How to Cheat in Photoshop CS4

How to Cheat in Photoshop CS4

Released September 2013
Publisher(s): Focal Press
ISBN: 9781136111013

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

* New! Zip through the learning curve in a snap with the free DVD!

* Hundreds of new Photo Objects, companion project files, QuickTime movie tutorials, sample plugins, and more.

* Don't miss the website www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com complete with Reader Forum where Steve answers your questions directly!

When you're short on time with crunching deadlines, but there's no way you can sacrifice quality, this book/DVD comes to the rescue. Nobody knows more about how to work fast under pressure and still produce top-notch photographic images than hands-on graphic artist and journalist, Steve Caplin.

Steve cuts through the grind with on-the-job, do-it-now skills, techniques, and shortcuts guaranteed to show you how to work faster, smarter, and better to produce the best work of your life. With a lifetime of practical experience in photo-montage Steve is the go-to person for professional designers, graphic artists, illustrators, photographic retouchers, and students of design media and illustration who want to create photorealistic effects using Photoshop.

Updated for Photoshop CSX, this must-have resource is also backwards compatible - relevant to any version of Photoshop.

'How to Cheat in Photoshop CSX' helps you "cheat in" (or take advantage of) Photoshop in two important ways. You learn how to make images look like photographs, when they're not so that you can create photographic work without a studio. And you find useful shortcuts to work more efficiently, economically, and with quick solutions to achieve the same superb results that come from long, complex operations that take forever.

Whether you're working for print or the web, dip into this book and extract the info you need - fast. Icons mark where Photoshop files or movie tutorials are available for you to open immediately to try for yourself. Stuck? Visit the Reader Forum on the web and question the author directly (and expect other readers to weigh in, too!) at www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com.

Crammed with gems that other books simply don't cover, and unique in that it's written by a working professional sharing his tips on how he makes money producing this imagery, this book/DVD excels in practical tips to turn the ordinary into the awe-inspiring, quickly. Don't miss how to create new artwork from scratch from starting points that aren't always obvious.

This fully updated new edition shows you how to get the most out of Photoshop CSX, including the Quick Selection and Cloning tools, and more. Yet it's backwards compatible with previous releases of Photoshop. The book's step-by-step tutorials alongside the DVD packed with hundreds of images, project files, and live tutorials show you how to:

* Create convincing smoke effects and make effective explosions - the simple way
* Take years off someone's appearance
* Turn a photograph of someone looking straight into the camera into a different perspective with the entire head (not just the eyes)
* Modify a statue so it looks like a living person or paint hair directly on any surface
* Produce the perfect cutout in the shortest time with Photoshop CSX's new Quick Selection tool... and more

A host of timesaving techniques and insider secrets teach you to work faster and more adeptly moving from the problem to the solution to get fantastic results!

Steve Caplin is a professional graphic artist, author and journalist.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. How to cheat, and why
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. How to use this book
  8. 1 Natural selection
    1. Selection: the fundamentals
    2. The Lasso and Magic Wand
    3. QuickMask 1: better selection
    4. QuickMask 2: tips and tricks
    5. QuickMask 3: transformations
    6. The Quick Selection tool 1
    7. The Quick Selection tool 2
    8. Refine Edges: going further
    9. The Pen is mightier
    10. The Pen tool by numbers
    11. Putting the Pen into practice
    12. Losing the edges
    13. Lock and load
    14. Find and replace
    15. Color by numbers
    16. Brush-on color
    17. Interlude: The perfect setup
  9. 2 Transformation and distortion
    1. The Free Transform tool
    2. Step and repeat rotation
    3. Introducing Image Warp
    4. Image Warp in combination
    5. Cloning in perspective
    6. Special effects with cloning
    7. Transformation in practice
    8. Content Aware Scaling 1
    9. Content Aware Scaling 2
    10. Interlude: The freelance artist
  10. 3 Hiding and showing
    1. Texture with layer modes
    2. Layer masks 1: intersections
    3. Layer masks 2: soft edges
    4. Layer masks 3: smoothing
    5. Layer masks 4: auto masking
    6. Blending 1: fire power
    7. Blending 2: plane view
    8. Interlude: Graphics tablets
  11. 4 Image adjustment
    1. Shadows and highlights
    2. Learning Curves
    3. Matching colors with Curves
    4. Major color changes
    5. Selective hue and saturation
    6. Multi-layer enhancement
    7. Sharpening: Unsharp Mask
    8. Natural healing
    9. Interlude: Getting started
  12. 5 Composing the scene
    1. Location is everything
    2. Relative values: interaction
    3. I only have eyes for you
    4. Game, test and match
    5. Back to the foreground
    6. Composition tips and tricks
    7. People and cars
    8. Interlude: Digital cameras
  13. 6 Getting into perspective
    1. Establishing the horizon
    2. Introducing vanishing points
    3. Two point perspective
    4. Three point perspective
    5. Correcting perspective
    6. Fixing wide angle objects
    7. Using existing perspective
    8. Boxing clever: doubling up
    9. Vanishing Point filter 1
    10. Vanishing Point filter 2
    11. Vanishing Point filter 3
    12. Cropping in perspective
    13. Interlude: Photomontage ethics
  14. 7 Light and shade
    1. Shadows on wall and ground
    2. Tricky ground shadows
    3. Creating complex shadows
    4. Light from windows
    5. Mood, light and emphasis
    6. Multiple shadowed objects
    7. Shading on Hard Light layers
    8. Visible light sources
    9. The romance of candlelight
    10. Turn the lamp on
    11. Shading using Dodge and Burn
    12. Shading using light modes
    13. Extreme shading
    14. Making smoke without fire
    15. Making fire without smoke
    16. Lighting up: perfect neon
    17. Day for night
    18. Interlude: Sourcing images
  15. 8 Heads and bodies
    1. Making the head fit
    2. Complex head fitting
    3. Combining body parts
    4. Changing history
    5. The perfect haircut
    6. The solution for flyaway hair
    7. The problem of hair loss
    8. A fuzzy hairbrush
    9. Beards and stubble
    10. The ageing process
    11. Reversing the ageing process
    12. A change of clothing
    13. It's all in the eyes
    14. A change of expression
    15. Liquify: turning heads
    16. Cosmetic makeover
    17. Sleep and the art of healing
    18. Coloring black and white images
    19. A change of skin
    20. Interlude: Sourcing images for free
  16. 9 Shiny surfaces
    1. Introducing… Plastic Wrap
    2. Blood and gore, no sweat
    3. Getting hot and sticky
    4. I'm forever blowing bubbles
    5. Water, water everywhere
    6. Making water from thin air
    7. Submerging in water
    8. Snow and icicles
    9. Making it rain
    10. A cool glass of water
    11. Getting the glazing bug
    12. Glass: refraction
    13. Glass: reflection
    14. Complex reflections
    15. Putting things in bottles
    16. Distortion with backgrounds
    17. Glass: putting it all together
    18. Through grimy windows
    19. Interlude: The photographic studio
  17. 10 Metal, wood and stone
    1. Instant metal using Curves
    2. Metal with Adjustment Layers
    3. Metal with Layer Styles
    4. Turning silver into gold
    5. Metal with Lighting Effects
    6. More on Lighting Effects
    7. Rust, grime and decay
    8. Reflection on a knife edge
    9. Photographing shiny objects
    10. The art of woodturning
    11. Making a better impression
    12. Timber floors with varnish
    13. Recycling old wood
    14. The philosopher's stone
    15. Bringing statues to life
    16. Carving words in stone
    17. A grave business
    18. Interlude: The point of illustration
  18. 11 Paper and fabric
    1. How to make a load of money
    2. Judging a book by its cover
    3. Paper: folding and crumpling
    4. Folds and wrinkles
    5. Ripping and tearing
    6. Simulating old photographs
    7. Waving the flag
    8. Making custom fibers
    9. Ribbon and tape
    10. Interlude: Upgrade and replace
  19. 12 The third dimension
    1. Adding depth to flat artwork
    2. An open and shut case
    3. Opening the hamper
    4. Matching existing perspective
    5. Building boxes
    6. Displacement maps 1
    7. Displacement maps 2
    8. Drawing pipes and cables
    9. 3D layers: managing models
    10. 3D layers: intersections
    11. 3D layers from primitives
    12. 3D layers from grayscale 1
    13. 3D layers from grayscale 2
    14. Illustrator and Photoshop
    15. The Poser phenomenon
    16. Interlude: Reality overload
  20. 13 Hyper realism
    1. Blurring for speed
    2. More blurring techniques
    3. Cartoon distortions
    4. Breaking glass
    5. Smashing things up 1
    6. Smashing things up 2
    7. Magical realism
    8. Zombie pensioners from hell
    9. Interlude: Carry on spending
  21. 14 Advanced techniques
    1. Front and back
    2. Avoiding white outlines
    3. Using Smart Objects
    4. Layer groups and layer comps
    5. Watercolor with Filter Gallery
    6. Smart Filters
    7. Making tricky selections
    8. Patch and match
    9. Portrait restoration
    10. Mix and match skies
    11. Complex strokes
    12. Custom brush design 1
    13. Custom brush design 2
    14. Precise scale matching
    15. Easy multiple adjustments
    16. Background Eraser tricks
    17. Making the most of Bridge
    18. Photoshop Actions
    19. Working with Camera Raw
    20. Interlude: CS4 interface changes
  22. 15 Working for print and the web
    1. Image size and resolution
    2. Working for print
    3. Working for the web
    4. Making it move
    5. Anatomy of an animation
    6. Test yourself
  23. Index
  24. What's on the DVD: thefullmontage
  25. Art & Design in Photoshop

Product information

  • Title: How to Cheat in Photoshop CS4
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: September 2013
  • Publisher(s): Focal Press
  • ISBN: 9781136111013