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How to Create Animated GIFs in Photoshop CS4

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:51:52 +0000

For this video tutorial, I show you how I created an animated GIF in PhotoShop CS4. The GIF animation is of the twitter bird, who flaps around around a bit and then shows a little banner that asks you to follow him.

In the video below, I walk you through the whole process, from importing the images, to saving it as web content. I show you how to create a timeline, edit slides, and watch your animation before exporting
.

If you like this tutorial, be sure to check some of our other tutorials here on our blog. Just click on the Tips and User Guides category in the side bar, or do a search for “tutorial.” Thanks.

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Amusing Easter Eggs on Your Computer

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:23:12 +0000

Easter eggs are amusing features or displays in an application, left behind by the developers for users to find. They are sometimes as simple as a funny message, or as elaborate as an entire flight simulator game, such as could be played way back in Excel ’97.

Here are some of my favorite recent Easter Eggs in common software.

Windows XP

Candy Cane Pipes: Turns 3D Pipes into candy canes

1. Right click desktop, click Properties, click Screen Saver tab
2. In the Screen saver pull-down menu, select 3D Pipes, and click Settings
3. In the Surface Style category, turn on Textured, and click Choose Texture button
4. When the Choose Texture window comes up, Click cancel, and the Pipes should now be candy canes.

Pinball game: How to cheat

1. Open the Pinball game.
2. Type: “hidden test”
3. Right click the ball.
4. Now left click and hold, and you should be able to move the ball with your mouse.

Notepad: Anti-Bush? Strange and pointless… I’m not sure if this is intentional. Anyway.

1. Open Notepad
2. Type “bush hid the facts”
3. Save as anything.
4. Close and reopen the file, and help yourself to some rectangle text symbols.

Mozilla Firefox

Try Typing these in the Address Bar:

[About Mozilla]: a verse from The Book of Mozilla
[chrome://browser/content/browser.xul]: A browser within a browser. Very strange.
[About robots]: A message to humans from robots.
[About:kitchensink] An interactive symbol-based kitchen sink. It actually didn’t work for me, but it can also be viewed here: Kitchen Sink.

Adobe CS4

Photoshop: Stonehenge developer page
1. Open Photoshop CS4.
2. Press and hold CTRL key.
3. Click Help, and About PhotoShop. A Stonehenge style developer page should appear.

AfterEffects: Periodic Table of Developers
1. Open AfterEffects CS4.
2. Press and hold ALT key.
3. Click help, About AfterEffects.

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PhotoShop Tutorial: Playing God with Photoshop

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:24:02 +0000

Playing God with Photoshop CS4 – How to change the color of the butterfly Planetary Nebula using Photoshop CS4.

Photoshopped Butterfly Planetory Nebula

Changing a specific color range in Photoshop is remarkably easy. Photoshop allows you to select particular colors and color ranges in your image, tweak your selection to the desired specificity and area, and then adjust it to your heart’s content. If you are using the trial version of PhotoShop, a good place for discounted software is SoftwareMedia.com.

In this tutorial, I decided to try my hand at a divine design, and adjust the color range of a beautiful image of a butterfly shaped Nebula, one NGC 6302, that was snapped by the Hubble telescope earlier this year.

If you would similarly like to tread on the outskirts of digital blasphemy, just go to Nasa’s Hubble Image page, and download the image you dare to adjust. Then follow the audacious steps below.

Step 1

With the desired image in your browser, right click and select copy image. Nasa offers different sizes of its photos to choose from. Remember, the bigger the image, the more precise will be your Photoshop adjustments, but too large an image can slow everything way down and will sometimes crash the program.

Step 2

In Photoshop, select New from the File menu. Photoshop will detect the size of the image on the clipboard, and adjust the canvas to the image’s specs. Now Paste your image. If you wish to make any other adjustments to the overall image, you should probably do this before messing with the color ranges.

Step 3.

When you are ready, pull down the Select menu, and click on Color Range. Photoshop will now open the Color Range window, which includes a special thumbnail view of your image. This thumbnail displays a black-and-white mirror image of the photo, showing which pixels are selected and to what degree they will be altered by the relative intensity of the white portions of the translated image. In other words, whiteness equals change.

You will notice Photoshop automatically selects the eye dropper tool. By clicking around in the original image, you can select the color range you wish to change. Hold to shift if you want select additional pixels while keeping your original selection.

Use the Fuzziness slider bar to widen or narrow the selected color range. If you wish only to change the color range in a specific area of the image, check the Localalized Color Clusters box above the Fuzziness slider bar. Now you can adjust the Range slider bar to make bigger or smaller the area of your selection.

For my image, I want to adjust only the red color range. To do this, hold down Shift and clicked around the image, focusing on only red areas.

Note: There is also an Invert box on the right hand side of the Color Range window. This little box is awesome. By checking the Invert Box, you can reverse your selection. This is very useful when it easier to select the parts in the image that you DON’T want to change, rather than what you do want to change.

Step 4

Okay. Now, when you are satisfied with your selection, click the OK button. The Color Range box will go away, and you will be left with your image, but now with the specified color ranges selected.

You are now ready to adjust the colors of your image. I would be interested to see what a bluish butterfly nebula would like to, personally, so let me lead you through the steps I would take to produce this effect. As you get more comfortable with Photoshop, you will probably find a specific style and order of adjustment-making that makes the most sense to you.

Step 5

Color Balance Adjustment. Click on the Color Balance button in the Adjustment Panel. Don’t be worried that the selection outlines disappear on the image. Photoshop remembers what you chose, and your adjustments will affect only those areas. Also notice that a new Color Balance layer has been indexed in the layer index below. If you don’t like the way an adjustment turns out, or just want to see what your image looks like without it, you can simply delete or turn off a specific layer at any time.

Notice that you have three Color Balance Tones to play with: Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights. You will want to adjust each of these until your image looks they way you want it to. I started with the Midtones, took out all the red, turned out the blue, and made a slight adjustment to the Magenta/Green bar. Your adjustments to the Shadow, and Highlight tones will probably be much more subtle.

Step 6

Once you are finished with your color balance adjustment, click the small arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the adjustment panel, located directly over the layer index. This will take you back to your adjustment panel from where you can make additional adjustments.

Also, click on the original layer, Layer 1, in the Layer index. This is how Photoshop knows you are making changes to the original image, and not another layer.

I will now make a Vibrance adjustment. Click on the Vibrance button on the adjustment panel. Two sliders appear: one for Vibrance and one for Saturation. Play with these, until you like what you see.

Step 7

For my third adjustment, I will make a Hue/Saturation adjustment. Click the arrow again, to go back to the adjustment panel, make sure Layer 1 is selected, and now Click the Hue/ Saturation button to begin making your adjustment.

You now have three slider bars you are able to adjust: Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. These are pretty self-explanatory. The Hue Bar adjusts what colors are most prominent. The Saturation Bar will emphasize the appearance of the colors, and the Lightness Bar simply lightens or darkens your selection.

Notice the pull down menu that currently read Master. This pull down menu allows you to select the specific hues to which you can make an adjustment: reds, blues, yellows, etc. Leaving it on Master, your adjustment will affect all hues similarly.

One cool feature Photoshop includes is predetermined adjustment that allows you to select a style of adjustment already designed, such as Sepia or Cyanotype. At the top of the Hue/Saturation adjustment tab is a pull down menu that is defaults to custom. You can click on this menu, and go through the different preset PhotoShop offers.

Step 8

My Nebula is looking pretty cool now, and I think I am almost done. One thing I don’t care for much is the brighter plain greens around the outskirts of the nebula, although I like the turquoise a lot. To adjust this, I will simply take another color range sample of the greens, with a relatively low intensity, and make another Color Balance adjustment. Bringing up the reds and turning down the green midtones will help blend these greens into the surrounding redish-browns.

Finishing up

I like the way this looks. If you are not happy with your image, continue making adjustments. Now I am ready to save, and export the image as a .gif. The easiest way to do this is to click File, and select Save for Web and Devices. To see my final cut, click here.

Adobe revamps Adobe TV

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:58:07 +0000

Adobe launched the latest version of Adobe TV today, its popular video channel offering its own official advice and training for Adobe products. The new face of Adobe TV includes the ability to customize your viewing experience and interact with the player during tutorials.

Videos featured instruct on topics ranging from beginning tutorials, such as creating simple animations in Flash CS4, to in depth explorations of Adobe product features, such as Photoshop CS4’s powerful tone-mapping capabilities, to advice on the best ways to integrate CS4 Creative Suite programs.

The new version of Adobe TV was designed in response to feedback from users, and offers a resizable pop-out window that will allow viewers to watch while working within the Adobe programs they are learning about. A free Adobe Media Player associated with Adobe TV is also available, allowing fans to save and watch content offline. The free media player also allows users to stream podcasts and internet shows, collect flash videos, and personalize via filters and playlists.

Changing the Color of Your Car in Photoshop CS4

Kevin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:57:05 +0000

Have you ever wanted to see what your car would look like painted a different color? How about seeing what you would look like with a different hair color? Photoshop CS4 can quickly show you what you car would look like in bright orange, or what you would look like with pink hair, using just a few simple tools that anyone can master. So let’s get started.

Once you have your car photo open in Photoshop CS4, you want to open the Adjustments Panel that is found under Window > Adjustments. For non-destructive photo editing (preserve all the pixels in the original photo), you first want to create an adjustment layer. For this exercise, you want to click on the Hue/Saturation adjustment icon in the top part of the Adjustments Panel. This will create a new Hue/Saturation layer with a layer mask.

When this new layer is selected, you will see the Hue/Saturation Adjustments box with sliders and eye dropper tools. Towards the top of this panel is a drop-down menu that says Master at the top. Using this drop down, select the color of the item you want to change the color of. For instance, if you have a blue car, select Blues. This will this layer to only target that specific color in the photo.

To start changing the color of your car, simply play around with the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders. As you are playing with new colors, you will probably notice some elements in your photo background that are changing colors as well. Now it’s time to use the masking tool to isolate your car from the rest of the background.

Simply select the white mask box on your Hue/Saturation layer, and then change your brush color to black. Select a nice big brush, and start painting the areas of your photo that you don’t want affected by the Hue/Saturation layer. This will create a layer mask that will isolate your car from the rest of the background, keeping everything else in the photo the same color.

That is all there is to it! This quick and easy technique can be applied to any photo to change the color of a specific object.

I mentioned earlier how you can also quickly change something complex in a photo, like hair color. To pull this off, you want to use the lower Hue sliders at the bottom of the Hue/Saturation Adjustments box. Collapse the left and right sliders to a single point, so you are only selecting a very small range of color. Then, use the eye dropper tool to select the hair in your photo. This should capture most all of the individual strands of hair, allowing you to play around with the three color sliders, just like before. If some hair strands were missed using this technique, you can simply expand the range of selected color using the lower Hue slider in the Adjustment box.

For a video overview of everything I’ve talked about here, check out this great video from Creative Sweet TV, from the Adobe TV website.

Editing Video in Photoshop CS4

Kevin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:07:18 +0000

That’s right, I said Photoshop. You can import video files directly into Photoshop CS4 and create all kinds of video effects using adjustment layers and masks.

To begin, simple open up a video file in Photoshop such as .avi or .mpg. Once you have the file open, change to the Video workspace to see the timeline window, which is similar to what you would see in Premiere Pro. This will let you move through the video clip, right inside of Photoshop CS4. You can also save your video file as a .psd file, which will open up as a video clip composed of layers in Premiere Pro.

It is very simple to move files between Photoshop and Premiere Pro. You can even go back into Photoshop once your new video clip is inside your timeline in Premiere Pro. Just save over the old .psd file and the new file will automatically update inside of Premiere Pro. This will save you tons of time from having to move files back and forth in your video workflow.

Carl Soule runs through some cool techniques that you can use to make adjustments to your video file in Photoshop CS4 in the video below. Some of the effects he goes through in this video tutorial include hue/saturation adjustment using an adjustment layer, creating transparency masks to alter the edges of your video clip, and editing a single frame of video in a non-destructive way.

For more cool video tutorials, check out the Short and Suite series on Adobe TV.

QuarkXPress 8 and Adobe Photoshop CS4 Integration

Kevin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:42:18 +0000

Quark and Adobe have always gone hand in hand when it comes to desktop publishing. Most professional publishing designers use Photoshop to prepare their images and QuarkXPress to do the layouts. The new QuarkXpress 8 has even more features that work seamlessly with Photoshop CS4, to save you time.

QuarkXPress 8 has better integration with Photoshop CS4′s PSD format than any other layout software. You can bring a PSD into QuarkXPress 8 the same as you would bring in any other image. However, with the PSD format, you are able to maintain an image’s layers. This lets you toggle easily between different images and layers in Quark, using a single imported image file. Importing an image in the PSD format also lets you use features like spot color and alpha channels, right inside your layout.

To import a PSD into QuarkXpress, create a picture box and use the File > Import Picture command like usual. To unlock the features of your PSD file, go to Window > PSD Import to open the PSD palette. This will give you full control over your layers.

Once the PSD palette is open, you will see that you are able to control layer opacity and blending modes, along with turning specific layers on and off. You can play with all of these settings right in your page layout, saving you from having to toggle back and forth between Photoshop and Quark. Also, QuarkXPress doesn’t alter the original PSD file, so all of these new layer changes are non-destructive. This allows you to use the same PSD file multiple times in a layout, without fear of altering the original image.

PSD files will output to PDF or print without any additional changes. Just use the QuarkXPress color management tools like usual. To optimize your PSD files for import into QuarkXpress, convert all layer effects to standalone layers. This will allow you to edit effects layers inside your layout. Also, convert all Photoshop vector shapes to smart objects. Text layers are supported as they come.

Just because QuarkXPress 8 supports PSD files doesn’t mean you should always import your images in this format. Sometimes you know for sure that your image is going to stay flattened, or you don’t have a PSD version of the file. In these cases, QuarkXPress 8 has some great features that will save you tons of time.

The Picture Effects tool uses a Photoshop-like image editor right inside QuarkXPress. This tool lets you make quick changes to your images like crop, rotate, add effects, or alter color. It is non-destructive as well, so you can always change your mind down the road.

Picture Effects also allows you to process all of your image changes in batch, so you don’t have to recreate them later in Photoshop. Picture Effects will output all of your new, edited images to a folder that is ready to send to the printer. No more switching back and forth between Photoshop to create all of your image changes! Just go to File > Collect for Output, then switch to the Vista tab and check Render Picture Alterations. That’s all there is to it.

New Quark Promotions

SoftwareMedia is running a couple Quark promotions this month that offer incredible savings. Starting June 15th, the price for QuarkXPress 8 will drop $200 to only $529! This software has an MSRP of $799. This promotion only lasts until July 15th, so take advantage of it while you can.

Also, all Quark licensing products have already been reduced in price. See our Quark Licensing page for more information and pricing. These prices are only available until the end of June.

For information on QuarkXpress 8, check out the official website.

Running Adobe CS4 With 64-Bit Vista

Kevin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:18:55 +0000

If you spend a lot of time using processor draining video or photo editing workflows with Adobe CS4, you’ve probably thought about upgrading your computer hardware. If you are considering buying a new PC, you should definitely think about installing 64-bit Vista. All Adobe CS4 applications can be optimized on a 64-bit system, giving you the maximum performance possible.

Unfortunately, not many people have spent time using a 64-bit operating system…well unless you have a Mac running OS X Leopard. All newer Macs come standard with a native 64-bit OS, but that’s another story. So, if you use a PC, chances are you are still using a 32-bit version of XP or Vista. If you already have CS4 and are experiencing slowdowns when switching between different applications in your workflow, or you have to render your projects overnight, 64-bit Vista is for you.

The main difference between a Windows 32 and 64-bit system is the usage of RAM. With a 32-bit system, you top out at 4GB. Once Vista is up and running, you actually only have between 2 and 3GB of RAM to work with. This is simply not enough to do any HD video editing in Premiere Pro or open very large files in Photoshop. With a 64-bit Vista system, you can add memory up to 32 GB, or more!

You may have heard that only Photoshop CS4 offers native 64-bit support for Windows Vista. Well, you heard right. However, all of the other CS4 applications like Premiere Pro CS4 and After Effects CS4 were optimized for 64-bit operating systems, allowing them to take advantage of systems with RAM to spare.

Now, upgrading to 64-bit Vista won’t magically make your programs run twice as fast. However, you will notice dramatic differences in speed in labor intensive operations like video rendering and switching between Lightroom and Photoshop. Speed tests by Adobe have shown up to a 200% speed increase in Premiere Pro running on 64-bit Vista with 16GB of RAM, over a 32-bit system with only 4GB of RAM. Not too shabby.

This is all well and good, but how do you get started? First, you need to buy or build a computer with 64-bit Vista in mind. This means spending some extra money on 16 or 32GB of RAM, but with the price of memory at an all-time low, you should be able to buy 16GB for well under $500. You also need to make sure your hard disk(s) are fast enough to keep up. Ideally you want a hard disk that can sustain a data rate up to 20MB per second and spin at 7200 rpms or greater. You can use a RAID array with a couple disks for the best possible performance. When installing Vista 64, you need to make sure it is upgraded to SP1. You will also need to download the latest 64-bit drivers for all of your hardware.

Now that your 64-bit Vista system is up and running, you need to make some adjustments to Adobe CS4 to ensure all of your applications are taking advantage of all that RAM.

-In Premiere Pro CS4, you need to adjust the size of the paging file to twice the amount of installed RAM. So, if you are running 16GB of RAM, you need to allocate 32GB of hard disk space for the paging file. You also need to upgrade to the latest version of Premiere Pro, which ensures it will recognize more than 4GB of RAM.

-In After Effects CS4, go under Preferences – Memory & Multiprocessing to adjust the amount of memory per core.

-All other CS4 applications should take advantage of the extra memory automatically.

Adobe is currently working on designing all Creative Suite applications to work out of the box in a 64-bit environment. However, this will not be a reality until the release of CS5. Also, Microsoft is pushing 64-bit systems even more with their next release of Windows 7 this fall. Eventually, all PC’s will be running a 64-bit operating system, but why not be ahead of the curve right now?

For further reading and additional info, check out these links:

Adobe CS4 Production Premium 64-bit White Paper

Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe’s 64-bit Roadmap

Dreamweaver CS4 – Setting Up Your Site Tutorial

Kevin — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:18:57 +0000

Adobe TV recently launched its new season of CS4 shows. One of my favorites is Taming the Web by Greg Rewis. This new season of Taming the Web will consist of 12 episodes, walking you through creating a new site from scratch with Adobe CS4 Web Premium.

Greg Rewis is a long-time Dreamweaver user, and his way of walking you through a particular concept is clear and very straightforward. The new season of Taming the Web is even better than last year’s. Adobe TV is definitely catching on with users, and they are putting more and more effort into each episode. This is great for those of us that use Adobe products and want some clear tutorials, without having to pay for them.

I have embedded the first episode of Taming the Web below, to get you hooked on the series. This episode walks you through the site set up process in Dreamweaver CS4. Greg explains how to correctly configure the intial set up settings for your particular site using the Dreamweaver wizard. He also shows you how to use the new version control feature in Dreamweaver using a subversion server. This allows you to “go back in time” to any previous save of the site you’re working on, allowing you to reverse recent changes to your code. The next episode will look at actually creating your new website, once you have your settings configured correctly in Dreamweaver CS4.

Turning 2D Images into 3D Art with Photoshop CS4

Kevin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:56:54 +0000

Adobe TV recently featured a tutorial on how to turn a regular 2D photo into an amazing 3D image using the new 3D capabilities found in Adobe Photoshop CS4. You really have to watch the tutorial to see how amazing this feature is.

The host of Creative Sweet TV, Mike McHugh, created this tutorial to walk you through various 3D tools found in the newest version of Photoshop. Despite what you may think, 3D creation is almost effortless with these various tools.