The New Photoshop Tutorial Thread

Dimy

Hi all,

This thread replaces my old thread.

I will start by re-posting my original tutorials (the images are broken in the original thread) and hopefully add new ones along the way.

I encourage other people to post their tutorials in this thread as well, but please note it's for Photoshop only (so no GIMP or other software tutorials please) and also mention your version of photoshop in the Title of the post.

If you have a tutorial request, feel free to PM me and I see what I can do .

Regards,
Dimitry

Dimy

Well here's my first tutorial, in this tutorial I will show how to fix a common problem, a tilted horizon or background.

Start Image


Ok here we have the starting photo, as you can clearly see the horizon tilted, and unless that was the effect you were looking for when you took the picture, this can be easily fixed in Photoshop by rotating the image and cropping.

Step 1: Select the Ruler Tool

But how do you know by how many degrees you need to rotate an image to straighten it? The hard way of course by applying the good old trial and error method, however... Photoshop has a build-in Measure Tool which is much more effective at this: The Ruler Tool.



Step 2: Use the Ruler Tool

With the Ruler Tool selected click and drag a line along the horizon. Alternatively I could have dragged a line vertically along the lines of e.g. the Poolbeg towers or the swimming pool jumping platform thingy.



Step 3: Rotate

Go to the Image Menu --> Rotate Canvas --> Arbitrary...



Now don't change anything to the presented angle in the screen above, by using the Measure Tool it automatically calculated the amount of rotation degrees needed to straighten up the image... so simply click OK here:



The result:


Step 4: Crop!

Now that we rotated the image, we need to crop the image. I prefer cropping at 2x3 ratio, but if you want a square crop or different dimensions feel free to do so.

Select the Crop Tool:


Make a crop selection by simply clicking and drag a box, when you're happy with the selection release the mouse button. If needed you can still change the size of the crop selection by moving any of the 4 borders upwards, downwards, left or right by just hovering over the side you want to change, click and hold the mouse button and drag.



Check the info box for the size of your selection and adjust either width or height of the selection until you have the desired ratio... in my case I want a ratio of 3x2 (I use a calculator for this, e.g. if the width of my crop is 1000 pixels I divide 1000 by 3 and then multiply by 2 to find that the height of my crop needs to be 667 pixels).

When you're happy, click on the Crop tool Icon once again to confirm the crop.



The result:


And that concludes this tutorial.

-Dimy

5uspect

There is also a similar tool in Camera RAW that behaves in pretty much the same way.

fizzoo12

Great tutorial Dimi,
and its a great thread for PS CS 4 which I am trying to get used to using only in the last week , keep it going and we'll all benefit from each other .....

fizzoo12

Hey Dimi,
have you any tips on brushing up facial blemishes etc .....

Fizzoo

squareballoon

fizzoo12- I know you asked Dimi but I thought I would throw in my 2 cents for facial blemishes. Use the patch tool

draw a circle round the blemish and move it to an area as close a possible without a blemish.