I recently also added some other tricks and I want to share this tips with you!. It’s about 10 photoshop’s tip you can’t miss. I hope this will help you with your work!

1) Isolate a level – Hold the ALT key and click on the eye that indicates the visibility of a layer. The leyer selected will be that the only one visible. A fast wat to isolate the level you’re working on.

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2) Finding the cursor - Sometimes we can lost the cursor, especially in very large images. Simply press and release the spacebar. The cursor will change its appearance for a moment, revealing himself instantly.

3) New merged levels - Pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + E all visible leayers will be merged in a new one (great tip!)

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4) Opening Styles – In order to open all styles just press ALT and click on the arrow next the folder icon. It’s great to open all styles in a simple clic.

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5) Special Undo – With Control+Z you go back one operation, repeating the operation it returns to the starting point. But by pressing CTRL + ALT + Z will go still further back in history.

6) Fast Opening – Double-clicking in the gray background of photoshop will open a document quickly, but if you hold down CTRL you will create a new document.

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7) Change Tool – Hold the ALT key and click on an instrument in order to change it. For example switch brush to pencil tool by clicking on the brush tool, holding ALT key.

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8 - Document Center – This is just an idea. To find the center of the image just select the background layer and press Ctrl + T. We don’t need transform anything, just look at the cross and mark it with rules.

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9) Fast zoom – Use CTRL + 0 to fit the image to the screen. Use CTRL + ALT + 0 to restore 100% zoom.

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At last but not least, my favourite photoshop tip:
10) Drag and drop an image into another by holding SHIFT. The image will be placed in the middle.

You need to render a rock surface and you just have a diffuse map. ( Look here for Free Textures! )
How to convert it in a useful displacement map?

Most of times you open the texture in photoshop and work it in order to get your displacement map. But often we just get really rought surfaces. How to improve it?

In this cases a really useful tool in Photoshop is Cutout filter:

Cutout reduce the nuances present in the image, thus solving most of the problems!

The classic steps to create a displacement map is:

• Transform it in black and white texture
• Contrast the image
• Save and apply it in the displacement channel

Ok guys, today I want to suggest one step more:

Apply the cutout filter (to reduce the color variations):

Look at the difference in the image below:

If you want to refine the displacement map you can use Gaussian blur filter.
The displacement will be more soft.

But Compositing is the most powerful technique for manipulating images in computer graphics is it could be fine to understand a little bit better what Psd Magaer do automatically.

However, in architectural rendering not many people use this technique. Infact, there are not many articles on the web and – anyway – you can render and render again still images 100 times, this will not a incredible problem (With the animation that would be impossible!!)

Anyway, compositing technique allow us to save our time so we can  add the compositing to our list How to reduce the rendering time!

A few days ago I read an article explaining a very basic compositing, just to see how it works: the article is comping of Basic Vray Renders, Then I start from there to present the topic: a small compositing tutorial!

I don’t want to bore you with words-words-words and I hope the following image and a psd file will clarify the matter in a few seconds:

With Vray, Mental Ray and several other rendering engines we can render specific channels.

I can choose to render only “certain parts of the scene” for example, direct light, the reflections or shadows. Overlap then – with different fusion methods (multiply, screen etc. ..) – all these images using compositing  softwares such as Shake, Combustion, Fusion .. or simply Photoshop.

The result will be (almost) the same image! The difference? Control.

Yes, because having all the separate channels we can choose whether to have more or less global light, manipulate the reflections, reduce or fix some color, simply adjusting on its channels. So you can manipulate the image with a great facility.

Download the PSD file below see with your eyes how to control everything.

• Basic compositing – (Photoshop File)
• Compositing | V-Ray Lighting Techniques – Dvd for sale

A very comprehensive guide about photography and Photoshop.

Fundamentals and advanced topics in this incredible and exaustive guide that talk about using levels and curves in photoshop, reduce noise, posterization… and more.

It’s not just for photoshop users but for all I think: the topics cover photoshop users too.. but not only. The most important thing is the concept expressed in.

• Cambrige in colour – Tutorials
• Check free images in my Shop – Stock Photography

Would you like turn your blac&white photo into Coloured one? Ok Let’s start with this nice tutorial:

STEP 1 : Clean up the image as best as you can (remove scratches, dust, etc..)

STEP 2 : Convert the image in CMYK – This is an important step

STEP 3 : Make a selection of an area using quick selection or any other tool you prefer. Each part of the portrait will have a separate mask (skin, hair, lips.. ect..)

STEP 4 : Nopw create an adjustment Layer

STEP 5 : Fix some discoloured outline using the Blur filter

I tried this method with some pics of mine and the results looked very, very good!

Consider my text above as a memorandum and see the video below to watch how to do that! Enjoy it!!

• Add color using Curves in Photoshop

Special thanks to Kainoa03 for this tutorial!

Very, very often we take a nice pics, with dear friends or beautiful girls/boys… but unliked higlights fills our visages! Especially in interiors shots, using the flash…

With Adobe Photoshop and my veeery fast and simple technic you can improve your pics quality in just 30 seconds!

Let me show you how it is possible: Very simple and fast!

1. Open your Pic, duplicate the Level and apply it two Photoshop filters:

—> Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches
(Radius: 8 pixels, Threshold: 0 levels)

and following…

—> Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
(Radius: 8 pixels)

You’ll have an image like that.

2.

Add a Vector a Mask and paint it Black

Now give to this new layer:
opacity 50%

3. Choose Brush tool and give it 0% Hardness. Select white color to paint.

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Choose the Brush Tool size that you prefer and paint on the mask, everywhere your see unattractive highlights!

Just some little suggestions:

- Don’t paint over the features
- After, play with opacity to find the perfect match!
- This technic is perfect also to get wonderful visages

Your pic will be much better in just 30 seconds!!!

If you love photoretouching I suggest to visit this Blog that I read: Pstutorialsblog.com – Photoretouching

• If you like this Tutorial subscribe my Feeds and take a look to Glass with Photoshop!

“Photoshop CS Text Effects” is a great video collection you can find and buy on WatchandLearnPhotoshop.com.

They are videos for intermediate level users, you can learn how to use the text tool, filters, styles, leyers and more features to make the texts as you imagine.

21 videos for 3d text, marble text effect, digital clock and water effects… etc.. etc..

Do you need Photoshop Videotutorials?

The teacher Craig Campbell offers the possibility to evaluate his (good!) work with free videos, selected by this collection.

Here the links:

• Photoshop – Stone Text Effect
• Photoshop – Ice text effect
• Photoshop – Metal Text Effect
• Photoshop – Neon Text Effect

I love his work, very good… so watch these videos, and think about to buy the entire work!

Matte Painting it’ s a very useful and powerful technic to create imaginary landscapes.
As you can read on Wikipedia:

Mattes Painting: it’s used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (such as actors on a set, or a spaceship) with a background image (a scenic vista, a field of stars and planets).

In film, the principle of a matte requires masking certain areas of the film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. However, many complex special-effects scenes have included dozens of discrete image elements, requiring very complex use of mattes.

Actually it’s easy to apply this technic using softwares, so why don’t try to do that with Photoshop?

This image you are seeing it’s created with this method and now I’m going to give you same intersting links to learn how to do that!

Here two great photoshop tutorials made by Sebastien Gaucher:

• Transform a quiet house in horror house
• From summer to winter

[ Merci Sebastien pour tes tutoriaux ]

In Photoshop cs2 you can find a new feature named Vanish point.

If you want to replace same parts of your picture but you have problems with perspective, for exemple with bricked wall or wood floor, you can easly do it using the new option: Vanish point!

You can create your reference grid and use replacement tool (like clone tool) respecting your reference grid and your perspective.

Here 2 useful videotutorials to learn how to do it in deep:

• Photoshop support: Vanish point
• Watch and Learn: Vanish point

Enjoy it.

Photoshop tutorial. If you want to render any kind of frosted glass, you have to think about to notable increase of rendering time.

My personal solution is to render “normal” glasses with our render engines, and after abtain any kind of glass playing with Photoshop. You could be make many kind of Glasses in few seconds!

A software like Photoshop could be very, very helpfully to refine scenes: stop to make 3d images directly with your 3d studio max or Maya… think your render as a first part. The second one will be the photo retouch!

Follow this great tutorial:

• Glass with photoshop