Photoshop Tip #3

Adding a vinegrette to a photograph will give you some depth of field, plus can take the attention away from an anoying background thus forcing the viewer to look at what you want them to see.

A few easy steps to do this one really.

1. Create an elipse using the marquee tool around the area you wish to leave sharp.
2. Goto the Select menu and choose feather. Add a value of around 10 but you can play around with this.
3. Goto the Select menu again choose Inverse this will now select the surrounding area.
4. Choose Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian choose a value of around 10 but again this is something that you can play with in order to create the perfect image.

Before

After

Photoshop Tip #2

Photos always look great as a mono shot, however with most D-SLR cameras there is no mono mode. So here are 3 great ways to change colour photographs to moody mono.

1. Grayscale
Simple and Easy goto the following menu. Image -> Mode -> Grayscale

2. Desaturate
This can be done in two ways
A. The shortcut = ctrl+shift+U
B. The Menu = Image -> Adustments -> Desaturate

3. The 3rd and best way if you have Photoshop CS is to use the Channel Mixer.
The Video below shows how this can be done, it gives you control on all the colours and how much each colour will change. Image -> Adustments -> Channel Mixer. Then tick the monochrome box. Then use the sliders on each of the colours.

Photoshop Tip #1

Thought that I would go for something quick an easy for the first Photoshop tip. This will allow a very quick way to boost the colour in your images and the also add a little saturation as well.

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. In the layers panel drag the background layer down to the new layer icon. This will give you a duplicate background layer.


3. Make sure that the new layer is selected and choose the following option. Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur.
4. When the window pops up give a value of somewhere between 2 and 4. You can play with this yourself for best results.


5. Back in the layers window where the drop down box currently displays "Normal" change this to say "Color".


6. Now click on the black and white circle and the bottom of the layers window. Choose a Hue/Saturation layer. Now you can slide the saturation handle to the desired position. If you have the preview tick box selected you will be able to display the changes as they happen.
   

Hope you enjoy playing with this one.

Anthony