The Fun Photoshop Thread

[joeblast]

Good idea I've been using this since about 1998 with the second version of photoshop...

 

Thanks! It takes me forever to cut out images all perfect like that . Well unless the background is extremely contrasted from the main image... and feel free to keep sharing your photoshop wisdom as well oh great other master!

One of the best photoshop books I have is called "natural selection" - it is mainly about making good, accurate, quick selections and also adding other transformative things in there to well blend two or more relatively dissimilar images, be it hue or lighting (or even pattern...)

 

To begin on those selections, try the magic wand tool. Shift, Alt, make it do different things. Shift adds, Alt subtracts - so beginning with the shift, magic wand and and click, click, will expand the selection. So to refine what's selected by the magic wand - remember that's just for quick general selections - use the lasso tool with ctrl or alt appropriately to trim up the selection - that's how you clean up those areas where the magic wand tool goes too far.

 

 

Once you have a selection in place it is there for all layers to utilize.

 

To have a look to see if your selection works well, especially in a file that has many layers - sometimes it is a good idea to create background layers and give them a solid color e.g. yellow or red, also sometimes its useful to use the opacity of the layer in question to compare vs the other layers.

 

Just a bit off the top of my head, I'm sure we have some other good photoshop talent on the board here

[BaguaKicksAss]

Thank you! That magic wand tool has saved me months on a project. I had to remove the background solid colour from a few hundred different circle designs. I couldn't find out how anywhere... then finally... After I had already done 30 of them by hand pixel by pixel *sigh* lol.

 

Now that lassoo tool, so confusing, it doesn't follow any shape at all for me <pout>.

[BaguaKicksAss]

While we are here, and since I love to derail threads... anyone know of any 3D software which has ring templates built in? Paid or free, either is good.. I haven't found any yet. But one that I can easily figure out would be cool, this being the case, Rhino didn't work out so well .

[joeblast]

No, the lasso tool is a freeform selector tool. I wouldnt recommend starting with it, it is really only useful for correcting existing selections.

[soaring crane]

The magnetic lasso is good, and you can fine tune the sensitivity, and change a few other things. You use the backspace key to erase points.

 

The most versatile selection tool in Photoshop is the layer mask. It pays off spending a few hours getting the hang of them.

 

I'm a "professional", technically speaking. I worked in prepress for a few years, but my ps knowledge stops at version 7

[soaring crane]

And the King of the selection tools is the pen of course :-)

[Marblehead]

My main graphics program is still PhotoStyler. It is the program that Adobe bought to create it first version of Photoshop. Still does almost anything I want to do with bitmap graphics.

[soaring crane]

My main graphics program is still PhotoStyler. It is the program that Adobe bought to create it first version of Photoshop. Still does almost anything I want to do with bitmap graphics.

 

haha, you mean from like 1990 or thereabouts? What kind of Mac do you run?

 

PS - I don't believe that's the way it went down. I think PhotoStyler was competetion for Photoshop. Adobe has bought up plenty of their competitors, of course, MacroMedia being the biggest victim. Goodbye my lovely Freehand!

Edited July 22, 2014 by soaring crane

[Marblehead]

haha, you mean from like 1990 or thereabouts? What kind of Mac do you run?

 

PS - I don't believe that's the way it went down. I think PhotoStyler was competetion for Photoshop. Adobe has bought up plenty of their competitors, of course, MacroMedia being the biggest victim. Goodbye my lovely Freehand!

Hehehe. No, PhotoStyler was the first full graphics creation program for the PC, yes, way back when. It was even out before Corel had a good program to offer. Yes, one can still get PhotoStyler for the Mac.

 

I have the Aldus PhotoStyler 2.0. (It is a "backup" copy that I bought for the company I was working with at the time.) But it was bought from a Taiwan company called Ulead.

 

But I do have Photoshop V. 4.0. (See how up to date I am?)

[soaring crane]

Hehehe. No, PhotoStyler was the first full graphics creation program for the PC, yes, way back when.

 

It's not quite that clear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoStyler. I guess it's possible that the PhotoStyler people had a graphics program ready before Thomas Knoll did (but I doubt it). Maybe the keyword in your statement is 'PC' i.e. Microsoft.

 

You might be thinking of Aldus PageMaker (PageFaker) that Adobe really did buy outright, to compete with Quark (it was no competition, lol). They also developed Freehand, which was a LOT better than Adobe's Illustrator. Adobe was not a well-loed company among the rank-and-file of the DTP set.

 

Now I'm trying to remember which program Adobe bought the filters from. Maybe that was PhotoStyler?

 

Regardless -- PS 4.0, wow! That's, like, not easy to work with.

 

Discovered something interesting. The German wikipedia entry on Photoshop mentions PhotoStyler, as a program that was being developed concurrently: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop

 

The Enlgish wiki page doesn't mention it at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_photoshop

 

Corporate meddling?

Edited July 22, 2014 by soaring crane

[Silent Answers]

I'm pretty handy on Photoshop if I can help the community in anyway I've done some graphic design work before.

[BaguaKicksAss]

Since the thread is called the fun photoshop thread... just something I found around the net

 

[soaring crane]

Since the thread is called the fun photoshop thread... just something I found around the net

 

Looks like it was posted by 'God' at Facebook, haha. "Behold! What shall I name it?"

[soaring crane]

I'm pretty handy on Photoshop if I can help the community in anyway I've done some graphic design work before.

 

uh oh ... BKA liked your post. You're in for it now.

[Marblehead]

It's not quite that clear:

Neither is my mind but that's okay.

 

I am going pretty much based on my memory and that falters at times.

 

To my recall, PageMaker came out after Photostyler.

 

There was another Desktop Publishing program for the PC that I used to use but I just can't remember its name. This was back before Windows.

 

I agree, PS 4.0 is hard to work with and that is why I mostly use PhotoStyler. Of course, I learned PC graphics desigh with PhotoStyler so I have long term usage knowledge of its functions and capabilities.

 

Hehehe. My primary music editing program is Cool Edit '96. It does everything I need to do with music editing.

[Marblehead]

Since the thread is called the fun photoshop thread... just something I found around the net

 

Oh! That's a real animal. You've never seen one?

[soaring crane]

Hehehe. My primary music editing program is Cool Edit '96. It does everything I need to do with music editing.

 

haha I bought a $3 shareware cd out of the bargain bin at a big box electronics store, because it had CoolEdit Pro on it. When I installed it, a Warez splash screen popped up saying, "hacked for your enjoyment", or something like that. I figured I'd bought it fair and square and have used it ever since. It's a great program (and yet another example of the Adobe-Kraken-Borg absorbing and assimilating and sucking the life out of and pushing the price up on popular, less expensive software).

 

PageMaker is a dtp/layout program, not related to Photoshop/PhotoStyler. But it was also assimilated.

[bluefire]

 

 

Since the thread is called the fun photoshop thread... just something I found around the net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2014 by bluefire

[soaring crane]

ok, this is getting fun now

[Marblehead]

haha I bought a $3 shareware cd out of the bargain bin at a big box electronics store, because it had CoolEdit Pro on it. When I installed it, a Warez splash screen popped up saying, "hacked for your enjoyment", or something like that. I figured I'd bought it fair and square and have used it ever since. It's a great program (and yet another example of the Adobe-Kraken-Borg absorbing and assimilating and sucking the life out of and pushing the price up on popular, less expensive software).

 

PageMaker is a dtp/layout program, not related to Photoshop/PhotoStyler. But it was also assimilated.

I actually consciously resisted saying anything negative about Adobe so I will thank you for your assessment, which I agree with, of course.

 

Back in the Apple II days the hackers did that all the time. They would break the copy protection and then share the program with their friends.

 

Your copy of Cool Edit is likely legal as the copyright had probably expired when you bought it. Adobe never supported Cool Edit after they bought it.

[Marblehead]

ok, this is getting fun now

Yeah. Those are actually pretty well done.