OUGD405 - Photoshop Induction

Today we had our photoshop workshop where we were taught some basic uses of photoshop.

This is probably the software I have the most experience in because of the years I have used it, but even so I was looking forward to getting some more out of it in these two sessions because we were going to be learning how to use it in a professional way.

The first week we will be using images given to us and next week we will be using our own imagery.

To start off we were asked to open up an image and were asked some questions to test our knowledge on photoshop already. The first was how to adjust the levels of the image.

We started off with this standard image and used 'cmd + L' to bring up the levels function.

We wanted to change the levels to brighten up the bottom of the image to make it more visible, to do this we adjusted the histogram in the appropriate directions using shadows, and mid-tones, highlights were fine how they were.

Adjusting it how I did, brightened up the bottom of the image in the way I was wanting to.

After that, we were run through how to open a document on photoshop. We were told the imperative necessities to know the output of our work before we begin work with anything, as this has the potential to ruin all the work we did.

So when opening a new document on photoshop, we were showed to change the image size to what we needed using presets or exact dimensions like for web. We were also showed how to change the resolution and were recommended to use 300dpi as that is the standard amount of pixels a human eye can register

We were also told about the colour modes, RGB and CMYK.

RGB is colour produced from light, red, green and black, from a computer screen or monitor. And CMYK is produced from inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Next we are going to be shown how to create an image in a non destructive way.

We opened up this photo and were told we could change the format from RGB to CMYK just from a menu selection.

We were told this is a destructive way of working because it ruins the colour of the original image and you can not get it back.

We were then showed how to 'proof image' so we see how it looks when it is printed in CMYK without destroying the image colours.

This is just a mock up/filter which shows us how it will look printed without changing the colours of the image itself.

We were also shown the Gamut warning, this highlights areas of the image in grey which is not in the colour range available to print in CMYK. We were told that a lot of blues are very difficult to get right for both RGB and CMYK as they are not possible. However reds are a lot easier so we were shown how to open an adjustment layer so we dont destroy the original image and just duplicate the layer without making the file size massive.

As you can see, the grey areas on the image have disappeared after changing the hues into the red scale.

Our next excercise was to open up the previous image we were editing and make an adjustment layer on there to change the levels and see all the detail at the bottom of the image.

After that, the ceiling/stained glass windows of the image have also been brightened and look too light. Simon then showed us how to layer the mask on it so that the top of the image was blended back into the older image.

To do that, we needed to click the mask panel on the adjustment layer after changing the layers, make sure the foreground colour on the toolbar was black and then use a soft brush tool on the areas I wanted back like the old image.

It worked really well and i will definitely be doing this a lot more in my future work as it is a quicker and more efficient way of doing it to how i used to just by layering the same image in different brightness settings.

We were then told to practice for a few minutes to get the hang of it all and let it sink in so I changed this image.

Next we were told to open up a new photo which will be harder to change, the reason for that was the definite edges of the piece. Here we have a photograph of a statue but the focus has been made on the sky itself, the reason for that is because if it was focuses on the statue, the sky would be whited out and there'd be no way of bringing it back.

First we used the quick selection tool to select the shape of the statue, i used different size brushes and the positive and negative for the gaps between the shapes.

After selecting it all, i made an adjustment layer and used levels to brighten up the statue but keep the definitions of the sky.

The last thing we are doing for our first session is to make a panorama from a series of photographs. Firstly I had to go into file, then automate and then photo-merge at the bottom.

This menu comes up where you can change the layout and add the appropriate photos you want to into the merging program. For what I wanted to do, all I needed to do was use the default settings.