DH Guide: Photoshop & Textures

Zardon

Read Over Here
__________________
It appears many of you remember my Photoshop guides from years ago as I still get emails asking to create more to help you guys get the most out of your designs and creative ideas. As you may know I don't believe in making these guides extremely complex because many people reading this will have a copy of Photoshop installed but have really no idea how to use even the basic features. With this in mind I believe that a good guide should use simple procedures to let you get something useful and creative from the program with as little effort as possible. So today I felt it might be helpful to show you something that will not only use Photoshop but incorporate another household item in 2009- your digital camera. Let's have a look at implementing a texture layer to get a creative end result.

clanman

thats awesome, I was able to apply a texture onto one of the pictures in my library (a person I know) and gave it a very gothic feel thanks to this guide. quite a few tips in this in how to stylise images.

thanks !

humonous

very nice, I am playing with some of the pictures of a recent trip. ive came up with some good ideas already. easy to read thanks.

Chaos

so come on gang where are your images??? If we expect Z to produce more tutorials we need replies

__________________

niceguyrichy

lol give us a chance mate
didn't see it til late last night, and been busy busy all day today, but I have started having a play
I'll post when (if) it's good enough

thanks from me for the effort to produce this guide Z, I always feel a tad intimidated by photoshop for some reason.. this helps

__________________

Mousey

Hmm very interesting Z, nice method for background replacement there
I need to pump out some more tutorials. Might try a simple wallpaper tutorial

__________________

Matth

A friend had Photoshop, but I've been Paintshop Pro for ages, had some lesser stuff from Adobe and just never liked their "house style", though fans of earlier PSP version say much the same about what they did to the layout in the late JASC / early Corel days.

Looks like pretty much any layers capable program could be used, maybe even paint.net


If you've got "full" Photoshop and don't know how to use it, then either it was bought for you, you pirated it, or you have more money than sense. It is an extortionately priced program for any non-professional users.

__________________
Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

Zardon

Well thanks Matt I am not quite sure what this has got to do with this particular thread mind you. If you can do something similar in Paint Shop Pro then perhaps you can enlighten us in another thread. As for everyone 'pirating' photoshop I think you might be surprised how many semi serious people buy it - i have quite a few budding photographer friends who bought it on its own, not as part of an Adobe Creative Suite. A few of my friends bought it for under £300 which might seem a lot of money but many people spend more than that on a processor a graphics card.

Anyway I digress, lets keep the thread on track.

Bolletje

Hehe, you got a large monitor over there

PS is too complex for me, but still a nice tutorial.

Falstaff

i said that about five years a go, and then I saw my daughter set up batch processing on her Apple she used in college. She is clever, but they teach workflow in her college class in marketing, etc and she encouraged me to try a bit. I use elements but the technique is the same. I dont use textures however I use other PS techniques that validate my interest in learning more. Allans tutorial is about as easy as it gets in terms of eyeballing it on a sunday afternoon, etc. You should give it a try, you never know, you might find it rewarding. I did, and I have never looked back.

__________________

Chaos

To me Photoshop is the only app that always grabs my interest. I took a mini 1 day session yrs ago and have played around off and on. Tutorials like this one for me are very useful. I enjoy seeing the results within a few moments of effort and each one i try, I hope to retain something that I can use again in the future

__________________

Falstaff

[quote=Chaos;1285882]To me Photoshop is the only app that always grabs my interest. I took a mini 1 day session yrs ago and have played around off and on. Tutorials like this one for me are very useful. I enjoy seeing the results within a few moments of effort and each one i try, I hope to retain something that I can use again in the future[/quote

I think your going to find some of it very rewarding. At least I do, and mainly for my pics, and cleaning up and playing with old ones. I have pics that I never post here on HV with textures, tints and colours that please me, but would suffer under scrutiny from HCE folks in the artistic community. I look forward to your experiments man, I wont give you a hard time LOL.

__________________

Chaos

I would like to see a tutorial on different masking techniques or anything else for that matter

__________________

Zardon

For quite a few years I helped college kids learn this app for course grade work and some of them picked it up really quickly. The thing about Photoshop which appeals to many people is that there are normally many different ways to get the same (or similar) end result.

I see a lot of people on forums teaching the app and I have to say that some of the ideas I see are very unorthodox and technically not great, but they quite often work ! I attended so many seminars on this program before I started DH and worked in the newspaper and magazine trade that I feel I do have a lot to offer you guys - its just getting the time between everything else, so apologies for the delays between them.

Anything else you would like to see apart from Masking techniques? I am surprised how many people email me after these little mini guides. I try to make them productive rather than teaching a tool, this i learned from the kids I taught. If they end up with a great end result or something they can 'see' made a difference or they can use again , rather than explain how a tool works in theory they tend to take more in.

Falstaff

I think getting someone who is enthusiastic but reluctant past the threshold of "pain" is the way to go man. Your tutorials offer me some gratification when I used them and it has been a while since I have used, so yeah man, all the creative techniques that help us make the jump from where we are at to somthing we can be proud of is the win win for me, but then I am a bit eccentric.

__________________

Chaos

the reason i mentioned masking is that most people I talk to about PS always want to know how to select and/or remove specific items from an image. I know there are many ways to get that result and different tools that can be used to get to the end result. The little i have learned about masking has long since been forgotten but i do remember that it was one of the best ways to get to the result desired

__________________

Chaos

then being able to use and blend layers effectively would be another topic area that interests me personally

__________________

Falstaff

have you tried any HDR techniques? I know there is a program that does it for the enthusiast, but I would like to master it in elements or CS4. I read several UK photo magazines and they include CD tutorials that are Mac specific, but you can only glean so much from them. I am just terribly impatient and want instant gratification.
HDR would be a hoot.
Exposure bracketing
taking the shot(s)
using masks and layers
and the Pizza resistance (little joke)
the finish landscape etc.

__________________

Mac Daddy

Excellent guide I will have to try it out on the weekend when I have more time

__________________
"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

sahara_mafia

nice photo shop guides
i need to try it out

__________________