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How to install a printer profile
Healing Brush
Extract Tip
Chromatic Noise Reduction
Bend a Straight Line Subject to a Curved Arc
Digital Gradient Filter
A technique for defining depth to your artwork
Layers and Adjustment layers
To fit photos when printing
Put several images on a single sheet
Repositioning Marquees
Increase the local contrast in an image
Reducing Grain due to Grain-Aliasing

How to install a printer profile

On a Windows machine, do a right click and click Install. The profile then appears in Photoshop drop-downs. In Mac OS-X drop the file in the Profiles folder. Open a window, click the home button. Navigate to Library->ColorSync->Profiles. Drop the profile into Profiles and it is available to all applications, not just Photoshop.


Healing Brush

Take advantage of the ability of the Healing Brush to "use all layers." Add a blank layer above your image and in the Options Bar, check the Use All Layers box. Then use the Healing Brush as usual, but now the pixels appear on the new layer. Then you can use the layer's opacity and/or blending modes to alter the effects of the Healing Brush.



Extract Tip

When you use the Extract command to separate a person from the background, don't drag the extracted person onto a different document. Instead, drag the "new" background into the document with the person. That way, you can still use the History Brush to fix any minor problems with the edges of the extracted person. (Think about it-if you drag the person over to a new document, the person isn't in the History palette and can't be adjusted.)


Chromatic Noise Reduction

  1. Open the file in Photoshop and select a dark ne
    utral area with chromatic noise and view it at 100%, then:
  2. Convert RGB to LAB Color: Image > Mode > Lab Color.
  3. Select channel “a”.
  4. Apply Smart Blur: Filter > Blur > Smart Blur > radius 7.9 > Threshold 6.3 > quality High > OK.
  5. Sharpen Edges: Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen Edges.
  6. Select channel “b” and repeat the Smart Blurand Sharpen Edges settings.
  7. Convert LAB back to RGB color.
  8. Adjust Contrast: Image > Adjustments > Levels or Auto Levels


Bend a Straight Line Subject to a Curved Arc

  1. Open image, make a Background Copy Layer(drag to icon)
  2. Edit > Transform > Rotate 90 CCW
  3. Filter > Distort > Shear
  4. Click once in middle of line and drag line to left as needed > OK (Shear only works on a vertical line)
  5. Rotate back (Edit>Transform>Rotate 90 CW)


Digital Gradient Filter

  1. Take two photographs of exactly the same subject. One image should be well exposed for the dark areas and the bright areas will be overexposed. The second photo should be correctly exposed for the bright areas and the dark areas will be underexposed.
  2. Import both images into Photoshop.
  3. Drag the overexposed image on top of the underexposed one, do this while holding the SHIFT key down. This will place them as aligned layers.
  4. Make a layer mask for the overexposed image by clicking on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
  5. Click on the layer mask to make it active, and then select the linear gradient tool.
  6. Drag a line from the top of the image toward the bottom until you reach the part of the image that it's not overexposed. Examine the image and repeat this step if necessary.


A technique for defining depth to your artwork:

Make the objects that are farther away appear out of focus, and the objects that are near sharp and crisp. This technique is for drawing attention to objects in the foreground of your image by slightly blurring the background. This adds depth and dimension to your artwork, as well as focusing attention.

To do this, put a selection around the area you want the focus, add a 10-pixel Feather (Option- Command-D/Alt-Control-D), Inverse the Selection (from the select menu or Shift-Command-I/ Shift- Control-I), then apply your blur (Filter-Blur-Gaussian).


Layers and Adjustment layers

Layers are like transparent sheets that contain image elements that you can stack above the background image you are viewing. The images on the layers can vary in density.

That way, you can add a picture of, say, a bird to a landscape picture. The bird is on a separate layer, so you can still move it around and work on it without touching the background picture of the landscape.

When you finally flatten the layers, the upper layers are dropped on the bottom background layer and are merged into and become part of the bottom image.

Adjustment layers are layers that do not contain image elements, but adjustment commands like 'Levels'. An Adjustment layer acts just like putting a filter in front of your camera lens. You have color filters, contrast filters, neutral density filters, graduated filters, etc. They generally have an overall effect on the entire film frame.


To fit photos when printing:

Some new digital camera owners run into trouble when they try to print their photos and discover that the photos are too big to fit on the paper, even 8.5x11" paper. To make the images print the correct size Choose Image>Image Size, uncheck the Resample Image checkbox, and then change the Resolution to 300 ppi. By unchecking Resample Image, you tell Photoshop to make the pixels smaller but to use all of them. You can now print a high-quality image that preserves all of the original data.


Put several images on a single sheet

Photoshop 7 and CS Picture Package can put a number of different images on a single sheet. (The earlier versions could only replicate a single image.)

The technique:

  1. Open the dialog box with File > Automate > Picture Package.
  2. From the pop-up menu, select the page layout you need.
  3. In the Layout area, click on a preview image box.
  4. Select the file to put in that spot.
  5. Click on another preview and select a file.
  6. Repeat until you have selected a file for each image on the page.

Then print.



Repositioning Marquees

If you start to make a Rectangular Marquee tool (M) selection and discover that you don’t have the selection positioned where you want it, don’t start over.

Before you finish creating the Marquee, press and hold the Spacebar, reposition the selection, and then finish making the selection. This trick also works with the Crop tool and the Shape tools.


Increase the local contrast in an image

  1. Open your image in Photoshop.
  2. Make a duplicate layer of your image. It will appear on top of the original.
  3. Select Hard light as the blending mode for the dupe layer.
  4. Choose from the filter menu "Other" then "High pass". Try 5 pixels first and adjust as needed for your image.
  5. Reduce the opacity of the dupe layer to 75 percent but adjust this as needed.
  6. Desaturate the dupe layer of all color, this will avoid color shift.
  7. Click the dupe layer icon off and on to inspect the image, when you're satisfied with the effect, merge the two layers.

The image will have enhanced local contrast and also appear to be sharper.

Flat colors will also have more tones.


Reducing Grain due to Grain-Aliasing

  1. Copy the image as a new layer and drag the new layer below the Original.
  2. Apply a modest 3 pixel median to the new layer.
  3. Set the mode of the original layer (above the medianed layer) to 'Screen'.

This tip works well for very 'grainy' images that have fairly good detail.

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Other Articles by John:


Getting Old
RGB & Violet
Smaller Camera Bags
Fun with Optics
Canyonlands, Utah
Scanning Old Letters
Bedke's Advice - Photoshop

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