10e20 Blog

Looking for that 15 minutes of fame? Well this tutorial won’t show you that, but it will give you a quick way to style your photos into a piece of Pop art.

1. Convert your photo to black and white or monochrome if it is not already. An easy way to do this is by opening the Hue and Saturation palette and sliding the saturation all the way to the left. Rename the layer ‘main photo’.

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2. Create a New Adjustment Layer and make it for Threshold. Use the options box to manipulate the image to how you like it, but try and leave some detail.

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3. Set the Opacity of the Threshold Layer to %50 and duplicate the main photo layer. Select the Burn Tool brush and set it to Midtones. Paint over ares that may need more detail, maybe the hair or face. Set the Threshold Layer’s Opacity back to %100.

A great way to convert photographs into colorful variations is to use the color balance adjustment to tone the shadows and highlights of your image into two different colors.

The Tone Effect technique can give your images a Pop art look or an aged mono/duo toned looked. Great way to further stylize a photograph and create something new and add some creative flair.

Step 1. Open your photo and adjust the Levels and or Curves. Make the Shadows the darkest areas and the highlights the whitest.

Step 2. Open your photo and convert it into a grayscale or black and white image. Go to Image/Adjustment/Hue Saturation and slide the saturation slider all the way down to the left. Or you can go to Image/Mode/Grayscale then you will have to convert it back into RGB, it will retain the new color mode of the grayscale though but it can now be colorized.

Do you want to sharpen your creative picture taking instincts? Do you want to combine new ideas with your current projects and techniques? These techniques will be better executed with digital cameras and meant as some direction or guidelines to taking ‘better‘ pictures. You are your cameras best viewfinder!

Why digital as opposed to film you say? You don’t have to buy tons of film if you are learning new ideas and trying different things and also you see the results right away.

That being said some of these photos were taken with Polaroid film. Polaroid has such an expressiveness to the colors and creates unique one of a kind images every time. The film is expensive but worth it. Once you get some basics down, experiment with film.

Photoshop has some great filters in its arsenal, but the trick is usually tweaking or working with them in such a way as to make it seem less like a canned filter that was just applied with the default settings.

Graphic interpretations of photographs can be a cool solution to a plain photograph that you want or need to spice up for presentation or inclusion into a larger graphic.

In this tutorial I will go over 2 effects that use a combination of a few filters to create a unique look.

I will use these 2 photos.

The vectorized looking, plastic feel

Step 1. Open your photograph and adjust the Curves and Contrast. Give the photo a good range of dark and whites. Make the shadows dark.

Step 2. Go to Filter/Blur/Smart Blur. Set the Radius and Threshold to %100 and the Quality High and the Mode Normal.

Often with digital photographs taken without the use of additional light sources we get a flat light. This works fine most of the time, but sometimes we would like to dramatically change the focus or impact of an element in the image.

This technique can be useful for product photography, portraits, and nature shots.

This tutorial will require some understanding if Masks, Adjustment Layers, and Layer Blend Modes.

Step1 . Set up the document and duplicate the Background layer. On the copy layer make any adjustments to the clarity, levels, and color that you need.

Step 2. Convert that copy layer into a B&W version. Go to Image/Adjustments/Hue Saturation and slide the Saturation all the way down. Be sure that you retain the blacks in the shadows and the whites in the highlights.

Does the Maximize Compatibility option pop-up when you go to save your PSD?

All you need to do is go into your preferences and make a few adjustments so Photoshop knows what you want to do without asking.

Step 1. Go to Photoshop/Preferences/General or Edit/Preferences/General.

Step 2. Select the File Handling option. Under File Compatibility the last section Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility select the option for Always in the drop down.

That’s it, no more pop-up’s when saving!

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Also a quick way to re-size images and make them crisper with Bicubic Sharper:

Step 1. Open your image to be re-sized. Go to Image/Image Size.

Step 2. Go to the last drop down box and select Bicubic Sharper. Then fill in the rest of your Image Size requirements.

A Drop Shadow is a visual effect that gives an object an illusion of depth by placing a shadow beneath an object. It is often used functionally to draw attention to an object, say a button or a text box. Text is also sometimes rendered with a subtle drop shadow that further emphasizes it and pops it off of the background.

In Photoshop you have the ability to create a Layer Style of a Drop Shadow and go back and change it at anytime- that’s helpful! You can even make all the layer styles the same and create a Global Light that they will all retain.

Sometimes it is better though to just make your own-why? Well it is surely unique. By using this simple technique the Drop Shadow will be on its own layer and also just as easy, or easier, to edit later on in the process.

Creating line effect patterns in Photoshop is easy and can come in handy for that little bit of texture applied to a background of a page or another way to spice up a photograph.

Line patterns can also make a ‘heavy’ image, one with lots of gradients and tones, a bit smaller in file size thus better for web use.

Line effect looks great on the screen because it mimics, to some degree, the way a screen displays light. This can work with printed images and give your images a more graphical feel, like a screen printing process, digital screen shot or transfer.

Step 1. Create a new document with dimensions of 2 pixels by 2 pixels and a transparent background. Zoom in till the document is larger and easier to work with.

Sometimes you get an amazing landscape shot, but the sky is so drab and lacks emotion. Out in the field you can not control this aspect of the weather, but with some post production in Photoshop you can create some interesting new images.

Skies with a lot of small details in the clouds towards the horizon, and very little interference, are great to have.

Step 1. On the new document select the layer of the landscape and using the Magic Wand tool select the sky by using a tolerance of 20 or less and add to that selection by holding the shift key. Enter into the Quick Mask Mode to further correct the mask and use other tools such as the Polygon Lasso and Brush.

Step 2. With the selection still activated click on the new sky layer and then hit the Layer Mask icon on the Layer Palette.

Starburst are a great way to lead the eye to the focus of a design or an image. I have 2 simple ways that you can go about doing them.

One works off of the Distort filter and the other is a few repetitions of the Transform and Rotate commands.

Option 1 (easy to do, but lacks control)

Step 1. Set up your document and create a new layer. On this layer make rectangle selections that span the height of the page by using the Marquee tool, and after the first selection hold down shift to add to that selection.

Step 2. Fill the selection with color. Do this by using the Paint Bucket tool or better yet go to Edit/Fill and choose the background or foreground color.

Step 3. With the same layer selected go to Filter/Distort/Polar Coordinates and select Rectangular to Polar.