Adventures in Photoshop, Part __ ?

[red_satin_doll]

Trying to teach myself PS CC is sometimes fun and sometimes sends me screaming into the night. As in last night, trying to correct a photograph of a rose I wanted to have printed and just muffing it up horribly. *le sigh*

The various "sharpen" functions are ones I have not mastered yet at all.  I'm sure I'll love it when I master it but I'm at that stage I was when I transitioned from Photobucket to ipiccy a couple of years ago: "I just want to do this, I just want my little slider bar back, where is the eraser so I can selectively apply this effect?" etc etc etc.  That said I do LOVELOVEOVE the fun effects with fonts - especially drop shadows, contouring and glow effects.

This morning I had a little more luck inmproving contrast, brightness, color, warmth etc on a photo I took yesterday of flowers behind the garage, but it still feels like I'm in the "beginner's luck" stage. I didn't even attempt to sharpen either of these, btw. Baby steps, baby steps.....

Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Many years ago I found a tutorial that I like and have been using it to brighten caps, with little tweaks here and there.

I'd be interested in that one :D

Right now one of the things I have to look up is the correct way and format to save files. I've found I've tried to reopen some files I've worked on and PS can't find or open it so I end up going back to the original. What are the best formats to save things and what about those little boxes that come up (to save as a copy or not? To compress or not? PSD, tiff, png?) I've tried reading Adobe's tutorial and it was still greek to me.

[teragramm.livejournal.com]

A lot of artists save images as png but because of my photo studio experience I always save mine as jpeg (most photo labs only except jpeg).

I either save as a copy or give the copy a new name. It is sometimes easier to give a new name because if the file is IMG_2445 and I have worked on it I will call it IMG_2445a, so I know I've working on it.

To compress or not? Since I don't usually do png or tiff I don't have need to compress or not.

PSD.... Is the image with all the layers....if you flattened the image, then there is no need to save it as a PSD.

I've tried reading Adobe's tutorial and it was still greek to me. Yes, I think they design it that way on purpose.

I'd be interested in that one :D Sure I'll PM it to you.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I did receive the tutorial thank you! Haven't tried it out yet. today I was trying to teach myself to use the quick selection tool to cut around images of Willow and Tara so I could merge them into layers and - half the time the QS tool worked and half the time it did not. Very frustrating. And half the time I could figure out how to actually cut away the pixels outside the figure once I've drawn the line.
*argh* It's slowing me down tremendously.

But at least I'm learning bit by bit.

I either save as a copy or give the copy a new name. It is sometimes easier to give a new name because if the file is IMG_2445 and I have worked on it I will call it IMG_2445a, so I know I've working on it.

I do something very similar! I always add a number or letter at the end so I know which version or simply that I've edited it. Thank you for the info on files, I think I'm starting to understand each one better. I'm surprised jpg's are such a standard format because they're "lossy" (is that the term?) You lose some information every time you copy a jpg. I've sometimes done awards banners where I've seen a huge difference from time to time on the quality of the artist's "originals" and ones the mods have reproduced and copied for contents.

[teragramm.livejournal.com]

A few things to remember with the quick selection tool....1. make sure your opacity is 100% or this can change the outcome of the QS. After you have made the selection, to the menu (on top) ... to Select and then down to Inverse the QS, then you can copy the part of the image you just did the QS. You can now paste it on same image or a different one.

Did that help?

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I actually don't quite understand this all yet but - let me go back and try again with the tool and see how it works.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Coming back to this to say YES, your advice about the QS tool was very helpful once I put it into practice, thank you!

[teragramm.livejournal.com]

So glad it helped. The inverse had me puzzled too when I first used the QS tool.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I can't say I'm any good at using it yet however. That's just going to take lotsa practice.

I also miss being able to simply "erase" pixels in ipiccy when I'm adding a new filter or layer.