Photoshop Friday - Color alteration

Digital scrapbooking is a fun way to preserve your pictures and journaling. As a bonus, it can be faster and easier than traditional paper-and-scissors scrapbooking. There are also lots of free or inexpensive digital elements that you can add do your pages. While you have the versatility of moving, re-sizing and rotating your elements all over your page, sometimes you are stuck working with colors that doesn't quite go together.

Or are you?

Today we'll go over how to alter the color of your digital embellishments. This method, while easy, may require some experimenting and you still might not come up with exactly the color you are looking for. But with a little practice you'll get pretty close and get a lot more mileage out of those digital elements.

We're starting with this lovely stapled pink ribbon. Download it here if you want to practice. It's called Sweet Sprinkles created by ShabbyPrincess and you can look at all their stuff at shabbyprincess.com if you like it. I like these elements that come as .png (pronounced 'ping') because the background is transparent (that's what the gray boxes mean). If you saved it as a .jpg, you would have a white box around your ribbon and that's a pain.

This method changes the color of the entire layer and I want that staple to stay gray. So first, I'm going to isolate it this way. Select your lasso tool (shown below) and make sure you are using the 'polygonal lasso'. That means that every time you click, it will make a line from one point to the next, making some sort of polygon when you're done. Obviously this would be harder with a more intricate shape. You'll get better at it with practice. And if you get excited and select the wrong thing, Crtl/Cmmd D will de-select your area so you can start over.

Once your staple is selected, simply copy (Crtl/Cmmd C) and paste (Crtl/Cmmd V) the selection. It will create a new layer. Remember that the layers are listed in order. The staple must be on top of the ribbon in the Layers Palette if you want it to show up on top in the image.

Turn off the lower layer (click the eyeball on the bottom layer) so you can see if you copied it right and you don't have any pink ribbon attached to it. If it's messed up, drag your staple layer into the little trash can (lower right of the Layers Palette) and start over.

Moving on. Turn your pink ribbon layer back on and make sure you're clicked into that layer so you can work on it. Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation. Just start moving the Hue slider back and forth. You can lighten or deepen the color by moving the Saturation or Lightness bars. Also try clicking on the "Colorize" checkbox on the lower right and see what happens with those settings. When you've discovered the color that you want to use, just click OK.

Now you need to make your still-gray staple a part of the image again. Click Layers -> Flatten Image to make it all one piece again.

Surprisingly easy yes? Add your fancy new ribbons to the project of your choice. Leave comments if you have questions.

Photoshop Friday - Color sampling

As you're working with your pictures in Photoshop, you might want to add a caption or a border or stamp or some other element. And you may want that element to be some color other than black. So here is how to take the guesswork out of color.

In this picture I'm adding a little saying and I think I would like it to match the pretty pink of her sweater. First I get all the type lined up just how I want it.

Now for the fun part. Let's change the color of the text first. Using your text tool, you're going to highlight the word that you want to change. Either in the Character palette or in the main toolbar, you're going to see an option for color (handy arrow to show you.)

Clicking on the color box will bring up this text-color window. Just about any color imaginable is available to you here. You can click in the rainbow bar to get reds, blues, greens... and then fine-tune your color in the big box by picking a color that is brighter, darker, more muted or vibrant... whatever suits you. But in this example, we're matching the color of her sweater. So move your cursor outside of the color box (but still over the photograph) and notice that it turns into a little eyedropper tool. This tool will pick up the color of any pixel that you're holding it over. Try clicking around the picture and you'll notice that the color changes each time. Also notice that even though her sweater is pink, there are different light and dark areas. So try a few and see which you like better, and which looks best over the background. You can always go back into the Select Color window and make it lighter or darker there as well. Pay attention to the background to make sure that your text or other element looks good against the background and adjust your color as needed.

When you've found the perfect shade of pink, click OK and de-select your text. Viola! Repeat for the rest of your text as needed. Instead of trying to find the exact area of the sweater where you chose the first pink, you can click right on your text and pick that color (eliminating even MORE guesswork... so fabulous!)


You might have to change the color of a shape, instead of a word. This is easy too. You'll notice that each shape in your layers palette has a colored box next to it? Double-click this box and it will bring up your Select Color window again. Same thing with the eyedropper.


Finally, if you're adding a stamp or a brush to your picture, you're going to want to choose the color before you start applying the brush. Change your foreground color (the upper left box) to your Perfect Pink by selecting the eyedropper tool and clicking on the photo. You can also double-click the color boxes to bring up the Select Color window.

Have fun with your photos!

Photoshop Friday - Correct a crooked picture

Yes, it has been a while since I've posted anything. Blame it on this snow, which sucks my will to live. Or the extra-super shorthanded month we've had at work. Or the fabulous case of influenza that both Minnie and I came down with and lasted for 2 entire weeks. Whichever is your Excuse of Choice, go with that one. And hey, it's time for another Photoshop Friday!

I don't know about you, but I take a lot of crooked pictures. Maybe one leg is shorter than the other. Whatever the reason, I end up straightening out a lot of shots in Photoshop afterward. And here is how.

Step 1 - take a crooked picture. This is the easy part. Because I know I do this, I often leave a lot of extra space around the edges of pictures I know I will have to line up straight later.

When you open your picture in Photoshop, expand the work window so you have some gray space around the picture to work with. Just pull out the lower-right arrow so the window gets bigger (it won't affect the picture, just your workspace).

If your window doesn't have a ruler around the top and left edge, click Cmmd (Control on a PC) R to get one. Or go to View - Rulers. Place your cursor inside the ruler, click and drag out a straight line. Place it anywhere you like (it won't show up on the finished picture.)

To rotate the picture, click Cmmd(Ctrl) A to select all. A dotted line should appear around the entire picture. Then click Cmmd(Ctrl) T to Transform. When you put your cursor near any of the corner transform boxes, it should turn into a curve with an arrow at the end. Use this to rotate the picture until it is straight up-and-down (use your ruler line for reference).

Once the picture is lined up, click Enter and all the transform boxes will disappear. Click Cmmd(Ctrl) D to de-select the area and make all the dotted lines disappear.

Using the crop tool, crop in on the picture so that the white areas at the edges disappear.

You're done! Perfectly straight picture.

Remember, if there's a Photoshop technique that you'd like to learn, make sure to tell me!

Photoshop Friday - black & white

Any photo-editing program can turn any digital image black and white, but with Photoshop you can enhance the original image to get a really great picture.

First, start with a picture that has good contrast between the background and subject. If your person has dark hair and is sitting in front of a dark leafy tree, their hair will just disappear into the background and it won't be the greatest picture. The same goes for really busy backgrounds - they will just look muddy. And some pictures just plain look better in color! So picking the right picture to turn B&W is important.


This picture will look great in B&W, the girl's hair stands out from the darker background and her eyes have a nice sparkle. Before I turn it B&W though, I'm going to pump up the contrast a bit more. We'll do this in Image -> Adjustments -> Levels


Mess around with the sliders until things are kind of hyper-contrasted. We talked about the features of Levels on a previous Photoshop Friday, if you want to review. Remember, you can always back up and start over if you don't like the results. You might even find a color version of the picture that you like better than the original. But nothing is permanent (just make sure you don't save over your master file!)

I usually bring the middle arrow up (to the left) and the left arrow back towards the middle. Beware the right arrow - you can really blow out your white areas and make the picture look 'hot'.

When that is done, I see what Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast can do for me. Again, play around with the slider arrows to see what happens.


At this point the picture is going to look hyper-colored and usually not so great. But stay with me!

Not all versions of Photoshop have a black-and-white feature. Never fear! If there isn't a Black and White command in the Image -> Adjustments tab, click Hue/Saturation



Take the slider for Saturation all the way down (left). Voilà!


Just so you'll see what the original picture would have looked like if you had simply run a regular black&white command on it.

Photoshop Friday - Cropping

Even though I'm on vacation, you STILL get Photoshop Friday. That's how much I love you.

I think there's two important reasons to crop your pictures. First to focus more on your subject and cut out any distracting background elements. Second to compose a good picture (something that's not always possible when you're actually taking the picture - especially with fast-moving kids!)

With this picture, I just want to close in tighter on Minnie and her pumpkin while cutting out some of the crowd and background... stuff.


Choose your crop tool, which is that funny square thing. If you're going to have your pictures as prints later, you might want to preserve the aspect ratio of the original picture (if you crop it to a square and then try to make a print from it, the photo lab will chop the top and bottom off to make a 4x6 photo print.) To do this, select the entire image with your crop tool. A dotted line with the little adjust-a-box things will appear around your photo. Now holding down the Shift key, adjust just the corner boxes. You'll see that the ratio of length-to-height remains the same. Magic!

If you accidentally hit enter and crop something wrong, Cmmd/Cntl-Z will undo it and you can start over.

When you crop pictures, it's OK to cut off edges of your picture. Yes - even if it's a person. In this picture, I'm focusing on the watermelon and the expression on his face. It's ok to nip off the top of his head. You don't even miss it. ;)

OK, let's talk about composition. Photography revolves around the Rule of Thirds. Each picture is broken up into thirds in each direction, like this:

So instead of having your subject in the exact center of every picture, it's more pleasing to line them up along one of the lines. Upper, lower, left, right... it doesn't matter. And even if you didn't take the picture like this originally, you can still crop it according to the RoT afterwards!

This way the picture feels composed, rather than just a snapshot.

One final note with the rule of thirds: if your subject is moving make sure they have somewhere to go. If Little Man were running off the edge of the picture, it would feel unbalanced. In your mind, the subject is moving and it wants to see where he's heading.


That's about it for picture-cropping and I hope this was helpful. Remember, if you have questions or topics you'd like to see for future Photoshop Fridays, tell me in the comments.

Photoshop Friday - photo collage

These photo collages always come in handy - whether you're posting big groups of pictures on your blog or making one big print to hang on your wall.

We're going to make a collage with 4 pictures - but you can use as many or as few as you want. Get all your files open at once.

Now you're going to open a new file. I'm going to make a square collage, so I'm making this one 1600 x 1600 pixels. That's a big web image, but if I were making a large photo print (11x14" for example), I would make sure to set my dimensions accordingly.

To select your entire photograph, just click Control (or Command if you're using a Mac) -A and it will grab the whole thing. If you want just part of the selection, choose the tool that looks like a square with a dotted line and select the part of the picture you want to use.

Click Ctrl/Cmmd-C to copy. Go to your blank collage and click Ctrl/Cmmd-V to paste the image. Ctrl/Cmmd-T will let you re-size the image (if it's too big). Hold down Shift as you move the corners of the image around and that will constrain the proportions (that means it won't stretch or squish the image as it re-sizes).

Repeat this for your other 3 images. The hardest part to get used to in Photoshop is: you can only manipulate the layer that you have selected. Look in the image below and see how I'm working on the layer containing the top-right picture. If I want to re-size the top-left picture, I need to select that layer before I do anything. It seems like a pain at first but you'll get used to it. If you leave some white space, you can use the text tool to put a title or some journaling.


Oh, one more thing - you can move the order of the layers in the Layers palette. The top picture in the palette is the top picture on the screen. If you want your picture to overlap (instead of have the white space between them like I do) make sure that the picture you want on top. You can grab the picture in the palette and move it to the top, or whatever. Does that make sense? Just experiment with it and you'll see.

To finish up your picture, just choose Layers - Merge Down and it will combine all of your layers into one.

Obviously don't do this until you're satisfied with the placement of all the layers. Then save your collage as a .jpg and it will be ready to load into your blog page, album or whatever.

Photoshop Friday - Reducing Shadows

As promised (long ago) I'm going to start a hopefully-weekly series of tutorials on Photoshop. These will all be simple, beginner type things. If you're looking for more advanced techniques, you should probably take a class. And here is a great one.

When you're practicing with your pictures, always work on a copy of your original picture. Open your file and immediately Save As a different name. That way if you experiment until you totally alter the picture, you won't accidentally lose the original.

For this first technique, we're going to brighten up a picture where there are dark shadows. Lots and lots of pictures have this problem and it's sure frustrating to lose the details in shadow - especially faces! Usually these are shadows from intense, overhead sunlight. Since people turn away from the sun, the shadows tend to make eyes look dark and hooded or even obscure the entire face. For an example, I'm going to use these two pictures.

You don't want to increase the brightness. Although this will lighten up the shadows, it will also bring up the already-bright areas and make them look hot and blown-out. Instead we're going to use Levels. This technique is surprisingly easy. Simply chose Image -> Adjustments -> Levels.


It will bring up a series of slider arrows and a fancy-looking histogram, like this:

The left arrow controls the shadows and low-lights of the picture. It will make the darkest areas darker. The right arrow controls the highlights and will make the whitest/brightest areas brighter. For shadow-reduction, we are mostly concerned with the middle slider. As you can see, I've moved the middle slider to the left, brightening up the midtones of the picture. Make sure that your Preview box is checked. The nice thing about these slider arrows is that you can just move things around until your picture looks right. There's no guesswork! If you mess something up, just cancel out and start over.

If you notice that the whole picture is getting too light, you can bring the left slider down and darken the low areas a bit for contrast. After you've brightened the midtones up a little, you can try Brightness/Contrast a little bit too see if it makes an improvement. Just move everything around and see what it all does. Pretty neat yes?

If you have questions, go ahead and post them in the comments. Be sure to include any techniques that you are interested in learning.