Basic Photoshop Tutorials Using The Eraser Tool

Have an object with edges you want to isolate? This is one way to use the Background Eraser tool.

The Magic Eraser is often used to blast large areas that contain unwanted pixels. It certainly can be effective if you want to get fast results, but it is less than subtle. This works well when you want to eliminate big areas of color that you don’t need. It is not always as useful when you are working with areas that are more intricate.

This is one of the reasons that Photoshop is so great. This program provides the user with lots of selection tool choices. Each tool has its own options that can be
customized.

Now, there are some kinds of selection jobs that work better with the Background Eraser than with the actual Magic Eraser.

The Background Eraser is more versatile and gives you greater control over some of the more difficult tasks. For instance, if you are selecting intricately shaped objects, the Background Eraser may be the tool for the job.

Let’s say you want to isolate your image in your picture by removing the sky. The sky consists of edges that may prove difficult to work with. Remove the sky along with the detailed edges using the Background Eraser tool.

Some selection tools would not be able to handle the job because of the position of the crenulations and the arches of the towers. This makes it very tricky when you want to try to remove the sky that is hidden among all of that other stuff.

Here is the way that you can work with the Background Eraser tool to accomplish the above task. You can cut out the complex shapes easily using the Background Eraser. Now you may need to spend a little time fiddling with the options to get the most use of the tool when you are working on a complex project such as this one.

Begin by selecting the tool from the toolbox and in the options bar you will want to set the Sampling option to Once. Sample a section of the blue sky by clicking and the
background swatch icon will change color.

This lets you know the pixels that are headed for deletion. If you hold the mouse button down and spray the eraser’s brush around the image you will be able to get rid of all the pixels of the same color.

Pixels of other colors will not be removed as you spray around the edge of the building. If you want the best results you can tweak the Tolerance setting.

Basic Photoshop Tutorials Using The Eraser Tool

Have an object with edges you want to isolate? This is one way to use the Background Eraser tool.

The Magic Eraser is often used to blast large areas that contain unwanted pixels. It certainly can be effective if you want to get fast results, but it is less than subtle. This works well when you want to eliminate big areas of color that you don’t need. It is not always as useful when you are working with areas that are more intricate.

This is one of the reasons that Photoshop is so great. This program provides the user with lots of selection tool choices. Each tool has its own options that can be
customized.

Now, there are some kinds of selection jobs that work better with the Background Eraser than with the actual Magic Eraser.

The Background Eraser is more versatile and gives you greater control over some of the more difficult tasks. For instance, if you are selecting intricately shaped objects, the Background Eraser may be the tool for the job.

Let’s say you want to isolate your image in your picture by removing the sky. The sky consists of edges that may prove difficult to work with. Remove the sky along with the detailed edges using the Background Eraser tool.

Some selection tools would not be able to handle the job because of the position of the crenulations and the arches of the towers. This makes it very tricky when you want to try to remove the sky that is hidden among all of that other stuff.

Here is the way that you can work with the Background Eraser tool to accomplish the above task. You can cut out the complex shapes easily using the Background Eraser. Now you may need to spend a little time fiddling with the options to get the most use of the tool when you are working on a complex project such as this one.

Begin by selecting the tool from the toolbox and in the options bar you will want to set the Sampling option to Once. Sample a section of the blue sky by clicking and the
background swatch icon will change color.

This lets you know the pixels that are headed for deletion. If you hold the mouse button down and spray the eraser’s brush around the image you will be able to get rid of all the pixels of the same color.

Pixels of other colors will not be removed as you spray around the edge of the building. If you want the best results you can tweak the Tolerance setting.

Adobe Toolbox Photoshop 7 Tutorials

You’ve probably been hanging out to get stuck into the very nifty Photoshop toolbox. In this article I’ll introduce some of the most frequently used tools found in the toolbox.

You’ll notice that some of the tool icons have small black triangles in their bottom right-hand corners. These icons contain hidden treasures! The triangle indicates that there are more related tools available; if you click on the tool icon and hold it down, a “flyout” menu will appear, displaying the additional tools.

Selection Tools:
You can use the selection tools to select certain areas of your document for editing. If you use a selection tool, only the area that’s selected will be affected by any changes you make. You can “feather” selections (specify a fuzzy radius for them) using the Feather field in the options bar.

Marquee tools (M) are used to create rectangular or elliptical selections, including selections that are “single row” (one pixel tall, stretching across the entire width of the document) and “single column” (one pixel wide, tretching through the entire height of the document).

To make single-row or single-column selections, click with the appropriate tool on the image area where you want to select a row or column. You can use the Lasso tools (L) to create freeform selections.

The Lasso Tool comes in three different forms:

Lasso Tool (L) Click and drag the Lasso Tool to draw a selection area. Releasing the mouse button will close the selection by joining the start and end points with a straight line.

Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) Click at different points to create vertices of a polygonal shape. Close the selection by moving your cursor to the beginning and clicking once, or pressing the Enter key.

Magnetic Lasso Tool (L) If you think you need help with making your selection, try the Magnetic Lasso Tool. Photoshop will attempt to make a “smart” selection by following the edges of contrast and color difference. Click once near the “edge” of an object and follow around it—Photoshop will automatically lay down a path.

You can also click as you follow the line to force points to be created on the path. Close the selection by pressing the Enter key or clicking at a point near the beginning of the selection. The Magnetic Lasso Tool is not available in ImageRead

Adobe Photoshop Tool Shapes

In this article you will how to use the 3 must used tools in Photoshop (Magic Tool, Move Tool and the Crop Tool) and once mastered you'll never be with out them.

Magic Wand:
The Magic Wand Tool (W) selects areas of similar color You can change the tolerance (how close the color values should be to the sampled color in order to be selected) of a Magic Wand selection, and choose whether you want the selection to be contiguous (pixels that are touching) or not (in which case, matching colors across the entire document will be selected)

Tips and Shortcuts for the Magic Wand:
Hold the Shift key to add another selection to the first.

Hold the Alt key (Option key on a Mac) to subtract your new selection from the first.

Hold Shift-Alt (Shift-Option) to select the intersection of your first and second selections.

Use the arrow keys to move the selection pixel by pixel If you feel that this doesn’t move your selection quickly enough, hold down Shift and use the arrow keys to move the selection ten pixels at a time.

Press Ctrl-J (Command-J on a Mac) to copy the selection into its own layer.

To cut the selection into its own layer, press Shift-Ctrl-J (Shift-Command-J)

If this seems familiar to you, it’s because I mentioned earlier how to copy a layer using the same keyboard shortcut Now that you know that not selecting anything sometimes means that everything is selected, it makes sense that simply by selecting a layer in the Layers palette, you can copy the entire layer by pressing Ctrl-J (Command-J)

To deselect a selected area, click outside of it with one of the Marquee tools, or press Ctrl-D (Command-D on a Mac)

To reactivate your last selection, press Shift-Ctrl-D (Shift-Command-D)

The Move Tool:
The Move Tool (V) moves a selected area or an entire layer .

You can invoke the Move Tool temporarily when using most other tools by holding down the Ctrl key (Command key on a Mac)

Tips and Shortcuts for the Move Tool:
For most tools, holding Ctrl-Alt (Command-Option on a Mac) and dragging a selected area will temporarily invoke the Move Tool, allowing you to move and duplicate the selected layer quickly

You can also duplicate a layer by holding down the Alt key (Option key on a Mac) while using the Move Tool,

The Crop Tool:
The Crop Tool (C) is used to trim images Create a selection using the Crop Tool, then double-click the center of the
selection, or press Enter, to crop the image to the size of the selection To cancel without cropping, select another
tool or press the Esc key

Tips and Shortcuts for the Crop Tool:
You can use the Crop Tool to resize your canvas Expand your document window so that it’s larger than the image area, and create a crop selection that includes the image and extends onto the gray areas “outside” the image Applying this crop will resize your canvas to include those extended boundaries, making your canvas larger.

Adobe Photoshop Brushes Techniques

Brushes are the core component of many tools in the toolbox, and confident brush handling is essential for the effective application of these. You need to master brushes because this gives you many ways in which you can use and edit brushes will equip you with a whole new set of skills, and give you access to a wide range of powerful and creative time-saving techniques.

The Brush Preset picker will help you to find the right brush fast so make the most of it

With some Photoshop tools, such as the Clone Stamp, the Brush Preset picker is used simply to edit the tool’s brush size, softness and opacity.

Because the Clone Stamp’s function is to subtly replace one area of pixels with another, you don’t need its brush tip to be shaped like a rubber duck, for example!

However you can use the Brush Preset picker to arm yourself with a variety of creatively-shaped brushes, should your project require them. Working smarter with the Brush Preset picker means maximising its potential. If you’re not already familiar with this interface.

The Brush Preset Picker

Click on the Brustic to open the Brush Preset picker, and scroll down to see the default set of brushes.

Towards the foot of the list of default brushes you’ll find a variety of unusually-shaped brush tips, including brushes shaped like stars and blobs.

Click on the picker’s menu icon to access other, specialised sets of brushes. You can use the picker’s menu to display a thumbnail of the brush stroke, or set it to show the brush tip and name.

The numerical value indicates the brush’s initial diameter in pixels. You can customise this to suit your requirements. When you select a new set of brushes, you can either replace the existing default set or append the new set to it so you can use both.

Adobe Photo Shop Basics

Photoshop users may be used to using many of the tools that are part of the program but have you used the Gradient Editor as a way to customize Photoshop’s default gradients?

You need to have a good working knowledge of Photoshop’s Gradient Tool if you want to be able to make the most of the possibilities and this means you have to be able to master the editing options.

No need to be overwhelmed because this is a fairly easy thing to learn and master, it will just take a little practice.

Begin by selecting the Gradient Tool and then click on the gradient preview located in the options bar. This will open Gradient Editor and you are ready to get to work.

When you have opened Gradient Editor you will see several preset gradients. You can choose from the default Foreground, the Background gradient and even the more complex Chrome gradient.

With some practice you will be able to use the preset gradients to create new ones.

You can edit the preset gradients and design new gradients. Some of the gradients have more color stops than others.

The Foreground to Background gradient has two color stops while the Spectrum gradient has seven color stops.

If you want to modify a gradient you can do so by changing the color stops.

Click on one and choose a new color from the color picker, it’s that easy.

You can also click on an image and sample a color for your customized gradient. When you do this you can use the Eyedropper Tool to customize or you may want to add new color stops to a gradient that already exists.

You just click anywhere along the bottom edge of the preview bar and you will be able to add new color stops.

Maybe you want to add different opacity settings so that you can have an image fade from solid to transparent.

This can be done when you use the opacity stops that run along the top of the preview bar. The black opacity stop will be 100% solid while a white opacity stop will tell you that this part of the gradient is 100% transparent.

The gray stops show you the values in between.