Adobe Creative Cloud Design Tools All-in-One For Dummies (2013)
Book IV
Photoshop CC
You can work much faster by taking advantage of helpful Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. Find user favorites online at www.dummies.com/extras/adobecreativeclouddesigntoolsaio.
Contents at a Glance
Chapter 1: Exploring New Features in Photoshop CC
Chapter 2: Getting into Photoshop CC Basics
Chapter 3: Messing with Mode Matters
Chapter 4: Creating a Selection
Chapter 5: Using the Photoshop Pen Tool
Chapter 6: Thinking about Resolution Basics
Chapter 7: Creating a Good Image
Chapter 8: Working with Painting and Retouching Tools
Chapter 9: Using Layers
Chapter 10: Saving Photoshop Images for Print and the Web
Chapter 1: Exploring New Features in Photoshop CC
In This Chapter
Upsizing improvements
Taking advantage of the Camera Raw filter
Using the Shake Reduction filter
Managing layers
Working with Live Shapes
This chapter is an introduction to the new features that make Photoshop CC an excellent upgrade. If you are a new user, Photoshop’s new features will matter less to you at this point, and you may want to skip this chapter and come back to it later. We don’t include all the new features here — only the most interesting ones.
Keep in mind that this chapter’s purpose is to introduce you to some of Photoshop’s more incredible features, but you also will find many more built in to the other chapters of the Photoshop minibook.
Scaling Up with Better Quality
Even newbie Photoshop users know that scaling up a bitmapped (or pixel-based) image can cause some serious quality issues. The pixels become more visible, and the image tends to look choppy and lack detail. So what is different about upscaling in this version of Photoshop? Well for one thing, you can choose from two enlargement resampling methods.
Though it is still much better to use an image that is the correct size, you do have a little more leeway with the new version of Photoshop. You can try it out in the next few steps:
1. Choose File⇒Open to open any one of your images or look for a sample at our website, www.agitraining.com/dummies.
2. Choose Image⇒Image size.
You can change the increments if it helps by holding down the Width and Height drop-down menus.
3. Choose the amount that you want to increase your image by. You can choose inches, percent, pixels, and more, as shown in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1: Changing the increments in the Image Size dialog box.
If you want to constrain proportions, you’ll want the chain icon to be closed, otherwise you will distort the image as you resize.
4. Make sure that Resample is selected and choose one of the enlargement choices — Preserve Details (enlargement) or Bicubic Smoother (enlargement), as shown in Figure 1-2.
Both work great, but if you notice an introduction of graininess or noise when you enlarge your image, undo and go with the Bicubic selection. Don’t worry; you have the opportunity to see the resampling in the preview window before you press OK.
Figure 1-2: Select a resampling method.
5. Use the slider to reduce additional noise or graininess, if you think it is necessary, and then press OK.
New Methods for Managing Layers
As you work more and more in Photoshop, you will come to love and appreciate the Layers panel. Layers offer the opportunity to essentially work with one image on top of another. You can blend layers together using masks, blending modes, and by applying variations in opacity. If you are not familiar with layers, read Chapter 9 of this minibook.
So what can you do in Photoshop CC that you couldn’t do in previous versions? You can now more easily isolate layers, allowing you to focus only on the active layer by using the Select menu. This isolate-layer feature is essentially an extension of the Layer filter feature that was introduced in Photoshop CS6, and it allows users to organize and find layers more easily. You can try it by following these steps:
1. Open any layered file.
You can find Photoshop layered sample files at www.agitraining/dummies.
2. Select any layer in the Layers panel, and then choose Select⇒Isolate Layers.
Note that the other layers disappear.
To view the other layers, just choose Select⇒Isolate Layers again. It’s a toggle control.
If you look in the Layers panel, you see a drop-down menu with the default selection of Kind. This is a filter that allows you to choose the type of layer you want to isolate in the Layers panel. You can choose from the filters on the right the following types of layers: Pixel layers, Adjustment layers, Type layers, Shape layers, and Smart Objects, as you can see in Figure 1-3.
Figure 1-3: You can filter layers in the Layers panel.
Using Camera Raw as a Filter
Some digital cameras provide you the option to shoot Raw images, which means that they are minimally processed, allowing photographers to manipulate their images using the Camera Raw plug-in in Photoshop.
Using the Camera Raw plug-in, you can easily change the following:
The temperature of the image
The exposure of an image
White balance and color space corrections
The sharpness of your image and more
So what is new in Photoshop CC? The Camera Raw component of Photoshop is now available as a filter in Photoshop CC. This filter allows you to access many of the helpful correction tools that were previously only available in the Camera plug-in. Using the Camera Raw filter gives you many of the same options as the plug-in, though some have been removed because they don’t apply to the filter workflow. These include Rotate, Crop, Save, Lens, and Camera Profile, to name a few. You can follow along with these steps if you want to give the Camera Raw filter a spin:
1. Choose any file or use a sample from our website at www.agitraining.com/dummies.
2. Choose Filter⇒Camera Raw Filter.
The Camera Raw dialog box appears. In this dialog box, you adjust two items: the white point to balance the color and the exposure to lighten the image a bit.
3. Select the White Balance tool (whitebalancetool.png) from the toolbar at the top of the Camera Raw dialog box.
The White Balance tool can be used to click an area in the image that is a shade of gray. By locating a gray, or a neutral, and clicking it with the White Balance tool, you can eliminate casts in the image relatively easily. Keep in mind that this is a quick correction technique and that using the Curves panel may be needed for more control.
4. With the White Balance tool selected, click anything gray in your image (as shown in Figure 1-4).
You can also make selective changes in the Camera Raw filter. You don’t have to make overall adjustments, but if you want to take the new Camera filter a little further, follow these steps.
Figure 1-4: Select the White Balance tool and click a gray, or neutral color, in your image to remove the color cast.
1. Select the Radial filter tool and then click and drag a selection on your image in the Preview pane in the Camera Raw dialog box.
The Radial filter acts like a vignette (or feathered) selection technique in the Camera Raw filter.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the Radial Filter panel, as you see in Figure 1-5, to see that you can select to affect the inside or outside of your selection. In this example, Inside is selected.
Note that this is the location where you can change the amount of feathering as well. For this example, keep the feathering at 100.
Figure 1-5: You can select to affect the inside or outside of the Radial Filter.
When the Radial Filter is selected, the options on the right change to reflect adjustments that you can make. Changes that you make in the Radial filter are dynamic and easily changed while you are still in this dialog box.
3. Click and drag the Exposure slider to the right until it reaches about +1.15; notice that the inside of the selection is being affected, as shown in Figure 1-6.
Figure 1-6: Increase the exposure in only the Radial Filter area.
4. Now that you have made an adjustment, experiment with changing the Radial Filter selection. Make it larger or smaller, or change it from a circle to an oblong shape. Work with the filter until you think it improves the exposure in the center part of the camera. No exact settings are necessary for this example.
5. Click OK when you are finished experimenting.
Shake Reduction
The addition of the Shake Reduction Filter in Photoshop is a boost for anyone who likes to snap photos without a tripod, or who is looking for a quick way to improve images blurred by movement. This filter is helpful when trying to reduce the effects of camera shake. It works best with images that have the following characteristics:
Still camera captures
Low noise or graininess
Relatively good lighting (not too dark or light)
Indoor images taken at a slow speed with no flash
Images captured with long focal length shot both indoor and outdoor
Images used for forensics, which is great for improving the quality of text in an image
Although Shake Reduction is a great tool, it is not the answer to all your blurry images. Keep the following in mind when selecting images to use with this filter:
The Shake Reduction filter does not work well with images that have specular highlights. Specular highlights are very bright spots caused by shiny material and reflections of light.
The Shake Reduction will not drastically improve the clarity of a moving object in your image.
It is best to use the tool in a portion of your image and not apply the filter to the entire image.
When you choose Filter⇒Sharpen⇒Shake Reduction, the Shake Reduction dialog box opens, and the Shake Reduction filter auto detects an area, determines, and starts analyzing the shape, size, and shake (motion). It then determines the best way to address motion, starting from the center of the selected area and moving out.
Although the Shake Reduction feature determines and makes automatic adjustments, you also have the capability to tweak them using the Blur Trace Settings area in the Shake Reduction dialog box, as you see in Figure 1-7.
Here are the settings and what each affects:
Blur Trace Bounds: Photoshop automatically figures out the amount of movement in pixels. You can manually adjust that amount if necessary.
Source Noise: You can use this drop-down menu to manually override automatic source image noise detection.
Smoothing: You can use the slider to manually adjust for smaller artifacts that occur with sharpening.
Artifact Suppression: Larger halo like artifacts can be adjusted with this slider.
Figure 1-7: You can reduce motion blur with the Shake Reduction filter.
Live Shape properties
An outstanding new feature that allows you to create more vector graphics in Photoshop is the Live Shape Properties feature. Now when you create a vector shape, the Properties panel reflects properties that you can change, such as the fill, stroke, stroke width, actual width and height, and more. A favorite is the capability to change the corner radius of a rounded rectangle, even after you have created it. Not only that, but you also can change the size of each individual corner radius by deselecting the link icon in the corner radius section of the Properties panel.
Notice that in the Properties panel, shown in Figure 1-8, you can more easily access the features that allow you to customize your shape by combining and subtracting shapes.
Figure 1-8: The new Live Shape Properties feature lets you adjust the corner radius of vector shapes.