Photoshop Workshop

To begin in our Photoshop workshop we were shown how to create a document most efficiently, and were also introduced to the different presets: print presets and screen presets. The print presets been at 300 dpi and in CYMK (The different printing inks, subtractive [ink]) and the screen presets been at 72 dpi and RGB (The 3 colours emitted by screen displays to form all the colours, additive colour [light]). 

Also explained to why the resolutions are different, 300 dpi been the highest resolution possible where a increase in resolution wouldn't make a difference to the average eye, while 72 (or 96) dpi where the resolutions which are set for all screen displays. 

One of Simon's photographs he had taken of the Killers was incredible vibrant, but it wouldn't be physically possible to print it out like this because the colour mode is set to RGB, since cameras take photographs that are in RGB because they capture light, it makes it so what they capture is often impossible to reproduce in ink. To proof your images you go to View > Proof Colours.

This brings up the following image once you proof it, with Proof colours [ Command + Y ] and Proof setup on Working CYMK, the image now is what it'd look like if you were to change the colour mode to CYMK. It's visibly duller and not as powerful as it was originally in RGB. This is a non-destructive technique  Changing the colours modes is destructive because once you change the colour mode to CYMK from RGB you can't change to back to RGB and reverse the effects because that's a destructive method of editing.

With the image we had originally that was in RGB, a non-destructive way of finding out how it'll look when it prints out is to use the proofing alongside the Gamut warning, this while still in RGB shows the areas in grey which wouldn't be reproducible in CYMK, so the aim of this is to get rid of all the grey while still preserving the image fully as possible. 

One way to do this is by changing the hue and the saturation and changing the colours of the image, Red is a lot more easily reproduced in CYMK then blue is so it's often best to make a image red if it's like this. Changing the colours to red below gets rid of all the gamut warning grey, this is still in proof view as well in RGB. This image below is what it'd look like once it'd be printed. Although the colour is changed the image is still very much preserved from what it was like originally, just with a colour adjustment.

Another image of Simon's, we were asked how we were too increase the contrast on the mosaic on the ceiling of the image, people said to use the Image > Adjustments > Levels/ Brightness & Contrast etc. But all of these methods are destructive to an image, you can't pull them back off once they're applied.

 We were told to use the adjustments layers, these are accessed from the bottom right where you'll be able to apply a layer adjustment layer, these are all the ones found in Image > Adjustments just that they're a non-destructive method to creating adjustments to your images.

I applied a levels adjustment layer to brighten up image, but this brightens the whole image, to pull it back to the only bits I want to apply it too, I can paint onto the mask of the levels layer, this allows me to cancel out the adjustment layer that's applied onto the whole image. This way I can then change the levels adjustment layer levels without effecting the parts that are painted in black on the image.

We then tried this on another image, this time attempting it in two different methods.

First method was to use the quick selection tool to quickly select the statue using [ + ] to increase and decrease the size of the brush size. Once we had all the statue selected I then created a levels adjustment layer and it had only applied it to the statue only, this allowed me to play about with the levels to bring it out of the image and get it to stand out. Result below.

For the next method we created a levels adjustment layer then used the quick-selection tool on the sky instead, then applying a fill to it to achieve the same effect, this result was the same as the first but this was more inefficient than the previous. The first method is just so fast and easy.

We were then shown how to create a panorama using the Photoshop automate options, allowing photoshop to do the work for us instead of having to craft and blend all of the photographs together. This could be found here: File > Automate > Photomerge.

This brought up the following options, Auto is the default and combines the photographs you input automatically, Perspective adds a perpective to the images, making them seem a lot like how you turn in real life. Cylindrical adds a fish eye effect to the photographs. Spherical does a similar effect, collage brings the photographs together but allows you to rotate them. Reposition simply just lets you reposition the images about.

Using just the automatic I set Photoshop to combine them and this is the result below, to fix up the image even more I had to crop it, so i used that on it to achieve what's seen on the bottom image.