Final Image Preview

Resources

• fire texture 02 by Fire-Love-Account.
• Weathered Texture by greyghostXXX.
• Atrox font.

Step 1

Create a new document, 1152×864 pixels, set the Foreground color to #006d68, and the Background color to #004e49, then, go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds.

Place the “fire texture 02″ on top of the Background layer, and change its layer’s Blend Mode to Multiply, and its Opacity to 50%.

Place the “Weathered Texture” on top of both layers and change its layer’s Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Step 2

Create the text using the color #7b7b7b. The font used is “Atrox”, and the Size is 330 pt.

Duplicate the text layer, and change the copy’s Fill value to 0%.

Step 3

Double click the original text layer to apply the following Layer Style.

- Drop Shadow: Just change the color to #686868.

- Inner Shadow: Change the color to #737373, the Distance to 0 and the Size to 10.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Technique to Chisel Hard, the Depth to 150, the Size to 27, and the Soften value to 5. Un-check the Use Global Light box, then, change the Angle to 90, the Altitude to 30, the Gloss Contour to Gaussian, and check the Anti-aliased box. Also, change the Highlight Mode to Overlay, its color to #ded96c, and the Shadow Mode’s color to #7b7b7b.

This is what you should get after applying the style above:

Step 4

Press the Ctrl/Cmd key, and click a text layer’s tumbnail (icon) to create a selection.

Create a new layer between the two text layers and call it “Texture”. Fill the selection with the color #005954. Then go to Select -> Deselect (or press Ctrl/Cmd + D) to get rid of the selection.

Set the Foreground color to #006d68 and the Background color to #004e49.

Step 5

It’s time to apply the Filters to create the texture, so change the values as shown in the images below for each filter. Start by going to Filter- > Texture -> Mosaic Tiles:

Next, go to Filter -> Artistic -> Dry Brush:

Now, change the “Texture” layer’s Blend Mode to Hard Light.

Step 6

Double click the copy (top) text layer to apply the following Layer Style.

- Outer Glow: change the Blend Mode to Overlay, and the color to #00a49d.

- Inner Glow: Change the Blend Mode to Overlay, the Opacity to 50%, the Noise to 50% as well, the color to 8df4f2, the Technique to Precise, the Source to Center, and the Size to 20.

- Bevel and Emboss: change the Technique to Chisel Hard, the Depth to 150, and the Size to 10. Un-check the Use Global Light box, then, change the Angle to 110, the Altitude to 15, the Gloss Contour to Cove – Deep, and check the Anti-aliased box. Also, change the Highlight Mode to Vivid Light, and the Shadow Mode’s color to #7b7b7b.

- Contour: Choose the Rolling Slope – Descending contour, and check the Anti-aliased box.

- Texture: choose the Metallic Snakeskin Pattern, and change the Depth to 20.

This will add a nice glossy effect to the text.

Step 7

Right click a text layer and choose Create Work Path.

Create a new layer right below the original text layer and call it “Stroke”, then choose a hard round 7 px brush.

Set the Foreground color to #159282. Then, pick the Direct Selection Tool, right click the path you’ve just created, and choose Stroke Path.

Choose Brush from the Tool drop down menu, and make sure that the Simulate Pressure box is unchecked.

Hit Enter/Return to get rid of the path.

Step 8

Double click the “Stroke” layer to apply the following Layer Style:

- Drop Shadow: Just change the Size to 2.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Gloss Contour to Cone – Inverted and check the Anti-aliased box. Also, change the Highlight Mode to Vivid Light, and the Shadow Mode’s color to #009d9e.

- Contour: Choose the Cone – Inverted contour and check the Anti-aliased box as well.

- Texture: Just choose the Clouds Pattern.

This is what you should get.

Step 9

Ctrl/Cmd + Click a text layer’s thumbnail once again to create a selection, then press Delete to get rid of the inner part of the stroke. .

With the text selection still active, create a new layer on top of all layers and call it “Soft Brush”, then change its Blend Mode to Overlay and its Opacity to 50%. Set the Foreground color to #90eadc, and use a soft round brush, with a quite big size (aroud 100 px) to add some bright dots over some parts of the text. Try not to add too much dots as this will ruin the original effect.

Create another new layer on top of all layers and call it “Color Brush”, then change its Blend Mode to Hue and its Opacity to 20%. Set the Foreground color to #eaddd6, and use a little bit bigger soft round brush (aroud 150 px) to add some color dots. The color is very subtle, but it adds nice depth to the effect. Try not to overdo it as well.

Step 10

Next, we are going to apply the same effect using different colors to a star shape. So pick the Polygon Tool, and make sure that the “Shape Layers” icon in the Options bar is clicked, then enter 5 in the “Sides” box.

Also in the Options bar, under the Polygon Options, check the Star box and set the “Indente Sides By:” value to 50%. Then, set the Foreground color to #7b7b7b.

Create the star shape wherever you want to, then duplicate the shape layer and set the copy’s Fill value to 0%.

Step 11

Double click the original shape layer to apply the following Layer Style:

- Drop Shadow: Change the color to #686868, the Distance to 3, and the Size to 3 as well.

- Inner Shadow: Change the color to #737373, the Distance to 0 and the Size to 5.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Technique to Chisel Hard, the Depth to 150, the Size to 14, and the Soften value to 3. Un-check the Use Global Light box, then, change the Angle to 90, the Altitude to 30, the Gloss Contour to Gaussian, and check the Anti-aliased box. Also, change the Highlight Mode to Overlay, its color to #ded96c, and the Shadow Mode’s color to #7b7b7b.

This is almost the same Layer Style applied to the original text layer, but using different size values to suit the shape used. So you can modify the values depending on the shape you created and its size compared to the text.

Step 12

Now double click the copy shape layer to apply the following Layer Style:

- Outer Glow: Change the Blend Mode to Overlay, the color to #a46000, and the Size to 3.

- Inner Glow: Change the Blend Mode to Overlay, the Opacity to 50%, the Noise to 50% as well, the color to #cfad7b, the Technique to Precise, the Source to Center, and the Size to 10.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Technique to Chisel Hard, and the Depth to 150. Un-check the Use Global Light box, then, change the Angle to 110, the Altitude to 15, the Gloss Contour to Cove – Deep, and check the Anti-aliased box. Also, change the Highlight Mode to Vivid Light, and the Shadow Mode’s color to #7b7b7b.

- Contour: Choose the Rolling Slope – Descending contour, and check the Anti-aliased box.

- Texture: Choose the Metallic Snakeskin Pattern, then change the Scale to 50% and the Depth to 20.

Once again, this is similar to the copy text layer’s Layer Styles, but with different size and color values.

Step 13

Create a new layer on top of the original shape layer, call it “Star Texture”, and change its Blend Mode to Hard Light. Then Ctrl/Cmd + Click the shape’s vector mask thumbnail to create a selection.

Fill the selection with the color #8f7708, then press Ctrl/Cmd + D to get rid of the selection.

Set the Foreground color to #4e4400 and the Background color to #8f7708. It’s time to apply the Filters to create the texture (like we did in Step 5), so change the values as shown in the images below for each filter. Start by going to Filter- > Texture -> Mosaic Tiles:

Next, go to Filter -> Artistic -> Dry Brush:

Step 14

Creating the path to add the stroke is a little bit different as this is a shape. You’ll need to pick the Direct Selection Tool, click the star shape itself, then click and drag around the star shape to select its anchor points. After that, go to Edit -> Copy to copy the path

Create a new layer below the original shape layer and call it “Star Stroke”, then go to Edit -> Paste to paste the path to the new layer.

Set the Foreground color to #958938 and choose a hard round 7 px brush.

Pick the Direct Selection Tool again, then stroke the path just like you did before. Right click the path you’ve just created, and choose Stroke Path. Choose Brush from the Tool drop down menu, and make sure that the Simulate Pressure box is unchecked. Hit Enter/Return to get rid of the path.

After that, Ctrl/Cmd + Click the shape layer’s vector mask thumbnail and press Delete to get rid of the inner parts of the Stroke, and preass Ctrl/Cmd + D to get rid of the selection.

Step 15

Double click the “Star Stroke” layer to apply the following Layer Style:

- Drop Shadow: Just change the Size to 2.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Gloss Contour to Cone – Inverted and check the Anti-aliased box. Also, change the Highlight Mode to Vivid Light, and the Shadow Mode’s color to #9e8e00.

- Contour: Choose the Cone – Inverted contour and check the Anti-aliased box as well.

- Texture: Just choose the Clouds Pattern.

This is what you should get.

Final Image

And that’s it! You can use other color shades as well if you like, and the effect will look awesome on all colors.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and found it useful.

This was a great giveaway thanks to Fotolia. Each winner will receive a free 30 day account for up to 5 downloads a day.

About Fotolia

Fotolia was founded in New York City in 2005 and is the first microstock agency to offer both crowdsourced and professional images on one site.

Fotolia has over 17 million images and vectors to choose from, as well as over 280,000 video footage clips available to download.

The Winners

Here are the 5 lucky winners of Fotolia giveaway:

1. Edward
2. Vladimir Sijan
3. DJ
4. Samantha
5. Viorel

Thank you to all for participating on this giveaway and congratulations to the winners.

All the winners will be contacted with more details thru email.

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Final Image Preview

Resources

• Boys in the woods 3

Step 1

Open photo in Photoshop. Resize photo to 1000×664 pixels by going to Image > Image Size. Duplicate photo using Ctrl+J. On duplicated layer apply Image > Adjustments > Color Balance.

Update layer blending mode to Multiply.

Step 2

Duplicate background photo using Ctrl+J. Place layer above all other layers. On duplicated layer apply Image > Adjustments > Color Balance.

Update layer blending mode to Lighten.

Step 3

Duplicate background photo using Ctrl+J. Place layer above all other layers. On duplicated layer apply Image > Adjustments > Color Balance.

Update layer blending mode to Darken.

Step 4

Duplicate background photo using Ctrl+J. Place layer above all other layers. On duplicated layer apply Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast.

Update layer blending mode to Darken.

Step 5

Duplicate background photo using Ctrl+J. Place layer above all other layers. On duplicated layer apply Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Apply Filter > Other > High Pass.

Update layer blending mode to Overlay.

Merge all layers into one layer by going to Layer > Merge Layers or pressing Ctrl+E and rename layer to “Background”.

Step 6

Duplicate “Background” layer with Ctrl+J and apply Filter > Blur > Smart Blur to duplicated layer.

Select Eraser Tool and a soft round brush. Erase boys from this layer and with that we will have a clear picture of boys and blurred image around them.

Step 7

Duplicate “Background” layer again and move it above all layers. Apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur to duplicated layer. With Eraser Tool repeat process done in Step 6 but leaving more blurred areas on the image bottom.

Step 8

Create a new layer on top of all layers. Fill layer with color #987f3f.

Select Eraser Tool one more time to erase light brown color in a way similar to mine to get same effect as you can see below.

Step 9

Create a new layer on top of all layers. Press D to set foregound color to black and background color to white. Drag a linear gradient using Gradient Tool.

Update layer blending mode to Overlay.

Step 10

Duplicate “Background” layer again and move it above all layers. Desaturate duplicated layer by going to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Apply Filter > Other > High Pass.

Erase layer background area with Eraser Tool (soft round brush with 400px).

Change layer blending mode to Overlay.

Reduce layer opacity to 60% and we are done.

Final Image

About Fotolia

Fotolia was founded in New York City in 2005 and is the first microstock agency to offer both crowdsourced and professional images on one site.

Fotolia has over 17 million images and vectors to choose from, as well as over 280,000 video footage clips available to download.

Customers can buy credits on as as-need basis or in bundles, or can take advantage of flexible daily and monthly subscription plans. Monthly subscription plans offer XXL download from $1.50. For more pricing information, visit www.fotolia.com.

Prize

Each winner will receive a free 30 day account for up to 5 downloads a day. That’s 150 downloads!

* Note: Giveaway not eligible for current Fotolia customers who already have credits or are using a promo plan.

How to Win

Leave a comment on this post telling us why you would like to win. Please use a valid email address so we can contact you in case you’ve won.

Giveaway details

This giveaway ends on Wednesday, May 16th 2012 after which the comments section on this post will be closed.
Only comment once.
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Winners will be announced on a separate post and contacted directly by e-mail. To stay current, please subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on our Twitter or Facebook page. And they will be contacted via e-mail.

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Good luck to everyone!

View Other Articles in This Series

• How to set up Photoshop
• Photoshop Interface Explained (Part 1)
• Photoshop Interface Explained (Part 2)
• Photoshop Channels and Color
• Photoshop Selections (Part 1)
• Photoshop Selections (Part 2)

Resources

• Sunset Surf Fishin
• Tiger

Modern display devices (LCD, CRT) use the RGB color model. This is an additive color model which means that in order to create a certain color, light has to be added.

How digital color works

Let me explain to you how digital color works. As you know, monitor displays are made up of pixels which are little squares that emit light. Each pixel can emit red, green and blue light in various amounts. These amounts are measured from 0 for no light to 255 for maximum light.

So in order for the blue color to be displayed the pixel will emit 255 amount of blue light and so on for red and green. But what if we want some other color, like yellow? Well, like I told you before, RGB is an additive color model which means that color is created by combining different lights. So for yellow the pixels will emit 255 amount red light and 255 amount green light for a pure yellow color. For a magenta color then the pixels will emit 255 red light and 255 blue light. Of course it is not necessary to have exactly 255 of each light in order to create color.

We could have a reddish yellow by using 200 red and 100 green light. But what happens if we add some blue light to our yellow color recipe? Will the color became bluer? Not exactly, because we are dealing with light if we add a little blue then the color will became brighter. As you can see figuring out how color works from the numbers it is difficult so that’s why the HSB color model exists. Think of it as a chart, a reference which will help you understand digital color better.

You can see from the chart that hue is the actual color while saturation is the intensity of that color. Brightness is the lightness of that color. Let me explain to you how I see the chart. Think of color as recipes and lights as ingredients. Each recipe has to have at least 1 ingredient (1 light) in order to work except for black which is the absence of light. So in order to get yellow I will have to add to my recipe red and green and I will have a fully saturated yellow. If I add blue to the recipe then the color migrates towards the center of the color wheel making my yellow less saturated.

Let’s do an exercise. Let’s suppose that I have 50 red, 100 blue and 10 green. Can you guess which color will be displayed? It will be a bluish magenta, not fully saturated. That’s because its 2 main ingredients are red and blue which results in a magenta color while the third ingredient, in our case the green color determines the saturation. The less of the third ingredient the more saturated the color will be. The complete lack of the third ingredient will result in a fully saturated color.

Let’s take another example. Let’s say I have 150 green, 100 red and 80 blue. What color it will be? The 2 main ingredients (or the first 2 largest numbers) are 150 green and 100 red. The secondary ingredient is blue (the smallest number of the three). So we will have a greenish yellow very desaturated because the blue is pulling the saturation towards the center of the wheel. You get it? To resume let’s say that the main ingredients determine the hue (red + green = yellow, red + blue = magenta, blue + green = cyan), the secondary ingredient determines the saturation (more of the secondary ingredient means less saturated colors) and the sum of all numbers is the brightness.

This discussion brings us to channels. Think of channels as black and white representations of an image. For example the red channel of a picture is the black and white version of an image. If this black and white image is bright then we have a lot of red light in our image and if it is dark then we have a little red light. If there is 255 red light then we will have a white image and if there is 0 red light then we will have a black image. Think of channels as visual representations for each main color (red, green, blue). If the green channel is light then we know that we have a lot of greens. If the green channel is dark then we know that we have little green light in our image.

Observe the reddish image above. Can you guess which color channel will be predominant? If not, look at the channels of this image below:

As you can see the Green and Blue channels are fairly dark but the Red channel is so white it is almost translucent. This means that we have a lot of red color in our image. You may wonder how this will help you with your own images. Well, I do a lot of photo retouching and when I first open an image, before doing any adjustments whatsoever I do the “Channel Walk”. No, it’s not the “Moon Walk”, it’s the “Channel Walk”. If you are imagining some kind of strange dance movement you’re wrong! The “Channel Walk” is the process of quickly viewing each Channel in part and analyzing the information I get from there. You may think that there’s not so much information in a black and white version of the image but you’re wrong.

Let me give you a practical example. Take a look at the image below. Can you tell what adjustments need to be made? If you are thinking that this image is noisy and needs color correction then you are right. But how should I color correct it? One could simply add a Curves Adjustment Layer and play with the curves until some (apparently) good looking results start emerging. Then a Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise would be the next logical step. But this is not the approach a Photoshop professional like yourself should take. Let me show the professional, right way to use your newly acquired knowledge about channels to tackle this problem.

Open photo. First, do the “Channel Walk”. This means to press Ctrl + 3 (Red Channel), Ctrl + 4 (Green Channel), Ctrl + 5 (Blue Channel) and use the information for further adjustments.

The Red Channel seems ok, except for the little black patches. Those little patches of dark are nothing else but noise. Hmm, I think to myself, I have a little noise in the red channel. Let’s move on.

The Green channel looks alright, and is less noisy than the Red Channel. Let’s move on.

Oh my. What an ugly thing to see. The Blue Channel is noisy as hell (this is common in digital imagery, the Blue Channel is usually the noisiest channel of all) and has some big, and I mean big areas of total darkness. This is not ok. How can I interpret this information? Because I (we) know that the darker the channel the less specific light it will produce, this means that where the image is dark in the blue channel there will be no blue color whatsoever. This means that in those areas the Red and Green channels will be the main suppliers of the color information. We know that Green and Blue colors are the recipe for fully saturated Yellow so the conclusion we draw is that we have a yellow color cast.

If you don’t get this the first time know you’re not alone. Channels and colors are a hard nut to crack at first, but once you experiment on you own a little bit this will be a walk in the park.

Let me quickly recap. The red channel is a bit noisy but ok. The green channel is less noisy, that’s good. The blue channel is very noisy and it has big black areas. Lack of color from the Blue channel means that that the color will be formed from the Green and Red channels and because Red + Green = Yellow we conclude that we have a yellow color cast.

In order to color correct this image we add a Curves Adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves) and slightly drag both the Red and Green curves downwards to lower the amount of light these channels contribute to the overall image.

So this is the image before adjustments. Now you can see that it has a pronounced yellow color cast.

And this is the image after the adjustment. The difference is subtle but noticeable.

In the next steps we could maybe use the Reduce Noise filter on the blue channel alone or we could make a new layer from all visible layers (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E) and then apply Reduce Noise filter to this layer alone and change the blend mode to Color so only the Color noise would be affected. However, noise reducing is a different topic so I won’t be covering it here (I am a fan of Lab color mode and this allows for some amazing manipulations of color and noise removal without affecting the luminance integrity of the image. But I digress.)

In the example above you saw a little practical example of how to use Channels to help color correct the image. Note that this barely scratched the surface of the usefulness of Channels, so don’t limit yourself to this, and learn as much as you can about them if you want to be a Photoshop Pro.

View Other Articles in This Series

• How to set up Photoshop
• Photoshop Interface Explained (Part 1)
• Photoshop Interface Explained (Part 2)
• Photoshop Channels and Color
• Photoshop Selections (Part 1)
• Photoshop Selections (Part 2)

Resources

• New York City

Quick Selection and Magic Wand Tools

The next selection tools on the toolbar are the Quick Selection and Magic Wand. Let’s talk Quick Selection first. Think of it as a brush not for painting but for selecting. You can change the brush size to select more or lower the brush size to select less.

You can see in the image below how the Quick Selection icon even resembles a brush. The brush with the + sign is used to add to the selection and the brush with the – sign is used to subtract from the selection. If you check Sample All Layers then it will make selections based not only on the actual layer but in conformity with all the layers. Auto-Enhance will make your selection edges better and Refine Edge will open the Refine Edge window.

How it works? If you brush over an area then Photoshop uses an algorithm to determine where the closest edges are and snap to them. You can see in the image below by the red how I quickly selected the sky by dragging (or painting) with the Quick Selection tool in the red encircled area. Notice how the selection automatically snapped to edges. Notice that the selection didn’t snap around the edges of the Statue of Liberty. That’s because the color of the statue it is close to the color of the sky (blue-cyan) but it snapped around the buildings below the statue because they are a different color and have a pronounced edge. This tool it is good for quick and dirty working and when you are in a hurry. I find myself using this tool when I composite scenes from different images and I just want to see how an object from an image would fit into my composite scene without the time required to make a refined, precise selection. Experiment with it on different images and get the “feel” of how this tool works. One quick tip worth mentioning it is that you can press the Alt key and drag with the brush to subtract from the current selection.

Next is the Magic Wand tool. The Magic Wand tool works like this: you click somewhere in the image and an area is selected based on the settings of the Magic Wand, the area you clicked on and the closest edges. You can see in the image the red encircled area is where I clicked once with the Magic Wand tool.

Notice how it selected an area and it snapped around the edges of the Statue of Liberty.

Let’s take a look at the settings available for the Magic Wand tool. The 4 icons with squares at the left are in order from left to right: New selection, Add to selection, Subtract from selection and Intersect with selection. When one of these icons it is activated (like the New selection icon is activated in the image below) your further clicks with the Magic Wand tool act differently on the current selection. With Subtract from selection activated then you will be subtracting from the selection, with Add to selection you will be adding to the current selection and with the Intersect with selection you will have an intersection between the current selection and the area you just selected with the Magic Wand tool. You can also use shortcut keys to replicate the above behaviors. While clicking with the Magic Wand tool hold Alt to subtract, Shift to add and Alt + Shift to intersect.

The Magic Wand tool works like this: when click you somewhere on the image it will select a contiguous area of pixels based on the Tolerance setting. The Tolerance values range from 0 to 255. These values are familiar, aren’t they? We know from this previous tutorial that these numbers represent the luminosity values a pixel can have. Let’s say that you have a Tolerance of 10 and you click on a pixel with a luminosity value of 88. The Magic Wand tool will select all adjacent pixels with values that are between 98 (88 + 10) and 78 (88 – 10). If Contiguous is unchecked then it will select all the pixels in the image with values between 98 and 78. The Anti-alias checkbox makes your selection edges smoother. Sample All Layers and Refine Edge work the same way as with Quick Selection.

Let’s take a look at a practical example. I clicked in the red encircled area with the Magic Wand tool. The Tolerance setting was 50. Notice how the selection snapped around the edges of the Statue of Liberty. That’s because the luminosity level of the sky is about 170 and the luminosity level of the Statue is 70. Because I clicked a pixel with a luminosity level of 170 it selected all the contiguous pixels within 220 (170 + 50) and 120 (170 -50) because the Statue of Liberty has a luminosity level of 70 it was not selected.

Color Range

Let’s move on to yet another selection tool Photoshop provides, namely the Color Range. You can access the Color Range Dialog box by choosing Select > Color Range. It works similarly with the Magic Wand tool – it selects an area based on the clicked area luminosity value. It also has a preview black and white version of the image showing the selected areas. White shows the selected areas, black the unselected areas and gray the partially selected areas. You can click on the small black and white preview image or you can click on the actual image. Localized Color Clusters is similar to the Contiguous checkbox for the Magic Wand tool. Fuzziness and Range expand or contract the selected areas and the little pen icons with the + and – sign stand for Add to selection and Subtract from selection (you can also hold Alt for subtract and Shift for Add). You can get familiar with this window by giving it a try. Play with the Fuzziness and Range sliders, click on different parts of the image and notice how the selection changes. Remember, in the small black and white preview image white stands for selected areas, black for unselected areas and gray for partially selected areas.

I use this tool for applying Image Adjustments to different parts of the image. Let’s say I want to change the color of the sea. I can make an approximate selection with the Color Range (look below) and then I can apply an Image Adjustment of my choice (Curves, Hue/Saturation, etc…).

In this case I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment to change the hue of the selected area (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation).

As I said before, just reading about this stuff isn’t going to teach you a great deal. Practice and experiment to learn how to use these tools.

Learn How to Select

Now it’s time to show the pro selection method. It is a bit more complex and it involves the use of the Pen tool but the results are worth the effort.

What is the Pen Tool? The Pen Tool creates vector shapes using Bezier Curves. Vectors are pixel independent and are rendered using mathematical formulas. I will not get into explaining vectors and Bezier Curves but I will give you a quick and dirty guide for using the Pen Tool to create amazing selections. The process of creating selections with the Pen Tool has 2 major stages:

1.Use the Pen Tool to create vector outlines.
2.Convert vector outlines to a selection.

Firstly select the Pen Tool by pressing P. Make sure option Paths is selected. You can start creating straight vector outlines by simply clicking in different places. The last click should overlap the first starting point to obtain an outlined vector shape. If you don’t want to enclose the outline simply Ctrl-click anywhere at any stage of drawing with the Pen Tool to finish drawing the vector path. The term “path” and “vector outline” are roughly equivalent and I use them interchangeably. “Vector outline” suggests an enclosed area while “path” is more of a freeform line. The little squares in the image below are called Anchor Points. When you click with the Pen tool you create an Anchor Point. If you click again in a different position you create a new Anchor Point and a path that connects the two Anchor Points. That’s the bread and butter of paths: Anchor Points connected by paths.

To create curved paths click once anywhere on the image and then click and drag to some other point. When you do that notice that the straight lines become a curve and its curvature is in the opposite direction to the dragging. The more you drag the more pronounced the curve. Notice the new elements: Handles. You can drag the handles after you have created the path to modify the curvature of the path.

In the image below I clicked and dragged again to continue my path.

And finally I clicked on the starting point to enclose the path.

T o transform this path into a selection simply press Ctrl + Enter. This may seem like a lot of overkill for a simple selection. Believe me, it is not. This is a very simple and limited example of the Pen Tool and is for demonstration purposes only. You can create precise and intricate paths and convert those paths into selections. This comes in handy when you are dealing with objects that have a color close to the background color, making the use of the common selection tools (Magic Wand, Quick Selection) impractical. Heck, even this simple example below is hard to replicate using the simple selection tools. I dare you to create the perfect teardrop form shown below with the Lasso Tool. You will find out that it is not an easy task.

Conclusion

This concludes the Photoshop Selection tutorial series. This is just an introduction to the wonderful world of selections and it barely scratches the surface of the more advanced capabilities of Photoshop regarding selections (Channels and Layer Masks) but I hoped it served its purpose and made basic selections easier for you.

View Other Articles in This Series

• How to set up Photoshop
• Photoshop Interface Explained (Part 1)
• Photoshop Interface Explained (Part 2)
• Photoshop Channels and Color
• Photoshop Selections (Part 1)
• Photoshop Selections (Part 2)

Resources

• The Earth seen from Apollo
• Police Cruiser

Selection Tools Inner Workings

Sure, you may use the software just to color correct your images with the various Adjustment layers, or maybe you just like playing with the Liquify Tool or maybe all you do in Photoshop is paint. This may be fine if you’re using Photoshop for personal use only, after all, your friends and family aren’t the greatest Photoshop experts and you can impress them with what you know already. But if you are working for a client or maybe you want to go to the next level in Photoshop expertise then you really should master (at least the basics) selections. Before you even touch a selection tool you should know the inner workings of the process.

Photoshop doesn’t know a thing about colors. It doesn’t see the orange, blue or red colors. Strange, huh? One of the best raster (and implicit color) image manipulation tools, it’s complete unaware of the colors it works with. But how does it do adjustments, selections and so on if it is color blind? Well, it may be color blind, but it is not Luminance blind. It works only with shades of black and white. Or grayscale. If you don’t know about channels check this tutorial, but as a quick resume know that Photoshop sees each channel as a grayscale image with 255 shades of black and white. So when it makes a selection it does so based on the difference between these 255 shades of black and white.

But wait, this is just one channel, and when I make selections all three channels are involved and that’s more than 255 shades of black and white, right? Wrong. Well, in a way! You see, concerning selections what Photoshop does is that it calculates the overall “grayscale image” by preserving the lightest pixel. Let me put it in another way. Let’ say a pixel is 100 levels red, 20 levels green and 240 levels blue. In the final grayscale composite that Photoshop uses for selections the pixels will be 240 levels luminance. The lightest channel wins. If you want to emulate this behavior simply press Ctrl + Shift + U to desaturate the image and make your selections using the Quick Selection Tool or the Magic Wand tool. The results will be the same as if you were using a colored image.

Ok, so let’s recap. Regarding selections Photoshop only sees 255 shades of black and white. Some selection tools use this model to select different parts of the image based on the difference between adjacent pixels (more on this later). You will also meet this number in many Adjustment tools (Levels, Posterize, Curves) and now you know why. These tools work with 255 shades of black and white as mentioned above.

Now it’s time for you to meet the selection tools. Below you can see the Marquee selection tools.

To make rectangular selections we use the Rectangular Marquee Tool and to make elliptical selections we use the Elliptical marquee tool. Pretty obvious, huh? The Single Row Marquee Tool and the Single Column Marquee Tool are pretty useless and I seldom use them. They select a single pixel row or column.

Let’s go back to the Rectangular and Elliptical marquee tools. You can see in the image below some selections I made using these tools. They may not seem of great use, but trust me, with the little tricks I am going to show you they are.

To use the above mentioned tools simply Left-click and drag. When you are happy with the selection release the mouse button.

First trick it is the use of the Shift and Alt keys. Let’s say you made a square selection but you want to modify this selection by adding another selection to it. If you simply drag again the previous selection disappears. To add to a current selection hold Shift then make your selection. This way the previous selection is still in place and we just added another selection to it. The Alt key works like the Shift key except it allows us to extract from the selection instead of adding to it. So if I have a rectangular selection and I want to subtract an area from this selection I simply hold the Alt key and drag with the selection tool of choice to subtract from the selection. Note that this technique works with all selection tools. Let’s say you have to select a perfect circle, like a planet (below) or a perfect square. Then you would hold the Shift key while dragging with the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee tool for a perfect circle or square.

Note that in the image below I didn’t center my selection because the selection would’ve been more difficult to see and because I want to introduce you to the second (little known) valuable trick

Some of you may be familiar with the Quick Mask Mode but nevertheless a quick description is required. Basically when you enter the Quick Mask Mode (Q) your selected areas (or unselected areas) are shown with a red overlay. Like below (Note: If the red overlay in your image looks different than in the image below continue reading, I provide a solution in the following lines).

Now if you select a brush and paint with white you will erase the red overlay and painting with black adds to the red overlay. Painting with a 50% brush will partially erase or add to the red overlay. When you exit the Quick Mask Mode (press Q again) the area with a previous red overlay will be selected. The partial red overlay (like when you paint with a 50% Opacity brush) will be partially selected. This behavior may be different on your machine so the red overlay may be representing the unselected areas. In order for the following trick to work double click the Quick Mask button and choose Selected Areas.

Time to show you this little trick I have been talking about. Ok, so you’re in the Quick Mask mode, you have a selection (like the planet image above). How do you center and tweak the circle so it fits the planet? You can’t do that with the Elliptical Marquee tool (at most you can make a flatter ellipse, but that’s all) so what is to be done. Simple. While in Quick Mask Mode with a selection press Ctrl + T to enter Free Transform mode and voila, you can tweak your selection to your heart’s desire. In the case of the planet, I would simply Alt-drag the corners to make it fit perfectly and because I selected previously Selected Areas I transform the selected area and not the unselected area (that will be weird). After you’re done press Enter to apply the transformation and the press Q to exit Quick Mask Mode and voila, you have free transformed the selection.

These kind of selections would be very hard to make without this technique. Of course when you are in the Quick Mask Mode you can Warp the selections or apply Filters. This is very powerful and it struck me first when I found out this was possible. You can apply a huge variety of filters to your selections for creative effects. In the example below, after I applied my transformation I applied Filter > Distort > Ocean Ripple to my selection.

Then I exited the Quick Mask Mode (Q) and I made a new layer from selection by pressing Ctrl + J. Then I added a layer below and filled it with a light blue for the purpose of the demonstration. Crazy, right?

Next we have the Lasso tool family. To make a selection with the Lasso Tool simply draw your selection (or “lasso it”) and release the mouse button. Personally I don’t use this tool very often because it lacks precision. Next we have the Polygonal Lasso Tool. This tool helps us draw polygonal selections and may be useful in certain situations. To use it simply click and move your mouse multiple times. This is easier done than said so go ahead, select it and use it on an image. A quick tip: you can temporarily access the Polygonal Lasso Tool while using the Lasso Tool by holding the Alt key.

Next we have the Magnetic Lasso Tool. To use this tool simply click once somewhere on the image and then drag across the margins of the object you want to select. You will notice some lines and points that snap to the edges of the object you want to select but not always. It works by analyzing the contrast between the adjacent pixels and draws lines according to the settings shown below. When you’re done simply double click to transform these lines into a selection. I will not be covering this tool mainly because I consider it bulky and imprecise. And I know much better ways to make selections. And mostly it is a noob’s choice (and we want to do it the professional way, right?). Of course, if you feel lazy you can use this tool for quick results but for advanced selections it will simply not be enough.

Below it is a short introduction to LAB color mode but you can skip it and jump to the practical techniques of using LAB although a basic understanding of the theory behind it helps.

A quick introduction to LAB color mode

So what’s the difference between LAB and RGB? Some of you may know that in RGB color mode we have three color channels: red, green and blue. These channels combine to produce all the colors on the RGB color wheel. Red and green combine to produce yellow, green and blue form cyan, blue and red form magenta.

What about LAB? Well, L is the luminosity channel, A is the green-magenta channel and B is the blue-yellow channel. “L” channel contains all the luminosity information and is basically the black and white version of a photo with no color whatsoever. “A” channel has all the greens and the magentas while “B” has all the blues and yellows. You may wonder where is the red cyan channel. There is no red cyan channel because these colors are formed by combining the “A” and “B” channels. Red is formed when equal amounts of magenta and yellow exist in the “A” and “B” channels while cyan is formed when equal amounts of green and magenta exist in the “A” and “B” channels.

You may notice that the colors are somehow wrong. Yellow has a brownish look, green has a “cyanish” look, while blue is very close to cyan. That is because LAB color mode it is designed to reproduce colors the way humans see them while RGB is the way the machines sees color. It has something to do with simultaneous contrast and that we perceive and judge specific colors according to the colors that surround them. This is not a very scientific definition of LAB color mode but is enough to get you started. If you want to know more about the scientific side of LAB color mode check out this Wikipedia article.

5 steps photo enhancement

Select one photo similar to mine and let’s open it in Photoshop. At our first look we notice that it is a fairly dark picture with some bland colors and what seems to be a light blue color cast. I would normally do a “channel walk“ and see how each color channel looks like, then I would make some color samples in the darkest and the lightest places of our image to see if there is a color cast. But these steps require time and let’s assume that I have to improve and color correct this photo in 3 minutes. Well, good luck doing that in RGB! Let’s LAB this picture.

Step 1

Choose Image > Mode > Lab Color. You shouldn’t see any change.

Step 2

Choose Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Your histogram of the lightness channel may be different to mine but follow these following guidelines:

• Make a so called “S Curve”. Click to make a point in the upper part of the histogram (highlights) and drag it upwards. Click in the lower part of the histogram (shadows) and drag it downwards. Don’t overdo the adjustments, aim for a balanced tone distribution (equal amounts of light and shadow). The “S Curve” adds contrast to the middle tones while flattening the highlights and shadows. Look at the histogram and if you see an empty space at the right drag the highlights slider until it is positioned below the histogram values. This move will set the white point and increase the contrast in the middle tones. You could do the same thing for the shadows slider but to a lesser extent because this usually introduces ugly black artifacts.
• Change to “a” channel and drag the left and right slider to the center in equal amounts. It helps if you have a more detailed grid ( Alt + click to make the grid more detailed) ). I dragged the sliders all the way to the first vertical line. Change to “b” channel and repeat.

Step 3

Convert the “Background“ layer to a smart object. To do this right click the layer and choose “Convert to smart object“.

Step 4

Choose Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Apply some high values. Remember that a big threshold and radius value means more blur. Don’t worry if your image looks blurry, we will fix that. Double click the little icon to the right of our surface blur smart filter to enter the blending options and choose color as our blending mode. This step will drastically reduce or completely remove any color noise or color fringing from our image.

Step 5

Choose Filter > Other > High pass and apply a rather small radius, just until the details start to emerge from the grays. Double click the blending options icon and change the blend mode to soft light.

An alternative step would be to apply a Smart Sharpen or an Unsharp Mask and change the blend mode to luminosity. This would apply sharpening only to our luminosity channel, while our color channels will remain free of noise. I choose not to apply these filters to our photo because they tend to add noise and we already have a bit of a noisy image. And I think the amount of clarity provided by the High Pass filter is enough. But If you have a rather blurry image feel free to apply some amount of sharpen using the filters I mentioned above. Don’t forget to change their blending mode to Luminosity.

These steps are much faster than they seem when you get to grips with them. It took me 3 minutes to make all the adjustments above and I think we transformed this bland image into a pretty decent looking photo. The changes are subtle but effective and the image now has some natural, rich colors. Some images will benefit more from these techniques while others will require a more time consuming approach.

I hope you will start to use LAB color mode as part of your workflow and benefit from doing so. Remember that the techniques described above are not absolute ways of doing things. Adapt them to your needs and make your photos look great in a short amount of time.