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01_PS_Using Curves in Photoshop for Better Lighting and Color
S1: Welcome to our first in a more advanced series of Photoshop tutorials. Here we'll
talk about some interesting settings and techniques that will get you more
acquainted with Photoshop in general. Let's talk about Curves. Curves is a setting in
Photoshop that allows you to get richer tones and colors in your pictures.
S2: To start, we've opened up our usual coffee image here, and we'll click on the
Image drop down, then Adjustments, then Curves. Also you can hit Control + M at
the same time.
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S3: Doing this will open up the Curves window, which looks like a neat graph chart.
In the middle you should be seeing a line going from bottom left to top right.
S4: If you want to apply a quick preset, which will set the settings for you, you can
click the drop down and change from Default to other settings in the list. Setting the
preset to Color Negative (RGB) changes some things here which we'll explain.
S5: As you can see, the individual values on the chart have changed. The original
black line is still the same, but each individual color has been changed. This is a
permanent way to change the values of the image, but if we wanted to make it
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something a little less permanent and tweak the settings as we edit our image, we
can make a new layer by going to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, and Curves. This will
allow us to have our own Layer that we can edit the properties of in the Properties
Window.
S6: So over here in our Properties Window you can see that we can edit our Curves
just like the image edit we were doing before, but it is not permanent as we can hide
and unhide the layer using the eye button next to the Layer.
S7: The main thing to take away from Curves is reading the histogram and placing
points. We can place points on the histogram so we can change the color changes
anywhere in the image, based on the dark spots, or the lighter spots of the image. As
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you can see on our image, the shadows and highlights of our image aren't very great,
so we can edit our colors without much interference.
S8: So if we put one point in the middle, one point on the end and one point on the
beginning, we can change the colors and alter them in subtle, or more advanced
ways. Curves help out many Photoshop Users with images that have bad contrast or
bad lighting. Use Curves next time you have an image that needs tweaking! It's one
of the most powerful tools in Photoshop's arsenal.
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02_PS_Adjusting Brightness, Contrast, and Exposure to Improve Lighting
S1: Welcome to our second tutorial in our advanced line of Photoshop tutorials. This
time we'll talk about some features that are similar to Curves but do things in a more
individual way: Brightness, Contrast, and Exposure.
S2: Just like before, we'll start out with our image available. As before, we could alter
the image from the Image drop down, and Brightness/Contrast under the adjustments
but we'll create a new layer using Layer, then new adjustment layer, then
Brightness/Contrast. That way we can adjust without permanently changing the image.
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S3: Once in the adjustment layer, we can see that we have a brightness slider, and a
contrast slider. Tweak your image using these settings. Left is less brightness, making it
darker, right is more making it lighter. Negative contrast washes out the colors, while
positive contrast makes the colors stand out more, but it can make shadows too dark.
S4: Next, we'll add an exposure layer. Go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, then
Exposure Layer.
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S5: Doing this you can see we have more sliders here. The Exposure slider going from
negative to positive can darken and lighten the image much like the previous layers.
Offset itself changes the absolute light and darkness in the image, so treat that option
with care.
S6: Gamma correction allows you to add and subtract gamma (general lighting) to the
entire image. It starts out at 1, and going left adds more gamma, while going right
subtracts gamma.
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S7: Using all these options allows you to tweak the image as you see fit, so you can
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03_PS_Make Photos Pop and Change Colors with Hue Saturation Adjustments
S1: Welcome to the third advanced tutorial in our Photoshop series. We'll be talking
about the Hue and Saturation Layer, which works similar to our other layer and
adjustment tutorials. Here I have my image open from before.
S2: To setup a hue and saturation layer, just like before, we'll go to Layer, New
Adjustment Layer, then put a new Hue and Saturation layer down on top of the original
image.
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S3: So with Hue and Saturation, we can see that we can adjust the layer's colors (hue),
the saturation (how deep the colors are, or how light they are, to grayscale), and
lightness (how dark or light in general the image is).
S4: In an image, you can make the colors much more vibrant by sliding the saturation
more to the right than usual. Here we can see our coffee image stand out much more
visually.
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S5: And if we change the hue towards more of a red spectrum, we can get the coffee
image to be very strong in color indeed.
S6: Use the lightness slider to make sure that things aren't too bright, as extremely
vibrant color can be akin to looking into the sun for some viewers of your images.
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04_PS_Photoshop Project 1 Create Web Banner Ads
S1: Welcome to our fourth tutorial in our advanced series. This time we're going to go
with a more exercise-focused approach, to help you get more acquainted with what a
client wants and needs for their projects. Today's exercise: Creating Web Banner Ads for
a client. There are many sizes that a client needs for their projects, and when doing web
banner ads, you may need to do all or some of them. We'll go over the industrystandard so that way you can make the banners needed for your projects. The first size
we'll go over is the Large Leaderboard. It's 970 by 90 pixels. To start, we'll create a new
image, and change the Width to 970, then the Height to 90. That'll give us the
dimensions of the image we want.
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S2: We'll create a simple white background here, then apply a quick text ad. Make sure
your text is in black so it shows up on the background. Write “10 Apples for 3.99”. To
center the text on the banner, go to Select, Select All, then hit the center layer option
just below the main menu here.
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S3: From there, add an image of an apple. Here I've added a quick image of an apple
I've found on the net to both sides of the banner to give it more of a friendly look.
S4: And if we were to be finished here, this would be the first type of ad we would have
to create for our client. Next, let's create a Half-Page Ad, which is a 300 pixel by 600
pixel version. First, save our image as a PSD.
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S5: Now, change our image to a 300 x 600 canvas. Go to Image, Canvas Size, and change
the inches drop down to Pixels. Here, type in 300 width, 600 height.
S6: You'll notice our apples and our text is now strangely off screen, and our
background isn't fully white. We'll fix all of that, and show you how to continue to make
other sizes of Ads.
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S7: If you'll notice, the apple images aren't exactly gone, they're just “off-screen” to the
image's canvas. Let's bring those apples to the top and bottoms of our image now.
Then, let's use the paint bucket Icon on the left, and fill in our white background again.
Remember to click the correct layer, which should be the first layer in your order. If it
helps, name your layers so you can remember which is which.
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S8: Now that we have our white background again, what about our text? For that, let us
change the spacing by pressing Enter on certain parts of the text. Here at apples should
do it. Move the text onto the canvas, and resize the text as necessary. For vertical text, I
like to use centered text under the paragraph tab of the Font properties to give it a
more pleasing aesthetic.
S9: And there you have it - we have a new ad that we can save as a separate PNG or
JPEG from our original apple ad. From here, we can create all the rest of the industrystandard ad sizes: 160 x 600, 120 x 600, 336 x 280, 300 x 250, 728 x 90, 468 x 60, 200 x
200, and 250 x 250. See if you can make apple ads for each one of them!
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05_PS_Photoshop Project 2 Design YouTube
S1: For our next project design tutorial, we'll work on creating some great YouTube
Channel art for yourself, or for any clients using Photoshop. Let's get started with the
correct size for YouTube Channel Art. Open a new file, and then set the width to 2560
and the height to 1440.
S2: As you start off here, you can see that there is a lot of space for you to create some
good channel art. What I recommend here is starting out with the theme of your
channel or your client's. Is it a science channel? Is it a space theme? You'll need a good
background here to show off the tone and mood of the channel in question. Let's
assume space is the theme here.
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S3: I've gone and grabbed a freebie space background here and imported it into the
image. With this, we can have a nice canvas of art to build the YouTube's mood and
image from. Our imaginary space YouTube is called “Deep Cosmos” so let's create a
great text effect to show off the name of the channel. First, create your text, make it
large enough to be visible, and set the color by clicking the color part of the properties
window, then clicking a part of the image.
S4: Then we'll go into Layer Blending options, give it a stroke, then a quick inner glow
effect. I've also used a different font here to give more of a unique look here. The type
of font is up to you.
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S5: I also recommend stacking the text on the right, so the rest of the art can breathe
and show off the theme for the channel. Add more text (in a more readable font,
probably not cursive) for what the channel is used for (Space Exploration) and any extra
social media links. I'd not use any more than two fonts on your images as well, as it is a
design error to use too many different fonts.
S6: And this will create a very basic YouTube channel art that will evoke a great wonder
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06_PS_Photoshop Project 3 Design a Facebook Advertisement
S1: In our next Project Design Tutorial, we'll go over how to make a Facebook Ad.
Facebook ads are similar to the industry-standard ad designs, so we'll go over the basics
really quick and then design an ad in a standard size. Single ads are the easiest type to
do, as the other options Facebook gives you for ads are multiple image ads, video ads,
and a few more. As before, we want to open a new image with the correct size. The
standard Facebook ad size is 1200 pixels by 618 pixels. Let's open an image with this
size now.
S2: From here, we'll create an image that really pops for our audience. Let's say we are
creating an image for a seafood company. Let's go grab an image of some great lobster
dinner.
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S3: On top of that, maybe you want to make the image have something that stands out
for your audience. So adding some text that implies that the dinner is irreplaceable or
you can't find it anywhere else is to create that type of “rarity” that clients want their
products to have. This is not necessarily true of every ad you make, but a nice quip or
message about the product you're advertising will help with the ad itself.
S4: We'll add that in and then we'll touch up the image by adding a quick inner glow
filter, and adding more of a vignette look to the dinner by making the glow dark, but
only around the inside edges of the image.
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S5: After that, you're done and ready to continue making more ads for Facebook pages!
07_PS_Photoshop Project 4 Design a Facebook Page Cover
S1: In this Project Design Tutorial, we'll go over how to make a Facebook Cover Page.
Facebook Cover Pages are similar to our YouTube Cover Pages, in that you can make
them as expressive as you or the client wants. As before, we want to open a new image
with the correct size. The standard Facebook cover page size is 851 pixels by 315 pixels.
Let's open an image with this size now.
S2: From here, we'll do as we did before, and create something a little more exciting
like our YouTube cover image. Let's make this one about science, and grab a picture of a
laboratory background.
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S3: Make sure if you use images you get them from approved sources. No one wants to
use copyrighted images in someone else's project. Here we'll add some text, as well as
maybe some other social media URLs in our image to give the impression that the page
is outside of Facebook as well.
S4: Once you've got the look right, it's just as simple as YouTube cover pages. One more
thing, if you want to get the ratios right for mobile, make an image that is 640 pixels
wide by 360 pixels tall.
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S5: After that, it's really easy to make more cover pages as you see fit, as well as make
sure to save everything as a PSD so you can edit the cover page in case there's errors.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM_I26euLiA
