Using Photoshop's Shear Filter

This is the first of what I hope will be more video tutorials. How many that will be posted will depend on the time available to create them. I hope you enjoy this and those that follow.

Simulated Lighting Revised

1. Open scene where you want to add simulated lightning
a. Set foreground color to i. H - 215 ii. S – 36 iii. B – 33
2. Add New Layer to make the scene look stormier.
3. Choose the Gradient Tool > Linear Foreground to Transparent
a. Drag from the top to the bottom
4. Change Blend Mode of this layer to Multiply
a. Reduce Opacity to 80%
5. Add New Layer named Lighting
6. Default colors
7. Gradient Tool > Foreground to Background
a. Drag across small distance on a slight angle
8. Filter > Render > Clouds (new)
9. Filter > Render > Difference Clouds - note: you can press Ctrl + F to reapply this filter until you get the look you want.
10. Levels – move Midtone slider to ~ 3.66
11. Invert, Ctrl+I
12. Levels – Mid-tone slider to the right to make black
13. Change to Screen Mode
14. Hue/Sat – check Colorize
15. Move slider to the right 15.
16. Delete the unwanted "strikes" either paint them with black or select them with Marquee slection tool then Delete.
17. When you have a single strike and want to create a branch with the rectangleur Marquee select lower part of the lighting
18. Crtrl+J to copy selection to a layer
19. Use Ctrl + T, Free Transform to change size and move into a position to attach it to the main strike.

There you have it.

Creating Textured Wood in Photoshop

This technique works in Elements as well as all releases of Photoshop

1. Open new document
2. Add a new layer name wood (Alt+New Layer icon allows you to name the layer)
3. Fill Layer with dark wood - R102, G53, B26
4. Filter > Noise > Add Noise
5. Amount - 90, Uniform, Monocromatic
6. Filter > Blur > Motion Blur
7. Angle 0 degrees, Distance -85
8. Stretch sideways to apply the filter to the whole layer using
9. Free Transform + Alt and drag the right side to the right. By holding the Alt key when dragging the left side is expanded to the left as well.
10. Adjustment > Levels – bring in the white point to the left and the black point to the right until you get the wood look you desire.
11. This will give you a smooth wood look. You can add texture after the next step.
12. Photoshop Liquify is at the Top of the Filter menu as an item in Elements go to Filter > Distort > Liquify
13. In the big dialog box the top tool in the toolbox is the distort tool. With a big brush drag this from left to the right to create the wavy wood textue tool. Do this over the entire image. Experiment with the 3rd and 4th tool that swirls the wood. Play with some of the other tools as well.
14. To get a textured wood look Copy this layer to a new layer and name Texture
15. Filter > Render > Lighting Effects
16. Settings are:
17. Default;
18. Directional;
19. In lighting box drag black spot at the end of the line to inside of the top left corner. Draging it in toward the center lightens the image. Drag to suit;
20. At the bottom of the box is box labeled Texture Channel. Click the down arrow and choose the Blue channel. You can experiment with the other channels; for a rough texture leave the setting between Flat and Mountainous. For less texture move the slider to the left toward flat. White is High should be checked.
21. Click OK

You now should have a nice wood image to use in a variety of ways.

Creating a Soft Focus Look on a Model

With the original non-sharpened image open

1. Filter Convert for Smart Objects
2. Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur - Radius of about 10-15
3. Click OK
4. If you double click the small icons on the right of the Gaussian Blur layer you will bring up the Blending Options box.
   a. Change the Blending mode to Lighten and reduce opacity to about 70%
5. Add another Gaussian Blur layer the same as Step 2
   a. change the blending mode to Darken
   b. reduce Opacity to 60%.
6. On the mask for the Blur filter paint with black on the eyes, eyebrow, mouth and the nose to remove the soft focus from these areas.

Slective Sharpening Using Smart Objects

1. Open image to be sharpened - works well on portraits. I used a model.
2. Use the Spot healing brush to correct skin blemishes- no use sharpening skin blemishes.
3. Filter Menu chose Convert for Smart Filters
4. Click OK in the next dialog box
5. I used the Smart Sharpen filter found in Filters > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen
6. In the Smart Sharpen dialog box I used Lens Blur in the Remove option.
7. Adjust amount and radius to sharpen image. I used 180 as the amount and 1 as the Radius.
8. Note that the skin pores is sharpened which we don't want.
9. In the Shadow tab you can reduce the sharpening effects in the shadows or the highlights. Noise is most noticeable in shadows so you can use this feature to reduce the sharpening in the shadow areas. I chose about 60% Fade Amount
10. Click OK and notice the filter shows a mask Smart Filter. As with any mask you can paint with black to remove. Click in the Mask and you get a border around the mask indicating the mask is active.
11. Gradually paint on the face to remove sharpening from the face.

You now have selectively sharpened the image.

Luminosity Blend Mode

The Luminosity blend mode creates the same result as the “color” mode if the layers are reversed, i.e. the color layer is underneath. The luminosity values within an RGB image have a number of useful applications. The luminosity values can be extracted from an RGB image (from the channels palette) and saved as an alpha channel, used as a layer mask or pasted as an independent layer above the layer.

Increase contrast using Luminosity

To increase an image's contrast using the Luminosity Blend Mode, with the image open

1. Load the luminosity of the image by, in the Channels palette Ctrl+click the RGB channel.
2. Control+J to copy the luminosity as a layer and name lighten.
3. Change the lighten layer's blend mode to Screen. This lightens the highlights.
4. To increase contrast we now want to darken the shadows.
5. Click the Background layer and load the luminosity by Ctrl+Click on the RGB channel as in step 1.
6. Inverse the selection by Shift+Ctrl+I
7. Ctrl+J to load the selection to a layer and name darken.
8. Change blend mode to Multiply.
9. The image's contrast has been increased.

Photoshop Smart Objects

Photoshop Smart Objects Mean Never Having to Say You're sorry is the title of a Creative Pro article on Smart Objects. This article can be accessed by clicking on
http://www.creativepro.com/article/photoshop-smart-objects-mean-never-having-say-youre-sorry
In the article is a link to download the images used in the tutorial. The link is Smart_Files.zip. Click on this link in the article to download the files.
If for some reason the link to the article doesn't work, do a Google search on "smart_files.zip".