Graphic & Photo Design Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

Among the next few posts, I’ll be writing about how to work on portraits in Adobe Photoshop. It’s important to realize that very few (if any at all) portrait photos are released into the wild without being touched. Oftentimes, they’re edited in Photoshop in such a way that accentuates specific areas of the image. In the posts that I write on this topic, I’ll begin with the outer edges of a portrait of a young girl and move in towards her primary focal point – her eyes. Since this is a multi-step process, I decided to break this serious up into multiple posts.

In today’s post, I’ll demonstrate how to begin editing a photo like this. While this type of work isn’t terribly challenging, it does require a good eye and some knowledge of the basic necessary steps. More precisely, I’ll be creating a very light and subtle vignette that encapsulates the model’s face, again, working in from the edges of the photo.

Original Photo

Below is the original portrait photo. The difference between it and the final photo won’t be very noticeable at all, and that’s the point. Drawing in someone’s eyes is a delicate maneuver and must be completed in a way that’s inviting as opposed to abrupt.

Creating a New Layer

Since my goal is to darken the edges of this portrait while leaving the model’s face alone, I’ll need a new layer. I wouldn’t want to touch the original layer because if I did, it would be awfully challenging to undo anything I might want to change in the future. By creating a new layer and working in that layer to make my changes, I’m creating an environment that’s called non-destructive. At any point, I could simply delete the top layer to start everything over from the beginning. Think about it like covering a car with clear plastic wrap and then painting it. It will look nice, but if you wanted to paint the car a different color, all you’d need to do is pull off the wrap.

Creating a new layer today is going to be a bit different than way I’ve done it in the past on this blog. While I normally move down to the bottom of the Layers panel and just click the Create New Layer icon, I’m going to add one more step to the process for this project. Before I click the icon, I’m going to press and hold the Alt key on my keyboard (Option on Mac). Doing so will open a small dialog box.

This box is called the New Layer dialog. Inside it, there are a few options. I’ll only be taking advantage of three today.

First, I’m going to name the new layer. Since I’ll be creating a vignette, I’ll call it Vignette. Second, I’ll click Soft Light in the Mode drop-down.

Finally, I’ll check the box that says Fill With Soft Light Neutral Color (50% Gray).

You may be asking yourself why I did all this. Well, let’s take a look at Adobe’s description of the Soft Light blending mode:

Darkens or lightens the colors, depending on the blend color. The effect is similar to shining a diffused spotlight on the image. If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the image is lightened as if it were dodged. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the image is darkened as if it were burned in. Painting with pure black or white produces a distinctly darker or lighter area, but does not result in pure black or white. Source.

Since my goal is to burn the edges of this portrait, this should work out perfectly.

Burning the Edges

Before I begin anything else, let’s take a look at my Layers panel.

As you can see, I have the background (original image) layer as well as a new solid gray layer that has a blend mode applied to it. Now, just to let you know, I could have gone about creating this new layer a multitude of ways, but the method I used is the most simple.

The oddest thing about what I currently have going on is that the top gray layer is virtually invisible. That’s only because the Soft Light blend mode is applied. If I turned that mode off and back to Normal, the image would be hidden by the layer.

Remember, when using this blend mode along with a solid gray layer, all I need to do to darken, or burn, an area of an image is to paint it black. To lighten it, or dodge, I’d similarly paint it white. Since I want to darken, I’ll select my Brush Tool, choose a preset brush and make sure my color picker is set to pure black.

The goal here is subtlety. I don’t want any burning to be very noticeable. For this step of the project, all I want to do is to draw the viewer’s eye towards the face. Because of this requirement, I’m going to move the opacity of my brush to 25% up in the options bar.

If I kept the opacity at 100%, the burn would be far too harsh.

Finally, with my brush size, shape, edge softness and opacity set, I can begin painting anywhere in the image that I don’t want attention drawn to. Basically, this means everything but the model’s skin.

Now let’s take a look at the Layers panel.

As you can see, I now have a vignette that surrounds the girl’s face.

While the change isn’t dramatic and you may be thinking I’m crazy right now, there surely is a change. Take a look at the next photo.

I’d say that’s enough for this step of the process. For each future step, I’ll be linking back to this post as well as placing links in this post to the future ones.

Please click below for the following parts of this post:

Brightening Eyes with the Curve Adjustment in Adobe Photoshop

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If you’re anything like me, you probably didn’t even know you could make custom brushes in Adobe Photoshop. Unless you’re an artist or graphic designer, brushes most likely haven’t played a large role in your use of the application. Every now and then, though, we all need to reach for that Brush Tool. Whether it be to work with masks or to color something in, we generally choose one of Photoshop’s presets.

Here’s a scenario: what if we needed a specific type of brush for a project we’re working on and it wasn’t available as a preset? What would we do? We certainly couldn’t just whip one up out of thin air – or could we?

In today’s post, I’m going to talk about how we can create custom brushes in Photoshop. In all honesty, you can probably put a very simple one together in about three steps. It’s when you have to meet certain specifications that things become more complex. Not crazy complex, but a familiarity of certain panels is definitely in order.

Creating a Custom Brush – The Simple Method

There really are only a few steps necessary to create a custom brush. In this section, I’ll cover the fastest method.

Create a New Document

The very first thing I need to do is to create a new white document. To accomplish this, I’ll head up to the File > New menu item and click. From there, I’ll set the document to 1000 pixels wide by 667 pixels high. Also, I’ll set the dpi to 72 because this is for web, not print (that would be 300 dpi or higher). Now, I want you to know that these settings aren’t important. I merely chose them because this is the size I usually work with while making screenshots for this blog. It’s also the same ratio of a normal photograph. Please feel free to choose any settings you’d like, as long as the document is large enough to work inside of.

Change the Workspace

Next, I’m going to change my workspace to one that’s more conducive to working with brushes. Luckily, Photoshop has such a workspace already preset into the application. To change it, all I need to do is head to the upper-right corner and click the drop-down box. From there, I’ll select Painting.

This workspace places the Brush Presets panel on the right side and in clear view, above the Layers panel. It also makes the Brush panel easily clickable in the vertical toolbar that sits just to the left of that.

Create a New Layer

This step is easy. I’ll move to the Layers panel and click the New Layer icon that sits at the bottom. This will create a new empty layer.

Draw a Brush

This is where we begin to get into the meat of this project. If you think about it, brushes are just drawings. If I draw a happy face, I can save that as a brush and stamp happy faces everywhere. I can do the same thing with a simple circle or a few straight lines. To keep things as basic as possible in this section, I’ll draw some lines with one of the Brush Presets Photoshop offers. I’ll do this in the new empty layer. Also, I’ll make sure I’m drawing in black.

Save the Brush as a Preset

Now that I’ve got my brush drawn, I can save it to the Brush Preset panel. To accomplish this, all I need to do is to head up to the Edit > Define Brush Preset menu item and click.

Once I click that menu item, I’ll be presented with a Brush Name dialog box that asks me to name the brush. In this case, I’ll name it Jay’s Sample Brush and then I’ll click OK.

Finding the Custom Brush Preset

Basically, I’ve created the custom brush. To use it, all I need to do is take a look around the Brush Preset panel and find it. In this case, since I just created it, it’s still sitting at the bottom of the list of presets.

I can create a new document, change the size of the brush and start drawing with it as I please.

Deleting or Renaming a Brush Preset

As you may have noticed, the brush I made has a few issues. Perhaps it would be good for some use, but honestly, it’s not very effective for anything I can think of. Due to this, I’d like to delete it.

To delete or rename of brush preset, all I need to do is to right-click on it in the Brush Presets panel. Once I do this, a popup box will appear with two instructions. Rename Brush and Delete Brush.

If you look closely at the above screenshot, you’ll see that the Rename Brush… option has three dots after it. That means that there will be some sort of dialog box that opens after you select it. In this case, it’ll be a Rename dialog. The Delete Brush option doesn’t have this. If I click that option, the brush will disappear (after I click OK).

Creating a Custom Brush – The Complex Method

You have to admit, creating a new brush preset is pretty easy. All you need to do is draw something and then save it. The issue with this is that there certainly isn’t a lot of thought that goes into this type of thing. As I mentioned above, there will usually be some sort of requirements that come along with making a new brush. In this section, we’ll explore the Brush panel to see how we can add some extra flavor to a new brush preset.

Adding Spacing & Jitter

My goal with this section is to make a brush that’s actually interesting. And one that might work well for a specific project. While this is merely an example, this is how you would go about doing something like this in real life.

The first thing I’m going to do is open the Brush panel. If you remember back, the shortcut for this is in the vertical tool bar that’s next to the right column.

Next, I’m going to select a random round brush preset. This is my starting point. I’ll size it so it’s easily workable and then head down to the Spacing slider and set it to 50%.

I’ll draw a sample line with the brush set like this in the document. I’ll show that sample in a bit.

Next, I’ll click the Shape Dynamics checkbox in the left column of the Brush panel. This will offer many more options to choose from and alter. Right now, what I’m concerned with is Size Jitter. I’ll bring that all the way up to 100%. I’ll draw a sample line with the brush set like this as well.

If you take a look at the above screenshot, you’ll see that the left sample line has uniformly sized dots while the one on the right has varying sized dots. This is what the Size Jitter setting changes – the sizing and randomness of the paint dabs.

Changing Opacity

Now that I’ve got some good spacing and jitter in the brush which makes it much more interesting than regular lines, I can move onto another dimension – opacity. To shake up and randomize the opacity of each brush stroke or paint dab, I’ll click on the Transfer check box in the left column of the Brush panel. After that, I’ll click in the top drop-down box and choose Pen Pressure. When I do this, a small warning triangle appears telling me that I need to use a pressure sensitive drawing pad to experience different opacity while drawing, but I’m going to ignore that. Even without that piece of equipment, I’ll get some different opacities in my lines.

Now, just to let you know, what I’ve got here is a fairly interesting brush that’s well worthy of saving like we already did above. I don’t want to do that just yet though because I’ve got bigger plans.

The next thing I’m going to do is to draw something like I did in my first example above. I want individual lines that will act as strokes. To do this, I’ll draw another picture, but this time, I’ll use this new brush that I’ve set up. I’ll also use random sizing as I draw. Here’s what it looks like.

Next, I’ll save this as a brush preset like I did above and this time, I’ll call it Jay’s Random Brush.

Let’s see what this brush looks like if I paint with it.

This looks pretty good. It’s interesting, to say the least. There are a few more things I’d like to experiment with though.

Changing Direction

Let’s pretend that I wanted to use this brush so it showed horizontal strokes instead of vertical ones. How would I do that? Well, if I go back into the Brush panel and click on Brush Tip Shape in the left column, I’ll see where I can change the direction of the brush itself. If I click inside the Angle area, I can change 0 degrees to 90 degrees and my brush will turn sideways.

Following the Direction

If I wanted to go one step further and have my new brush follow the direction in which I’m painting, I can do that too. This would make things much more realistic. To accomplish this, I’ll click on Shape Dynamic in the left column again and then click on the drop-down box that’s right below the Angle Jitter slider. Inside that box, I’ll select Direction.

As you can see, the brush now acts much more like a real live one.

At this point, I can save the brush again and name it as something else. I’ve changed many settings to add to what I originally saved, so it’s definitely worth it to retain all that work.

I’m going to stop here. I think I’ve demonstrated how simple or complex it can be to create a custom brush in Photoshop. I’ll be writing many more posts on this topic, so stay tuned. Thanks!

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Take a look at the above photo. Do you see anything strange about it? Anything wrong that jumps out at you? Don’t worry if you don’t. I don’t either. That’s the power of a pretty awesome feature in Adobe Photoshop that’s called Content-Aware Scale.

Content-Aware Scale is a tool that allows you to scale a photo within Photoshop without the harmful effects of distorting people, buildings, animals and more. It helps to preserve proportion when scaling smaller as well as filling in empty areas when scaling larger. When you use this feature, Photoshop focuses its efforts on pixels that don’t play a large role in the photo. Ask me how it does this and I’ll tell you it’s magic. I wish I knew the secrets that are hidden inside the Adobe lab.

To read more, please take a look at Adobe’s page: Content-Aware Scaling

In today’s post, I’m going to extend a photo that originally has a drink set off to one side. Here, take a look:

My goal for today is to center the drink in the photo without reducing its size at all.

I know that the first step most folks would take in a situation like this is to crop the photo smaller so the drink sits at the center. The thing is, what if we didn’t want to lose any sand or sky area? What if we didn’t want to cause the drink to appear larger? In cases like these, simple cropping wouldn’t work. That’s where Content-Aware Scale comes in.

Cropping Outward

I want to give you a word of warning before I begin today’s tutorial. When using this feature in Photoshop, you need to be careful. The best results occur in photos that have larger open areas that are conducive to manipulation. I played around with another photo before I settled on this beach scene and didn’t have half as much luck. The was a road in the photo and when I attempted to enlarge it, it warped in an obvious way. If you have images of fields, skies, beaches or anything that can be enlarged gracefully, you should achieve very good results.

To begin working on the photo, I’ll open it in Photoshop and then select the Crop Tool from the left vertical toolbar. As of today, it’s the 5th tool from the top. You can either select it from the toolbar or simply click C on your keyboard.

I’ll then select the image with the tool so it looks like this.

After that, I’ll take a look at the drop-down box in the Crop options bar that sits along the top of the workspace when the Crop Tool is activated. I’ll make sure I have the appropriate setting chosen. If you aren’t comfortable with cropping in Adobe Photoshop, please take a look at these posts. I wrote them a while back and they do a good job of covering most of what you need to know on the topic:

Using the Crop Tool in Adobe Photoshop

How to Crop a Photo to an Exact Size & Resolution in Adobe Photoshop

Next, I’ll click inside the image somewhere and drag it to the left until the drink is centered in the photo.

After that, I’ll either double-click or hit Enter on my keyboard to actually crop the image. What I have left is exactly what you’re looking at above, minus the Crop Tool outlines.

Selecting Part of the Image

The next step is to try to select as much of the photo that’s similar to the area I’d like the empty part to look like. In other words, in the photo I’m currently working on, I would like the empty area to look like sky, water and sand. I don’t want any part of the drink in it. So, I’ll use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to select everything on the right side of the drink.

Content-Aware Scale

Here comes the best part. The magic, if you will. Now that I have the proper area selected, I can head up to the Edit > Content-Aware Scale menu item and click.

Once I do that, I’ll notice that the selected area stays selected, but has some Free Transform handles applied to it. If I click the center-right handle and drag the transformation to the right so it matches up with the edge of the photo, things will start looking good.

From here, all I need to do it hit Enter on my keyboard to apply the transformation and then go up to the Select > Deselect menu item and click to remove the marching ants. And that’s it. I’m done.

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? I don’t think anyone would ever guess that this photo was edited.

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I’ll start this post off by telling you that my favorite aunt is a very talented illustrator. She’s been drawing and painting for years. I can remember back to when I was a young boy sitting in one of those Radio Flyer wagons, waiting for her to finish painting a picture of me. Believe it or not, I have that picture hanging on the wall not more than ten feet from where I’m sitting right now. She stood on my grandmother’s walkway with her easel and paint and I sat on the edge of the road in the wagon. My legs were so short they didn’t even touch the ground.

Aunt Ruthanne emailed me yesterday and asked for my assistance. She recently set up an Instagram page that shows off some of her illustrations. If you’d like to take a look at those, please feel free. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to share something she’s so passionate about with those who appreciate such things.

Anyway, her goal is to take five illustrations and merge them into one document using Adobe Photoshop. The issue is, while she has the illustration part down pat, she’s relatively new with Photoshop. This is where I come into play. She requested that I write up a tutorial that talks about how to accomplish her goal. I’m more than happy to help.

In today’s post, I’m going to take the five files that Aunt Ruthanne sent over to me last night and take a step by step approach to putting each of these in a new document, cropping them and arranging them so they make sense. Hopefully by the end of this post, I’ll have something that looks like the lead-in image up top.

Creating a New Document

The first thing I’m going to do (after launching Photoshop) is create a new document. To do this, I’ll head up to the File > New menu item and click. From there, the New dialog box will appear.

I’ll set the width to 1000 pixels, the height to 667 pixels and the resolution to 72 dpi. The reason I chose these dimensions is because they are what I use for this blog. The ratio is that of a regular photograph taken with a DSLR camera and the resolution is what’s used for the web. If I were creating this image for print, all this would change.

When I’m finished with this, I’ll click OK and a new tab will appear. Now, regarding these tabs, you may see some additional ones in my screenshots for this post. Just ignore those. I’m currently using them for the previously mentioned screenshot. If you’re following along, you should only have one tab open in Photoshop at the moment.

Opening the Illustration Files into Photoshop

The next thing I’m going to do is open all five illustrations into Photoshop. I’ll head up to the File > Open menu item and click.

When I select this menu item, I’ll be presented with the screen that navigates Windows. I’ll find the files, select all of them at once and then hit Open down at the bottom right of the dialog box. This will open all five illustrations in the same workspace in Photoshop. At this point, you should have a total of six tabs. One blank one and five illustrations.

Need a refresher on tabs? Check out my posts on the topic.

How To Arrange the Tabs in Your Photoshop Workspace

Tips For Tabs & Guides in Adobe Photoshop

Making Uniform Illustration Heights

This is the section where the fun begins. Since I now have all five illustrations open in Photoshop, I can start looking more closely at them. To see what I’m dealing with, I’ll click the Image > Image Size menu item from the top navigation bar.

When I do this, the Image Size dialog box appears. I’ll take a look at the height dimension for all five files to see if they match.

It appears that they don’t. If they did and if each drawing was centered the same way all the others were, I could do some batch processing. Since each file is wider or taller than the others, I’ll need to work on them one at a time. The first thing I need to do is trim each image.

Cropping the Illustrations

In the final composition, I want some white space above the head and below the feet of each model. I’ll keep this in mind when I’m cropping.

To crop each image, I’ll first set up some guides. To do this, I’ll click inside the top ruler and drag the guide down so it sits where I’d like to crop from. If you aren’t familiar with using guides, please scroll down to the Setting Guides section of this post. I explain everything there.

I’ll set guides like this for each illustration.

Next, I’ll select the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the left vertical toolbar.

In the top options bar, I’ll be sure the Style drop-down box says Normal. Then, I’ll click and drag the marquee so it’s lined up with the guides and the edges of the image.

In the above screenshot, please notice the small dashed lines that surround the area of the image I’ll be cropping.

After that, I’ll head up to the Image > Crop menu item and click on it.

Once I click Crop, everything outside those marching ants (dashed lines) will disappear. I’ll be left with this:

To remove the marching ants and deselect the image, I’ll go to the Select > Deselect menu item and click. Then, I’ll move on to the remaining four illustrations and do the same thing. I’ll crop them the same way I did above.

Resizing the Illustrations

Since the output file will be 667 pixels high, I need to resize each illustration so it’s the same height. Resizing is simple. All that needs to be done is for me to click on the Image > Image Size menu item again and to set the Height dimension to 667. When finished, I’ll click OK. This will reduce the image size so it matches the output file’s dimensions. I’ll do this for all five illustrations.

NOTE: If you look inside the red circle in the screenshot below, you’ll notice that a small chain link is highlighted. Make sure yours is too. This locks the image ratio so things don’t end up all squeezed and weird looking.

After resizing, the images will look rather small on your screen. To enlarge them to their 100% size, simply click Ctrl + on your keyboard. Do this until you see 100% in each tab for each file.

Cropping Again

Since I know that the final image will be 1000 pixels wide and that I have five illustrations to fit in the final file, I’ll do a bit of math. 1000 divided by 5 is 200. So, each of these illustrations now needs to be cropped to 200 pixels wide. This is really easy to do as well.

Again, I’ll go over to the left toolbar and click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool. This time though, I’ll make a change to the Style drop-down in the options bar up top. I’ll choose Fixed Size. Once I do that, a few more fields will appear. Inside the Width field, I’ll type 200 px and inside the Height field, I’ll type 667 px.

Now when I click inside one of the illustrations to crop, a fixed size square will appear. To nudge it up, down, right and left, I’ll use the arrow keys on my keyboard. When I get the square into position, I’ll go back to the Image > Crop menu item and click. This is what I’ve ended up with:

Again, I’ll deselect the Rectangular Marquee Tool. And again, I’ll crop all five illustrations this way.

Arranging the Layers Inside the Final Image File

At this point in the project, I have five identically sized layers (images) that are located in five different tabs. What I need to do now is drag each layer over to the final file tab. To do this, I’ll need to go to the Layers panel in each illustration tab, click the layer and drag it up to the tab of the final image. Without letting go, I need to drag the layer down into the workspace of the final image and then let go. I need to do this for each of the five illustrations.

Once the layers are all in the same file, I can begin arranging them. If I go to the View > Snap menu item, each layer will snap into place much easier than if I didn’t use that feature.

I’ll be sure to select the Move Tool (the top tool in the left vertical toolbar) to move the layers around. And if I take a look at the Layers panel, this is what it looks like with all the illustration layers in it:

Once the layers are arranged the way I want them, I can save out the file.

Saving the File

Now that the project is basically finished, I’d like to save the file so I can email it or use it online. To do this, I’ll go up to the File > Export > Save For Web menu item and click. When I do this, the Save For Web dialog box will appear.

I’ll choose JPEG as the file type and 50% for the Quality. Then, I’ll click on Save and browse to the area on my computer I’d like to output the image.

And that’s it. I think this looks much more challenging than it is. I swear that if I timed myself to do something like this, it would take no longer than 2 minutes. If there are any areas you get hung up on, please ask in the comments section below. There are bound to be questions and by the time I get them, my fingers will be ready to type very clear and thorough answers. Thanks!

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and found it helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, if you’d like to continue learning and would like our posts sent directly to your email inbox, simply sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send each and every post directly to you. Thanks!

Tell me if you’ve ever experienced something like this – You install a new program on your computer (such as Adobe Photoshop), open it up and start wildly clicking icons and tools in an effort to see how everything works. You don’t really know how to do anything yet, but you still click away. Crop, paint and apply filters. I’d say filters is the most fun.

The reason I bring this up is because this is exactly what I did with pretty much every single application I’ve ever installed on any of my many computers. I can remember back so clearly – trying to make a photo look as good as the ones I’ve seen online – within the first 10 seconds of using whatever it was I was using. I can also remember the frustration of not getting anywhere. While the buttons, icons and tools looked relatively simple, without any true knowledge and understanding, I left myself in a heap of a mess. Eventually, I would just close things down, order some instruction book from Amazon, never read it and fail. I hated that part – the failing that is.

I want to fill you in on something. Learning any type of post-processing application takes time. It needs to be progressed through as more of a habit as opposed to as a task. It needs to become a way of life and worked on every day. It’s the little things that matter the most. Sure, I can apply the Lens Flare filter rather quickly and enjoy a major change to whatever photo it is I’m working on, but would I be able to apply that lens flare correctly? When should I do that? Why? There’s more to design and editing than simply getting things done.

Part of the reason I enjoy writing posts that touch on small topics is because, for one, I get to learn and review. I enjoy that and every time I write, something new emerges. Another reason is, because it’s the many small topics that combine to create a large one. Take today’s topic for example; I’ll be working in the Properties panel of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. That’s it. There are only a few areas I’d like to talk about, but when you’re finished reading (and I’m finished writing), things will be more clear than they ever were – just for that one panel. I was never very good at breezing through panels while avoiding their details. It’s much better to stop and really analyze things.

With that said, in today’s post, I’d like to cover a few areas of what I just stated above; the Properties panel of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Adobe Photoshop. I’ll be using a beautiful photo of some flowers to help clarify the topics I’ll be discussing. It’s the sliders I’m most interested in, so if you’d like to pick up some knowledge and impress your friends, read on below. I’ll be adjusting the colors, saturation and lightness of the objects in the demo photograph.

Original Photo

At the top of this post, you can see the original photo with all of its original colors. My goal is to simply add the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to change a few of the colors. This is a popular activity for almost any type of photography. Folks need to update and enhance colors all the time.

While doing this, I’ll be exploring the aspects of the Properties panel control.

Creating an Adjustment Layer

The first task I’m going to complete is to create the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. To do this, I’ll head up to the Adjustments panel and click the appropriate icon.

Once I do that, I’ll see the related Properties panel appear. I’ll also notice that the new layer was created in the Layers panel.

Now, I want you to remember that any change I make to this photo related to this adjustment layer will be non-destructive. This means that the original photo will be untouched and I can revert back to it at any time.

Presets

The first area I’d like to cover in the Properties panel is called Presets. This is a drop-down box that holds some fairly magnificent methods for very quickly adjusting the look and feel of a photo.

To edit a photo using nothing more than a preset adjustment is extraordinarily simple. Actually, the whole process takes about three clicks. And as you can see, there are a few available choices. They are:

– Cyanotype
– Increase Saturation More
– Increase Saturation
– Old Style
– Red Boost
– Sepia
– Strong Saturation
– Yellow Boost
– Custom

As an example, I’ll first select the Cyanotype preset to show you what that looks like.

Next, I’ll select Old Style.

And finally, I’ll choose Sepia.

As you can see, there are some interesting results. All that work boiled down to a few easy steps. And what’s even cooler is that as you choose a preset, you can look at the sliders and controls in the same panel below to see what changed. Everything is completely visible. So if you enjoy the look of the Sepia selection, but would rather accentuate a color other than what’s given, you can easily figure out what happened and how to make the necessary change. Photoshop is all about keeping your eyes open and exploring around the menus and panels.

Selective Color

This next drop-down actually doesn’t have a name. On Adobe’s support page, it’s called “the menu to the right of the On-image adjustment tool.” That doesn’t matter. It’s basically the drop-down that’s directly below the Preset one.

Inside this drop-down menu are a few choices. They are:

– Master (all colors)
– Reds
– Yellows
– Greens
– Cyans
– Blues
– Magentas

Now, this is where things get interesting. This drop-down menu and its selections work in tandem with the On-Image Adjustment Tool (the little hand icon to the left of the drop-down) and the hue sliders at the bottom of this panel. I’ll explain what I mean below.

I like to think of this trio as controlling the target color you’d like to change. Each one does it in a different way.

The Drop-Down

If I were to choose Master from the drop-down menu in question, all colors in the photo would be selected. I could alter them with the Hue slider, add or remove color with the Saturation slider and/or lighten or darken them with the Lightness slider.

If I were to select one of the other, more color focused, choices though, my options would change. I’ll use an example to illustrate this. Since there are some magentas in this photo, I’d like to see how it would look if I changed them. So, I’ll go ahead and choose Magenta from the drop-down menu.

If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that Magenta is selected from the drop-down menu. If you look a bit lower than that, you’ll also see that something new happened to the hue sliders at the bottom of the panel. Inside the bracket that appeared inside of the sliders, you’ll see the range of color that will be affected if I move any of the above sliders, such as the Hue, Saturation or Lightness. That’s right, all other colors in the photo will be left alone and only the magenta color that’s locked in that range will be altered. Let see this in action. I’ll push the three primary sliders around a bit.

This is the output of the photo. Notice how only the magenta colors in the photo changed. All others stayed the same.

Furthermore, I can edit one color, just as I did above, then select another color from the drop-down and edit that. I can repeat this step with all the available colors and build upon my initial changes.

The On-Image Adjustment Tool

Very similar to the drop-down is the On-Image Adjustment Tool. This tool can be found to the left of the color choice drop-down menu. It’s an icon that has the image of a little hand in it. If I click this tool to activate it, my mouse pointer will turn into a dropper. I can select any color from the photo by clicking on it and that color will be automatically chosen from the drop-down menu. This is a great tool to use if you can’t quite identify a color in the photo, but you know you want it changed.

As with the previous method, you can continuously select colors with this tool. All you need to do is to click the tool, select a color with the dropper, make your slider changes and then click on the tool icon again. This will deactivate it. If you want to select another color, simply click on the tool once more to start again (with an additional color). You can do this as many times as there are colors in the drop down menu.

Color Range

Let’s say you already selected a few colors to alter using one of the methods from above. You made your changes, but noticed that you would like to expand the selected colors. You initially selected a color that had a gradient into another color or two different colors are right next to each other. Whatever the reason, you want to expand the range of color for adjustment. We can do this.

If you take a look at the screenshot directly above, you’ll see that I outlined an area in the Properties panel. This area includes three icons that allow you to expand, contract or keep the same color selection.

Since I already made a choice to change up the magentas in the photo, I clicked on the small dropper icon with the + symbol next to it in the outlined area to add to that. When I used my mouse (dropper) to click on another color, the brackets in the double color bars grew apart to accommodate that. Now, when I move the three primary sliders to make adjustments to the colors, anything contained inside the bracket area will be affected.

Another method for accomplishing the same thing is to physically click on the bracket edges themselves. You can click right on them and drag them to the left and the right to capture the color range and feathering you’d like.

To assist in explaining how this works, I’ll take a blurb from Adobe’s support page:

Four color wheel values (in degrees) appear in the Properties panel (the double hue sliders at the bottom). They correspond to the adjustment sliders that appear between the color bars. The two inner vertical sliders define the color range. The two outer triangle sliders show where the adjustments on a color range “fall off” (fall‑off is a feathering or tapering of the adjustments instead of a sharply defined on/off application of the adjustments). Source.

As you can see, you have a lot of control when it comes to changing colors in a photo.

Resetting the Adjustments

Oftentimes, I like to mess around with making changes before I settle on anything permanent. I do a lot of pushing sliders and making selections from the drop-down boxes. Because of this habit, it becomes cumbersome to reset everything to its original state before I begin making changes in earnest. Luckily, many panels in Photoshop have a feature that will take on this chore for you.

If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that I circled an icon at the bottom of the panel. It looks like a semi-circular arrow. If you click this icon, all the adjustments you made will be reset to their default settings.

Finally, here is the image after I made some changes to it. I actually like this version more than all the rest – even the original.

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