In Photoshop create a new document using File > New. Set the size of the button. In this example 120 x 25 pixels. Resolution for web is 72 dpi.
Zoom in to 400% by clicking 3 times Ctrl together with +. Select the Rounded Rectangle tool from the tools bar.
In the Option bar make sure that the first icon is selected (Shape layer). Type a Radius of 10 pixels. Select a dark red by clicking the color box.
Click exactly on the top left corner of your artwork and drag your mouse all the way to the bottom right corner. The red Rounder Rectangle should appear when the mouse button is released. In the Layers palette you should see a shape layer above you Background. Click and drag your Background in the small trash bin at the bottom of the Layers palette. You can skip this step if you have selected Background Transparent when created the new document.
Now it is time to add some effects. From the menu Layer select Layer Style > Bevel and Emboss. A nice bevel effect can be created by un-checking the Global Light for Shading and setting the Altitude value to 70º. Note that to be able to edit style settings, must click the correspondent word. Clicking just the checkbox won’t display the style settings.
Add other effects as a white Inner glow. Also add a Inner shadow. This one may look nicer if you set the light angle from bottom right. In the example -66º. Remember to un-check Global Lighting every time you change a specific style, unless your intention is to change the light for all the layers in the document.
Let’s add some text to the button. Create a new empty layer using Layer > New > Layer. Rename the new layer “Home”. A new layer has been added above the button. Select the Text tool in the Tool Bar and click into the artwork. Type “HOME” and press Enter on your numeric pad (NOTE: do not press Return in the main keyboard).
Go to Window > Character. Set color white by clicking the small color box. Set size 14. Go to Window > Paragraph and set the alignment to Center text.
To move the text in the middle of the artwork, select the Move tool (the first tool on the top, the black arrow) in the Tool Bar. Your text should snap in the middle of the artwork. If it does not, make sure that Window > Snap is enabled.
While the Home layer is still selected, go to Layer > New > Layer via copy (shortcut Ctrl+J). That is how you can quickly duplicate a layer. In the stack of layers, you should see Home Copy on top. With the Move tool still active, double click the correspondent thumbnail (it displays a letter T) and type ABOUT. Press again Enter on the numeric pad to commit the text. You should see ABOUT overlapped to HOME. In order to temporary hide a layer, click on the correspondent Eye that indicates the visibility.
You can add as many labels as you need. To rename a layer, double click the name of the layer in the Layers panel. Try to be accurate when do this. If you double click just outside the layer’s name, the Styles window will open instead. You can also decide to apply a small Drop Shadow style to the text. Once in a while, remember to save your work as PSD file. The advantage of PSD is that layers are preserved. JPEG files instead, do not support multi-layers. Once that all the labels that you need are prepared, get ready to export them.
Hide all the layers except the first on top and the “Shape 1″ layer. Go to File > Save for Web and Devices.
From the right panel of the File > Save for Web and Devices window select the format GIF or PNG. These two formats are quite similar. They count the number of colors to save. In this case 128 can be enough. The maximum number available is 256. The major advantage of using GIF or PNG is that both support transparency. Make sure that the Transparency check box is selected, so that the round corners will not have any matte fill around.
Repeat this step as many times as the layers created.
A button have normally three status: Up, Over and Down. Up is the normal status of the button when appears in the web site. Over is the status displayed when the mouse cursor moves on it. Down is the appearance when the button is clicked. The file that you just saved should be named after the Up status of the button. Again, remember to not use capital letters and spaces. A good way name a Up button is: bn_home_up.gif, bn_contacts_up.gif, bn_products_up.gif, and so on.
To change the color for the Over status, double click the “Shape 1″ color thumbnail in the layers palette. For up status can be a good idea to select a color slightly brighter.
Repeat the exporting part for all the text layers, so you will have files named as: bn_home_over.gif, bn_contacts_over.gif, bn_products_over.gif, and so on. You can double click one more time the “Shape 1″ color thumbnail in the layers palette and select a darker color. Repeat the exporting part for all the text layers, so you will have files named as: bn_home_down.gif, bn_contacts_down.gif, bn_products_down.gif, and so on.
1. What is a digital Raw file?
2. Data capture from camera’s image sensor
3. Exposure and linear capture
4. Raw vs Jpeg
5. Raw limitations
6. Adobe Camera Raw - why we use it
Author Samuel Chia (founder of The Cacao Print Studio)
When Samuel Chia was 15, he became the youngest member ever to assume the role as the Instructor of the Photographic Society of Temasek Junior College. He has trained photographers in the College and other schools for 2 years, with a body of work spanning genres from performance arts to sports.
As a part of the process of his photography, Samuel prints his own images. The print is the “final performance” of his craft. He believes in the balance of aesthetic vision and technical knowledge; they go hand in hand to fulfill the artist’s intention. He has also set up a customized printing service, The Cacao Print Studio, to allow like-minded photographers and artists, the ability to enjoy the very best of high-end archival photographic printing.
This is the most extreme method to neutralize your pictures. You can get rid of any color cast and make sure that your grey will be perfectly calibrated to RGB 128/128/128.
Although it may seem complicated at first sight, it will be much easier once you really understand what’s going on.
Member of Creative Crew can require the source image with labeled layers.
(File size 7.2Mb) Practice will be much easier. Ask the image to the Administrator using the contact module.
The first thing to do is to make a copy of the background. Ctrl+J is the fastest way (Command+J for Mac). Then apply the FIlter > Blur > Average.
It creates an average matte of all the RGB pixels in the picture. It means that the matte is the actual Color Cast of the picture, in fact the problem to solve. If we invert it (Ctrl+I, Mac: Command+I), the result color will be the solution.
To better understand where the solution is mostly required, we set the layer’s blending mode to Difference. Difference simply subtract the RGB value in the layer on the top, to the RGB value of the layer underneath. Where the value is RGB 0/0/0, it displays a black pixel.
Since our eyes cannot spot a pure black pixel among millions, it’s better to use a measurement tool. So let’s add an Adjustment layer > Threshold. Drag the value back to 1, and slowly increase it using arrow up on the keyboard. When the first pixel appears, that’s the target. The first pixel may appear with values as small as 2 or 3. If the picture is quite big, it may be necessary to zoom in. Use Ctrl and + to zoom in, and hold spacebar to pan around. Sometimes the first pixel appears not alone. Just mark one out of the first bunch. Make sure that the eyedropper tool is the active tool. To mark the pixel, simply Shift+click on it.
Now it’s time to use that pixel. Hide the Average layer and the Treshold adjustment layer. Open Window > Info and note that a marker #1 is returning RGB values. Sum the three values and divide the total by 3. In this way we calculate the average value. Note it somewhere.
Add an Adjustment layer Curves. Alt+click (Mac: Option+click) on the Curves grid to swap it from 4 to 10 boxes. Go to the three channels individually and do the following.
Click and do not move the mouse in the top right corner of the bottom left box. It should return input/output values 26 and 26*.
Click and do not move the mouse in the bottom left corner of the top right box. It should return input/output values 230 and 230*.
* 25 and 25, or 229 and 229 are equally acceptable.
Click and do not move the mouse, exactly in the middle of the grid, where it should return the value 128 and 128.
Once you marked these point in all Red, Green and Blue, you may want to save it using the Save Curves Preset in the fly out menu, in the Curves panel.
Go to the Red channel of the Curves. Click and slightly drag the point in the center to select it. Sometimes just clicking does not select. That’s why it safer to drag a little bit up or down. Then use the values Input to type the value displayed in the Info panel. Type in output the average value noted previously. Repeat it for Green and Blue.
As result, the whole image now looks more tint. Color cast seems more saturated. No panic.
Use the magic shortcut Alt+Ctrl+Shift+E (Mac: Command+Option+Shift+E) to create a new layer out of all the visible layers underneath. So now you can hide the Curves Adjustment layer and remain with just the Background and the new layer you just created.
Invert the new layer (Ctrl+I) and set it as Blending mode Color. Now decrease its opacity to 25%.
The Color cast seems to be removed, and in fact, it has been mapped with the Inverse action. Then the Blending mode has gradually reduced the influence of the Color cast where needed.
The last touch is perfection. The target for Color cast neutralization is RGB 128/128/128.
Add a new Fill layer and set the color to 128/128/128. Set the Blending mode to Difference. Then add an Adjustment layer Threshold and set the value to 1. Increase it up to 4. Note where the most black pixels appear. Mark a pixel into a quite large black area, so the 128 calibration will not affect just few pixels, but the whole “neighborhood”.
In the Info panel will appear #2 marker. Hide the Threshold and the Grey matte.
Add an Adjustment layer Curves. From the fly out menu load the Curves previously saved.
Type the input value of the Info panel for the three channel. This time, instead of the average value as output, type 128.
Repeat on the three channel and now the Color cast has been removed.
The new revolutionary CS4 Adjustment panel, is the positive evolution of Adjustment layers.
Since non-destructive editing became a “must”, the menu Image> Adjustment retired. Adjustment layers, instead, allow to edit images in the most flexible way.
Ten reasons why to use the new Adjustment panel.
Member of Creative Crew can require the source image with labeled layers.
(File size 2.1Mb) Practice will be much easier. Ask the image to the Administrator using the contact module.
1- Edit an Adjustment layer once you added it from the Adjustment panel. Any Adjustment layer can be eventually deleted by simply dragging it to the small trash bin at the bottom of the Layers panel.
2- Adjustment layer can be used at lower opacity than 100%. Just decrease the Adjustment layer opacity in the Layers panel, if you realize that the effect is too strong.
3- You can edit it an Adjustment layer unlimited times. Just use the new Adjustment panel and do not need to double click anything. It is all visible.
4- Every Adjustment layer comes together with a Layer mask. Whatever you paint black in the Layer mask, will hide the effects of your Adjustment layer. Whatever is white shows the Adjustment layer’s effect.
5- Some special effects can be obtained by changing Blending mode to an Adjustment layer. Use the drop down list in the Layers panel to change Blending mode. A nice colorization effect can be obtained using the Colorize mode of a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer, in Blending mode Overlay.
Another interesting one is obtained by just adding a new Curves Adjustment layer. Do not apply any change to the Curves, just change Blending mode from Normal to Overlay or Soft Light.
6- Adjustment layers are in fact layers. So you can actually duplicate (or drag and drop) from a document to another one or more. Whatever you set in the Adjustment layer will be duplicated in the other documents.
7- Form Photoshop CS3 onward, the amazing Select> Refine Edge, allows to control the edges of a layer mask. Now, in Photoshop CS4, it is even easier using the new Mask Panel.
8- Some new Adjustment layer users, are afraid to lose control, because an Adjustment layer works on every layer underneath it. In Photoshop CS3 you should have used what I call “The trick of the pot“, as the shape of the icon resemble a pot. The trick consist of a simple Alt+click in between an Adjustment layer and the underlying layer. When the pot appears, the Adjustment layer is parented to the Layer.
Now, in Photoshop CS4, everything is much easier. All you need to do is to decide, before to add a new Adjustment layer, if you want it to clip the layer underneath or not. It can be quickly set by clicking the icon at the bottom right hand side of the new Adjustment panel.
9- To clip more than one layer can still be a bit tricky. The solution is to put together in a group (folder) all the layers that you want to be affected. On top of them place your Adjustment layer. Then, finally, change the Blending mode of the whole group, from Pass Through to Normal. Immediately the layers included in the group will be affects by the Adjustment layer.
10- Sometimes, struggling in post processing risks to be wasted time. Auto correction can return excellent results on under exposed pictures. Unfortunately, if there are white and/or black areas, Auto corrections do not have space to fix the image histogram. In that case you may want select a target area of the image that does not include any pure white and/or pure black pixel. Select that area using any basic selection tool. Add a new Adjustment layer Levels or Curves. In the Adjustment panel use the side drop down menu to select Auto Options. From the pop up window experiment the three Auto correction algorithms.
Enhance monochromatic contrast corresponds to Auto Contrast.
Enhance per channel contrast corresponds to Auto Tone (previously Auto Levels).
Find Dark & Light colors corresponds to Auto Color.
Auto Color gives excellent result when applied together with the check box Snap to Neutral Mid-tones.
Once you decided which Auto correction works better, click Ok.
Last step, trash the Adjustment Layer’s Layer Mask. The Auto correction selected will be applied to the whole image.
It was announced as one of the most revolutionary new features in Photoshop CS4, and must admit it did not disappoint. Content Aware Scaling allows to change the orientation of a picture, simply using a Transform box.
The technology was invented by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir and presented during Siggraph 2007. Adobe guessed right when thought it would have been an outstanding new WOW tool.
The idea is to scale up and down an image, preserving the important details. In the example I used an African panorama picture from Stock Exchange (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/721946).
Although the orientation is horizontal, it may take a snap to convert it to a vertical format.
Go to the menu Edit, and select Content Aware Scale. If you are short-cut friendly, you may want to use Shift+Alt+Ctrl+C (Mac: Shift+Option+Command+C). It will appear as it was the normal Free Transform bounding box. When you are using Free Transform, you may want to be careful to do not stretch or squeeze the bounding box, as the image will distort accordingly.
With CAS go ahead! Stretch and squeeze as much as you want. Photoshop will do the dirty job.
You do not need to mask, select, create copy and so on. It is just a matter of how much you want to change the original proportions. The main features of the image will be preserved.
ICC Color Profiles describe the color attributes of a particular device or viewing requirement by defining a mapping between the source or target color space and a profile connection space (PCS).
In digital imaging systems, color management is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printers, offset presses, and corresponding media.
Every color profile can be displayed as gamut. A gamut is a certain complete subset of colors. Every gamut has a different shape that normally is represented as a map of colors in a “pear” shape.
The Adobe RGB color space is an RGB color space developed by Adobe Systems in 1998. It was designed to encompass most of the colors achievable on CMYK color printers, but by using RGB primary colors on a device such as the computer display. The Adobe RGB color space encompasses roughly 50% of the visible colors specified by the Lab color space, improving upon the gamut of the sRGB color space primarily in cyan-greens.
In Adobe RGB, a huge number of color can be displayed. Unfortunately, not so many monitors are able to entirely display Adobe RGB gamut. Check out for brands Quato and Eizo.
One of the most complex themes of Photoshop is outlining some object and isolating them from the original background. To outline objects with Photoshop there are a lot of tools and different methods. In this tutorial we learn how to outline more complex objects with edges that are not defined. I think that the most reliable tool to outline in Photoshop is the Pen, even if in some cases it is very complex, the most important is when the object to outline has a clear foreground and an out-of-focus background. So, it is better, even if it is slower, to create 2 outlines with different strokes and to combine the two levels, but if the object has a background that is quite defined, it is possible to save a lot of time using the filter Extract. For further information, post your questions on the forum for "About Photoshop Tutorials".
This filter sometimes "frightens" the new user of Photoshop because its interface is full of settings. My aim in this tutorial is to give instructions for a simple extraction where the subject is clearly recognizable from the background. For people who love using shortcuts from the keyboard, use a combination of "alt + Apple + x" (PC: Alt+Ctrl+x).
The first tool on the left is called "Marker Pen", and it is what we use to draw the perimeter of the object to outline. To obtain the best results, use the brush diameter big enough so that half of it is on the object and the other half is on the background. On the right, we can find more settings on the diameter of the brush. The smaller the diameter, the more careful the elaboration of the search for the edges to outline will be. To use a bigger diameter would accelerate the work, but the results will not be good if the photograph is not clearly contrasted, as in the example.
With the combination "apple" together with "+" or "-", to zoom in or out, or you can use the lens icon. The closer we are on the subject, the better the emphasis of the outline. In the case of the cat’s whiskers, for example, there is no quicker way to outline it, than using Extract with the appropriate diameter. Also for this tool the use of a graphic tablet is easier.
Once you have completed the perimeter of the object you have to outline, you have to fill the perimeter with the tool bucket, that is found on the left tool palette, under the "marker pen". Just a quick click into the perimeter and it’s done. Click "OK" to confirm the area to extract. Note that this tool will permanently modify the layer, and you will loose the background. Therefore, it is safer to save a copy of the background before making any changes. In the case of outlining the body of a human figure, it is better to use the pen tool for the body and to use filter Extract for the hair.
With filter Extract you can have the preview of the results. You can also force the foreground color. Filter Extract is useful to outline subjects with complex strokes, for example, plants, where it takes a long time to outline individual leaves. Another use of filter Extract is to outline hair and animals with lots of fur. The objective of this tutorial is to introduce the tool Extract.
Tutorial created by Stefano Virgilli
Adobe Video Specialist
Adobe Certified Instructor, Photoshop
Adobe Certified Instructor, Premiere Pro
Adobe Certified Instructor, Illustrator
Adobe Certified Instructor, After Effects
Adobe User Group Manager
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