Creative Backyard - Open Discussion Thread

haha tell me about it, i only started using them this year! they're incredibly powerful tools. great for doing cutouts etc because you don't lose any of the original image, you just make it not visible. if you ever want to bring any of it back, you just paint in some white!

 

You can save the time of masking by just creating a clipping mask (right click the brush-layer and select clipping mask) it'll only affect the layer directly under it.

 

basically the clipping mask and layer mask are doing the same thing but the cool thing is to combine them.
here is a tutorial:
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/compositing-inside-silhouettes.html

 

Why is there a new (useless) open thread created for walls.

I thought the long running Phunners Original and/or Celebs and Models Collages already covered that.

 

Every now and then my photoshop resets to the defaults. Anyone know why this is and how to stop it?

 

http://www.sigtutorials.com/page/6

Site with lots of tutorial stuff for new guys and not so new guys alike.

 

just moved this post from the Redux thread, figured this is a more suitable place and would be good to finally get and keep this thread going!

Jamms posted in Sigs Redux that he tried to get an 'instagram' style effect, but couldn't. this is the process i use for getting the sort of effect i believe he means.



i do it a lot using a method i learned a few years ago using a Curves adjustment layer. if you haven't used adjustment layers before, basically its like applying an effect to a layer, only the effect sits in it's own layer and affects every layer below it. you can also apply a mask to it so the effect is only visible in certain parts of the canvas. the adjustment button is at the bottom of your layer panel (PS) and looks like a half eclipsed moon. click on that and select curves. then in the adjustment window (you may have to select this from your window drop down menu) it'll default to RGB and show you a graph with a diagonal line. click where it says RGB and select each colour individually and make the curves look like the image below (this is a composite image, you only see one colour graph at a time).



this makes colours more/less intense in light/dark areas. most notably you get blue creeping into your shadows and skin takes a slightly yellowy tone which helps with the 70s retro style. tweaking the curves will give you all sorts of different results, varying from image to image. the beauty of adjustment layers is nothing's permanent so you can alter settings further down the line. you can also reduce the opacity of the effect just like you'd reduce the opacity of a layer, and it makes the effects less visible.

once you're happy with that, try adding a bit of noise to the image. lower the contrast to flatten the image slightly, and another good tip is to open up the 'levels' window from Image > Adjustments and on the output levels (0 and 255 by default) pull both ends in a bit. this takes away your extremes of light and dark, so your blacks become a bit greyer and washed out, and your whites won't be so extreme. this again adds to flattening the image slightly.

 

u can also make a blue layer above your image put it on Exclusion and opacity 25%

 

great quick little tip helium. i like using images as textures as well, clouds on blue sky works really well, usually set to Screen, but nearly always needs some editing to make it work properly. if you look at my current sig, the texture on the orange bar is mainly from clouds

 

The phun blue B/g colour is #fafafa

handy and quite funny

 

Anyone can recommend a software for erasing water marks from pics?
Thanks

 

Photoshop or Gimp