Welcome to the creative digital photo manipulation news site. Here you'll find tutorials, solutions and ideas for your Photoshopping with focus on fun, creativity and inspiration.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Jalbum repository
Need yet another new skin for your Jalbum exhibition? At the Jalbum repository you'll find all the latest skins (actually all of them). Today I've changed the Galleries to the SWEx skin. I don't like flash skin since they can't be indexed by the search engines, but they do look good.
Found a link to the history of computer graphics and possibly the mother of Photoshop. It's no surprise that it all began in a military lab, but still interesting reading. And if you want more;here's a slightly dated, but entertaining piece about the dawn of Photoshop.
I had a Nikon D70 for a two years and was never really impressed, probably due to the faulty assist light and the dull colours. DPreview has just published their D80 review, but I think I'll get me a Canon 400D instead.
I found a lot of yellow gold deep in the dark swedish forrest yesterday. If you want be Midas for a day this trick is for you.
1. Make a rough selection of the object you want to turn into gold and duplicate it into a new layer. 2. Add an adjustment layer curves and set it as clipping mask to the object and mess up the curve as much as you can. 3. Add another adjustment layer. This time we'll select hue/saturation and check the colorize check box. Adjust it until your object has the right gold hue. 4. Apply a gaussian blur to your gold object Done!
Need inspiration? No ideas are new - everything has been done before. All you need to do is to steal an idea and make it your own. Add a twist to an existing image. Copy a great piece of art work. Ever found an extrodinary digital manipulation you wish was your creation? Replicating a stunning piece of work is an excellent training ground. Go steal!(The image to the left is my version of Salvador Dalis "Sleep" - I don't call it stealing. I call it inspiration.)
The vanishing point tutorial is up and running. Hosted by freakingnews.com right here.
I've never found the vanishing point very useful, but it can be fun to play with. The main purpose must be the ability to clone in perspective e.g. remove stuff from a wooden deck or delete a painting from a wall with a repetitive wallpaper. In this tutorial we will change the texture of the house, install two addition windows and a sign with the assistance of the vanishing point filter found in Photoshop CS2.
"Adobe is an ageless construction material..." the text can be found on the back of the bottle of wine I found yesterday. Some say alcohol can boost your creativity some say it's a creative blocker. The Chilean Adobe wine is not really in my taste, but I like the label and in moderation it can be a fruity brain booster.
Do you find your 21" lcd to small? If you have a projector you can expose your creations on a wall from the floor up to the roof and if you want to you can trace the output on your wall or on a canvas and do a paint-by-numbers mural.
This mini tutorial will teach how to cut and paste with absolute precision. If you haven’t used the Pen tool before this will be hard and take some time, but when you know the technique you will be able to make perfect selections within seconds. The Pen tool is difficult to learn but I promise you it will be worth your while. The Bezier curves are vectors jointed by anchor points. The anchor points have handles that controls the curves. Paths are vectors and not pixels and can be scaled up and down in size and transformed without loosing quality. There are numerous of vector tutorials, but this is how I learned to play with vectors and it teaches you the very basics. We will make a path around the “three” with 17 anchor points. You can cheat and make 300 anchors points, but you will not learn how to master the beastly Bezier curves.
The tutorial is hosted by freakingnews.com right here
This mini tutorial teaches you how to paint inside an object. Clipping masks are excellent when you want to set the light and shadows to an object. To paint the highlights add a new layer above the layer of your object and "Create a clipping mask" in the layer palette sub menu or press [Alt+Ctrl+G]. Set the layer blending mode to soft light and paint with a broad soft edged white brush in the clipping mask. The white colour will only affect the object and not its surroundings. To paint the shades create a new layer, set it as clipping mask, set the blending mode to multiply, the opacity to about 30% and paint with a broad soft edged black brush in the clipping mask layer.
Besides from having an ultra cool name it's very useful when you need to erase stuff from your chop. First take an image of your scene. Next you place your object in the scene and take the second shoot. The tripod will keep your camera in the exact same position. The light might change between your two images, but if you are shooting RAW images you can match the light later on.
Open the two images. Copy/Paste the one with the object and place it in a new layer above the image with the scene. Apply a layer mask set to hide all and paint back the parts you want to reveal. Make an object fly, merge objects or erase your own legs as in this example.
Have a lot of creations you want to share with the rest of us? You might give jalbum a try. Jalbum automatically creates web albums. There is a big selections of included an downloadable skins. You can also customize your skins.
Photoshop and Photoshop Elements can do it to, but not as stylish and jalbum is free... The Patrikland galleries have been updated with a new skin "mushi".
If you don't take your own photos you'll have to find the sources somewhere else. When you look for an image to distort you'll need large and sharp sources. Google image search can be useful, but there is the copyright issue and often a quality issue. I'd like to recommend istockphoto.com for cheap, but good sources (the used to be gold fish is from istockphoto). You can download a lowres image for 1 dollar and highres from 3-5 dollars at istockphoto.
And when we are on the subject I'd like to recommend the Adobe exchange community for inspiration, templates, scripts and image solutions.
There is an easy way to apply a new texture to grayscale object. Place the image with the texture file in a layer above the grayscale object. Set the layer blending mode to overlay in the layer palette. You can also experiment with different blending modes. Set the texture layer to soft light for a less intrusive blending or hard light for brighter, harder colours.
Now you need to trim the texture layer. Apply a layer mask to the texture layer. Set the mask to "hide all" and paint it back to the grayscale object. Done!
Next time we will apply a texture to a coloured object - stay tuned.
This is a very simple and very funny trick. As you know your left side of your face isn't identical to your right side and this little stunt shows you what you would have looked like if you were absolutely symmetrical.
Take a portrait of someone you know (or don't know) and copy the left or the right side of the face. Paste the half into another layer and flip it horizontally and move it over to the other side. Done!
2. Add an adjustment layer curves and set it as clipping mask to the object and mess up the curve as much as you can. 
3. Add another adjustment layer. This time we'll select hue/saturation and check the colorize check box. Adjust it until your object has the right gold hue.
