A few photoshop tricks (and calibrating your monitor)

I mentioned in an earlier post that my husband is working for a digital photography company who puts out high end catalogues. He's learning all sorts of cool photoshop tricks, and I wanted to pass some along.

First, I had mentioned calibrating your monitor. We figured out how to do it - it's quite easy and REALLY improves the look of the screen.

Go to Start
Go to Control Panel
Click on "Adobe Gamma" (it's the top row on my Windows XP)
It will give you a choice of what profile to use. I used AdobeRGB (Matt picked it actually - I think because I use Adobe Photoshop). If you use another photo manipulation program there might be another choice.
Then just go through the steps - it's really easy.

Voila! I hope this works and helps!

Susan

 

One of the other cool tricks he taught me is how to brighten up or darken spots on your photo.

Enter Quick Mast Mode (hit the Q key)

Make sure that black is the foreground color.

Choose a soft edged brush from the brush palette.

Paint over the parts that you would like to alter. It will show up pink.

Hit Q again to exit Quick Mask Mode. You will see the "dancing ants".

Go to Image. Then to Adjust. chen those what you'd like to change - the levels or suration for example. You will see it change on the screen.

Click Control D to end.

 

And finally, this one is my favorite - it's really fun. But it takes a minute to get the hang of it.

To finely adjust the colors and contrast...

Hit Control M

This brings up a screen. Click on the black eye dropper - the furthest left of three buttons on the bottom of the screen. Then click on the darkest part of the photo.

Click on the white eye dropper (furthest right). Then click on the brightest part of the photo.

Click on the gray eye dropper (middle) and click on the most mid tone gray of the photo - you might have to click around a bit.

This will alter the color of the picture, and if you hit it right, it looks AMAZING.

However, you may need to tweak it a bit - so you can wiggle the line on the graph on the right side of the screen and it will make adjustments. You can also change only certain colors, using the Channel pull down menu at the top. This is a little tricky, but it's cool!

I hope these are clear!

Ill keep picking his brain.

Susan