By watching ‘over the shoulder’ of an expert through the medium on video tutorials a newcomer or beginner can quickly learn the Photoshop’s capabilities and how to harness them. Even advanced users can watch Photoshop Video Tutorials and learn quickly how to create special effects and access new features as the program develops.


There are things that can be accomplished with this program that simply stun and amaze most people. Photoshop is even used to create complete websites! All you have to do in order to be a great designer is to learn the ropes of this photo design program.

But have you ever tried reading through a book that promised to be the easiest and quickest way to learn the Photoshop program? Many people who have tried to learn from such books will most likely agree that it is like trying to understand a foreign language you have never seen before. There are many technical terms and phrases in such books that someone who did not attend graphic design school would not understand.

The best way to learn how to master the program is through Photoshop VideoTutorials. The best way to learn anything, whether you are in fourth grade or approaching forty years old is to see the information. Seeing and placing those important images in your memory bank will ensure that you are able to recall on that information when the time call for it. By listening and watching such Tutorials, or videos, you will be able to not only learn how to sue the program yourself but you will have enough of an understanding of the system that you could probably teach someone else a few things.

Even ’static’ screenshot-and-text tutorials are better than books, but even these are nowhere near as effective as actual tutorials using the Photoshop program made into videos are.

When you watch Photoshop video tutorials you will be seeing experts run the Photoshop program you can work right along side them and mimic what they are doing. This is a great way to help make sure that everything that you have learned through the Tutorials will stick with you for a very long time, particularly if they are video tutorials. Learning through action is a great way to make sure that you truly understand the information that is being relayed to you.

Many of the things that you will be taught through the Photoshop Video trials you will not find anywhere else. Screen shots along with text explanations are not a great way to learn anything about this simple, yet complex program. You also will not be able to properly learn about color calibration by using ICC profiles.

When an expert’s actions are captured on screen in a dynamic fashion as when recording Photoshop vide tutorials, you will be able to immediately see on screen the effects of moving various sliders and applying brush strokes and other special tools.

While you may have been interested in the program before, after watching a few Photoshop Video Tutorials you will be addicted to trying out all of the new tools you have learned about.

But where does a person find these Video Tutorials? When searching the web you may think at first that you have stumbled upon a ton of great Tutorials on Photoshop. Once you take a closer look though you will probably find that most of the results gave you nothing more then screen shots with text instructions. You are really going to have to dig in there to find all of the information you need in the video format you need it in. There is no reason to settle for lower education when there is the wonderfully created video Tutorials out there waiting for you to make use of them.

Once you find a couple of the Photoshop Video Tutorials and take a look at them for yourself, you will see what all of the trouble was for. Photoshop for you will never be the same again now that you are able to sit over the shoulder of a professional as they walk you through the detailed steps of how to turn a blank page into a digital masterpiece. You will also want to make sure that you are book-marking those pages so that you can easily find them again for reference later down the road.

So instead of searching online for ‘Photoshop Tutorials’, make sure that in future you add the word ‘video’ as in ‘Photoshop Video Tutorials’. In fact, because you don’t want to pay for the videos - you want them to be free, don’t you, I would search for ‘Free Photoshop Video Tutorials’.

Another thing to look for when searching for ‘Free Photoshop Video Tutorials’, is to make sure that the video tutorials are properly categorised into groups so that you can quickly find the set of video tutorials covering the topic you are interested in.

The sky is the limit with Photoshop. And now that you have the proper Photoshop Video Tutorials to walk you through the process you can reach new heights with your work.

First off, there’s Adobe’s own Photoshop tips website, which you can find at adobe.com/products/tips/photoshop. The selection of tutorials here is not that wide, however, and the writing style can often be a little dry.

A good resource for basic, starter tutorials is psworkshop.net. While the site lacks more advanced material, it has quite in-depth explanations of each tool and what it can do.

For fans of About.com, you can find material on Photoshop at graphicssoft.about.com and graphicdesign.about.com. The advantage of about.com is that all the material on a particular sub-site is written by the same expert (they call them About.com Guides), giving it a consistent tone and quality.

If you want new tutorials all the time, good-tutorials.com is a good place to go, with hundreds of Photoshop tutorials being added every day. They are well-categorised and easily searchable. Once you get good enough, you can even submit tutorials here yourself, and other members will vote on them - the ones with the most votes get featured on the main page.

A good way to find links to the very best tutorials out there on the web is to use Google and tell it exactly what you want, but that doesn’t always turn up any results. Another option that is rapidly becoming more popular is to use link-tagging services such as Yahoo!’s del.icio.us. Going to del.icio.us/popular/photoshop will show you which links are currently the most popular across the whole web for photoshop. It works for anything else, too - just replace the word Photoshop with whatever you’re looking for.

First of all, you need to remember that most professional photographers today use Adobe Photoshop to edit the digital photos they take. You need to remember that not every photo they take is perfect and some will have the common mistakes in photography, such as the red-eye phenomenon, finger over the lens syndrome and even the hand shake syndrome. Poor exposure is another enemy of photographers.


Whatever it is, professional photographers are able to fix these mistakes by just using Adobe Photoshop. In fact, some professional photographers even edit the photos they take of models with Adobe Photoshop. If you read magazines, and you noticed the near-perfect bodies of models and very smooth skin, then you have an idea on how professional photographers manipulate the photos they take with Adobe Photoshop. For example, if you take pictures of someone who has an ugly looking zit on their face, then you will be able to make their face look perfect by removing the zit or pimple with Adobe Photoshop. In fact, you can even use Adobe Photoshop to make someone fat look like a supermodel.

Here are some of the basic ways on how you can make the photos you take look more professional.

The first is by eliminating the red eye from the photos. You need to remember that even if you are using the latest SLR digital camera with red eye reduction, it will still happen. Adobe Photoshop has red eye tool that will identify and completely remove the appearance of the red eye from the photos you take. It will even remove the red eyes from your pet cat or dog.

Secondly, you will be able to create brighter and clearer photos with more vibrant colors. Adobe Photoshop is meant to be a tool to help clean up an image as well as improve its appearance. With the color enhancing tools and adjust brightness and contrast tools, you will be able to turn dark photos in to something that looks like it was taken in perfect lighting condition. Basically, the tool will allow you to manually adjust the image’s color settings that will result in the sharpest and cleanest appearance of the image as possible.

Another great editing feature of Photoshop is that it will even allow you to remove unwanted objects in the photos you already took. For example, if a seemingly perfect photo was just ruined by a trash can on the background, you can easily remove the trash can and replace it with something else as if the trash can wasn’t even there at all when you took the picture. You can even crop out people from the photos you take and even replace the background.

These are just some of the great things that you can do with Photoshop. As you can see, even an amateur photographer like you will be able to take professional looking pictures. With the help of Adobe Photoshop, you will be able to make your photos look as if it was taken by a professional photographer.

• Photoshop Schönheiten at Netzwelt/Spiegel

The most popular free (open source) program for replacing Photoshop is known as the GIMP - not the most politically-correct of names, but then it was never really intended for the mass market. Originally a Linux application, it has been ported to Windows. While it performs most of Photoshop’s functions effectively, the interface is, yet improving with every version, still awkward.

To solve this problem, some people set about taking the GIMP and adjusting its interface to make it into a virtual Photoshop clone. The result is called Gimpshop, and works quite well - if you’re looking for a free Photoshop, this is pretty much your best option.


Apart from that, you could try Paint.net. Originally intended as a replacement for Paint, the simple drawing program that comes with Windows, Paint.net has quite quickly turned into something more on the scale of Photoshop. Developed by university students from the ground up, it is a project to watch, and runs much faster than Photoshop does with an arguably more intuitive interface.

Of course, if you’re just after a simple program for converting file formats, rotating pictures and removing red eye, then all of this is complete overkill - even something like Paint Shop Pro is really too advanced for these simple tasks. Instead, you should be looking at programs like Microsoft’s Digital Image, IfranView and Google’s Picasa. At heart, these are simple photo management programs with only the functions that you’re likely to need for digital photo adjustment, avoiding all the distractions that high-end tools like Photoshop can bring.

Actions are macro routines condensed into buttons and quick-key combinations. With Actions you can ‘record’ routines at any level of complexity to use later on other images.

So many people are unaware of the existence or Actions or are too scared to use them, but they really are quite straight forward to implement.

Where to start?

We will need to open an image within Adobe Photoshop and ensure that the Action floating palette is open. If you can’t find the Action palette, simply go to (menu bar) Window>Actions or press Alt and F9.


Depending on your current setup, the Action palette should present you with a collapse and expand list. If all you see are colour buttons, then click on the small menu icon (triangle in a circle) at the top right of the Actions palette and choose ‘Button Mode’ from the drop-down list. This toggle feature should switch from button mode to development mode, allowing you to create and edit Actions.

Creating an Action

Along the bottom of the Action palette you will find the ‘Create new action’ button (2nd from the right). Click on it.

The New Action dialogue box should appear. Type in a name for your Action, choose a colour (for colour coding purposes) and a short-cut to it if you wish. You can also organise your Action into ‘Sets’, but they are not covered in this article.

Now click on record to start creating your Action. Nearly everything you do from now on will be recorded.

Experiment with different Adobe Photoshop features, i.e. add a filter, change the image size/colour mode or even transform a layer, etc. You will notice that each and every step you make will now become incorporated within the Actions palette’s listings beneath the name you gave to it.

When you are finished with creating your Action, click on the ‘Stop playing/recording’ button (first from the left) to end.

You should now have successfully created an Action.

To use it, you’d be advised to change back to ‘Button mode’ by clicking on the menu icon on the palette and selecting it from the drop-down list.

Try opening another image and apply your Action to it. Can you now see the possibilities? Actions can be saved and transferred; offering the possibility of exchanging or even selling well constructed and useful Actions over the net. So be creative and most importantly - experiment!

One step further

If you have a CD or folder full of images that you wish to apply your Action to, why not use (menu bar) File>Automate>Batch…. Select your Action, choose a source and target, click on ‘OK’, then go and make a cup of coffee and the job’s done!

This tutorial goes over the basics of creating digital artwork files for business cards and marketing postcards. The following tutorial can also be used to create business stationery including letterheads, compliments slips and label artwork files by adjusting the sizes.


The dimensions mentioned are for landscape items and should be transposed for portrait cards.

Creating Files in Photoshop

Select File > New. Give your file a name, and enter the size.

For business cards set the size to 95mm x 57mm and for A6 post card to 151.5mm x 108mm. These dimensions include the bleed of 3mm (8.5pt) for and business cards and 1.5mm (4.2pt) for post cards.

Set the resolution to 300 pixels/inch, set the mode to CMYK and the contents to White. Click OK.

Ensure you have the page rulers showing, View > Show Rulers. Ensure your rulers are set to cm, Edit > Preferences > Units and Rulers. Now click and drag the guides from the ruler bars.

For business cards set the guides to 3mm, 6mm, 51mm and 54mm vertically and 3mm, 6mm, 89mm and 92mm horizontally. For post cards set the guides to 1.5mm, 4.5mm, 103.5mm and 106.5mm vertically and 1.5mm, 4.5mm, 147mm and 150mm horizontally.

You are now ready to create your design within this template.

Please note, nothing should extend to the outside edge of the document other than items that bleed off the edge of your cards.

The first guide line 3mm (business cards), (1.5mm postcards) is where the cards will be cut and you should try to keep all your text and images within the inner line 6mm (business cards), (4.5mm postcards) to avoid the possibility of anything being ‘clipped’.

Avoid scaling up images, if an imported image is too small scaling up will reduce the resolution and therefore the quality.

When you are happy with your design, save the file as an Adobe Photoshop (.psd) file, this is your back up in case you need to make alterations at any time in the future. This file cannot be uploaded.

Save the artwork

Flatten any layers you may have (Layer > Flatten Image).

Select File > Save As and Choose Photoshop EPS(.eps) Set the preview to None, Encoding to Binary and uncheck all the boxes. Your file is now ready to be supplied for printing.

Approach #1
Open any image.
We are going to use guides and they only work when the Rulers are on an image.
Put the Rulers on the image with Ctrl + R / Cmd + R. Guides will snap to the centre of an image but it is a bit subtle.

To make the job easier, we’ll convert the Ruler measurements to percentage figures.
Right + click / Control + click one of the Ruler bars.
From the pop-up menu, choose percent.
Drag the cursor down from the top Ruler bar to create a new guide.
Drag it down to the 50% mark. It will snap into place.
Drag the cursor right from the vertical Ruler and move it to the 50% mark. It will snap into place.
Where they cross is the exact centre of the image.

Approach #2
The Transform tool has a centre mark in it.
Open an image.
The Transform function only works on a layer and not on a locked Background.
Using the Layers panel, hold Alt and double-click on the Background icon or label.
Bring the Rulers into view with Ctrl + R / Cmd + R.
Open Free Transform with Edit > Free Transform - Ctrl + T / Cmd + T.
Drag a guide down from the horizontal Ruler until it snaps on to the central point of the Transform.
Drag a guide to the right from the vertical Ruler until it snaps on to the central point of the Transform.
Remove the Transform with Ctrl + full stop / Cmd + full stop or use the Esc key.

Note: Copy an object from one image and paste it into another and it will automatically be pasted into the middle of the image.

Photo shop restoration and retouching plays a very important part in saving photos from accidents and the natural wear and tear of time. Photo restoration and retouching provides a workable foundation for restorers to work on photos that need work, without having to alter the original photo in any way. When an original photograph is tinkered with, there is great risk for irreparable damage to occur to the photograph. When people handle their pictures and negatives, they do many things, unintentionally, that are very harmful to them, and most do not even know they are damaging their photos. Photo shop restoration and retouching can produce corrected copies of old photos and photos that have been damaged.


Photo shop restoration and retouching can help with restoring photos that have been damaged by common wear. While many people know that you should not touch pictures, most people think that fingerprints only smudge up a picture. Fingers have acid on them, and can transfer the acid to prints which can ruin them. Photo shop restoration and retouching can correct damage that has been done by acidy fingers. Pictures are actually made of gelatin and tiny silver particles. This makes them susceptible to bug infestation, mold, mildew, and humidity.

Unfortunately, many things that are made for use with pictures are the very things that hasten their disintegration. Photo shop restoration and retouching can give you a picture that is free from the damage that has occurred to your originals. Many picture boards, cardboards, and most glues contain an acid that slowly eats away at the pictures. Even the chemicals that are used to develop the film from negatives are to blame for the eventual demise of these photographs. Photo shop restoration and retouching can give you corrected duplicates of your original, damaged, photos.

Photo shop restoration and retouching can correct sunlight induced fading damage. Most people are commonly aware that sunlight will ruin photographs. Even pictures that were never intentionally put in the sun can still show damage, even if the sun hit the picture for a few minutes each day. Photo shop restoration and retouching can provide a smooth replacement for a sticky, corroded picture, and give you prints that you can safely and proudly display in your home for many years into the future.

Many web and graphics designers use Photoshop to create and design company logos and advertisements. Built in Photoshop effects and filters can make designing professional logos or advertisements a quick and simple process. With the power of layers and opacity, pictures can be blended together and effects such as shadows, blurs, etc. are made possible. And, for those who desire to return to the finger painting days of their youth, Photoshop has a paintbrush tool with countless brush shapes and textures for anyone who just needs to let out their creativity.

Text editing has also become easily accessible because of Photoshop. Perspectives, shapes, and type on a path are just a few examples of the tons of amazing text effects that are available. Slimy, dripping letters or cloud-writing in the sky are made easy from filters and text effects built into Photoshop.

Web designers thrive on Photoshop for making animations using Photoshop with other Adobe products. The things that can be done with Photoshop are literally endless. This is truly and amazing program.

There is no better way of improving your skills, getting recognised and building up ideas than to compete in the Graphic Design Forums. With so many different contest forums on the web it is difficult to pick out the ones that are best suited to for you. There are literally hundreds of web sites offering freelance services and forums.

A good way to help you decide is to think about what kind of results you wish to get out of joining. Some people join to compete against other designers in the hopes of winning competitions and receiving financial rewards. Others join up to learn from their professional competitors and slowly build up their skills and reputation. The problem with competing for money is that unless you are a well established and talented designer with loads of previous experience you are unlikely to win many if any competitions. How do I know this? Well, I tried to do that exact thing for over a year and it rarely paid off for me.


It is important to understand that top professional designers with years of experience will be regularly showing of their creative skills by submitting their superior designs. They have a system in place for quickly and professionally come up with brilliant designs to meet the clients specifications. However, don’t let this put you off as competing against the professionals will help you to improve your own works.

When looking at current submission think of how you could improve upon that design. I am not saying rip off their designs, as this will lead to your account being banned from the forums. Simply acknowledge their work and come up with something equally as original based on the guidelines set by the client and submissions already present.

Here are some useful design forums to look at: Sitepoint.com, Namepros.com, DesignContests.net
and of course: Worth1000.com

Photoshop CS3 supports many new image dimensions as well as files and as such it requires more advanced system performance when compared to its predecessor. The maximum file size that it can support is 300,000 x 300,000 pixels, except for PDF files because those are still constrained by the 30,000 x 30,000 pixel limitations.

What can you do to speed up Photoshop CS3? Look below for some tips.

The options you select as well as the plug-ins that you use in Photoshop greatly affects its performance, the ones which affect it the most are the ones listed here.

Setting Scratch Disks

What is a scratch disk? A scratch disk is similar to a virtual memory in a Mac OS. So for the best performance possible, you must set the primary scratch disk to an already defragmented hard drive that is not used to run the operating system as well as having a good amount of unused space. It should also have a fast read and write speed.

Adjust Cache Levels

Photoshop makes use of image caching to draw high resolution pictures faster on-screen. To enable the Cache Levels options, specify the number of low resolution versions you want Photoshop to store or cache. The more versions you save the slower Photoshop would open the files. The default setting for this is 6 but you can go lower by choosing a number between 1-8. Setting it to the lowest possible would help increase and speed up Photoshop CS3 performance.

Minimizing Palette Preview Thumbnails

Photoshop uses extra memory to display the thumbnail previews in the layers, paths and channels palettes so the more preview thumbnails that Photoshop displays and the larger their size, the more memory is being used to draw and update them. To minimize these previews, click on Palette Options from the Palette pop-up menu then select the smallest size or none for the thumbnail size and then click OK.

Dragging and dropping files

Dragging and dropping in between layers of files is way more efficient than when you are copying and pasting them. Dragging files bypasses the clipboard and directly transfers the data. Copying and pasting on the other hand would involve more transferring of data and takes more time.

By customizing the system you can help speed Photoshop cs3. You can also do this by increasing the amount of memory allocated to Photoshop you can do this by closing applications that you are not using or by disabling extensions that aren’t significant.

Abobe photoshop is not a complicated software package to use, but the abundance of tutorials, photoshop tips, and articles on the subject of photoshop makes it almost impossible to answer specific questions or solve certain problems you may be having. Why should you have to take a tutorial if you have one simple question that you need an answer for? Why read hundreds of photoshop tips when you only need a solution to a single problem? Photoshop forums are the best way to find more specific information or answer questions you may be having concerning Adobe Photoshop.


You’ll find a variety of available and helpful photoshop forums on the Internet, most of them used by people like you who know a little about Adobe Photoshop and are eager to learn more. Photoshop tutorials are very abundant and great for learning how to use photoshop overall, but when it comes to the specifics of digital photography forums are going to be your best bet. Photoshop tips, while useful, don’t often answer the questions that you may have. Using forums to learn photoshop can be very beneficial and a lot more entertaining than sitting through a long photoshop tutorial or reading a photoshop tips page.

Forums are a more relaxed, friendly way of communicating with other photoshop users who have the same problems and questions that you have. Other photoshop users are happy to share their advice and knowledge, which comes only from experience working with Adobe Photoshop. You can learn a lot by conversing with other photoshop users, and the information you receive will be invaluable. While photoshop forums may not be able to replace the knowledge gained from a tutorial, forums can certainly add to that wealth of knowledge and help you with the specifics of using photoshop.

Unlike tutorials and photoshop tips, photoshop forums are a little harder to find on the Internet. Most people do not know that such forums exist, but once you go looking for some photoshop forums you’ll be surprised at how many are available. A specific search of photoshop forums should yield some great results. Reading back entries on forums may be more helpful than you know - chances are, someone before you has asked the same question about photoshop that you have in mind. You can refer to photoshop forums again and again and always find something new, which is not the case with photoshop tutorials that never change and always offer the same information. Forums stay updated and fresh, while photoshop tips pages are rarely updated. Being able to communicate directly with other photoshop users is extremely useful to those who wish to learn more about the details of using Adobe Photoshop for their digital images or graphic web design.

When you want to learn more about the specifics of using Adobe Photoshop, a photoshop tutorial may not be your best bet. While these tutorials are useful, they rarely contain specific information and cannot answer specific questions you may have. A general idea is presented in these tutorials, with little or no time spent on the details of using Adobe Photoshop. In spite of the photoshop tips you may find or the tutorials you may take, the chances are that you will still have some lingering questions, or a new question or idea will pop up the more you use photoshop. Discussing problems and ideas in photoshop forums is not only helpful to you, but to future readers of the forum as well. You will be able to get your questions answered and ideas validated, and eventually someone else can learn from your photoshop knowledge as well. The Internet is a wonderful place to connect with other people, to learn and share information about any subject. Photoshop is just one of the more popular subjects, luckily enough for those who want to know more about using Adobe Photoshop in their personal and professional lives.

Never judge a digital photo without looking at the actual pixels. Image editors often squeeze the image down to the size of your screen (or, even worse, down to the size of a window on your screen). No matter how good the software is, it can’t remove a lot of pixels and still show you the same image. Your image editor should have a menu choice for “Actual Size,” “Actual Pixels” or “1:1.” Slide your chair back a few feet if you need to get a longer view when you’re looking at the actual pixels. And be sure to view your images full-screen; all good editors let you do that.

The display resolution of a digital television or computer display typically refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. Some commentators also use this term to indicate a range of input formats that the display’s input electronics will accept and often include formats greater than the screen’s native grid size even though they have to be down-scaled to match the screen’s parameters. An example of pixel shape affecting “resolution” or perceived sharpness is displaying more information in a smaller area using a higher resolution, which makes the image much clearer. However, newer LCD displays and such are fixed at a certain resolution; making the resolution lower on these kinds of screens will greatly decrease sharpness, as an interpolation process is used to “fix” the non-native resolution input into the displays native resolution output.

So what are the mechanics of this “through the lens” shot to achieve the ghosting effect? 1. Stabilize the camera - using a tripod is best, a stable surface is a second option or, a steady hand as a last resort; 2. Set number of multiple exposures you require for the frame to (N) - usually 1 to 9; 3. For the roll of film in your SLR, determine the film speed (S); 4. Reset the camera film speed (Yes, you can override the setting) to (N S) or, if not an exact match, set it to the absolute closest speed ((N S) adjustment); 5. Take your picture, depressing the shutter button for a total count equalling the number of camera exposures you set in step “2″. Example: 1. You want 6 exposures on the frame (N=6) so set the number of multiple exposures to ‘6′; 2. You’ve determined the film speed is 200 (S=200); 3. Reset the camera film speed to ‘1200′ (= 200 6); 4. Depress the shutter button 6 times (for 6 exposures). Remember: Check and reset the SLR film speed and number of exposures to their original settings before continuing with your next shot. Some SLRs will automatically reset the number of exposures back to ‘1′ before advancing the film to the next frame. It’s always better to verify this.

Photoshop has opened up many new and vibrant ways to change and edit your many photos. Photoshop and other editing tools are the photographers best friend for photos that are perfect except for one thing or just for experimenting on colors and variety. Frame; There are unlimited ways you can put frames around your photos in Photoshop. Vignette; Vignette is a popular effect that involves a soft fade, usually in oval shape, where the photograph is light in center and fades gradually into the background where it gets darker. Vibrant Color; By adjusting the saturation you can turn an otherwise dull photograph into a masterpiece of vibrant color. You can even work with particular color channels while leaving others alone. As you learn Photoshop and start experimenting with adding special effects to your photos you will learn many more techniques as well as different ways to achieve the same effects.

Some things you are going to have to do to start up a photography business are: you have to do is get all the equipment that you’re going to need. This is going to vary depending on what kind of field you want to get into. For example, if you’re planning to become a photographer who specializes in stock car racing, then you are going to need a lot of equipment for taking high speed photos. The good news is that you’re not going to have to spend a lot of money on lighting since these photos will be taken outdoors. Conversely, if you’re planning to photograph fashion models, lighting is going to be critical to your photos and your lighting equipment expense is going to be quite high.

Through highlighting edges of your photo, you also highlight its details. The method of unsharp mask and others like the difference of Gaussians increase the change in brightness close to each step. This technique’s standard version adds a bright halo along the bright edge of the step and a dark halo along the dark edge. Depending on what effect you’d like for your image, there are advantages in just using one or the other. Using both may not do very much to improve your image, though


There are several advantages of using any of the effects for the edges on real images. One is that it reduces interference between steps or detail and the haloes from other, nearby steps. Another thing, the light or dark haloes make other features of the image stand out better from the background.

Start doing this effect on your images using Photoshop by following several procedures:

1st step is duplicate the layer holding the image

2nd step - apply the conventional unsharp mask

3rd step - set the layer blending mode to “Darken” or “Lighten”.

However, you must understand that this only works for 8 bit per channel images - those that can be put into layers but it could function also on 16 bit per channel pictures with Optipix plug-in that allows direct selection of dark or light edges.

If you are not sure about which edge halo to use, there are general rules regarding such:

1. On light background tones, light edges don’t show up well and vice versa on dark ones.

2. The halo should lie on the background, not on the foreground. This technique helps the feature stand out without having to change its brightness values.

Sometimes the following rules are in conflict. It is necessary, then, to try several combinations to decide which is best. You can try both edges, light edges only, dark edges only. You can experiment since different regions of your image may call for different answers.

As you experiment for the best results, you’ll come to know that using unsharp mask filter may drive you to add too much additional local contrast. Understand that though adding some local contrast can make a bland image turn into a good one, adding too much creates a disaster. Take care not to add too much and make the image appear more like caricatures than photos. Remember that what looks best on the computer screen may not be the same in print since the process somewhat compresses contrast and blurs detail.