Using Photo Techniques


In the past, one of the benefits of using a professional photographer was the photographer's (or the photo lab's) ability to manipulate lighting ”both when shooting the initial photo and when creating the prints. The Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools in Photoshop help you mimic a photographer's tricks in correcting lighting in an image. The Healing Brush and Patch tools can help you repair an image, such as a scanned image of a photo with spots, scratches, and other blemishes.

Dodging an Area

Use the Dodge tool to lighten an area that's too dark in your image. In the case of scanned content or a photo downloaded from a digital camera, dodging can actually reveal detail that previously wasn't visible in the image. Follow these steps to work with dodging:

  1. Open the image to correct and select the desired layer and zoom, if necessary. The image (and layer) will become active or current.

  2. Click on the Dodge tool in the toolbox. The Dodge tool will become the active tool.

  3. Choose options on the options bar as needed. The options for the Dodge tool are:

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    • Brush. Designates the brush style for the tool.

    • Range. Specifies whether the Dodge tool affects shadows, midtones, or highlights in the areas over which you drag.

    • Exposure. Identifies how much of a change the Dodge tool makes as you drag.

    • Airbrush. Enables the airbrush effect for the tool.

  4. Click on or drag over the area(s) to dodge. Photoshop makes the corrections immediately. After you finish dodging, you can work with another tool or operation in Photoshop.

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Burning an Area

The Burn tool has the opposite impact as the Dodge tool. Burning darkens an area in the image, as if more light were directed to that area when the "photo" was being developed. You can use burning to help balance an area that seems weak or too light in an image or to emphasize a particular area. In the case of a color image, burning can intensify the color in an area and make it stand out from its background a bit more.

  1. Open the image to correct and select the layer to burn, if necessary. The image (and layer) will become active or current.

  2. Click and hold on the Dodge tool in the toolbox. A shortcut menu will appear.

  3. Click on Burn Tool . The Burn tool will become the active tool.

  4. Choose options on the options bar as necessary. The options for the Burn tool are:

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    • Brush. Designates the brush style for the tool.

    • Range. Specifies whether the Burn tool affects shadows, midtones, or highlights in the areas over which you drag.

    • Exposure. Identifies how much of a change the Burn tool makes as you drag.

    • Airbrush. Enables the airbrush effect for the tool.

  5. Click on or drag over the area(s) to burn. Photoshop makes the corrections immediately. After you finish burning, you can work with another tool or operation in Photoshop.

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Sponging an Area

The Sponge tool (sponging) changes color saturation in a color image and contrast in a grayscale image. In either case, using the Sponge tool helps make the area you're correcting appear more bright or crisp, to help it stand out from surrounding content in the image.

  1. Open the desired image and select the layer to correct, if necessary. The image (and layer) will become active or current.

  2. Click and hold on the Dodge tool in the toolbox. A shortcut menu will appear.

  3. Click on Sponge Tool . The Sponge tool will become the active tool.

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  4. Choose options on the options bar as necessary. The options for the Sponge tool are:

    • Brush. Designates the brush style for the tool.

    • Mode. Specifies whether the Sponge tool saturates (adds more color intensity) or desaturates (decreases color intensity) in the area you drag over.

    • Flow. Identifies how much of a change the Sponge tool makes as you drag.

    • Airbrush. Enables the airbrush effect for the tool.

  5. Click on or drag over the area(s) to sponge. Photoshop makes the corrections immediately. After you finish sponging, you can work with another tool or operation in Photoshop.

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Using the Healing Brush

The Healing Brush is an amazing tool for getting rid of unwanted areas in photos. It can be used to clean up dirt marks, scratches, holes, tears, or other imperfections that can arise on photos. In this example, we will remove a logo from the sleeve of a t-shirt using the Healing Brush.

  1. Open the desired image and select the layer to correct. The image (and layer) will become active or current. Zoom in, if needed.

  2. Click on the Healing Brush tool. The Healing Brush tool will become the active tool.

  3. Click on the Brush style on the options bar. A palette of brush options will appear.

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  4. Make Diameter , Hardness , Spacing , Angle , and Roundness choices in the palette. The selected choices will affect the shape of the Healing Brush tool as follows :

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    • Diameter. Enables you to specify the size of the brush (the area to be "healed").

    • Hardness. Enables you to specify the size of the brush's hard center, as a percentage of the total diameter.

    • Spacing. If you want erasure brush strokes to be noncontiguous as you heal, increase this setting to add spacing or skips.

    • Angle. This setting works with the Roundness value you specify to tip the brush shape. You can either enter a value in the Angle text box or drag the arrow axis on the brush preview.

    • Roundness. Enables you to specify whether a brush is round. Decrease this value to less than 100% to decrease roundness.

    Note

    Use the bottom setting, Size, to further control the brush when you're using a graphics tablet with Photoshop.

  5. Click on the Brush style down arrow . The palette of brush settings will close.

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  6. Click on the Sampled option button to select it, if necessary. The Healing Brush tool will use the area you sample in the image to make the needed repair.

  7. Alt + click on the area to sample. (Of course, you should sample an area that looks like the area to patch.) The target mouse pointer will appear to verify that you are sampling, and the sample will be loaded after you click.

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  8. Click again or drag on the area to repair. Photoshop will cover the flaw using the sampled content.

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Patching a Flaw

Use the Patch tool to increase the speed with which you can make even more complicated repairs . With this tool, rather than painting over an area with sampled material, you select a patch area from the image and then drag that patch over the area to repair. This tool works particularly well when the area to repair has a pattern, striping, or some other type of texture that the Healing Brush tool cannot capture. Use the following steps to create a patch and use it to repair an image:

  1. Open the desired image and select the layer to correct. The image (and layer) will become active or current. Zoom in, if necessary.

  2. Click and hold on the Healing Brush tool in the toolbox. A shortcut menu will appear.

  3. Click on Patch Tool . The Patch tool will become the active tool.

  4. Click on the Destination option button on the options bar. This will set up the Patch tool so that you will first select the sample to use as the patch and then drag it over the area to be patched.

  5. Drag on the image to select the source area (patch). The area you drag around will be selected so that you can use it as the patch.

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    Tip

    It's important to select a patch source area that's large enough to cover the flaw but not so large that it will cover mismatching areas around the flaw.

  6. Drag the patch from the source location over the flaw; release the mouse button only when you've positioned the patch as necessary. The patch will cover the flaw.

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    Tip

    As long as the patch remains selected, you can move it and reposition it. You also can rotate the patch (Edit, Transform, Rotate) and make other changes to ensure a precise fit.

  7. Click on Select . The Select menu will appear.

  8. Click on Deselect . The patch selection marquee will disappear. Depending on how close the patch was to the area to be repaired, the repair will be totally or nearly impossible to see.

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Adobe Photoshop CS Fast & Easy
Adobe Photoshop CS Fast & Easy (Fast & Easy (Premier Press))
ISBN: 1592003451
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 179

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