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adjustments to cutting-edge advanced controls. Create images that
inspire, inform, and delight.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom.html

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a retro 3D effect to any photograph, poster, or text using straightforward steps in Photoshop.

So here we have a Spinosaurus photographed on a railway in Poland. I have applied the black and white effect featured in this tutorial, however colour photos will work fine as well.

First duplicate your image so that you have 2 copies of your original layer.

Name one layer ‘red ‘and the other ‘blue/green’.

Now, with the ‘blue/green’ layer selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Levels.

In the Channel list choose ‘Red’.

Then drag the central grey pointer all the way to the right, and click OK.

This will have taken all the red out of the ‘blue/green’ layer.

Next select the Red layer, and again go Image>Adjustments>Levels.

This time you want to take away the blues and greens, so first choose ‘Blue’ and take the slider all the way to the right…

… then, with the box still up, choose ‘Green’ and take the slider all the way to the right, then click OK.

This leaves the layer entirely red.

Next change the blending mode of both layers to Screen.

Now you can either hide or delete your original layer.

Then select the ‘blue/green’ layer.

Use the Move tool to move this layer a little to the left, and you will see your 3D effect begin to appear.

Depending on the composition of your image you can adjust the position of the layer to suit the image.

I used the perspective transform tool to widen the left side of the image where the tail is closer to the viewer.

Remember you can apply this technique to any photo, poster or text.

Thanks for reading!

In this lesson, you’ll be introduced to Adobe Photoshop’s Toolbox, and a lot of the tools it has to offer. A solid understanding of the tools showcased in this tutorial will lead to better comprehension of Photoshop in general.

Anatomy of the Toolbox

The toolbox in Photoshop is split up into 4 unique categories so that finding the right tool is never a hassle. Those categories are:

1. Selection, Crop & Slice Tools
2. Retouch & Paint Tools
3. Drawing & Type Tools (Vector Tools)
4. Annotations & Measurement Tools

In addition to these 4 sections a few other components make up the toolbox, most notably, the Foreground and Background colors.

Now that you see how the tools are all organized, let’s take a look at some of the most vital tools Photoshop has to offer. This is really just a cursory glance of the toolbox, as we’d be crazy to go into detail for EVERY SINGLE tool Photoshop has to offer in a single lesson, but you ought to now have an understanding what some of the tools are capable of. We’ll go over how to use many of these tools in later lessons.

Selection Tools

The Marquee Tools are used for selecting objects such as rectangles, squares, and ellipses.

The Move Tool is used to move selections, objects, and layers.

There are several Lasso Tools which are used to make irregular selections. There is a polygonal lasso tool for polygon selections, and a magnetic lasso tool which automatically follows edges of objects.

The Magic Wand Tool selects an area of similar colors in a single click (such as the white in the cloud logo).

The Crop Tool allows users to redefine their active image area but not resize the ENTIRE image. It’s sort of like cutting out a smaller picture from a larger photo with a pair of scissors.

Retouch Tools

There are several healing tools in Photoshop which are used to repair imperfections in images, or handle blemishes and red-eye.

With the Clone Stamp Tool, a user may select a source starting point somewhere on an image, and then paint elsewhere using that starting point as a reference, effectively cloning the source.

The Eraser Tool can be used to erase parts of an image, selection, or layer.

The Sharpen Tool is used to sharpen edges in an image, while the Blur Tool burs edges. The Smudge Tool smudges an image, similar to using fingerpaint.

The Dodge Tool lightens parts of an image while the Burn Tool darkens. The Sponge Tool is used to saturate, or desaturate parts of an image.

Painting Tools

The Brush and Pencil tools are used to paint strokes in graphics. These tools can be highly customized for very effective painting.

The Fill Tools are used to fill entire layers, selections and areas with a solid color, or gradient.

Vector Drawing & Type Tools

The Type Tools are used for creating and setting type in an image. Both vertical and horizontal type can be created.

The Pen Tools are used to create clear shapes and paths which can be used as vector objects that can be scaled to any size.

Cutom Shapes are vector objects that can be created on the fly from a list of presets (including user created shapes).

Foreground / Background Color

A foreground color and background color can be set to be used to paint with, color text, and fill objects among other things. This view provides an easy way to see what colors are currently selected, and allows for easy switching between two different colors.

Using Tools

To actually use a tool varies from case to case (again, we’ll be covering nearly everything you’d want to know in the future lessons). To Select a Tool from the toolbox, simply click it once. If the tool displayed has a black arrow in the bottom right corner, that means that there are more tools of that type hidden underneath it. To select one of these hidden tools, hold down the mouse button while over it, and then release once you’re over the tool you’d like to select.

When it comes to image editing and processing, the one name that stands out is Adobe Photoshop even with its hefty price tag. It comes with tons of features and options which makes it one of the best image editing tools. Now Adobe has released a Photoshop app for iPad, Adobe Photoshop Touch which brings in many features of the desktop app to iPad. Photoshop Touch is a fully touch optimized version which comes with features like layers, selection tools, adjustments, filters and basic editing. You can pull images from your Facebook account, Google images or from iPad’s camera as well.

 

Another important feature of this app is the social networking integration, you can easily share your photos with your Facebook friends and view comments left by your friends on the photos right within the app. The maximum image resolution supported is 1600 x 1600 pixels.

There is also step-by-step tutorials to easily learn techniques the pros use for great-looking results. Overall, we feel the app is pretty good and comes with handy set of the features to edit images from your iPad. The app is priced at $9.99, although on the higher side like the desktop apps, does the job of editing images pretty well.

Download Photoshop Touch for iPad


 

Even though you're only shooting with the crappy camera built into your smartphone, Photoshop CS6's new Blur Gallery will easily make it look like your shots came from an expensive DSLR.

Properly faking a shallow depth of field usually involves creating and strategically masking multiple layers with various levels of blur on each of them. But in Photoshop CS6 you just specify what in your image you want kept in focus, and adjust the shape and size of the area around it that's not blurred. That's it. Just a few clicks takes you from an amateur photog to a fake Ansel Adams. [YouTube via PetaPixel]

 

Lets get started!
1. In SketchUp, save a Scene under View>Animation>Save Scene, that you want to use for the illustration that way you can get back to the same view later if need be.
2. Switch the Face Style to “Hidden Line”. Under View>Edge Style, check “Display Edges.” Make sure Shadows are off.

Step 2. Change Face Style

3. Go to File>Export>2D Graphic and save the image as a JPEG.
4. With the Face Style still set to “Hidden Line”, turn on Shadows and again export the image as a JPEG.

Step 4.Turn on Shadows and Export Image

5. Now, switch the Face Style from “Hidden Line” to “Shaded with Texture.” Again, export the image as a JPEG.

Step 5. Change Face Style to Shaded With Texture

6. With the 3 images complete, it’s time to combine them in Photoshop. Begin by opening the first image (SketchUp export with only line work, no shadows) in Photoshop. Right click on the Background layer (Click in the space next to name of the layer) and choose “Duplicate Layer”.

Step 6. Duplicate Layer

7. At the top, select “Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur”.

Step 7. Apply Gaussian Blur

8. When the dialogue box appears, choose a Radius of about 6.5. This number may need to change depending on the resolution of your image.

Step 8. Choose Radius

9. With the lines now blurred, we need to darken them. I prefer to use Levels although you can probably get away with adjusting the contrast. For Levels, go to “Image>Adjustments>Levels”. Move the left black triangular slider to the right until the line work darkens to almost black.

Step 9. Adjust Levels

Below, is what the image should look like at this stage.

Image so far

10. Next, duplicate the layer just created and move the new layer to the top. This duplicated layer will be blurred again using the Gaussian Blur filter. However, use a higher Radius such as 35 this time.

Step 10. Duplicate Layer and Apply Gaussian Blur

11. I want the original line work Layer to show through the two, now blurred Layers just created. To do this, select the two blurred Layers and set the Layer blending mode to “Multiply”.

Step 11. Set Blending Mode to Multiply

12. The next step is sort of the “secret sauce” of the tutorial.

a. Open the SketchUp exported image that showed both the line work and shadows.

b. Drag the new Layer to the top of the layer stack. Set the Layer blending mode to “Hard Light”.

Step 12a. Open Line Work and Shadows Image

Step 12b. Move to Top and Change Blending Mode

13. Add some color to the image.

a. Open the SketchUp exported image that had the face style “Shaded with Textures” turned on.

b. Drag the new Layer to the bottom, just above the “Background” Layer.

Step 13a. Open Shaded with Textures Image

Step 13b. Place Layer above Background Layer

14. I like to add color overlays to my illustrations to give them more of a mood. Create a new Layer and move it to the top Layer. Select the “Brush Tool”, and adjust its settings to have 0 Hardness as well as lower the Opacity down to 25 to 30%. Begin painting in areas where you want more color.

Step 14. Add Color

15. Set the Layer blending mode to “Overlay”.

Step 15. Blending Mode to Overlay

16. One last thing, I want the shadows to be a little more darker. To do this, select the Layer with lines and shadows that was set to “Hard Light” in Step 12 and “Duplicate” it. Now, select the new duplicated Layer and change the Layer blending mode from “Hard Light” to “Multiply”. You can adjust the Layer Opacity if the shadows are too strong.

Step 16. Duplicate and Change Blending Mode to Multiply

For the final shot below, I added some vignetting (Tutorial Here). I also overlayed another exported SketchUp image with the face style set to “X-Ray” mode for more detail in the light areas of the illustration.

Final Image

That’s it! It may seem like a lot of steps, but I think once you go through them a few times, you will realize they are relatively simple and the whole illustration can be created in a matter of minutes. I hope you found this tutorial useful and you can maybe introduce it into your own workflow, especially when you need something really quick and simple!
Thanks for reading..

Alex Hogrefe