EPT
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]](http://i.imgur.com/lWxMe.jpg)
Now open the spoiler. See what i´m trying to say?
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oYdsH.jpg)
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]](http://www.digitho.com/images/1-Day9.jpg)
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]](http://www.digitho.com/images/2-Day9.jpg)
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]](http://www.digitho.com/images/4-Day9.jpg)
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]](http://i.imgur.com/QmA1m.jpg)
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]](http://i.imgur.com/2i7xZ.jpg)
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]](http://i.imgur.com/nOj5D.jpg)
(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
