Category: Photoshop

Create photo-illustration effects with Photoshop

I’ve been experimenting with enhancing some of my photos in Photoshop to create more interesting images. I use a Canon PowerShot SD 990IS point-and-shoot camera that does a good job on the whole, but because the lens isn’t very high quality, images sometimes come out somewhat hazy. The camera actually captures a lot of detail but it takes some processing to bring it out. I’m not against using some tricks to emphasize what’s good about the picture, even to the point where it crosses the line into illustration.

[DOWNLOAD DEMO FILE]

For this project, I started with a fairly unexciting picture of my dining room. Its one strong point was the sunlight streaming in the windows which brought out the colors in the wood chair and tablecloth. This picture was one of several shots of the same scene with different exposure settings.

This was the lightest one, chosen for the detail visible through the windows. However in choosing the lightest exposure, the tablecloth lost a lot of its color. However I thought it had potential.

Original image

Original

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Problems with Photoshop filters

Recently I’ve been using the Photoshop Filter Gallery filters more than usual, and experienced a few apparent problems, particularly with the grayscale filters. First all the grayscale filters suddenly seemed to stop working. All of them showed nothing but a completely blank screen, no matter what settings were tried.

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I really thought this was some sort of bug with CS4. But a search of the Adobe forums turned up nothing. Clearing the plugin cache and Filter Gallery preferences reverted the filters to their defaults, and fixed the problem.

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Batch resizing in Photoshop, step by step

One important element that is often left out of beginner Dreamweaver courses is how to make your photos web-ready. Today’s cameras turn out multi-megapixel images that are several feet wide when dropped into a web page at web resolution. Here’s how to take a folder of high-resolution images and turn them into smaller files that will display at about 5-6″ wide at 72dpi using Photoshop.

  1. Select Scripts > Image Processor from the File menu
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Photoshop Brush Fever!

Photoshop brushes are incredible! I just discovered them and have been playing with them for two days straight.

They’re like rubber stamps on steroids. You can control the brush dynamics – the separation of each individual “stamp”, the color and brightness “jitter”, randomness, edges, etc.

I’ve found many sites that offer free brush sets, but
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Truly-Sarah.com

and

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AnnikaVonHoldt.com

are my current favorites. AnnikaVonHoldt’s brushes are like instant creativity! You will be creating beautiful and mysterious fantasy images almost automatically.

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