With Photoshop, Nothing Is As It Seems

Today's image isn't what it seems.  The "path" is actually a paved road in the town where I live in Connecticut.  The guy walking down the "path" is really in Vermont.  It's not really raining.  I called it "Summer Rain" because you can see the sun shining on the barn in the background.  So, we have the base image of the road, the image of the path laid over the road, the image of the guy walking and the non-image of the rain.  Why?  Just to play.  It's a Monday.  There's nothing on the schedule.  Might as well practice (play) with Adobe Photoshop CS6.  As usual, I found the components for the image using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.  As far as I'm concerned, the only DAM (Digital Asset Management) application I need.  I do admit, I stumbled upon the shot of the fellow walking.  I was looking through some shots of our Granddaughter and in the same folder were shots from a weekend in Vermont.  I checked, they are keyworded, so if I ever wanted to find those specific images I wouldn't have to rummage around blindly.  Just go to the Keyword List in LR4 and they'll pop up very quickly.  As you might suspect, there is a lot of choreography involved in the making of today's image, so let's get going.  Just hit the "Read More" to continue.
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Wednesday Q&A: Nesting Photoshop Smart Objects

I know, it's a little weird to do a Wednesday Q&A on a Friday, but that's the type of week it's been.  The diagram that makes up today's image shows in very little detail how I work with Smart Object on a very simple image.  It goes from bringing in the original RAW file from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (LR4) to Adobe Photoshop CS6 (CS6) and the way I use Smart Objects to get to the Ready For Print version in CS6.  Using this diagram I can go all the way back to the image in LR4, make any LR4 adjustments I'd like and have them reflected all the way back up to the Ready For Print image.  I can make any changes in any step.  The work flow becomes completely non-destructive.  With this method you do not have any dead ends that would force you to start over at any point.  To see the list of what goes on in each step, hit the "Read More".

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Using Photoshop Brushes To Create A "Painting"

A couple weeks ago I did a post about making a few bucks by targeting a specific sport and offering the athletes a one of a kind Digital,photographic painting.  Something with an ultra crisp image of the sportsperson doing their thing combined with a "painted" background.  The last one was an OOB (Out of Bounds) interpretation with the rider breaking out of the "frame" of the painted area into the white of the canvas.  It's one way to go.  Today's image is another way to "see" a similar (it is a different rider) image.  Rather than the OOB breakout it gives the rider a more open idea of what's going on.  There are several considerations when "designing" (yes, you are altering a few conditions from the original image) a digital "painting".  To find out what decisions were made to today's image, hit the "Read More".

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Wednesday Q&A: Photoshop Smart Objects - Getting Rid Of Them

Any body wanna buy a house?

As promised last week, the next couple Wednesday Q&As are going to be about Adobe Photoshop Smart Objects.  Smart Objects (SOs) were sort of a hidden feature introduced in Photoshop CS4.  Adobe didn't make a big deal about SOs and you'd have to right click on the Layer's panel bar and drop down to Convert for Smart Filters (I believe) to use them.  The growth in the use of SOs has been slower than frequent SO users might think.  We're at CS6 and many people either still don't know what they are or how to use them.  Newbies to SOs convert a Layer to a Smart Object, try to do something on the Layer, get frustrated and want to dump the SO and go in another direction.  The biggest thing I see is that people want to do something directly to the Smart Object.  Basically, you can't.  If you were to try to use the Healing Brush (J) on a SO you'd see that you'd get the good old Ghost Busters icon and you wouldn't be able to "heal" the SO Layer.  You would be able to put a new Layer over the SO Layer, make sure Sample All Layers is checked and heal whatever needs healing that way, but not directly on the SO Layer.  If you're absolutely frustrated by a Smart Object Layer and want to just get rid of it, hit the "Read More".

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Wednesday Q & A: Smart Objects. Using, Getting Rid Of and Why They Are the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

Just that we'll be going in "baby steps".

The number one query that brings people to The Kayview Gallery is about Smart Objects.  What are they?  How to use them?  How to get rid of them?  How do you prevent images from opening as Smart Objects?  Any way you can twist it, people are either interested in Smart Objects or vexed by them.  Hit the "Read More" and we'll go through the questions one by one.

Let's start out with "what are they?".  They're containers.  If you are familiar with Russian nesting dolls, they make a reasonable analogy.  You can put one Smart Object inside another Smart Object.

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Using Photoshop Calculations To Make Selections and Hello Bozeman

Real quick, just to start the post I'd like to say hello to a reader in Bozeman Montana, USA.  I don't get a lot of readers from Montana in general, but for the past couple of months I've seen someone from Bozeman peeking in almost every day.  That kind of interest deserves some sort of recognition.  I do get consistent visitors from several cities from around the world, but usually they're larger cities.  There's Athens, Greece.  Athens is large enough that it could be a circle of visitors, each checking in once a week or once a month.  There probably isn't a day that goes by without someone from New York popping in, but that's just the fact that there's eight million people in NYC.  It could be 365 people stopping by once a year.  Bozeman has less than 40k people.  I'm guessing I don't have a real large following in Bozeman, so welcome (in the words of Sheldon Cooper) Bozite.  From the image on Wikipedia I'm guessing your city council thinks traffic signals are a status symbol.  You appear to have one signal every half block.  Enough about that.  Today's image comes from separating out the stalk of some sort weed by using Adobe Photoshop CS6 (and before for several versions) Calculations dialog box.  If you've clicked on Calculations (Image/Calculations), your next click was probably to hit the Cancel Button.  To find out why I use this monster dialog box and where to use it, hit the "Read More".

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If You Can't Lower The Tripod, Use Photoshop To Raise The Water

Today's image was shot while sitting on a rock in the stream with the tripod legs precariously placed on three smaller rocks.  If nothing else, the skew of each leg was, hmmm, let's say "interesting".  One as short as it would go.  The second just a tad longer and the third extended out to almost full extension.  The angle on that one was way out there.  So, I'm sitting on a rock in the stream.  (I just couldn't bring myself to say "in the middle of the stream".  It's pretty obvious that I'm over to the edge.  Maybe two feet in.)  The tripod is as low as it can go.  I'm folded about in half trying to see through the viewfinder (Live View was about useless in the sunlight).  But I got the shot.  Well, I got a shot.  It was reasonably easy to tell the camera was too high above the water.  I knew I had to do something.  Luckily Adobe Photoshop CS6 has an easy way to raise the water level.  To find out what I did, hit the "Read More".

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