The Two Functions of Photoshop


Generally speaking, the two halves of Photoshop serve different purposes. The straightforward Jekyll tools mostly concentrate on painting, and the more complex Hyde capabilities are devoted to image editing. Therefore, to tackle this great program, you may find it helpful to understand the difference between the two terms.

Drawing and painting without the mess

To discover the benevolent Dr. Jekyll half of Photoshop, you need look no farther than the standard painting and editing tools. Shown in Figure 1-1, these tools are so simple, they’re practically pastoral. The Eraser tool erases, the Pencil tool draws hard-edged lines, the magnifying glass magnifies your images, and so on. These incredibly straightforward tools attract new users just as surely as a light attracts miller moths.

click to expand
Figure 1-1: Many of the Photoshop tools have an old-world, rustic charm that’s sure to warm the cockles of the most timid technophobe.

Likewise, painting is just what it sounds like: You take a brush loaded with color and smear it all over your on-screen image. You can paint from scratch on a blank canvas, or you can paint directly on top of a photograph.

Notice in Figure 1-2 the rather drab fellow drinking a rather drab beverage. (Though you may guess this man to be Dr. Jekyll armed with the secret potion, most scholars consider it highly doubtful that even Jekyll was this goofy.)

click to expand
Figure 1-2: The unadorned “I Love My Libation” poster boy of 1948.

I invoked all the changes in Figure 1-3 by using a single tool — the brush — and just two colors — black and white. Suddenly, a singularly cool dude emerges. By saving the original image to disk (as explained in Chapter 3), you don’t have to worry about making permanent changes to your images. You can restore details from the original image at whim (the subject of Chapter 14).

click to expand
Figure 1-3: A few hundred strokes of the brush result in a party animal to rival Carmen Miranda.

You quickly discover that, on their own, the painting tools aren’t super-duper exciting. Also, the tools don’t work much like their traditional counterparts — a line drawn with the Pencil tool, for example, doesn’t look anything like a line drawn with a real pencil. Here’s another little issue — the so-called straightforward tools aren’t particularly applicable to the job of editing images. Generally speaking, you have to be blessed with pretty major eye-hand coordination to achieve good results using these tools.

Editing existing image detail

The remade man in Figure 1-3 is the life of the party, but he’s nothing compared to what he could be with the aid of some image editing. When you edit an image, you distort and enhance its existing details. So rather than paint with color, you paint with the image itself.

Unfortunately, that’s when you discover the Mr. Hyde half of the program. You encounter options that have meaningless names such as Dissolve, Multiply, and Difference. Commands such as Image Size and Trim — both of which sound harmless enough — seem to damage your images. And clicking icons frequently produces no result. It’s enough to drive a reticent computer artist stark raving insane.

Figure 1-4 demonstrates what I mean. To achieve this grotesque turn of the visual phrase, I was obliged to indulge in a liberal amount of distortion. First, I flipped the guy’s head and stretched it a little bit. Well, actually, I stretched it a lot. Then, I further exaggerated the eyes and mouth. I rotated the arm and distorted the glass to make the glass meet the ear. Finally, I cloned a background from a different image to cover up where the head and arm used to be. The only thing I painted was the straw (the one coming out of the guy’s ear). Otherwise, I lifted every detail from one of two photographs.

click to expand
Figure 1-4: Image editing has no respect for composition, form, or underlying skeletal structure.

Okay, so that’s a lot of complicated stuff I did. Unfortunately, many folks return broken and frustrated to the under-equipped and boring, but nonthreatening, painting and editing tools that they’ve come to know. It’s sad, really. Especially when you consider all the wonderful things that the more complex Photoshop controls can do. Oh sure, the controls have weird names, and they may not respond as you think they should at first, but after you come to terms with these slick puppies, they perform in ways you wouldn’t believe.

In fact, the dreaded Mr. Hyde side of Photoshop represents the core of this powerful program. Without its sinister half, Photoshop is just another rinky-dink piece of painting software whose most remarkable capability is keeping the kids out of mischief on a rainy day.

Mind you, you don’t have to go quite so hog-wild with the image editing. If you’re a photographer, for example, you may not care to mess with your work to the point that it becomes completely unrecognizable. Figure 1-5 shows a few subtle adjustments that affect neither the form nor composition of the original image. These changes merely accentuate details or downplay defects in the image.

click to expand
Figure 1-5: You can apply more moderate edits to your image.




Photoshop CS For Dummies
Photoshop CS For Dummies
ISBN: 0764543563
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 221

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net