To dodge and burn is to paint with light and shadow. By doing this, we can add depth to photos. We can also use it to tame the light in certain areas of image, or change the emphasis of what people mostly notice in the image.

This is a follow up to the Adjustment Brush Basics in Photoshop tutorial, where a lot of people indicated they wanted a more in depth look at this adjustment tool

Currently, the adjustment brush is only found in the Public Beta Version of Photoshop

How to use the adjustment brush

Choose the Adjustment Brush for the toolbar.

Set the adjustment to Brightness contrast

Once to click on the image, or begin painting the tool is activated.

You will see a new Adjustment Layer with a mask.
(This is the same adjustment layer if you added it from the layers panel, its just a simpler way of getting there).

Turn the brightness all the way up so we can easily see the adjustments. Don’t worry, you can reduce this later if you prefer a more subtle adjustment.

Brush settings

Let’s look at brush settings, including pen pressure for a Wacom, Xencelabs or Microsoft Surface type stylus. (The tutorials still works with a mouse, just not the pen pressure settings).

If you click the icon to the left of Opacity, pen pressure controls brush size.

If you click the icon to the right of the opacity you can control opacity with pen pressure.

This enables you to blend in the adjustments because you can shade like a pencil, adding more density by pressing harder.

If you want more advanced settings choose Window>Brush Settings

Shape Dynamics changes size, Transfer controls opacity with pen pressure.

For dodge and burn (painting with shadow and highlights) I like to use pen pressure for opacity and turn off size.

One more adjustment, lower the flow to around 7%

How to Dodge and Burn

Burn is to darken shadow areas and to Dodge is to brighten the highlight areas, or add highlights, I think of this as adding light.

You will lighten the areas facing the light source

You will darken the areas that are shaded from the light source

Tip for Brush Size, Control+Option+Drag your cursor to change brush size and softness. (Alt+Dight Drag on Windows). Or use the square bracket keys  [ and ] keys change brush size, add the Shift key to change softness.

Dodging and Burning

Lets start with Dodge, or lighten.

Paint the areas you want to lighten.

Here is the image with the light areas painted (you can see it in action on the video at the top).

Hiding the Adjustment layer, shows you the before image.

Burning the image (Darken)

Let’s paint some shadows.

Click the background

With the Brightness / Contrast still selected and the Adjustment brush the selected tool,

Click to add a new adjustment layer

Turn the brightness all the way down

Paint in the shadow areas.

Reusing your masks

Lets create a new Exposure adjustment, just to show how easy it is to reuse your work.

Choose exposure

As soon as you click on the image a new Adjustment layer is created.

We want the same brush settings we used on the highlight area, but don’t want to have to paint it again.

Here is a trick. Hold down Alt/Option and drag your highlight  Mask into the Exposure layer mask

The mask will be duplicated and added to the exposure.

If we hide the highlight area, we will see that the exposure can now be used to control the effect of the brushwork.

If you wanted to tint the color, such as warm uo the highlights, do the same thing, use a Photo filter of hue saturation adjustment.

Trick for straight lines

It can take a steady hand and some patience, to paint these columns at Petra.

As soon as you begin dragging down with your brush, hold the Shift key and it will constain the movements in the direction you are moving the brush.

This makes it easy to get the highlights on one side of the pillar.

Repeat for the other side of the pillars with a darkened adjustment to darken them

To make the shadows blend a bit more, drop the flow to 2%

Paint over the shadows to blend them in more.

When you are done, you can adjust the opacity of the adjustment layers to tone down the adjustments a bit, for a more natural result,

I hope you found this tutorial useful.

Check out another of our 700 free Photoshop tutorials here at the cafe

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

PS: Get over $200 worth of valuable Photoshop Add ons, brushes, presets, cheat sheets and ebooks abolulutely free, right here. 

The post Dodge and Burn Photos in Photoshop with the Adjustment Brush appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Adobe Photoshop mini masterclass on Select and Mask. The video and written steps explain how every tool in Select and Mask work, so you can fix all the common problems we get with cutouts. Eliminate Jaggies, blockies, smudgies and halos.

Part 1/2 Hair and Fur is here.

When you make selections to cut out images, often you will have problems with the edges. You’ll see halos, jaggies, blockies, smudgies and other problems. (I just coined the phrases Smudgies and blockies, you’ll know them when you see them.) Photoshop contains a number of tools to address these edge problems. Many people aren’t using all these tools because they often don’t know what each tool does. That’s my goal here, to explain these tools and demonstrate when to use them. I wanted to make a comprehensive walk-through of every feature in Select and Mask and how it works. Here is Part 2 of this tutorial, dealing with Smooth Edges. Part 1 is here

This tutorial is made in Photoshop 2024. It will work with Photoshop CC and newer.

We will use a car because it has nice smooth hard edges. We will focus on these types of edges in this tutorial. Often I will use the Pen tool to get a very accurate selection on this kind of task if I’m going high resolution or print. See how to use Photoshop Pen Tool here

For a faster and easier way to cut out these objects, please watch the first 3 steps of this tutorial.

Select and Mask can be used on all selections, no matter what tool you use to make the selection.

Lets make a selection

Choose the Object Selection or Quick Selection tool

Look for Select Subject at the top toolbar

Choose Cloud for a better quality selection

Tip: Cloud gives the best quality, but you have to be connected to the internet for it to work. Otherwise use device.

You can change the preferences to choose Cloud all the time

Photoshop Settings>Image Processing>Select Subject Processing, choose Cloud.

You will now see a selection

Notice an extra bit got selected at the back

Use Object selection

Hold down Alt/Option for the subtract option and draw around the selection boundaries you want to remove

Photoshop will remove that portion and snap to the object.

Finish making the selection off you need to. I have many tutorials on making selections, there are many ways to do it using the magic tools, quick mask, pen tool, color range, marquee tools and more. I have tutorials on those here as well as a course on Photoshop Selection Secrets.

If you used the steps above or a different selection tool, let’s refine the edges now.

Choose Select and Mask (If it doesn’t show, choose a selection tool for the toolbox on the left of Photoshop).

Select and Mask Workspace Tools.

Let’s look at the tools on the left.

Refine Tool is for soft and semi transparent areas. We covered this in part 1 of this tutorial

Then we have the brush tool.

The brush tool lets us paint wherever we like without any algorithm working. It’s fully manual

If we paint with the brush tool we can add areas to the selection.

Hold down Alt/Option to remove areas. This tool allows us the freedom to manually choose edges and areas that got missed.

In this case, we are painting away the extra bit on the back. We are in Black and White viewing mode which lets us view the mask. (This was covered in part 1).

The object selection tool is the same Object Selection in Photoshop and uses ai to detect edges and objects

We can add the car in the garage with a single click when using the object selection in Select and Mask.

The Lasso tool uses a lasso to add or remove from the selection, Like the brush, but it’s selection based.

Make a selection and that areas shows

Hold Alt/Option and make a selection to remove from that area.

We don’t have to fill when using the lasso tool, it does it automatically.

If we use the polygon Lasso tool, we can edit with straight lines. This is a very useful option.

Using Global Refinements in Select and Mask

Let’s explore the global refinements. These tools are designed to help with smooth edges such as skin or hard surface objects.

Look at the Jaggie edge

Adjust smooth to smoothen out the bumpy edge

How Global Refinements Work

Let’s look at Photoshop for a second, so I can show you what’s happening with the Global Refinement tools. Don’t follow these steps, but just observe for a second. (You can watch it on the video at the top).

Here is a rough edge, we are looking direct at the mask. (Photoshop layer Masks for beginners here)

If we choose Filter>Blur, we can soften the edge of the mask,

This is exactly what the feather slider does.

The edge is soft and removed the bumps and unevenness,  but we need to make it a sharp edge.

Choose Ctrl/Cmd+L for Levels. (we are adjusting the mask, but viewing the image, so you can see the result, don’t worry, you don’t have to do this).

As we pull the triangles together it sharpens the edge, This is the same as using the contrast slider in Select and Mask.

Before Select and Mask, we used to use blur and Levels all the time, because that way the only way to do it.

Back to Select and Mask

Add some feather to soften the edge and even it out

Add contrast to make the edge sharper.

Shift Edge

There is another setting that allows you to expand or shrink the edge. This lets use show more of the edge, or choke out the edge fringes.

Move it to the right to expand and widen the edge.

Move it to the left to contract the edge.

How Shift Edge works (demonstration, you don’t have to do this).

If we go back to that mask in Photoshop

Remember when we added a feather and then pulled the triangle together in Levels to sharpen that edge?

If we move all the triangles in levels to the right it contracts the edge

Move all the triangles to the left to expand the edge of the selection.

Shifting Edges in Select and Mask

Back to select and Mask

Be careful when shifting the edges in Select and Mask, because this affects the entire image.

Often its useful to Turn on decontaminate colors because this can remove the edge halos by itself.

Only after you apply decontaminate colors. move the Shift edge a very minimum amount.

This is the fastest and easiest way to fix the edges.

There are a number of ways to fix edges and I have made several tutorials here at PhotoshopCAFE. Here is another way to clean up the edges of selections in Photoshop 

Choose New Layer with Layer Mask on “output”

Click OK to apply the changes.

The layer open with a layer mask in Photoshop.

If you paint on the Layer mask with a black brush, you can remove areas of the cutout.

If you paint on the Layer mask with a white brush, you can add areas of the cutout.

This way you can use brushes to finish the cutout and get it absolutely prefect.

There are other tools and many other techniques to working with cut outs and edges in Photoshop. My course covers many of them, and there are lots of free tutorials here at the CAFE

I hope this 2-part tutorial has helped you understand the Select and Mask tool in Photoshop better.

Thanks

Colin

If you found this useful, please tell your friends about photoshopCAFE and follow me on social media for Photoshop tips and inspiration.

The post Select and Mask in Photoshop free masterclass Pt 2 fix Smooth edges appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

This is one of those fundamental skills in Photoshop. I’m making this tutorial because some things have changed in photoshop and I want to show the newest and best way to achieve the blending or fading effect. I’m also offering a way to have more flexibility and some different options to blend all the edges, not just one edge.

Here I our Photo on a layer, with a pattern in the background that we will fade into. (How to combine images here If you don’t know how to get to this point.)

Add a layer mask on the top layer

Press the D key to reset colors

Choose the Gradient tool or hit the G key

Choose foreground to background and linear for the options as shown. Mode normal, opacity 100%

Drag on the image to apply the gradient.

Black hides the layer and white shows. Because it’s a gradient, you get a smooth blend.

The new gradients allow you to drag the points to change them.

On white so you can see better. (I created a white layer)

What if you want to fade the top too?

In the past, I would have said grab a black to transparent gradient. This still works, but the following gives more options for you

With your Layer selected, Press Ctrl/Cmd+G

This puts your layer in a group

You can add Masks to groups

Add a layer mask

Apply the gradient at the top.

Notice it doesn’t affect the gradient at the bottom

If you want more, select the top group (Its already selected unless you clicked somewhere else)

Press Ctrl/Cmd+G to put the group inside another group.

Add a mask, apply a gradient on the left.

Repeat for the right side. As you can see, you can keep nesting Layer groups and adding masks to each one. This is handy to know.

Another option is to choose. a radial Gradient instead.

Now you can do everything in one gradient. Here is a tutorial on using the radial gradient for blending layers, it shows the basics and goes into more depth

I hope you found this tutorial useful!

Thanks

Colin

The post How to Fade an image in Photoshop appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

We are working on Photoshop 2024 on the Mac. It works the same on Windows.

The first part is (somewhat) common knowledge, but I quickly build from there into new territory. I started with the knowledge that you can apply art effects to images if you use a 40% density with Generative Fill. I then ran with that piece of info and experimented with a number of things and came up with the tutorial you see here. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I just said, it will be explained.

Here is an important explanation, then we will do step-by-step, but this will help people who have difficulties getting the same result.

5 Steps to Generating Art from Photos

When we generate these effects, these are the 5  steps we will take every time. It’s actually very fast and easy once you have done it a couple of times. (This is a reference, I will walk you through it). We will start with a photo.

1. Press Q for Quick mask (Takes us into Quick Mask Mode)

2. Choose a foreground color (a shade of gray)

3. Press Alt+Backspace – Option+Delete on Mac (Fills the canvas with the Foreground color)

4. Press Q key once again (Takes us out of Quick mask and turns the Mask into a selection, You won’t see the selection because it’s filled with less than 50% gray)

5. Choose Generate and enter text into the prompt

Ok, hold on one second. This is where some people got stuck.

In this tutorial, I will be setting the Brightness in the color picker to set the density (transparency of mask selection)

The number depends on a Photoshop setting.

Double click the Quick mask tool. What is your Quick Mask option set to?

If you are set to Color Indicates: Masked Areas then enter the same amount as the desired density. You know like normal. If you want 40% density, enter 40 int the B box. If you want 7%, enter 7. (If in doubt, use this option, it’s the easiest)

BUT If you are set to Color Indicates: Selected Areas then enter the opposite amount from 100 as the desired density. For example is you want 40% Density, enter 60  (100-60=40). If you want 7% density, enter 93 (100-93=7). If you wanted 20% density, enter 80 (100-80=20) (100-B=Density).
Sorry if some people got confused. Hopefully this clears it up. Not everyone has the Mask options set the same, so we have to have this explanation. So depending on your preferences, choose the correct number.

I have my preference set to Color Indicates: Selected Areas in this tutorial. So either change your preference now and follow along exactly. Or make the adjustments to the B (Brightness) number. Chart below to help.

Let’s demonstrate the effect now.

Creating a Water Color Effect to a photo with Photoshop AI

Starting with a photo

Press the Q key, or click on Quick mask to enter quick mask mode. (In quick mask you can paint or fill with color. These will be converted to selections when we exit Quick Mask).

Now we want to set the density for the mask (transparency). We want to start with 40% (The number everyone uses for this effect)

Let’s choose a Foreground color

Click on the foreground color picker

Choose the lightness from 0-100. The color doesn’t matter because masks don’t support color. Only tones.

See the 3 HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) radial buttons? We will enter our number into the B field. This is the Brightness and its all we care about.

In this case I am entering 60.

This will give me 60% brightness, but 40% density because my Quick Mask mode is set to selected. (If yours is set to Masked, then just enter the desired density as the same Brightness amount (the opposite). If this doesn’t make sense, read the part above labeled “ok hold on one second…”

Click ok

Now fill the quick mask with the foreground color

Press Alt/Option+Backspace, You will see a pink color overlaying (this is the mask)

Press Q once again, or click Quick Mask to convert the mask to a selection and leave Quick mask.

You might see a warning saying selection won’t show because there is nothing selected over 50%. This is expencted. You won’t see the marching Ants selection, but the selection is active and everything is selected at 40% density (transparency).

Now, click the Generative Fill button on the taskbar

In the field, enter Watercolor into the prompt.

You will see a result, that looks like water color and takes on the shape and form of your photo.  (We are about to make it look a whole lot better.. hold on)

Ok this is where most people stop with converting photos to art in Generative fill and getting just ok results.

Lets see what I have discovered that makes it a whole lot better.

Lets start with changing the density (This isn’t even the good bit yet.. stay with me)

Much Better results with lower density

I wondered, why does everyone who does this stick to 40%? Surely there must be other numbers that work too? And sure there are, here is the result of my first discovery (more coming as this tut progresses).

Let’s do these steps again

1. Press Q for Quick mask (Takes us into Quick Mask Mode)

2. Choose a foreground color (a shade of gray)

This time we only want 7% density: enter 93% (or 7% depending on your mask setting)

3. Press Alt+Backspace – Option+Delete on Mac (Fills the canvas with the Foreground color)

4. Press Q key once again (Takes us out of Quick mask and turns the Mask into a selection, You won’t see the selection because it’s filled with less than 50% gray)

5. Choose Generate and enter watercolor into the prompt

Now look at this much better result. (This still isn’t even the good bit)

What I have discovered here is the density changes the result

The lower the density, the closer the result is to the original image. The Higher the density, the more the result will stray from the original.

THIS IS A HIDDEN AMOUNT SLIDER (The Density) But when you see why in a second, the lights will come on.

Here I performed the same 5 steps, but changed the text prompt to watercolor instead of watercolor and got an oil painted result.

We also tried it with Pencil Sketch for another art effect, this is at 30% density.

Here I used the same Pencil sketch prompt, but at 10% density. Experiment with different densities for different results.

Ok, if you stuck with me this far (And didn’t assume you already knew this and bounced) get ready for a huge payoff.

It struck me that Photoshop uses Firefly as the engine that runs Generative fill. So therefore, it seems Generative Fill must understand the Firefly settings? Let’s see.

Go to Firefly.adobe.com

Click on Text to Image

Just to get something going to populate the interface, I entered Street and Firefly generated these images. (Firefly is now on Model Version 2 and vastly improved image generation – No V2 isn’t in Photoshop yet).

Look at the settings on the right side of the interface, this is the magic.

Notice a strength slider? We are emulating this by changing the density back in Photoshop.

Scroll down and see more settings.

Let look at Movements (These are art styles or movements such as Art Deco,  Art Nouveau (predecessor to Art Deco), Steampunk, cyberpunk etc)

Ok, lets go back to Photoshop.

Open a Photo of a street.

Q for Quick mask

Choose foreground color. Choose 40% density. Either 60 or 40 into your B box depending on your Quick masks settings

Click ok

Fill with foreground color Alt/Option+Backspace

Press Q to convert to selection

Remember the movements in Firefly?

Enter Art Deco

Now our photo is converted to exactly the same scene, but in an art deco style! Mind blown!

Let’s try a different one. Steampunk.

Yes! This works beautifully too.

So, all the movements work. Lets try a different category.

Back in Firefly I see a concepts tab

Ohh futuristic looks interesting. Lets try that

I entered Futuristic in the prompt in Photoshop and Generative fill gave me exactly what I wanted.

Just for fun I opened another of my images I shot a while back

Entering Futuristic into the Prompt transformed this exact scene into a futuristic diner concept. Ok, it’s far from perfect. But start to think about the possibilites!

I encourage you to experiment with this and see what you can do. Go to Firefly for inspiration and see what you can generate.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful!

If you want to learn more about Generative Fill, check out my course here

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

The post Revealing hidden features in Photoshop Generative Fill to convert photos to art and more appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

I recently made a tutorial on all the new features of Photoshop 2024. I got a lot of questions and comments on Youtube and various social medias, so I’ll address the most asked ones here. There is also a video well worth watching above (It’s more in depth).

Is Generative Fill a paid add on?

A lot of talk about this one!

Generative Credits

Adobe is introducing Generative credits. The easy way to understand this is like a phone plan or data plan. An unlimited data plan allows unlimited data, but once you pass a threshold the speed may be throttled during peak time.

If you are a paid subscriber, you will get fast processing credits. Once you pass that limit, you can still generate without extra costs, but the speed may slow down if the servers are busy.

You don’t have to pay for the credits. Each month your meter will refresh.  AKA top off. You can’t accumulate credits and roll them over.

You can see the amount of credits you will receive each month in this chart from Adobe’s website. FAQ here

This doesn’t begin until Nov 1, 2024

Main ones are
Full CC: 1000 Credits per month.
Single app (aka Photoshop) 500 per month,
Photography + Lightroom CC 250 per month. New subs after November 1 will get only 100 per month.

What if you run out of credits?

To be honest, Most people won’t get though 1000 or even 250 credits per month. But if you do, then what? You can continue to use the feature and you may experience slow downs, or even a daily cap  (We don’t know what that means yet, because it hasn’t happened, but my guess is the cap is to stop people abusing the system, like starting a generation farm and selling as stock).

If the speed throttle is bad, you have the option to buy more credits fro $4.99 per month for 100. So basically it gives you priority processing, and you go to the back of the line when you use your monthly credits. They refresh each moth like the minutes on your phone.

Generative credits do not apply to the Remove tool to other ai features in Photoshop, only Generative Fill and Generative expand. Adobe express and Firefly it also applies to Text effects and Text to image.

Is resolution still limited to 1024 x 1024

the generated resolution is 1024 x 1024 px

This means 1024 px on the longest side. If your selection is larger than 1024  high or tall, the generated pixels will be enlarged to fit the selection resulting is a softer looking image. At selections of 2or less, the resolution should match your image.

I have a tutorial here on how to get high resolution fills in your image, see the tutorial here

Where is High Resolution?

Here is my best guess. I don’t know for sure, if Adobe had told me, I won’t be able to talk about it because of NDA, but I don’t, so I’m only speculating.. but it’s an educated guess

On Adobe’s site they say future capabilities may include Higher Resolution, may incur additional Generative Credits or additional cost. Lets examine that

If you compare to Mid journey, you have the ability to generate new images, or to upscale any of the variations.the U1-4 mean create high res on demand.

When you generate high resolution, it costs 1 credit.

My guess is Adobe will allow us to generate in low resolution (like now), but in the future we may be able to choose to redraw a variation in high resolution. This is like the current practice of using Adobe Stock for free in low res with a watermark. When we are happy with the results, we license the image and it’s replaced with a clean, high resolution version.

Maybe that high res generation will cost 1 credit, or even 5 depending on the resolution. We will see.

Is it Photoshop 25 or 2024?

They are the same. Photoshop is at version 25 as an app, but all the apps in Creative Cloud 2024 are called 2024 no matter their individual app versions.

Where are my Presets, plugins etc

When you install a full dot version update, (25 vs 24.7 etc) sometimes preset and plugins might be missing or not working. (I actually had good luck with my plugins this time and they all work)

Your plugins should be in: Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2024\Plug-ins folder

The key is to not replace your old version until you can be sure everything is working.

When you choose update from Creative Cloud, don’t remove old versions.

You can uninstall them later if you like.

Also if you do this, make sure you turn off Auto Update, I strongly encourage this anyway, or it could update you and wipe out your presets without your knowing. It’s happened to me before.

Running the correct version of Photoshop

If you need to reinstall an older version of Photoshop you can. To get back discontinued functionality like 3D.

Click the menu in the Creative Cloud app next to the open button in Photoshop

Click other versions

A menu will appear with other versions. You can install multiple versions at once.

Where are the new tools?

You may have the new version installed. Make sure you are launching the correct version if the new features aren’t there. You might Have added 2024, but still launching 2023. Check the name next to the icon.

Where is the Remove tool?

If you are using a workspace that didn’t include the Remove tool, generative fill or other new features at the time, they will be missing from your toolbar.

Click and hold on the toolbar options, you will see a fly-out menu.

Click Edit Toolbar

Click restore defaults and done and everything should be there now. If you had a custom workspace, update that workspace, or the tool will disappear again the next time you reset the workspace.

Wrong version is opening in Lightroom

When you right-click on an image in Lightroom classic, you can choose to Edit In>Photoshop

Some people are only seeing beta and can’t get it to open in the regular Photoshop

For Mac users, go to preferences>External Editing

Change the Photoshop version

When you right-click you will see the correct version of Photoshop, You can target the beta or other versions if you prefer.

For windows users, you need to First Launch Photoshop and then when you choose Edit in, it will open in Photoshop 2024.

I hope these tips are proving useful for you.

Drop a comment and let me know!

Thanks

Colin

By the way, I heard from some people they were waiting for Generative Fill to come to the main Photoshop because they didn’t want to mess with the beta. Well, it’s here now.

As you may know, I made a course on Generative fill (the first and as far as I know, the only course) and everything on the course works exactly the same in the final release, except you don’t have to download the beta anymore. If you missed the discount before, I thought it would only be fair to offer it again here if you are now ready to jump in.

I’ll give you a week to use the code GENFILL2 to save 20%.  Grab it here (If you already bought the course, you don’t need to buy again, it’s unchanged, as the features are unchanged)

The post Updating to Photoshop 2024, Your Questions Answered appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Photoshop tools are designed to do certain things. Sometimes, with some imagination, we can use them in different ways than intended to get some really useful results. I love to experiment and try things, and here is something I came up with, that I use quite a bit. This is a case of using Black and White, to darken and lighten COLORS!.

Here is the starting photo. Notice how the background is very bright and saturated and fights with the subject for attention.

Let’s tone the background colors using an unexpected way.

In the Layers panel, click on new adjustment layer

Choose Back and White

The image will change to grayscale.

You typically move the sliders to adjust the tones in the color areas to get a better black and white conversion.

We are going to keep the image color, but use the sliders to darken or lighten the colors.

Change the blend mode to Luminosity, so only the brightness will change and not the colors.

You will already see a difference because the sliders aren’t in a neutral position.

Move the slider in the reds to lighten or darken skin tones. This has a lot of other uses, from making sunburn and more.

Also move the yellow and green sliders to darken the foliage in the background and make the color more cinematic.

Of course, you will use this on your own photos and adjust in a way that is personally pleasing for you (Just because I like this style of color grade doesn’t mean everyone does. The cool part is you get to adjust how you want).

Another way to work, choose the picker tool

As you drag over colors directly on the image, you can adjust their brightness.

Because we are adjusting the brightness, it changes the way the colors look. (Red becomes pink, if lightened)

If you want to shift the colors you can.

Choose a new Hue Saturation Adjustment layer

Choose the picker tool

Click on the color you want to adjust.

It will now limit it to the selected colors

You can now adjust the saturation and color if you like, check it out on the video above to see what I did.

I hope you found this tutorial useful!

Drop a comment and let us know if you did.

Great to see you at the CAFE

Colin

Browse the other free photoshop tutorials here at the cafe

Download 100s of dollars worth of Photoshop adds on for free here at the Vault.

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik, Threads and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

The post Hidden Luminosity Mask trick in Photoshop appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

The public beta of Photoshop gives you early access to new and upcoming features in Photoshop. Sometimes these features can be big, like Generative Fill and ai filters. Sometimes they can be small features. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to access the beta, as well as answer some questions I hear all the time!

Installing Creative Cloud

Click on the creative Cloud icon at the top of the screen on Mac, or at the bottom on Windows.

(If you don’t have it, google creative Cloud Download and download from Adobe. You need to create a Creative Cloud account at Adobe and be signed in for this to work.)

Launches the Creative Cloud app, note this app has changed in Feb 2024. This tutorial coves the new updated version.

Click on Apps

When in the Apps Panel, look for beta at the top and click on it

Click on Install to install the Photoshop Beta App. (This is the public beta)

Make sure you have updated Creative Cloud first. Next steps show how to update.

Updating Creative Cloud

On the right panel click on Manage Updates

When I hear from people saying they don’t see a feature, this is one of the big reasons (I’ll give you reason #2 at the end). You want to ping the server and check for an even newer update first!

Click Check for updates at the top right.

Creative Cloud will now force the latests update. Auto updates don’t always load into the interface right away, that’s why we do it manually to be sure we have the newest version.

Launch the correct app

This is the 2nd reason people don’t see certain features, because they are launching the wrong version go Photoshop.

When you download and install the beta, it installs a completely separate version of Photoshop. Both can run at the same time. Use the beta to test new features, but use the shipping version for your production work. (It will say beta in the top of the screen)

I try to Access Photoshop beta or Firefly and its grayed out, why?

In order to have access to Generative ai features, you need to verify you are at least 18 years old. If you didn’t do this in your CC account, you can create or link an account at Behance and do it there.

A word about beta

Another thing I hear from people. “When are they putting such and such a version into the main Photoshop? I don’t want to use the beta because its unstable”

Stop and think about that for a second. If those beta features were moved into the main version, it would make it unstable too. This is why they are beta. They aren’t ready for production work yet. Maybe there are some bugs that needed fixed, or features to be added. Beta features are not to be used for commercial work and there is no guarantee that a beta version will ever make it into the main version, although most do.

Sometimes things happen on beta. For example, one feature may work only on Mac, or maybe only on windows. Beta means a Work in Progress and they aren’t final or ready. So don’t use Beta software with mission critical work.

Here is some FAQ from Adobe. Faq page is here

A last word, access to beta is a privilege, not a right. So enjoy it, get a taste of what’s coming.

I hope you found this tutorial useful.

Colin

Tutorial on Generative Fill in Photoshop

Drop a comment and let me know if this was helpful.

Browse the other free photoshop tutorials here at the cafe

Download 100s of dollars worth of Photoshop adds on for free here at the Vault.

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik, Threads and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

See you next time!

Colin

The post How to get the Photoshop Beta appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

We have all seen the floating heads effect on posters, magazine and album covers, you name it. We combine different pictures and seamlessly blend them into the background.

While experimenting with the updated gradients tool in Photoshop, it occurred to me, this might work well on faces and heads. So I tried it and immediately, I knew I had stumbled on the perfect use for this tool. I’m excited to share this discovery with you now.

The first thing we need to do, is get all the images into Photoshop, but in layers in a single document.

Choose File>Scripts>Load Files Into Stack

Click Browse and choose your images. Tip: If you have already opened the images in Photoshop, choose Add Open Files, and they will be stacked together.

Click ok

All the images will be added to layers in a single document.

Turn off the layers except the background by clicking the eyeballs in the Layers panel

One at a time, resize and position the images of the faces. Press Ctrl/Cmd+T for free transform. Drag to position. Drag the corners to resize.

We will do the following steps for each image.

Choose the layer and make it visible. (eye icon)

Click the new Layer mask to add a mask

Choose the Gradients tool (G Key)

Choose Radial and Foreground to transparent

Make sure the forgeround color is black,

Make sure REVERSE is checked it the top bar. Alternatively use a black to white gradient. (The Transparency option allows to use multiple gradients on 1 mask). 

Making sure the mask is selected in the layer, not the image..

Drag out from the center. Notice it creates a beautiful vignette effect and blends the image into the background.

In the Properties panel, drag the center point under opacity control. This will change how the edges feather. (You should be able to do this with the diamond on the overlay, but that appears to be broken at this time).

If you want to do manual touchup on the mask it’s easy.

Grab a brush. Paint with black to hide areas and white to show them. Be strategic with the manual painting as you can easily ruin the smooth blend if you aren’t careful.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. I actually mad this a 2 part tutorial on the new Gradient tool. Check out the addition tutorial on making a rainbow to master some of the other features, as well as a killer tip I came up with.

Drop a comment and let me know if this was helpful.

Browse the other free photoshop tutorials here at the cafe

Download 100s of dollars worth of Photoshop adds on for free here at the Vault.

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik, Threads and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

See you next time!

Colin

The post How to Seamlessly Blend faces into background in Photoshop using new radial gradients appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

I originally wrote this graffiti tutorial a decade ago. While the style still looks good, the usability sucks. Total update time, let’s make the graffiti on the text layer using all layer styles. The advantage to this is 2-fold. First we can reuse the layer style and secondly, we can change the text and the style will remain on it as we edit. (Non-destructive baby!)

Step 1

Start with an appropriate font and type the word, graffiti

Here I used Tags Extreme. Download it here | Download the layer style for this tutorial

Step 2

In the layers panel, click the little fx for layer styles.

Choose gradient overlay. Click on the arrow to choose a gradient, Choose the legacy orange to yellow one.

If you don’t see legacy gradients, you can load them in like this. (or just proceed with a custom gradient)

Click on the gradient to edit it

Step 3

The gradient editor opens. Click to add a white gradient stop in the middle. (Watch the video to see how to do it)

This gives us the gradient color onto the type

Step 4

Give it a small gray stroke by using the settings shown in the stroke option, size is 10

Step 5

Because we are actually giving this a triple stroke, we need to apply an additional stroke. In Photoshop CC or newer, click the + button next to the stroke to make an additional one.

Set the bottom stroke to black and make it bigger than the gray one, so you can see it.

If you are using an earlier version of Photoshop you have to be clever. Lets use the outer glow as a secondary stroke. Choose outer glow. Blend mode in normal and black. The magic happens with the spread and size. Make sure you turn on anti aliased, or it will look blocky.

Double stroke in action!

Step 6

We now need to create the 3rd stroke which is really a hard edges drop shadow, Opacity is al 100 and once again, the magic happens with spread and size. Set the distance to suit your Image. Tip: You can drag directly on your document to set the distance and angle.

Cha! The graffiti is looking good!

Step 7

Because it’s applied as a layer style on a text layer, I can change the text to say whatever I like.

Step 8

Its really easy to add this graffiti to photographs. All you really need to do is change the blending mode to Overlay.

If you want to make it even better, use a displacement map to wrap it to your surface, tutorial on displacement maps in Photoshop

I hope you enjoyed this updated tutorial

Why don’t you Download the layer style for this tutorial

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

Grab more Photoshop goodies here

The post How to make re-usable graffiti in Photoshop tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

How to make a displacement map in photoshop

Here I have a flag and some text on a different layer, We will warp the text to the flag with the displacement map,

In the Layers panel, Right-click in the text and choose “convert to Spart Object:” This will enable us to warp it. Text can’t be warped with a displacement map without rasterizing it or converting to a smart object.

1. Hide the text layer and choose the flag layer

2. Choose the Channels Panel

Click on the separate channels (RBG) to find the one with the most Contrast. Green in this case.

Right click on the channel and choose Duplicate Channel.

3. Choose new, this will create a new image tab containing just the Green channel

4. Choose the new document and blur it just a little. Blurring improves the result from a displacement map.

Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. I used 2.3

5. In order to make a displacement map it must be 2 things.

A single channel, multichannel document. When we copy a channel to a new document, we get that. We did that in step 3.

Saves as a PSD. File>save as.. choose .psd.

You can close the image window, we don’t need it anymore.

This is your displacement map. Lets use it now

How to use a Displacement Map in Photoshop

6. Go back to the original document.

Turn on the text layer (Smart Object) and select it. Let’s warp it

Choose Filter>Distort>Displace

7. Set a number in the Scale. By default it’s 10 and 10, This works best for most things, but experiment.

8. Once you click ok, Photoshop will ask you to select an image.

Choose the PSD that you created as your Displacement Map

You will see that the text warps to fit the contours of the flag

9. Change the layer blending mode to Soft Light and you can see it better

Let me show you what happens if you choose a different number than 10 and 10 for the scale.

Leys choose 50.

See how we get. more pronounced warp. We also start to get a wavey pattern on the edges. Experiment with different scales and see what works best for you image. I actually think 25 looked best for this flag and that’s what I used on the thumbnail for this tutorial.

Let’s use what we have learned to wrap a logo to a tshirt in Photoshop

Start with the image and a logo on a separate layer.

1. With the logo selected, press Ctrl/Cmd+T for free transform.

Right-Click and choose Warp

2. Drag on the points and handles to make the logo follow the perspective of the surface, How to use the Warp tool in Photoshop

3. Hide the logo layer and go to the channel panel

Find the channel with the most contrast. Blue channel in this.

4. Right-Click on the blue channel and choose Duplicate channel

For document, choose new

5. Click on the new document and add a blur. Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. 1 pixel

Click ok

6. Lets increase the contrast.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+L for levels

Push the left triangle to the right until it meets the edge of the histogram (mountain looking thing).

Move the middle gray triangle to the right to add more contrast and show the texture in the shirt better.

Click ok

7. Save as a PSD

8. Lets apply the displacement map

Grab the original image. Choose the graphics layer (logo)

9. Choose filter>Distort>Displace

Accept the 10 and 10 settings and click ok.

10. You will see the dialog box looking for an image.

Choose the PSD you saved.

You will see the displacement map has been applied.

Change the Blending Mode to Multiply (different blending modes work with different colored images)

Now you can see the texture of the shirt comes through nicely and it looks like the logo is actually printed on the shirt.

Here is the full view.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. If you did. share it on social media and with your friends, it helps these tuts get discovered.

Until next week, see you  at the CAFE

Colin

The post Best way to make displacement maps in Photoshop, wrap anything around any surface appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.