Jan 102013
 

If you still haven’t upgraded to Photoshop CS6, and are wondering whether you should consider, let me give you some of the amazing new features that I find useful, to help you make a decision.

Auto-Save
Probably, one of the best things they’ve done in Photoshop, is something that you won’t see. How many times have you been working on a document only to have Photoshop crash and you lose all your work?!

Apr 272012
 
Screen Shot 2012-03-29 at 20.11.10

Just in case you missed part 1, it’s right here, so check it out before returning here ready to finish this tutorial.

Mixing your subject with objects in the scene will help sell the illusion better, so I have placed the subject over the barrel and will now make it look like she is standing next to it. The shadow is causing a problem, but nothing a mask cannot fix.

Mar 302012
 

So in the previous tutorial I showed you how to change the colour of a green screen. Well what about dropping in a new background? Using the rough cutout from a previous tutorial here I will show you how to ‘photoshop in’ a new background and make it look real.

To start I dropped the cutout onto the background and manipulated it into place using Edit -> Free Transform (Or Cmd/Ctrl + T) It is best at this stage to get the proportions right and positions correct as best as possible as this could affect where you place shadows and what other effects you apply later.

Mar 292012
 
Red Memory Box

In this tutorial I will show you how to use some techniques to change the colour of a green screen to achieve an interesting textured background without having to do a cutout!

To start I added a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Then using the colour selector hand in the palette I clicked on the green screen. This automatically selects the greens for me in the palette and will mean only those are changed.

Next I refined the selection by dragging the slider to cover all the greens.

Feb 292012
 

Welcome to Part 2 of Cut Outs: Background Eraser Tool. In this tutorial we will be cleaning up the rough cutout we made with the background eraser tool. Missed it? Don’t worry, the post is right here.

If you remember, the cutout we made was decent enough; especially for the time we put into it. But for a professional, this is just not up to scratch yet. Now I will take you through some advanced techniques to cleanup the image before we drop it into a background. The image below shows you where we got to – some rough/furry edges, green lines remaining and green hints in the legs and arms.

Jan 202012
 

In the previous masking tutorial (found here) we looked at how to use some of Photoshops masking tools. But now we will look at a new kind of mask, the Clipping Mask.

So let’s start playing with this tool. Here I have a background and a line of text. What I would love is for the background texture to fill only the text area. This can be done with standard masks in just a few clicks, but with two clicks it can be one with clipping masks.

(1st click) Move text under the texture.