Photoshop Tutorials/General Photo Editing links and advice
Jagerjaques:
Hi! Here, you will be allowed to add your own tutorials, or if you have any links or whatever, you may post them as well. I will try to keep this post updated like an index. Thanks everyone.
1 - franciele's Photoshop CS2 Tut Starts HERE
franciele:
Yay! I'm so happy I finally have it done! :lol:
I divided this post into 4 parts just to make sure I didn't do something to mess up the thread.
1 of 4
This is an Adobe Photoshop CS2 tutorial that I did by request.
Ok, this is the first time I’ve ever tried making a tutorial. I made it as self explanatory as I could make it. But you know how it goes: different people think in different ways. So if there is anything you don’t understand let me know and I will try to explain to the best of my abilities. Also I like to say that I am NOT an expert, I also make mistakes. All I know about Photoshop was learned through the long and suffering trial and error process. If you have an easier way of doing things then by all means let us know! Another warning note, English is not my first language and I am bound to make mistakes so bear with me.
Don’t expect this to be a quick process because it is NOT, photoshoping pictures takes time, so be patient! :)
I wrote this tutorial in the most basic level so if I bore you with the elementary detail, I’m sorry. I think this will keep people that don’t know much about Photoshop from getting confused.
This is a tutorial for Adobe Photoshop CS2; other Photoshops should be similar so maybe this will be of some help to other Photoshop users. If you don't have Photoshop CS2 and want to try it, here is a link to a fully functional 30 days trial. Just register and download!. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start!
The objective of this tutorial is to put two pictures together and make it look good lol
I will be using these two pictures:
Picture 1 (which I will call the face picture.)
Picture 2 (which I will call the original or body picture.)
The picture selection is very important, try to choose pictures that have similar poses to make the process go smoother.
Let’s start by opening Photoshop, when it is loaded click on File/Open
Select the picture of your choice that you will be editing (you may use my two pictures) and click open.
Repeat the process and open the second picture.
Now that we got both pictures open let’s check their sizes. Since I want to crop the head from one to put on the other picture, I’ll have to match the head size to as close as possible.
To find the picture size, and to resize, go to Image/ Image Size.
The head picture is 538x550 and the other picture is 553x600. There is no way for me to make this huge head fit, since it’s almost the same size as the body, we have to adjust that. Where it says Width let’s change it to 300. This is a trial and error thing I’m basically guessing what size will work. But let’s try 300x325 first (trust me it will work since I tried a couple of other different sizes before settling on 300 :lol:). Click ok to exit this window.
To check the size compatibility select the Move Tool on the left corner of the screen in the tool box.
Move your mouse on top of the head picture hold down the left mouse button and drag it on top of the body picture.
This basically makes a copy of the dragged picture. Since we just wanted to check the head size we don’t need it, so we can delete it. To delete simply click on “delete” on your keyboard or on the right lower corner there is the box called History.
Simply go back a step by clicking on the first option, in this case “open”, this works with everything you do it’s the same as “undo”.
franciele:
2 of 4
Ok now that I got you somewhat situated let’s do some copy and pasting. First we are going to select part of the head.
To do that select the Lasso Tool. There are 3 different lassos. To make all 3 show up for selection simply do a right mouse click on top of the Lasso icon and the selection box shows up and you can select whichever you want, I like using the magnetic lasso and that’s the one I’m using for this tutorial.
Don’t worry this is a pain, I know. Just don’t give up it takes sometime to get use to it. After you have the head part you want selected
Put your mouse on top of the selected area and again hold down your left mouse button and drag it on top of the body picture.
No, it will not look good, lol, it never does. But now comes the fun part! Now we get to make the head actually look like it belongs there.
The first step is to erase the original head so it won’t show up. To do that we will color it out. Meet your newest friend the Eyedropper Tool! Select the Eyedropper Tool on the left corner.
After selecting the Eyedropper move your mouse to the background near the head and click on it.
A color selection will appear at the bottom left corner in the tool box.
You will need to switch the colors (there are 2 little squares) click on the little double arrow on top of the second color square, this should switch the color to what you have just selected with the eyedropper.
Now select the Brush tool
For different sizes and thickness simply click on the little arrow button at the top after selecting the brush tool
Erasing of the original face. Using the layers (there should be 2) on the top right corner under “Layers”. Select the head layer so we can move it to the side and color the original face a little. To color the original face make sure you have the original picture layer selected! Or you are going to have a mess…not going in detail just trust me lol
After coloring the original face move the new head back… and see? It almost looks ready!
You are now officially half way! :lol:
Now let’s play with the hair. That’s right: play. From here on it’s all about playing with the brush tool. The Eyedropper will become your best friend from here on too. Number one rule: It may look black but it’s not! So use the eyedropper to select colors that already exists on the picture that way you keep the picture in harmony.
franciele:
3 of 4
Using the eyedropper and the brush I started to work on the hair
Using the eyedropper I select the darker color of the hair and used it on the highlights that were standing out too much. I added some lighter color to the ends to make it look a little more real. For now I’m happy with it so let’s work on the rest of the picture.
Her skin tone is bothering me too since it is too light for the face. I shall change that. Using the eyedropper select the color more common to her face (the brownish color).
Now, at the top below Help there is something called Opacity. Here is the trick to make the skin tone darker, or brownish if you prefer :)
The opacity will determine the strength of the color you are using. Example: if you are using black at 100% it will be BLACK now say if it’s at 30% it will “burn” the original color (of the picture) slightly to a darker shade. Since we are using a brown color, the skin tone after I use the brush with opacity at 35% will make her whitish skin look a little different, darker.
Now that we got the opacity selected you may choose to use a bigger sized brush to make the job easier, don’t use one that is too big though you don’t want the whole picture to be the color of her skin :lol:
Yay! That’s done.
Notice I also changed the arm a little bit, she looked a bit too chubby for the face so I changed the hand a little to make her look slimmer (all I used was the brush no biggie). Now that I’m happier with the body I’m going to put the finishing touches on the hair, again best friend eyedropper comes to use in selecting the right color.
I basically just filled in on the empty space next to the red hair arrangement. Nothing too fancy. :)
Since the reflection on the mirror doesn’t quite fit we got to change that too.
Here comes the most awesome eyedropper again lol Just use it to select a darker shade of the hair and a darker shade of the skin.
Again opacity comes to play since you don’t want the skin in the mirror to call too much attention and be distracting.
This is where we are ready to save! Go to File/Save As.
A screen will pop up, this is important, make sure you save it to a file that you are familiar with. I use JPG/ JPEG since most, if not all, programs and web hosts can open these kinds of files. Name it whatever you want, select the file type and click on save (make sure you know where it’s being saved at) another little box will pop up just click ok. You may close this picture now, since you “saved as” you won’t need to worry about the original picture getting lost (in case if you wanted to keep the original without the changes).
franciele:
4 of 4
Since I want to make it look like a painting I’m going to use art effects. But first I have to open the picture that I just saved (here is where I’m not perfect :lol:, I don’t know why but I can never make art effect on pictures with layers so I save it, which makes it one layer, and open it again and it’s all good) So go to File/ Open find where you saved it at and click on open.
Once it’s open go to Filter/ Artistic/ Colored Pencil.
You will have the preview of your picture on the left side and all the artistic features on the right. The 100% zoom, at the left bottom corner, bothers me a little since I can’t see the whole picture so I always change it to 66%, just click on the arrow button next to the 100% to do that.
This is my favorite part, there are tons of things you can do and play with here. There are quite a bit of effects you can use in 6 different folders named “Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Sketch, Stylize and Texture” To see the effects just click on the little arrow and several options will appear then click on the icons and see what happens!
Play with the options; you never know what you might come up with!
Enough playing for me lol I chose to use Grain under Texture for this picture, since to me it gives the painting feeling.
On the right side of the screen you have Grain Type, Contrast and Intensity; they are all up to your preference. The Grain Type is fun, check it out see what you like best!
I chose Regular Grain and had Contrast at 63 and Intensity at 4.
And here it is!
That’s it folks I hope this helped! I would love to see the results that you guys get if you use my tutorial. You can use my pictures for guinea pigs :lol: I don’t mind. Give me credit if you are going to use this tutorial for something other then personal use, it did take me a long time to do it! I hope this didn’t confuse anyone. I’ve been told I think backwards a lot so if anything is confusing please let me know! I would like to thank Brendabond for helping me out on posting this. Thank you Brenda! And thank you all for reading! Have fun!
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