Photoshop CS4 Interface Quick Tour

Written By Steve Patterson
Adobe has been making major changes lately to Photoshop's user interface, and Photoshop CS4 brings with it the most streamlined, efficient and user-friendly interface we've seen yet. In this Photoshop Basics tutorial, we'll take a quick, general tour of the new interface to see what's what, what's new and where it all is in this latest and greatest version of the world's most popular image editor!
If you've upgraded to Photoshop CS4 from a previous version, you'll find that even though the overall appearance of the interface may seem quite a bit different from older versions (especially if you've upgraded from Photoshop CS2 or earlier), everything is pretty much where you'd expect to find it in Photoshop CS4, and considering how massive Photoshop has become over the years, it's a definite nod to the talents of Adobe's designers that they've managed to keep the interface so clean and elegant.
The screenshot below is of the Mac version of Photoshop CS4. Generally speaking, both the Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop CS4 are identical, but there are a couple of small differences which we'll look at as we come to them. Also, I'm running Photoshop CS4 Extended here which contains some additional features not found in the standard version of Photoshop CS4. Again, we'll look at these differences when needed:

The new user interface in Photoshop CS4.

The Menu Bar

At the very top of the screen as always is the Menu Bar, a common feature of most programs these days. Clicking on the various menu headings brings up a list of related options and commands. For example, the File menu is where we find options for opening, saving and closing Photoshop documents. The Layer menu contains options for working with layers. Photoshop's many filters can be found under the Filter menu, and so on:

The Menu Bar in Photoshop CS4 (Extended).

We won't bother going through all the menu options here since we'd both die of boredom and most of the important options and commands are covered in our other tutorials. As I mentioned, I'm using the Mac version of Photoshop CS4. The Photoshop menu option on the far left, which is where we find Photoshop's Preferences on the Mac, is not found in the Windows version. You'll find the Preferences under the Edit menu in Windows. Also, the Analysis and 3D menu headings are exclusive to the Extended version of Photoshop CS4 and not found in the Standard version.

The Tools Panel

Along the left side of the screen is Photoshop's Tools panel, formerly known as the Tools palette (palettes are now officially known as panels in Photoshop CS4), and also commonly referred to simply as the Toolbox. This is where we find all of the various tools we need for working on our images. In Photoshop CS4, you'll find the Tools panel displayed in a single column, but I've split it in half here just to make it easier to fit on the page:

The Tools panel in Photoshop CS4.

Again, there's a couple of tools shown here that are exclusive to the Extended version of Photoshop CS4 (the 3D Rotate and 3D Orbit tools directly above the Hand Tool), but the majority of the tools are available in both the Standard and Extended versions and most have been around in Photoshop since forever.
Single Or Double Column Layout
Photoshop CS4, like CS3 before it, gives us a choice of how we want the Tools panel displayed. We can leave it in the default single column, or if you prefer, you can click on the small double-arrow icon at the top of the panel which will switch it to a double column layout, handy if you've upgraded from Photoshop CS2 or earlier and you can't get used to the new single column design. Click again on the icon to switch back to a single column:

You can switch between a single or double column layout in Photoshop CS4.

Accessing The Hidden Tools
Photoshop CS4, like earlier versions, comes with so many tools that if Adobe tried to display them all at once, the Tools panel would need its own scroll bar. So instead, Adobe has grouped many related tools together, with one tool in the group visible in the Tools panel and the others hidden behind it. Whenever you see a tool in the Tools panel with a small arrow to the bottom right of the icon, it means there are additional tools behind it waiting to be selected, and if you click and hold your mouse button down on one of these tools, a fly-out menu will appear showing you the additional tools. For example, by clicking and holding on the Rectangular Marquee Tool at the top of the Tools panel, a fly-out menu appears giving me access to the Elliptical Marquee Tool, the Single Row Marquee Tool and the Single Column Marquee Tool. Simply move your mouse cursor over the name of the tool you want, then release your mouse button to select it:

Click and hold on some tools in the Tools panel to access additional tools behind it.

Click and hold on the other tools in the Tools panel to see all of the tools available to us in Photoshop CS4.

The Options Bar

Directly related to the Tools panel is the Options Bar at the top of the screen. On a Windows system, the Options Bar is located below the Menu Bar. On a Mac, it's located below the Application Bar which is new to Photoshop CS4. We'll look at the Application Bar in a moment.
Your Options Bar may look different from mine, and that's because it always changes to display options for whichever tool you current have selected. Here, the Options Bar is displaying options for the Move Tool:

The Options Bar displays options for the currently selected tool.

If I select the Crop Tool from the Tools panel, the Options Bar changes to display options for the Crop Tool:

The Options Bar now displaying options for the Crop Tool.

And if I select the Type Tool, we see options displayed for the Type Tool:

The Options Bar now displaying options for the Type Tool.

Every tool has its own set of options which will always be available in the Options Bar.

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Handy Techniques for Cutting Out Hair in Photoshop

When trimming out images in Photoshop, human hair or animal fur always proves troublesome and can be tricky to achieve a realistic look. Here are two techniques I use on images with both plain backgrounds, and those with a varied background tones, each achieving pretty decent end results.

Technique One: Images with Plain Backgrounds

The best photos are those professional studio type shots that are taken against a plain white background. These shots make it much easier to find the edges of the subject, but trimming out fine hairs can still be a little tricky. In this example we’ll be using the common Channel technique to trim out this lovely lady.

Open up your image in Photoshop. This particular image doesn’t have a pure white background, but it is a plain colour and has good contrast between the subject and grey backdrop.

Head over to the Channels palette and review each of the Red, Green and Blue channels. Each one will be made up of slightly different tones, pick the one with the most contrast between foreground and background. Drag this channel onto the new channel icon to duplicate it.

With only the new channel selected, adjust the Levels (CMD+L) to dramatically increase the contrast between light and dark areas. However, don’t go too far, as you’ll notice some horrendous pixilation appearing in the fine areas.

Due to the slight variation in tone of the background, it appears grey in the darker areas. Use the Dodge tool set to a low Opacity to target the highlights and brush over this background area to really brighten it up.

Switch over to the Burn tool and target the shadows to dramatically darken down the inner areas of the image to pure black.

Use the brush tool to finish off the blacks by painting over the remaining areas of the inner section of the image.

Inverse the image to switch over the black and white areas (CMD+I), and give a quick check for any stray areas that may have been missed by the brush.

CMD+Click the Channel thumbnail to load the selection, then turn back on the visibility of the original channels. Head back over to the Layers palette and copy the selection. Paste it on a new layer and hide the original to see the cut out image against transparency.

The selection has managed to trim out even the finest of hairs to give a realistic cut. Paste the photo against an alternate background. Zoom in and check for any light coloured fringes around the edges, especially if placed against a darker background. These can be reduced using the Burn tool set to Highlights and gently brushed over the outline of the image.

Technique Two: Images with Detailed Backgrounds

The Channels technique is all well and good for studio photography with plain backgrounds, but it gets a little more difficult on standard shots with detailed backgrounds getting in the way.

Open up your image in Photoshop. This image has a decent contrast between foreground and background, but certain areas of the hair do blend in with the darker tones of the backdrop.

Start by trimming out the clear edges with the Pen Tool, but when you reach the hair simply create a rough tracing.

Around the hair portion, aim to include only solid areas of hair that aren’t merging with the background, otherwise the lighter tones will mess things up later.

Make a selection with a feathering of 0.2 pixels to remove any harsh edges then paste onto a new layer. Reduce the transparency of the image so that the original hair line can just be seen.

Here’s where the fun begins! Use the Smudge Tool to draw in areas of new hair, using the original outline as a template. Begin with a 4px brush to flesh out the thick base hair and disguise the jaggy lines from the path. A Wacom Graphics Tablet really comes in handy here to speed up the process and help add varied line thicknesses.

The new hair will soon flesh out the image back to its original appearance. It doesn’t look too bad at this stage, but repeating the process with a thinner brush will draw in those individual hairs.

Use a 2px brush with the Smudge Tool to draw thin stray hairs in varied directions to add realism to the image.

The photo can then be placed on any background with ease, and displays a crisp cut-out with no fringing or loss of fine detail.

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The Crop Tool in Photoshop

Introducing the Crop Tool

Third button down on the left side of the Photoshop toolbox we find the crop tool. The crop tool has a very easy keyboard shortcut to remember, so you'll rarely need to bother with selecting it from the toolbox. The shortcut for activating the crop tool is C. The crop tool in Photoshop can actually do much more than crop your images. The crop tool can be used to increase your canvas size, to rotate and resample images, and to quickly correct the perspective of an image. Let's start by exploring the most common use of the crop tool... cropping, of course! Open any image and select the Crop tool. Notice in the options bar you have spaces to fill in the desired width, height and resolution for the final cropped image. To the far left of the options bar, you can select from several crop tool preset options. I'll go over the crop tool options and presets a bit later, but for now, if you see any numbers in the crop tool options, press the clear button on the options bar to remove them
There's no need to be precise when making the first crop selection, because you can edit your selection before committing to the crop. If you want exact precision however, you will want to switch to a crosshair cursor. At any time, you can toggle from standard to precise cursors by pressing the Caps Lock key. This works with the painting tools as well. Try it out. You may find that the precise cursor is hard to see in some backgrounds, but it's nice to have the option when you need it.

The Crop Shield and Adjusting the Crop Selection

Pick which ever cursor preference you like and drag out a crop selection on your image. When you let go, the crop marquee will appear and the area to be discarded is shielded with a gray screen. The shield makes it easier to visualize how the cropping affects the overall composition. You can change the shielded area color and opacity from the options bar after you make a crop selection. You can also disable the shading by unchecking the "Shield" checkbox. Notice the squares on the corners and sides of the selection marquee. These are called handles because you can grab onto them to manipulate the selection. Move your cursor over each handle and you'll notice it changes to a double pointing arrow to indicate that you can resize the crop border. Make some adjustments to your crop selection now using the handles. You'll notice if you drag a corner handle you can adjust the width and height at the same time. If you hold the shift key down while dragging a corner handle it constrains the height and width proportions.
You'll find if you try to move the selection border to just a few pixels from any of the document edges, the border automatically snaps to the document edge. This makes it difficult to trim just a few pixels from an image, but you can disable snapping by holding down the Ctrl key (Command on Mac) when you get near an edge. You can toggle snapping on and off by pressing Shift-Ctrl-; (Shift-Command-; on Macintosh) or from the menu View > Snap To > Document Bounds.

Moving and Rotating the Crop Selection

Now move your cursor inside the selection marquee. The cursor changes to a solid black arrow indicating that you can move the selection. Holding the shift key while you move the selection constrains your movements. But that's not all... move your cursor to just outside one of the corner handles and you'll see it change to a double pointing curved arrow. When the curved arrow cursor is active you can rotate the selection marquee. This allows you to crop and straighten a crooked image at the same time. Just align one of the crop edges to a portion of the image that should be horizontal or vertical, and when you invoke the crop, it will rotate the image to conform to your selection. The center point on the crop marquee determines the center point to which the marquee is rotated. You can move this center point to change the center of rotation by clicking on it and dragging.

Adjusting Perspective with the Crop Tool

After you draw a crop selection, you have a checkbox on the options bar to adjust the perspective. This is useful for photos of tall buildings where there is some distortion. When you select the perspective check box, you can move your cursor over any of the corner handles and it will change to a shaded arrow. Then you can click and drag each corner of the crop marquee independently. To correct perspective distortion, move the top corners of the selection marquee inward, so that the sides of the selection are aligned with the edges of the building you want to correct.

Completing or Canceling Crop

If you change your mind after you've made a crop selection, you can back out of it by pressing Esc. To commit to your selection and make the crop permanent, you can press Enter or Return, or simply double click inside the selection marquee. You can also use the check mark button on the options bar to commit to the crop, or the circle-slash button to cancel the crop. If you right click in the document where you have made a crop selection, you can also use the context sensitive menu to finish the crop or cancel the crop. You can also crop to a selection using the rectangular marquee tool. When a rectangular selection is active, just choose Image > Crop.

Cropping Layers - Delete or Hide Cropped Area

If you are cropping a layered image, you can choose whether you want to delete the cropped area permanently, or just hide the area outside of the crop marquee. These options appear on the options bar, but they are disabled if your image only contains a background layer or when using the perspective option.

• The Delete option works like a typical crop — the same as if you used the Canvas Size command to clip the image.
  
  
• The Hide option retains those pixels, but resizes the canvas so they are not visible. This area outside the visible canvas is called "big data" and you can make it visible again by choosing Image > Reveal all. Keep in mind that the hide option requires more memory and disk space when you save the file.

Take a few moments now to practice cropping and manipulating the crop selection using all the methods we've discussed so far. You can return your image to its original state at any time by going to File > Revert.

Crop Tool Presets

Now let's get back to those crop tool options and presets. If you select the crop tool and click the arrow at the far left end of the options bar, you'll get a palette of crop tool presets. These presets are for cropping to the most common photo sizes, and they all set the resolution to 300 which means your file will be resampled. You can create your own crop tool presets and add them to the palette. I suggest you create your own crop tool presets for common photo sizes without specifying the resolution so you can quickly crop to these sizes without resampling. I'll walk you through creating the first preset, and you can create the rest on your own. Select the crop tool. In the options bar, enter these values:

• Width = 6
• Height = 4
• Resolution = (leave blank)

Click the arrow for the presets palette, then click the icon on the right to create a new preset. The name will fill in automatically based on the values you used, but you can change it if you like. I named my preset "Crop 6x4."

Cropping Aspect Ratio

Now when you select this preset, the crop tool will have a fixed aspect ratio of 4:6. You can size the crop marquee to any size, but it will always retain this aspect ratio, and when you commit to the crop, no resampling will occur, and the resolution of your image will not be changed. Because you've entered a fixed aspect ratio, the crop marquee will not show side handles — only corner handles. Now that we have created a preset for a 4x6 crop, you can go ahead and create presets for other common sizes such as:
1x1 (Square)
5x7
8x10
You might be tempted to create presets for both portrait and landscape orientations of each size, but this is not necessary. To swap the width and height values for the crop tool, simply click on the double pointing arrows between the Width and Height fields on the options bar, and the numbers will swap.

Additional Cropping Tips

Anytime you use a number in the resolution field of the crop tool, your image will be resampled. Unless you really know what you are doing, I suggest always clearing the resolution field of the crop options. You can also use pixel values in the height and width field of the options bar by typing "px" after the numbers. For instance, if you have a web site and you like to post all your images at the same size of 400 x 300 pixels, you can create a preset for this size. When you use pixel values in the height and width fields, your image will always be resampled to match the exact dimensions.
The "Front Image" button on the the options bar comes into play if you ever need to crop one image based on the exact values of another image. When you click this button, the height, width, and resolution fields will fill in automatically using the values of the active document. Then you can switch to another document and crop to these same values, or create a crop tool preset based on the active document size and resolution.


Source: About.com

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How To Create Engraved Text in Photoshop

A nice text effect is the ‘cut-out’ look or what is best known as engraved text. It is actually as easy to implement as to alternatively add an embossed effect to any length of text. Here is a good approach if you want it to be done quickly.
Let us create a box at 300 by 100 pixels. Now assume we are creating a logo and wish to engrave the company name text. I chose a light cyan shade as this softer color will help make the engraved look stand out more upon completing the task. The hex code used was #88A4F7. Then fill the box with that color.
I used ‘brush stroke 26′ as the font to gain a smooth wavy feel with a size of 60 pixels. Actually you can use any font, just make it around 40 to 60 in size and a much darker color than the background.

Now, right click the text layer, and select blending options. Check the inner shadow box.

If you wish to alter any of the other settings, best you wait until the tutorial is over so you can correct any adjustments as necessary. Duplicate the text and change the duplicate font color to white. Then, move the white text layer above the first layer so it snaps into place. Then move that text down with your arrow key about 1-2 pixels.

Now drag the white text down a layer in the list so it is beneath the black text.

The next part is to simply alter the opacity levels of the text. Bring the top dark layer down to about 65% and the white layer to about 80%. My aim was to make the inner text look pale though you can leave the opacity setting if you prefer the darker engraving above. Play around with the figures to try and achieve the engraved feel. It may be that you need to adjust the position of the dark layer slightly. Soon as I adjusted the opacity levels, the result should now start to look like engraved brushed text.

Now, right click the bottom white layer, go to blending options, and change the blend mode to overlay. Now to sink the wavy texture further, check the inner shadow box.

Et Voila! Now you have completed the tutorial by weaving a nice engraved effect that you can use for any of the fonts complete with curves and shadows giving it a subsequent apparent depth. You simply enter the text, and then choose a font size upon further edits.

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Extract a person from a photo.

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Cast shadow in Photoshop

By adding cast shadow to an object you can make it look more realistic. This tutorial will teach cast shadows in a few simple steps using nothing but basic techniques.

Step 1

You must start by cutting out the background from the object that you want to cast the shadow. When you have done this you duplicate the layer that you have the object in, call it shadow to make it easy to work with. Place the shadow layer underneath the object layer.

Step 2

Select the shadow layer and go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness / Contrast, set them both to -100 as displayed in the image and hit ok. Change the shadow layer opacity to around 40%.

Step 3

Now go to Edit > Transform > Distort your shadow should now have 6 handles, click and drag the upper middle handle. Drag the handle to the left and down to create the effect that we want.

Step 4

To make the shadow a bit fuzzy go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a Radius of something like 4 pixels.

Step 5

Now I want the shadow to become lighter the further away from the object it is. To achieve this effect you need to add a Layer Mask to the shadow layer. Select the shadow layer and press the Add layer mask button at the bottom of the Layers Window. Use the Gradient Tool to draw a gradient from white to black, where black should be in the position where you want the shadow to be the softest.

The final cast shadow

You might have to move the shadow to make it look like it origins from the object, when you have aligned it perfect to the object you are done and it could look like the image you can see below.

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How-To: Fade One Image into Another

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use layer masks to create the effect of one image gradually fading into another.
Have you ever wanted to create an image that depicts two separate images fading into each other?

This is a nice professional effect that's easy to create using Photoshop's Layer Masks. This tutorial shows you how it's done.

Open the two images in Photoshop

We're going to use the following two images from our ImageKits in this tutorial:

Open these two images in Photoshop. They'll appear as two separate documents.

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Put the images into one document

So that we can do the fade between the images, we'll need them both in the same document. The easiest way to do this is to shift+click on the "Background" layer in the "books" document, and drag the layer on top of the "clouds" document:

(Holding down the shift key ensures that the "books" image will appear in the centre of the "clouds" document.)
You should then have both your image layers in the "clouds" document, as follows:

Add a layer mask

We'll now create a layer mask on the "books" layer. A layer mask behaves just like a regular mask, but it is attached to a specific layer. As with a normal mask, dark areas of the mask hide the underlying layer, while light areas of the mask reveal the underlying layer.
To create the layer mask, make sure the "books" layer ("Layer 1") is selected in the Layers palette, then select Layer > Add Layer Mask > Reveal All:

You can see that the layer now has a layer mask attached to it (the white thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail). Also, note that the mask is highlighted with a white rectangle around it - this means that you are now working on the mask, rather than the layer image. (You can click on the layer thumbnail and mask thumbnail to switch between the two.)

Fill the layer mask with a gradient

We're now going to fill the layer mask with a gradient fill, going from white in the top left corner to black in the bottom right corner. Remember that white areas allow the layer to show through, and black areas hide the layer, making the underlying layer visible. This is how we will achieve our fade effect!
With Layer 1's layer mask still selected in the Layers palette, select the Gradient tool:

Select the "Linear" gradient type and, from the drop-down colour box, choose the "Black, White" swatch:

Now, click and drag in the document window from the bottom right of the image to the top left, to create the gradient fill:

You should now see the finished effect, with one image smoothly fading into the other!

Tweaking the fade effect

If you're not happy with the fade effect, you can play with the layer mask to achieve the desired result. Remember that the layer mask can be edited and drawn upon, just like a regular bitmap image!
For example, to produce a sharper transition, increase the contrast of the layer mask (Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast...):

You might also like to try playing with the various blending modes for Layer 1, or applying different filters to the layer mask, until you get the effect you're after.
Enjoy! :)

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