Photoshop

Adapted from Photoshop CS4: Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks (Wiley Publishing)
By Lynette Kent
Dateline: August 17, 2009
Version: Adobe Photoshop CS4

You can paste one image onto another and blend the pasted image into the Background layer by changing the blend mode. The layer blending modes control how the colors in the top image combine with the pixels in the underlying image. They do not affect the texture of either image. To make the top image blend into the texture of the base image and make the final image appear more realistic, you can use the Distort filter and a special file called a displacement map.

Adapted from Printing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Focal Press)
By Tim Daly
Dateline: August 12, 2009
Version: Adobe Photoshop CS4

Toning

Historically, photographic print toning has used chemical toners like sepia and selenium to make prints with fairly limited colors ranging from brown to purple-reds. With the digital process, however, there are many more color options available together with a near Zone System level of control. For the fainthearted, this digital route is also reversible, so there’s no danger of ruining your perfectly good image file. Subtlety, if you want it, is there in bundles, with no need to produce intimidating Colorvir-like prints, unless hallucinogenic effects are your thing. Digital coloring in CS4 means you can have infinite control over the toning process adding color across the whole image or dropping it in up to ten different tonal sectors. Following is a number of different routes to image toning, starting with the easiest and ending with the more interesting Duotone techniques.

We've discussed techniques for enlarging images before using Photoshop commands. Re-sizer is an action pack that uses a series of such commands as an action pre-packed for you to achieve the best possible result.

Have you ever had a problem like the the picture above in InDesign?

All those red zones are above 300% inkt percentage.

So you need to change those percentages, there are a lot of ways of doing it, with profiles and so on...

I found an interesting way in Photoshop. Here it is...

Open the picture in Photoshop, see that you have your info panel visible.
When you hover over a problem area in your picture you can read the inkpercentages in the info panel.

Check out the video podcast about:

I noticed so many of us use the trackpad as the primary input device.

I though it would be interesting to check out what trackpad gestures can you use in Photoshop. Here is what I found out:

As with most things in Photoshop, there are several ways to sharpen an image. One of my favorite ways is by using the High Pass filter:

1. Duplicate the layer you want to sharpen.
2. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass
3. Enter a radius of 1-10, click OK
4. On your layers palette, set the blending mode to Hard Light
5. Drop the layer opacity until you find the strength you like

I like this method because I can control it more. Also, it's not destructive since you can easily delete the duplicate layer you made. Hope this is useful for you!

Smart objects is extremely useful for designers putting together layouts in Photoshop. Not having to worry about resizing logos and other vector elements is a huge help.

You can not only transform and apply filters to these layers without destructing them, but also edit them in Illustrator and save them back right into Photoshop.

Use the Eye Dropper tool to sample any color on your screen by clicking and dragging from your document to anywhere on your screen, even outside of Photoshop.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein