Phil Parsons

How to use calculations in Photoshop to help mask from channels

Phil — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:56:11 +0000

When using channels to mask an object from a fairly simple background but one that is too complex for the wand or color range tools there is a technique that can be used to cut down the amount of time you spend brushing into the areas you want to mask and the calculations command is [...]

Building a horizontal drop down menu for wordpress categories and pages

Phil — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:36:44 +0000

With a little CSS and JQuery you can create a pretty cool drop down menu for your sub categories or pages in your wordpress themes. Here’s how… View the demo Setting up the pages When you create your pages or categories to be displayed as sub pages/categories in wordpress you will need to make sure that you select [...]

Archive page problems with Wordpress

Phil — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:52:04 +0000

While redesigning my site recently I wanted to display a list of just the titles and dates for each article on the archives page. This was easy enough but as I have my settings set to show 5 posts per page I was getting just that a list of the latest 5 and a link [...]

jQuery animated navigation menu

Phil — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:24:14 +0000

jQuery provides some pretty cool effects which can be achieved with very little code. Here is a cool pop down tab style menu you can use with some simple css and a touch of jQuery. View the demo The HTML Ok the html here is basic just throw in an unordered list with the id of “nav” or [...]

A simple php class to fetch twitter statuses

Phil — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:31:47 +0000

Redesigning my site recently led me to add a twitter badge in the sidebar showing my most recent tweets. Searching on google for a nice simple php approach to pulling them returned lots of bloated classes and functions that I really didn’t feel happy using so I decided to pick through the twitter API and [...]

Retouching the eyes – part 4

Phil — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:12:20 +0000

In this tutorial we will address the eyes before moving onto the body to do a minor structural change. Step 1: Once you have your file from the previous tutorials opened up in Photoshop we will merge everything to the top using shift+ctrl+alt+E and then create a new layer above that. Take the stamp tool (S) and [...]

Retouching the face – part 3

Phil — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:27:07 +0000

In this tutorial we will concentrate on the face with a little more cleaning up and some tricks to add some depth and appeal to the eyes and mouth. Step 1: Open your file up in Photoshop and if you haven’t done so already merge everything to the top by selecting the top most layer and hitting [...]

Removing wrinkles and shadows – Part 2

Phil — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:34:26 +0000

In this tutorial we are going to focus on the face and neck to remove those dark wrinkles and to even out some of the shadows around the eyes. Open your file from the previous tutorial and we will make a start. Step 1: First thing we want is to merge everything we have thus far to [...]

Photo retouching clean up – Part one

Phil — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:17:49 +0000

This tutorial is going to cover the first part of our retouch, the clean up. We are going to start with the skin removing any blemishes and move onto tackling those ever annoying fly away hairs. Tutorial images: Beautiful Bride by Fernando Weberich Step 1: Once you have downloaded the image open it up in Photoshop and arm yourself [...]

Swapping heads with photoshop

Phil — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:46:21 +0000

The one thing everybody always seems to want to know in Photoshop is how to superimpose their head onto somebody Else’s body. In this tutorial we will create a pretty unbelievable but strangely convincing head swap in a few simple steps. Tutorial images: Bodybuilder | Old man Step 1: Make a nice quick selection around the old mans head [...]