Vee's Photoshop Tips and Tricks and Tutorials (for Gimp Users Too)

[Vanessa28]

So, I work with photoshop for 5 years now and the program never fails to amaze me. But after so many years of working I finally decided to make a special thread on here to share with you my tips and tricks.
Because it is late right now and I don't want to make things complicated I start with something simple.

TIP 1

I noticed many people here work with graphics programs. One of the main things I notice is the cut out. Everybody knows how to cut out a pic but what to do with the edges of your object? Hown often does an object look ugly after you cut it out? Yes of course, you can soften the edges with the blur tool or you can make it look softer by erasing it a bit or what about using the Refine edge tool?
These are all great solutions but it leaves behind this white ghostly edge! Itb depends on your own taste of course but not always does this glowing line make your work look better so how do we get rid off it? Very simple...

1. Open Photoshop
2. Open the file you want to use
3. Select the Pen or Lasso tool and smoothly draw a line around your object.
4. When your done go to Select > Refine Edges. For smooth we choose 1 px and for feather we choose 2. Click OK
5. Now select the move tool (simply press V on your keyboard) and move your object to the file you want it to add to.
6. You see the white smooth edge? We are going to erase it now! Hold CTRL on your keyboard and click on the thumbnail of your object in your layer palet. This makes a selection of your object.
7. Now add a layermask by simply clicking on the Layer mask icon below your layer palet. or choose Layer > Layermask
8. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of 1 px.
9. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and move the left radius (dark square) to the right. Watch your pic and see how the white edge is going to vanish. Move it completely right until it is gone. Click ok
10. Right click on the layermask and choose: Apply Layermask.

You're done! This was tip one for today. I'm going to add more tips and tutorials here so you learn how Photoshop works.

[Kybyrian]

Excellent tip! I never knew about this myself, but it works very well. Some of the things you mention could be slightly clearer, though, such as the part where you talk about moving your object to the file you want to add it to. I wasn't so sure what you meant there, but I assume you meant move it to a new file or something, wherever you wanted to place it. I did that and got the results I was looking for, so I'm going to assume I was right. You also mentioned to set the "Refine Edge" to 1 or 2px, but weren't clear on exactly what you were setting. I assumed it was the radius and I was right, but some people may not figure that out and might go to set something else, like the feather of the refine edge. I'm also not sure of what version of Photoshop you are using, so this may because of some extra features mine has compared to yours, but I thought I'd point that out.
Not important, but the squares you talked about in adjusting the levels are triangles in CS5.

Anyway, this is indeed very good and I got a very good result. Keep it up!

[Ghosi]

That's a good tip! I will definitely try it! Thanks V!

[Vanessa28]

When I wrote this yesterday I didn't open photoshop so I wrote it out of my head. Yes move should be moving one file onto a new file. And the radius should be at 2 px and smooth should be at 1 px. And you are right. I use CS5 as well but not only CS5 but all the former versions of Levels have triangles. But I mixed the Layer mask icon which is a square with the level gliders which are indeed triangles.
I'm glad you like it Most people don't know this trick. But it really comes in very handy to get rid off rough edges and this awful glow. There are more tricks I'm going to add which are very useful.

When I wrote this yesterday I didn't open photoshop so I wrote it out of my head. Yes move should be moving one file onto a new file. And the radius should be at 2 px and smooth should be at 1 px. And you are right. I use CS5 as well but not only CS5 but all the former versions of Levels have triangles. But I mixed the Layer mask icon which is a square with the level gliders which are indeed triangles.
I'm glad you like it Most people don't know this trick. But it really comes in very handy to get rid off rough edges and this awful glow. There are more tricks I'm going to add which are very useful.

Tip 2: Shortcuts

When you work with photoshop you'll notice you have to go to the tool box for every change you make. When you need to cut a pic you have to select the cut tool. When you make a new layer you have to click the new layer icon etc. This can be very annoying when you are busy with something and rather don't want to search for the right tool in the tool bar or even in the menues. There is a solution and the solution is called SHORT CUTS! Surprise, surprise!
I will name the most common and useful shortcuts here, There are plenty more but these will help you to quickly get access to a tool.

1. To set your back and foreground colors at the standard size press D. Anf to switch the boxes of the colors press X.
2. To add a new layer press CTRL + N
3. To duplicate a layer press CTRL +J
4. To select the Erase tool simply press E. But as we know we have more Erase tools. The normal Eraser, Background Eraser and Magic Eraser. To go through these options quickly hold down Shift + E and keep on doing this till you reach the right tool.
5. To select a brush, simply click B and here the same. Hold down Shift while pressing B if you want to go through the Sub menue.
6. Press G for the Gradient tool and hold down shift + G to switch between Gradient and Bucket.
7. When you select something and you want to deselect hold down CTRL +D.
8. To select the Move tool press V.
9. Press L for the Lasso tool and hold down shift while pressing L to switch between the three options Lasso, Polygon Lasso and Magnetic Lasso
10. Press M for the Marque tool and hold down shift while pressing M to go through the different options.

So far 10 short cuts. I have tons more so don't worry because I haven't forgotten anything. But I want to close this post with a short tutorial.


Tutorial:

Suppose you have blue eyes but want to know what you would have looked like with another eye color. In this tutorial you learn how to change eye colors withoutn it even looking unnatural.
I'm going to use two examples. First one is Link. I used this pic so you can use it if you like.

1. Open Photoshop and open the Link file.
2. Duplicate the file by either pressing CTRL + J or simply go to your layerpalet and grab the file and drag it down to the new layer icon at the bottom of your layerpalet (hoover your mouse over it and the text will show up) and for those who still don't know simply go to Layer > Duplicate Layer and in the next window click OK.
3. Select your Polygone Lasso tool make sure you select add to selection on top of your screen (look at the screenshot I made) and when necessary zoom in to your file and draw a selection around the eye.
Screenshot on step nr 5
4. Now press CTRL + J to add the selection into a new layer. Select this layer simply by going to your layerpalet and select the top layer which is the newly added layer.
5. Hold CTRL while clicking on the layer thumbnail. This will activate the selection around the eyes you created before.
6. Now go to Image> Adjustments > Hue Saturation
7. Check the Colorize box (optional and not a must) and play with the gliders. I used a creepy red color. Hue 351 radius, saturation 100 Radius and lightness -25 radius. But it is all optional what you like. Just play with it till you find the perfect color for you. Click OK.
8. Press CTRL + D to deselect and change the blending mode. For a "natural look set the blending mode on either ColororHue. And for the more "Alien" look set the blending mode on either Multiply, Color Burn or Overlay. You can also leave the blending mode as it is and erase the edges of the eye with a very small and soft brush.

When you're satisfied you can save your file. Here is my result

I will also show you what effect it will have on humans. I used a pic of Eric Lindros , a retired Hockey player (and nickname was Bige ) to show you the effect on humans.
After making the selection I filled it with a rainbow color. And I set the Blending mode on soft light and lowered the opactity till 49%. I erased the selection around the eye to make the dark line of the original file come through. I did the same with the pupil.
This is how it looks and as you can see it is very weird but it looks natural. Simply because I didn't use too much. When you want to keep things natural you must never add too much.

Show me your results!

[Vanessa28]

TIP 3 :How to blend a pic in a background without cutting any layer

This trick also works for Gimp. So Gimp users can follow this as well

Many of you know this trick already but some might not. This is very simple. You have a cool pic and you want to blend it into another layer. I assume you know how to add one layer onto another layer. If you don't know simply open two pics (File > Open) and select V on your keyboard and then drag one pic onto the other. Now go to your layer palet and select the upper layer. Now look down at your layerpalet and click the Layermask icon. Hoover your mouse over all the icons below and the name will show up so you can't miss it Or go to Layer > Layermask > Reveal all.

Now the next step you must do is press B on your keyboard. This will select the brush tool. Right click on your brush and make the size larger or smaller. And I suggest you set the hardness opacity at 0% because this will soften you brush. Hardness 100% will make it hard. This will make the edges very hard and not smoothly and natural.
Now press D on your keyboard to reset the fore/background colors.

Make sure you select the mask in your layer palet. What you are going to do now is paint in your file (the one in the middle and not the thumbnail in your layer palet) over the parts you want to remove. The black color will remove the parts from the layer and if you made a mistake simply click X on your keyboard. This will change the for/background colors and you will see the foreground color is white. Now paint over the error you made and you see the parts you just removed are coming back! And press the X again to make the foreground color Black and you can start again.

That's all! Very easy trick but very handy when you don't want to cut the layers or erase them.


TIP 4: Remove Brushes from the Brush tool

This one is very cool!
So you have downloaded a very cool set of brushes but when you tried them out you discover there are actually a few you like. You don't like most of the brushes. Now what to do? Simple!! Go to your brush tool and click on the tool on top of your screen (where you normally pick a brush) and hold down ALT and you will see a scissor icon. Now simply while holding down ALT you click on every brush you want to remove! This is fast and easy. Otherwise you must rightclick on every brush and select remove. And of course photoshop will then ask you if you really want to delete it. So using ALT is much faster and no questions asked if you want to do this

You accidentally deleted a brush you liked? Simply click on the arrow and reset your brushes. When Photoshop ask you to save the changes you made to your brushes say No. Now you can load the brushes again and try it again When you're done simply choose Reset brushes to default. Photoshop will ask you once again if you want to save your current brushes. Just click Okay. Now you can save them somewhere and give it a name and you can delete the original set because you don't need the whole set anymore.