Practical Photoshop December 2021

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3oNGsAx In this festive project, we’ll show you how to make a composite picture from four images: the snowy forest, the Moon, the snowflakes and Santa on his sleigh. With the help of Blending Modes and some quick layer techniques, it takes mere minutes to combine these photos – and these same skills can be used for all kinds of creative projects… 01 DOWNLOAD THE IMAGES We got the snowflakes from the Adobe free stock site (search for AdobeStock_302520032) and the others for free from pixabay.com (search for starry-sky-4742307, full-moon-1869760 and christmas-312463). Open all four images in Photoshop to get started. 02 MASK THE MOON Go to the moon image and grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Hold Shift+Alt and drag out from the center of the moon to make a circular selection over…

The Brush Tool is more than just a simple tool for painting colors. If we delve into the Brush Panel (Window > Brush Settings), we can find all kinds of wonderful brush effects. Scatter and Size Jitters are especially helpful for a scattered glow effect like this. First choose a brush tip or make your own (see tip 3), then go to the brush settings, click Scatter and increase Scattering. Next, go to Brush Tip Shape and adjust Spacing to change how many times the brush paints in one go. Then go on to adjust the Size and Angle Jitters in Shape Dynamics to randomize things further. Here we’ve used scatting effects in combination with Layer Styles to create our Christmas tree effect. WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3kUBznQ…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3oGdHWl It may not be a white Christmas for all of us this year, but we can still give our photos a festive snowstorm, whatever the weather. We’ll explain how to create your own snow with brushes, and how to change your brush settings to create a random scatter effect for the snow. Whether you want to add a snow effect to your photos or get creative with all kinds of amazing brush tricks, we’ll show you how. Of course, you can save these brushes for use in future designs and effects as well. you can also experiment with brush settings that allow you to scatter, rotate and spread out your brush. These fun features let you randomize the snow brush effect, as if you were throwing handfuls of snow…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3HzW5nz Neural Filters are one of the most interesting things to happen in Photoshop in years. They use machine learning to apply different filter effects, so the effect is tailored to the content of the image. We’ll use the Style Transfer Neural Filter here to transform our photo into a festive greeting. This particular filter lets you restyle your photo based on analysis of another work of art. So you can load in a Van Gogh or a Degas and transfer the color palette and brush style to your photo. Like all filter effects, Style Transfer is a bit hit and miss. But it’s fun to try out, and it’s interesting to see how the filter works differently in areas of the image rather than as a blanket effect. 01…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3x2cnka The recently introduced Color Grading panel is available in Photoshop’s Camera Raw plugin and Lightroom – and it’s one of the most powerful toning tools on offer. Several of the other color tools in Camera Raw are geared towards correcting unwanted color shifts, but Color Grading is different. Rather than correcting, it instead invites you to add creative color shifts of your own in order to give an image a certain look or mood. As such, Color Grading is one of the best tools to use for boosting the atmosphere of a scene. Color Grading is a replacement for the old Split Toning Panel. Like its predecessor, it lets you add individual tints to different parts of the tonal range of your image, based on brightness values. But while…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3kRnKqv The basic mechanics of the Clone Tool are simple: you Alt-click to sample pixels from one place, then paint to replicate them in another. But there’s real skill involved in cloning, and the tool takes experience to master. In fact, with the possible exception of the Pen Tool, the Clone Tool could claim to be the most involved tool in Photoshop. When you delve into the Clone Source Panel, experiment with brush Blending Modes and discover cloning in the Vanishing Point filter, you’ll soon realize there’s much more to the Clone Tool than meets the eye. Our image here is the sort of seascape where precision and clean lines are vital, but there are a few glaring errors. First, spots of water on the lens have created blurry blobs…