Adobe photoshop 6

“its free and its good.


I just got it from my commerical art teacher”

“Free?
Only if you pirate it.

Good?
Understatement of the year. Best version yet.

If you are seriously going into graphic design learn it like the back of your hand and forget the rest.”

“I have 5.5. And am awaiting Version 6 zipped and e-mailed to me byTea. LOL

Hey someone share with me
1) How to use layers effectively
2) How to use "quick mask"

Know any online tutorials on this? I had gotten Photoshop for Dummies like a year ago. (And I'm not a dummy compared to your average Joe Blow Photoshop user)...
The book says on masks "too complicated to explain in this book." GREAT! GEEZ!”

“I have photoshop for dummies also, and that book sucks! The Curves command rocks, and the dummies book says don't bother!

Lizs, definitely check out this link for a good online tutorial. I *hope* that link works. Some good link resources as well.”

“Sometimes it is just so hard to "select" things.... like a feathery or fringe border!! AGHHHHHHH!

I have a photo of a Native American dancing at a rendezvous event. Tons of gross people in the background (like a big fat OBVIOUS woman in a pink shirt...... ACK!)
And pretty much all in the same plane of focus (was using newspaper digital... still haven't developed my Elan II shots, but anticipate an f-stop of around 22 there, too. Was very bright, mid-day. And I don't use filters to darken it, so couldn't open it up more.)

First I tried the blur tool all over ...Otherwise too hard to make all the multi-colored background ONE selection. But eventually I tried it, bit by tiny bit. Still, the area around the fringe is messed up.

Am going to get him and his shadow clear, with the background a cool blur of colors. Shadow is short and close to him, since sun was almost immediately overhead. It will look neat, but am kinda stuck now!! lol

Thanks for the link Bobka/Tripod! I shoulda thought to try "About.com"

Hey, have you started posting at usefilm yet?

More boring PS stuff (for those who care.....lol). Just yesterday I was trying to pull words off a composite of four photos. A graphic artist put it together for us.. and I asked to get us a grayscale version to use in a yearbook ad.

The words on it were transparent and a medium gray, but in some places had other dark words cutting through them. Very hard to select just them! I wanted to make them dark. First time through I made photo too contrasty trying this.

I was hoping to make a second layer and ERASE everything but the words -- and then darken the words a lot. For some reason, that wasn't working. (I don't know layers!!) Eventually, I used airbrush to create white space between words and any other clutter. This I painfully selected all the letters...and made'em BLACK through brightness/contrast!

Looked pretty decent when done. Much better than first version. So would layers have helped me? (I'll read the tutorial LATER........lol)”

“Lizs, I haven't posted yet. I've got a bit of a problem with my computer at home. It is too old and slow to run the 20 to 50 meg files I am creating with my film scanner (an even bigger problem with photoshop 6, since it lets you do a lot more editing in 16 bit). Last year we had to get my wife a laptop, which is no good for working with photoshop.

Hopefully I can get a new computer at xmas time, if we get any bonus at all (which is questionable with the economy what it is). But when I do get a new machine, that baby is going to have at least a gig of RAM!”

“And, yes, I think layers would have helped you isolate what ever you were trying to edit. I am afraid that painfully selecting elements of an image pretty much comes with the photoshop territory.”

“It's all about layers. You need to learn how to use layers and masks or you will never be an effective user. (and life will be very painful LOL)

First off burn the dummy books, they are useless if you really want to learn the product. Get the photoshop classroom in a book from adobe. Expensive but worth it. The studio techniques book is good too.

The curves tool is where you should start when you are color correcting photos. It is one of the most important tools for this.

If you intend to print your images at any point never use the brightness/contrast adjustment or at least use it VERY sparingly it is a destructive method and discards pixel information necessary for high quality images. You should be using curves for this.

Lizs,
For your Native dancer image. Select the area you want to be clear. Select it using the magic wand tool. I suspect you will need to use shift and Alt alot to get your final selection. Once you have your final selection feather the selection and invert selection. Then apply the blur filter (not the tool, too time consuming) to the now selected background.

Your text issue. Once you had the final selection all you needed to do was to edit/fill and set the color to black.”

“Photoshop is worth every penny, I'm looking forward to getting 6.0”

“Okay folks, get out your credit cards and update to 7.0. It makes all previous versions obsolete. It's "repair" brush is incredible for photo retouching. It's extraction filter utilizing smart highlighting is simply amazing. I can't wait to learn all about all the newest tools it has to offer.”

“Now why would I want to use an inferior product designed for a poor o/s when I get Gimp free with linux? :}”

“Hobbit, I had a film question. I'm scanning old slides and I have noticed I still really like the color balance of Kodachrome. Is there a print film that is close?

Thought you might know.

Anybody else?”

“Pathman - FYI. My Kodachrome (25 ASA) slides, a lot of them 44 to 46 years old, are all still good. Other film types faded. My guess is that a lot of film types will be close, as long as they have not aged too many years.”

“Gimp is a good name for it.

That's nothing but a photoshop 3 clone. If you are doing prepress work it's color handling sucks. That alone will send most serious users scrambling to reinstall PS.

At least Animation is cool with Gimp. The automation scripting language is powerful but it's confusing and hard to learn scheme unless you are a programmer.

It sure as hell isn't as feature rich as Photoshop. Quick mask anyone?

Installation either works or is a living hell. Lots of configurations throw it out of whack. It's buggy as hell too.”

“I think Kodachrome's warm subtle hues can be closely reproduced by their E100S slide film. For an added punch, try the E100VS, but I personally think it blows the reds off the scale.

For people pictures, I really like the balance and natural color that FUJI Astia adds, and for scenic and landscape photos I prefer FUJI Velvia, or Provia F. My personal preferences.

If you're shooting portraits, and want a color negative film, it's pretty tough to beat Kodak's Portra 160VS. It renders a very natural skin tone, plus has a bit of extra saturation.”

“Ya I gotta give photoshop credit .. it is loaded with a lot of features i dont use :}

The only problem Ive had with gimp is it tends to hang my printer deamon.”

“Sounds like a bad case of sour grapes to me. Kind of like my neighbor who drives an old Ford Escort and criticizes me for my choice of vehicles for whatever reasons; not as fuel efficient, too large, too much power, conspicuous consumption to an extreme. Do I use all 300+ horsepower all the time? Nope.... but it's there when I need it. Do I use all of Photoshop's features all of the time? Nope.... but they are also there when I need them. And I use most of them from time to time. However, that's what makes this world go 'round. Different strokes as they say. I just hope I never become a bitter dirty old man who is so quick to criticize something I do not have.”

“Personally, I think Photoshop is a great program, the learning curve is a little steep, but it is the best...not the easiest...

I just added Photoshop Elements (around $100.00) ...it's a toned down version of Photoshop 6/7 and has more features then most folks would ever need.....it's easier to use, with an interface geared to the home user. There are lots of free programs out there, I have tried most of them, and I still come back to Photoshop.”

“Oh i am hardly bitter... im quite happy with my little econobox :}

all the horsepower in the world wont help you when yer trunk is filled with lead :P it is kinda like the differance between taking a real airbed and a thermarest... that airbed is really comfy but yer gonna need it after hauling it all the way down the road...



ps. i used to be a windows slave...
upgrade this, upgrade that..oops so sorry about that. a regular gear junkies excuse generator.The old one more upgrade will fix it routine... I kinda miss having a built in excuse to spend money on my unfaithful little friend.”