Photoshop tips and tricks

[tiltjlp]

Share your tips and tricks for Photoshop here.

 

[davidsss]

Hey, I'll have a go at starting this. These are really basic tips for Photoshop:

Use the layers Luke!
When touching up a playfield always touch up on a separate layer so you never destroy the original. You can always rub out what you have done on a layer without affecting other layers.
Secondly use the layers to your advantage. In print production there is a thing we call trapping. What is trapping? Glad you asked. When printing a multi-colour document you use 4 colours on the printing press. Printing presses are built for fast cheap production so they are not accurate below a couple of millimetres. So what you do is to overlap the colours and make a solid line with the black ink. To use this concept when touching up a table: when you touch up an image draw black lines on their own layer and then fill in the other colour on a layer beneath - that way you only need to make the black layer exact as it will cover any little mistakes on lower layers. You will notice that there are often black lines drawn on playfields where 2 colours meet - this is because the artists are trapping their colours - I'll put a pic in to illustrate. You will notice that between the red and green in the outlane and between the 2 greens, as well as elsewhere in the pic, there is a black line between the colours. Get the black line right, then draw the other colours on lower layers and you don't need to be so accurate as the black line will cover any little mistakes if it is on a lower layer. I hope this makes sense otherwise I'll have to make a heap of pics!
Remember Layers are your friend!

Brightness and Contrast don't exist
I haven't used brightness and contrast for years. I use levels. If you really need to pull up a really dark image you might have to play with colour balance and the like but that is much more complicated. See if you can get the picture's balance correct in levels. Levels allows you to control the brightness of the bottom, middle and top ends of the image. In other words you can leave the lightest part of the image at the same level of brightness while making the middle and darkest parts of the image brighter (although this will necessarilly decrease contrast which is usually ok). Open up the Levels pallatte by hitting Ctrl-L and you will see a histogram. Looks more complicated than it is: the histogram shows you how much of the image is at various levels of brightness - use it a few times and it makes sense. There are 2 sections to this pallatte - input and output values. Use the input values and slide the 3 handles around and you should get an idea of how they work. This is a really simple way of lightening an image which gives you massively more control than Brightness and Contrast.

Hope this helps some people.

DS

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

@davidsss,
Old thread, but some interesting techniques!

I haven't used PS for years, but I think IrfanView has something analogous to "levels." I'm frequently darkening PF's, and maybe that would be a better way to preserve detail.