Photoshop Work.

• Finding the Mid-tone. 
• Printing process.
• Experimenting with graphics.
• Embossing text.
• Panoramic.

Finding the Mid-Tone

How to Color Correct RGB Images Easily in Photoshop

I’m back again to bring you the next trick in my arsenal ofPhotoshop goodies. The subject today is color correction. Specifically RGB color correction, for web and screen (monitor, tv, little camera screen, iPhone) use.

There are 2 major, accepted color scales out there for consumption by human eyes – additive color and subtractive color. Subtractive color is accomplished via some sort of dyeing, screening or printing method. This is achieved by mixing either custom ink colors, or adopting a color scale , which in the subtractive realm of color, is called CMYK.

This refers to the 4 base colors used to physically, in paint or dye form, mix together to allow the formation of any color in the Cyan Magenta Yellow Black scale. This is what’s knows as CMYK – but i’m not sure why K stands for black though.

Additive color is the realm of discussion in this article. Additive color refers to the scale of color produced by adding different colors of light (rather than ink) to produce an image or color shade. In additive color, when you add the 3 primary colors together, Red Green and Blue (RGB), you get pure white, as illustrated in the additive color wheel above. Whereas if you mix together Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black inks, you get a dull brown.

Since RGB is the primary color scale for all monitors, phones, screens, laptops, anything that produces light; we will be discussing this today, as a way to empower you to be able to have brilliant images on your websites, and to get the most out of the pictures you snap in with your camera in any condition. We begin with a picture of a clearing on the ocean.

The following picture looks dull, discolored and too red. But you’d be surprised how much color information is contained in the picture, that simply needs to be brought out.

Open the image in Photoshop and you can follow along as you read the article. The tool we will be using can be found in the Image menu under Adjustments, and it’s called Levels. Otherwise it can be Hotkeyed at Ctrl-L.

The levels panel is one of the most used panels in Photoshop. You will also find Auto Levels. It is not recommended to use Auto Levels because it simply cannot replace the eye, and most importantly the taste of the viewer.

Once you have the levels panel open, there is a simple way to tell if all of the available color information is being used. The following is the levels output from the original image of the clearing on the water, showing a red discrepancy where all of the available color frequencies aren’t being utilized to their potential:

In order to correct this, and the inherent lack of color and brightness in the image, we need to give each respective primary color its own attention.

Using the Channel picker at the top we first choose the Red channel.  Next, pull the right, white slider over to the left where the dots begin to appear on the graph, indicating the channels are being used. Next pull the left, black slider over to the right to the point where the channel begins to show usage. Do this for red, green, and blue respectively.

As you make these changes, make sure the Preview checkbox is ticked so you can see your changes in action. Here’s what the process looks like, after gradually fixing red, green and blue:

Notice that even when we only fix the red channel, the picture already gets slightly brighter and richer. By bringing these sliders in, we are essentially telling Photoshop to spread the available color information over a wider range of color frequencies, and thus fill out the full spectrum more richly. Next we move on to the green channel.

At this juncture shown above, the picture starts to become richer and more saturated with color.

After finally adjusting the blue channel below, we can see the picture is at a very rich stage. Details that weren’t previously visible shine out now. What used to be shadows in the bushes are now more bushes, more leaves, more detail. And you would have never known the image contains all this information if you didn’t open the Levels panel.

Using these steps, you can take any RGB image and really pull the most out of the information that’s there.

Not all the detail in a picture is immediately visible to the naked eye. But with the Photoshop Levels tool you can maximize on detail and quality for each image.

Finding the Mid-tone. Colour and black and white.

 Step 1: Add A New Layer

• First thing you need to so is create a new blank layer.
• So click the New Layer icon, at the bottom of the Layer panel
• The New Layer will be above the Background Layer

• Click on the New Layer icon.
• You can now see the New Layer is called "Layer 1"

Step 2: Fill The New Layer With 50% Grey

• Now I fill the New Layer with 50% grey. 
• To do that go to Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill.

• This opens Photoshop's Fill dialog box. Select 50% Gray from the drop-down list at the top of the dialog box:

• Photoshop fills the new layer with gray, temporarily hiding the photo below it from view in the document window:

Step 3: Change The New Layer's Blend Mode To 'Difference'

• Go up to the Blend Mode option in the top left of the Layers panel and change the blend mode for Layer 1 from Normal toDifference:

• Change the blend mode for Layer 1 to Difference.
• The Difference blend mode isn't one that's used too often since it tends to make images look, well, different (some may even say frightening), as we see with my image after changing the blend mode to Difference:

• The Difference blend mode certainly makes photos look different.
• The way the Difference blend mode works is that it compares the layer with the layer(s) below it and looks for differences between them (hence the name). 
• Any areas in the layer which are different from the layer(s) below it show up as strange colors in the image, which is where the purples, blues and yellows are coming from, but any areas which are identical between the layers show up as black, or at least almost black if they're not 100% identical but still pretty darn close to it. 
• In other words, with the Difference blend mode, any areas between the layers which are identical become the darkest parts of the image, and we can now use that to locate any areas that are supposed to be neutral tray!
• How? Simple! We're now comparing our image on the Background layer with the layer above it that's filled with 50% neutral gray, which means that any areas in our image which are closest to that midtone gray color will now appear as the darkest parts of our image. So now, finding a midtone gray area is as easy as finding the darkest part of the image!

Step 4: Add A Theshold Adjustment Layer

Click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

• Choose Threshold from down near the bottom of the list of adjustment layers:

• Click on the little white triangle at the bottom and drag it all the way to the left:

• Drag the white slider all the way to the left.
• This will turn the image in the document window completely white:

• Now slowly drag the triangle towards the right until you begin to see black areas appearing in your image. 
• The first black areas that appear are the neutral gray areas you're looking for.
• Continue dragging the triangle until an area of black becomes just big enough that you'll be able to click on it to select it, which we'll be doing in a moment. 
• This is the exact same way you would normally find the darkest parts of the image when you're removing any color casts from the shadow areas, but now, thanks to the Difference blend mode, these darkest areas represent the areas closest to midtone tray. 
• Click OK when you're done to exit out of the Threshold dialog box (Photoshop CS5 users can simply leave the Adjustments Panel open):

• Drag the white slider towards the right until a small area of black appears.

Printing Process

• Before you print on Photoshop, I usually set Photoshop to> Photography and go though my image and cheak that everything is in order:
• I check that the resolution is on 300.
• I then go to> Print, and then> Page set up.
• I check that my Paper size is correct and on, For example A4 Sheet.
• I also Check that it is the right printer on> Format For. Then Click ok.
• After that I go to> Colour Handling, and make SURE that it is on>Photoshop Manages Colour.
• I then go to> Printer Profile, and select the Printer and Paper type.
• Then after all of that i am ready to Print!

SCREEN SHOTS GO HERE 

Lightoroom

Panoramic

You will need:

1. Digital camera (I used a Nikon D3000)
2. Tripod or a stable platform
3. Photoshop and the photomerge utility 

The shoot:

When starting i found its good to start from the extreme left of what you want to capture, and take bracketed exposure shots. I then stopped to see if the exposure is right in all of them, without moving the camera.  If not all the same, I retook them. 

This was my first attempt, but as you can see i did it wrong. I forgot to take the camera off of auto! The  shots are extremely bleached out! Also I shot in landscape.

When I shot again i used manual, and they came out just right. I did notice that some of the lines in one of the images didn't match up so on Photoshop I will have to see if it is able to work properly.

Making the Panorama:
Now Im going to Stitch my images together.

1. Open each image into photoshop 
2. Open them sequentially, starting from the farthest left
3. Go to file> Automate> Photomerge
4. Click on 'Add open files' 
5. Check the file numbers are all in order and select all
6. Then click ok

Once photomerge is complete, I was able to see how photoshop managed to merge them. One of my images did not g in. This is because, the image didn't match up.

In the end I settled for the three. I cropped it and this is my final, but small panorama.

Will Pearson

Will Pearsons work is beautiful. his pananroma shots are amazing in detail and scale. 

Caddymob

Jaspal Jandu

Natural Wonders: A Panoramic Vision takes viewers on a spectacular journey through more than twenty of the earth’s most treasured locations. From the magnificence of Alaska to the haunting majesty of the Aurora and the Himalayas, this is a view of our world at its finest and most sublime. As this collection reveals, in the face of man’s relentless expansion, nature’s last remaining wonders represent a legacy of unsurpassed value.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/

Photoshop .PSD

Of all the file formats that Photoshop supports, the PSD format is probably the most important. PSD stands for "Photoshop Document", and as the name implies, it's Photoshop's native file format. PSD is one of the few file types that fully support all of the powerful features that Photoshop gives us, like layers, layer masks, adjustment layers, channels, paths, and so on. It also serves as your working file. When we open an image in Photoshop, regardless of which file type the image was originally using, Photoshop temporarily converts it into a PSD file behind the scenes so we can work on it with all of Photoshop's tools, commands and features at our disposal.

PSD files are your best choice to serve as your master files and for archiving to CD, DVD or an external hard drive for safe keeping. If you've done any sort of editing work on an image and there's even the slightest chance you'll need to come back to it again at some point in the future, save your work as a Photoshop PSD file. There's no loss in image quality no matter how many times you re-open and re-save a PSD, and all of your layers, layer masks, adjustment layers and so on will be saved as part of the file, allowing you to go back at any time and make changes to the image or continue working from where you left off.

You can easily print your images at home with Photoshop directly from the PSD file, and many commercial printers are now able to accept PSDs as well, although some may still require an EPS or TIFF version of the file instead, so it's always best to check with your printer to make sure you're giving them the format they need. One of the newer advantages with PSD files is that they can now be imported directly into Adobe InDesign, giving you complete access to the individual layers in the file as you're designing your page layouts. You can even re-open a PSD file in Photoshop directly from InDesign, make changes to the file, save it, and have the changes immediately update in your layout!

The only real disadvantage to PSD files is that the file size can get very large, especially if you're working on an image with hundreds or even thousands of layers. But with computer hard drives and memory being so cheap these days, it's a small price to pay for the creative freedom that Photoshop and its native PSD file format give us. Bottom line, your PSD file is the most important file you can have, so be sure to save yourself a master copy of your work as a PSD file so you can always return to it in Photoshop when you need it!

JPEG

The JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) format has been around for nearly 20 years now and has become the most popular and widely used file format for viewing and sharing digital photos. It supports 24-bit color, which means it can reproduce roughly 16.7 million colors, and even the cheapest digital cameras can capture images as JPEG files. Most high end digital SLR cameras give you the option of capturing images in either the JPEG or RAW format.

It's important, though, not to confuse "popular" and "widely used" with "professional quality". JPEG is what's called alossy file format because it compresses the images, which essentially means it takes some of your image information and tosses it out the virtual window, never to be seen again. It does this to reduce file size, but the more compression you use, the worse your images look. You control the amount of compression being applied to the file using the Quality setting that appears in Photoshop when you go to save it. A high enough Quality setting can still produce great looking images but your file size will be larger. Lower Quality settings can produce very small file sizes, but set too low and you'll introduce ugly and obvious compression artifacts.

The biggest strength of JPEG files is convenience. They're usually small enough that they can easily be uploaded and displayed on web pages, or on photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr, and emailed to family and friends. Online printing services usually require your photos to be uploaded as JPEG files. The downside to JPEGs is that the reduced quality caused by image compression means they're not a good choice for printing when image quality is your primary concern, and they're also not a good choice for archiving your originals.

If you're capturing JPEG files in your camera, make sure you're capturing the largest, highest quality images possible. Check your camera's instruction manual to find out where the image quality option is in your camera's menu system. The highest quality setting is usually labelled "Large".

One thing you want to avoid doing whenever possible is re-saving JPEG files repeatedly. Each time to open and re-save it, you'll add even more compression to the image, and it doesn't take long for things to get ugly. Once the image detail is gone, you can never get it back (unless of course you read the first part of this article and saved a master copy of the original as a Photoshop PSD file).

GIF

The GIF file format, which stands for Graphics Interchange Format, has been around even longer than JPEG, and it's the format of choice for web graphics. Notice I said web graphics, not web photos. GIF files can only display up to 256 colors, far less than the thousands of colors needed to convincingly reproduce a photographic image (and far less still than the millions of colors supported by the JPEG format).

When it comes to web design, though, the GIF format is indispensable. The files are well suited for web page layouts, banners and buttons, especially if they contain large areas of solid color. All major web browsers support GIF files and their small file sizes load quickly on the screen. GIF also allows web designers to create simple animations. One major advantage GIF has over the JPEG format, and another reason why it's so important for web designers, is that it supportstransparency, although it supports only one level of transparency, meaning a pixel is either transparent or it's not. This can result in harsh edges around graphics if the edge color differs from the color of the background it's placed over. For higher quality transparency effects, a better choice is the PNG format.

PNG

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) was originally meant to replace the GIF format (PNG also stands for "PNG not GIF"). That never happened and GIF files are still in wide use today, yet the PNG format improves upon the GIF format in nearly every way. It even improves on the JPEG format. While JPEG files support 24-bit color (16.7 million colors), PNG files support up to 48-bit color, giving us more than 1 billion possible colors! That may sound impressive, but even JPEG files support more colors than the human eye can see, so any real world differences between 24 and 48-bit color are minimal at best.

The biggest advantage over JPEG is that PNG is a lossless file format, meaning that even though it still compresses images to reduce file size, the compression method it uses does not result in a loss of image quality. You can even re-save the same PNG file multiple times without degrading its quality, whereas JPEG files look worse each time you re-save them. With over a billion possible colors and lossless compression, PNG is a great choice for saving digital photos as high quality originals. The downside, though, is that PNG is not as widely supported as the JPEG format, and PNG does not support CMYK color, which means commercial printers can't use them. For everyday viewing and sharing of your digital photos, the JPEG format is still more useful and convenient, even if the image quality isn't as good.

PNG's main advantage over GIF files, besides far exceeding GIF's 256 color limit, is that it can reproduce a full 256 levels of transparency compared with GIF's single level, giving us smooth transitions around edges without having to worry about matching the edges with the background color. PNG files are also usually smaller than GIF files, so they'll load even faster in a web browser. Unfortunately, older web browsers may not support the PNG format, which means GIF is still the safest choice when browser compatibility is your main concern. Also, while GIF supports animations, PNG does not. PNG files are most often used in multimedia programs like Flash as well as Keynote and PowerPoint presentations.

TIFF

Like PSD files, TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is one of the few file types that support all of Photoshop's features and is another great choice for archiving your images, with lossless compression that allows you to save photos with the highest possible image quality. The quality comes at a price though, as TIFF files can be very large, especially when compared with JPEG files. TIFF is the universally accepted standard for images destined for commercial printing and is compatible with virtually all page layout programs like QuarkXPress and InDesign.

Even though TIFF files are capable of storing all of the layers, adjustment layers and other elements you've added in Photoshop, it's generally recommended that you save all those elements in your master PSD file, then use the TIFF format to save a flattened version of the image for print. This makes it easy to tell just from looking at the file extension which version of your image is the master working file (.psd) and which is the flattened, print-ready version (.tif). Also, many commercial printers will ask for a flattened version of your TIFF file.

With InDesign now being able to import and work directly with layered Photoshop PSD files, and both the PSD and PDF formats gaining popularity in the print community, TIFF isn't quite as important as it once was, but it remains the print industry standard and enjoys widespread support.

EPS

EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is another print industry standard format that's been around for quite a while, but its use has been in decline over the years. EPS files are not really image files in the traditional sense. Instead, they contain a series of instructions for how a printer should reproduce the image. They can be imported into most page layout programs, but the "encapsulated" part means the files are essentially locked and can no longer be modified unless they're re-opened in Photoshop. A preview image must be embedded in the EPS file when you save it in Photoshop if you want it to be viewable onscreen when working in your page layout program, otherwise you won't be able to see it until the layout is printed. While EPS remains an industry standard format, you probably won't use it very often unless it's the format specifically requested by your commercial printer.

PDF

Finally, while most people are familiar with PDF files for viewing, sharing and printing electronic documents (hence the name Portable Document Format), PDF is also gaining in popularity as a great choice for saving images destined for print. Like the PSD and TIFF formats, PDF supports and preserves all of Photoshop's features, including the ability to use spot colors, something the EPS format does not support. PDF gives you the choice of either JPEG compression, complete with a Quality setting to balance image quality with file size, or lossless ZIP compression. And the PDF format benefits from the fact that anyone with the free Adobe Reader installed on their computer can view the image.

The most important thing to remember is to save your working Photoshop file as an unflattened PSD file to use as your master copy, which will preserve all of your layers, channels and so on in Photoshop's native file format, allowing you to return to your work at any time. From there, you can save a copy of your image in one of the other six formats depending on where the image is headed (print, the web, or a multimedia program) or which format your printer has requested.