Project files, desktop

designs, stock art…

ISSUE 21

DYNAMIC
Retouching reality masterclass | Create ink art | Master outer space | Bert Monroy interview

6-PAGE MASTERCLASS

CREATE BRUSHES
INK ART
Unleash their potential with
this step-by-step guide

Photoshop masterpieces
with water and ink

HOW TO…
Get to grips with the new Vista OS

0+
Take control of 32-bit Support

2
Make the most of Preferences
Perfect outer space effects TIC
TAS IRLSE’S
N
FA K SW ISS
U
IN THCISD
ONREE

LAPTOP
F

ROUNDUP
We take a tour of the
best notebooks around

Master skin, hair and beauty retouching with Photoshop

www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk

ISSUE 21
ISSN 1748-7277 £5.99
21

9 771748 727009

MAKE MONEY WITH ‘SHOP pages of professional

Use your Photoshop skills to create tips & essential step-
21
UE

more than art – make a living too! by-step tutorials

ISS

001_APM21_cover_27_7.indd 1 28/7/06 16:44:36

 Cover

Cover image Imageer:

Angel D’Amico is a freelance designer and ANGEL D’AMICO
illustrator from Chicago. Combining her fine arts
background into her digital work, she creates
beautiful and exotic illustrations. Typical of her
fresh, imaginative style our cover image I USUALLY START
showcases Angel’s talents with Photoshop and
watercolour – a gift that has allowed her to EXPERIMENTING
stand out from the Photoshop crowds.
/ For more of Angel’s work, turn to page 18 AND IT LEADS TO
SOMETHING I WASN’T
EVEN EXPECTING
TO CREATE
3
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003_APM21_intro.indd 3 28/7/06 12:03:45

 nds
mme
Reco

GIVE IT A GO 7 30
Master digital retouching and watch your images
go from good to great. Simon Danaher shows
you how to perfect fashion-esque shots

ISSUE #21

inside... LETTERS
Our readers’ comments and feedback
7 8

INSIGHT 7 10
News and showcases from around the globe
All the latest events, exhibitions and awards 10
Angel D’Amico presents her portfolio 18
Digital wonder Tom Bagshaw shows all 20
Check out the work of PCP 22

HELPDESK 7 78
Your technical traumas shared with fellow readers
and answered by our expert

7 85
THE COVER
Learn a few of the techniques
needed to emulate our cover artist,
24 RESOURCES
Angle D’Amico’s amazing style. Just Bert Monroy reveals the Vital assets to improve your Photoshop work
techniques behind his art
turn the page and get creating
Vista: The preview 86
Gadgets 90
Books 92
Photoshop websites 94

E ...
THIS MONTH’S CD 7 96
Superb stock art, project files to go with this
B 6
C RI ge 7 f month’s issue and more!

UBSto pa £s ofce
S rn ave pri
Tu d s ver 36 48
an e co Make a living with
the Adobe app
The final part of our
Photoshop relay race
th

4
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 64
Master Painter style effects
with Dynamic brushes

TECHNIQUES
Faster, better, more… How can you work smarter?
RETOUCHING REALITY
Master skin, hair and beauty Photoshop work
7 30
FEATURES
INTERVIEW: BERT MONROY 7 24 INK ART
Manipulate reality with cool ink effects
7 42
The digital wonder shares his secrets

MAKING MONEY WITH ‘SHOP 7 36 CREATE OUTER SPACE 7

The second part in our series on the art of space
56
Inventive ways to make Photoshop work for you

THE AP PHOTOSHOP RELAY 7 48 INSIDER INFO

32 BIT SUPPORT 7 62
The final stage in our marathon competition Think you’ve mastered it? Think again

PEER PRESSURE 7 72 DYNAMIC BRUSHES 7 64

Inspiring and challenging images from your fellow readers Everything you need to know to create Painter-esque art

ROUND UP: LAPTOPS 7 80 INSIDER INFO

We take a tour of the best notebooks around PREFERENCES
Make the most of Photoshop using this feature
7 70
PREVIEW: VISTA 7 86
Can the new OS really live up to the hype?

5
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 Letters
Mailbox
Got something to say about the magazine or
Photoshop in general – write in and tell us!
Email us at advancedpshop@imagine-
publishing.co.uk or visit the forum at
www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk
SUBJECT: Qualification qualms
FROM: Richard Trainor
I was wondering how necessary qualifications
actually are in regards to landing a career in design. I
recently left my first year of a graphics course I was
doing for the second time as I felt I wasn’t learning
anything and the course was mostly filled with things
I didn’t think matter. In all honesty I have learned far
more in a few months of reading your magazine
than I did in two years of college, where there were no
actual lessons, just project after project. The thing
that tipped the scale for me was seeing the senior
students’ final projects and thinking they obviously
hadn’t learned any techniques, their work was of the
same quality as when they started the course.
So I was wondering, is it more important to have a
good quality portfolio of quality images with no
certificate, or a piece of paper with some letters on it
aside a poor portfolio?
DECISION TIME: While he’s making the decision
between hands-on training or education, check out
some of Richard’s work
8
Advanced Photoshop
008-009_APM21.indd 8
Editor replies:
Well, opinion on this is quite divided, as it really will
depend on where you would like your career to go.
Generally speaking an employer (like a magazine
publisher or ad agency) will look at qualifications first,
then at your portfolio should you get through to the
interview stage. If it’s a freelance career you’re after
then your clients will be more interested in seeing
what you can do, not your qualification.
Why not try looking for a better course? One of the
ones mentioned in issue 19 of Advanced Photoshop
might suit you more and give you a solid education
so that you can choose either path. I hope that helps
somewhat and good luck!
SUBJECT: Feature suggestion
FROM: Darren Blume
SPLITTING IMAGE: Over the next few months
I’ve noticed that you’re now doing a regular hardware there’ll be some radical changes to both the forum
round up and would like to suggest a topic for that and the website, so keep checking!
feature. As a dedicated mouse user I’d like to see a
review of the best wireless ones, as well as optical and Editor replies:
laser options. This is something a few people have had problems
I know most people seem to be switching over to with so both magazines have been working with our
tablets now, but some of us are stuck in our ways! in-house multimedia department to split up the
forums. Visit the new Advanced Photoshop forum at
SUBJECT: Sister sister www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk/forum.
FROM: June Jennings
Am I the only person who finds your forum confusing? SUBJECT: Top grades!
Which bits belong to those who read Photoshop FROM: Derek Meadle
Creative and which to those who enjoy Advanced Can I just say a big well done to Trevor Morris, your
Photoshop? Every time I think I have worked out Insider Info writer. He does a superb job every month
which section I should be in, another post appears explaining the technical side of new Photoshop
which contradicts my decision. Please can’t the two features that most of us have never been able to get
magazines have separate forums? our heads around. The Vanishing Point one in issue 18
“I’VE ONLY JUST GOT ISSUE 18
AND YOU’RE ALL TALKING ABOUT
ISSUE 20 – THAT’S JUST CRUEL!”
17/7/06 15:32:26
 “I HAVE
LEARNED FAR
MORE IN A Straight to
XXXLDS APART:
From opposite sides of

the point
the earth Hi-Liter and

FEW MONTHS Revjessecuster, two

forum users, took up

OF READING
the Goddess challenge

Pixel perfection
YOUR
MAGAZINE Subject: Issue 20
From: Dan Horne

THAN I DID IN I’ve been a fan of pixel art for years and it’s great
to see it being represented in a magazine like

TWO YEARS yours. Too often ‘advanced’ magazines address

their audience like they don’t know what a layer

OF COLLEGE” is or how to create a new document.

was a particular favourite of mine and cleared up
many issues I had with that feature.
Other aspects I personally have some trouble with
are the Print With Preview feature and data-driven
graphics – have you covered these in previous issues
or dare I hope you might include them at my request?
Editor replies:
Hi Derek, thanks for the email. Trevor’s features are a
big fave here in the office and with you guys reading
the mag, so we’ll always do our best to cover the
features you’re finding most troublesome. You can
except to see one of your suggestions in the very next
issue, with the other following closely behind. Enjoy!
SUBJECT: Fluid mask
FROM: Keely Hunter
I got Fluid Mask recently and I must say it is very good.
I love the fact you can pixel-pick the colours you want
to remove. Check out the gallery of cutouts on their
site – it really shows what you can do!
Editor replies:
Finding a new app which makes life easier is always a
pleasure but for those of you who have yet to try out
Fluid Mask or have used it but don’t own it, count
down the days until issue 22. Along with our new
news feature from Robin Preston will come the
chance to win a copy of Fluid Mask – we’ll set you a
little Photoshop challenge and let you fight it out
between you!
SUBJECT: Wacom wonders
FROM: Stephen MacArthur
I wanted to drop you all a quick line to thank you for
your round up of tablets in issue 20. After pondering
over purchasing one for many months I’ve finally
taken the plunge and expect my new toy any day.
SUBJECT: On a positive note
FROM: Joan Charmant
I received an issue 18 magazine today, it’s the first
time I’ve got an issue of Advanced Photoshop in my
hands and I must say you guys do a fantastic job,
both on content and on print quality.
I have prepared a package of five pictures for
possible inclusion in your Peer Pressure
section – I hope you enjoy them.
Keep up the good work!
LOVING IT: He might love
reading it, but having his work
appear in it is even better!
Check out Joan’s work on
page 72
Although to the beginner pixel art can look
complicated and daunting, once you give it a go
PAIN OR you’ll find your Photoshop skills and creative
PLEASURE: thinking will make things seem a lot easier.
Whether you spent
five minutes or five
hours giving pixel Subject: 20 is the magic number!
art a go, you all From: John Bradshaw
seemed to love our
last cover Although I’ve never been a big fan of pixel art I
must admit your cover made me stop in my
tracks. A bright, vivid magazine that proclaimed
I could ‘Create this cover’. After giving Mr Lucken’s
tutorial a go I am convinced I could indeed
recreate your cover, if I had the patience! Surely
pixel art is enough to drive any sane person
completely mad! Did anyone else feel like this or
do I just have the attention span of a gnat?
Subject: Anticipation killed the
Photoshopper!
From: Jeff, via email
I love that you give us forum users a bit of a
sneak preview of upcoming covers every month
but I do have a bit of a moan. For those of your
loyal readers based in the US, like me, this can
seem like torture. I’ve only just got issue 18 and
you’re all talking about issue 20 – that’s just
cruel! That said, the content looks fab and I can’t
wait to get my hands on my next copy of AP.
Editor replies:
We’re glad you liked the mag – or the look of it
for those of you outside the UK – and we’re
pleased to hear you’re having a crack at the
tutorials. Pixel art is quite time-consuming
and here at AP we’re divided between
those who gave up after five minutes
and those who spent countless
afternoons playing with pixels!

9
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 Keeping an eye on the latest trends in contemporary photography, art
and design, Insight sets out to snapshot innovation in the making

Destination London
There’s still a month to go before the London Design
Festival, but things are starting to heat up already. With
new events being announced daily, the festival, due to
show from 15-30 September at various locations
throughout London, is sure to be one of the best yet.
Established in 2003, the London Design Festival is an
annual international event celebrating and promoting
London and the UK’s creativity. Events announced so
far include Tom Dixon in Trafalgar Square, [re] design
06 and Scarlet Projects, which sees 12 stalls manned
by a selection of the most talented and dynamic
young UK designers selling remedies for modern-day
‘illnesses’. Ailments treated could be anything from iPod addiction MIRANDA WAT
KINS, GRID TA
British design ta BLE: As well as
to compulsive shopping disorder and celebrity obsession, acting len sh
flavour. Over 15 t, the programme will have an owcasing
as a revealing and insightful commentary on the 21st Century countries are ex international
creativity, and pected to be de
show monstrating th
human condition. Norway, India an s from countries including Th eir
d Singapore wi ail
ll add a truly glo and, Austria,
The vast majority of Festival exhibitions are free although some bal dimension
may require tickets, so keep checking the website to make sure you
don’t miss out. Each of the listings includes details on what’s
www.londondesignfestival.com
planned, who’s hosting, and where and when its on, alongside
details of similar or nearby events.

[RE] DESIGN, RYAN

SRANK INKUKU:
Just one of the designs
you’ll see if you go
along to [re] design
– on at the Old
Truman Brewery from
20-26 September

FUSE DESIGN COLLEC

TION,
CANDLESTICK: During
the Festival design
is everywhere in London
, and projects can
be found in over 150 diffe
rent venues. The
home for projects varies
by type and
includes museums, college
s, creative
businesses and tempora
ry locations

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Design
Xchange
Of special interest to teachers of
design, advertising or
communications is D&AD Xchange.
On from 4-5 September in London,
the event, which is sponsored by
Adobe, is a packed two-day
programme of talks, case studies and
debate covering the full range of
creative disciplines.
Aiming to ensure courses are
covering the most relevant, up-to-
the-minute and inspired content for
the year ahead, this is a must-see for
anyone in the teaching industry. This
year’s speakers include Adrian
: Available free, the
MAKING A WAVE
lets users view intera
ctive we
ions, entert
business presentat
ndreds
a web browser. Hu
ded daily,
Players are downloa cent of Internet-enabled desktops
on more than 55 per
010-013_APM21_insight.indd 11
09.06
2006, A GOOD YEAR: Artwork
from this year’s Xchange brochure.
The event is only for those involved
in the teaching of design,
DESPERATELY SEEKING TEA
Channel 4’s case study presenta
CHERS:
tion at
advertising and communications last year’s D&AD Xchange
SEVEN’S A CROWD: Safari photographer
supremo Todd Gustafson shows the standard
the judges have come to expect
Go wild!
As digital imageers, we’re turning our
hands more and more to the
photographic side of our art. But, no
matter how good we become, one of
the hardest topics of photography
remains wildlife – you can’t ask your
subject to stand still, pose or get too
Shaughnessy, Dave Trott, Digit,
close, but you want that perfect shot.
John McConnell, Mark Porter of
Now in its 42nd year, the Shell
The Guardian and many more. You’ll
Wildlife Photographer of the Year
be able to find the full programme
competition aims to find the very best
of events and speakers at
photography featuring natural
www.dandad.org/xchange.
subjects. Open to amateur and
D&AD is an educational charity
professional photographers, it’s one of
that represents the global creative,
the most prestigious competitions of
design and advertising communities.
its kind. And in just weeks, we find out
Since 1962, D&AD has been setting
the big 2006 winners. If you want the
industry standards, educated and
chance to see the winning entries for
inspired the next generation, and
yourself, pop down to the Natural
more recently, has demonstrated the
History Museum during October.
impact of creativity on enhancing TALKING THE TALK:
business performance. Jonathan Jeffrey’s (www.
bibliothequedesign.
com) presentation at the www.nhm.ac.uk
2005 D&AD Xchange
EBOY: To see more of the work of contributor
Two become one
eBoy check out its pixel-art based website
hello.eboy.com/eboy
al.
er the life of the de
ern et, su re Adobe products ov the
n on the Int s custo me rs
Wherever you tur The first stage bring
gh yo u’l l fin d sig ns of Adobe or To olb ar with downloads of
enou Goog le
nts in the ir fie lds , the pair dia Shockwave Player.
Google. Two gia me nt Adobe’s Macrome
n forces to ce are some of the
have decided to joi “Adobe customers
their dominance. siastic consumers
rke t most savvy, enthu ll
“As leaders in our
res pe cti ve ma d we think they wi
e an d of web content, an ar wi ll let
tin g for Ad ob Go og le To olb
categories, it’s fit love the fact that
Google to work tog
ether to r of Google search
me rs them take the powe d
improve the wa ys cu sto re on the web,” sai
an d with them anywhe esi de nt of
th ide as r vic e pr
engage wi
tan u Om id Kordestani, senio nt
Shan siness develop me
information,” said global sales and bu
ray en , pr esi de nt and chief
Na at Google. a
operating officer
at Adobe. on or to download
es For more informati ob e.
Shockwave Player ag ree me nt se r, visit ww w. ad
The ne w
free Shockwave Pla
ye
b con ten t such as games, distribute er/.
ain me nt an d adverts from Adobe agreeing to co .uk /p ro du cts/shockwaveplay
th va rio us
of tho usa nd s of Shockwave the Google Toolb
ar wi
an d Sho ckw ave is installed
11
Advanced Photoshop
24/7/06 11:59:16
 insight
Adobe: New super-power?
It never seems enough for Adobe. Leader in every market it touches, it has
acquired Macromedia and all that it stood for, has gone into partnership with
Google, and now Adobe has announced that it has acquired the technology
n of
a free versio assets of Pixmantec, maker of digital imaging software that provides advanced
T U FF : To download nt ia ls, ju st
FREE S ooter Esse workflow management and processing capabilities for digital camera
tec RawSh tec.com
the Pixman te at www.pixman
visit the web si raw files.
“With high-quality digital cameras now within reach of every
photographer, customers are gravitating to raw file formats that allow
them to get more control over final results,” said John Loiacono,
senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “By combining
Pixmantec’s raw processing technology and expertise with our own,
we’re continuing to deliver on the promise that even your existing
raw files can be processed with increasing quality as our software
technology evolves.”
Adobe plans to integrate Pixmantec raw processing
technologies – including its RawShooter line of digital
photography software products – into Lightroom as well as
other applications.
CUT-BACKS: In preparation for this
Existing Pixmantec customers will continue to be supported integration, the Pixmantec RawShooter
by Adobe and will be provided with an upgrade path to the Premium product is being discontinued,
Adobe digital imaging product family. though the free RawShooter Essentials product
will continue to be available until the
Lightroom public beta program is completed

CAPTURE THE MOMENT:

With the help of software like
Adobe’s Photoshop and Nikon’s
new Capture NX, home snaps
can now be turned into works of
art. All images copyright Martin
Hartley/Adventure Ecology

A world without ‘Shop

Ever wondered what the world would be like
without Photoshop? Which company would
have the digital imaging market sewn up in
its place? The recently released Nikon Capture
NX is probably the closest we’ll ever get to
ever knowing.
Priced from £119.99 ($221), Capture NX is the
radically enhanced and redesigned version of Nikon’s image editing
software. Aimed at photographers shooting with raw, the software
has some powerful and dedicated tools.
Robert Cristina, manager of Professional Products for Nikon
Europe, said: “One of the main barriers inhibiting and limiting
creative image editing has been the skills required to isolate areas or
subjects in the image. Layering and masking techniques have been
the exclusive preserve of experts and retouchers. Nikon’s Capture
NX redefines the image editing landscape and marks a significant
new direction for both Nikon and our partner, Nik Software.”
Features you can expect to find include New U Point technology
to apply subtle enhancements to areas of any JPEG, TIFF or NEF (raw) image. It also boasts
RAW TALENT
selective tools and colour management control, a powerful image browser and repetitive : Ab
means this new le to handle file types such as
software has th raw
global editing actions. to the digital im
ag
e extra flexibilit
y essential
compete with Ad eer – but will Nikon’s effort ev
obe’s Photosho er truly
p?

12
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 09.06
DIARY
DATES
IMAGES 30
4-12 August
London

TRAFALGAR SQUARE
ARTS FESTIVAL
Until 21 August
London

PAINT THE CITY

No less than 100%
LET THERE BE LIGHT: Situated between 100%
Detail and 100% Design, this year will see the launch 31 August
of 100% Light, a new lighting event. Presenting Manchester
architectural and contemporary lighting, it will link
the two already established shows On at Earls Court from 21-24 September is 100% Design. One of the
world’s leading contemporary design exhibitions, the event DESIGN MART
showcases the latest furniture, lighting, accessories, wall and floor Until September
coverings, textiles, and kitchens and bathrooms. Preston
Attracting over 35,000 visitors including architects, interior
designers and retailers, 100% Design is full of innovative ideas for THE LONDON DESIGN
your home and office. Exhibitors include international and British
designers, as well as first-time exhibitors and old hands – ensuring
FESTIVAL
15-30 September
you get to see the best new products around.
London
Concurrent with the exhibition, 100% Design hosts a series of
seminars and discussions at Earls Court 2. These events are free and
cover a range of topics from the professional status of the interior NEW ARRIVALS,
designer to the factors that inspire creatives in their work. NEW VOICES IN
Now in its 12th year, Ian Rudge, brand director and co-founder of ILLUSTRATION
EBOY: To see more of the work of contributor
100% Design comments, “100% Design has changed the face of eBoy check
17-23 out its pixel-art based website
September
design in this country forever, placing it high on the agenda for hello.eboy.com/eboy
London
consumers and professionals alike. At 100% Design 2006, yet more
new designs and designers will be placed in the public eye, ensuring
that this legacy of championing design continues into the future.”
ARTS SHOW 2006
Until 17 September
Leeds

LEARN MORE: For more information on the event or

to book your place, visit www.100percentdesign.co.uk

MAKE THE GRAD

E: The high qualit
exhibitors is maint y of 100% Design’s
procedure that allo ained by the string
ws only the very bes ent vetting
show. A panel of res t in design into the
pected industry lea
potential new exh ders assesses every
ibitor, judging wh
newcomer has wh ether or not the
at it takes to make
the grade

13
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010-013_APM21_insight.indd 13 24/7/06 12:01:02

 insight
ON THE STRIP: As well as the convention,
the NAPP expo has organised a series of
events. From seminars to parties, you could
even get to see the newest members of the
Photoshop Hall of Fame inducted

PHOTOSHOP WORLD ATTENDEES: Last year halls were

packed with attendees leaving the conference kick-off
ceremony, excited to learn the latest Photoshop techniques

Vegas, baby!
ga
Over the other side of the pond this ’re thinking of buyin
GET READY: If you ta rea dy or che ck
September is one of the biggest events in the it is Vis
new PC, make sure tible
see if it’ll be compa
Photoshop year. The NAPP Photoshop World out the website to
and Expo will be held at the Mandalay Bay
Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, and is well
worth a visit if you can get there.
Bringing together photographers,
designers, artists, educators, motion graphics
designers and Photoshop users of every kind
for the three-day event, it means there simply
is no other event like it in the world. Although
the tickets are a little pricey – they start from
$149 (£81) – we reckon it’ll be worth it to see
presenters including Russell Brown, Scott
Kelby and this issue’s interviewed artist,
Bert Monroy.
Photoshop World is now in its seventh year,
and since its inception it has been sponsored by
Adobe and produced by NAPP (National
Association of Photoshop Professionals). NAPP
is the largest graphic and digital imaging trade
, President of the National
association with over 50,000 members SCOT T KELBY KEYNOTE: Scott Kelby
ls (NAPP) and Conference Technical
Association of Photoshop Professiona World extravaganza
worldwide, and is the leading resource for Adobe Chair, kicks off the three-day Photoshop
Photoshop, education, training and news.
Leopard: the new Tige
www.photoshopworld.com
The beginning of
August saw the un
r DOWN, TIGER: Ap

In the Eighties it ga
ple
revolution in the Sev ignited the PC
enties with the Apple
II.
veiling of Apple’s ve us
addition to its Ma latest continues to lead the the Mac. Today, it
c OS X family, Leop industry with deskto
previewed earlie ard. Version 10.5 and notebook com p
r this year but wa wa s puters and its OS X
system
public on August s finally shown to
7. the
It is generally expe
cted to get a full rel
end of 2006 or ea ease at the
rly 2007, with Apple
support both Powe saying it will
rPC and Intel x86-
Revealed at the Wo based Macs.
rldwide Developers
(WWDC), the prev Conference
iew of Mac OS X ‘Le
the only thing to opard’ was not
get tongues wagg
WWDC, developers ing. Throughout
discussed best pr
developing Unive actices on
rsal applications
advantage of the that take
performance of Int
So we can be sure el-based Macs.
that the big deve
seemingly working lopers are
together for a mo
computing experie re unified
nce…

14
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 09.06
DIARY
DATES
PHOTOSHOP WORLD
CONFERENCE & EXPO
7-9 September
Las Vegas

MASTERING THE
POWER OF SMART
OBJECTS
30 September – 1 October
Berkeley

PICTURE PERFECT
COLOR SEMINAR
teach
BEYOND THE MUNDANE: Robin will 14 September
what it
you how to look at an image and see Minneapolis
airplane
can be – like this transformation from
(right) to luscious holiday-esque scene 5 October
Chicago
10 October
PUFFHAIR: Learning from one of the Miami
industry’s top names, our new column
will give you all the tips and tricks to
24 October
follow in Robin’s footsteps San Francisco
1 November
Coming up... New York

It’s been a busy few months for Robin HASSLEBLAD CLEAR

Preston. You may remember the creative
from issue 18’s interview feature, but
FOCUS STUDIO TOUR
you’re bound to see a lot more of him in the
14 September
Los Angeles
future – especially within these pages!
As well as touring the country (and 2-4 November
indeed the world) giving presentations on New York
behalf of Adobe, Wacom and the like, he’s
also been named senior evangelist by the DIGITAL DAYS
Wacom crew. 9-10 September
And that’s not all. Starting next issue, Philadelphia
Robin will be contributing to your favourite
23-24 September
Photoshop magazine every month.
Denver
Reviewing products, telling you about
forthcoming events or sharing his wisdom 4-5 November
New York
– it’ll soon be your must-read every month.
Next issue Robin will be launching his
column by giving you the lowdown on PHOTOPLUS EXPO
Fluid Mask, as well as offering you the 2-4 November
opportunity to win a copy. Don’t miss it! New York

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 insight

PHOTOSHOP BEAUTY: “YRB Magazine sent me amazing photographs of international

models which they wanted me to use my watercolour and Photoshop skills on. I picked
a colour for each set of photographs and watercoloured a background that would fit
Angel D’Amico
the photograph. I scanned them in and manipulated the colour and shapes and then
applied a burn and adjusted the contrast” Chicago-based Angel D’Amico is an arts and crafts lover. She paints,
draws, sews, makes books and takes photos. All of these interests
no doubt influence her eclectic style. After studying visual
communications and opting for a whole host of fine art options,
Angel never really thought about taking up her art as a freelancer.
“It was after I was featured in a ten-page spread in Digital Graphics
Magazine
Magazine, based in Australia. They only saw my work from a school
internship I had. I was very into watercolour at the time, so I just
started painting a background, scanning it in and then either took
photographs of my friend, boyfriend, myself or whoever,
retouched the photo, incorporated my watercolours and just
went crazy with it.”
Angel has perfected a process that she uses on most of her
designs. “If I get a job or start a project I usually have a main
object I’m designing around. I research what I want to work with,
or take photographs. Then I start drawing with a charcoal pen
and maybe spray paint, add watercolour. I scan all of this into
Photoshop and piece the elements together, sometimes
bringing in vector elements I have drawn in Illustrator. Then I
start playing and manipulating the colours, contrast, hue and
saturation. I really like to make my images bold and use many
beautiful colours. My images end up with thousands of layers. I
usually start experimenting and it leads to something I wasn’t
even expecting to create,” Angel enthuses. “I love Photoshop!”
Angel’s website can be found by logging onto the link below,
where you can peruse more of her work.
ph from PH by
GLITTERATI: Ange
Phillia Clothing, an
l used a photogra
d too k it into Ph oto
d
shop. She then
dif ferent paint
/ www.angeldamico.com
nd bla ck an d use
made the backgrou es to create all of the sparkles
iqu
and airbrush techn
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 MOUSE ADDICT:
“I started with
09.06
charcoal drawings of
the mice and spray-
painted clouds, which
I scanned into
Photoshop. I layered
the mice onto the
clouds in Photoshop
and then added the
colours and squares
from Illustrator
drawings”

THE WHOLE TOOTH: “I had a fast recovery after I

had wisdom teeth surgery so I wanted to send my
oral surgeon a card. I drew some teeth with wings in
Illustrator and brought them into Photoshop, using a
watercolour background”

d with a
CREATE: “I starte
COLLABORATE TO Ph illia’s ph oto grapher, Megan
PH by
photograph from the original
n was cut out from
Petersen. The woma added some watercolour
the n
background and I ph”
ck feather photogra
flowers and a peaco

BEAUTIFUL DECAY: Watercolour drips were added

to these images and the threshold was altered to
provide a different-coloured background

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 insight

MAKING THE
MOST: “I try to
make full use of
layer styles, layer
shapes and
masking
techniques in
order to be able to
fine-tune colours
throughout my
process”

PAINTER BACKGROUND:
“As a traditional artist I find d combination
C: Through a detaile
Painter IX’s way of blending paint LIGHT FANTASTIPainter, Tom creates ethereal, almost
on the canvas an intuitive process, of Photoshop and stillness but the
t have a painting’s
so I tend to hop out of Photoshop surreal images tha graphic scene
and use this program for specific accuracy of a photo
areas of blending”

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 Tom Bagshaw
When a client can’t tell the difference in quality between a painted illustration and a
09.06
digitally created one, you know that it’s time to embrace the latest imaging technology
and broaden your wings.
Tom Bagshaw grounded the roots of his career studying traditional art at
Bournemouth and Poole College of Further Education where oils, acrylics, pen and paper
were the standard medium. He initially wasn’t taken by the digital bug, but with the
introduction of Photoshop 5 and the advent of Painter he soon decided to ditch his
beloved brushes. Now, along with his trusty Wacom graphics tablet, Photoshop is the
most valuable tool in his workflow. “Everything I do these days has been created entirely
in it, or been through Photoshop at some point. Although, if the graphics tablet hadn’t
been invented I think I would probably still be a traditional artist.”
Tom works under the name mostlywanted. It began life as a small online portfolio for
the illustrator and designer, but after turning freelance full time in 2004, mostlywanted
became not only the domain name for his portfolio but also his trading identity.
The style of mostlywanted has been shaped by more traditional artists although Tom
has a penchant for Craig Mullins, Karen Oxman, Cellia Calle, Andy Potts, Shiv, Rich May
and Aya Kato to name but a few. As many of the images are aimed towards the fashion
market, mostlywanted’s art has a distinctive style that combines vector graphics, 3D
elements and painted strokes. “My work is always varied and I wanted to show a more
unified style that wasn’t only based on my painting skills, but something that
demonstrated a graphic edge.” To find out more about Tom’s work log onto the
mostlywanted site, where you can browse a sketchbook and portfolio.
/ www.mostlywanted.com

THE SHIFTING HEART: SNOW WHITE: “Apart

“When I’m happy with my Photoshop for from blending,
prett I use
progress I tend to save a flat copy figure is painted y much everything else. The
with a certain am
of the image and then continue overflow outside ount of
of the known ou
the illustration using that flat file layer is masked tline, then the
with a vector cli
as a base layer, progressively For more comp pp
lex shapes Illustr ing paths.
building up layers until another ator is needed”
save point is reached”

FOREVER: “These start as

thumbnail sketches, either on
paper or in Photoshop, to get an
idea of composition and colour. A
final version at high res is created,
using references from books,
magazines, and my photography”

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 insight

FEEDBACK (LESS NO
ISE): Because their
images are drawn dire
ctly in Photoshop, the
artwork has a distinc
tive watercolour appear
ance

Hype Hope Wonderland

aka PCP
If a digital artist describes their style of work as “dreamy”
and “druggy”, you know it’s not going to be run-of-the-mill
Photoshop art.
PCP’s work is a cavalcade of the magical. In his world fish
swim casually out of their tanks, deer have stomachs riddled
with skyscrapers and rabbits take over the underground. Hype
Hope Wonderland is the creation of Heisuke Kitazawa – also
known as ‘PCP’ – a freelance illustrator/designer based in Tokyo
and Los Angeles who regularly “goes back and forth between the
two cities, making illustrations for various purposes”.
These succulent images wouldn’t be possible without our
favourite app coming into the equation. “I do everything in
Photoshop, from rough sketches to printouts. I sketch in
Photoshop with the help of a Wacom Intuos3 tablet and then paint
them using an airbrush and custom brushes. Sometimes I will print
the file out and physically paint over it with acrylics. Past projects
have seen collaborations with Honda Mobilio in Japan, Trespassers
William band, Mercir and Cartonbox, while Heisuke is currently
working on a Nintendo DS game, a picture book and CD for the band
Her Space Holiday and a store design for a restaurant chain in Japan.
If you’re floating around San Francisco then you can see PCP’s
images on display at Giant Robot from 26 August. To find out more
about PCP visit www.hypehopewonderland.com or become his
myspace.com chum by logging onto to
his MySpace address. THERE TO
FROM HERE,
/ www.myspace.com/pcpweb WHERE : He isu
his imagery as
ke describes
” and
“druggy
e world of
“dreamy”. In th
Ho pe Wo nderland,
Hype ble
anything’s possi

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 ROCK THE FROG: “This was
created in a very straightforward
09.06
way with no Magic Wand Tool or
any Selection Tools used”

FRAGILE BRIDGE OF UTOPIAN BABYLONIA: “I

like drawing deer and airplanes (or something related
to technology). I often see or hear about deer getting
hit by automobiles, so the deer loosely represent
something that’s taken over and beaten up by
technology. Aeroplanes and other technological icons
represent the opposite side, or enemy side. Sometimes
they fight against each other, and sometimes they
can coexist. I try to draw many aspects of relationship
between technology and nature or hype versus hope”

TH US: “The
COME RUN AWAY WI using the
ated
I OFTEN DREAM line drawings were cre
7, with a little
TO STAY AWAKE: Brush Tool in Photoshop
os3 Tablet”
Multiple layers help from a Wacom Intu
allow Heisuke to
draft up complex,
busy imagery

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 Inter
view

KEEPING Y
ou’d be forgiven for thinking Bert Monroy was a straight-up
photographer. His images are detailed snapshots of
predominantly urban scenes, created almost entirely within
Photoshop. “As a photo-realist painter, I have often been asked why
I don’t just take a photograph,” he says. “Good question, when you

IT REAL
consider my paintings look like photographs. Well, for one thing,
I’m not a photographer. To me, it is not the destination that is
important – it is the journey. It’s not the image; it’s not displaying it
afterwards or getting it printed. It is creating it. It’s the process of
getting to the end result that is important. That’s the most
rewarding part.”
Bert describes himself as a hyper-real artist. Taking photos of scenes
and then recreating them digitally, he has earned a place in the
Photoshop Hall of Fame for his art. “My stuff is a little different from a
Bert Monroy: author, artist and photo-realist, as everything is in focus. If you look closely you’ll notice

Photoshop legend. Spending

that even the tiny little screw in the corner will be completely in focus
with the dirt around it. In most cases I start by taking a photo because

up to 2,000 hours creating just my images can take so long I can’t just sit there.”
Yet although the starting point might be photographic, there is

one image, Monroy’s
masterpieces are some of the
finest Photoshop creations
you’re ever likely to see
nothing but digital painting in his images. “There are no photos in the
actual painting. Nothing is traced, nothing is brought in,” he stresses.
City slicker
Bert Monroy was born and raised in New York, explaining his obvious
love of the neon sign in his creations. “Twisted pieces of glass filled with
gas, there for the sole purpose of attracting attention. There is

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 Bert Monroy

‘SHOPPER SHOWSTOPPER: This was Bert’s latest and most

ambitious digital painting, of a Chicago scene, unveiled at Photoshop
World in Miami on March 22, 2006. It is a panorama of the Damen Station
on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority. Adobe Illustrator was
used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the
buildings in the Chicago skyline. The rest was created in Photoshop

something so urban about them. Being originally
from New York and being a city guy, the urban
landscape has always been my fascination. It
offers a lot more because of the fact it is man-
made. The dirt and the grim and the wear and
the tear are all stories. Nature is eternal but man-
made stuff is of the moment, you might say.”
Having given up the bright lights of the Big
Apple more than 13 years ago, Bert is now a
citizen of Berkeley, California. Whiling his days
away authoring books, teaching at San Francisco
State University or creating his hyper-realistic
artwork, his latest creation, Damen, has been one
that you could only describe as a labour of love.
Clocking in at over 2,000 hours of work, the mega
project has around 15,000 layers and is comprised
of close to 50 Photoshop files.
So just how does an artist keep motivated to
complete such a mammoth project? “That’s a
good question, especially for that piece. On
average my pieces take between 80 and 250
hours to complete, whereas this
piece took a lot more motivation.
A few times I almost dropped it
completely ‘cause I was just
getting bored with it. That is a
tremendous amount of time to
be spending on something. So, I
began by working on the
platform on the left side, then I
started work on the city, which
began getting tedious so I
switched to the orange
building just off-centre on the right.
When that started getting too involved I really
TRAINING UP: The front face of the train was
started losing it and the desire to start the next created in its own file. The reflections in the windows
painting kicked in. So I decided to knuckle down were added once the train was placed in position
within the overall image. The side of the train car was
and work on the right side on the station, and
created in a separate file and duplicating that file
that kind of anchored it. made it easy to add additional carriages. The
It gave it an overall dimension. That gave me duplicates required changing the reflections in the
windows, the accumulated grime and the car
the motivation to finish the piece. In the end it numbers to make each car appear different
was worth it. When I did my once-over –

BEING A CITY GUY, THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY FASCINATION
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 Inter
view

NIGHT LIFE: This 2005 creation shows Bert’s love of the

urban scene – packed full of neon lights and street wares, the
effects can only truly be appreciated close up. Visit
www.bertmonroy.com to see his images in their full glory

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 Bert Monroy
OPENING DOORS: One of Bert’s earliest paintings,
this was created in 1986 in MacPaint and shows what a
talent he had for the digital arts even then

LIGHT FANTASTIC: Created in 2002, the little

details take a while to spot. The angles and reflections
are painstakingly placed so that you wouldn’t know that
this wasn’t a photograph

MacPaint, and something clicked. This was it; this

when I flatten it and go section by section, inch
by inch, looking for discrepancies – at that point I
really got more motivated to put more details in.”
Canvas cowboy
Although Bert’s time is spent working digitally
now, it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, this
digital whiz was from a far more traditional
creative background.
“I started off at the high school of Art and
Design in New York, after that I went to the
School of Visual Arts where I was doing more
traditional painting because computers were
nowhere near the field then.
In 1984 I was working in an ad agency and my
partner, a real computer buff, said we were going
to get a computer. I warned him straight off that I
didn’t want to be sitting there all day entering
data, but he told me there was a new computer
coming out that I could do my layouts on. I went
down to the store to see this thing, which was a
Macintosh 128, started playing with it and using
was the future. I was in that store every day until
my Mac arrived. I was doing demos at the store
after a week ‘cause I’d mastered it already.”
From there Bert went on to experiment with
PixelPaint (he was even referred to within the
industry for a while as Mr PixelPaint!) before
switching over to Photoshop and Illustrator to
create his visions.
“I was working with Photoshop two years
before Adobe even knew it existed. So being an
early adopter of the technology, any time anyone
was bringing out anything to do with graphics it
would end up in my lab: ‘What do you think, how
should I improve this?’”
But the question on most people’s lips now is
surely, how do you create such detailed 3D
artwork in 2D software?
“Illustrator is pretty much the pencil-on-the-
canvas type thing. It’s a lot easier on RAM than
Photoshop and you can work with a larger
workspace. It gives me the flexibility to play
around with images, bend lines here and there,
and establish my perspective. Then that is

I WAS WORKING WITH brought into Photoshop and turned into

selections to do something with – to fill or to

PHOTOSHOP TWO YEARS BEFORE stroke or whatever is necessary in Photoshop.”

Bert also finds that it’s not just the high-end

ADOBE EVEN KNEW IT EXISTED programs that allow him to create such painterly
feeling pictures. His tools are a major factor

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 Inter
view

PIXEL PERFECT: Created in 1988 in PixelPaint:

“My inspiration is whatever happens to capture me. If
I’m walking down the street I’ll suddenly see the
painting. For commercial stuff, especially with the
Internet, sources of inspiration are everywhere. Like
today I have to create this baseball stadium so I’ve
been relying on a lot on Internet searches”
too. “I use a tablet. In fact I use a Cintiq, where you
draw direct on the screen. It’s gone full cycle back
to the way it used to be. I used to hold a brush
and look up at the canvas, then I went to the
computer and held that little bar of soap on the
Although there can be no argument that Bert has
reached the top of his game, he’s not content to
rest on his laurels and he’s always on the lookout
for a new challenge.
“I stay on top of the technology and constantly

IF YOU DO side. Next the tablet came out and I was back to
holding a pen, but it was on the side.
challenge myself. I’m always looking for
something I haven’t done before and I enjoy the

SOMETHING THAT The Cintiq has brought it back full cycle so that
we’re looking up at the canvas again, watching
learning process along the way. I’m not in
competition with anyone but myself.

YOU REALLY LOVE, your hand work over the canvas. Like the way I
was traditionally trained, but digital. It is a lot
If I was, I wouldn’t be out there training
thousands of people.”

YOUR LIFE FEELS easier to work this way.

It’s nice to look exactly where your hand is
FULFILLED moving, it allows for a lot more flexibility and
free-flowing drawing.”
Spreading the word
As well as holding workshops and seminars
teaching people his art, Bert has written a

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number of books, including co-authoring the first
ever book on Photoshop, The Official Adobe
Photoshop Handbook. However, this isn’t
something he particularly enjoys doing.
“I enjoy using them because they become
great training tools. Writing books is purely a
vehicle to help me teach but the actual writing of
the books I don’t enjoy at all – it’s a lot of work
creating all the visuals, writing and editing and
so on. They are a necessary way of
communicating my techniques and I do teach
quite a bit, which I enjoy!”
Currently teaching at San Francisco State
University, Bert understandably has many
students looking to him for help and advice on
024-029_APM21.indd 29
I’M ALWAYS
LOOKING FOR
SOMETHING I HAVEN’T
DONE BEFORE
their fledging Photoshop careers, hoping to
follow in his footsteps.
“My students all ask ‘Can you make a lot of
money doing this?’ and I tell them right off the
bat that the motivator shouldn’t be the money,
the motivator should be that this is what you
want to do. When you’re working this is where
you spend most of your life. If you do something
that you really love then your life feels very
fulfilled. So if you want to pursue this, do it not
because it has the potential to make you a lot of
money but because it has the potential to make
you feel satisfied, because it’s something that
you love, because it’s something that you want
to wake up the next day and can’t wait to get to
Bert Monroy
HOT WHEELS: “I consider
myself a hyper-realist artist. I
love to paint. I use the word
paint for lack of a better word.
My medium is actually light. I
have a passion for making
things happen on the screen.
Finding a new way of doing
something and finding a new
room in my imagination is
what I love about the work.”
From his website www.
bertmonroy.com
work.” His passion for his art is obvious through
the devotion he can give to just one project, but
what does the future hold for one of Photoshop’s
founding fathers?
“I do animation work and I’ve done a lot of
effects for movies. So from a commercial
standpoint I have a little more diversity. My
personal artwork is just 2D work, so I would at
some point like to get into 3D art. Now it’s getting
to the point where machines are powerful
enough and the programs are powerful enough
that the results can be really good. My only fear is
that once I get involved in a 3D program it’ll
probably take years to create just one image! But
for the future, I’d say that’s where I’d like to go.” 5
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 MASTERCLASS

Photos (c) Luqman at L’uzzine (www.pressbook.com/luzzine)

Retouching reality
Studio shots are rarely perfect, especially when it comes to fashion
and beauty where models and environments have to look flawless.
But perfection can be achieved with a little tweaking in Photoshop…
BY SIMON DANAHER

ON THE DISC
On this month’s disc you’ll find a link to
Simon’s site where you can download the
images for this tutorial. These images are
strictly for recreating this tutorial and are
for use in non-commercial work only.
Photos (c) Luqman at L’uzzine.
OUR EXPERT Simon Danaher
Simon is a digital artist and author with five books and many
magazine articles to his name. You can see more of his work and
get some free tutorials on 2D and 3D graphics at his website
www.simondanaher.com.
I
n this tutorial we’ll look at how to clean up and
improve a fashion and beauty shot using
Photoshop’s image-editing toolset. You may be
working with a beautiful model, but there will often
still be plenty of cleaning up to do if you want to
achieve a perfect look. Another thing is that if you’re
not the photographer, you may not be available for
the shoot itself. In these cases you can’t give advice
to help make your touch-up work easier later.
In this example a lot of work was done to clean up
the image, integrate composited elements, make skin
adjustments, remove clothing and more. A head
replacement was also done because the shot we
wanted to use had the butterfly glassware obscuring
the model’s body.
It’s a relatively simple task to composite two photos –
taking the head from one and the body from the other
– especially in a controlled environment like a studio. Far
trickier was removing the wooden table to create a
neutral, reflective surface. This involves a fair bit of work
to get the effect looking natural, but was essential in
order for the final shot to look clean.

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 Aiming for perfection
1 RAW essentials
The first step is importing the RAW image into
Photoshop. Photoshop’s RAW importer is an essential
tool for working with images because you have so
much control over the unprocessed, uncompressed
images from the camera. You also have control over the
image resolution, allowing us up to 6144x4085 pixels for
this particular photo – despite a little softening.
3 Clean up the fringing
The result is an image that seems
a little low in contrast and sparkle. That’s
fine, we want as much mid-range detail
as possible. Further editing is done in
the RAW panel to clean up things –
adjustment of the chromatic aberration
to remove some colour fringing and a
small amount of colour noise reduction.
Luminance smoothing is not used
because it softens details too much.
4 Three’s a crowd
Once the RAW editing is completed we can set to
work. Here are the three shots that we’ll use to create
the final composite image. At the top is the main body
shot, at the bottom right is the shot from which we’ll
take the head and left is the butterfly glassware shot.
There’s a lot of work ahead.
030-34_APM21_masterclass.indd 31
2 Maximum flexibility
For this shot we know that there’s going to be a
lot of work done, so this is reflected in how the RAW
settings are chosen. We’re not looking for the best final
image settings here or making any artistic choices –
instead we’re looking for the maximum flexibility for
editing the image later. So we don’t want clipped
shadows or highlights, though we do want some
neutral tones.
5 Clean your background
First, we clean up the background using the Clone
tool to remove any marks. Then a gradient layer is
applied using sampled colours from the backdrop in the
image. This is overlaid with reduced opacity over the
image so that some of the original background shows
through. We’ll duplicate the girl in a moment – all we’re
looking at here is the smoothness of the background.
Gradients and
banding
When specifying a gradient, be careful that you
don’t get colour banding. This occurs most often
on large gradients that don’t have a lot of
contrast. Photoshop only has 256 shades in each
colour channel to create your smooth gradient
from, and banding occurs when there aren’t
enough shades to go round. Certain colours are
worse than others, but enabling the Dither
option in the Gradient palette can help. The
easiest way to eliminate banding without
tweaking the colours is to add noise, although
you’ll often need a lot to eliminate banding
altogether – which may be unacceptable.
“WE’RE NOT
LOOKING FOR
THE BEST FINAL
IMAGE SETTINGS,
BUT FOR THE
MAXIMUM
FLEXIBILITY FOR
EDITING THE
IMAGE LATER”
6 The path for separation
To separate the girl from her background we use a
path. You could try extracting her using the various
selection tools or maybe a plug-in matte creation tool,
but it’s often a lot quicker and more accurate to simply
draw a path. A good clean path is worth a dozen dodgy
selections, and it’s resolution-independent too.
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 MASTERCLASS
7 Swapping heads
The new head is dropped in from the other
photo. It is simply marquee-selected, copied and pasted
into the main document, and then roughly aligned with
the background body. Because the two shots are so
similar it’s not a difficult task to get things looking good.
8 Hair today…
Path selection, as good as it is, can’t cope with the
hair, but we can create a separate selection for this and
add it to the path that’s converted to a selection. Here
the blue channel has been duplicated and edited to
give the most contrast to the fine strands of hair on the

blurs
The tricky part is removing the background. top of the head. This is desirable because it helps to
Gradient keep the shot looking natural and not too much like a
Photoshop comp.
Gradient blurs are a great way to create
photoreal effects such as depth of field or
attenuated diffused reflections. The traditional
way to do this is to create your gradient in a new
channel, load this as a selection and then apply
the Gaussian Blur filter multiple times using a
small value (say 2.0 pixels depending on image
size). However, Photoshop CS features a Lens
Blur filter, which can be used to produce a
graduated blur using a channel as a control, and
can do so in a single pass. You also get the
option of applying features such as highlight

9 10
bloom and noise.
Mask painting
The path is loaded as a selection and saved as a
channel. Then the edited blue channel is loaded as a
selection and used as a mask through which the hair
detail can be painted, using a large brush, into the saved
path channel. Although it’s a little scrappy, the hairs are
so fine and low enough in contrast to be unnoticeable.
Hair detail retained
The new girl mask is loaded as a selection and
is applied to a duplicate of the main image as a layer
mask. This is placed above the gradient layer so that
she’s no longer obscured by it. As you can see, with the
mask applied the fine hair detail remains intact against
the smoother background, preventing her looking like a
crude cut-out.

“PATH
SELECTION 11 Aligning the shoulder
12 Skin and bones

CAN’T COPE The head is attached to the body by

blending using the layer masks where possible, such as
The back has to be retouched to remove her
top and to make some subtle skin and bone

WITH THE HAIR, in the hair area. The shoulder is a little more difficult and adjustments. Cloning is one way to do this, but a simpler

BUT WE CAN
requires cutting and pasting a small section of the chin/ approach is to just paint out the details with a brush, like
shoulder area, rotating it to align the shoulder and then traditional ‘airbrushing’. Skin tones are sampled from her

CREATE A
blending using a layer mask. back, and using a soft brush the unnecessary details are
then painted over. This is done in a new layer to keep

SEPARATE
things editable.

SECTION FOR
THIS AND ADD
IT TO THE PATH
THAT’S
CONVERTED”
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 “WHEN THE SHADING IS TURNED OFF, THE RESULT
IS UNNATURAL AND FAKE-LOOKING”
13 14
Boob job
15
To remove the rest of the top involves a bit
more work. To begin with, we select and copy/paste a
portion of her shoulder and arm to a new layer to serve
as the new skin. This helps because there’s already some
shading and curvature to the skin from this area that
aids in the reconstruction.
Similar shading
Shading is painted in using colours sampled
from other parts of the image where there are similar
shadow tones. Getting the right shadow darkness can
be tricky, since the shadows vary at different locations.
Applying the paint layer in Multiply mode allows you to
adjust the opacity to get the best balance.
The right FXs
Integration is not quite right, but that can be
improved with a little layer effects shading. The Bevel
and Emboss section is used to add a small highlight to
the leading edge of the skin area, while the Inner
Shadow option provides further darkening nearer the
elbow. Linear Burn is used to keep the shadow area
the correct colour.

16 Butterfly babe
The butterfly is added next but is almost a
project in itself. Photoshop’s Layer Sets help a lot when
organising large composite documents like this. Once
again a path was used to cut out the butterfly from its
background – easier this time, as there’s a hard edge all
17 Flip it
Some reconstruction is needed to fold the
wings, otherwise the glassware will obscure the girl too
much. The butterfly layer is duplicated, flipped, skewed
and rotated to get the desired perspective, as if the wing
was folded over. The unwanted sections of both wing

the way around. It’s dropped into the main document.
grain
layers are masked out using masks applied to their
respective layers.
Film
Most cameras will generate some grain whether
they are film cameras or digital. When
compositing non-photographic elements (such
as 3D-rendered objects) or when replacing
backgrounds, be careful not to have too much of
an obvious difference between the grain in
these sections. You can easily add it back
though. Simply create a new layer, fill it will 50%
grey and apply in Overlay mode. Apply the Noise
filter to this layer, then blur it slightly, just
enough to match the grain in the photograph.
You may have to repeat this once or twice to get
the right match.

18 Get real
Almost invisible
shading is applied to the edges
of the butterfly. Although barely
perceptible when active, when
the shading is turned off the
result is unnatural and fake-
looking. The shading consists of
a smooth dark line inset from
the edge of the cut wing, as
well as a lightening as if
reflected from the girl’s back. It
helps to give the cut edge
some dimension.

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 MASTERCLASS
19 Get consistent
The other shots in the series this was created
for (six in total) all have a silver sheet on the table which,
although cleaned up, is kept in the final images. In order
to keep all the shots in the story consistent we need to
replicate the effect in the butterfly image. One of the
other shots is opened so that we can copy a small
portion of the reflective board to use under the girl.
21 Ripple and reflect
The girl layer is duplicated and flipped
vertically to make the reflection. It’s moved below the
main girl layer and set to Overlay mode. This is a good
blending mode for subtle reflections such as this. The
opacity is reduced and then the layer is distorted a little
using the Ripple filter, because the board is not meant to
be a perfectly flat mirror.
24 Back it up
More shadow is applied next, this time to the
girl’s back as if cast from the butterfly wings. Again, this
is painted in on a new layer using a soft brush and
sampling colours from shadow areas in the image (again
it’s very subtle). Linear Burn is used as the blending
mode because this darkens the skin tones while also
keeping the colours in shadows look natural.
34
Advanced Photoshop
030-34_APM21_masterclass.indd 34
20 Transform your image
A small section of the board is copied and
pasted into the main document. Sections are duplicated
and moved to increase the surface area, then stretched
across the whole width using the Free Transform
command. This is just to capture some of the texture of
the board. The reflection and other surface detail will
have to be recreated by hand.
22 Blur her
To make the reflection accurate it needs to
be blurred, but not uniformly. Using a gradient mask, the
blurring can be varied so that the blur is stronger the
further the reflection is from the girl. The gradient
channel can be loaded as a selection and then the
reflection layer blurred multiple times using small values
of Gaussian Blur.
25 Lengthen the legs
Lastly, it was felt that from this angle her legs
looked a little short compared with her body. To fix this
a flattened duplicate of the main document was
created. This allowed us to extend the legs and the
reflection in one go. The legs were copied from the top
of the thigh down where the skirt is, making the join
easier to disguise. We’ve lowered the opacity so you can
see how much the legs were lengthened.
Camera
RAW
Photoshop CS ships with the Camera RAW plug-
in, accessible when Photoshop identifies a RAW
image via its Open dialog or Adobe Bridge. Bridge
offers greater integration of RAW processing,
since you can apply RAW adjustment settings to
similar images in a set without having to open
them. The adjustments are visible in thumbnail
view and in the large preview panel in the Bridge
window. The latest version of Photoshop RAW,
3.4, can be downloaded from www.adobe.com.
23 Skirt the shadow
Along with the reflection there should be
some shadow too, since the surface is not entirely
reflective (ie, it reflects light diffusely). This is applied
using a Levels Adjustment layer and layer mask to
control where the shadow appears. Using a soft brush,
the shadow can be painted in the desired locations
under the skirt and feet.
26 And finally…
The background was adjusted with a radial
gradient to add some vignetting to the edges and bring
the focus more strongly on the girl. A little noise was
then added and blurred to match the film grain. This
helped blend the hair area and prevent the background
looking too false and clean compared to the subject. 5
19/7/06 14:59:16
 Feature

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036-041_APM21_Money.indd 36 27/7/06 16:39:23

 MAKING MONEY WITH PHOTOSHOP
Making money with
Photoshop Is your copy of Photoshop just sitting there without earning its
keep? Never fear. We explore the many ways in which Adobe’s
seminal application can be used to generate extra income
BY MARK JAMES
I
t’s hard to believe that Photoshop, arguably the
most famous computer application of all time,
almost never got released. It began life first as a
program called ‘Display’ and then ‘ImagePro’,
written in the mid-Eighties by Thomas Knoll with
help from his brother John, an employee at
Industrial Light And Magic. None of the publishers
they approached showed any interest at all in
the program, and in the end it fell to a scanner
manufacturer to release the first version of
‘Photoshop’ on an unsuspecting world, giving
away around two hundred copies to purchasers
of its hardware.
Then Adobe entered the picture, and in February of
1990 Photoshop 1.0 was released. Since then, successive
versions have transformed the computer’s role into an
artist’s tool. From visual effects for multi-million dollar
blockbusters through to home users removing a little
red eye from their holiday snaps, Photoshop is owned
and used by millions. What’s more, it’s also helped
036-041_APM21_Money.indd 37
generate revenue in the millions – and we’re not just
talking about Adobe’s sales figures.
The beauty of Photoshop is, of course, its versatility.
Over the last 16 years the feature-set has expanded to
the point where the program has a role in just about
every possible digital art and animation process
imaginable. Best of all, that versatility also opens up
countless commercial possibilities for the market-savvy
user searching for ways to harness their artistic skills.
Whether looking to make a living or earn a little extra
cash, Photoshop is the ideal tool for the job.
Illustration and graphic design are the most obvious
commercial applications for Photoshop, of course.
Whether working as part of a team in a studio, setting up
a one-man business or dabbling with a bit of freelance,
there are myriads of opportunities for designers with an
affinity for creating marketable visuals for ads, product
designs and more. But beyond these obvious and
visible Photoshop livings, there are countless other
money-making avenues worth exploring.
Illustration by Magictorch
37
Advanced Photoshop
27/7/06 16:39:52
 Feature
WHEN CHOOSING WHERE TO APPLY
YOUR SKILLS, CONSIDER HOW MANY
OTHER DESIGNERS YOU’LL BE
COMPETING AGAINST AND HOW LARGE
THE MARKET IS LIKELY TO BE
SIMPLE IS BEST
EXPLODING DOG: When creating a site to showcase
your work, add something that’ll keep people coming
back and increase traffic. For inspiration check out
Exploding Dog (www.explodingdog.com). Creator
Sam Brown posts a new image almost every day
ADOBE CERTIFICATION
Adobe is now rightly famed for its certification
system, which enables keen Photoshop users to
gain additional training and professional
credentials. While just about any Photoshop user
is likely to benefit from the additional experience
38
Advanced Photoshop
036-041_APM21_Money.indd 38
Let’s start with the Internet,
unquestionably the ideal
place for entrepreneurs to
network, advertise and sell their wares, all without the
need for expensive investment. The trick is to
showcase your skills while also offering an extra
incentive for people to visit. Think hard about your
target market – career, age, gender, disposable
income, etc. Whether you’re trying to sell your design
skills or other Photoshop-related knowledge to
individuals, companies, even other Photoshop users,
will determine just what value-added extras you
should be offering.
You could choose to start up your own
Photoshop-related blog, for example, regaling the
many millions of armchair Photoshop Elements
owners with insider tips. Or you could launch a
full-blown website where visitor-friendly goodies such
as reviews, news snippets and downloads help raise
its profile. Don’t know how to design a good site? No
problem. Simply find a web designer who’s willing to
trade skills, coding your site in return for some of your
Photoshop design work.
To ensure your web presence doesn’t go unnoticed,
it pays to gain an understanding of how to get listed
and training it offers, whether it makes financial
sense to take this extra step depends not only on
how serious you are about making money from
Photoshop work, but also the nature of that work.
If you’re selling merchandise to consumers it
will be of little value, but if you’re planning on
offering logo or template design services to
businesses then being able to flash the Adobe
Certified Expert qualification will help you get
noticed, instantly gain the confidence of potential
clients and stand out from the crowd.
Needless to say, it really comes into its own if
you’re hoping to teach others your skills. Some
training centres won’t even consider letting you
loose on a classroom without ACE or ACP (Adobe
Certified Professional) accreditation. You can train
for certification either by buying a self-paced
course from Adobe or finding an instructor-led
class. For further details log onto the site at
www.adobe.com/support/certification/ace.html
by search engines
http://searchengine
(http://searchengine
watch.com)) as well as
doing a bit of online
networking with other
Photoshop professionals and people working in
related areas. Become an active part of the online
community by posting at online forums such as www.
photoshopforums.com, www.advancedphotoshop.
co.uk/forum or www.purephotoshop.net – as well as
more general arts-based ones like www.cgsociety.
org – and you’ll be amazed how your reputation will
grow. And with improved stature comes a greatly
increased chance of attracting paying customers,
whatever type of Photoshop service you’re selling.
Web work
When choosing where to apply your skills, consider
how many other designers you’ll be competing
against and how large the market is likely to be.
Perhaps the most obvious online market is for
Internet-related design skills. The Internet is awash
with companies and individuals looking to attract an
audience for online services or personal musings, and
for that they require a strong logo, striking visuals and
an easy-to-navigate user interface.
While those who can combine Photoshop
knowledge with HTML, Flash and similar skills are well
placed to provide a full web design service, remember
that there’s also a market for bespoke items such as
individual company logos, front-page artwork, page
templates or button designs. Try designing logos for
friends and colleagues, or create a portfolio using
sample designs, get them up on your website and
start contacting potential clients. Once you’ve got a
couple of successful commissions under your belt,
you’ll be surprised how quickly word of mouth can
bring in new clients.
For those searching for a more modest entry into
the world of web design, it’s also worth looking to the
world of the blogger. Blogging has turned into a
genuine online phenomenon over the last couple of
years, with seemingly every web user keen to
document their thoughts and experiences, and then
let the rest of the web community read all about it.
And as more and more blogs vie for attention, so
bloggers increasingly look for ways to give their own
site a unique visual angle.
27/7/06 16:42:31
 Making money with Photoshop

Case Study: Publishing Martin Evening

In addition to a successful career as a photographer, Martin Evening

is also author of Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers. Evening
says his journey to authorship began when he first joined various
mailing lists and found he was able to offer Photoshop advice to
other users. “I was also involved in setting up meetings for the digital
imaging group and writing various articles for magazines,” he recalls.
“It was the culmination of all this work that led me to think about
writing a book about Photoshop.”
Evening says his membership of the Photoshop beta-testing team
also proved useful. “It wasn’t easy to get an invite to join, but by
building contacts with Adobe and learning how to provide the
e’s book
LD: Graham Rawl
WOMAN’S WOR abou t Photoshop, but
Photoshop team with useful information, I’ve built up a good
rld is not
Woman’s Wo Every word working relationship.”
with the program.
was put together news pa pers/mags and Now Evenings’ role as author has led to further Photoshop-related commercial work, in the form of
m old
was scanned in fro www. grah am rawle.com Pixel Genius: “That came about through friendship between myself, Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, Andrew
laid out on-screen:
Rodney, Mike Skurski and Seth Resnick. Since agreeing to meet up once or twice a year, our small
company has now produced a series of automated plug-ins for Photoshop.”
Chong Xue Ling, aka XueZi (http://glossified.net/),
www.martinevening.com
is a Singapore-based Photoshop user who has carved
www.photoshopforphotographers.com PIXEL GENIUS: Ma
herself a niche creating blogskins. “I started out using rtin Evening divide
www.pixelgenius.com between photogr s his time
aphic
custom-made skins found on www.blogskins.com, in studio Pixel Geniu work, membership of plug-
but soon got sick of using the same stuff as everyone s, and authorship
such as Adobe Ph of books
otoshop CS2 For Ph
else,” she explains. “Soon I was editing and otographers
personalising them, and so began reading tutorials
and tips and developing a style of my own.”
XueZi, who treats blogskin design as a part-time
sideline, admits that the availability of so many free
ready-made designs can make it difficult for designers
to charge for a unique service. “You need to offer
something more. I custom make blogskins according
to what my clients want, giving them the opportunity
to customise absolutely everything, from colours and
pictures to styles and themes. If you treat the clients
well they’ll keep coming back.”
She also emphasises the need to educate potential
clients, highlighting the fact that truly creative
blogskin design is something worth paying for. “Get
the customer to understand that a large amount of
effort and inspiration is needed to design a template.
It can take hours, with constant changes to the design,
just to create one single skin.”

Sideline success
In a similar vein, but this time catering for other
Photoshop users, why not try your hand at brush set
design? Again there are quite a few free ones out
there, but if you’ve got the skills to create truly
desirable designs then it’s perfectly feasible to make
money by selling them as downloads or on CD. Check
out David Seipp’s http://photoshopbrushes.com/
to see an example of good, simple Photoshop
brush marketing.
But why limit yourself to designing for other
professionals? The Internet is arguably even more
effective when selling direct to the public. Open an
online shop and you’ve got a globally accessible,

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 Feature

OPEN AN ONLINE SHOP AND YOU’VE then it’s really taken off and become a pretty valuable
source of supplementary income.”

GOT A GLOBALLY ACCESSIBLE, OPEN- Prints, postcards and stickers are particularly easy
for the home Photoshop designer to create. But don’t

ALL-HOURS STORE WITH A POTENTIAL be put off by the idea of selling more labour-intensive
merchandise such as mugs, wallets or clothing. There

CUSTOMER BASE IN THE MILLIONS
are easiest. Create
TADO TS: T-shirts inting company
e a T-shir t pr
design, us
d run, then adverti
to turn out a limite s from Tado
n come
online. This desig
open-all-hours store with a potential customer base
in the millions. There are already a good number of
design teams and even solo artists who have
harnessed the power of the web to sell art-related
items direct to punters. Take a look at the website of
design duo Tado (www.tado.co.uk) to see how
simple an online shop can be, and what sort of
art-related goodies are favoured by successful
e-selling artists. Tado’s success in this field is even
more impressive given that it was never conceived
as a serious business concern. “It was originally
supposed to be just a bit of fun to help us
de-clutter the studio,” says Mike at Tado. “But since
BRUSH STROKE
S: Ta
sell creations as do lented designers can
wn
CDs for customers. loads or by burning
Ge
Seipp’s http://phot t inspired by David
oshopbrushes.co
m/
a
se
are many companies out there (again, easy to find on
the web) which can run up these sort of items using
your custom designs, while T-shirts can even be
bought plain and printed up yourself if you really
want to take a DIY approach.
Or at the other end of the scale, websites such as
Café Press (www.cafepress.com) simplify the whole
merchandising process. For a fee they’ll create an
online store for you, handle all aspects of selling, and
even automate the entire product creation process,
enabling anybody to create hats, clothing, prints,
calendars, toys, mugs and more. Dedicated websites
also exist for the sale of digital art and prints. Some,
like www.4wall.co.uk, offer work from a very select
range of artists, but others such as UKPortfolios
(www.ukportfolios.com) work on more of an open
house basis. And of course, stock image libraries are
always looking for fresh, high quality material.
Image libraries do focus more on photographic
imagery, but even here Photoshop can prove
invaluable. Combine good snapping skills with strong
retouching work, and you’ve got a great chance of
finding a market for your photographic
imagery. It’s also possible to blend digital
design and photography even more overtly,
creating truly striking and highly marketable
collage work. Just a few years ago such imagery
was considered strange, but it’s now highly
prized by executives in the worlds of
advertising, packaging and publishing. Check
out the book Adobe Photoshop CS2 for
Photographers: A Professional Image Editor’s Guide
to the Creative Use of Photoshop for the Macintosh
and PC (Paperback). Written by Martin Evening

Case Study: Tutoring Jack Casement

Having bought his first copy of Photoshop in 1994,

only to discover that decent tuition wasn’t easily
available, Jack Casement set about applying his own
knowledge to help newcomers, initially offering
Photoshop lectures to camera clubs.
“I organised small workshops in my home office.
Then eight years ago I was approached by Bracknell
& Wokingham college, which was looking to start
Photoshop courses.” He progressed to teaching
digital imaging for a City & Guilds qualification.
Casement eventually moved away but soon found
himself teaching Photoshop once again, this time for
BEFORE AND AFTER: Retouching work by Jack Casement shows how effective photographic
Light & Land Wildlife Photographic Holidays. manipulation can be. Casement has been showing photographers how to get the most from Photoshop
Find out more at www.lightandland.co.uk. for almost a decade – teaching courses in colleges, at home workshops and for private businesses

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 Making money with Photoshop
MARKETING MERCHANDISE: Designing art
for merchandise is a great way to make extra
cash. Jon Burgerman’s distinctive work can be
found on prints, wallets, books, etc at his store
and published by Focal Press, it provides an expert
guide to the world of image retouching.
Not that retouching work has to be limited to
self-shot photos. Develop these skills sufficiently
and it’s possible to earn a substantial amount
providing a service for professional photographers,
many of whom still don’t fully appreciate the ins and
outs of this craft, or else prefer to focus on the
image-taking and let another expert handle the
post-production work.
Teaching trick
Perhaps the most inspiring way to make money using
Photoshop is not to use it to create designs that you
can market, but to actually sell your knowledge. From
ad-hoc private lessons and sessions at local Internet
cafés, through to training at established creative
training centres and colleges, there are a myriad of
tutoring opportunities for those with a real
understanding of the program.
When it comes to college lecturing, Photoshop
teaching expert Jack Casement notes that tutors are
required to take a 7307 teaching course. But as these
classes are often aimed at high-end Photoshop users
(and command fees to suit), the extra effort can be
well worth it. And remember, it’s not just budding
digital artists who can benefit from your knowledge.
Casement highlights the suitability of camera clubs for
providing Photoshop tuition. “At least 75 per cent of
the audience are using digital imaging now, and in
PERHAPS THE MOST INSPIRING WAY
TO MAKE MONEY USING PHOTOSHOP IS
TO SELL YOUR KNOWLEDGE
036-041_APM21_Money.indd 41
Case Study: Merchandising
Naature Clothing
Naature Clothing was founded by designers George Smith (aka
Precursor) and Jason Krieger, self-confessed fans of cool T-shirts who
decided to try designing their own in Photoshop. “To our surprise,
the first batch of designs we did was a major success, with only a few
now remaining in stock,” says
Smith. “The whole web-based
T-shirt business has really taken
off in the last couple of years
and is still up for grabs, but to
get into the game you need to
make sure you have some sort
of niche. Our whole goal to
stand out from the crowd
was to offer fresh and
different designs with a BACK TO NAATUR
E: Five
heavy abstract influence. new designs are to
launched in Augu be
Our personal artwork has st. Guest
designers include
gained many followers Justin
Maller of depthCO
over the years, so most of RE.com
and John Leigh of
Karborn.
our customers were com – this design
is by Leigh
already there – we just
needed to tap into them.”
Smith suggests designers simply approach local T-shirt or
printing shops for a cost effective screen-printing service.
“Watch out for setup fees and minimum quantities though.
TI ON : Na atu re Make sure you know what you’re getting into,” he advises.
LIMITED AC
r Jason
Clothing co-founde op “Once you build up enough capital, you could invest that into a
sh
Krieger used Photo ition screen printer and have complete control over the process and
d ed
to create this limite save a lot of money in the long run.”
T-shirt design
Find out more at http://clothing.naature.com.
fact many camera clubs now run Photoshop teaching regularly contribute to this very magazine are
evenings for beginners.” equally renowned for their contributions to the
Not that teaching always involves dealing with a online community. For example, in addition to
class of students. The very finest Photoshop experts writing for Advanced Photoshop magazine and
might also consider whether they have the necessary enjoying a successful career as a digital artist, Sam
writing chops to get their hints, tips and artistic Gilbey (www.personalspaceinvaders.co.uk) is a
guidance published. The ultimate aim of many is to get regular at Pixelsurgeon (www.pixelsurgeon.com).
into print, either following in the footsteps of experts “I’ve always enjoyed writing, and my Visual Arts
such as Martin Evening by authoring their own book, or degree required lots of it, so it was a natural thing for
by writing for magazines. But the easiest place to build me to start doing tutorials once I graduated and
6 up tutorial writing skills is definitely online. became a professional graphic designer and
Again, forums or your own home page are ideal illustrator,” he explains.
places to offer advice and put together tips and For Gilbey, one of the enjoyable side effects of
tutorials while simultaneously raising your profile. writing tutorials is that it prompts him to analyse
In fact, several of the Photoshop experts who his own techniques. “You can’t help but end up
with a better understanding of your own strengths
and weaknesses, and as such you’re bound to
improve your own skills as well as (hopefully!) helping
others. Ultimately it’s just a sideline, but I see it as a
valuable one.”
A healthier approach to the whole subject of making
money using Photoshop you’re unlikely to find. 5
41
Advanced Photoshop
27/7/06 16:51:00
 MASTERCLASS
Ink effects Something smells fishy. Create fantasy still life shots
by combining several source pictures BY EMMA CAKE
ON THE DISC
Make your own inky still life images using a selection of free ink
photographs supplied on this month’s disc, courtesy of
Shutterstock and iStockPhoto. Get snapping to create your other
source imagery. Alternatively, if you want to create this tutorial in
full you can download the fish bowl (file number ‘797211’) and the
goldfish (file number ‘520198’) from www.istockphoto.com.
42
Advanced Photoshop
042-047_APM21.indd 42
I
n the world of Photoshop anything’s possible:
pigs can fly, money can grow on trees and even
the most heathen of souls can walk on water.
The key to creating a great constructed piece of art is
the use of flexible source imagery.
If your individual elements are stunning of their own
accord then, with some careful mastering in Photoshop,
you can make a faux still life shot that requires a second
glance. On this month’s cover disc there are a generous
batch of ink stock images courtesy of www.
shutterstock.com and www.istockphoto.com. Over
the following pages one of these ink samples will be
used to create a still life with a difference. Using one of
the ink images as a basis we’ll be looking at a number of
techniques that will enable us to create a convincing
composition. Layer modes are an absolute must, as are a
number of blending techniques and opaque brushes.
You’ll also discover the benefits of lesser-used tools, such
as the Blur and Smudge. You can download the
elements from iStockPhoto to use with your free ink
images but we suggest making your own original ink art
using your images as a resource. There’s no limit to the
fun you can have with this!
OUR EXPERT Emma Cake
With weeks spent longing for some pets and a
biOrb fish bowl, these scaly characters were the
most obvious choice to appear magically out of
Emma’s ink art.
24/7/06 11:54:53
 Add ink effects to source images
1 The bigger picture
Here’s a handy way to make a larger canvas using
an original source image as a basis. We downloaded file
number ‘797211’ from www.istockphoto.com. Using
the Crop tool, create a marquee around the canvas and
then expand the top, bottom and right-hand side of
the selection. The new work area will need to be able to
fit in another copy of the bowl to the right-hand side
and reflections.
3 Goodbye, fish
Zoom into the goldfish in the
left-hand bowl and use the Clone
Stamp tool to carefully erase it out of
the bowl leaving just the source image
that we need. This will work best with
a Soft Round Airbush measuring 24
pixels. When you have got rid of the
goldfish go over the area with the
Healing Brush tool to make sure that
the blends are accurate and don’t
look messy.
4 Colour the ink
Pick an ink image from this month’s cover disc.
We’ve chosen one where the ink has spread out to give
us more scope to manipulate. Add another layer on top
of this and fill it with a bright orange using the Paint
Bucket tool. Then, alter the Layer Mode to Color. Open
up the Levels command and make tweaks with the
slider to brighten the orange and get rid of the dull
background. You might find it helps if you Desaturate
the lower Background layer.
042-047_APM21.indd 43
2 Another bowl
Create a selection around the bowl and press
Apple/Ctrl+C followed by Apple/Ctrl+V to add another
bowl to the image on a separate layer. Display your
ruler guides by pressing Apple/Ctrl+R and drag a line
along the bottom of the bowls to make sure that they
line up correctly.
5
Add the ink
Select and copy the newly coloured ink and go
back to your main canvas. Paste this selection onto a
new layer and the use the shortcut Apple/Ctrl+T to
transform the ink and move it to cover the left-hand
bowl. You will need to reduce the scale to around 60%.
Alter the Layer Mode to Darken so the ink blends into
the water in the bowl and there are no nasty white
elements to the image.
“THE KEY TO
CREATING A
GREAT PIECE OF
ART IS THE USE
OF FLEXIBLE
SOURCE IMAGES”
Your own
photography
If you’re feeling a little saucy and fancy
scrapping the images on the disc and creating
your own source files, then here are a few
photographic tips:
1. If you’re pouring ink into a container or
bowl then make sure you have an assistant
handy. It will be a nightmare if you have to do
everything yourself.
2. Use a suitable backdrop, such as a white
sheet, so that the colours that are captured are
vibrant and clear.
3. A camera with manual settings is essential to
take the shot. For ease, set your camera to
Program mode and take the shutter speed right
down. Your aperture will need to open up (a
smaller F-stop number) to avoid your image
being underexposed.
4. Natural light will be best for illumination if
you’re unable to take your image in a studio
setting. However, if you need fluorescent
lighting then make sure you alter the white
balance on your camera.
5. Keep an eye out for nasty reflections. Your
shot won’t look very good if you’ve captured a
messy bathroom in the reflection.
43
Advanced Photoshop
24/7/06 11:55:20
 MASTERCLASS
6 Tidy it up
Use the Eraser tool to tidy
up the ink. Make sure that the
7 On reflection
The bowl won’t look realistic unless there are a
few reflections. Do this by selecting the ink, copying it
top of the ink is level with the and then pasting it. You can flip the ink by pressing
water and get rid of the parts Apple/Ctrl+T and then altering the height in the upper
that cover the curved sides of toolbar to -100%. Use the Eraser tool to get rid of every
the bowl (in theory you part of this ink reflection apart from the area around the
wouldn’t see this). Reduce the base of the bowl. Lower the opacity of this level to
risk of the ink looking too around 16%.
regimented by erasing out
parts of the ink so it doesn’t fill
the entire water line.

8 On the side
Where the ink is nearly touching the right side of
the bowl duplicate this part and transform to a width of
-100%. Drag the corner of the transform box to rotate
this slightly clockwise. Then, with the Eraser tool, carry
out the same fading procedure as in the previous step.
Open up the Liquify command and use the Bloat tool to
distort this slightly to match the curvature of the bowl.
9 A fishy tale
We located a fantastic image that included plenty
of goldfish in different positions, facing different
directions. You can locate this by logging onto
www.istockphoto.com and typing in the file number
‘520198’. Select one of the fish (thinking carefully how
well it could be incorporated into the ink) and then
paste this onto a separate layer in your main artwork.
You may find that you need to use the Eraser tool to get
rid of stray fins from neighbouring fish.
10 Blending in
Now concentrate on blending the fish into
the ink. Not only should you experiment with position
by using the Transform tool but work on the colours so
that the fish matches the tone and shading of the ink as
close as you can. Great tools for doing this include the
Color Balance command, Levels and Curves. Here, we’ve
adjusted the Color Balance to a setting of Shadows: +75,
+3, 0, Midtones: +35, -13, -1 and Highlights: +13, -4, +25.

11 Smudge
and Burn
Colour alone isn’t enough to
make the fish blend into the
ink. Select the Clone Stamp

“COLOUR
tool from the Colors palette
and duplicate parts of the ink

ALONE ISN’T pattern using a Soft Round

airbrush with an opacity of

ENOUGH TO around 80%. The Smudge

tool can be used to work

MAKE THE these areas into the fish. Once

you’ve done this, select the

FISH BLEND Burn tool from the Tools

palette and darken patches of

INTO INK” your little pet. Don’t go

overboard though!

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Advanced Photoshop

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 12 Blur it
At the moment the fish looks too sharp 13 A shoal of fish
Open up the fish image again and pick “REMEMBER
compared to the ink. You can fix this by applying a
Gaussian Blur. Select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Alter the
another unsuspecting character. Remember, you can
experiment as much as you like with rotation, scale and YOU CAN
slider amount to 0.4 pixels. Make sure you check the
Preview button so you can see the effect before
flipping. You shouldn’t need to erase any of the white
areas around the fish as long as you alter the Layer Mode EXPERIMENT
committing to the blur. to Darken. For a more convincing blend select the
original ink layer and use the Eraser tool with a low AS MUCH AS
Opacity to knock this back a little.
YOU LIKE
WITH ROTATION,
SCALE
AND FLIPPING”

14 Get organised
It’s very important to make sure you
keep organised with your layers. Every time you add a
fish to the bowl create a new layer for it. That way, if you
need to tweak colours when you take a step back near
the end you can jump straight to the correct layer.
Colours can also be adjusted using the Hue/Saturation/
Lightness command, although you will need to
Overlay the effect with the Burn tool so it blends into
the ink inconspicuously.

15 Unusual angles
We want to keep the fish in the ink bowl down to three as it will be more successful if it’s not too over
worked. For the final addition we’ve chosen a fish that’s swimming forwards, just so it doesn’t look too regimented.
You can really experiment with this one by tucking it into the ink.

16 Colour overlay
If you’re having
trouble getting the blend right,
you can sample from the ink
layer by selecting a square with
the Rectangular Marquee tool.
Paste this into a new layer and set Colour
as Overlay. This doesn’t blend the
light blue areas as well, so you
will need to use the Eraser tool
calibration
with a Soft Round Airbrush to get Your image could look perfect on screen but if
rid of the faint orange box. your monitor isn’t calibrated, those gorgeous
aqua blues may turn out looking like a muddy
swamp. We suggest getting your hands on a
Pantone Huey to make sure those pixels are
perfect. Log onto www.colourconfidence.com
to shop for one.

45
Advanced Photoshop

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 MASTERCLASS
18 Blur to blend
With the original ink layer selected pick out
the Smudge tool in the Tools palette (this may be

17
hidden underneath the Blur tool). Adjust the size of the
That’s magic brush using the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keys and carefully pull areas of
Don’t underestimate the the ink so they blend well into the fish. Erase parts with a
benefits of using the Magic Wand. low-opacity brush if it looks out of place.
Although it has a reputation for
being one of the more primitive
selection tools it will come in handy
for tricky parts such as fish fin. To
make sure that the wand doesn’t
select too much, lower the
tolerance of the wand right down
to 1px. Then click and Shift-click to
add more areas to your selection.
When you’re happy, erase this part
of the Overlay layer.

“DON’T UNDER- 19 Correct depth

Zoom out and take a good look at the work 20 Group together
The artwork is in danger of getting a little

ESTIMATE THE you’ve done already. Do any of the fish look a little out of
place? You can fix this by applying more Gaussian Blur.
confusing with so many different layers and it will help
to be able to distinguish between the left bowl and the

BENEFITS OF Don’t go over the setting of 0.5 pixels for any of the fish
you’ve added or this will just look very out of focus.
right. Select ‘Create a new group’ in the Layers palette
and drag all of the layers you have added to the left

USING THE hand bowl into this folder, leaving the original

MAGIC WAND”
Background layer where it is.

Ink
inspiration
If you want some inspirational ideas for how
you can use the ink images supplied on this
month’s cover disc, then check out the
gorgeous work of Lewis Mulatero (www.
lewismulatero.com). The photographer of the
recent Britvic Robinson’s squash images shows
you that it’s possible to make even the most
complex of subjects out of an inky image.
21 Adjustment
layer
At the moment all of the ink
artwork looks a little bit too
red. Eventually, we want the
inky fish and the goldfish
we’re going to place in the
right-hand bowl to have
similar colour tones. With the
new group folder selected
add a Hue/Saturation
Adjustment layer and adjust
the Hue to +13, the Saturation
to +6 and the Lightness to -1.

46
Advanced Photoshop

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 22 Another new group
Add another group layer to the palette and
call this ‘Right Bowl Art’. Drag this existing ‘Right Bowl’
layer into this group folder. We’re going to add a few
more fish to keep the current one company in the right
hand bowl and balance out the artwork more.
23 Four’s a crowd
Add three more fish to the right bowl, using
the same techniques as before. Changing each of these
new layers to Darken mode should mean that they
blend well into the bowl. Don’t forget you can reduce
the scale and rotate each addition to make sure the
Blending
methods
composition is accurate.

In this tutorial we’ve made good use of the Blur

and Smudge tools but only skimmed over the
surface of the Liquify filter. It’s a bit of a tricky
one to master, but not only can you use it to
blend additional images over your ink shots, it’s
perfect for manipulating your ink swirls to make
them more exciting. The best tools to use within
the Liquify filter are the Forward Warp tool and
the Twirl Clockwise tool (if you hold down the Alt
key you can alter this to a Twirl Anti Clockwise
Tool). Be warned however – the Liquify Filter
struggles under low memory.

24 Level
it up
When you’re happy with
the composition of your
image, save a PSD version
just in case things go

“WE’VE ONLY
wrong later and flatten
the layers. Open up the
Levels command and
alter the Input Levels to 0, SKIMMED OVER
0.80, 255, just to make the
image a little brighter and THE SURFACE
more vibrant.
OF THE LIQUIFY
FILTER”
25 Reflection
Create a new path and use the Pen tool to draw a selection around
each bowl – one at a time. Once you’ve finished your path Ctrl/right-click and
choose Make Selection. Copy this selection and then paste on another layer.
Press Apple/Ctrl+T and then flip the bowl by changing the height to -100%.

26 Mirror image
Make use of the ruler guides to align the reflections of the two bowls. For
each of these two layers lower the Opacity to 30%. Then use the Eraser tool to rub
out the reflections for a feather effect – lowering the Opacity of the tool closer to the
base of the bowl. Finally, flatten your image and save. 5

47
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 Feature

Star t

48
Advanced Photoshop

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 Photoshop Relay

Photoshop
Relay The final three competitors get
their creative mitts on our image –
who will triumph? You decide

I
t’s a well known fact. Creative types are the
most competitive people you’re ever likely to
meet, and when the creatives you’re talking
about are at the top of their industry, you know
you’re going to have a scrap on your hands.
Taking control of the creative baton this issue are
our final three Photoshop relay competitors. And what
amazing challengers they are! The three top designers
within Imagine Publishing going head-to-head ensures
you’ll see something special.
But this isn’t where it all ends. Once you’ve browsed
the newly trodden steps of the final three challengers,
it’s crunch time. You then get to decide who has
added the most to the relay race and who should be
crowned AP Photoshop Relay champion. The winner
will not only get a (small) trophy, they’ll also get the
ultimate prize – the opportunity to gloat over their
fellow competitors!.
For your chance to vote either drop us a line at
advancedpshop@imagine-publishing.co.uk or log on
to our forum (www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk) and
answer the poll. Be sure to take the time to say why
you’re voting for your winner and post your own
attempts – we love to see them!
And so, without further ado, our fourth challenger
takes up the stylus. Claire Kendrick, art editor supremo,
takes the baton…
ON THE DISC
For those of you who missed issue 19 and the Shutterstock starting
image, we’re providing it once again this month. You’ll also find
Emma’s image which is where we left off at the end of last issue on
this month’s CD.

Shutterstock
www.shutterstock.com
The AP Photoshop Relay starting image is one of
Shutterstock’s thousands of images. The largest

Rela subscription-based stock photo agency in the

chal y
world, Shutterstock was founded in 2003 and is
now one of the fastest growing suppliers of
le ng
Claire er s royalty-free stock photography in the industry. Its
outstanding collection of premium images
vs Ro Kendrick combined with a user-friendly interface has made
vs Mass Andrew Shutterstock a trusted resource for an expanding
rk Ken s global customer base. Shutterstock currently has
dick nearly 900,000 images available to its subscribers,
and that number increases every day.

49
Advanced Photoshop

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 Feature
1 Unify the image
To enable me to add more complex textures to
the image I needed to first simplify the colour palette. I
did this by greyscaling the image and converting it into a
duotone. I chose some subtle contrasting colours that
would not overpower any textures I want to overlay.
Then I convevrted it back to RGB.

3 Gaussian Blur
After taking away most of the colour from the
image I needed to replace some colour depth. On a new
layer I created a large circle, filled it in green and then
applied a large Gaussian blur to ensure there was a
smooth blend between the colour and the background.
As it’s on a layer this can be changed using blending
modes to achieve the correct amount of colour.

Claire 5 Stroke path

I wanted to add some extra highlights to the
contrasting bird shapes. Using the Magic wand I made a

Kendrick
selection around the bird, converted it into a selection
and added a 1pt brush to the stroke in white. I scaled
and offset them and removed any parts of the stroke
that were distracting from the bird’s features. I then
Art editor, Advanced Photoshop duplicated the layer and flipped it horizontally.

“Picking up the relay

challenge fourth
doesn’t leave me with
too many options. So
I’ve decided to build
on the textures and
composition using
symmetry to create a hi-key butterfly
Star t effect with the birds wings.”

50
Advanced Photoshop

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 Photoshop Relay
2 Halftone pattern
After duplicating the duotone layer I selected the Ross
Andrews
Halftone pattern filter from the filter gallery and applied
it over the image with a fairly large pattern size. The end Star t
result can be tweaked at a later stage using the blending
modes to get the desired level of contrast. I then flipped
Group Art Editor
it horizontally and applied it at 80%.

“This poor old

bird has been
through a lot.
Time to give it
some sweet,
sweet nectar to
sip from; oh and
time for me to show off some
flowery Photoshop skillz.”

4 Pin Light
Using the cut out bird layer from James’ relay I
placed it on a new layer, removed the colour and
enhanced the black channel using Curves. I then
duplicated the bird layer and overlayed it to create a
symmetrical effect using Pin light, so as to see
background glimpses through the wings.
1 Paths to perfection
Although I’m sure my rivals might accuse me
of switching to Illustrator, Photoshop’s path tool is
2 One had a stroke
Having loaded up the Calligraphic brush set I
picked the narrrow, vertical elipse. Creating a new
more than up to the task of creating some flowing layer for each path, I stroked each one with white to
ribbons to break the symmetry of the image, giving create the basic ribbon shapes; I’ll worry about the
it a little more dynamism. Although I originally colour next.
worked on one work path, I then copied and pasted
pieces into seperate paths.

6 Add a mosiac
The mosaic effect was added using the filter gallery
and then using blending modes applied as screen at 50%
to add further texture only in certain areas of the image.
At this stage I went back to the duotone layer and
removed parts of the flipped image I felt were now
unnecessary – the duplicated string and the hand drawn
character. I also add an adjustment layer to tweak the
colour levels.
3 Layer styling
To give the ribbons a hand-drawn penciled
look I double clicked a ribbon layer to bring up the
Layer Style window and added a one point black
stroke. A trip to the Gradient Overlay section then
gives me a nice gold sheen. To save a bit of time I Ctrl
clicked the styled layer and chose ‘Copy Layer Style’,
pasting it onto the other ribbon layers, where I could
then edit the gradient colours and angle.
4 Doing it old-school
Although I love the many and varied tools of
Photoshop, sometimes you just can’t beat a little
hand shading with the brush tool – which is exactly
what I did after merging the styled layers onto fresh
clean layers below each one (to rasterise the layer
style) and creating new, clipped layers to paint the
shading on, giving the ribbons more depth.

Pa s s

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Advanced Photoshop

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 Feature
5 Flower arranging
The flowers are actually the easiest parts.
Instead of creating them from scratch, I cheated and
copied them from Illustrator’s Flower symbols. They
came as Vector Smart Objects which I could position,
scale and rotate before rasterising them. I then
added two white borders around both the ribbons
and flowers, keeping the lower one selected and
running the Wave filter to mess it up a little.
Pa s s
52
Advanced Photoshop
048-053_APM21.indd 52
6 Time to grunge it up a little
My final step was to unify the image, and give
Mark
Kendrick
it a little accent before passing in on to Mark. I started
out by merging and duplicating my layers, setting
the lower one to Multiply, and adding a layer mask to
the upper so I could paint out some areas. I finished
by grabbing some flower, line and dirt brushes from Creative Director
Vered (www.vered.fredfarm.com/vbrush/main.html)
and painted in some white and red detail onto select
layers, bringing everything together. “There have been
some tough arts to
follow. So rather than
trying to continue
their work I decided
to add a human focus
yet grunge it up a
little at the same time. My mag, my
company, my rules – I win! Ha ha.”
1 Beginning of the end
First I duplicated Ross’ set of ribbons and flipped
them horizontally. Next I added a new layer and
Star t adjusted the Hue/Saturation from there to brighten the
whole image.
2 Perfect symmetry
My second step involved buying an iStockphoto.
com image of a girl (ref no. 1898365) to add a human
element. This also adds another element of symmetry to
the piece. You can purchase this image from $1.
28/7/06 15:23:36
 Photoshop Relay
3 Flip it!
Next I imported the image and rotated it to match
the angle of the birds, before hiding the original.
Duplicate the layer and, using the Lasso tool, I crudely
cut around the hair, then duplicated this off as a master
and applied Find Edges.

4 All in the detail

Using the master of the face created in step three, I
erased away the non-essential details. Next I applied
Screen blending mode and set this behind the ‘Find
edges’ layer.

Vote
for your
favour ite s
tep
Email us
visit our noer
online foru w
m

5 Frame her face

To create more symmetry across the top of the
image, I took the ribbons from Ross’ steps and duplicated
them, laying them across the top of the piece.
6 Cross the threshold
We’re almost finished now but one of my final
steps was to duplicate the hidden master from earlier
once more and apply Threshold (Image > Adjustments >
Threshold), followed by a Color Halftone.
7 Last but not least
Finally, I applied a new adjustment layer and
lightened the entire image so it faded away at the edges.
Then I painted the details back in at the centre of the
image. Voila, your Photoshop relay is finished!

53
Advanced Photoshop

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 Step-by-step Workshops

PAINTING WITH DYNAMIC

BRUSHES 7 30
If you want to discover a new element in your artwork then look no
further than this tutorial. Making full use of Photoshop’s brush palette,
this step-by-step will show you how to produce Painter-esque effects

PEER PRESSURE 7 72 with ease. Just load up your brush and get started…

We’ve been inundated with fantastic Photoshop creations this month.

Here’s your chance to browse through our pick of the best. Seek
inspiration for new design concepts, swot up on new techniques and
check out the competition. If you think you’re up to the challenge then get
your designs to us by e-mailing advancedpshop@imagine-publishing.
co.uk. You never know who’ll be flicking through next issue and you may
even get to see your design on our front cover.

Insider
es
iqu

Info
n
ch
Te

THE FINAL FRONTIER 7 56

Add the finishing steps to your intergalactic Orso Major artwork as Ross
Andrews sends you and your favourite app into orbit

INSIDER INFO 1
MERGE TO HDR
INSIDER INFO 2
62 PREFERENCES 70
HELPDESK 7 78
Combine bracketed exposures Adjust Photoshop settings to Sometimes even the pros need some
into a single frame with this nifty improve performance using these sound advice. We have the answers
new CS2 tool helpful hints to all your technical angst in this
month’s helpdesk

55
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 Step-by-step
Workshop
CREATE SPACE!
This is the final frontier. With the warp factor up to max we complete the final
steps of our breathtaking nebula. Welcome back to space… BY ROSS ANDREWS
PART TWO: PLANET-SPEWING NEBULA
I
you missed last issue then we suggest you
do whatever you can to try and get hold of
it, whether it’s giving our subscriptions
department a ring, trawling eBay, or begging
a copy from a pixel-pushing friend. We’re not
saying this because we’re trying to tout our
wares (although you will be getting a vital
collection of Photoshop tricks, tips and
techniques!), but because we took you, step-
by-step, through the process of creating an
out-of-this-world piece of art. We walked you
through using filters to create starfields and
56
Advanced Photoshop
056-060_APM21_workshop.indd 56
showed how an innocent-looking circle could
be made into a beautifully glowing planet,
complete with rings. Now the fun really
begins, as you get to unleash your
imagination, warp factor 10, on the process of
creating a fiery, planet-spewing nebula.
Your nebula won’t be perfect straight away. A
fair amount of tweaking will have to be made in
the first few steps before you start to see great
results, so whatever you do don’t get
discouraged. The key is to invest the time and
effort into building up your swirling shapes, and
then as soon as the Smudge tool comes into
play, everything will quickly fall into place.
OUR EXPERT Ross Andrews
As group art editor Ross works on a range
of creative titles here at Imagine Publishing,
and he’s also a Photoshop supremo who
can point your pixels in the right direction
when it comes to inventive image creation.
These steps are only guidelines; they recount
how we made the image shown here, but don’t
feel you have to follow them exactly. Experiment,
repeat steps and build up layer upon layer of
textures, glows and clouds. You’ll have a lot
more fun, and your image should end up looking
the better for the hard work and energy you’ve
put into it.
18/7/06 17:34:03

PICK UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF
Don’t worry – it’s a shaky start
1 A word of warning
One thing we’ve discovered about
creating nebulae is that they begin looking
awful. With that in mind, grab a 40-pixel soft
green brush, at about 30% Opacity, 50% Flow,
and on a new layer above the planet layer set,
sketch a rough shape. After this, switch to a
larger brush and add a haze around the shape.
4 Add some detail
When the paints are curving
gracefully together, dial the
Smudge tool right down to around
4 pixels, but take the Strength right
up to 95%. Zoom in to the image
and start feathering the swirls by
pushing out from the edges –
experiment with this technique and
you’ll soon get the hang of it.
5 Big it up
Now increase the size of the Smudge tool
to 125 pixels, but with the Strength still up at
95%, and perfect the shape of your nebula by
nudging areas about so they seem to flow
together naturally. Keep tweaking until you’re
perfectly happy with the result.
056-060_APM21_workshop.indd 57
es
n iqu
ch
Te
2 Bright light
Increase the brush size to around 800
pixels, and switch the foreground colour to
3 Smudgy smudgy
Now’s the time to start seeing some results.
Select the Smudge tool, with a size of around 50
white. Create a new layer and click in the same pixels, and set the Strength to 50%. Now, starting
place on your nebula a couple of times to create from the white highlight, click and push the pixels
a highlight. Tweak the layer’s opacity to your out in flowing curves, so that the green and white
liking and then merge the two nebula layers. mix and flow together. Think of this process as
pushing wet paint around a palette.
“ALWAYS
WORK WITH
A SOFT
AIRBRUSH,
6 Spot the difference
SET TO
A LOW
Your nebula will be looking more than a
little flat and painted, so it’s time to add a more
OPACITY’’
realistic texture. Copy the nebula layer, ensure
your foreground and background colours are set
to black and white by hitting the D key, and from
the Render section of the Filter menu select
Difference Clouds.
Paint with a soft brush
Many creatives shy away from hand painting, figuring that
their mouse control isn’t that great, but there’s one secret to
great results. Always work with a soft airbrush, set to a low
opacity. Below 30% works best, but it can be much lower
depending on your confidence. As you’re building up colour
instead of doing it in one stroke, any mistakes are harder to
spot and instead you get a smooth and perfect finish – it just
takes a little more patience.
57
Advanced Photoshop
18/7/06 17:34:52
 Step-by-step
Workshop
“YOUR AIM 7 Whoa!
8 Smudge some more

SHOULD BE
Sure, the last step will give you a cloudy, The cloud texture should look great, but
smoky texture, but it will also give you some probably more than a little artificial, so it’s a

TO BUILD UP strange colour and no doubt almost completely

obliterate your carefully-crafted nebula. Don’t
good idea to switch back to the Smudge tool
and smear the colours back along the curves

CONTRASTING worry though; experimenting with blending

modes and opacity settings can easily rectify
again. This still retains the smoky feel in the
background.

AREAS, SO this. In our case we simply switched the layer

mode over to Overlay.

WORK
AGAINST THE
WHITE’’

GETTING CREATIVE
Give your nebula a realistic look with Smudge, brush effects and colour tweaks
9 Dupe
To start adding more contrast, duplicate the clouded nebula layer
and switch the blending mode to Color Burn. Don’t panic when this
blacks out most of your image – choose Image>Adjustments>Levels
and drag the white slider to the left past the middle point. Your nebula
may not look great, but it’ll look better.
10 Hue and cry
All it takes to get your nebula back to
looking fantastic, is a trip to
Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Leave the
Hue slider alone, but drag the Saturation slider
completely left to -100 and experiment with the
Lightness to get the desired effect; in our case
we dragged it up to +56.
11 Let’s smudge again
Once again it’s time to reach for the
Smudge tool, and it’s back to the 4-pixel setting
at 95%. Work across both the clouded layers,
pushing from dark to light and vice versa to
build feathered, flaring detail into the image. It’s
the contrast between parts of the nebula that
really give it depth.

Take a tablet 12 Build with

brushes
Put away the Smudge
tool and create a new
It’s probably the tip you’ll find most repeated across the
layer. Then, select the
pages of Advanced Photoshop, but it really rings true for this
Brush tool, and open up
kind of work. If you can afford it, buy a graphics tablet. For the
kind of flowing brush work you’ll need to replicate in this the Brushes palette. Click
tutorial it really is a valuable asset. You can of course do it with on Texture, select Texture
a mouse, but it’ll be much harder to get the same results. We Fill from the thumbnail
recommended using a model from Wacom’s Graphire range menu, and then the first
as it will give you the ability to be able to experiment with texture in that set. Drag
pressure sensitive functions. the Scale slider down to
around 50%.

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13 Paint effects
With black
selected as your colour,
Stars of the show
Flow set to 50% and the If you want to make up your own nebula from scratch but
Opacity set to around 30%, need some reference material then check out http://
carefully start painting hubblesite.org/gallery/. There is a stunning array of images
some cloudy detail into the that really are out of this world. It’s a useful resource for not
image. Do this by clicking only checking out formations but also colours and tones.
If that wasn’t enough you can also download hi-res versions
the mouse, never dragging
of the files to place in Photoshop as a reference. Don’t
strokes. Again, your aim
forget to send us your creations - we’d love to see what you
should be to build up come up with!
contrasting areas, so work
against the white.

14 And repeat
When you’re happy with your
contrasting shapes it’s time to repeat a few
steps from earlier. Begin by using the Smudge
to tease out strands of black and break up the
obvious edge; you can also reverse your strokes
to great effect. Then duplicate the layer, apply
Difference Clouds, lower the Saturation and
experiment with the Lightness. Set the layer
mode to Pin Light.
15 Experiment
Now that the nebula is looking a bit
healthier, it’s a good time to experiment.
16 Highlights
This should give you some pretty weird highlights.
Emphasise these by opening Image>Adjustments>Levels and
Duplicate the main nebula layer (created in step dragging the white triangle to the left, exaggerating the effect.
one) and drag it to the top of the Layers palette.
Repeat the Difference Clouds filter and set the
layer mode to Color Dodge.

SEND UP THE FLARE 18 And repeat

When you’re happy with your
contrasting shapes it’s time to repeat a few
Adding highlights for effect steps from earlier. Begin by using the Smudge
to tease out strands of black and break up the

17
obvious edge; you can also reverse your strokes
Paint effects to great effect. Then duplicate the layer, apply
With black Difference Clouds, lower the Saturation and
selected as your colour, experiment with the Lightness. Set the layer
Flow set to 50% and the mode to Pin Light.
Opacity set to around 30%,
carefully start painting
some cloudy detail into the
image. Do this by clicking
the mouse, never dragging
strokes. Again, your aim
should be to build up
contrasting areas, so work
against the white.

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 Step-by-step
Workshop
Keep working at it 19 Creator of worlds
Duplicate the main
planet from last issue’s tutorial.
The steps printed here are a record of how we created our Use Edit>Transform>Scale to
nebula, but it really is quite a random, organic process. Feel resize it and position over the
free to repeat any of the steps, building up multiple layers, flare point in your nebula.
trying different apply modes, smudge a copy of everything Experiment with its position in
and generally have fun with it – the more time, the layer order until you find a
experimentation and energy you put into it the better it will combination that looks great.
look. Constructing your nebula can be a mind-blowing task
Repeat this step to create a few
with plenty of layers inevitable. Get organised with your
more planets to scatter about.
Layers Palette by making use of Groups. As you work you can
then bunch layers into these folders. This will make it easier if Move the nebula layers under
you need to make adjustments and tweaks later on. the main planet layers but above
the starfield layer.

20 I like to move it
The positioning of your nebula probably won’t be spot on,
as you’ve created it quite organically. Select or link all the nebula layers
21 Colour shift
A top tip for most Photoshop
creations is to have a final experiment with
22 Colour the highlights
When you’re happy with the colour
of the nebula, use Hue/Saturation again to tweak
and experiment with moving it around the image until the colour before committing to an end result. Work the colour of the planets so that they match. For
composition works. through the nebula layer by layer using Hue/ the large planet in the nebula’s centre it’s also a
Saturation to tweak colour ranges until you find a good idea to push the saturation a little to give a
combination you love. Ours took a red hue by strong coloured glow.
taking the Hue slider right down to -111.

23 Sun burn
Finally, to tie the whole image together, create a new layer in the Big Planet set, and create a
layer mask using the planet as a selection (with the mask active, Cmd-click (Mac) or Ctrl-click (PC) the
planet layer, select Inverse and fill with black). Pick a light colour from the nebula and with a huge soft
brush at a low opacity, paint in a coloured highlight. The end result should look absolutely stunning. 5

‘‘A TOP TIP

FOR MOST
PHOTOSHOP
CREATIONS IS
TO HAVE A
FINAL
EXPERIMENT’’
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 Insider INSIDER
Info INFO
Merge to HDR
Introduced in Photoshop CS2, the Merge to HDR command enables you to combine a series of
bracketed exposures into a single image that encompasses the tonal range of the scene

E
ven with the most sophisticated digital cameras available today, you’re
only able to capture a relatively small portion of the visible spectrum. For
some scenes this limited dynamic range may be acceptable, whereas
under extreme lighting conditions, the results might be completely inadequate.
But with the new Merge to HDR feature in Photoshop CS2, you can now combine
a series of exposures into a single 32-bits-per-channel (bpc) High Dynamic Range
(HDR) image that encompasses the full tonal range of the original scene.

OUR EXPERT Trevor Morris HDR preparation

Trevor Morris is an official Photoshop beta tester
and amateur digital photographer with more than a
dozen years’ design experience. He works as a senior
graphic designer for a Canadian web design
company and also maintains the Photoshop-centric
website GFX™ (http://user.fundy.net/morris).
HDR EXPOSURE SELECTION:
Photoshop Merge to HDR command
allows you to combine a series of
bracketed exposures into a single
32-bpc, high-dynamic range image
HDR from Bridge
● To merge a series of bracketed
exposures from with Bridge, simply
select the desired images and choose
Tools>Photoshop>Merge to HDR.
Creating a HDR image requires a
series of exposures with identical
positioning, so a sturdy tripod is
absolutely essential. Additionally, the
scene must be virtually motionless, as
differences between exposures will
appear as blurs or ghosts in the final
image, ruining the shot.
Merge to HDR requires at least two
exposures, although for best results, a
minimum of three to five exposures is
recommended. The more exposures
used, the better Photoshop is able to
approximate your camera’s response
curves, which in turn results in a more
even tonal distribution.
Each exposure should be separated
by one stop: equivalent to doubling or
halving the exposure time (do not
adjust the aperture or ISO speed). For
example, if your first shot was exposed
for one second, one stop up (EV +1.00)
would be two seconds, and one stop
down (EV -1.00) would be 0.5 seconds.
Using images that are more than one
stop apart could result in posterized
output (ie banding). Also ensure that
the brightest exposure contains no
blown highlights, and that the darkest
exposure is relatively noise-free with
clearly visible shadow detail.
HDR IMAGE PREVIEW: The Merge to HDR dialog allows you preview your final
image and corresponding histogram. In addition, you can toggle exposures on or
off, preview the white balance and select a bit depth for the combined image
Create a HDR with
Photoshop CS2
To create a HDR image, choose
File>Automate>Merge to HDR. Select
one of the following sources from the
Use drop-down list:
● Files – allows you to specify the
specific files to be merged (via the
Browse button).
● Folder – allows you to specify the
folder of images to be merged (via the
Browse button).
● Open Files – allows you to merge
the files currently open in Photoshop.
If your photos weren’t taken on a
stable tripod, you may need to enable
the Attempt to Automatically Align
Source Images, which significantly
increases processing time.
After processing each exposure, a
preview of the HDR image and
combined histogram appears. Use the
checkbox below each exposure’s
thumbnail to designate which images
to include/exclude in the final image.
Get the patch
Adobe has released a Photoshop
9.0.1 patch that, among other
things, fixes a high-ASCII bug in
Merge to HDR. Download the patch
from the Adobe website.
● Mac OS: www.adobe.com/
support/downloads/product.jsp?pr
oduct=39&platform=Mac
● Windows: www.adobe.com/
support/downloads/product.jsp?pr
oduct=39&platform=Windows
the Image>Mode submenu after the
HDR image is created. We recommend
you use the default 32 Bits/Channel so
that you can save an archival version of
the HDR image before conversion.
Once created, the HDR may appear
washed out. Use Image>Adjustments>
Exposure to increase the exposure and
reveal hidden shadow detail.
Currently, only a handful of

Additional resources The slider below the histogram is used

to set the white point preview for the
image. Although the white point
Visit the following links for more information about HDR imaging:
preview setting is saved with the 32-
● HDR: High Dynamic Range Photography (CambridgeInColour.com) bpc image, it does not alter the data.
www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/high-dynamic-range.htm If you choose an option other than
● HDR features and tips (AdobeEvangelists.com)
32 Bits/Channel from the Bit Depth
www.adobeevangelists.com/pdfs/pscs2/hdr.pdf
drop-down, the HDR Conversion
● Errors when you use Merge to HDR in Photoshop CS2
(Adobe Support Knowledgebase) dialog appears immediately after the
www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331730.html HDR image is created. This is the same
as choosing the desired bit depth from
commands are available for editing
HDR images in Photoshop CS2, but just
as Photoshop’s 16-bpc support evolved
with each successive version, it’s
almost certain that future versions of
Photoshop will have much more
support for 32-bpc images. In the
meantime, you’ll need to convert your
image to 8- or 16-bpc (Image>Mode>8
or 16 Bits/Channel) for post-processing
and final output to screen or print.

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 Step-by-step
Workshop

PAINTING WITH
DYNAMIC BRUSHES
In Photoshop your brushes aren’t limited to being boring one-trick ponies.
Tim Shelbourne shows how the power of Dynamic Brushes can transform
Photoshop artwork BY TIM SHELBOURNE
W
hen it comes to using the Brush and tilt, drawing direction and even speed,
tool in Photoshop, many people producing incredibly lifelike effects. Via these
ON THE DISC
think that there are just two dynamics you can control the size of the brush,
The reference image used in this
flavours of brush tip: a soft-edged one and its colours, textures, opacity and a whole lot more.
tutorial can be downloaded at
www.istockphoto.com. You can hard-edged sibling. We’re going to use these Dynamic Brushes to
find it by searching for ‘1107104’. But nothing could be further from the truth. If create a very energetic image, complete with
However, the techniques used in
this step-by-step can be applied to
you’re armed with a pressure-sensitive graphics realistic flowing hair, a subject that is just made
any image, so why not try it on one tablet, you can open the door to a whole new for very responsive brushes. We’ll also be using a
of your own? world of creativity by exploring Dynamic Brushes. custom dual brush, which allows us to combine
OUR EXPERT Tim Shelbourne In essence, all of Photoshop’s brushes can be two brushes for some extra special effects. As
With 20 years’ experience as an artist and illustrator, Tim is made dynamic and can be configured to you work through the tutorial, watch out for the
one of Photoshop’s leading lights. As well as writing tutorials, respond in very specific ways. Dynamic Brushes tip boxes that will give you the low-down on
Tim’s book Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook is a must-read.
can be set to respond to pressure, stylus angle configuring Dynamic Brushes.

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1 Increase your image size
Open your start image and hit D to set
default foreground and background colours. Go
to Image>Canvas Size. Check the Relative box
and choose Percent for the dimension units.
Enter 30 for Height and Width. Choose
Background for extension colour and click OK.
Now double-click the Background Layer to
make it editable. Add a new layer and fill it with
White via Edit>Fill>Contents: White.
4 Zoom for accuracy
Continue to outline the image,
zooming in to complicated areas to
ensure accuracy. Don’t trace over the
hair in the image, as we’ll be creating
our own hair with some Dynamic
Brushes a little later. Once the
outlining is complete, click the
visibility eye in the Layers palette to
hide the image layer. Click on the
‘Drawing’ layer and hit the Lock All
icon in the Layers palette to protect
this layer from editing.
5 Set up a brush
Click on the hidden image layer and add
a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N). Name this new layer
‘Skin Midtones’. From the Brush Picker, choose
the Oil Medium Wet Flow brush. In the Brushes
palette, in the Other Dynamics category, set
Opacity to Pen Pressure. In Shape Dynamics set
Minimum Diameter to 50%. Choose a medium
skin tone from the Colour palette and begin to
paint over the face and hands.
064-069_APM21.indd 65
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2 Prepare for tracing
Grab Layer 0 in the Layers palette and
drag and drop it above the white-filled layer.
3 Start drawing
Hit F5 to display the Brush Dynamics palette. In Other Dynamics,
set Opacity to Pen Pressure. Now, on the new blank layer, begin to trace
Now reduce the opacity for this layer to 40%. around the image of the girl using the Brush tool. Vary the pressure on
Add a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and name this your stylus to create thicker, more opaque lines
layer ‘Drawing’. Display the Colour palette via around the girl’s outline. Try and be very accurate
Window>Colour and choose a mid blue. Choose when tracing around the teeth to ensure realism.
the Brush tool, and from the Brush Picker choose
a small hard brush.
“WITH A
GRAPHICS
TABLET, YOU
ARE OPEN TO
A WORLD OF
CREATIVITY”
6 Establishing skin tones
Paint this colour all over the face and
hands. Don’t paint over the mouth at this stage. Loading brush libraries
Now choose a deeper flesh tone and add a new
layer, naming it ‘Skin Shadows’. From the Brush In this project, we use brushes from other
Picker choose the Spatter 36 brush. Set Opacity brush libraries than the default one that is
to Pen Pressure and Minimum Diameter to 50% generally used in Photoshop. Although the
in the Brush Dynamics palette. default brush library features a good
selection of brushes, Photoshop has lots
of additional brush collections that give us a
greater variety of brush tips and truly
dynamic brushes.
To load one of these additional libraries,
you need to click in the Brush Picker and hit
the small right-
pointing arrow at the
top right of the
picker window to
activate the fly-out
menu. From here
you can load any
brush library simply
by clicking on it in
the list.
65
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 Step-by-step
Workshop
7 Add some shadows
Now, with this brush, begin to paint in the shadows on the skin,
using the supplied shadow map or the original reference image as a
guide. Vary the pressure on your stylus to go from dark to light tones as
you paint for the best finish. With this same brush and colour, add the
shadow area to the hands.
8 Reinforce the image
Return to the original image layer and
duplicate it. Drag and drop this layer so that it
sits directly above the ‘Skin Midtones layer’. Click
the layer’s visibility eye to make it visible, and
reduce its opacity to 88%. Now go to
Filter>Blur>Smart Blur. Use Radius 39, Threshold
92, High for Quality and click OK. Use a soft
eraser to clear any unwanted parts of this layer.
9 Establish the hair mass
Click on the top layer in the stack and add
a new layer. We’ll use this layer to begin forming
the main body of hair. Choose a very dark
burgundy for your foreground swatch. Using the
same brush, go to the Brush Dynamics palette
and set Minimum Size to 15%. Using the brush at
a medium size, begin to paint in a rough shape
for the hair.

“THE BRUSH 10 Go with the flow

Remember, at this stage we’re not 11 The Burn tool
Now it’s time to change tools.

DYNAMICS concerned with painting in the fine strands of

hair, but simply with establishing the main hair
Choose the Burn tool from the toolbar and click
in the Brush Picker. In the Brushes palette, click

PALETTE IS body. As you paint, try to visualise where the

main tresses of hair would flow, creating
on Brush Tip Shape. Reduce the Spacing to 5%.
Now choose the Shape Dynamics category and

CONTROL flowing sections of hair with your brush, set the Size Jitter control to Pen Pressure. Set

CENTRAL FOR
controlling the brush size with your stylus. Minimum Diameter to 5%. So that the strands of
hair flow in the right direction, set the Angle

A PROJECT
Jitter Control to Direction.

LIKE THIS”
Brush Dynamics palette
The Brush Dynamics palette really is Control Central for a
project such as this and is key to exploiting the magic of
Dynamic Brushes in Photoshop. You can display the palette by
hitting F5 or by going to Window>Brushes.
The dynamic characteristics of the brush are split up into
separate categories, which you’ll see down the left-hand side
of the palette. To

adjust the dynamics
within a particular
category, you simply
click it in the list and
place a checkmark
next to it to activate
those dynamics.
Within a particular
category, the Control
Options relate to the
way the brush reacts
to a pressure
sensitive stylus, so
set this up to suit
your needs.
12
Burn tool setup
Click in the Other
Dynamics category and set
the Exposure Control to Pen
Pressure. In the Options bar,
choose Shadows from the
Range Box and set Exposure
to 5%. Now, using this brush at
about 125 pixel size, begin to
add some darker tones to the
hair in long sweeps. You can
adjust the size of the brush
via the square bracket keys on
the keyboard.

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13 Darker
strands
What we’re doing here is
14 Brush for highlights
Add a new layer, naming it ‘Hair Lights’. Choose the Brush
tool. and select the same brush from the Picker (Stipple 12), and use the
adding some dark accents same settings in the Brush Dynamics. In Other Dynamics, because this
to the hair, to create a sense is the Brush tool and not the Burn tool, you won’t have an Exposure
of volume and to add some option. Instead, set both Opacity and Flow Control to Pen Pressure.
light and shade. Use very
little pressure on your stylus
and use long sweeping
strokes that follow the flow
of the hair. A flick of the
wrist with your stylus will
ensure hair-like end strands
as we have brush size set to
Pen Pressure.

15 Fore/background colours
Click the foreground swatch and
choose a medium burgundy colour from the
colour picker. Now click the background swatch
and choose a slightly more saturated shade of
this colour. Return to the Brush Dynamics
palette and click in Colour Dynamics. Set the
Foreground/Background Jitter Control to Fade.
Now, using the brush at a small size, begin to
add some light strands of hair.
16 Add life to the hair
Use the softest pressure setting on
your graphics tablet and vary the size of the
brush regularly. By using the brush at a bigger
size, you can add broader sections of hair.
Conversely, use the brush at a very small size to
drag out wispy strands of hair to break up the
outlines and add realism.
17 Take your time
This part of the painting can be a laborious process, but it’s
worth taking you time with it as the more stands of hair you add, at
varying angles and sizes, the more realistic the finished piece will look.
Be careful to finish off any blunt ends of hair with the brush at a very
small size. Clean up any parts of the initial drawing on the lower hair
layer with the Eraser tool.

18 New brush,

“THE MORE
new settings
Time to change brush

STANDS OF
again. Still working with
the Brush tool, click in the
Brush Picker, load the Thick
Heavy Brushes and choose
HAIR YOU
the Smoother Round Bristle
brush. In Brush Dynamics, ADD, THE
set the Size Jitter Control to
Pen Pressure and the MORE
Minimum Diameter to 50%.
In Other Dynamics, set the REALISTIC IT
Opacity and the Flow
Control to Pen Pressure. WILL LOOK”
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 Step-by-step
Workshop
“SAVE THE 19 Skin highlights
20 Highlight accents

MODIFIED
Click on the ‘Skin Shadows’ layer and Increase the size of the brush and
add a new layer, naming it ‘Skin Highlights’. For paint in some rough highlight areas on the

BRUSH AS A the foreground colour swatch choose a very

light yellow colour. With this brush at a small
cheek, chin and jaw line. Now choose white for
your foreground colour swatch and paint some

NEW PRESET size, begin to add subtle highlights to the far

side of the face and the nose. Vary the opacity
tiny accent highlights over these areas to add
focus and polish to the image.

SO YOU DON’T of the stroke by using a little less pressure on

your stylus.

HAVE TO
GO THROUGH
IT AGAIN”

21 Dynamic eyebrows
Zoom into the girl’s eyes with the Zoom tool. Activate the
Brush Tool and click in the Picker. From the fly-out menu, choose Reset
Brushes. From the brush thumbnails choose the Dune Grass brush.
Open the Brush Dynamics palette (F5). Set the Size Jitter Control to Pen
Pressure, Minimum Size to 5%. Set the Angle Jitter Control to Direction
and the Angle Jitter slider to 7%.
22 Super realism
Click on the ‘Skin Shadows’ layer and
add a new layer, naming it ‘Eyes’. For the
foreground colour swatch choose a very dark
brown. Position your brush over the widest part
of the eyebrow and adjust the brush size to suit.
Now use this brush to paint in the eyebrows.
Use heavy pressure on your stylus for the wide
parts, less pressure for the narrow tails.
23 Adjust for eyelashes
Change your foreground colour
to a very dark brown. In the Brush Dynamics
palette click Shape Dynamics and reduce Angle
Jitter to 0%. Now click Brush Tip Shape and
check the Flip X box. Grab the arrow point on
the brush map in the dialog and drag it
clockwise until the brush is at the correct angle
for the eyelashes.

Saving a new brush preset

After you’ve gone to all the trouble of carefully adjusting the
dynamic capabilities of a brush, which can be quite time
24 Paint the
eyelashes
Now paint in the
consuming, it’s a good idea to save the modified brush as a eyelashes with this brush,
new brush preset so that you don’t have to go through the again controlling the size
procedure all over again to recreate the brushes effect. You can of the brush marks via the
easily do this via the Brush Picker. Activate the fly-out menu pressure applied to your
and choose New Brush Preset. Give your brush a descriptive
stylus. You can increase
name and click OK. When you change to a different brush
the intensity and darkness
library, you’ll be given the opportunity to save the current
library containing your new brush. of the eyelashes simply by
working over them two or
three times with the
brush. Before moving on,
crop the unwanted space
from the right of the
image with the Crop tool.

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25 Brush Picker
Click in the Brush Choosing colours
Picker and, from the fly-out
menu, load the Special
and sampling
Effects Brushes. From the There are a number of ways to choose colours in
thumbnails choose Drippy Photoshop and we use a lot of them in this
Watercolour. Choose a deep project. One of the simplest ways is by using the
red for the foreground swatch Colour palette. Using this palette, you can
and a mid-golden yellow for simply hover your mouse over the colour
the background. Go to the spectrum and click to choose a colour. You can
Brush Dynamics and check even use the sliders to make very fine
Colour Dynamics. Click Dual adjustments to the colour. Remember, when
you choose a colour by this method, it is always
Brush and set the Scatter
applied to the foreground colour swatch, so to
slider roughly central. In
choose a colour for the background swatch, hit
Other Dynamics set Opacity X on the keyboard to swap foreground and
to Pen Pressure. background first.

26 Liven up the background

Click on the white-filled layer at the
bottom of the stack and add a new layer. Now
paint roughly over parts of the background with
the Watercolour brush. Use the brush at a fairly
large size, leaving plenty of white areas
remaining. Choose the Eraser tool and erase any
parts that show through the face. Reduce the
opacity of this layer to 65%.
27 Add a keyline
Choose a very deep blue for the
foreground swatch. Add a new layer at the top
of the stack. Go to Select>All. Now go to
Edit>Stroke. Enter 15 for Stroke Width and
choose Inside for Location. Hit OK to apply the
stroke around the image.

28 Add eyeshadow
Return to the ‘Skin Shadows’ layer.
From the Brush Picker load the Thick Heavy
Brushes set. Select the Smoother Round Bristle
brush and set the Dynamics options as in Step
18. Choose a light blue/green from the Color
palette and paint over the eyelids at low opacity
to add a touch of eye shadow.
“CHECK EACH
INDIVIDUAL
LAYER FOR ANY
RAGGED EDGES OR
OVER-PAINTING”
29 More highlights
Change your foreground colour to a
pale yellow. Still using the same brush, add
30 Tidy and adjust
Finally, check each individual
layer for any ragged edges or over-painting. Use
some more broken highlight lines here and the Eraser tool to tidy up any rough edges.
there throughout the image to strengthen and Remember you can always change the tone of
clarify it. Remember, you control the width of the painting on any of the layer via the Levels
the stroke by varying your stylus pressure. command. Here we’ve darkened the skin
shadows a little. 5

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 Insider
Info
INSIDER
INFO
Optimising preferences for better performance
Optimising Photoshop to take advantage of your current system and preferred
workflow can significantly improve performance and decrease startup time

Trevor Morris
OUR EXPERT
Trevor Morris is an official Photoshop beta tester
and amateur digital photographer with more than a
dozen years’ design experience. He works as a senior
graphic designer for a Canadian web design
company and also maintains the Photoshop-centric
website GFX™ (http://user.fundy.net/morris).
T
here’s no arguing that CS2 loves
a fast processor and lots of
RAM, but before you run out
and spend a heap of money upgrading
your system, try configuring
Photoshop to take advantage of the
hardware you already have. Of course,
you won’t be able to double
Photoshop’s performance or halve the
load-time, but you should notice a
significant difference. Just for fun, you
may even want to jot down the
approximate time it currently takes to
apply a memory-intensive filter or the
time it takes to boot Photoshop, and
then compare the results after
optimising your system.

Memory management
Photoshop’s performance is most
RESET PREFERENCES: To reset all significantly affected by the amount of
palettes and preferences to their factory available RAM, how much of it is
default settings, hold down the Apple/ allocated to Photoshop, and what it
Ctrl+Opt/Alt+Shift keys while booting MEMORY MANAGEMENT: The Preferences dialog allows you to customise the
Photoshop. Be careful though, as this is used for. amount of memory and scratch disk space allocated to Photoshop, based on your
will overwrite any custom presets that To begin with, choose Photoshop/ particular hardware configuration and the demands of your workflow
you haven’t saved Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch
Disks and select the drive(s) and/or select a fast, dedicated drive (or The Memory Usage setting
partition(s) you want Photoshop to use partition), such as a RAID 0 partition. determines what maximum portion of
as scratch disks (virtual memory). You Never use network and/or removable physical memory should be allocated to
can assign up to 64 exabytes of scratch drives as scratch disks, since their read/ Photoshop. There are two vital factors to
disk space over four volumes – that’s 64 write speeds are far too slow. Also avoid consider when setting this value. First,
billion GBs! For best performance, assigning Photoshop’s scratch disks to entering a value that’s too high may
the same volume used for the operating deprive the operating system and other
system’s virtual memory, as this may applications of the RAM they require to
Additional resources result in a competition for resources. function adequately – which could
Next, choose Memory & Image Cache ultimately result in poor performance for
For more information about optimising Photoshop’s performance, check out (Apple/Ctrl+8) from the drop-down at all applications, including Photoshop.
the following articles from the Adobe Support Knowledgebase: the top of the Preferences dialog. Here Second, Photoshop will only use as
● Optimise performance of Photoshop CS2 you can configure the number of much RAM as there is scratch disk space
Mac OS: www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332270.html low-resolution previews Photoshop will available. So if you only have 500MB of
Windows: www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332271.html store in memory to speed up screen scratch disk space, Photoshop will use no
● Memory allocation and usage redraws for high-resolution images. The more than 500MB of RAM, regardless of
www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html higher the Cache Levels, the more how much memory you assign. I
previews Photoshop stores: however, recommend using a memory setting of
● Slow performance and screen redraw problems in Photoshop CS2
higher values also require more RAM between 55% (the default for Windows)
on Windows
www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331412.html and cause images to open more slowly. and 70% (the default for Mac),
Acceptable values range from 1 to 8, depending on how much RAM you have.
There’s also plenty of useful information in the Adobe Photoshop Read Me
file located in the root of the Photoshop installation folder. See the section where 1 disables image caching Adobe suggests using a value that’s
titled Improving Performance and Troubleshooting. altogether (ie, only the current screen several times more than the largest
image is cached). The default value is 6. image you typically work with.

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Bigger Tiles plug-in trim presets is to use the Preset Manager
(Edit>Preset Manager), but you can also
● If you have more than 1 GB of RAM, use the individual preset palettes (eg, Where’s that folder?
you may wish to enable the Bigger
Styles palette, Gradient Editor dialog Assuming a default installation, the locations of the folders referenced in this
Tiles plug-in (Plug-Ins>Adobe
box, Customer Shape picker, etc). In article are as follows:
Photoshop Only>Extensions>Bigger
Tiles), by removing the tilde ( ~ ) from either case, simply Opt/Alt+click on a
the filename. When enabled, Bigger preset to delete it – the cursor will turn FOLDER NAME MAC OS PATH
Tiles speeds up redraw time by into a pair of scissors – or drag the Photoshop <hard drive>/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2
increasing the size of image tiles. preset(s) onto the Trash icon. Plug-ins <hard drive>/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins
Note that because the tiles are larger Although it’s always wise to back up Presets <hard drive>/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Presets
they may appear to draw slower, but your settings/files before running <hard drive>/Users/<username>/Library\Preferences/Photoshop
Settings
overall, the image is updated sooner CS2 Settings
around madly deleting things, you
than with the default smaller tiles. Colour Profiles <hard drive>/Users/<username>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
needn’t worry too much in this case, as
Adobe Fonts <hard drive>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
there are two simple ways to restore
<hard drive>/Library/Fonts (<hard drive>/Users/<username>/
Palette preferences Photoshop’s default preferences. To System Fonts
Library/Fonts)
Many of Photoshop’s palettes provide restore an individual palette to its
thumbnail previews, such as the Layers, default state, just delete the FOLDER NAME WINDOWS PATH
Paths, Channels and Animation palettes. corresponding palette preferences file Photoshop C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2
However, these previews also come at (PSP) within Photoshop’s Settings folder. Plug-ins C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins
the expense of both memory and To reset all settings to their defaults, Presets C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets
application response time. Every time hold down Apple/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+Shift C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Adobe\
Settings
Photoshop\9.0\Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings
you make a change to your image, all while booting Photoshop. Just be careful
Colour Profiles C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color
associated thumbnails have to be that you don’t trash your own custom Adobe Fonts C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts
updated, and the larger the thumbnails presets at the same time! System Fonts C:\Windows\Fonts
the more resources are required. Another way to speed up Photoshop’s
In order to configure the size of the boot time (and save some memory) is to Also see ‘Where things are’, a PDF document available from
AdobeEvangelists.com: www.adobeevangelists.com/pdfs/pscs2/
previews for each palette, Ctrl+right-click disable any plug-ins you don’t use. For
wherethingsare.pdf
on an empty area of the palette, or example, Photoshop comes with a set of
choose Palette Options from the Digimarc plug-ins that read, write and
corresponding palette menu. Choices detect digital watermarks. These plug- that will only be recognised by Adobe
include: None (static 12 x 12 icon), Small ins not only add to Photoshop’s boot applications – however, you should limit
(28 x 28 thumbnail), Medium (52 x 52 time, they also increase the time it takes the number of fonts in this folder to
thumbnail) and Large (76 x 76 to open every single file! To disable those you use on a regular basis. The
thumbnail). ‘None’ requires least these filters, locate the Plug-ins\ System Fonts folder contains fonts
resources but provides only generic Digimarc subfolder and add a tilde ( ~ ) installed by your operating system and
thumbnails, while ‘Small’ requires to the beginning of the folder name (for may be used by many applications,
relatively little RAM and processor time, example, ~Digimarc). including Photoshop. It’s recommended
and provides real thumbnails. Follow the same procedure to disable that you don’t remove any of the fonts in
Another palette that can potentially any file formats (8B? files) that you never the System Fonts folder.
use a lot of memory is the History palette. use: open the Plug-ins\File Formats Unfortunately, you can’t hide fonts in
That’s because every history state (and folder and add a tilde to the beginning subfolders prefixed with a tilde. All fonts
snapshot) requires additional scratch disk of their filenames (eg, ~FilmStrip.8bi, – even those with subfolders – will be
space, and for large images these states ~Pixar.8bi, etc). To disable multiple files enumerated by Photoshop upon startup,
can add up very quickly. To configure simultaneously, place them in a so if you don’t use them, move them to a
the number of history states, choose subfolder whose name begins with a location outside the fonts folder.
Photoshop>Edit>Preferences>General. tilde (for example, ~Disabled). Like fonts, all colour profiles (ICC and
The default number of history states ICM files) installed on your system are
is 100. Use ‘em or lose ‘em read by Photoshop upon startup, so it’s a
Upon startup, Photoshop checks both good idea to remove any profiles that SMALL THUMBNAILS: To save
Improving load time the System Fonts and Adobe Fonts aren’t required. additional memory and improve
There are several things you can do to folders to determine the number of Photoshop’s response time, try
reduce the time it takes Photoshop to fonts available for use with the Type Preventative reducing the size of the
thumbnails for the various
load. One way is to delete (or archive) all tools. If you have a lot of fonts installed, maintenance palettes (eg, Layers, Channels,
the presets you don’t use, such as the this can significantly increase the time it Finally, make sure you defragment/ Paths and Animation)
default Styles, Tool Presets, Custom takes for Photoshop to load. The Adobe optimise your hard drive on a regular
Shapes and Brushes. The simplest way to Fonts folder may be used to store fonts basis, as this will improve the read/write
speed for files and programs on that

“PHOTOSHOP CS2 LOVES drive. A good rule of thumb is to defrag

your drive at least once a month – or any

A FAST PROCESSOR AND time you notice your operating system

becoming sluggish. Note that for large

LOTS OF RAM” and/or significantly fragmented drives,

this procedure can take several hours.

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 Eye-catching imagery that
inspires and challenges

O
ne thing that never fails to impress us here at
Advanced Photoshop is not only the skill of
our readers but the huge variety of different
Ice cold
approaches that you all take. It’s a healthy sign to see NAME: Joe Upton
EMAIL: zachtlr@yahoo.com
so many different creative styles emerging from your
good selves, and this month’s Peer Pressure shows off
Joe Upton is a meat cutter by trade and both an amateur
those skills better than ever before. Have you got a photographer and an avid Photoshopper in his spare time. He has
digital masterpiece up your sleeves that you’d like to been using Photoshop for about three years and is often seen with a
share with your fellow readers? Canon Digital Rebel XT in his hand. This image was inspired by the
Sending your images in to us for inclusion in Peer ice tutorial featured in Advanced Photoshop 17. “Choosing an image
Pressure is an ideal way to get your name out there. You with the proper skin tones and highlights was more challenging
never know who’s browsing through the magazine looking than I originally supposed it would be. One particular problem with
for a new Photoshop guru to front their company. this image was that the right shoulder was almost all highlight and I
If you’d like to see your own work on these pages, please feared it would appear blown out. This was solved by choosing a
foreground ice image that would hide most of the right shoulder.”
send us low-res versions to advancedpshop@imagine-
publishing.co.uk – we’ll get back to you for more
information and higher resolution copies if we want to
print them. Alternatively, please log on to our forum
website at www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk/forum and
scroll down to Peer Pressure in the Creative Projects section
to post a link to your image samples.

“I STARTED OFF
TAKING VARIOUS
SELF-PORTRAITS
IN ANGUISHED
POSES...”
You’ll stand a better chance of seeing your work in print if
you adhere to the following criteria: make sure that your
images are high-quality TIFFs or JPEGs (RGB or CMYK),
300dpi minimum, and can be printed at 15cm x 15cm
minimum. Don’t forget to include a short text file detailing
how you created your work, too.

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 es
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The colour of pink BB EE
ST
NAME: Daniel Sehlstedt IN INSH ST
EMAIL: danne@dannei.com S OW
H
WEB: www.dannei.com
If yo
Be u think y
s O W
the t In S ou’ve go
This image was created as a token gesture for Daniel’s girlfriend. “I was feeling imagn send youhow in netxwhat it ta
uninspired and my girlfriend told me to create something for her.” To begin with a Your ine-publr images t t month’s kes to be
gradient overlay was created using a blend of pink and white. “I needed a background Spydefforts couildshwining.coo.uuskat adAvdavnacncedtPhheoto
texture and found a nice wavy pattern for which I altered the blending mode and Cal er2PROyou a fantast edpshops@hop
changed to an overlay. I reduced the opacity of this as I didn’t want it to get the full For m ibrat Moni ic
www ore inform or wo
.colo ation rth £ tor
attention.” Daniel then added some text into the background and used a layer mask to
hide the sides of the text to make it blend in more. Finally, he polished off the piece by urco on this 195
adding a few marks with different brushes and the ‘color of pink’ text. nfide prod
nce.c uct vis
om it

Purgatory
NAME: Matthew Kempton
EMAIL:
mattakempton@yahoo.co.uk
WEB:
www.cucumbersandwich.co.uk

Matthew taught himself

Photoshop and has been
learning for two years. His
current job as an in-house
designer for a small
company doesn’t require
much Photoshop so he tends
to practice in his free time.
Inspired by Vault49 and
Flatliner Matthew’s piece
was an idea conceived from
a conversation he had on
purgatory. “I thought it would
make for a rather interesting
project, so I started off by
doing a bit of home
photography, taking various
self portraits in anguished
poses. Once I had a photo I
was happy with I started
working on getting the body
to look as if it was about to
combust.” The result was
achieved by working with
several duplicated layers
(with subtle filters applied)
that were then combined
with layer effects.
“The sides of the image
were built up using a
combination of photographs
that were traced using the
Pen Tool and filled with solid
colour. Some brushes that
were sourced from
deviantART were used to
add the final touches.”

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 Discover the thinking behind the art

BE
IN ST
SH
OW

SHOAL OF APARTMENTS: “I tried to

think of how our great-grandsons would
live in harmony with nature and went for a
‘shoal of fish’ analogy. As often with my
pictures this looked quite dull before the
very last few steps. It only came together
after I added distance blur, light rays, small
dithers and a global colour retouch”

CITY HOPPER: The picture was created using a grasshopper as the main source
image and replacing each part with a mechanical element. “I couldn’t find sources for
the limbs of the pilot so I photographed myself in the position and incorporated this
into the image. Sometimes it’s the only way to get a weird perspective to match”

ASIMO RIDE: “A
recurring theme in my
pictures is the depiction of
everyday scenes in a
futuristic and mechanical
world. I wanted to show the
robot having a good time,
riding his new hover car.”
Joan used a motion blur on
the background to spice up
an otherwise static scene.
“I also turned the car into a
convertible to suit the
overall feeling”

SUNRISE ON LILYVILLE: “The piece combines several key approaches I had used
previously. I created a deep perspective by the multiplication and blurring of elements
in the background. A dreamy light was important as sunshine and sunrise always
makes for a nice ambiance. As for sense of scale, the man on the boat is there for a
reason – it ties the whole thing together. It’s very important in pictures to give the
viewer a way to understand the proportions of the elements”

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Visions
Of The “I DO PHOTOSHOP AS A HOBBY AND I
Future
NAME: Joan Charmant
WOULDN’T WANT IT OTHERWISE”
EMAIL: joan.charmant@gmail.com
WEB: www.joancharmant.com

Joan has been dabbling with

Photoshop for just under two
years. With previous
experience in graphical arts
he knew that photo-montage
would be the right style for
him. “It’s something that
combines the freedom of
illustration with the impact of
photography. The possibility of
developing my imaginary
worlds into convincing
pictures instantly attracted
me.” Joan has learned a lot
about his digital imaging by
“trial and error” constructions
in the daily competitions on
www.worth1000.com. It may
surprise some to learn that
despite his terrific Photoshop
skills Joan isn’t interested in
going professional. “I work for
the software industry. I do
Photoshop as a hobby and I
wouldn’t want it otherwise. I
sometimes feel that having an
art director can spoil the fun of
creation. I want to keep it pure
leisure, even if it means I’m not
getting any money out of it.”

BUNCH OF GEARS: This was one of

Joan’s earliest works and is one of the first
pictures he was happy with. “I did this
over the course of an afternoon, with a
pretty simple concept in mind. I replaced
each and every flower with a gear of the
same size and perspective. There are a
couple of things I would definitely do
differently today, but I guess its
symbolism still works quite well”
World Cup Fury
NAME: Gareth Julien

Gareth is a 26-year old project manager and multimedia student from

London. “I’ve dabbled with Photoshop since the days of the Apple Mac
Classic and would probably be a guru by now if I’d stuck at it.” He tells us
that this was quite a simple piece to create, but “involved a lot of playing
about to achieve the correct blending results.” Gareth painted the red flag
strips onto the material and adjusted the opacity and the different
blending options until he had a convincing result. The Warp and Brush
tools were used to manipulate the ‘England’ text and the German strips.

By submitting images to Advanced Photoshop’s Peer Pressure, you hereby grant Imagine and, if relevant, clients to
whom the relevant work has been provided, an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free licence to use intellectual property
in relation to work similar or equivalent to the work. This includes the right to showcase work on multimedia formats.

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 Helpdesk
Our Photoshop pro tackles your editing woes and sets
you on the path to image enlightenment BY JULIE EASTON
HUE’S THAT GIRL?
I am having trouble getting strong colours
from my digital SLR and I spend a lot of time
in Photoshop increasing the saturation, but
the results still aren’t as vivid as when I
worked with film. I use a lot of flora in my
digital artwork and I really need the texture
and vibrancy of flowers to remain.
However, I find that Photoshop tends to turn
colour into solid blocks and there are
uncomfortable transitions between different
colours. Can I avoid this effect when
adjusting the saturation?
Sarah Dunn
Increasing the saturation of an image in Photoshop leads to
blocky colours and unwanted artefacts because you are clip-
ping the pixel data and forcing tonal values too high. If you
are selectively increasing one colour channel, then you might
find that some pixels are changed and others nearby are not,
“BEFORE JUMPING RIGHT IN AND
USING THE SATURATION COMMAND,
TRY ENHANCING THE CONTRAST FIRST”
78
Advanced Photoshop
078-079_APM21_Helpd.indd 78
FLOWER POWER: Use the Saturation command as a last
resort to avoid blocky colours; try increasing the contrast
which is where the “uncomfortable transitions” make their
appearance. Digital saturation enhancement will exaggerate
the differences in tones that are usually too subtle to notice,
and this will lead to the loss of texture that you describe.
Before jumping right in and using the Saturation
command in Photoshop, try enhancing the contrast first, as
this may help to bring out the tones in your image without
losing pixel data. Also, use the Levels and Curves adjustments
options to make subtle changes to your image. Use the
Saturation command as a last resort and hopefully you’ll find
that your floral images retain more detail, but still have plenty
of contrast and colour.
BALANCING ACT
I use a couple of different cameras to
capture images that I later comp together for
digital projects. I am having trouble getting to
grips with my white balance settings and the
lighting can look off when different images
from different cameras are comped together.
I shoot under Tungsten lights, and set both
cameras to the pre-set Tungsten white-
balance setting, but they both produce
different results. What’s going on?
Simon Tucker
This is a common problem and it relates to the different ways
in which camera manufacturers describe Tungsten lighting.
Tungsten covers a wide range of different colour tempera-
tures from 2000-24000 degrees Kelvin for domestic bulbs, to
3200-3400 degrees Kelvin in studio setups. It depends on what
the particular manufacturer has based their Tungsten setting
on as to what colour the resulting image will be. Generally
cameras will be matched to the studio setting (which is what
Tungsten film was balanced for), but some cameras will aim
to reproduce in accordance with domestic values, which will
produce cold tones if used under studio lighting.
The best thing that you can do to achieve consistency
between your different cameras is to use a manual white
balance setting if there is one available. Measure the light
using a piece of white card underneath the lighting that you
intend to use for each of your cameras and hopefully the
images will comp together naturally. If you can, shoot in RAW
so that you maintain the image data and can adjust the
white balance settings in post-production.
LIGHTEN UP: Measure your white balance
manually if working under studio lighting
18/7/06 17:24:08

LET THERE BE LIGHT
I am weighing up the odds of buying a handheld light meter and wanted your advice. I
have a Canon 5D with reflective light metering and was wondering if I would benefit from
investing in a handheld meter that has both incident and reflective metering options.
Ian Clifton
All DSLRs have reflective light metering built in, which measures the light reflected by the subject toward the camera.
Incident lighting measures the light falling onto the subject, and can give more accurate light readings. With a handheld
meter you can get in close and take a meter in the same light as the subject, figuring the results into your calculations. The
main advantage of using a handheld meter is if you are photographing light, bright subjects like snow, which can often
fool a camera’s built-in metering into underexposing the image. They are essential under studio lighting to ensure correct
exposure of your subjects. Sekonic (www.sekonic.com) does a good range of light meters to suit all budgets.
PEN TROUBLES
I am using a PC with Photoshop CS2. I love
your magazine and your tutorials are really
excellent, but unfortunately something is
holding me back from being able to really
move forward creatively. I just can’t get my
head around the Pen Tool, therefore I can’t
create any of the great stuff in your magazine
that relies on this. It’s completely my fault I
know, but I just can’t get past what has now
become a major hang-up with my Photoshop
usage. I have studied web tutorials on using
the Pen Tool, but it just doesn’t click for me.
Would there be any chance at all of some
help with this? I’m sure I can’t be alone in
finding the accurate plotting of points for
tracing completely mystifying.
Antony Baker, via email
You’re definitely not alone in this one, Antony. A lot of people
have trouble getting used to the Pen Tool for cutting out
objects, but it is an essential tool to get to grips with if you
want to further your Photoshop skills. The trick here really is
practice, practice, practice. The web is full of great tutorials
that can help you, though some are more complicated than
others. One good tutorial can be found at http://retouchpro.
com/tutorials/?m=show&id=30, which isn’t the best-look-
ing of step-by-steps but it is a good one for simple explana-
tions. We wish we could offer you a quick-fix solution, but
unfortunately this is one case when there really isn’t one.
OUT OF CONTROL: The Pen Tool is tricky, but you just
gotta learn how to use it. Online tutorials can help
078-079_APM21_Helpd.indd 79
SENSITIVE TYPE: The larger sensor on the D50 make it a
better choice for good image quality than a prosumer camera
PIXELS VS POWER
I want to invest in a new camera but I am
confused as to what is the most important
thing to look for: megapixels or image-
processing capability? I need to be able to
print out comfortably at A4 and possibly
larger, and I am torn between a nine-
megapixel Fujifilm S9500 prosumer model, or
a six-megapixel Nikon D50 DSLR. I’ve been
working with film and scanning my images
in, but now I think it is time to go digital.
Jamie Donaldson
Once upon a time it was all about the megapixels, but that
race seems to be finally slowing down. Manufacturers are
realising that pursuing higher resolutions isn’t worth it when
most users don’t print out large enough to notice a difference.
What is more important is the size of a camera’s sensor.
Prosumer models, like the S9500 that you mentioned, have
tiny sensors meaning that the enlargement ratio for printing
out at A4 is a lot bigger than on the D50, which, like all DSLRs,
has a larger sensor. This means that at A4 size you will get
better quality images from the lower-resolution Nikon than
the nine-megapixel Fujifilm. You will also benefit from less
noise and better contrast. Therefore, if picture quality is
your only concern then we’d definitely recommend going
for the DSLR option, although you will have to take other
things into consideration like cost, additional lenses and
portability before making your final decision.
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MEMORY LOSS
I’ve done something silly and accidentally
deleted some images off of my memory
card. It was a long and tiring shoot and the
thought of having to do it all again is not
exactly filling me with joy. I have heard of
rescue software; can you recommend a
product, and will it work?
Jane Dorman
There are programs that can recover images from a memory
card to a reasonably good extent so don’t panic just yet! A
quick Google search reveals a number of different software
solutions that you can use. PhotoRecovery is available
from www.gorecovery.com and comes in both Mac and
Windows versions. The software costs £22.78 ($42) and can
be downloaded as soon as payment is made so you can
begin your attempt to recover images straight away. There
is no guarantee with this sort of program, however, so don’t
be disappointed if your images are beyond saving. In the
meantime don’t use your memory card or format it, otherwise
your chances of recovery disappear completely.
BRING IT BACK: You may be able to save deleted images
on your memory card with software like PhotoRecovery
HELPDESK
CALL FOR QUESTIONS
Want help with your Photoshop problems?
Then let our team of experts sort you out.
Send your emails to us at:
advancedpshop@imagine-publishing.co.uk
Remember to specify whether you are
using a PC or Mac and the version number
of your edition of Photoshop.
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18/7/06 17:25:06
 lap
tops
NOW THAT’S WHAT
Do your Photoshop on the move
with these powerful laptops that
pack a mean punch
I
f your love for Photoshop is as big
as ours, then those times when
you’re away from your computer
are painful. Staring out of the
window on a train or watching an awful
rom-com when jet-setting seems like a waste of
precious practice time. Similarly, if you have an
important appointment with a client and want
to prepare a presentation without worrying
about the hardware you’ll be greeted with, it’s
probably time to think about getting a laptop.
There are so many models on the market that
parting with your hard-earned cash can be a
decision nightmare. It’s easy to get carried away by
the temptation of a sleek and snazzy model, but if
the specs aren’t up to scratch your purchase could
be a big mistake.
The model for me?
If money is no object and you don’t mind
splashing out on another software package, then
you won’t have to worry about matching up your
operating system with your hardware at home or
PARTING
WITH CASH CAN
BE A DECISION
NIGHTMARE
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080-083_APM21_laptops.indd 80
I CALL A
NOTEBOOK
in the office. But if, like most of us, you need to be
budget-conscious, then you will need to install
the same package you have on your desktop onto
your new laptop. The Adobe CS2 licensing allows
you to install a package onto a maximum of two
different machines. There’s no hybrid version of
Adobe Creative Suite 2, so if you’ve already gone
the way of the Apple at home, you’ll need to get
a MacBook. You’re less limited when it comes to
Windows systems, because there’s plenty more
choice for model types and brands for a variety
of budgets – although you may find the system
less intuitive.
There are a few pointers to remember when
buying a laptop. Because you’ll be working with
large file sizes that could easily slow down your
machine, plenty of memory and hard drive space
(around 100GB) will be invaluable. Of course, you
can always attach a portable hard drive to save
your storage from being used up, but your
Photoshop work will be tedious without that extra
oomph of good speed.
Working with high-resolution images will mean
that a good graphics card is essential. Steer away
from integrated graphics cards. You’ll be able to
upgrade your machine far easier without one
and always make sure you’re up to date with the
best graphics technology (this is particularly
useful if you ever want to upgrade your software
– you never know what new releases are around
the corner).
Although you won’t want to carry around an
unnecessarily large model, a generous monitor
size is a must to make your Photoshop work easy
on the eye. Most new models don’t scrimp on
this, but try to opt for a widescreen that measures
more than 15 inches so you can spread out your
windows and palettes.
Finally, there will be more freedom using your
laptop if you choose a piece of kit that comes
with a good quality DVD writer, so you can burn
and back up all those essential files.
Go shopping
There are plenty of places to pick up your laptop
models. The obvious place is a company website
to mail-order your pieces of kit, although this
won’t necessarily give you the best deal. A local
chain store is another option, but let’s face it,
getting your ear talked off by a shop assistant on
commission isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
The best deals will come from scouting the
web. If you’ve got Del Boy tendencies and fancy
trying your luck with a bargain, check out eBay
and start placing your bids. A potential bargain
might immediately come to light by logging on
to our favourite price comparison website,
www.pricerunner.co.uk. Here, you can compare
prices from reputable outlets, read up on
customer reviews, check out the star rating and
save yourself searching high and low for those
cracking deals.
18/7/06 17:17:20
 Laptop
ROUND UP
LAPTOPS: PORTABLE POWER
When high resolution, fast speed and huge
storage space are a must

Sony VAIO
AR Series
Web: www.sony.co.uk / www.sony.com
Contact: (UK) 0870-2402408 / (US) 1-888-476-6972
The AR series is Sony’s designated multimedia PC range, fusing premium
technology and entertainment features, and they all look pretty slick. Included in
the range is the first VAIO notebook with Blu-ray disc. The benefits of a model from the
AR series include a large hard disk capacity – perfect for storing large image files – and a
17-inch WideUltra XGA2 black LCD screen to make your Photoshop work a joy. All of the
monitors include a dual-lamp and a multi-layer anti-reflection surface treatment to aid the
display’s contrast and brightness.

VGN-AR11S
Price : £1,999 / $3,688
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Media
Center Edition 2005
Platform: Intel Centrino Core
Memory speed (MHz): 533
Memory size: 1024
High Drive capacity (GB): 200
Optical Drive type: Blu-ray Super Multi Double layer DVD +/- RW/ BD-RE Drive
Display: 17-inch (1920x1200) X-black LCD with double lamp technology
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce Go7600 GT with 256MB dedicated video memory

A BLU-RAY DISC VGN-AR11M VGN-AR11B

CAN STORE LOADS
MORE INFO PER LAYER
Price : £1,499 / $2,765 Price : £1,199 / $2,213
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Media Operating System: Microsoft Windows Media
Center Edition 2005 Center Edition

THAN A DVD Platform: Intel Centrino Core

Memory speed (MHz): 533
Memory size: 1024MB
High Drive capacity (GB): 160
Optical Drive type: Super Multi Double Layer DVD
+/- RW Drive
Display: 17-inch (1440x900) X-black LCD with
double lamp technology
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce Go7600 with
128MB dedicated video memory
Platform: Intel Centrino Core
Memory speed (MHz): 533
Memory size: 1024MB
High Drive capacity (GB): 100
Optical Drive type: Super Multi Double layer DVD
+/- RW Drive
Display: 17-inch (1440x900) X-black LCD
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce Go7400 with
TurboCache supporting 256MB

Blu-ray eration optical

know, Blu-ray is the next gen
For those who aren’t in the and embraced by
Blu-ray Disc Association
disc format developed by the wel l known HD DVD format in
against the
Sony. It’s currently competing
true VHS vs Betamax style. r (25 gigabytes
s more information per laye
A Blu-ray disc can store load elen gth . However,
ause of the shorter wav
instead of 15) than a DVD bec ens ive to pro duc e.
far more exp
the drawback is that they’re

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 lap
tops
rock
Web: www.rockdirect.com
Contact: ((UK) 08709 909090
great-quality
rock has been producing
yea rs. Although that’s st innovative
notebooks for over ten ops offer some of the mo
oun t of tim e com par ed to its competitors, its lapt IT exp erts.
a pretty short am ch is often applauded by
technology on the ma rket
There are a whole host of
to satisfy rigorous Photosh
. It’s

op
ran
a rea
ges
dem
lly serious competitor, whi
ava
and
ilab
s. All
le from
roc k’s
roc k, all catering for different
products have a three-year
nee ds, wit h ple nty of power
collect-and-return warran
es with an option al second
ty, Apple
Web: www.apple.com
awry. The CTX T2500 com
mind if anything does go on the move. Great for tho
se
so you can have peace of rs of extra pow er Contact: (0800 039 1515 (UK),
t swa ps wit h the DVD writer to give over three hou form anc e.
battery tha rificing screen size and per 1800 88 20 29 (Ireland)
op on the train without sac
who need to use Photosh 1-800-275-2273 (US)

rock Xtreme CTX T2500

Apple delivers the goods with the MacBook
and MacBook Pro, offering not only superb
specs for speedy Photoshop work but also
Price : £1,644 / $2,995 stunning design. Not only can you rely on
t Windows XP Home
Operating System: Microsof
Duo T250 0 Apple to provide a notebook with plenty of
Platform : Intel(r) Core
welcome extras, there’s always great
Memory speed (MHz): 667
Memory size: 1GB support both online and over the
: 100 telephone. Both of these models are similar
High Drive capacity (GB)
l Layer +/- DVD Writer
Optical Drive type: 8x Dua en in style, but vary a little according to size
17-in ch (168 0 x 1050 ) WUXGA+ X-Glass TFT Scre
Display: and technical specifications.
IA GeFo rce Go79 00 GTX with 256MB
Graphics Card: NVID The MacBook offers 2GHz of Intel Core
dedicated video memory
Duo Power and up to 80GB hard drive, with
able that swaps an optional DVD burning SuperDrive,
Optional second battery avail
with the DVD write r to give
over three hours of
battery on the move
– good for people
p
MacBook
who need to use Photosho Price : £749 / $1,099
g
on the train without sacrificin Operating System: Mac OS X v.10.4 Tiger
and perform ance .
screen size Platform: 1.83GHz or 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory speed (MHz): 667
Memory size: Up to 120GB
High Drive capacity (GB): Up to 120GB
Optical Drive type: Super Drive with double-layer

GREAT
read support (DVD+R DL/DVD +/- RW/CD-RW)
Display: 13.3-inch glossy widescreen TFT display

FOR THOSE
Graphics Card: Intel GMA 950 graphics
processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared
with main memory

WHO NEED
TO USE
PHOTOSHOP
ON THE
TRAIN

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 Laptop
ROUND UP
Alienware
Web: www.alienware.co.uk/
www.alienware.com
Contact: 0800 279 9751 (UK), 1-
800-ALIENWARE (US)
If you’re not one to trundle along
with the masses then an Alienware
notebook could be the right
option for you. Alienware offers
award-winning products with a
unique style and hefty performance. There are plenty of models to
opt for with varying specifications, but all have the distinctive
Alienware casing that will be sure to make heads turn.

Aurora MALX Elite Assassin

Price : £2,599 / $4,792
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition
Platform: AMD Turion 64 Mobile Processor
Memory speed (MHz): 400
built-in Bluetooth, wireless-ready bandwidth. The standard is a
Memory size: 120GB
Airport and up to 2GB of RAM from 15.4-inch display which comes with High Drive capacity (GB): up to 120GB
$1,099 in the US, with the nasty tax 2GHz or 2.16GHz Core Duo, one Optical Drive type: 8x Dual Layer DVD +/-RW/ 24x CD-RW
man adding a little extra for the UK at FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports. Graphics Card: 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX SLI Enabled
£749, while Europeans get it for €1,119. However, we’d suggest the 17-inch
For extra punch, the MacBook Pro is
five times the speed of the PowerBook
display, which has 2.16GHz Core
Duo, one FireWire 800 and three USB THE DISTINCTIVE
G4, with eight times the graphics 2.0 ports.
ALIENWARE CASING
MacBook Pro WILL BE SURE TO MAKE
Price : £1097 / $1999
Operating System: Mac OS X v.10.4 Tiger
HEADS TURN
Platform: 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory speed (MHz): 667
Memory size: Up to 2GB
High Drive capacity (GB): Up to 120GB
Optical Drive type: 4x SuperDrive (DVD +/- RW/ CD-RW)
Display: 17-inch (1680x1050) TFT Screen or 15.4-inch (1400x900) TFT Screen
Graphics Card: 17-inch – ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual
link DVI. 15-inch – ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual link DVI

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 Giving you a creative head-start
Push the limits of Adobe’s image-editing app
with these essential resources

GET FLASHY: The latest,

greatest gadgets on page 90

software 86
Everything you need to know about
Vista, the new Windows system

gadgets 90
Bring some gadgetry to your desktop
with our selection of tech toys

books 92
From game art to digital photography,
we’ve got it covered

mends
websites 94
Recom Learn online with these top Photoshop
sites and resources

C reating in Photoshop has never been an ‘all work, no play’ affair. Engineering digital images is a
fun and creative task, and your work area should reflect this. Giving you a helping hand to
obtain the ultimate home office, we’ve compiled a list of the coolest gadgets around. With some
proving invaluable to your work within days and others being a more frivolous spend, you’re sure to
find something to suit your needs.
And that’s not where our creative researching has stopped this month. We’ve had Steve Jenkins,
Windows XP Made Easy’s reviews editor, give us the lowdown on the impending launch of Vista.
Whatever you need to know about the release, we’ve got it covered.
There’s also a wealth of books between these resource pages, covering topics from creating video
game art to using Corel Painter successfully with Photoshop.
Finally, we’ve included a directory of the finest Photoshop websites around. Whether it’s inspiration,
tutorials, news or reviews you want from the Internet, these sites will set you on the right path.

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 Feature

A view of
Windows Vista
With the next generation of Microsoft Windows
just around the corner, will it be worth the wait?
T
he next generation of Windows, officially
BY STEVE JENKINS titled Vista, has been a long time in the
making. Its predecessor, Windows XP, first
appeared in the public domain in 2001, making
the transition almost six years – and that’s if Vista
makes its scheduled debut!
Although Microsoft has insisted Vista will be
unveiled to the public in the first quarter of 2007, the
launch has been plagued with problems. Even if that
exact date is still open to speculation, when the OS
finally does make an appearance, Microsoft assures
its waiting consumers that it will have been worth
the wait.
Will Vista prove to be the powerhouse Microsoft
claims or will it be a case of ‘don’t believe the hype’?

Looking good
With several betas and the CPP (Customer Preview
Program) available, much of the mystery of Vista has
already been dispelled. However, one component
that’s been gaining plenty of attention is the new
user interface.
With the right hardware, the visual sophistication
of the new interface can be fully appreciated. Vista
introduces glass effects to home and office

ALL GROWN UP: The vastly

improved graphics engine
brings with it visual
sophistication and the option to
make standard Windows
elements semi-transparent. The
new Start menu finally grows up
and becomes a new mature self

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 WINDOWS VISTA
computing, enabling elements such as the title bar
and taskbar to become semi-transparent so users can
focus on the task of actually using the software. This
opacity also allows for users to view underlying
Get ready for Vista
The appearance of a new OS
content without the inconvenience of having to
brings with it one prevailing
minimise or close a window. This may be a simple
question. Will my present
feature but could be worth its weight in gold,
machine be powerful enough
improving productivity no end.
or will I need to upgrade?
Alongside the new UI, the other famous feature of
History dictates that
the Windows Desktop – the Start menu – has also
Microsoft’s minimum specs are
been given a major reworking.
liberal to say the least. As a
The first, most traffic stopping change is that it no
general guideline, you’ll need
longer bears the moniker ‘Start’. Sporting simply the
to double whatever Microsoft
Windows flag that brings forth the new improved
states to gain acceptable
menu with a single click, the new look Start menu is
performance from the OS. At a
sure to cause some excitement. The gateway to
quick glance, users will need
Windows also now boasts a redesigned layout, giving
for a Vista Capable PC,
the menu a far more compact look and feel. The ‘My’
according to guidelines, a
tag has been removed, with My Documents, My
modern CPU (Intel, AMD or Via
Pictures, My Music, etc simply becoming Documents,
at least 800MHz), 512MB of
Pictures and Music. This rejuvenated menu helps
RAM and a DirectX 9 class
give the impression of a far more grown-up and to find out if they are ready for BE PREPARED: It’s best to play
graphics processor. For a Vista safe and double up on whatever
mature system. an upgrade to Windows Vista.
Premium PC, a 1 GHz processor, specs Microsoft gives in order to
And that’s not where the menu updates stop. The This can be found at www.
1GB of RAM, 128MB graphics get a reasonable performance
cascading All Programs menu system has also been microsoft.com/windowsvista/ from the operating system
memory plus 15GB of free disk
given the boot, and space within the menu is reused getready/upgradeadvisor/
space and a DVD-ROM.
to display a sub Contents menu for quicker default.mspx.
For further assistance you
interaction. In addition, an integrated desktop search For replacement PCs, users
can try the latest beta of The
known as Instant Search offers the option to find and need to look out for the
Windows Vista Upgrade
launch almost any file or program instantly. Windows Vista Capable PC logo
Advisor. This is a small
which identifies hardware that
application that runs on
Take control current Windows XP machines
meets or exceeds the
The Control Panel is an essential and central point requirements to deliver the
for modifying the many settings that Windows LOOK FOR THE Windows Vista core experience.
currently possesses. The new improved Control Panel LOGO: The For a better Windows Vista
retains some of the old favourites, but boasts plenty Windows Vista
experience, be sure to get a
Capable PC logo
of new additions as well. In fact, there are now a will identify the Windows Vista Capable PC that
total of 54 Control Panel applets waiting for hardware you need is designated Premium Ready.
your attention.

ADOBE HAS SUPPORTED MICROSOFT

OPERATING SYSTEMS CONSISTENTLY, SO
IT’S A NATURAL EVOLUTION FOR US TO
SUPPORT VISTA
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 Feature
A NEW BROWSING
EXPERIENCE
A big player in the Windows universe and the
World Wide Web, Internet Explorer has been
given a long overdue overhaul. The latest beta
(www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.
mspx) introduces a sparkling new interface
and a host of new features including the much
vaunted tabbed browsing. This finally brings it
in line with its few competitors (mainly Firefox).
Web searching straight from the toolbar,
reading and subscription to RSS feeds, and
improved support for cascading style sheets
(CSS) are also included. The ‘ools menu gives
way to the all-new and improved Phishing
Filter, which offers Automatic Website
Checking to ensure that a site is safe.
Much like the old Control Panel, the Vista version is
available in two views – Classic and Category – with
the Category view now expanded. Tailoring the look
and feel of Vista to suit personal requirements is now
within easy reach thanks to the Ease of Use Center.
User Accounts and Family Safety provide control over
how children access and make use of the PC, as well
as giving the option to impose time limits.
CONTROL PANEL: The Control Panel is where the
heart of Windows Vista lies and a visit will reveal a
host of new improved applets, an amazing 54 in total
VISTA HAS JETTISONED MANY A
FEATURE TO MAKE ITS RELEASE DATE
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086-089_APM21_Vista.indd 88
Security is an issue that has been at the heart of
Windows for many years, and Vista proves to be no
different. Microsoft states that its latest OS will be the
most secure version of Windows yet. To this end it has
included a host of tools and features to prevent
unwanted intrusions. Automatic Updates and
Windows Security Center can help you keep your PC
up to date with the latest security patches, while the
improved Windows Vista firewall will help repel
hackers, viruses and worms. Windows Defender
(already available in beta) helps protect you against
spyware and other potentially unwanted software.
Plus there is the inclusion of the Malicious Software
Removal tool, which scans your PC looking for known
prevalent viruses.
Gadgets and Sidebar
Vista is by no means going to be all work and no play,
though. A new addition, that Mac OS X and even
Google users might have seen the like of before, is
Gadgets. Essentially, Gadgets are mini-applications
that are web services delivering information to the
desktop. These include news updates, weather
information and Internet radio streams. These are but
the tip of the iceberg though with Gadgets being
capable of integrating with installed applications –
Media Player, or being standalone apps – Calculator.
Alongside the standard Vista set, further Gadgets
can be downloaded from a wide variety of
MINI APPS: Download, install and manage a host of
mini applications with the help of the Windows
Sidebar and a pool of Gadgets available from
developers and manufacturers across the globe
developers. And Microsoft has thought of you if you
have too many gadgets to know what to do with.
The Windows Sidebar is a panel that resides to the
side of the desktop and lets users organise Gadgets
for easy access.
As you might expect from a new Windows OS,
Microsoft has included a host of media tools that
begin to take Vista beyond a PC operating system.
Included is an updated version of Windows Media
Player with a new improved interface and all round
manageability. Integrated into the player is URGE, a
new digital music service from MTV Networks. Vista’s
own version of Media Center with updated interface
makes an appearance making it easier than ever to
find, play and manage all your digital entertainment
on your PC or TV using a remote control. It’s almost
like you never had a PC. Alongside the big players
there’s the updated Movie Maker, now with support
for HD video and burning to CD/DVD plus DVD
Maker for creating DVD interfaces.
A Photoshopper’s paradise?
But what about Photoshop users? Will Vista be
a paradise for us, or will we find that like the
brand new Intel-powered Macs, Photoshop has not
been considered?
As usual, the app giant is being tight-lipped about
any forthcoming changes to software to encompass
new technology, although one Adobe spokesman
MUSIC: Get to grips with the all new interface of
Windows Media Player 11, and take control of your
music and video. Plus, expand your music collection
with the integrated download service URGE
19/7/06 15:13:05

”Admittedly we’ve had to wait a long time for a major upgrade to Microsoft’s
Windows, but despite that it looks like we won’t be disappointed as there’s
definitely a lot to get excited about in Vista – from the fresh new
sophisticated look including desktop gadgets and the 3D Flip view to
simplified system management and improved security features.“
Stuart Tarrant, Editor – Windows XP Made Easy
did tell us: “We have supported Microsoft operating
systems consistently, so it’s a natural evolution for
us to support Vista. Beyond this, it is Adobe
corporate policy to not comment on future versions
of our software.”
And there’s more
Any insight into Vista would not be complete
without the mention of the Windows Vista product
line-up. This will consist of six versions, two for
businesses, three for consumers and one for
emerging markets: Windows Vista Business, Windows
Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows
Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate and
Windows Vista Starter. The three contenders for
the home users are Windows Vista Home Basic,
Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista
Ultimate. For an in-depth view, head on over to
SUPREME CONTROL: Take control of access and get
peace of mind all in one easy-to-set-up centre. Limit
access to undesirable websites, impose time limits
and block programs on your machine
086-089_APM21_Vista.indd 89
Windows Vista
www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/
feb06/02-26WinVistaProductsPR.mspx.
Vista is expected to hit the streets in Q1 2007.
However, much in the tradition of all that is Windows,
even this date could prove to be flexible. Originally
set to be released in 2005, Vista (codenamed
Longhorn) has jettisoned many a feature to make
even the ‘07 date. This includes the recent removal of
WinFS, its relational file system once described as one
of the pillars of Vista. The recent €497m fine from the
European Commission for a ‘near-monopoly’ of the
Windows System hasn’t helped matters either.
Microsoft recently said that efforts to improve
security in Vista were largely behind the delays. Vista
chief Jim Allchin commented, “We’re trying to do the
responsible thing here.” Well, let’s hope so, and roll on
2007 when we can finally see the fruits of the
software giant’s labour – and it had better be good. 5
PHOTOS: Browse your carefully arranged photo
collection via a selected month or day, or view your
highly rated favourites. Give the not-so-good a
helping hand with a click of Fix
INSTANT VISTA
ADVICE
The advent of a new OS brings with it plenty
of online information, and Microsoft sites
among many others can be found in
abundance. The main instigator of the latest
Vista news and general information lies within
the Microsoft site itself.
● Official Windows Vista
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/
default.aspx
This is the starting point from which users can
branch out, discover and expand their
knowledge of the next generation OS.
Additional official websites that make the
grade include:
● Get Ready
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/
default.mspx
This page provides links and insight to
Windows Vista Capable PCs, Windows Vista
editions, Upgrade Advisor and the Customer
Preview Program.
● Windows Vista Community
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/
community/default.mspx
This page includes Vista featured articles, links to
popular blogs, up and coming events,
newsgroups and community MVPs.
● Windows Marketplace
www.windowsmarketplace.com
Provides a selection of Windows Vista Capable
and Premium Ready PCs that are available today.
For an unofficial view of the latest and greatest
Microsoft OS, pay a visit to:
● ActiveWin
www.activewin.com
The Active Network is a huge resource that’s
dedicated to Windows in all shapes and forms.
Alongside its dedicated Windows XP section,
users will find the Vista section which offers an
in-depth guide to the OS.
● Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows
www.winsupersite.com
This site embraces all versions of Windows with
FAQs, reviews, Tech Showcases and its own
dedicated Windows Vista Activity Centre.
89
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19/7/06 15:14:28
resources
gadgets When you’re stuck at your desk, a cool gadget or
funky flash drive can fire up your inspiration

TADO Hero Flashdrive High-tech treats

Price: £64 / $117.95
Web: www.mimoco.com PQI U510

Y
ou’re probably familiar with the work of TADO (www.
tado.co.uk). A design company that produces its own
cartoon-esque worlds through Photoshop, Illustrator and
Flash, Mike and Katie are well-known in the design industry.
Expanding their creative wings further than their illustrations
and range of toys takes them, they’ve now designed a series of
flash drives. Imagine tucking your work onto these funky drives
– you’d be the envy of the design world! Check out www.
mimoco.com, where you’ll find designs by lots of artists
and the storage goes up to 2GB – not bad. Convenient
and portable, these drives are an essential working tool,
and with one this design-friendly, you’ll never lose it. 5
Recom
Rating: 5/5
Price: £35 / $44.99
Web: http://www.pqimemory.com
If you thought your flash drive was small,
then check out the latest offering to be
announced by PQI. The U510 looks set to be
the world’s slimmest flash drive at just 3mm
thick. That’s not much bigger than your
credit card!
Designed to fit neatly in your wallet or
pocket the U510 has a built-in retractable USB
connector, works with Macs and Windows,
and holds an amazing 16GB of data!
Although the some information remains
unobtainable (at time of print) the U510 will be
mends available in iron grey, metallic silver and a
football-inspired design. 5
Rating: 4/5

Logitech Cordless Desktop

Photoshop Shortcut S530 Laser for Mac
Price: £69.99 / $127

Keyboard
Web: www.logitech.co.uk
Designed specifically with the stylish white
Macs in mind, the new S530 is the ideal
Price: £10.49 / $18 companion for your monitor, scanner and
printer. Complete with a one-touch button
Web: www.editorskeys.com
that allows you instant access to your music

I deal for those new to the Adobe app, this gadget is and photos on a Mac, the Desktop also
compatible with both PC and Mac keyboards. Allowing includes a cordless, ergonomically designed
keyboard with extended battery life and a
you to work faster than ever by giving you easy access to sculpted laser mouse for extra precision.
shortcuts, the Photoshop Keyboard is fully compatible Perfect for those using Photoshop.
with the default shortcuts in Photoshop 5 and above. Although if you’re a PC user this one is
Transforming your keyboard couldn’t be simpler – just stick definitely not for you, with the USB mini-
receiver and stand, this is the perfect package
and go for a potential increase in your productivity. Although
– even if you’re designing on the go. 5
we’re not huge fans of keyboard stickers like this, they can be
Rating: 4/5
and invaluable resource while you’re learning and can be easily
disposed of afterwards. 5
Wacom Graphire4 Classic
Rating: 3/5 Price: £54 / $99.95
Web: www.wacom-europe.com/uk
Even those put off by some of
Wacom’s more expensive

Availabot
tablets can’t turn their nose
up at the Graphire4 range. Recom
mends
Starting at just $99.95
Price: TBA (around £54) the tablet is
cheap enough to let you get the
Web: www.availabot.com feel of the stylus, without feeling like you’ve

N ow this really is a frivolity. As yet only a prototype, the

Availabot is designed to make you aware when your
instant messaging friends are online. For example, when
spent a fortune.
The Graphire4 Classic has everything
you need to get going with a tablet – a
working space of around A6 (which is great
your mate is online Availabot stands up straight, and when for enthusiasts, although pros might find this
they go offline your desktop buddy drops to the floor. a tad restrictive), 2000 dpi to allow pinpoint
A purely fun way of showing whether or not your mates are accuracy and a pen compartment to
store your new cordless and battery-free
online at any given time, the Availabot has one more trick up its
Wacom pen.
sleeve to ensnare you into buying. It can be made to look like Of all the gadgets you may want, this is one
you or your friends! No word yet on when this little gadget is you actually need. 5
going to be released or how much it’s likely to retail for (at time Rating: 5/5
of print), but we reckon unless it’s under a tenner, this is one
office gadget we can all live without. 5

Rating: 3/5

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High-tech treats
Logitech MX1000 Laser
Cordless Mouse
Price: £49.99 / $91
Web: www.logitech.com
This was the world’s first laser mouse and
remains to this day a decent product. With
an incredible 20 times more sensitivity to
surface detail – or tracking power – than
optical, laser can track reliably even on
tricky polished or wood-grain surfaces.
The MX1000 also offers some advanced
features that will make you more productive
and more comfortable, these include the
sculpted thumb support and finger grips for
enhanced control, tiltable wheel for scrolling
sideways and illuminated four level battery
indicator. One more plus point is that it’s
available in two hues – gunmetal silver and
onyx black – so no matter what your setup,
this will look fab. 5
Rating: 4/5
MacBook
Price: £1028.99 / $1499
Web: www.apple.com
Do you like to stand out Recom
mends
from the crowd? If so your
next purchase should be the
MacBook black.
We’re all used to seeing the white Macs.
People on trains rub them in our faces
(metaphorically only of course), students show
them off in the local parks and TV shows seem
to sport more than their fair share. However,
they’re all white.
The new MacBook from Apple features
Intel technology, a screen over 13 inches wide
as well as all of a Mac’s usual fare, and comes in
either traditional white or the bold black.
Which will you choose? 5
Rating: 5/5
HP TravelScan 860 Business
Card Scanner
Price: £36 / $67
Web: www.usbgeek.com/prod_detail.
php?prod_id=0283
For people who are always meeting new
clients, business cards can become more of
an annoyance than a resource. However,
with this cool little portable scanner from
HP, that might all be about to change.
As you get a new card you can simply feed
it into the miniature scanner and it’s stored
directly on your computer. The scanned
images can be converted into text using
built-in optical character recognition
technology, and can be imported directly into
Outlook or another client. Costing just £36,
you get the black and white scanner, cable,
software and carrying case. 5
Rating: 4/5
090-094_APM_21_resources.indd 91
resources
Pantone Huey
Price: £69.95 / $127
Web: www.colourconfidence.com
T o be able to work to your best, you have to be sure
your technology is working to its best too. And what
most people can overlook is proper colour
calibration for their monitors.
The Pantone Huey is a breakthrough. Able to
work with LCD, CRT and laptop screens and
compatible with Windows 2000/XP or Macintosh
mends
OSX 10.3 and above, Huey is the size of a small Recom
marker pen and is the first monitor calibration device
to continually adjust a monitor as room lighting
changes. With calibration complete in less than three
minutes, you’ll be left with plenty of time for creativity. 5
Rating: 5/5
American Express
Butterfly
Price: N/A
Web: www.americanexpress.com/uk
I
f you’re starting your own design business, could there
be a better way to impress clients than to buy lunch on
an American Express? Yes: buy it with the new Butterfly.
Only available to Gold Card holders, the butterfly comes in
its own sleek case that can be worn around the neck, but its
show-stopping feature is the fact it is jointed to bend in half.
The Butterfly, although not available to everyone, is embedded
with status and style that means it’s sure to turn heads. But a
whole host of people wearing their cards round their necks in a
recognisable case can mean only one thing. Trouble. 5
Rating: 3/5
Sony Mouse Phone
Price: £55 / $100
Web: www.sony.co.uk
I
f you want decadence, look no further than the Sony
VAIO VN-CXI – a mouse and phone in one. If you like the
concept, it could be the perfect gadget for a home office.
In mouse mode the VN-CXI is highly responsive, featuring
800dpi resolution that makes navigating files and the Internet a
breeze. As an Internet telephone incoming calls are announced
by a LED on the mouse or by a ring tone if you prefer and the
device opens at the touch of a button to become a handset for
hands free or normal calling. Weighing in at just 67g the VN-CXI
is available in black, silver or blue, but it’s the question that’s on
everyone’s lips we just can’t answer. Why? 5
Rating: 4/5
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19/7/06 15:04:07
 books
resources
Not all books are made equal, so we sort the wheat from
the chaff in the digitally obsessed literary world
Artistic Techniques With Adobe Photoshop
and Corel Painter
Author: Deborah Lynn Ferro
Publisher: Amherst Media
Price: £21.99 / $34.95
ISBN: 1584281650
Web: www.amherstmedia.com
I f you want to branch out of the realms of Photoshop
and explore some new apps then this book is for you.
Looking at the way Photoshop works with Corel’s Painter,
this volume teaches even old hands at ‘Shop, new tricks.
From selecting the right hardware and software to make your
digital masterpieces to revealing tricks to combine the effects of
these two powerful apps, everyone will find something new in
this read. Possibly one of the most useful features of this book is
its advice on marketing and selling your images. Looking at the
advantages of producing limited editions, as well as revealing
the must-knows behind pricing, marketing and the media, you’ll
find it invaluable.
The book however, is severely lacking in photographic
presence. Although packed full of step-by-step tutorials on how
to create images within both apps, the lack of visuals makes the
techniques harder to follow and ultimately uninspiring. A few
more photographs and a few less words would make all the
difference to this book.
3D Game Textures: Create Professional
Game Art Using Photoshop
Author: Luke Ahearn
Publisher: Focal Press
Price: £29.99 / $54
ISBN: 0240807685
Web: www.focalpress.com
I t’s no surprise to learn that a lot of Photoshoppers are
also gaming and Internet enthusiasts. Spending most
of our time locked onto the computer for one reason or
another, it’s great to know we can create what we’re
looking at.
3D Textures teaches you how to create professional-looking
videogame textures with step-by-step tutorials. Also focusing
on teaching you the most efficient workflow critical for game
development, this is not a book that speaks down to you.
Using just Photoshop the book explores the skills needed to
create grungy urban settings or rich fantasy worlds. From start
to finish the volume looks at the research behind the games, to
creating effective bullet holes, blood splatters and blast marks.
Written by Luke Ahearn, a professional game developer with
more then 13 years’ experience in the business, this is not a read
for Photoshop beginners. Ahearn was involved in the
production of Dead Reckoning and America’s Army as well as
having a hand in the backgrounds of some of EA’s biggest titles.
If the thought of learning from the best isn’t enough to make
92
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090-094_APM_21_resources.indd 92
Further reading
The Book Of Digital
Photography
Author: Chris George
Publisher: Ilex
Price: £20 / $36
ISBN: 9781904705857
Web: www.ilex-press.com
Available from August, The Book Of Digital
Photography is described by its publishers
as “its most ambitious single volume
photography title to date” and after taking
a look at it we’d have to agree.
Anyone trying their hand at being a snapper
will love this book. Looking at everything from
depth of field to focal length, lighting and
shutter speed to all aspects of manipulation.
Because of the breadth of subjects, some
aspects are skimmed over that should be
explored further, but for people with a good
basic knowledge, this is a fantastic book. 5
Rating: 4/5
From Guttenberg
Moan over – as a whole the volume will teach you some To Opentype
essential tools to combine the power of Corel and Adobe to Author: Robin Dodd
Publisher: Ilex
create collages, painterly effects, pencil sketches, watercolours Price: £19.99 / $36
and more. ISBN: 1904705774
Web: www.ilex-press.com
Top notch for a tenner, but for over 20 pounds you might feel
An informative and comprehensive history
a little disappointed. 5 of type from the earliest markmaking to the
present day, this book is a must-have for
Rating: 3/5 anyone working closely with typefaces.
A beautifully designed and laid out read, the
400 images to 192-page ratio certainly gets our
approval. Starting with the beginning of the
written word, to the introduction of printing, this
volume really sets the scene. Once we get to the
modern day the book focuses on specific
typefaces and where they originated, looking at
how they are still used today. A little samey after
a while, especially if you have no real interest in
mends
the area, although if you’re looking for a new
font for your site this might help out. 5
Recom
Rating: 3/5
Automating Photoshop To
Get Twice The Work Done
In Half The Time
Author: Matt Kloskowski
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Price: £24.99 / $45
ISBN: 0321441656
Web: www.peachpit.com
This book reveals all the tricks, tips and
techniques behind automating Adobe
Photoshop to save time and effort.
Written by Matt Kloskowski, education and
curriculum developer for the National
Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP),
the book can help you master Photoshop’s
powerful tools, and leave you wondering how
you ever got along without them. This guide will
you want to part with your hard-earned cash, the CD-ROM extra also show you hidden actions and automation
might just be. Packed full of everything you’ll need to get gems that are already loaded when you install
started developing your own game textures, the CD is the Photoshop CS2 – if you want to increase your
perfect accompaniment to a great book. 5 speed, and get twice the work done with half
the headaches, this is the book for you. 5
Rating: 5/5 Rating: 4/5
19/7/06 15:04:33
 websites
resources
Whether you want some Photoshop community, advice,
tutorials or inspiration, you’ll find it all on the web

Photoshop User What’s on the web

Web: www.photoshopuser.com
Photoshop Support
R un by the National Association of Photoshop
Professionals (NAPP), Photoshop User is the place for
training, education and news on Adobe’s finest app.
Web: www.photoshopsupport.com
Finding a site that provides you
with access to great brushes,
Although you have to become a member to enjoy the full plug-ins and offers can begin
benefits of the site, those benefits are numerous. From all the to seem like a challenge once Recomm
ends
latest news on the Photoshop Expo to getting money off of you’ve trawled through the
net a few hundred times.
hardware, software and the like, or being able to showcase your
If you haven’t yet found Photoshop
work on their online portfolio and receiving the Photoshop User Support though, you should pop over there
magazine, the list is comprehensive. soon, as this fantastic site provides you with
However, membership does come at a cost and that isn’t opportunity to purchase many apps at a
discount, as well as providing a host of brush
cheap. Starting from $99 the membership will allow you access
and plug-in downloads.
to Photoshop TV but you might find you can get similar Other resources found on the site include
benefits elsewhere and for less money. 5 Flash and Dreamweaver tutorials as well as a
photo and Hard Drive recovery centre –
Rating: 4/5 providing lots of advice and support. Easy to
navigate and a good source of inspiration. 5
Rating: 5/5

Photoshop Café Photoshop Killer Tips

Web: www.photoshopkillertips.com
Web: www.photoshopcafe.com Produced by the NAPP, this site provides

P
visitors with access to an abundance of
roviding visitors with access to all things Photoshop,
Photoshop tips to make creating Actions,
the Café is a great place to visit. From online forums to batch processing, Histogram updates and
discuss your ‘Shop woes, to some fantastic tutorials more, easy.
provided by imaging experts, it’s all here under one roof. Subscribe to the site for free and get the
Created originally by Colin Smith, the site has grown to tips delivered straight to your Video iPod or
iTunes player (iTunes version 6 or higher only),
become a one-stop resource shop for image editors of all so no matter where you are you won’t miss
persuasions, including coverage of new features of CS2, out on the top tips.
competitions, book reviews and lots of useful links to Although other resources on the site are
thin on the ground – there’s just a handful of
mends
Photoshop inspiration across the web.
Recom
links and the archived tips – the hints
A particularly fine feature on the website is the tips
themselves are well worth a look to improve
page. Whether you want to know how to create custom your Photoshopping abilities. 5
gradients easily or how to create a composite layer, this site Rating: 4/5
covers it all. Well worth a visit next time you’re online. 5

Rating: 5/5 Photoshop Contest

Web: www.photoshopcontest.com
We’re only too aware from our own forum
(www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk) that

Planet Photoshop you lot just aren’t happy unless you’re

being creative. And you’re even happier
when being creative also means being
Web: www.planetphotoshop.com really competitive!

I
Photoshop Contest hosts all the
f you want to chat to fellow Photoshoppers about web competitions one person could need. There’s
design, advanced techniques or just the basics, there’s a daily one to test your skills as well as
few finer places than within the Planet Photoshop forums. long-term contests to give you some extra
thinking time. You can also take a look
Although the community is still fairly small, it’s friendly and
through the site’s past winners in order to get
you’ll start seeing lots of familiar faces. But that’s not all this site some inspiration.
has to offer. Tutorials on the site cover a host of subjects – And that’s not all. With tutorials, forums,
photography, effects, text, web and so on – and the tip of the news, galleries and more, this is one site that’s
day is a really nice feature. sure to hold your interest for more than just a
moment. Highly recommended. 5
If you’re based in the US the most useful function will be the
events listings, which is a handy feature to help you see what’s Rating: 4/5
going on near you. For those based elsewhere in the world, the
resources tab brings up a page of useful links – making a
specific Photoshop search much easier. 5

Rating: 4/5

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