115designtut's Blog

CS4 U?

115designtutorials — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:27:11 +0000

Allow me to introduce a man who I consider one of the Greatest Of All Time, my sensei,

Don Hardy

www.photoshop.com/user/donhardy

“Hello.. my name is Don Hardy. I started working with Photoshop back in 1990 (version 2.0) before layers! When layers came out in version 3 it changed the way folks work in Photoshop forever! I got my first digital camera in 1994. Photoshop and digital photography go together like cake and icing! If you own a digital camera you definitely should have Photoshop.”

I asked Don to periodically give his two cents on different topics concerning Photoshop. My first question to him was something I’ve seen flood message boards all over the web.

There is a concern with most users who are either just starting to use Photoshop or are poor college kids, as to whether or not the switch from CS3 to CS4 is absolutely necessary. I myself operate under CS3 as noted previously and haven’t found myself “behind the times.” But I must consult Don on this one, so Don, here’s the Million Dollar question, do you think it’s essential to upgrade to CS4, if I’m already operating under CS3? What’s your experience with it?

“Photoshop updates a new version about every 18 months. Lately they have changed from CS3 to CS4. I have both versions and tend to switch from one to the other. CS3 is my favorite but CS4 has some pretty cool features that none of the other versions have, for instance…

• 1 the application bar! This is a quick way to access some of the more frequently used Photoshop features such as: a) the Bridge, b) zoom levels, c) hand tool, d) zoom tool, e) rotate view tool.

• 2 Tabbed windows…mainly for organizational purposes..I usually end up splitting some or all of the open documents anyway.

• 3 Application frame…the entire Photoshop application in it’s own window! I use it off and on

depending on what else in open on my desktop. If I’m only working in Photoshop, I might

skip this feature..active it by going Window>Application Frame

• 4 The Adjustments Panel…now non modal (no more floating boxes!) And a new one has been added…Vibrance (prevents saturation clipping),

• 5 Clone tool preview! Right after you option click your source point a floating piece of the source follows you around until you start to paint, this is great for more accurately reregistering areas in your image!

• 6 Drag-resizing of the brush tools (here you simply hold down the Control and Option keys while dragging your mouse, to change the hardness of the brush simply hold down Control, Option and Command while dragging the mouse!

• 7 Continuous Zooming…press and hold down the mouse button for a more fluid zooming experience, add the option key for the reverse effect!

• 8 Content Aware Scaling (you can select an area of an image to protect it as you scale the rest of the image, the selected/protected area stays virtually undistorted !

• 9 The new Mask panel give you control over your mask all in one box!

• 10 Color Range has been reprogrammed for more accuracy with the addition of the “Localized Color Clusters” option.

Again let me say huge thanks to Don Hardy for taking time out to contribute and if you want to check out some of his work, it’s available here.

For Future Reference

115designtutorials — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:03:53 +0000

Overview of Web Graphic Formats

Here’s a quick overview of the three main web graphic formats (we’re excluding Flash here, since it requires a plug-in, though we agree it is becoming a fourth major format): GIF, JPEG, and PNG. We’ll compare the three formats, then use and display actual images saved in those formats.

Let’s begin with a quick comparison table:

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format)	JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)	PNG – 8 & 24 (Portable Network Graphic)
Originally developed by CompuServe in the ’80′s, this format offers a maximum of 256 colors, is still used for simple animations, and is “lossless” — does not introduce pixel noise into images. Web art books recommend this format to keep clean edges around illustrations & text — though PNG offers the same advantage.	Professional photographers and programmers worked out this solution (early ’90′s) to incorporate millions of colors in an image with a range of compressed file sizes depending on how much quality you wish to retain – the smaller the file, the lower the quality.	Developed in the late ’90′s to offer improvements on both GIF and JPEG formats, the 8 bit PNG offers a maximum of 256 colors, but with a wider range of transparency options. 24 bit PNG, offers millions of colors, like JPEG, but cannot reduce file size as much as JPEG because this format uses “lossless” compression methods.*

From the comparison table and notes, we can develop some web graphic format usage guidelines:

GIF, or PNG-8 work best to retain crisp detail in simple illustrations (less than 256 colors), and for web graphics containing text (so the text edges remain sharp)
JPEG (also abbreviated as “jpg”) is still great for photographs displaying millions of colors at a very small file size
GIF is still the format of choice for simple animations (PNGs are not yet compatible for animations), though JPEGS are used in some FLASH animation work.
PNG-24, though larger in file size, is a good choice if you don’t wish to lose any quality (reduce details, and introduce pixels and noise not in the original photo — see examples below) in photographs
Use higher quality JPEGS as more web surfers use high-speed broadband — remember… at the highest quality setting, JPEG is also lossless!

For the Freshmeat

115designtutorials — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:18:42 +0000

First and foremost let’s go over the bare necessities before we get carried away.

Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation software, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. It has been described as “an industry standard for graphics professionals”and was one of the early “killer applications” on the Macintosh, later also for the PC.

Big difference between CS3 and CS4: SPEED

Personally I run CS3 and although it’s rather sluggish it gets the job done.

Now…

Lets look at our startup screen.

This is a brand new blank document.

To the right we have our Layers and the rest of our windows which can come and go depending on your preferences.

To the left of the screen rests your “tools”

So that’s the basics really. The rest of the options and tools in Photoshop will be accessed and utilized in other tutorials. I know it’s quick, but at any time in any of the tutorials, you can access me via email to answer any questions. Also I will supply psd files to go along with the some of the tutorials, for those who like to work backwards.