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Basic Techniques

I know several people who claim that they can't paint, and yet they create beautiful work in Photoshop. Even though they don't have sufficient hand-eye coordination to write their names on screen, they have unique and powerful artistic sensibilities, and they know many tricks that enable them to make judicious use of the paint and edit tools. I can't help you in the sensibilities department, but I can show you a few tricks to boost your ability and inclination to use the paint and edit tools.

Painting a straight line

Photoshop provides a line tool that lets you draw straight lines. It's a surprisingly flexible tool, permitting you to draw vector-based layers or pixel-based lines, and you can even add arrowheads. If you'd like to learn about it, I explain the line tool and others like it in Chapter 14.

The main reason I use the line tool is to fashion arrows (as I explain in the "Applying Strokes and Arrowheads" section of the next chapter). If I don't want arrows, I usually take advantage of Photoshop's other means for creating straight lines: the Shift key. By Shift-clicking with any of the tools introduced in this chapter, you can paint or edit in straight lines.

Try this: Using the brush tool, click at one point in the image and then press Shift and click at another point. Photoshop connects the start and end points with a straight stroke of paint. You can use this same technique with the pencil, or to blur, smudge, dodge, or otherwise edit pixels in a straight line.

To create free-form polygons, continue to Shift-click with the tool. Brush Size and Shape" section. I also used a variety of colors sampled from the image by Alt-clicking (Option-clicking on the Mac). Most importantly, I painted the image on a separate layer. This served two purposes: I was able to protect my original image from harm, and I could erase mistakes along the way by clicking and Shift-clicking with the eraser tool. (I discuss layers in Chapter 12 and the eraser in Chapter 7.) But as a matter of principal, I only Shift-clicked with the brush tool; I never dragged.

Figure 5-4: Starting from an image by photographer Barbara Penoyar (top), I created a stylized tracing (bottom) by clicking and Shift-clicking with the brush tool on a separate layer.

Figure 5-5: It takes one 1 click and 21 Shift-clicks to soften or sharpen the edges around this knife using the blur or sharpen tool.

Figure 5-6: The results of blurring the knife's perimeter with the Strength value in the Options bar set to 50 percent (top) and 100 percent (bottom).

Figure 5-7: The results of sharpening the knife with the Strength value set to 35 percent (top) and 70 percent (bottom). Anything higher produced an oversharpening effect.

Painting a perpendicular line

To create a perpendicular line — that is, a line that is either vertical or horizontal — with any of the paint or edit tools, press Shift while dragging with the tool. Releasing Shift returns the line to freeform, as illustrated in Figure 5-8. Press Shift in mid-drag to snap the line back into perpendicular alignment.

Figure 5-8: Pressing Shift after you start to drag with a paint or edit tool results in a perpendicular line for as long as the key is pressed.

One way to exploit the Shift key's penchant for snapping to the perpendicular is to draw "ribbed" structures. To create the central outlines around the skeleton at the top of Figure 5-9, I dragged from right to left with the brush tool. I painted each rib by periodically pressing and releasing Shift as I dragged. In each case, pressing Shift snapped the line to the horizontal axis, the location of which was established by the beginning of the drag.

Figure 5-9: To create the basic structure for our bony pal, I periodically pressed and released Shift while dragging with the brush tool (top). Then I embellished the fish using the brush and pencil (middle). Finally, I applied a Bevel and Emboss layer effect and set the fossil against a patterned background (bottom).

After establishing the basic skeletal form, I added some free-form details with the brush and pencil tools, as shown in the middle image in Chapters 7 and 14, respectively, for complete information on patterns and layer effects.) Nobody's going to mistake my painting for a bona fide fossil, but it's not too shabby for a cartoon.

Painting with the smudge tool

Many first-time Photoshop artists misuse the smudge tool to soften color transitions, which is the purpose of the blur tool. The smudge tool is designed to smear colors by shoving them into each other. The process bears more resemblance to finger painting than to any traditional photographic-editing technique.

In Photoshop, the performance of the smudge tool depends in part on the settings of the Strength and Finger Painting controls in the Options bar. Here's what you need to know about these options:

Strength: The smudge tool works by repeatedly stamping the image hundreds of times throughout the length of a brushstroke. The effect is that the color appears to get pushed across the length of the stroke. The Strength value determines the intensity of each stamping, so higher values push colors the farthest. A Strength setting of 100 percent equates to infinity, meaning the smudge tool pushes a color from the beginning of your drag until you release your mouse button. Figure 5-10 shows a few examples.

Figure 5-10: Three identical drags with the smudge tool subjected to different Strength settings. In each case, I began the brushstroke at the eye and dragged downward.

Finger Painting: Back in the old days, the folks at Adobe called this effect dipping, which I think more accurately expresses how it works. When you select this option, the smudge tool begins by applying a smidgen of foreground color, which it eventually blends in with the colors in the image. It's as if you dipped your finger in a color and then dragged it through an oil painting. Use the Strength setting to specify the amount of foreground color applied. If you turn on Finger Painting and set the Strength to 100 percent, the smudge tool behaves like the brush tool. Figure 5-11 shows examples of finger painting with the smudge tool when the foreground color is set to white.

Figure 5-11: The same three drags pictured in Figure 5-10, but this time with the Finger Painting option turned on and the foreground color set to white.

The Use All Layers option instructs the smudge tool to grab colors in all visible layers and smudge them into the current layer. Whether the option is on or off, only the current layer is affected; the background and other layers remain intact.

For example, suppose the mask around the woman's eye on the left side of Figure 5-12 is on a different layer than the rest of the face. If I use the smudge tool on this mask layer with Use All Layers turned off, Photoshop ignores the face layer when smudging the mask. As a result, details such as the eye and skin remain unsmudged, as in the middle example in the figure. If I turn Use All Layers on, Photoshop lifts colors from the face layer and mixes them with the mask layer, as shown in the right-hand example.

Figure 5-12: The original image (left) features a mask on an independent layer in front of the rest of the face. I first smudged the mask with Use All Layers turned off (middle) and then with the option turned on (right). In both cases, the Strength setting was set to 80 percent and the brushstrokes were identical.

Mopping up with the sponge tool

The sponge tool is actually a pretty simple tool, hardly worth expending valuable space in a book as tiny as this one. But I'm a compulsive explainer, so here's the deal: When the sponge tool is active, you can select either Desaturate or Saturate from the Mode pop-up menu in the Options bar. Here's what they do:

Desaturate: When set to Desaturate, the sponge tool reduces the saturation of the colors over which you drag. When you're editing a grayscale image, the tool reduces contrast.

Saturate: If you select Saturate, the sponge tool increases the saturation of the colors over which you drag or increases contrast in a grayscale image.

You can switch between the Desaturate and Saturate modes from the keyboard. Press Shift+Alt+D (Shift-Option-D on the Mac) to select the Desaturate option. Press Shift+Alt+S (Shift-Option-S on the Mac) for Saturate. No matter which mode you choose, higher Flow settings produce more dramatic results.

To see the sponge tool in action, take a look at Color Plate 5-1. The first example shows a photograph of a delicately featured woman from the Corbis image library. The rest of the color plate shows me adding a virtual face-paint mask around the woman's eyes, a technique that relies heavily on the burn and sponge tools. The following steps explain how I did it.

STEPS: Sponging Color Saturation In and Away

Draw the mask. To make the mask, I drew the mask outline using the pen tool set to the Paths mode. For more information about this wonderful tool, read the section "How to Draw and Edit Paths" in Chapter 8.

Convert the path to a selection outline. After drawing the mask outline and eyeholes, I converted the path to a selection outline by Ctrl-clicking (or z -clicking) it in the Paths palette. If you're intimidated by the pen tool and Paths palette, you could create a similar selection using the lasso tool but it wouldn't look as smooth. Chapter 8 tells you more.

Jump the selection to a layer. I next pressed Ctrl+J (z -J on the Mac) to copy the selection to an independent layer. This protected the image so that any edits I applied to the mask would not harm the face.

Burn the mask. Color Plate 5-1. (Note that no other tools or commands were used to darken the mask — that's 100-percent burn tool. See what I meant by my earlier toast analogy? That burn tool makes some tasty looking toast.)

Sponge away saturation. The mask had a nice tone to it. But to get more of a Mardi Gras effect, I wanted to introduce some difference in saturation values. I began by painting around the eyes inside the mask. Because the Mode option in the Options bar was set to Desaturate, this sucked away the color around the eyes, leaving mostly gray.

Sponge in saturation. Still armed with the sponge tool, I changed the Mode setting to Saturate and painted along the forehead of the mask and the bridge of the nose. This drew out some vivid oranges. Then I switched to the face layer and painted the eyes, lips, and hair to increase their saturation as well.

Dodge the eyes. Want to make a person look better? Use the dodge tool on the eyes. Just a click or two on each eye brightens the irises and gives the person an almost hypnotic stare. A little bit of extra dodging makes a person look downright freaky, like some kind of radioactive X-Men character. Which is a good thing, needless to say.

The finished image appears at the bottom of Color Plate 5-1. Note that while the woman now appears more brightly colored, she does not look more made up. That's because the sponge tool doesn't add color to an image; it merely enhances the colors that are already there. This makes the tool a bit unpredictable at times as well. For my part, I was surprised to see the hair turn a fiery orange and the tips of the earrings go purple. You never know what you'll find when you raise saturation values.

The sponge tool works with grayscale images, but its effects are much more subtle, reducing and enhancing the contrast between neighboring pixels. The first image in Color Plate 5-1. To create the second image in Figure 5-13, I started by lightening the eyes and skin with the dodge tool. Then I set the sponge to Saturate and dragged all over the place. The result was a pumped-up image with a lot more depth and contrast.

Figure 5-13: The middle image from Color Plate 5-1 (top) followed by that same image enhanced with the dodge and sponge tools in Photoshop's grayscale mode (bottom).

Using the color replacement tool

It's no secret that Photoshop is the most powerful image-editing software on the planet — if you can picture it in your mind's eye, Photoshop can paint it in pixels. Yet for years, casual users and professionals alike have had no easy, one-click method of dealing with the age-old photographer's curse known as "red-eye." Red-eye is a photographic anomaly caused by either the flash of your camera reflecting off the back of your subject's eye, or your subject having been possessed by some kind of horrifying demon.

The color replacement tool works by taking a color sample from the area in which you first click and then applying the foreground color to any area that matches the sample. For instance, if you were trying to clean up some red-eye, you would set the foreground color to a dark or medium gray, select the color replacement tool, and then click and hold on the reddest section of eye you can find. What you're doing is telling the tool "You see this shade of red? A red so deep and piercing that it's as though you're staring into oblivion itself? Do your magic." As you drag with the tool, Photoshop replaces any section of matching red with your more natural gray while leaving the non-red-eye components of your image untouched.

When you're dealing with a problem like red-eye, the color replacement tool can usually give you the results you need in just one or two clicks. But as I mentioned earlier, the tool is capable of expertly replacing large chunks of one color with another in a variety of situations. You control the behavior and sensitivity of the color replacement tool using the settings in the Options bar. Here's how they break down:

Brush: You don't get a whole lot of brush choices when using the color replacement tool. The minimalist controls found in the Brush option bear a closer resemblance to Photoshop 6-era brushes than the snazzy, robust Brushes palette available to a number of the other tools.

Mode: This setting tells the tool how to combine the newly painted pixels with the existing ones in your image. By default, the Mode option is set to Color, and you're generally going to want to leave it there. Because the Color mode affects hue and saturation, or the color values of an image, but doesn't affect luminance, or lightness values, it's generally the way to go. However, you can achieve some nice results by just experimenting with the different brush modes. We'll take a close look at painting with brush modes near the end of this chapter.

Sampling: The Sampling option lets you set how Photoshop will decide what color you're replacing. The first option, Continuous, causes the tool to keep sampling colors, nonstop, for as long as you're using the tool. Drag over your red-eye to fix it instantly, but keep dragging until you reach skin and you're left with a grayish, splotchy mess. For example, in the image on the left side of Figure 5-14, I set the Sampling to Continuous and dragged across the middle segment of the boat's sail. Although the tool does a great job of cleanly shifting the color in the target area, the Continuous setting allows it to keep altering the color long after I wanted it to stop.

Figure 5-14: I decided I wanted to change the color of the middle section of the boat's sail. The color replacement tool's Continuous setting lets me replace the correct color area, but it tends to go a little overboard (left). Choosing the Once setting ensures that only the color on which I first clicked will be affected (right).

Much more useful than Continuous is the second Sampling option, Once. This sets the color on which you click when you begin your drag as the target of your replacement. This means that for as long as you continue dragging, only the original color will be affected, as demonstrated on the right side of Figure 5-14. The third and final Sampling setting is Background Swatch. Choosing this option tells the color replacement tool to alter only pixels in your image that share a color with the current background color. It can be a neat way of providing even more control over what the tool will affect, but I still recommend you stick with the Once setting.

Limits: The Limits option lets you set even more guidelines for determining which pixels the tool will affect. Select Discontiguous to replace colors anywhere you drag with the tool. Select Contiguous to replace colors only in areas that are contiguous with, or connected by color to, the color currently under your cursor. The Find Edges option is designed to work the same way as Contiguous while better preserving edge details in the image.

Tolerance: The Tolerance value determines how exact of a color match is required to deem a pixel suitable for replacement. Lower values replace colors similar to the sampled color, and higher values replace a broader range of colors. Most of your work with the color replacement tool will live or die based on this setting, and it can be a bit tricky to get it right. Keep in mind that a value that works for one section of color in an image may not be the correct setting to affect a lighter or darker section of the same color in the image. For the sailboat image in Figure 5-14, I found a Tolerance value between 12 and 15 percent worked best.

Anti-alias: This check box lets you toggle antialiasing, or softening, on or off. It's almost certainly a good idea to keep it turned on.

The color replacement tool won't work perfectly for you all the time, as evidenced by the top image in Color Plate 5-2. Despite its capability to defeat eye-infesting demons, it's not a sorcerer and it does take a bit of experimenting to achieve predictable results. While you're getting acquainted with it, it's not a bad idea to apply the color replacement tool to an area of your image, zoom in closer, and then use the history brush to do a little bit of cleanup. That's precisely what I did to create the bottom image in Color Plate 5-2. For complete details on using the history brush, check out Chapter 7.

Undoing your damage

If you make a mistake in the course of painting an image, stop and choose Edit Undo or press Ctrl+Z (z -Z on the Mac). If this doesn't work, press Ctrl+Alt+Z (z -Option-Z on the Mac) to step back through a sequence of paint strokes.

If you like the basic look of a brushstroke but you'd like to fade it back a bit, choose Edit Fade or press Ctrl+Shift+F (z -Shift-F on the Mac). The Fade command lets you reduce the Opacity or change the blend mode of the brushstroke you just finished painting. (If you have since clicked with another tool, the command may appear dimmed, indicating that you've lost your chance.) The Fade command is applicable to all paint and edit tools, as well as other operations in Photoshop, so we'll be seeing a lot of it throughout this book.