- Lesson overview
- Strategy for retouching
- Resolution and image size
- Getting started
- Straightening and cropping an image
- Making automatic adjustments
- Manually adjusting the tonal range
- Removing a color cast
- Replacing colors in an image
- Adjusting lightness with the Dodge tool
- Adjusting saturation with the Sponge tool
- Applying the Unsharp Mask filter
- Comparing automatic and manual results
- Saving the image for four-color printing
- Review
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Getting started
The image you’ll work on in this lesson is a scanned photograph. You’ll prepare the image to be placed in an Adobe InDesign layout for a fictitious magazine. The final image size in the print layout will be 2 x 3 inches.
You’ll start the lesson by comparing the original scan to the finished image.
- Start Photoshop and then immediately hold down Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Windows) or Command-Option-Shift (Mac OS) to restore the default preferences. (See “Restoring default preferences” on page 6.)
- When prompted, click Yes to confirm that you want to reset preferences, and Close to close the Welcome Screen.
- Click the Go to Bridge button (
) on the tool options bar to open Adobe Bridge.
- In the Favorites palette in the upper left corner of Bridge, click the Lessons favorite, and then double-click the Lesson03 folder in the preview area to see its contents.
- Make sure your thumbnail previews are large enough for a good look at the images, and compare the 03Start.psd and 03End.psd
files.
Notice that the scan is crooked, that the colors in the original scanned image are relatively dull, and the image has a red color cast. The dimensions are also larger than needed for the requirements of the magazine. You will fix all of these qualities in this lesson, starting with straightening and cropping the image.
- Double-click the 03Start.psd thumbnail to open the file in Photoshop.
- In Photoshop, choose File > Save As, and save the start file in the Lesson03 folder, but rename it 03Work.psd.
Remember, when you’re making permanent corrections to an image file, it’s always wise to work on a copy rather than on the original. Then, if something goes horribly wrong, at least you’ll be able to start over on a fresh copy of the original image.
)
The Crop tool rocks!
)
Here are two little-known but great ways to use the Crop tool (Z) more effectively:
- Use the Crop tool to add canvas to any image. With an image open in Photoshop, drag to enlarge the image window so that you have gray empty space beyond the edge of the image. Then simply drag a marquee with the Crop tool, and after you release the mouse you can drag the handles outside the image area. When you apply the crop (by pressing Enter or Return), the area will be added to the canvas and filled with the background color.
- Use the dimensions of one image to crop another. Open both images in Photoshop, and make the image with the desired crop dimensions active. Select the Crop tool, and click the Front Image button on the tool options bar. This enters the image’s height, width, and resolution in the respective fields on the options bar. Switch to the image that you want to crop, and drag with the Crop tool. The tool constrains the aspect ratio as you drag, and when you release and apply the crop, the image will be resized to the desired height, width, and resolution.