Introduction to Photoshop

Topics

1. Overview of Photoshop
• The Photoshop Environment
• Looking Ahead at What We Will Be Doing
2. Separating an Object from its Background
• Using Color Ranges
• Painting the Mask
• Isolate the Butterfly
3. Creating a New Background
• Create a Gradient Background
• Copying in our Image and Mirror Imaging it
• Adding Swirls
4. How to Save
5. Review of Handy Short-Cut Keys
6. Sources of Free Photos
7. References
8. Exercise

Please get the Photoshop examples and images used in this lab, by clicking here

1. Overview of Photoshop

A previous lab discussed the difference between raster and vector graphics. Photoshop is a tool originally based on raster graphics. I will not lie to you: Photoshop is an extremely large package. We could spend the entire lab covering just Photoshop's features alone. Photographer friends who use Photoshop all the time say that they do not know Photoshop; but they know enough to produce some amazing results. In this lab, we are going to familiarize ourselves with Photoshop. Because this class is about "multimedia", images are only a small part. We do not have time to get into all of the wonderful things that Photoshop can do. If you have time and would like to learn more cool things to do in Photoshop, I recommend the book in the reference section for inspiration and cool little projects that you can follow along with to get some really neat effects.

For additional inspiration:

• Famous people young and old
• Bettina Guber and digital anachronisms
• Composition from Nova Tree Lungs

1.1 The Photoshop Environment

Let's look at some of the key components of Photoshop. If you would like to follow along, you can open the butterfly.jpg file included in this week's sample

• Menu - This has the regular options like File > Save. Notice the image manipulation options such as Image and Filter.
  
  
• Options Bar - You will notice that this bar changes to suit the specific tool that you have selected. Try clicking on different tools in the "Tool Bar" and see how this bar changes.
  
  
• Tool Bar - This contains an overwhelming assortment of tools that you can use for drawing or editing your images. In the bottom right-hand corner of some of the tools, you will notice an arrow. If you click on the arrow, you will see MORE tools. They are all grouped according to their functionality (supposedly to make it easier)
  
  
• Current Document - Depending on your set-up options, this will open as a docked tab or a separate window.
  
  
• Panels - This too contains an overwhelming number of additional options or information for you. The Window menu allows you to select/disable certain panels. You can customize this area to suit your preferences. Below, we will examine two panels that are instrumental to working in Photoshop.

Two handy panels are shown below:

• Layer Panel. The below is the Layer panel from butterflyCropped.psd (included in the code sample for the lab)
  
  • Layers are a powerful part of Photoshop. They have been compared to having a stack of transparencies on top of a "background". If for instance, you draw a rectangle, it goes on a new layer (a new transparency). The power of layers is that it separates things, making it is easier to remove or change pieces. Going back to our rectangle example, if you want to get rid of the rectangle, you just remove the layer (or the transparency on which the rectangle is drawn)!
    
    
  • The layer above covers the layers below it. Think about the transparencies again. If you have two transparencies with things drawn in the same space, the transparency on top will be viewable over the one below. You can drag and drop layers in photoshop to control what is covered and what is viewable. Believe me, this is awesome once you get used to it!
    
    
  • Notice the "eye" to the left-hand side of the layer panel. If you click on the eye, the eye will disappear indicating that layer is no longer "visible" in the document. Cool magic trick!
    
    
  • As a cautionary note, when applying changes, double check that your target layer is selected; the indication is that the thumbnail is encircled in dashed lines.
    
    
  • Notice also the icons representing layer options on the bottom of the panel. We will be looking at some of these options later in this lab.
    
    
• History Panel
  
  • The icon for the History panel is shown above encircled in red. Sometimes this panel "disappears". Either it is collapsed into a panel bar (and you can click on the icon), or it is not open. If you would like open this panel, click on History in the Window menu.
    
    
  • This panel is important for those of you who are used to "Undoing" your work with command-z (Ctrl in Windows). Photoshop will only undo your last change. If you want to do multiple "undo's", you will have click bottom-up through the list of changes in the History Panel. Agreed, this takes a little getting used to at first.
    As a note, the command key on the current macs looks something like this:

1.2 Looking Ahead at What We Will Be Doing

For your lab instructor, one of the most useful feature of Photoshop. is the ability to cut out parts of an image and use them in posters or in conjunction with other images. To give you a preview of what is to come in the lab, we will start with the butterfly.jpg image:

We will then manipulate it by "cutting" out the butterfly and creating a new background to get something like the following image (notice how we are using Photoshop to create a mirror image effect):

To do this, we will be exploring a small part of Photoshop:

• We will be working with multiple layers (in the Layers Panel)
• We will try the following tools from the Tool Bar: Gradient, Brush, Crop, and Move
• We will apply transformations to our layer including flipping horizontally and vertically
• We will work with Selections based on Color Ranges (under the Select menu)

2. Separating an Object from its Background

There are multiple ways of separating an object from its background. Including: Quick Selection Tool, Magic Wand or Lasso Tools. We are going to focus on an approach that does not use these tools. There is no particular reason for this preference besides that it "seems" quicker to separate the object from the scene. In reality, to get all of the edges "cut out" nicely, it takes a bit of time.

2.1 Using Color Ranges

In the picture of the butterfly that we are starting with, the butterfly is the only thing orange. Because it contrasts nicely with the background, we can select it using color ranges and then refine our selection. These two steps are broken down below:

2.1.1 Select Using Color Ranges

This assumes that you have "butterfly.jpg" open. You can use the File > Open... menu and choose "butterfly.jpg" in the Downloads folder (under your username).

1. First, ensure that you are not modifying the original image. You can do that by duplicating the layer using command-j. Notice that you will get a new layer which is an exact copy of the Background, but called Layer 1:
   
   
   
2. From the main menu, choose Select > Color Range...
   
   
3. The following dialog box is displayed:
   
   
   
   1. Click inside the butterfly
      
      
   2. Ensure that "Localized Color Clusters" is checked and set the Fuzziness and Range to the values encircled in red: 103 and 37.
      
      
   3. Select the eyedropper with a plus sign beside it: to ensure that each time you click on the butterfly it adds to your selection
      
      
   4. Click on two or three more (black colored) places inside the butterfly
      
      
4. Click the "OK" button.

You will see a "marching ants" selection on your image. The selection will be missing parts of the inside of the butterfly. We need the next step to select more of the inside of the butterfly.

2.1.2 Refine Edges

This section will refine the selection a little. The steps are:

1. From the main menu, choose Select > (Hold down the Shift Key) and Select and Mask...
   
   
2. The following dialog box is displayed:
   
   You can use the settings shown above or try experimenting to find your own. These settings were chosen because the preview looked pretty good.
   
   
3. When you click o.k on the previously shown dialog box, it will produce a new layer with a mask and your original Layer 1 will be hidden.
   

Notice that the mask produced is black and white beside Layer 1. You probably are wondering what the heck a mask is! Think about a mask in life. Usually it covers someone's face but the eyes can be seen. In our mask, we are covering the background (using black) and "cutting" the butterfly out (using white) so that it shows through. In the layers panel, If we click on the eye for the "Background" layer, we will see the full effect of the mask. It is not perfect, so we will try and fix the mask by using the paintbrush tool.

2.2 Painting the Mask

To summarize the idea of masks: black hides (or conceals) and white reveals. We are going to use brushes and paint in black and white to fix our mask. The steps are below:

1. alt-click on the black and white mask in the Layers Panel. This will reveal the mask in grayscale mode. The idea will be that you will paint the parts inside the butterfly white and the parts outside of the butterfly black.
   
   
   
2. Now, select the Brush in the Tool Bar:
   
   
   
3. In the Options Bar, click on the down arrow beside the Brush:
   
   
   A round brush should be selected, but if it isn't then click on any of the circles as shown in the above diagram. Then, adjust the Master Diameter to 83 px and the Hardness to 100%. If you wanted a softer "edge" between the object and its background, then you would make the Hardness less than 100%.
   
   
4. To set the brush color to white, type the letter "d" (think "Default"). Paint (by clicking and dragging over) the black dots along the inside edges of the butterfly wings.
   
   
5. Change the brush color to black, type the letter "x" (think "eXchange"). Paint (by clicking and dragging over) the white spots outside of the butterfly.
   
   Your results should look something like this:
   
   
   Now, we should refine the edges and get all of the antennae. Depending on how anal you are, this can take quite a bit of time.
   
   To get the refinement, we will do three things: 1) look at the background underneath the mask, 2) zoom in, and 3) change the size of the brush
   
   
6. To see the background underneath the mask, we can use what is called "rubylith overlay" for the mask (instead of the grayscale used above):
   
   
   1. Click on a different layer or on the image thumbnail to stop viewing the grayscale mode (or alt-click on the layer mask)
      
      
   2. alt-shift-click on the layer mask thumbnail
      
      
   The background and butterfly should look something like this:
   
   
   
   As a note, if you find that red does not separate well from your image, then you can choose a different color by right clicking on the mask thumbnail and choosing Mask Options.... The following dialog will appear:
   
   
   Double-click on the red to choose a different color.
   
   
7. To zoom in, we can use the short-cut key: command-plus(+). Zoom in to about 100% (shown in the bottom left-hand corner or in the document tab)
   
   
8. Click on the mask in the Layer Panel. Ensure that the dashed lines are around the thumbnail showing that it is selected.
   
   
9. Adjust the brush size: press the "[" key for a successively smaller brush and the "]" key for a larger brush.
   
   
10. Go around the edges and paint. Remember black should be for the outside of the butterfly and white will be for inside of the butterfly.
    As you might tell, this part can take awhile.

To save time, you can use the butterflyCropped.psd file provided in the sample code for this week that has a mask with refined edges.

2.3 Isolate the Butterfly

Two final steps-applying the mask and cropping the butterfly-will make copying the butterfly into another document easier.

1. Right click on the thumbnail of the mask and choose Apply Layer Mask as shown in the diagram below:
   
   
   After this, your layer will change so that the mask no longer exists. You are committing to changing the layer.
   
   
2. Select the Crop tool in the Tool Bar:
   
   
   
3. Click and drag around the butterfly. When you are happy with the selection, click on the check mark icon noted below.
   

You might want to save your file as a new psd (Photoshop format) file. Choose File > Save As... from the main menu.

3. Creating a New Background

Now, for the fun part of creating your own background for the butterfly!

First we will create a new document. Choose File > New... from the main menu. The following is the dialog box that appears:

Choose the Print tab and Letter option. Change the name of this document to Poster.

3.1 Create a Gradient Background

Let us create a background that changes from blue to black.

1. First, we will set the foreground to blue and the background to black. For the black background, type 'd' and then 'x'.
   To get the blue color, click on the Foreground color sample near the bottom of the Tool Bar:
   
   
   
   
2. The following "Color Picker" Dialog box will be displayed:
   
   To get the exact shade of blue, you can type beside the R, G, and B the values shown encircled in red: 144, 190, and 243
   
   
3. Next, select the Gradient tool from the Tool Bar:
   
   
   
4. In the Options Bar, click on the down arrow (encircled below) and ensure that the "Foreground to Background" (first option) is selected.
   
   
   Also, choose "Linear Gradient" as the gradient type by clicking on the icon (encircled in red above)
   
   
5. You are ready to go! Click and drag (from top to bottom) on your new document. If you want to ensure a straight line, hold down the shift key before clicking and dragging. The following diagram shows where you can click and drag to get similar results:
   
   
   You should now have blue on the top and black on the bottom with a transition between.
   
   

3.2 Copying in our Image and Mirror Imaging it

In this section, we will copy the butterfly into our new document. There are multiple ways of doing this; we will go through one method.

1. Go back into the butterfly document (If you have not closed it, you can find it under the Window menu).
   
   
2. In the Layer Panel, click on the isolated butterfly layer to select it.
   
   
3. Under the main menu, choose: Layer > Duplicate Layer.... The following dialog box will be displayed:
   
   Choose the "Destination" as your new document with the gradient (in this case, called "Untitled-1"). You can find this document by clicking on the arrows shown encircled in red and a list will appear.
   
   
4. Return to your new document with the gradient. Click on the Move tool (shown below) in the Tool Bar to select it:
   
   
   
5. From the Options Bar, click on the box to check "Show Transform Controls"
   
   
   The butterfly in the document window should now be shown with "boxes" around the borders.
   
   
6. To make the butterfly bigger or smaller (without squishing it in one direction or the other), hold down the shift key and click and drag on a corner box.
   
   
7. To rotate the butterfly, hover outside of the corner box and notice how the mouse changes to a "rotate cursor":.
   Click and drag to rotate the butterfly until it looks something like this:
   
   
   
   
8. To commit the transformation, press the enter key, or click on the check mark in the Options Bar:
   
   
   
   Now you will be ready to add a mirror image.
   
   
9. First, copy the selected butterfly layer by typing command-j. This will add another layer to the Layer Panel.
   
   
10. Then, from the main menu, choose: Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical
    
    
11. Now, move the flipped butterfly directly below the original using the Move tool. To keep the butterfly directly underneath, hold down the shift key while clicking and dragging.
    
    
12. You can now "skew" the reflection by pressing on the command key and clicking and dragging on a corner point. You might have to "skew" two corner points. The goal is to get both parts of the wing touching like in the picture below:
    
    
    Remember to commit the transformation by pressing the enter key or clicking on the check mark in the Options Bar.
    
    
    Now let us make it look more like a reflection.
    
    
13. First, let's change the Opacity of the copied butterfly to 70%:
    
    
    
14. Then, click on the "Add vector mask" button (also shown in the picture above).
    
    Beside Layer 1 copy, there should now be a white mask. Ensure that the mask is selected (shown with dashed lines around it).
    
    
    We will now make a gradient that changes from black to white.
    
    
15. Make sure that your foreground and background colors and white and black respectively. You remember what key to press, right? Remember "Default".
    
    
16. Select the Gradient tool from the Tool Bar. The settings in the Options Bar will be the same as what we previously used for the Gradient tool.
    
    
17. Hold down the shift key and click and drag from the upper edge of the flipped butterfly to midway down. You should now have a "reflection" that looks something like this:
    
    
    Nice, we did it! We made a reflection of the butterfly using Photoshop.

3.3 Adding Swirls

Just to fancy up our picture, we will add some swirls (and a reflection too).

1. Under the File menu, choose Open...
   
   
2. In the "Open" dialog box, choose "swirlsMe5f.ai", which was included with this week's sample package
   
   
3. Click the OK button for the "Import PDF" Dialog box
   
   
4. Choose Layer > Duplicate Layer... from the main menu. As a Destination, choose our "Untitled-1" document.
   
   
5. In our "Untitled-1" document, ensure that our new swirl layer is selected.
   Then press command-i to invert the color so that the swirl is white instead of black.
   
   
6. Flip the swirl horizontally, by choosing: Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal
   
   
7. Use the Move tool to rotate and resize the swirls so that it looks something like this:
   
   
   If the swirl is in front of the butterfly, then in the Layer panel, you can drag and drop the swirl layer so that it is under the butterfly layers.
   
   
8. To create a more blended look, change "Normal" to "Screen" using the drop down list. Also, change the opacity to 40% as shown below.
   
   
   
   Now, to create the reflection of the swirl.
   
   
9. Copy the swirl layer using command-j.
   
   
10. With the copy of the swirl selected, choose Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical
    
    
11. With the Move tool selected, Shift-drag the copy of the swirl so that it is behind the wings of the upright butterfly.
    
    
12. In the Layer Panel, change the Opacity to: 9%
    
    
13. Now we are going to do something that makes applying a mask to our reflected swirl easy. Hold down the "alt" key and drag the mask from the butterfly reflection to the swirl reflection.
    
    This should duplicate the mask. And, voila, we are done! Our final picture will look something like this:
    
    
    

4. How to Save

5. Review of Handy Short-Cut Keys

Photoshop has short-cut keys that are super handy. As a review, here are the "top twelve" that we used in this lab:

Just a note on the Background layer: you typically cannot apply certain changes to this layer. One way of getting around this is to duplicate the background layer and make changes to the duplication. Another way is by double clicking on "Background" and renaming it something else like "Layer 0".

6.Sources of Free Photos

1. https://pixabay.com/
2. https://unsplash.com/

If you know of any others, let me know.

7. References

• Ideas for creating the background from: Photoshop. CS4 Down and Dirty Tricks, by Scott Kelby, 2009 (Chapter 7)

8. Exercise

We learned a little about Photoshop in this lab. This exercise will be based on a "reflection". You can either modify a picture of yourself to create a reflection or you can create a "product ad" that has a reflection (think apple ads from 2010). There should be some selection involved to separate something/someone from the background.

8.1 Your submission:

Add an entry into your learning journal. Your submission should contain:

1. A heading for Lab 3 and a brief description of what tool was used and what you did (ie. for this lab, it might be something like  Lab 3: Photoshop and Reflection)
2. At least three images: one image of your final Photoshop work environment with all the layers(use Command-Shift-4 and space on a mac to take a snapshop of your Photoshop window), the source image(s) used to create your product, and the other image of your final product. If you do not have a picture of your Photoshop work environment (and all of you layers), I may withold your marks until you provide me with your ".psd" file.
3. A learning journal entry which will contain:
   1. a heading image that summarizes your project
   2. a description, which contains the goal of your project or the "why are you doing it"
   3. a story, which describes the process that you went through to complete your project. This can be the different stages that your project went through.
   4. design info, which indicates what you used to complete your project. For illustrator, this could be colours and font used. For photoshop, this could be images used. For audition, this could be sounds used.
   5. gratitude. Thank the reader and give credit to any sources of video, audio or images that you have used

Try it out and have fun being creative!