Exploit freedom..and Photoshop CS3

Time flew by so quickly. I am now just a month short of being a yr-old boss.

I realized how daunting as much as satisfying running one’s own buisness could potentially be. Despite the irregularities in job hours and income for the past 11-months, I personally vouch that it wasn’t all that bad afterall especially for someone like myself (not cut out for business) embarking on his maiden voyage towards professionalism. As mentioned in my final post for 2007, I did in fact achieve quite a few firsts. Sure, there were the inevitable lull periods in the calendar such as now, but hey, this is the chance for me to actively pursue other areas for my personal development and growth – something that I aim to do at this juncture. This week, I started on a new course at Objectifs – my first actually. Visual Experimentations – Seeing with a New Eye is facilitated by Francis Ng, a local artist whom I am familiar with from my previous tenure at the National Arts Council. Also this week are two Adobe workshops – one of which I attended last evening and another this Friday. Seems pretty fun already…oh hell yeah..as the jingle goes – ‘I’m Lovin’ It!’

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 Adobe Photoshop CS3 Workshop
by Master Instructor cum Adobe Evangelist, Ms Shirley Tan

I was fortunate enough to have been involved in a small group workshop conducted by Adobe. The objective of this hour-long session was purely to meet up with bloggers within the creative industry to find out more about our various needs pertaining to Photoshop (CS3) as well as to impart some practical techniques involving certain features that were commonly overlooked and disregarded by most users not excluding the professionals. I arrived at the Adobe office in Suntec with a clear mind since I am a firm avocator of the mantra that ‘we all learn something new everyday’ although I would like to think of myself as a semi-advanced user (~10 yrs) of this extraordinary application (tho’ most of which were self-taught). Our facilitator for the evening was Ms Shirley Tan. Her lively presentation coupled with her crisp demonstration was testament to her numerous years of training experience. Having acquired numerous accolades, Shirley is the only Adobe Master Instructor recognised in SEA. Having taught more than 10,000 users within the last fifteen years, Shirley has a firm grasp of both theory and practice of an extensive range of Adobe software products. At the end of the hour, I honestly declared that I had picked up six new retouching/ enhancement techniques. Although the techniques were not totally new per se, the steps taken to achieve a desired outcome were significantly reduced. I am convinced that “all roads lead us to Rome” however, the one who uses the least number of clicks would have less back- and shoulder- cramps. =) Ok so who thinks I ain’t a nice guy, let me now share and explain step-by-step a couple of ’new’ techniques which I took away from the workshop:

1. Making your images ‘Shout’ – tweaking saturation and vibrancy of an image using different layer blending modes

2. Bringing out details – instead of the ever-popular ‘unsharp mask’ and ‘smart sharpen’ filters, use the ‘High Pass’ filter instead. This method yields significantly less ’noise’ as compared to the former two sharpening options. I’ll demonstrate over here:  

•  Copy your background layer using the shortcut Ctrl + J 

• On the duplicate layer go to Filter > Other > High Pass 

• I used a radius of 3 (or any other value to suit your image) and click OK.

• To remove the gray areas on the duplicate layer, change its mode to Overlay.

• There you are done.

3. Removing colour cast – for the less discerning photographers out there, applying the appropriate colour cast removal technique could pose an uphill task. Despite the ease of use of ‘Photo filters’ and the destructible ‘Auto Colour’ features, it is not entirely foolproof for all images. Using the ‘Average Blur‘ filter solves this problem for most cases. Let’s now try to remove the cast off the model’s skin tone: 

• Once again make a copy of your background layer (Ctrl + J)  

• Go to Filter > Blur > Average

• The layer turns brown         

• Invert the layer using Ctrl + I (it is now blue)

• Now change the layer blending mode to Color

• Finally, play around with the opacity to balance the skin tone to your liking.

4. Perspective Crop - images such as framed art works mounted on walls usually contain keystone distortion. Checking the box next to the ‘Perspective’ option allows you to place your cropping handlers at any position you want to.

5. Blend If – this extremely powerful tool hides or show certain elements of your image without the addition of layer masks nor brush strokes. Imagine creating some cool SFX without additional steps!

6. Image Stacks – ever thought of getting rid of those annoying elements in your images? This feature allows you to eliminate or add differences in quality or content within a group of images. Make sure you had already converted your layers to smart objects before using the ‘Stack‘ feature though.

I hope you’ve learnt or rather, ‘re-learnt’ these few techniques and apply them immediately in your next post-job. Overall, the session was short and sweet. Oh..and did I almost forget to mention that we rounded off the evening with a sumptuous dinner at the Imperial Treasure Teochew Restaurant? Excellent. =P

Here’s wishing one and all a Happy Valentine’s Day! 

Shirley may be reached at: shirley@acetraining.com.sg or www.acetraining.com.sg
 
P.S: Big thanks to Fiona and Sue from Adobe. =)