• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 14:01
CEST 20:01
KST 03:01
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
TL.net Map Contest #21: Voting2[ASL20] Ro4 Preview: Descent6Team TLMC #5: Winners Announced!3[ASL20] Ro8 Preview Pt2: Holding On9Maestros of the Game: Live Finals Preview (RO4)5
Community News
Weekly Cups (Oct 6-12): Four star herO45.0.15 Patch Balance Hotfix (2025-10-8)67Weekly Cups (Sept 29-Oct 5): MaxPax triples up3PartinG joins SteamerZone, returns to SC2 competition325.0.15 Balance Patch Notes (Live version)119
StarCraft 2
General
PartinG joins SteamerZone, returns to SC2 competition 5.0.15 Patch Balance Hotfix (2025-10-8) Weekly Cups (Oct 6-12): Four star herO IP For new Brazil servers for NA Players TL.net Map Contest #21 - Finalists
Tourneys
WardiTV Mondays SC2's Safe House 2 - October 18 & 19 Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament RSL Offline Finals Dates + Ticket Sales! SC4ALL $6,000 Open LAN in Philadelphia
Strategy
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 495 Rest In Peace Mutation # 494 Unstable Environment Mutation # 493 Quick Killers Mutation # 492 Get Out More
Brood War
General
[ASL20] Ro4 Preview: Descent I'm making videos again Any rep analyzer that shows resources situation? Whose hotkey signature is this? BW General Discussion
Tourneys
[ASL20] Semifinal B [ASL20] Semifinal A [Megathread] Daily Proleagues [ASL20] Ro8 Day 4
Strategy
Current Meta BW - ajfirecracker Strategy & Training Siegecraft - a new perspective TvZ Theorycraft - Improving on State of the Art
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread ZeroSpace Megathread Dawn of War IV Path of Exile
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion LiquidDota to reintegrate into TL.net
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
SPIRED by.ASL Mafia {211640} TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine US Politics Mega-thread The Games Industry And ATVI Stop the Construction YouTube Thread
Fan Clubs
The herO Fan Club! The Happy Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread [Manga] One Piece Movie Discussion!
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion MLB/Baseball 2023 NBA General Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
SC2 Client Relocalization [Change SC2 Language] Linksys AE2500 USB WIFI keeps disconnecting Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Recent Gifted Posts
Blogs
Inbreeding: Why Do We Do It…
Peanutsc
From Tilt to Ragequit:The Ps…
TrAiDoS
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 2357 users

Learning Photoshop the proper way -Part2

Blogs > leecH
Post a Reply
leecH
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Germany385 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-20 19:21:37
June 19 2011 06:10 GMT
#1
Hi again and welcome to Part2 If you are like "WTF is this?" please go check out Part1 first.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=234353

Thanks for all the nice feedback. Thats the reason Part2 is already here :D
I thought about how to continue. I dont really have a gameplan, so to say. First i wanted to go into some of the "bread and butter" tools for Photoshop after i already started talking about Layers and Masks. But actually i´d like to put Photoshop aside for a bit and talk about something i feel is very important to new comers and even for more advanced people.

Let´s talk about colours:

Remember when you were a littel kid? You had all those colourful toys, were forced to wear ridicoulous coloured clothes and maybe spent some time with a colouring book. As you grew older you started to wear more and more black and white clothes. Maybe you threw away all your colourful posters hanging around in your room because now, you like it nice and clean. Thats just how things change. You start to loose your sense for colours.

But this sense can be gained back and it´s very important you do so if you want to get into anything related to pictures, designs or even just making a very simple interface for a programm you are busy coding. The best thing about it is: It does not take any precious time away from you! For some people this may sound absolutly stupid but for others this is as eye opening as it was for me, espacially when you live in a city where everything is gray.

When first starting to work at a company during my education i was hanging out in Photoshop for 8-10 hours a day. After several weeks i started to look differently at my surrounding. When going to work at morning i was suprised how blue all these gray walls looked. And when going back home how orange and warm everything seemed. This sounds like i smoked too much weed during that time, which may be true or not.

Don´t open the spoiler yet. Look at this gray. Looks gray doesnt it :D ?
[image loading]
Now open the spoiler. See what i´m trying to say?
+ Show Spoiler +
[image loading]


If you start training your eyes so you can see the first gray is a warm gray without seeing the comparison, you developped a very helpful skill. For some this will be easier than for others.
The example is pretty obvious but if you train your eyes you will spot difference in 1-3% ranges.

Now, how can we train our eyes to do so? The first step is to understand that our brain actually works against us in this case. Our brain claims "The white wall in my room is painted white, therefore, it is white!" Take a look at anything in your room that is white. Is this really really pure white? Or does it look more like some kind of grey or "dirty white"? Compare it to the white on your screen.

Let´s imagine Day9 is our best buddie and he asks us to "Photoshop" his awesome picture. We open the picture and just look at it. Really do this. Just look at the picture for a bit. What do you notice?

[image loading]

Its very yellow heavy and oversaturated. Take a look at the table - its yellow! This means poor Day9 is also too yellow heavy. You see this has nothing to do with Photoshop itself. But with the help of Photoshop we now can correct this.

[image loading]

The next step i did was to give the picture a bit more contrast. I just felt like it. It´s not much so i wont upload a picture. Now with the corrected colours, the tshirts starts to look washed out. Doesn´t seem right so lets make a healthy green out of it.

[image loading]

This are 3 very simple steps and roughly took about 15 minutes to execute. It´s not really a creative or complicated process, still the picture benefits alot from those changes. Of course this is not a masterpiece but i try to keep it simple.

(Note: every screen displays colours differently. Ever have been to a media market where 30 screens are next to each other? They all have different colours. There are professional screens which can be calibrated to a veriety of standards. Those screens are insanly expensive [2000 Euro upwards]. I am using my TV as a screen which of course is very unfortunate but i can´t afford a good screen so im stuck with it. Anyway to all you more advanced folks: you can google and read abit more into it. There are some ways to optimize your screen without expensive hardware. It´s worth it.)

Let´s take it one step further:

Of course i know many use Photoshop for designing or layouting only and care less about pictures. Lets take the MLG Logo for example. Why does it look so glossy?

[image loading]

Again, take a look at your room. Why does glossy plastic look glossy? Why does metal look like metal and why does cloth look like cloth. You need to examine simple things like this and understand them. Then you wont have a problem making a glossy logo. All you then need is to know is how to immitate these characteristics in Photoshop. Now we can go into Photoshop and start bothering which tool to use to make the white gardients which let the MLG logo look like glossy plastic.

When you are traveling with the train, taking a sh*t or enjoying a cigaret on your balcony, think about why something looks like it does. Out of personal experience: don´t do this when interacting with other people :D Anyway i hope i could give you abit of a personal insight.

[Tools] A closer look at the Pen Tool (Shortcut: P)

I bet some of you are like "omg stfu and tell me something useful". Okeeey =( here you go:

This is one of the most powerful tools. Its one of those bread and butter tools you absolutly have to know about. Whenenver you need to select or cut out a part of a picture the first thought should be "can i do this with the Pen Tool?". Also this is the go to tool if you want to create any kind of shape. Because Adobe sometimes is a bit of a Troll, we have to adjust the settings for the tool first. By the way, always check out the tool settings and play around with it. Worth it! The Pen Tool one should look like this:

[image loading]

Now how does it work? Just try it out. It´s not rocket science :D Take 10 minutes and just try to outline something. Like always try keys like Alt or Strg/Cntrl out in combination with clicking on the little squares and on the lines. This tool will first feel awkward and need some time until you get used to it. But its the most accurate tool when you have to select, cut, make curves etc. We even have something like a "Layerwindow" only for our the paths we make. Imagine you do a retouche of a car, first thing you do is path the shit out of the car. It takes a huge amount of time, is boring as hell and needs to be as accurate as possible. Don´t be sloppy with the path tool! It will bite you in the ass later! (Also name your paths and dont be lazy like i was.)


[image loading]
(Note: this is a 25% view. When using the Pen Tool, zoom in a bit so you can work accurate)

After setting up all the paths we can now select every part of the car we like and influence them. To make a selection out of a path press Ctrl + click on the path in the pathwindow. You can also do this with layers. Now we have a selection. Sweet, right? From here we have lots of options. While having or selection active, we can make an adjustment layer (curves for example, as seen in Part-1 last picture). It will directly make a mask out of your selection, meaning you now can change to colours for the part you made the path for. I hope i explained this ok, if not tell me.

Alright thats just an example for the Pen Tool. Don´t be lazy and use it, even if it takes alot of time to use it´s worth it!

I guess thats it for Part2. Tell me if this helped you at all or if i may miss obvious things. It´s the first time for me really sharing this kind of stuff so yeah.. I also like the idea of always talking about something not too much related to Photoshop itself and then talk about a tool or a function. I guess this benefits a more wide range of people.

Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading,
leech



****
Bockit
Profile Blog Joined November 2004
Sydney2287 Posts
June 19 2011 06:53 GMT
#2
Very cool that you're writing up this series

I didn't see this mentioned and I'd be curious what you think about it (it seems you use ps professionally, I do too, but not my primary tool). Just elaborating on the pen tool intro, I'd add that it's the best (as in quality) way to cut something out of a picture. Sometimes time > quality and you have to use other measures but if the time is manageable I always use the pen tool to cut things out of a picture.
Their are four errors in this sentance.
DoX.)
Profile Joined December 2008
Singapore6164 Posts
June 19 2011 07:03 GMT
#3
Very nice :D Thanks very much for this series
Sovetsky Soyuz
Profile Joined May 2011
Russian Federation905 Posts
June 19 2011 07:05 GMT
#4
Is it finished? Mooooarrr!!!
leecH
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Germany385 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-19 07:09:37
June 19 2011 07:06 GMT
#5
On June 19 2011 15:53 Bockit wrote:
Very cool that you're writing up this series

I didn't see this mentioned and I'd be curious what you think about it (it seems you use ps professionally, I do too, but not my primary tool). Just elaborating on the pen tool intro, I'd add that it's the best (as in quality) way to cut something out of a picture. Sometimes time > quality and you have to use other measures but if the time is manageable I always use the pen tool to cut things out of a picture.


I added it. You are absolutly right it is the best tool to cut something out. Not just quality wise but also because Adobe InDesign can "read" these paths. I bet you know this but i thought i might mention it now and keep the first post as simple as possible :D

I feel you on the time/money > quality.. some clients.........


On June 19 2011 16:05 Sovetsky Soyuz wrote:
Is it finished? Mooooarrr!!!


gotta watch dreamhack soon and need to get into masters league T_T but moaar comming soon. promised.
HaruHaru
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United States988 Posts
June 19 2011 07:37 GMT
#6
there needs to be a function to subscribe to blogs on tl...
Long live BroodWar!
Plexa
Profile Blog Joined October 2005
Aotearoa39261 Posts
June 19 2011 08:00 GMT
#7
On June 19 2011 16:37 HaruHaru wrote:
there needs to be a function to subscribe to blogs on tl...

http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/photoshop
http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/photoshop/rss
Administrator~ Spirit will set you free ~
BroOd
Profile Blog Joined April 2003
Austin10831 Posts
June 19 2011 08:16 GMT
#8
Great series so far, will be looking forward to more! I almost never use the pen tool out of ignorance, but I'll play around with it a bit.
ModeratorSIRL and JLIG.
adso
Profile Joined March 2011
718 Posts
June 19 2011 09:18 GMT
#9
photoshop rules all (and has for more than 20 years)
esasafe
Profile Joined November 2010
United States103 Posts
June 19 2011 09:46 GMT
#10
Thank you very much for this amazing series of blogs - I've been fumbling my way through photoshop to touch up my photos, but I haven't explored the myriad options available. Thanks for the highlighting on different tools!
RHCPgergo
Profile Blog Joined June 2005
Hungary345 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-06-19 11:12:07
June 19 2011 10:27 GMT
#11
I haven't used or tried photoshop before, but I've put it on my things-to-do list long ago. Thanks a lot for inspiring me, I will be following this blog. Cheers!

edit: I really like how you add some "real life examples" and you don't just explain the tools. 5 stars all the way, thank you!
DrThorMD
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Canada359 Posts
June 19 2011 10:29 GMT
#12
Nice. I just got photoshop and was looking for a place to help me start off. This is perfect.
Damn your Chronoboosts!
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Monday Night Weeklies
16:00
#26
RotterdaM1143
TKL 396
ZombieGrub309
IndyStarCraft 251
BRAT_OK 144
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
RotterdaM 1143
TKL 396
ZombieGrub309
IndyStarCraft 251
BRAT_OK 144
ProTech31
MindelVK 30
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 27459
Calm 4178
Rain 1965
GuemChi 1382
Shuttle 641
Larva 382
firebathero 356
EffOrt 336
actioN 193
Dewaltoss 164
[ Show more ]
PianO 152
Hyun 136
Rush 87
Mong 60
Backho 47
Yoon 35
Rock 33
scan(afreeca) 28
Aegong 25
yabsab 21
Movie 17
soO 12
Shine 11
HiyA 8
Hm[arnc] 7
Dota 2
qojqva3903
BananaSlamJamma240
Fuzer 208
Counter-Strike
fl0m1243
pashabiceps112
FunKaTv 24
Other Games
FrodaN1922
Grubby1478
ceh9391
Skadoodle266
KnowMe182
Liquid`VortiX173
C9.Mang0146
Trikslyr47
OptimusSC21
Organizations
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 17 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• poizon28 20
• kabyraGe 10
• Reevou 2
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• sooper7s
• intothetv
• Kozan
• LaughNgamezSOOP
StarCraft: Brood War
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
Dota 2
• C_a_k_e 3707
League of Legends
• Nemesis7057
Other Games
• imaqtpie775
• Shiphtur415
Upcoming Events
Replay Cast
5h 59m
Afreeca Starleague
15h 59m
Soma vs Bisu
OSC
19h 59m
OSC
23h 59m
MaxPax vs Gerald
Solar vs Krystianer
PAPI vs Lemon
Ryung vs Moja
Nice vs NightPhoenix
Cham vs TBD
MaNa vs TriGGeR
PiGosaur Monday
1d 5h
The PondCast
2 days
OSC
2 days
Wardi Open
3 days
CranKy Ducklings
4 days
Safe House 2
4 days
[ Show More ]
Sparkling Tuna Cup
5 days
Safe House 2
5 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Acropolis #4 - TS2
WardiTV TLMC #15
HCC Europe

Ongoing

BSL 21 Points
ASL Season 20
CSL 2025 AUTUMN (S18)
C-Race Season 1
IPSL Winter 2025-26
EC S1
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025

Upcoming

SC4ALL: Brood War
BSL Season 21
BSL 21 Team A
RSL Offline Finals
RSL Revival: Season 3
Stellar Fest
SC4ALL: StarCraft II
eXTREMESLAND 2025
ESL Impact League Season 8
SL Budapest Major 2025
BLAST Rivals Fall 2025
IEM Chengdu 2025
PGL Masters Bucharest 2025
Thunderpick World Champ.
CS Asia Championships 2025
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.