Design & Multimedia

Covers Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and other graphics articles and tutorials.

Fading One Image into Another

2 January 2003 / 2 Comments

Have you ever wanted to create an image that depicts two separate images fading into each other?

This is a nice professional effect that’s easy to create using Photoshop’s Layer Masks. This tutorial shows you how it’s done.

Things You Can Do with Photoshop Paths

1 March 2002 / Leave a Comment

After creating and editing your paths in Photoshop, what can you do with them? There are lots of uses for paths. Let’s look at some of the more common uses here.

Now you know how to create paths, we’ll take a look at how you can change your path after you’ve made it. This way you can alter the shape of your path and “fine-tune” those lines and curves until they’re just right!

Drawing with Photoshop’s Pen Tool

18 February 2002 / 3 Comments

Now that you know the theory of Photoshop paths, it’s time to explore Photoshop’s Pen tool and other related tools.

Most of the drawing and editing of paths can be done via the tools under the Pen tool icon in the Tools palette. Click and hold the mouse button on this icon to bring up all the other tools:

Let’s briefly go over these tools now, and what you can use them for.

The Pen tool is probably the tool you’ll use most. With this tool you can create the straight lines and curves that make up your paths.
The Freeform Pen tool is designed to let you create paths quickly by just drawing freehand with the mouse. It’s not very good for creating precise paths though.
The Add Anchor Point tool allows you to insert additional anchor points into your path, effectively splitting a line segment into two. This is useful if, say, you’ve created a curve already but you want to turn the curve into a more complex shape. You can also add anchor points using the Pen Tool, provided you have the Auto Add/Delete option set – just move the mouse over the line segment you’d like to add a point to, and click!
The Delete Anchor Point tool removes anchor points from your path. As it removes a point, it joins up the two line segments either side of the removed point into one long line segment. This is good if you’ve accidentally created too many segments (it’s best to create as few as possible!) or if the Freeform Pen tool has created too many for you! You can also delete anchor points using the Pen tool if Auto Add/Delete is set – move the mouse over the point you’d like to delete, and click.
The Convert Point tool allows you to convert a smooth anchor point to a corner anchor point, and vice-versa. More on this tool later!

Photoshop Paths Explained

11 February 2002 / Leave a Comment

In this introductory tutorial, you’ll learn about Photoshop’s Paths feature. Paths are a powerful tool and a big topic to cover. They’re also quite tricky to get the hang of, but once you do, you’ll never look back!

Enjoy…

Modifying Selections in Photoshop

31 October 2001 / 1 Comment

Once you’ve made your basic selection using one of Photoshop’s numerous selection tools, there are a lot of things you can do to play around with it. In this tutorial we’ll look at:

feathering
anti-aliasing
adding and subtracting
bordering
smoothing
expanding and contracting

Working with Photoshop’s Quick Mask Mode

24 October 2001 / 2 Comments

Photoshop’s Quick Mask mode is a really versatile way to select things. Instead of creating marquees as you do with the other tools, you can “paint” the selection using any of Photoshop’s painting tools. You can even use the other selection tools on the Quick Mask, as if it was a regular image. This makes the Quick Mask mode a very powerful feature of Photoshop.

Selecting with Photoshop’s Color Range Command

15 October 2001 / Leave a Comment

Photoshop’s Color Range command is great for selecting particular colours in your image — for example, all the reds, or all the greens. You can then work on these specific colours — turning them from green to red, for example, or removing particular colours from the image.

This command doesn’t work well for selecting particular areas of your image (such as a foreground object), as it has a tendency to only partially select pixels, and often selects unwanted parts of your image that are a similar colour. But it’s great for selecting colours to work on!

Using Photoshop’s Quick Selection and Magic Wand Tools

10 October 2001 / Leave a Comment

In this tutorial you’ll look at two very quick and easy ways to make selections in Photoshop: The Quick Selection tool and the Magic Wand tool.

Selecting with Photoshop’s Marquee and Lasso Tools

26 September 2001 / Leave a Comment

Selections are a great way to work on parts of your image independently, rather than manipulating the image as a whole.

Once you’ve selected a part of an image (e.g. a person’s head or other object), you can then manipulate this object separately from the rest of the image. This means you can cut the object out; add drop shadows; adjust the brightness/contrast; warp it; apply effects and filters easily – in fact, anything you like!

In this series of tutorials you’ll explore the various selection tools in Photoshop. On this page we start with the marquee and lasso tools.