Understanding Adobe Photoshop CS4: The Essential Techniques for Imaging Professionals By Richard Harrington
List Price: $49.99 – Sale Price $32.49 DISCOUNT CODE – UAP TWO - 35% OFF
Photoshop is the foundation of every digital career. It is the most pervasive technology on the market. Many users think they know it, but in truth they have gaping holes. This book covers what a professional truly needs to know about Photoshop to be employable. For students (whether in formal programs, certified training centers, or self-paced) this book offers a chance to explore the many aspects of the program interactively. The book cuts though the clutter and is unique in that it focuses not just on digital photography, but Internet, graphic design, multimedia, and video uses. Readers will learn the basics in correcting, editing, sharpening, retouching, and presenting photos as well as work on specific projects/exercises, including: digital painting; preparing images for newsprint; designing a CD/DVD label, magazine cover, and advertisements; and building an electronic portfolio. The full-color book includes a CD-ROM with hand-on exercises and practice images, access to a reader’s only Web site for bonus downloads and files, and access to the popular video tutorial Podcasts (150 at time of publication). CLICK TO ORDER – DISCOUNT CODE – UAP TWO - 35% OFF (Enter Code at Step 3 of checkout)
As an iPhoto user chooses to migrate to Aperture, they’ll likely have a large library of images to bring with them. Aperture offers twoasy ways to migrate iPhoto images into your Aperture library. Which method you select will vary depending upon your needs.
Migrating an Entire iPhoto Library
When you launch Aperture for the first time, a dialog offers to let you import your entire iPhoto library. You can choose to copy the images into your Aperture library or to simply reference the images in their current location. Even if you choose not to import your Aperture library the first time you launch, you can do so at any time.
Because Aperture and iPhoto are both manufactured by Apple, the two programs are designed to share information seamlessly. For example, any organization you did to create albums in iPhoto will translate into projects in Aperture. The EXIF, keywords, ratings, and applied adjustments are also maintained.
Importing an iPhoto library is very easy. To import your iPhoto library, do the following: 1. Choose File > Import > iPhoto Library. Aperture navigates automatically to your current iPhoto library. 2. Select the iPhoto Library folder using the file browser.
3. Choose the location where you’d like Aperture to store your images.
Choose "In the Aperture Library" from the Store Files pop-up menu to store imported masters in the Aperture library. This will allow Aperture to manage the images in its library architecture.
Choose "In their current location" from the Store Files pop-up menu to import the files as referenced images. This means the files are stored in their current locations on your hard drive.
Choose "Pictures" from the Store Files pop-up menu to store imported masters in the Pictures folder for the current user. The images are treated as referenced images.
Choose "Choose" from the Store Files pop-up menu and pick a folder where you want to store the imported masters as referenced images. You can also specify an organization method for the images by clicking the Subfolders pop-up menu.
4. Specify a naming convention from the Version Name pop-up menu. You can choose Master Filename from the Version Name pop-up menu to store your images using the current master filenames assigned by the camera. There are also several options for assigning custom names. 5. Click Import to add the images to your Aperture library.
Richard Harrington shows you how to use the new adjustments panel in Photoshop CS4 to speed up your workflow. Want the videos in HD? Then check out our iTunes version.
Richard Harrington shows you how to use the Adobe output module in Bridge CS4 to make websites, PDF slideshows and web galleries of your images. This technology is slick and easy to use.
Would you like to watch our new Photoshop CS4 Sneak Peek videos in HD? You’ve got two options to choose from. #1 iTunes Store You can subscribe to or download all our videos absolutely free by visiting the iTunes store. By clicking subscribe, you’ll pay nothing, but get over two hours of free Photoshop CS4 Training. New episodes are released daily.
#2 Apple TV Our show is also available on Apple TV in HD. A quick search for CS4 and you’ll find us.
I hope you enjoy... comments are very welcome (and encouraging).
Sometimes, a color (or range of colors) will be very present in your image. These colors can be used to quickly create an accurate Layer Mask. Even if the color cannot be used to select the object entirely, you can always harness the Brush tool to clean up stray areas. 1. Open an image with an area of continuous color you’d like to select.
2. Turn the Background layer into a floating layer by double-clicking its name in the Layers panel. 3. Choose Select > Color Range to make a selection based on a range of colors. Check the Localized Color Clusters option to reduce the selection area to just the chosen colors. 4. With the Eyedropper, click within the yellow area of the flower to make an initial selection. Hold down the Shift key and drag through other areas of the flower to add to the selection. 5. Leave the Fuzziness set to a low value (30-40). When most of the flower is selected, click OK to create an active selection. 6. Click the Add layer mask button for the layer. The petals will show well, but parts of the flower will be missing. 7. Add a solid color layer to make it easier to see your edges. Choose Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. A purple layer will help things stand out nicely. Click OK and drag the solid layer below the masked flower. 8. Examine the masked layer closely. You will need to paint in part of the center of the flower. Additionally, some of the petals contain unwanted transparency. You may also have some leaves or stems that bled through. We can fix all of these problems quickly using the Brush tool. 9. Press D to load the default colors of black and white. 10. Select the Layer Mask attached to the layer. 11. Press B to activate the Brush tool. Adjust the size of the brush and its hardness settings so you have a smaller brush with a gentle edge (an 80-pixel brush with a hardness of 75% is a good place to start). 12. Paint in spotted or missing areas with white. You can remove any unwanted areas by painting with black. 13. When finished, you can save the image as a layered file such as a TIFF or PSD formatted file.
Learn about important changes to the Photoshop CS4 user interface. - Refined workspaces – Freely rotatable canvas – Greater zoom levels - Enhanced controls with panels - Tabbed documents
Welcome to Part 1 in our series comparing iPhoto to Aperture. I invite you to check out the Apple Pro Training Series guide to Aperture 2 for more information on getting the most out of this powerful software.
Nondestructive Image Processing
Both Aperture and iPhoto offer nondestructive image processing.At any point during the image adjustment process you can restore your image to its original state.Although both iPhoto and Aperture feature nondestructive imaging,they take a different approach to achieve it.
Want to find out everything new in Adobe Creative Suite 4? Trust me... there’s some really cool things coming. Adobe has an invitation out to view their Web broadcast on September 23rd. But you do need to go to the sign-up page at www.adobe.com/go/somethingbrilliant. By the way... we are going to be releasing something very special on the 23rd as well as a “thank you” to all our viewers. Be sure to stick around and keep an eye out.
It’s always nice to start your day and find out that Apple has listed you on their homepage for Hot News. Seems they like our new podcast on Aperture 2, which is a great program.
By the next day the show was #3 on all of iTunes (beating every television network except for one show from HBO). So, thanks! And for those of you new to the site - welcome! Please look around and explore the many books, training titles, podcasts and resources we have here.
I often find myself working around my kids... which means we share things like music and television. Every once in a while you find something you don’t mind sharing with them, such as Jack’s Big Music Show or Chuck E. Cheese. Today, we saw a great concert for kids... by a rapper called Secret Agent 23 Skidoo. The show was great (the rapper has a long career of doing alternative rap with Granola Funk Express).
We bought the CD, checked out his MySpace page. Its nice to find music you can blast without teaching your kids words you’d rather not like. Perfect music for working on deadline or just a long car ride with the kids.
To make things easier, we’ve put together a new website for RHED Pixel Productions. Here you can find out information about all our podcasts, books, DVDs, and websites. Feel free to take a quick browse and try out some of our new resources. I hope you enjoy!
I just got back from Vegas... tucked the kids in... and sat down for a quick blog post. What a great event... this year’s Photoshop World was a blast. I taught several new classes that I really enjoyed (the resources are going up in a few days). The show was a great chance to catch up with industry pros as well as friends. I managed to bump into two former students and several viewers of our podcasts.
Some of the highlights of the show:
Adobe announced that they will announce CS4 on September 23 (weird... I know)
I caught a few great classes from some top instructors
I saw some great new technology, blog posts forthcoming
To use this template, first open and crop your desired image to 540 x 366 pixels at 72 ppi. Note: you can crop the entire image, or focus in on a smaller, more important part of it.
Flatten your cropped file and select "Save As" to save the cropped file as "FileNameFlatLowRes.psd"
Then open the template, click on any one of the smart object layers in the layers palette. Select Layer > Smart Object > Replace Contents, and navigate to select your cropped, low resolution, flattened file.
After the images are replaced, choose the best looking conversion, open your original high resolution file, and drag and drop the adjustment layer from the template to the high res file. Voila!
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