Photoshop Support

Today's technique shows how to create a dual-focus hybrid image. In human speak, that means how to create an optical illusion that makes a photo looks like one thing from a distance (an adult lion) and another close up (a lion cub). The trick is to create an image that contains both high-frequency (close up) and low-frequency (far away) data, so that the image changes based on your visual distance. When I suggested to Deke that we call this movie, “How to make an optical illusion,” Deke’s response was, “Everything about Photoshop is an optical illusion. You may be familiar with this effect if you’ve encountered the Albert Einstein Marilyn Monroe image in your Internet wandering. When you look at the image above, whose face do you see? At normal screen viewing distance you should see the face of the great scientist Albert Einstein. Now squint your eyes or take a few steps back grom the image. Does a certain Hollywood personality pop into view? The Marylin Einstein hybrid image was created by Dr. Aude Oliva for the March 31st 2007 issue of New Scientist magazine. In Deke’s lion example, he applies Photoshop’s High Pass filter to a photo of a lion cub, ensuring that the high-frequency data sears that particular image in your mind, but he also applies the Gaussian Blur filter to the adult lion, so that if you back up (or squint), you’ll see the image of an adult lion in the same photo. In the below images, the high frequency is shown above and the low frequency is shown below, but these are actually different optical distances of the very same image: If you’re intrigued by the mysteries of hybrid images, Deke has another lynda.com member-exclusive technique this week where he explains how to add text to a hybrid composition. You can get a free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library. A credit card is required to ensure uninterrupted access to lynda.com, if you choose to remain a member after your free trial ends. There is no long-term commitment required, and you can cancel any time. After signing up for the free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library you'll gain access to over 60,000 video tutorials instantly. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Missed yesterday, so here are two for today: Grungy Star Brushes and Texty Fabrics Brushes. These sets were made by scanning wrapping paper and pillow cases. 20 brushes in all! Grungy Star Brushes Set name: Yami No Matsuei (brushes in set: 7) All illustrations were scanned off a beautiful paper my granny's birthday flowers were wrapped in before I found them. Grungy look belongs to my talent in organizing my bag. Texty Fabrics Brushes Set name: Scarlett (brushes in set: 13) These images were scanned off what has been left by my bunnies and was last be seen as beautiful pillow cases from my couch. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

There is a sale on the Perfect Photo Suite 6 beginning today. onOne is offering Perfect Photo Suite 6 full version for $199.95 ($100.00 savings - normally $299.95). This sale will be available until February 15th. The new Perfect Photo Suite 6 includes seven powerful products that solve today's most common problems in digital photography and help you create extraordinary images in less time than ever before. Integrate it with how you work — use it as a standalone application or as a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture. American Photo Magazine awarded the Perfect Photo Suite their Editor's Choice award for Top Image Editing Software and the professional photographers who read Studio Photography voted the Perfect Photo Suite the best plug-in for Adobe Photoshop in their Reader's Choice Awards. All products in the Perfect Photo Suite 6 work as standalone applications or as plug-ins for Photoshop CS4, CS5, Elements 9 and 10, Lightroom 2 and 3, and Aperture 2.1 and 3. They work with both Mac and Windows and you can install the Suite on two computers. Learn more... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 8 from Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop, excerpted with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The book is available in stores and through online retailers nationwide. Here’s a link to a multi-retailer sales page. Author Alen Hess is a professional event and concert photographer whose subjects have included The Grateful Dead, Bruce Hornsby, John Legend, Robin Williams, and many more. CITYSCAPES There is nothing quite like a great nighttime cityscape image; the lights of the city make everything just look magical. The bigger and busier the city, the easier it is to get a good cityscape mainly due to the amount of light present. I have often been amazed at the actual amount of light available when looking out at San Diego. A lot goes into getting good cityscape photographs, including choosing a fantastic location, the best time, and the ideal exposure. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION There is a saying in the real estate business that the three most important things are location, location, and location. Well, that holds true for capturing cityscapes as well. There are two distinct views to look for: the first is to get as high above the city as possible, and the second is to get away from the city and shoot from a distance. To shoot down on a city, look for the highest point that gives you the view you want. Check to see if the location allows visitors — specifically, photographers — and tripods instead of just showing up and hoping for the best. Of course, if you are on vacation, then you have nothing to lose, so just go for it. In the busiest areas of most cities, some of the tallest buildings are hotels, usually upscale hotels, and a lot of them have bars or restaurants on the upper floors, taking advantage of that view that you want to photograph. Many times you can just call and ask if it is possible to take photographs from that area. It really doesn’t hurt to ask. When shooting down from a high vantage point, wide focal lengths work really well. The wider focal lengths allow you to capture the grand vista of the whole scene. The twinkling lights in the offices and the traffic patterns rendered as light trails make the whole scene worth capturing. Take the cityscape in Figure 8-17 and the way the city looks alive with the lights twinkling in the scene. I took this image from the 40th floor of a hotel in downtown San Diego with a 24mm lens. READ FULL ARTICLE... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here are today's free Photoshop brushes from Janita: Fantasy Brushes Set name: Thousand Sunny (brushes in set: 14) All illustrations were scanned off a lovely plate I have secretly borrowed (and never given back) at the bar I am working at. You see I am even risking my life for a new brushset. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here's a new Adobe special: Save 15% off orders of US$375 or more. .Just enter code LOVE15 during checkout. Ends February 14, 2012. Valid for commercial and education customers. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here is today's free set of Photoshop brushes from Janita: Fancy Flower Flower Brushes Set name: Out Of The Blue (brushes in set: 14) All images were scanned off wrapping paper and have been additionally illustrated with plain copic pens. First illustrated then scanned. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

For one day only, February 6, you can save 25% off Adobe CS5.5 Design Premium Full, a savings of $474 on the regular version, and $112 off the Student and Teacher edition. No coupon code necessary, valid in the North America Commercial store and Education Store only. Deliver eye-catching designs for print, the web, and devices using Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium software. Create striking images and graphics, design print and digital publications, construct standards-based HTML5/CSS3 websites, and craft interactive content that is displayed consistently across screens of all sizes. CS5.5 Design Premium combines the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst, Fireworks, and Acrobat Pro, as well as a complimentary subscription to Adobe CS Live online services. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here is today's set of free Photoshop brushes from Janita: Distressed Flower Brushes. Set name: Mine All Mine (brushes in set: 21) All the illustrations in this set were made using some handmade potatoe stamps. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here are today's free Photoshop brushes from Janita: Bubbly Doodle Brushes - Set name: Glimmer (brushes in set: 22) All the illustrations in these brushes were drawn by me while I was endlessly bored on a rainy university morning. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here is today's free brush set from Janita: Fluffy Feather Brushes. All the feathers in these were scanned from images I found in scrapbooking stores. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Neon signs are bright; that is part of their charm and part of their usefulness. The brightness also makes it more difficult to shoot the sign than it would seem. You do have choices: You can expose for the whole scene, which will most likely overexpose the neon; you can expose for the sign, which can underexpose the rest of the scene; or you can combine different exposures into a single frame to get the exposure right for both the scene and the neon sign. The aperture that you use will also affect the way the light bleeds on a neon sign. This bleeding of the light is called halation and it relates to how the light can spread beyond the proper boundaries in a photographic image. As you change the aperture, the spread of the light changes; there are no right or wrong apertures, and knowing this means you can change the look of the light and the image by using different apertures. To get the neon sign to stand out against the background, just follow these steps to underexpose the image slightly. The first step is to find a sign that is relatively isolated so that the composition will allow the sign to stand by itself. Read full article... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here are today's free brushes: Butterfly Brushes. Set name: Glitterflies (brushes in set: 20) All images were handmade. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here's another Photoshop CS6 preview video: Here's an early look at a popular Facebook fan request — the ability to do a background save on a large file that would NOT make Photoshop slow down, and a new, very powerful liquify tool that allows large brush sizes and is very snappy. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

This week Deke shows you how to use a secret Asian-language text setting to create authentic-looking movie credits in Illustrator. The trick is exploiting the Warichu feature which is designed for stacking characters within a single line of type. In this technique, Deke reveals how the feature allows you to gracefully stack two words one on top of another, adjust the size, create a character style that saves those settings, and then apply your character-style down the line to all the people who helped make your imaginary movie possible. Any designer or budding movie promoter who’s obsessed with typesetting (and doesn’t that include most of you?) knows that the standard movie credits in a promotional poster stack the two-word job title before the linear presentation of each contributor’s name. So text that initially looks like this... ... ends up looking like this: If you were inspired by Deke’s Designing an Indiana Jones-style logo technique from December 2011, then this technique will allow you to create some credits at the bottom of your poster that will convince your audience that you know how to properly hype your latest entirely theoretical but professionally promoted cinematic endeavor. And if you’d like specific instruction on putting the two techniques together, check out the Two ways to place a pixel-based image movie from the Illustrator and Photoshop chapter (chapter 21) of Deke’s Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced course. You can get a free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library. A credit card is required to ensure uninterrupted access to lynda.com, if you choose to remain a member after your free trial ends. There is no long-term commitment required, and you can cancel any time. After signing up for the free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library you'll gain access to over 60,000 video tutorials instantly. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

We'll be releasing a free set of Photoshop brushes every day for the next twelve days. These are exclusive sets from us that were designed by the talented Janita from Seishido. Janita's brushes are tinged with an air of whimsy, often featuring delicate feathers, gossamer wings and dreamy clouds. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

You can save 50% off the standard price of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 in the Adobe North America Store. No coupon code is necessary. The discount will be applied when products are added to the shopping cart. Offer starts February 1, 2012 and ends March 5. The following Euro stores are also offering the same 50% off special: UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is an intuitive digital darkroom and efficient assistant designed for serious amateur and professional photographers. Easily manage, edit, and showcase all your images. Lightroom integrates tightly with Adobe Photoshop software and supports more than 275 camera raw file formats, as well as JPEG, TIFF, and PSD images. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here's a Photoshop tutorial from Photoshop Daily, by Simon Skellon. There are many ways to alter the contrast and mood of an image in Photoshop. Try this one using Apply Image. Apply Image can produce variations of contrast that other adjustments just aren’t able to offer. This particular method may not be the most commonly practised one, but shouldn’t be dismissed. Read more... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Have a look at the amazing photos of magnified grains of sand at the Uk Daily Mail site. "Viewed at a magnification of over 250 times real life, tiny grains of sand are shown to be delicate, colourful structures as unique as snowflakes. When seen well beyond the limits of human eyesight, the miniature particles are exposed as fragments of crystals, spiral fragments of shells and crumbs of volcanic rock." Read the full article. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 8 from Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop, excerpted with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The book is available in stores and through online retailers nationwide. Here’s a link to a multi-retailer sales page. Author Alen Hess is a professional event and concert photographer whose subjects have included The Grateful Dead, Bruce Hornsby, John Legend, Robin Williams, and many more. The basics of photographing light trails are simple: Use a shutter speed long enough that the lights in question turn from points of light into trails as they move through the frame. There are three different types of captures in this section: the first is where the camera is stationary and the subject is moving, the second is where the camera moves along with the subject creating a background that seems to be made up of streaks of light, and the third is to use the zoom on a lens to create trails from a stationary light source. Read more... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)