Question regarding Photoshop

RoisinRoseDubh

Hi,

I have some general queries regarding Photoshop and would really appreciate it if anyone had a few minutes to spare and could answer a few short questions via PM.

Thanks!

Effects

Why via PM? Why not ask the questions here so you get more than one response?

chuckyarelaw

RoisinRoseDubh wrote: »

Hi,

I have some general queries regarding Photoshop and would really appreciate it if anyone had a few minutes to spare and could answer a few short questions via PM.

Thanks!

PM me.

OldGoat

Crop.
Levels.
Curves.
Sharpen.

Anything else is jazz.

Michael D Not Higgins

OldGoat wrote: »

Crop.
Levels.
Curves.
Sharpen.

Anything else is jazz.

For fixing your holiday snaps yeah. OP hasn't clarified what they want it for. Picasa or Paint.net would work just as well for regular photos.

ScumLord

OldGoat wrote: »

Crop.
Levels.
Curves.
Sharpen.

Anything else is jazz.

If that's all you're doing with photoshop you really overpaid for your software.

I wouldn't have thought people are using the sharpen effect that much anymore.

DaireQuinlan

ScumLord wrote: »

If that's all you're doing with photoshop you really overpaid for your software.

I wouldn't have thought people are using the sharpen effect that much anymore.

the sharpen 'effect'

Sometimes things need to be sharpened.

Effects

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

the sharpen 'effect'

Sometimes things need to be sharpened.

And sometimes you need to apply an effect to get something to look cool/good.

bullpost

Overfond of the "make this crap look good" filter meself.

Effects wrote: »

And sometimes you need to apply an effect to get something to look cool/good.

ScumLord

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

the sharpen 'effect'

Sometimes things need to be sharpened.

There's loads of techniques for sharpening images, I get the photoshop magazine every so often and they give you loads of ways of sharpening an image while avoiding some of the artifacts that pop up using the sharpen filters or tool. They can allow you to sharpen an image in a particular way to avoid sharpening parts of the image you don't want to. You'll probably find them on youtube too. Sharpening in particular seems to be an area where people develop a load of techniques and don't use the basic built in tools in photoshop.

An example would be.. Making a copy of your image onto a new layer and applying the high pass filter to it, changing the blending mode to overlay, or one of the light options IE: soft light, or pin light, (the blend mode can give you different types of sharpening, or even a combination) and dropping the opacity way down to around 20%. It's a non destructive way of applying sharpening.

DaireQuinlan

ScumLord wrote: »

There's loads of techniques for sharpening images, I get the photoshop magazine every so often and they give you loads of ways of sharpening an image while avoiding some of the artifacts that pop up using the sharpen filters or tool. They can allow you to sharpen an image in a particular way to avoid sharpening parts of the image you don't want to. You'll probably find them on youtube too. Sharpening in particular seems to be an area where people develop a load of techniques and don't use the basic built in tools in photoshop.

An example would be.. Making a copy of your image onto a new layer and applying the high pass filter to it, changing the blending mode to overlay, or one of the light options IE: soft light, or pin light, (the blend mode can give you different types of sharpening, or even a combination) and dropping the opacity way down to around 20%. It's a non destructive way of applying sharpening.

... magazines ... youtube ... high pass filters ... whut

Michael D Not Higgins

Magazines are small books on specialty topics and usually include a number of pictures.

YouTube is a website that has videos.

High pass filters allow higher frequency and thus sharper parts of the image through. Blending with the original can sharpen it.

DaireQuinlan

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

Magazines are small books on specialty topics and usually include a number of pictures.

YouTube is a website that has videos.

High pass filters allow higher frequency and thus sharper parts of the image through. Blending with the original can sharpen it.

In LAYMANS terms. Dumb it down for me there doc.

magicbastarder

i don't think i've ever sharpened a full res image. for web, i occasionally use unsharp mask, but since i loathe oversharpened images, i generally don't do it.

magicbastarder

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

For fixing your holiday snaps yeah.

i've just seen this. i'm off to reexamine my whole approach to photography.

Michael D Not Higgins

magicbastarder wrote: »

i've just seen this. i'm off to reexamine my whole approach to photography.

Maybe OP is getting into graphic design, we can only speculate. But they'll need a whole lot more than basic tools if they are.

Zillah

ScumLord wrote: »

If that's all you're doing with photoshop you really overpaid for your software.

I wouldn't have thought people are using the sharpen effect that much anymore.

Wait wait...

...paid...for photoshop?

No I'm lost.

magicbastarder

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

Maybe OP is getting into graphic design, we can only speculate. But they'll need a whole lot more than basic tools if they are.

my point ws that there are plenty of people here producing good work using only those basic tools. the suggestion that on they're own, they're only good for holiday snaps is the one i was disagreeing with.

chuckyarelaw

OP is sorted.

ScumLord

magicbastarder wrote: »

i don't think i've ever sharpened a full res image.

If your importing into photoshop through camera raw you are applying sharpening, just the default amount. If your using jpegs I think it's the same, your applying the default amount of sharpening for jpegs.

magicbastarder wrote: »

my point ws that there are plenty of people here producing good work using only those basic tools.

I'm not going to suggest that using more elaborate sharpening processes is automatically going to get better results. The major difference is that it's non destructive editing and the amount of sharpening you use is editable at a later stage. The original image is untouched.

Mike.Za

Just don't use PS use Lightroom

I never use(and despise Photo shopped images) personal taste I guess but IMO its load of c*ck and b*lls

Kenny Logins

Mike.Za wrote: »

Just don't use PS use Lightroom

I never use(and despise Photo shopped images) personal taste I guess but IMO its load of c*ck and b*lls

Yeah, because all 'Photoshopped' images are the same..?

Mike.Za

Of course not,

But when it becomes "photoshopped" you can tell visually that it has been edited in PS. That I hate.

The reason I dont like it is because more people over use it and their pics are visually "photoshopped". Very few have the skills to use it and still retain a natural good looking photo.

Obviously I am not so naive as to not realise that all published photos probably went through PS.

Maybe its because I love film photos and cameras and learnt that way. Not the way of a 550D and a pirated copy of PS.

DaireQuinlan

Mike.Za wrote: »

Of course not,

But when it becomes "photoshopped" you can tell visually that it has been edited in PS. That I hate.

The reason I dont like it is because more people over use it and their pics are visually "photoshopped". Very few have the skills to use it and still retain a natural good looking photo.

Obviously I am not so naive as to not realise that all published photos probably went through PS.

Maybe its because I love film photos and cameras and learnt that way. Not the way of a 550D and a pirated copy of PS.

All my shots are photoshopped. Every single last one. I don't think you can "tell visually that it has been edited in PS"

magicbastarder

Mike.Za wrote: »

But when it becomes "photoshopped" you can tell visually that it has been edited in PS. That I hate.

i think your idea of what photoshopping involves and what other peoples' idea may diverge.

ScumLord

Mike.Za wrote: »

But when it becomes "photoshopped" you can tell visually that it has been edited in PS. That I hate.

Just about every single image you see in the media are photoshopped to some degree. Most of the time you can't really tell. That's why you use techniques rather than tools because it can blend your adjustments better over the entire image.

There are a few techniques that are well established and often you'll find the top guys are repeating each other. I usually buy the photoshop magazine once or twice a year when I'm traveling (they're too expensive to be buying all the time) and you'll get some good stuff in them, I'd say if I was buying it every month I'd see the same stuff repeated over and over again. So it's not even a case of there's a load of different techniques to learn, you could improve your images dramatically with just a handful of basic ones.

5uspect

Mike.Za wrote: »

Just don't use PS use Lightroom

There's no real difference. Lightroom is essentially just a subset of Photoshop.

Kenny Logins

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

All my shots are photoshopped. Every single last one. I don't think you can "tell visually that it has been edited in PS"

Needs lens flare.