Computing

I did the update to Windows 8.1. Actually, I did it some time ago. This caused problems with my Cricut, as the application that I use to run it did not play in the same sandbox at all. I had a $200 Cricut shaped doorstop. But the folks at Provo Craft finally sent out an update and I was back in business. Is 8.1 better than 8.0? Meh. A couple of things that were nifty with a touch screen and a royal whirling pain in the butt with a tablet or mouse got adjusted. The power button got moved, but it still stumped my DSS when I challenged him to prove that he knew his way around the OS.

I've been working with Lightroom 4 a bit. I'm not sure if I like it. I need to dig through Photoshop CS6 and get it fine tuned to the way I'd like it to behave. I'm not too worried about getting that done. I've been working with Photoshop since Photoshop 6. It isn't rocket science.

Configuration Process

I've been taking it much more slowly than I usually do when configuring a new computer or a rebuild. The list of applications I use has gotten longer but that's not slowing me down. I'm simply not trying to get everything done at once. I only installed a printer this morning. Today's goal is to get Lightroom installed. After all, that software is why I got a new computer in the first place.

Untouched = Not Updated

So, I finally opened up Lightroom after a long time away from my computer. Really, I shouldn't have. I have had to install at least two updates and reboot once. Eventually, I'll be able to print the two pictures that I wanted.

If I'd regularly used the application, I'd have been caught up with the updates and printing those two pics would be a snap. Nope. If you don't use it, you lose it and staying updated is no exception.

I'm not Dead

But this new job is killing my free time.

Anyway, I was able to spend a little time watching a training video on using the pen tool. I'm going step by baby step, but I'm determined to grasp the concepts and become competent in using the pen tool.

The first step in learning how to use it is learning how to set it up. In the process, I'm learning what all the little symbols that appear and vanish next to the icon mean.

In early December, I'm hoping to get new glasses. The ones that I've got are not up to the task of reading all the little symbols without some squinting and straining.

PTotD

Tip # 130. The process for saving presets of different types, meaning shadows, styles, Brushes and so on, is functionally the same process. If you can save a style, you can save a Brush and so on. If you aren't paying attention, you'll save things that you didn't want to save included with the things that you did want to save.

I'm thinking of a kit that went up for sale and the designer had included a set of styles in her kit. But since she hadn't been paying attention, she'd saved a set of styles that included ones that were not for sale. She bought them from a different designer and hadn't meant to include them.

The trick is to select only the objects that you want to save in the Preset Manager. The lines around the different styles or Brushes or whatnot will be heavy if the item is selected. Use your Command or control click to select more than one. Shift click will work as well. Only the do you want to click on the save set button.

Don't forget to give your set a descriptive name when you save it!

Photoshop Tip of the Day

An old joke in my family ran like this:

A man is lost in New York City. He can't find Carnegie Hall. He stops and asks a wino, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The wino paused a moment and answered, "Practice, man practice!"

That's pretty much what I heard from an airbrush expert this past weekend. He spends time doing drills, thousands of them. He can create strokes that look identical because he's done it thousands of times. I'm not saying you need to press the keyboard shortcut for the Brush tool a thousand times. You do need to continually practice what you learn. Use it or lose it.

Organization

A large part of using Photoshop is being able to find the graphics you are going to work with. This means organizing your photos and organizing the kits, templates, overlays and so on that you have bought. Spending time learning shortcuts to work faster will do you no good if you are wasting time searching for your files.

Organize in a way that works for you. Using a system that someone else created won't help if your brain doesn't work that way. If you think in dates, working best chronologically, a system that uses names in alphabetical order won't work for you. The one thing that will help any system is to use complete words. If you are labeling something from a trip to Orlando, "Orl" is not the best choice. "Orl" could also stand for "New Orleans" or "Oriole."

Don't think you must purchase fancy software to organize your images. I managed for many years simply using the directory structure of files, folders and sub-folders present in Windows. Now that I own the fancy software, I still use that structure as the base of the system.

PTotD

Tip #129. Those Swatches that are available in the Color/Styles/Swatches panel by default are a fast and easy way to select a color. The cursor will turn into an eyedropper when it is over the swatches panel and a fist will let you know that you have successfully clicked to grab a color. Glance over at the background/foreground icon to make sure that you got the right one. Hover your cursor over a swatch to see what it is named. If you right or option-click in the panel, you can save a color you like as a swatch. Make sure you give it a descriptive name. You use the Preset Manager to save your swatches as an .aco file. They aren’t saved unless they are in a file you can back up. Photoshop will remember them if you close down the application, but that doesn’t mean they are saved!

PTotD

Tip# 128. Gradients are a great way to put a little more interest into a background. Give this a try. Open a document and put in a ho-hum kind of background. Create a new layer above it. Select black or some dark color from your swatches and then select the Gradient tool. The Keyboard shortcut is the letter G. You might get the paint bucket first, but you want the Gradient tool. Then go to the options bar and select from the second drop-down from the left to set the kind of gradient. The first choice is from a foreground color to white, and the second one is from the foreground color to transparent. You want to use the transparent option. Then look at the icons.to the right of that. The first one is a horizontal gradient, the second is a radial gradient, the third is Angle, the next is reflected and the last one is diamond. If you hover your cursor over the icons, you’ll see a name pop up. The one you want for this is the radial gradient. Next, click inside your layout somewhere around 10:00 and drag down towards 4:30. A line will appear, indicating the direction of the gradient. When you release the drag, a layer of color will appear that fades from your start color and start point down to transparent at the end point. Whee!!! If you want it to be darker or lighter, select a different color, change the opacity of the layer, or make the drag line start and end in different places.

Photoshop Tip of the Day

Tip # 127. When making a tricky selection, there isn’t anything wrong with making adjustments to your image to make the selection tools work better. Your goal is a good selection. You can add an adjustment layer, and tweak the contrast to be incredibly wrong, for example. Just ditch the adjustment layer after the selection is made. Or, if you are using Smart Objects, you can revert back to the original. Wow. What a concept.

PTotD

Tip # 126. A Smart Object can be defined as an object, which may be composed of multiple layers/objects or a single layer/object, which remembers what it used to be, so the changes you make are not permanent and can be reversed. A smart object has a marker in the lower right corner of the icon in the layers panel to indicate that it is a Smart Object. The marker looks like three images, with one black and two white. You can create Smart Objects several ways. Right or control-click on the layer in the layers panel and select Convert to Smart Object. Or you can go to Layer | Smart Object | Convert to smart object. You can control or right-click on the object in your layout and select convert to Smart Object. You can even convert for a smart filter through the Filter menu, which will create a Smart Object. When you drag and drop an image from MiniBridge in CS5, it will import as a Smart Object. It will have bounding box that includes an X through the center. Hit Enter, and it will be a smart object. Smart Objects do have a few limitations, but in general, they are useful, because you retain the ability to undo changes, even after saving and closing the file.

PTotD

Tip # 125. Ever open a file, make a few changes and immediately hate them? You want to go back to the freshly opened file and start over again, but you don’t want to undo, use the History, or close without saving changes and then open the file again. Just go to the file menu and select revert. Your file will go back to the way it was when you first opened it.

PTotD

Tip #124. As usual, Photoshop has more than one way to get to the same settings for the Brush tool. The keyboard shortcut for the Brush tool is the letter B. Have you noticed that many of the keyboard shortcuts for the tools are the bottom row of letter keys? Ahem. In the options bar, from left to right, you’ll see first an icon of the tool you have chosen. There will be a dropdown arrow next to that tool icon. If there are presets for that tool available, they will be listed. Don’t be confused by the word ‘presets’. There are other brush presets that you’ll need to know more about. Next to that, will be an icon of the selected brush and a dropdown arrow. If you choose that, you’ll get to a pared-down panel for selecting brushes and changing the size and hardness of the brush. The number in the pictures you see will let you know the size of the brush. It’s the larger of width or height in pixels. Next to that is an icon of three brushes in a jar. Clicking on the icon will open up the brushes panel, which includes tabs for brush presets, brush settings, and clone source. Now that you know where to go to change brush settings, it’s time to play. See ya later!

PTotD

Tip #123. Those blobby/spiky shapes for the brush tool are great when you want to apply an action, but softly, gradually. Say I want to erase something, so I can see through it to the layer below, but I want the top layer to remain in ghost-like fashion. Instead of doing a selection with a feathered edge and playing with blend modes, I can use a soft brush to erase what I don’t want. And with a soft, blobby brush, I can work gradually. If you are trying to do things like this with a mouse, you won’t have pressure sensitivity. If you have a tablet, you are good to go.

PTotD

Tip #122. The Eyedropper tool you use to take a color sample can take a sample of a single pixel, or sample a set of pixels. It takes the average color in your sample, so a larger or smaller sample can make a big difference. You can make the sample size from one pixel, up to 101 pixels by 101 pixels. When you change the setting for the eyedropper tool in the tool bar by changing the sample size, it becomes the setting for the eyedropper in the color picker. Photoshop’s default setting for the eyedropper is for a single pixel.

PTotD

Tip #121. Keep your screen clean. Not just ‘I dusted it off a while ago.’ But absolutely clean. Never touch your screen. Point at it, point to it, but don’t let your fingers touch your screen. The last thing you want to do is to adjust for a shadow, only to realize it was a smear on your screen.

PTotD

Tip #120. It is possible to turn a selection into a path. That’s one of the best ways to create a path that goes exactly where you want your text to go. Option or right-click inside the selection and select ‘make work path’. I leave the tolerance at the default setting of 2.0 pixels. Poof! The marching ants become a line that indicates the path. Select the Text tool, put the baseline at your starting point and click. Enter your text. The path will become invisible if the layer is not the active layer.

PTotD

Tip #119. Everyone wants to be able to put text along a path, so they can make it go in a circle, or along a line that they create. Well, almost everyone. It’s never interested me. Remember, the pen tool is used to create a path. You’ll want to do that first. Then, press ‘T’ to go to the text tool. Carefully position your cursor, so the baseline indicator is on the path. The baseline of the cursor will add a wiggly line to let you know you are there. Click. An insertion point should appear on the path. Enter your text. Taa-daa!

PTotD

Tip #118. This should be titled, “Fun With Text”, I suppose. Photoshop has a set of pre-created options to distort objects. You can use these to distort text. Once you have your text on your layout, click on the curved, double-ended arrow with a T above it in the options bar. A pop-up window will appear and the default option for Style is ‘None.’ The options have little pictures that clearly show the sort of distortion that you can select. Changing the bend will increase or decrease the amount of curve. Horizontal distortion will make one side larger and the other smaller. Vertical distortion can create elongated text, or mirror it underneath the baseline. Wheee!!!

PTotD

Tip #117. Some people like to prevent having to move their text around by creating a text box for the text to go inside. Photoshop has made this really easy. All you need to do is use the Text tool to click and drag to indicate the area you want the text to go into, before you start to type. Be aware that there will be NO space between the text box and the text that aligns with that edge. Text will be ‘on the line’ exactly. But you can still move the text should you wish.