Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the fastest, cleanest and most useful program of its kind.  It equips photographers with all the tools necessary to manipulate images to create an impeccable and realistic final product.  This latest version of Photoshop is an application included in Adobe’s Creative Suite that creates a larger variety of options for photographers with a whole new bag of tricks.  The new tools have amazed photographers and put them a step ahead of the rest with an ability to precisely bend pixels and create impressive images.

The most impressive feature of this program is what is known as the “content aware fill brush” which gives the designer the ability to remove any large image from a photo as though it was never there.  This can alter a background including the ability to take out extra people within a photo, vehicles, power lines, or any other unwanted objects with a simple and easy click of a button.

Photoshop CS5 is perfect for the serious photographer, designer and publisher and came out this past May.  Prices range from $1300 to $2600 depending on the package, with upgrades of existing packages ranging from $500 to $1500.  Photoshop CS5 by itself costs $700 or $200 for an upgrade. 

This past year was the 20th anniversary of Photoshop.  This latest version has stirred about a certain “wow” factor that cannot be compared to any other program.  The level of technological advancement is astonishing, one that could never be predicted when the company first came about.  The release of the Adobe CS5 has been immensely popular amongst all artists who use a photo editing program and is quickly becoming one of the most popular and desirable programs to own.

M.A.H.

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For hobby photographers, choosing the right version of a Photoshop suite can be a daunting task, so in order to make the decision a little easier to make we will discuss the two available suites in this article.

As stated, users can choose from two separate suites, which are Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements.
Contrary to popular belief, Elements is not a trimmed down version of the real thing, it is a standalone photo editing suite built separately from Photoshop CS and is intended as an alternative, not as a light version.

This being said, selecting the right software for photo editing will depend mostly on for what purpose you are editing the photos.

Photoshop Elements: The benefits

The current version of Elements is version 8 and is a more basic editor than Photoshop CS. This often makes the available tools easier to use but also limits the tasks to basic operations. All the obvious functions are there, like removal of red eye effects from pictures, applying tints etc., so if basic photo editing is the goal,
Elements should be all you require and more.

On the other hand, Elements contains other features that could make for a decisive factor in deciding which suite to choose over other editors, like integration with Adobes online Photoshop apps, that will allow users to edit images remotely and Elements comes with a generous 2GB of storage for your images. Elements also comes with an excellent organizer for your images, which certainly will be a feature many hobby photographers will like.

Photoshop CS: The Benefits

Photoshop CS may be a more advanced editing suite and therefore have a longer learning curve, but a user that persists will learn the skills and with it gain the ability to do complex editing on the images to a point where all other photo editors will fall short. On the other hand CS is the most expensive suite compared to Elements, so whether or not it is worth it will depend on what you will be using it for.

By learning how to properly use Photoshop CS a user will acquire skills that can benefit them in a career in this area, so for photographers looking for a way to turn pro, CS may be the only way to go, as it adds skills to your repertoire.

Learning those skills can be a quick process or as long as you want it to be, as there will be courses, tutorials and how to articles everywhere you turn. A simple search on Google, YouTube or your average article directory will spawn hundreds of pages filled with learning material about how to use the features of Photoshop. Users can decide to master the basics or become an expert in that chosen field. The possibilities are almost as endless as the functions in the software itself.

Overall, the reason for editing and the price of the suite will ultimately be the decisive factor on deciding which suite is the best option for you, hopefully the above will have contributed into making the decision a little easier.

M.A.H.

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Photoshop Elements is the version of the popular software that is intended for the amateur photographer, packing a powerful punch without being too sophisticated to overwhelm a beginner. It comes with an editor equipped with a guide to help a new user get the hang of it, and contains lots of automated tasks, simplifying things. It has a user-friendly user environment, which will also be suitable for most advanced users. The software comes equipped with lots of features geared towards the web2.0 experience, and basically is the photo enthusiast’s best friend.

That is to say, that is what it should have been. As a long time Photoshop user of all versions, I have had the pleasure to work with all its previous versions, so I have a lot of material to compare this new release with and I am sorry to say: Elements 8 will not stand up to the previous versions that came before it.

All the versions were absolutely fabulous until the dreaded version 7, with nothing standing out that would justify upgrading to it. The fact that a new version had so little real improvements made me fear the worst. Sadly, it appears I was right.

Version 8 also has many issues that need to be worked out better, especially the organizer feature which needs attention. Elements 8 has lots of new features that have potential, but they are implemented in a fashion that makes working with them a nightmare. The software is slow, it feels bloated, and I get the impression I spend more time waiting for things to happen, than I am actually working with the software. Needless to say I have grown a healthy dislike for the “wait” cursor.

The people recognition function was something I was especially looking forward to, but the way it is implemented proves to be entirely disappointing. Compared to similar functionalities in competing products, the version in Photoshop Elements cannot hold a candle to it, which is a shame. Some of the bugs encountered in Elements are the same as we saw in CS4, like the recompose function, which can produce unpredictable results when applied.

Does this mean that Photoshop Elements 8 is a bad product? Not at all, it is just not even close to what it could have been, if features had been implemented the right way as we have seen competitors do. Strong points in Elements 8 are the editor, which is easy to use, brings solid results and makes adjusting images a snap, and lots of other features like merging images work flawlessly, provided you have good images to work with.

The organizer (once you get it loaded fully) is designed well, and comes equipped with lots of handy features, so overall Photoshop Elements 8 is a decent product.

On the other hand, knowing the high standard the software used to have in the previous versions, I dare state that this version cannot even be called a shadow of its former self, which to me is a major disappointment, knowing what Elements was, what it is now and what it could have been.
M.A.H.

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Images always do well on a webpage, as they largely determine the look and feel of a page. However, using only normal imagery and photos, can make the page look just a little too static, and often the addition of a small animated object is exactly the thing it needs to make the page complete.
Today we are going to show you how to create animated images, using Photoshop, in just a few simple steps:

• Start up the program and select new file, and select the desired size in pixels. The proper resolution would be 72 and the correct color mode would be RGB. Animated images can be any size, but remember that the larger they are the slower they will load on a webpage, so it is advisable to keep the dimensions as small as possible. In other words, don’t use 200 x 200 pixels when 100 x 100 will suffice.
• Make sure that Layers are selected in the windows menu at the top of the screen. When selected a layer menu will appear on your screen.
• On the menu at the left of your screen select the draw tool, and create a picture.
• Now go to the layer menu, and click on the tiny arrow icon on the top right to bring up the layer menu and choose “Duplicate Layer”.
• Now select the bottom layer at the layer menu by clicking the eye icon. Now you can use the pencil tool to add more to the image, or remove parts of it by using the eraser.
• Click on file on the menu at the top, and select Adobe Image ready. When asked click ok to store the file on your hard drive.
• Image ready will now start up, and once running, select “Show Animation” from the “Window” menu at the top. Once selected the Animations menu will appear.
• At the top of the floating animations menu Click on the small arrow icon to bring up the menu, and from there select “Make Frames from Layers”.
• You are done. Click on the save icon, or choose the option from the file menu, and when presented with option, choose “Save Optimized” and enter the desired name of your new animated gif.

The above is a very simply example on how to create animated gifs in Photoshop. And is merely intended to display which steps to take, in order to create animated images which you can use on any web page. When creating them you are not limited to the pencil and eraser tools to create your images. By using the various other features in the program, you can add images, photos and alter them with the tools available. As you gain more experience in making the animations, you will be able to make detailed and awesome animated graphics, which will be eye-catching.

It should be noted that by adding existing images to any type of animated gif, you may be in violation of the copyright laws. Therefore, either only use images or photos that you actually own, or have permission to use, for this kind of purpose.

Happy designing! M.A.H.

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Recently the releases of CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended were announced by Adobe. These new installments of the most popular industry software in the world, comes simultaneously with the celebration of its 20th anniversary.

The popular software continues to build on a past filled with innovative features that has often lifted the standards of the graphical industry. The concept of adding more features than the average user requires has paid off in these upcoming releases of the software. Thanks to the innovations of the previous versions, the suite has greater AI when it comes to the contents of images, which enables the user to perform complex tasks as easy as clicking a few times with the mouse.

Adobe, with this new installment, has delivered all that was promised and more. Besides awesome features for editing images, it is packed with a whole range of 3D tools, which make these versions invaluable for many industries, including the medical and engineering industries.

Both of the software products will be treated as separate packages, as well as being part of the popular Adobe Creative Suite.

The last 20 years showed an impressive cooperation between users and the adobe team of developers resulting in a product that comes close to “temporary perfection”, as technology is ever evolving so is the software, of which the new versions are proof.

How popular Adobe’s software is can be measured by the fact that the release of its video on the new Content Aware Fill feature received millions of views in almost no time at all, and ranks amongst the most popular videos online to date. Also the fact that the feature has been among the top discussions on Twitter is proof of the immense popularity of the software.

It is clear that the new version will be the most advanced and innovative version of the software to date, and many users can’t wait to get their hands on it.

With 20 decades of history Adobe has laid out a solid foundation to expand on, and it does so with the new packages, giving more control than ever for image manipulation, 3D manipulation and many other enhancements to its users. Over the last 20 years the software has become a must have for both amateurs and professionals.

The new software packages are due for release within a month and will be available through the Adobe website, and stores. The CS5 package will sell for around $699 and the Photoshop CS5 suite will be sold for about $999.

M.A.H.

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Today’s cameras, like many zoom lenses, make the edges of the picture disappear so the edges become invisible. Any photographer, who has ever printed the pictures himself using a darkroom, knows that when printing the photos there is a choice to print the image without cropping, creating those dark rough looking edges. Today we are going to teach you how this is created using Photoshop, in just ten easy to follow steps.

1. select and load the picture of your choice and select the entire canvas by pressing “A+Control”. After this is done you can start cutting out the image by pressing “X+Control”.
2. Create a new file. Photoshop uses the size of the image in the clipboard as the new file’s size. Ensure you have selected white as your background, then press the enter button so the new file is created.
3. Hold down V+Control in order to place the copied image in the newly created file. After this is successfully done use the marquee tool to draw a box around the copied image, but make sure never to touch the edges of the window.
4. click on “select”, in order to get to the “modify” menu, and from there select “Feather”. Use this tool to make the corners just a little rounder.
5. Again click “select”. This time to get to “refine edge” in order to edit the corners, cleaning them up. While doing this make sure contrast is set to 100 percent.
6. Make sure your image is the layer which is selected and click on “layer” and in the menu select “layer mask”, and in the sub menu select “reveal selection”.
7. Press Control and hold it down, while left clicking on the new layer mask, in order to once again get the right selection, and from there click “select”, in order to get again to the modify sub menu, where you select expand. As a value you put in “2″ and click the ok button.
8. Make a new layer, and place it under the layer for the image. At this point your Marquee tool should still be selected, and if it is click inside the selection, using the right mouse button, where you can select fill in the menu that appears. Use this tool to fill the selection and after this hold down “D+Control”, in order to deselect it.
9. Make a copy of your new layer. With one of these layers selected, click on “Filter” and select “Blur”, in the submenu select “Radial Blur”. Select all new layers by pressing and holding down Control and left click with the mouse on the layer palette, then hold down “E+Control” in order to merge the layers.
10. Last click on “edit” and select “transform”, and in that submenu select “warp”, in order to generate a wavy effect, in order to make it seem less flattened. Be subtle about it though, or you will get straight dark lines.

M.A.H.

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Getting started using Photoshop can take quite some time to master. Below are 10 tips to speed up the time it takes to work with the basic functions of Photoshop:

1. Moving Layers
   Activating the move tool is not required to move layers in an image. Press CTRL (Windows) or Command (Mac), then click the layer and drag it to the desired position using your mouse.
2. Hiding Palettes using TAB
   Palettes that are in the way can be hidden easily by hitting the “TAB” key on your keyboard. Simply hit “TAB” again to make them reappear.
3. How to select all pixels on a layer
   If you were for example to select all red pixels on a layer, simply hold the CTRL key (Windows), or Command key (MAC), then click on the layer in the palette.
4. Double click to open a file
   In order to open a file there is no need to use the file menu, simply double click anywhere in the grey background area of Photoshop and you can select the file you want.
5. Drag a layer from file to file
   To copy a layer you can simply click it and drag it to the desired file. Obviously both files must be open in Photoshop.
6. Photoshop 6+ Layer folder feature
   Users of Photoshop 6 or higher, for files with a large amount of layers be sure to organize them using the folder feature. On the layers palette click on the icon at the bottom to create a folder for it.
7. Full screen Modes with and without menus
   Very useful when working with large images. In order to make maximum use of the screen simply press “F” to switch between full screen with the menu and full screen without the menu and editing bar.
8. More positioning control
   When using the arrow keys to move the layers around you get increased control over the layers placement. Hold down the CTRL key (Windows) or Command key (Mac), and then use the arrow keys to position the layer. This makes it possible to move it pixel by pixel. Hold down shift along with the CTRL or Command key to move 10 pixels per move.
9. Fast color selection
   Press the “I” key to get to the Eyedropper function and click the color inside your image that you want. This will immediately change the foreground color to the color of your choice. Performing this while holding down the “ALT” key will do the same for the background.
10. Drawing a straight line
    You can restrict mouse movement while using the Paintbrush and Line and Move Tools by holding down the “SHIFT” key while using the mouse to drag the line.

M.A.H.

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Why is it necessary to sharpen images?  Noise on images is a daily issue for any photographer. If more sensitive film is used, or not enough light, the amount of noise will increase resulting in grainy images. In order to combat these side effects, tools to reduce noise or grain are applied. Depending on the quality of the original image it is decided to simply down sample it, or to apply more aggressive tools for noise reduction.

While optimizing the image, you can’t expect miracles. The term is noise reduction, not noise removal. There will always be a percentage of noise on the image, which often is desired to make the image look more natural. The second thing to keep in mind is that any reduction of noise on an image will cause loss of details. The challenge is to find the proper balance, to achieve the highest level of detail with the lowest amount of noise, in order to get the best results possible.

Noise removal tools can easily be used too much, leading to unreal looking images with soft and blurry parts that look like a special filter was applied to produce the effect. Once applied the image is much harder to sharpen as this leads to an increase in noise, more than there was in the original, due to the noise reduction actions applied to the image. As a rule, always first do the sharpening of the image before applying noise or grain reduction tools, and only sharpen an image if you really have to.
Most of the time, the easiest way for noise removal delivering best results is simply to avoid sharpening the image.

In extreme cases there are add-ons available for Photoshop provided by other companies that work better than Photoshop’s built in tools. Tools like Grain Surgery from Infinity offer professional noise reduction tools providing more control of the noise reduction process. This is only one of the third party suppliers of noise reduction tools for Photoshop, there are many others all doing an equally good job reducing noise or grain levels on the image. Which one to use is a matter of personal opinion, try a few and stick with the one you like working with best.

While working, you will find that the only time these add-ons are required is with severe under exposure, or in some cases extremely high ISO film is being used. In most other cases the built in tools of Photoshop will do the job nicely.

M.A.H.

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Many color modes exist within Photoshop that are ready to work with. Without question the most well known of them is the RGB mode. RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue, which are called primary colors. When combined, these three colors can create a palette of a whopping 16.8 million colors. RGB is also the color standard for publishing images on the Internet because RGB is most suited for displaying images on a monitor screen. The three colors have a value of 255, so adjusting these values with figures between 1 and 255, makes up for 16.8 million colors. When all three colors are set to 255 a shade of gray is displayed.

Adobe Photoshop also comes pre equipped with other color modes, one of them is the CYMK mode. This mode is typically used for creating imagery destined to be printed on paper. CYMK is based on the quality of the paper used, the quality to absorb light that is.

Using CMYK in Photoshop works similar to using the RGB mode. By altering the values the colors are combined. Unlike RGB that uses three colors, CYMK uses four colors to mix. These colors are cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Deciding what color mode to use is required before the actual image is created in Photoshop as converting existing images usually leads to unacceptable loss of quality. In order to play it safe, when in doubt select RGB modus this looks good on the screen of the computer but also on paper. RGB also supports the most file formats including .jpg and .gif variants, which to date are the most popular and most used formats.

Another mode that is frequently used in Photoshop is for the creation of colorless images using the grayscale mode. To select the desired shade of grey all a user needs to do is enter the appropriate value between 1 and 256, where zero stands for pitch black.

There are several other color modes available in Photoshop besides the ones mentioned. Modes like duotone and tritone color mode, these are only used on rare occasions. For normal use of Photoshop Grayscale, RGB and CMYK are all the color modes a user needs to create almost any type of image.

M.A.H.

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Photoshop is a subject undertaken by a number of professionals in the fields of designing, engineering, photography, fashion and graphics. The courses are available to not only make you more competent, but also to give you that extra edge. These are available in various regions of the planet, the technology having been adopted in various continents. The user friendly systems of the various versions of the software have made it popular amongst the users. The courses enable students from various fields to handle the software with ease. Even the most complicated of designs can be demonstrated easily.

The courses are available on a variety of websites. Most have free tutorials which can get you started to work on the basics of Photoshop. This can get you to a certain stage from where you can take off as a professional. The important aspects to look into while choosing a Photoshop tutorial would be if it offers a certificate or recognition for you as a potential professional, information regarding its reputation, curriculum offered and fees.

Graphicssoft, Hwg.org, Askedu are some online resources that are worthwhile for obtaining lessons on Abode Photoshop. The courses are very reputable and help students attain a level of competency so that they are able to earn a decent income. The resources also provide the option of customizing your courses according to your convenience and aspiration. The various resources for online education in Photoshop include reviews and program guides for students looking to hone their graphics skills.

The various versions of Photoshop is another important point. The resources offer different courses in different versions of Photoshop. It is imperative that you choose an appropriate version that would suit you before you head for the course.

M.A.H.

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