Advanced Photoshop Issue 022

Project files, desktop designs, stock art…

I S S U E 2 2 M a n g a a r t m a s t e r c l a s s | C r e a t e t h e D a y A f t e r T o m o r r o w e f f e c t | P r e p r e s s & P h o t o s h o p | T i m

HOW TO TO… …

Produce pre-press Photoshop art Find the best hard drive for you Perfect recycled image collages Master Data-Driven Graphics

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P O T E H T

P H O S S T O C U T O P H O R T S H

M a r r s i n t e r v i e w

Adoptt the style Adop style of the Orient with this step-by-step guide w w w . a d v a n c e d p h o t o s h o p . c o . u k

DAY AFTER TOMORROW

Create apocalyptic images with the help of Photoshop brushes

pages of professional tips & essential stepby-step tutorials

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Cover

Cover image Providing our amazing cover image this issue is Shutterstock. The largest subscription-based stock photo agency in the world, Shutterstock was founded in 2003 and is now one of the fastest growing suppliers of royalty-free stock photography in the industry. Its outstanding collection of premium images combined with a user-friendly interface has made Shutterstock a trusted resource for an expanding global customer base. Shutterstock currently has nearly 1,000,000 images available to its subscribers, and that number increases every day.

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Imageer: IMAGE COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK /

WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

SHUTTERSTOCK CURRENTLY HAS NEARLY 1,000,000 IMAGES

s e n d m m R e c o

36 7 If you want to be inspired to create your own Japanese-esque imagery, make sure you read the history behind the art first GIVE IT A GO

ISSUE #22

inside... LETTERS

7 Our readers’ comments and feedback

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INSIGHT

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7 News and showcases from around the globe All the latest events, exhibitions and awards

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Peter Joison presents his portfolio

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Mario Belém shows us what he can do

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Digital wonder Vincent Wakerley’s work

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HELPDESK

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RESOURCES

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7 Your technical traumas shared with fellow readers and answered by our expert THE COVER If Manga is your thing then be sure to check out our awe inspiring tutorial on page 64

. . . . . E I B 7 6 R e f S C p a g s o f f B o e £ r i c t o ic e S U r n n v T u d s a v e r p a n e c o t h

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7 Vital assets to improve your Photoshop work

Tim Marrs reveals reveals the secrets secrets behind his Nike artwork

The top 25 Photoshop shortcuts shortcuts

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Printing services

90

Books

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Plug-ins

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THIS MONTH’S CD

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7 Superb stock art, project files to go with this month’s issue and more!

42 64 Create The Day After Tomorrow Tomorrow

From initial sketch to critical shading, we’re Manga mad!

TECHNIQUES Faster, better, more… How can you work smarter?

FEATURES

INTERVIEW: TIM MARRS

DAY AFTER TOMORROW

7 Create apocalyptic images with Tim Shelbourne

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RECYCLED COLLAGES

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INSIDER INFO PDF PRESENTATIONS

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64

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This month’s head-to-head has a disco twist

PEER PRESSURE

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MASTER MANGA ART Everything you need to know to create Manga

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We take a tour of the best storage devices around

25 TOP PHOTOSHOP TIPS

Make use of your old images and stationary

Wow potential clients with this CS2 feature

Inspiring and challenging images from your fellow readers

PORTABLE HARD DRIVES

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From Hello Kitty to Manga, we investigate Oriental art

READER VS PRO

7 Discover the techniques behind print perfection 7

The Photoshop guru shares his secrets

TURNING JAPANESE

PRE-PRESS & PHOTOSHOP

INSIDER INFO DATA DRIVEN GRAPHICS Make the most of Photoshop using this feature

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The industry’s best share their knowledge with you

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Letters

Mailbox Got something to say about the magazine or Photoshop in general – write in and tell us! Email us at advancedpshop@imagine publishing.co.uk or visit the forum at www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk SUBJECT: Demo disc FROM: Luke Davis I’m 16 and have been interested in graphic design for a while, and I am currently studying it at college. However, one thing has eluded me: Photoshop CS2. Because of the huge price I am unable to buy it and because of the huge file size of the demo I am unable to download it, so is there any chance of it being put on CD? If you have put it on a cover disc – which issue was it on? And if you haven’t, do you know where I can find one? Editor replies: Hi Luke, thanks for getting in touch. This can be a problem for creatives who don’t have the spare cash to afford the Adobe app, although you’re in a great position. As a student you can buy an educational Photoshop package that gives you a massive discount off the normal price and means you can get the full version and not just a demo. In order to find out if you do qualify, head over to www.adobe.com/uk/education/purchasing/

and check out the terms and conditions listed there. Best of luck with your course and your future in the digital arts.

SUBJECT: Career conundrum FROM: Via forum Hello, I am currently at college doing a Media course, but recently I have done some graphic design work for a friend’s band, and found it quite fun. Having done TV mocks as well, I’ve sort of trained myself in Photoshop to a good standard, and would possibly like to take this on as a career. However, most degrees and college courses demand at least a decent skill in drawing. Sadly, my drawing skills are a bit rusty, so I’m not quite sure what to do. Any advice? Editor replies: My advice, and I’m sure your peers will agree, is that there is no replacing hands-on experience. While a good degree in a relevant course will make it easier for you to get a job as a magazine designer or as in-house staff for something like an ad agency, freelance careers require cracking portfolios. Try and do as many commissions as you can, post some of your work in our online Peer Pressure forum thread for exposure in the magazine, and most of all, keep at it. Most people in this career have been working towards getting their name known for many years and are only just reaping the benefits – take Robin Preston, for example. Get your name and your work known (for the right reasons) and you can’t go far wrong.

“IS THERE NO SUCH THING AS REALITY ANY MORE?” Editor replies: As the first person to spot this design tweak, we’re sending a big AP pat on the back to you! Yes, these pages have indeed been given a revamp in the hope they’ll be easier to read as well as considerably easier on the eye. Do you like the new look? Tell us via our new forum.

SUBJECT: An angel FROM: Helena Eagelston Having admired Angel D’Amico’s front cover image on issue 21, I decided to look up the photographer who took the source image and felt I must recommend his website for other readers to view. One of the most talented photographers I’ve seen recently – his images are truly inspirational.

SUBJECT: Crazy for you FROM: Dean Umbridge

FAN CLUB: We’ve had loads of emails from readers

telling us what they thought of our metallic cover

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First, let me say what an amazing issue number 21 was. Not only did the cover leap up and beg me to buy it, the content was top-notch too. Best issue yet! I do have one quick question though. Is it just my dizzied state of awe or have your Workshops changed? I don’t collect back issues but I do remember the Workshop pages being somewhat confusing, reading up and down, and in issue 21 they read left to right. Am I mistaken?

SNAP FANTASTIC: Inspiration can come from anywhere, just check out www.lioneldeluy.com for proof

NOW YOU SEE IT:

Tutorials like Simon’s are an invaluable tool towards a career in the digital arts

XXXLDS APART:

From opposite sides of the earth Hi-Liter and Revjessecuster, two forum users, took up the Goddess challenge

Straight to

the point Get dynamic!

Editor replies: For those of you who haven’t taken a look at Lionel Deluy’s amazing website yet, check it out at www.lioneldeluy.com.

SUBJECT: Rendered reality FROM: George Nunn After reading Simon Danaher’s (fantastic) tutorial in issue 21, I was left feeling a little disheartened. Is there no such thing as reality any more? Although the butterfly wings were an obvious add-on, the leg lengthening, head replacement, bra removal (need I go on) were all a surprise. Are no photographic images done purely in-camera now? Editor replies: The sign of truly great Photoshop work is when you don’t know it’s there. Although many photographers can capture images like this in-camera, we think you’ll benefit from knowing how to fake it – just think of the practice you’ll get from tweaking this year’s holiday snaps!

Editor replies: Well, I’ll start with an apology. The Create Space tutorial was indeed lifted from our sister magazine, Photoshop Creative, so for those of you reading both magazines – you might recognise this content and we are very sorry about this. This was done for two reasons. Another tutorial scheduled for that issue had to be replaced quickly and we decided to use this tutorial as it showcases many advanced techniques, which many people at a fledgling stage in their Photoshop careers will simply not be able to master. So our second reason for using this tutorial was that, while some PC readers found it too complex, AP readers should be able to master the techniques involved with ease. We are sorry for those of you reading both mags, but we will try to ensure you won’t see any more content being crossed over from now on. Why not have your say on what goes in the magazine, by logging onto our forum and posting your suggestions – we’d love to hear them!

SUBJECT: Issue 20 FROM: Via forum I may be mistaken – it happens often enough! – but I’m pretty sure that the space art tutorial with the nebula (issue 20) was in your sister magazine Photoshop Creative a few issues back. Now, it’s not the tutorial I have a problem with, it’s a cracking one. As a regular reader of both these magazines I do find it slightly less value for money, when paying £12 a month for them both, to find the same content in them. Aside from that – the pixel art tutorial was superb, and I enjoyed the write-up on the tablets. Now just have to save up for a Cintiq 21UX…

PIXEL PAINTER: Unleash the artist in you

with a helping hand from Photoshop’s extensive Brush palette

“NOT ONLY DID THE COVER LEAP UP AND BEG ME TO BUY IT, THE CONTENT WAS TOP-NOTCH TOO”

Subject: He’s our man! From: Brian Ferro After reading Tim Shelbourne’s tutorial in issue 17, I took up my stylus and attempted to emulate his work, to little avail. However, with your latest issue (21) and his latest tutorial I’ve tried once again and have had more success. Basing my paintings on a photo gives the image more structure and makes me feel more accomplished. Let’s see some more work from this Photoshop wonder in the future. Subject: Hair raising From: Stacy Herst I’ve always had trouble Photoshopping realistic hair and hair textures, so I was delighted to find a tutorial that covered this subject in my first ever AP , issue 21. Combined with my new ‘reality retouching’ skills, my family photos have never looked so good! Subject: Behind the scenes From: Jeremy Casell As someone who’s always wanted a career in magazine design, I have a question. How do you decide upon a cover image? To my mind the Dynamic Brushes tutorial in issue 21 would have been a fabulous cover, as would the feature illustration on page 36. Why did you opt for something that only got two pages of coverage inside the magazine? Still a great cover, just wondering about the thinking behind it. Editor replies: Wow, glad you’re all enjoying both the content and the metallic cover issue 21 offered. We’re always striving to introduce you to new techniques, tips and imageers, but if you have any suggestions we’d love to hear them too. Check out page 30 this issue, which addresses some of the tricks behind making a good Photoshop image into a great one in print.

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Keeping an eye on the latest trends in contemporary photography, art and design, Insight sets out to snapshot innovation in the making SHO W O F F

: J a ck i e K i n g ’s w o r k ha s b e e n e x D u bl i n , M ai n e a nd N e w Y hi b it e d i n Lond on , or k a nd j us t one a s a f r ee la nc e p hot o g r y e ar a f te r s et t a p he r he r t al e in g u p w he n he r v ib nt w a s of f ic i a ra n t l y c ll y r ol ou r ed e co g ni se d C r az y Lady p l ac e s i n t he B s e r i e s w on t wo ri t i s h P ro f ir st f e ss i o na l P hot o g r a p h y Aw a rd s

QEST for perfection en Eli zabeth Scholar shi p education in moder n and T r ust (QEST ) aims to adv ance olar shi ps , o pen to men . Sch UK he s in t f t a r tr aditional c r ded tw ice a y ear a aw e , ar and w omen of all ages

A RO YAL QES T: T he Que

GOING SOLO: Jackie’s solo show, opening at the Allen Gallery in Alton, Hampshire in October, celebrates work from the photographer who has gained international recognition with her unique style within the fine art photography field

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Proving once again the all- conquering power of Photoshop, the winners of the QEST awards have been announced, and one comes with a twist. Jackie King, who has just won an £8000 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship, was voted British Professional Photographer of the Year 2005 and UK Portrait Photographer of the Year 2005. Unlike most of her peers however, Jackie’s images are photographed on film, then scanned onto a computer and enhanced using the Adobe app. Winning a QEST scholarship means Jackie can study for the London College of Fashion’s 30-month part-time MA in Fashion Photography. She says: “This degree is the only one of its kind in the world. Students look at social, cultural and critical issues involved in fashion photography and the impact and construction of fashion images as a spectacle. I plan to use this opportunity to develop my understanding and creativity. It will help me develop my approach further, pushing my own boundaries and realising aspirations and objectives within my work.” QEST was set up in 1990 to mark the 90th birthday of The Queen Mother and, since then, has given out cash awards worth over £1,000,000 to more than 150 craftsmen and women to develop their skills. QEST scholarships worth up to £15,000 are awarded twice a year for training and work experience, and are open to people of ages. The closing date for spring 2007 scholarships is 19 January, but for more details or information on how to apply, visit www.qest.org.uk or www.royalwarrant.org.

http://jackieking.net

insight Making the grade Adobe has announced the winners of the sixth annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards. The competition is widely regarded as the top student design event that honours the world’s most talented student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers and computer artists from the top design, film and broadcast institutions. Using the latest Adobe products, more than 1,800 students from 24 countries competed in this year’s competition. “Honouring the top students in the creative arts is part of Adobe’s on-going commitment to design and film education, and to the creative professional market,” says Melissa Dyrdahl, senior vice president of corporate marketing and communications at Adobe. “Winning an Adobe Design Achievement Award is just the beginning for these students; winners have the opportunity to gain exposure to the creative community, jump-start their careers in the creative arts, and showcase their talents at industry events such as Sundance, Cannes and the ZeroOne Festival.” Winners included Keng-Ming Liu in the Animation category, Amy Wang in the Environmental Graphics and Packaging category, Janina B oesch for Interactive Design, and in the Digital Photography category, the winner was Nils Orth. “Winning an Adobe Design Achievement Award was an exceptional experience. I got the opportunity to display my work at the Guggenheim in New York, as well as at Sundance and Cannes and have it seen by so many industry professionals,” says Yibi Hu from Kingston University in London and 2005 winner in the Animation category. The winning entries can be viewed now by going to www.adobe.com/ education/winners.

TWO FACED: Through the use of many layer masks, Nils Orth composited several features from various individuals to create a singular face. Although many layers and masks are used to get to the final image, the result is a seamless portrait of an individual

ANIMAL MAGIC: Kyley Hellhake used Photoshop to cut

the animals out of their backgrounds before enhancing the photos with lighting effects: “I then created my own photo booth strip by splicing together my animal portraits with photo booth backgrounds. The entire process could not have been completed without the use of Photoshop”

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SNAP HAPPY: Katie Sheridan

shot these photographs with a 35mm. Photoshop was used to convert the images to 3D

10.06 DIARY DATES MASTERING THE POWER OF SMART OBJECTS 30 September – 1 October THE LINE UP: Monday Haitink’s

Beethoven can be heard; Tuesday is Choral Blockbusters; Wednesday is the LSO and Gergiev; Thursday features music from the series Daniel Harding: A Portrait, in partnership with UBS; and Friday finishes off with music from movies. Image of Matthew Gibson, member of the LSO; photo by Alberto Venzago

The sound of artwork If you’re going to see images of one of the world’s most famous orchestras, there really is only one way to view them: with a musical accompaniment. UBS Soundscapes – The LSO in the City, starts on 18 September 2006 and goes on for five days near London’s Liverpool Street Station, offering commuters and tourists the opportunity to view this unique exhibition. Combining sound with large-scale photography, the exhibition marks the opening of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2006/7 concert season with this extraordinary sensory experience. The images on display feature the orchestra, as captured by award-winning Swiss photographer Alberto

Berkeley, California

PHOTO IMAGING IN THE DIGITAL AGE 17-21 October Touring

MAX 2006 Venzago. Taken behind the scenes and while out on tour, the photos – accompanied by LSO recordings of everything from Beethoven to music from Star Wars – are sure to be a big hit. To check out UBS Soundscapes for yourself, just pop along to the Broadgate Arena, Liverpool Street. A free event, the installation aims to introduce commuters and city workers to the magnificence and breadth of the LSO’s orchestral world.

23-26 October Las Vegas

EPSON PRINT ACADEMY 28 October – January 2007 Touring

SECRETS OF THE MASK

www.ubs.com

2-3 December Mill valley, California

Wacom & Adobe join forces

DIGITAL DUO: S tu d i o and S tu d io X L t abl et s ar e ai med at amat eur phot ogr a pher s w ho w ant t o get t he best out of t hei r phot os

As well as announcing the release of up dated v ersions of the Graphire4 Stud io and Studio XL tablets, W acom has also rev ealed that f rom now on, all Graphire4 pack ages will come bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. Ideal f or those starting out in the illust rativ e business, this new bundle will be the perf ect building block f or a succ essf ul imaging career. Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 prov ides new tools f or creativ e image editing and helps the user to organise pictures more ef fe ctiv ely . Pen tablet users prof it f rom two new tools: the mag ic selection brush and the magic extraction brush. Both brushes allow selecting and editing parts of a pictu re more easily and with the tablet pen, these selections can be done v ery easi ly and precisely . For more inf ormation on the complete range of Graphire4 tablets check out w w w. my -graphire.com .

15 Advanced Photoshop

insight

JOURNEY OF THE STUG:

Pete perfects the textures in his images by using adjustment layers to carefully tweak the highlights, gradients and blending modes

Pete Joison – Blurburger

ATOLL: Pete is influenced by almost anything when it comes to thinking up new concepts for designs. “Landscapes, animals, peeling paint – everything really. Whatever you see can inspire you in some way,” he says

Pete tells us his penchant for design started at a very early age: “At primary school I used to design personalised logos for the kids and charge them 20 cents.” However, his entrepreneurial skills didn’t initially launch him into his art career immediately after leaving school. Instead he spent time travelling from job to job working as a barman, timber worker and salesman amongst other things. The decision to make a full-time career out of his artwork emerged after studying a two-year Associate Degree in Melbourne, Australia in 1989-1990. His first break came after being commissioned to complete a range of cartoon greeting cards. “Showing samples of my work by ‘cold calling’ helped. These days I just let my website do the showing for me,” he says. Describing his style as ‘cartoony’, ‘bright’ and ‘slightly off-centre’, Pete uses similar techniques for each of his creations: “I have a sketchbook where I’m constantly doodling new ideas. From the

sketchbook doodle I either redraw it in Illustrator, or scan it into Photoshop.” When an image is imported into Photoshop Pete duplicates the outline layer and selects each area, copying to new layers as he goes. He then fills, paints and airbrushes each area and uses an adjustment layer to play around with the highlights, gradients and blending modes. “After I’ve finished with the colour layers I ‘re-see’ the outline layer with Multiply on. On another layer, I finish off with the details, highlights and shadows,” he explains. So what other artists inspire Pete? Well… none. “I don’t have a favourite artist,” he tells us. “I see the world a bit like a restaurant. I want to taste everything. Every time I come in I’ll order something new. It might not always be to my taste, so I move onto the next thing. And I never need to know the name of the chef – the tastes, colours and presentation of the dishes are enough for me.” How’s that for an analogy? www.blurburger.com / ves him the toon st yle of Pete’s work gi e alett ur p colo ting d and e xci o p portunit y to use a broa

ht car BER TH: T he brig

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WANDERS REMEMBERING: This

image was scanned from a drawing straight into Photoshop. Pete used an airbrushing technique to achieve the gradient effect

10.06 LOOKOUT: “Sometimes you may have to turn an idea upside

down or inside out in your mind, or combine two or more ideas together to create something new. Sometimes a fully fledged idea will pop into your mind at three in the morning. Inspiration can come from anywhere,” Pete tells us

STAIR

W ELL SECRET: “ Us ual ly m y w or k c omes f rom m y head or d ood le s ,” sa y s P et e. H er e an ol d pr o j ec t has been i nc or por at ed i nt o his d esign

HEAD: “It’s the end of a long day at

the local lawn bowls club. Everything stops as a giant monster saunters past the back fence. With this picture and the chosen colours I tried to get a feeling of timelessness, silence and disbelief”

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insight Mário Belém Photoshop is such an important part of Mário’s life that it’s not uncommon for it to be incorporated into his dreams. The passion started around 12 years ago after he got his f irst PC and shortly af ter this, his first Wacom tablet. “Since then I’ve gone through at least six tablets. I make a lot of pressure when I draw on the pads and eventually destroy them.” Mário started out by copying artistic styles by Mucha, Escher and Manara. “The illustrations that I made were really bad, but I learned a l ot about drawing by trying to replicate the styles of great masters” Rather than concentrating on large-scale projects he prefers to create flyer art. “Flyers have always fascinated me; they’re great showcases of your work and usually don’t consume a lot of time. You’re completely free to create whatever you like.” His work process normally starts from some very rough sketches on paper to plan out the composition. Google Images also comes in use as a source of reference. “Here in Portugal, the going rate for illustration isn’t very good, so if you want to make a profit out of a project you have to be fast. I try to keep my projects under eight to 12 hours so that they make the money worthwhile”. To achieve his fir st commission, Mário created six mock flyers and showed them to some friends. Eventually, word got around and several months layer he was contacted by an event producer. “When you really want something you have to be persistant – eventually it will come around”, says Mário. www.mariobelem.com

/

OLA: M ár io al w a y s w or ks at d ou bl e t he s i z e. T hi s giv es hi m mu ch mor e mov in g s pac e , e s pe c ia ll y t o c r ea t e l i t tl e d e ta i ls . “ I c an t he n ma k e s u re t he l in e s w i ll t u rn ou t ni ce and c le a n”

GOA GIL: “If there is a human figure in one

of my images I either photograph it or grab something off of Google and draw on top of it in Photoshop. This saves me plenty of time. In Portugal the going rate for illustration isn’t good so if you want to make a profit you need to work fast” TAMARIZ PANORAMIC: “The only problem I have working with images that are double the standard size is that you easily end up with files of one or two gigabytes. You really have to invest in RAM memory. Right now I’m working on a Dual G5 with 3.5 Gig RAM”

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10.06 TAMARIZ 2006: Photoshop is an integral part of

Mário’s life, not just a tool to create his final pieces. “Photoshop is everything. Once you get through the first shock and start trying out all of the functions, making a lot of mistakes in the process of course, pretty soon you get addicted. I dream about Photoshop loads of times, no kidding!”

CIRCUIT TASTE: Flyers have

always fascinated Mário, not only as a piece of ‘mass graphics’ but because he feels that they’re great for showcasing his work. “Whenever one of my friends goes abroad I always ask them to pick me up some flyers”

STROLLING: “One of the

things that I’ve been trying to eliminate as much as possible is that clean, superficial look that all computer illustrations tend to have. There are several ways to go around this – one of the easiest is, after you’ve finished your illustration, to place a photo of a texture (usually cracked up walls and tree barks will do it just fine – check out www.mayang.com/textures if you want some top quality stuff for free) on top of your image with 20% Opacity and then apply a layer mode like Screen or Overlay”

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insight Vincent Wakerley Vincent has been working as a f reelance airbrush illustrator for more years than he cares to remember. He started off editing slick photographic images for magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Harpers & Queen, but by the end of the Nineties he needed a change in direction. “I bought a second-hand Mac which was very slow, plus a copy of Adobe Photoshop 3, and practised each night after work until two in the morning, teaching myself the basics of how to create an image as well as retouching.” Vincent established himself at a very early age after Francis Kyle visited his college to talk to the students. “I knew this would be my chance to impress, so I deliberately made a critical comment about some of the work he was showing us, which prompted the exact response I was hoping for. He asked to see my work as I’d been so outspoken. He was impressed enough to invite me to exhibit my work in his gallery, from where he sold many of my drawings, prints and paintings. He also got me several commissions – the first of which was for Cinzano.” Describing his style as “slick, clean and hyper realistic”, Vincent’s images are created to look better than the real thing. “Often new clients assume they’re created using a 3D program.” This isn’t the case. Vincent takes his own photos in his studio using a Nikon D2X and then uses Photoshop to cut and paste parts of each picture together, with a little help from his trusty Wacom tablet to build the perfect product shot. Keep an eye open for a new Cadbury’s chocolate piece created by Vincent, out later this year: “It’s one of the best digital pieces I ’ve done.” /

NESCAFE BEAN: “A real coffee bean

was shot with a macro lens, then using the Photoshop channels and selective colouring I changed the image to appear gold while still retaining the texture of the bean. Logos were drawn and effects added. These were all then retouched together and flattened”

LE MON FIZZ:

T hi s i mage w as use d f o r a S ai nsbur y ’s fr ui t d ri n k pac ka gi ng. “ T he bubble s w e re shot f ro m an Al ka S e lt z e r in a w at e r t ank , w hil e t he f r ui t w as shot se par at e l y . E x tr a bubbl e s w e re sam pl ed , d ra w n and al l r e to uc he d t oge th e r on t o p of t he l e mon”

BRAND FLAG: “Using a Wacom

tablet gives me the control and feel of a real airbrush or pencil so I can paint over the cracks and add or move highlights to make the bar look like the client imagines it or wishes it to be”

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www.id2-studio.com

CYBER FRUBE: “A rough sketch

was drawn in Photoshop on a ‘Multiply’ layer, then using Bezier Curves I masked out coloured areas where the body was painted. Frubes brand type was again Bezier curved, airbrushed, then a chrome effect was added using filters”

10.06 CELEBRATIONS: For this image the sweets were shot

with Vincent’s Nikon D2X and then tweaked in Photoshop. Additional elements were added using Adobe Illustrator

PIM’S: A whole Pim’s biscuit was shot and then several

broken open. The best images were grafted to the whole biscuit and retouched

“This was originally an airbrush illustration for an A0 size advert printed on supermarket floor tiles. The type was cleaned up using Paths, Bezier Curves and the Airbrush tool” KENCO COFFEE:

WALL’S CORNISH: The sections

of the brolly were duplicated onto individual layers using Paths and the colours were altered using the Channel Mixer

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BRAND IT: Tim describes his style as “handmadetextured-screen-print-lookingcomputerised stuff.” This particular vision was created as a double spread in Brand Jordan magazine

GOT MOJO: A piece created for MOJO magazine, this is one of Tim’s

most recognisable and high-profile works. So much so, in fact, that it brought him to the attention of other commissioning US-based hip hop magazines

ROUGH & READY Riding high on the success of designing Nike’s mighty Brand Jordan campaign, Tim Marrs takes time out of his schedule to talk about Photoshop, design and why he still sees himself as a one-trick pony


I

n an increasingly digitalised age, there can be little doubt that the boundaries between traditionally compartmentalised genres of the arts are being broken down. In a world where photography is regularly mixed with vector art, new media mixed with natural, pinning an imageer to a particular genre is a tricky task, and one that makes digital artist Tim Marrs utter the intriguing response: “handmade-textured-screen-printlooking-computerised stuff” when pressed on his exact method of artistic impression. Indeed, Tim is resolutely part of the new wave of digital artists who work from photos, but whose creations show an eclectic mix of diverse media influences. Working exclusively in Photoshop, Marrs has built up a mighty back catalogue of household name commissions and illustration credits in literary, drink, music and sporting fields to name but a few. Today he whiles away the hours fulfilling briefs for the likes of Nike, Lucozade

Tim Marrs


Inter view

and MOJO magazine, continually pushing his abilities and multimedia potential to the next level. “I’ve been inspired by a lot of pop art,” he explains. “My girlfriend used to work in a vintage film poster store so I’d get inspired by the colours and the composition – so it’s possible my work has a retro feel too.” But while his work is digital through and through, there can be little doubt that such retro influences are truly where Tim’s heart lies: “I don’t want my work to look as though it’s computer-made, so it’s important that I throw some drawing in there, because not everyone can draw.” Splitting his allegiance between old and new influences in this way is no easy task, but gives the artist’s work a distinct and unique appeal that is lacking in an industry packed to the hilt with identikit illustrators all following the same design trends. Using Adobe’s app, Tim is careful to pull his work out of the very same norms that so often entrench his rivals. “Compositionally, we all fall into the trap of using colours in a similar way, or putting things together in a similar style,” he remarks. “You have to always keep a lookout for different ways of working.”

It was this attitude that won him one of his most high-profile commissions to date, working on Nike’s Brand Jordan campaign. “I first got


approached to do three double-page spreads for the Jordan magazine Brand Jordan through my agent in America, which led on to the event for the 20th basketball boot. My designs were blown up and backlit on 20-foot walls, which was very exciting to see. It was very brave of them to use me, as my style is very rough and ready, and their style is very slick.” Tim’s approach to this promotional project exemplifies his wider method of working, which tends to start with raw photographic materials provided by his clients. In the case of Nike, though, the abundance of promotional images at his disposal nearly toppled the project before it had begun. “They had sent so much, I was aware that if I wasn’t careful this stuff would drown out my own creativity,” Tim remembers. “I wanted to make everything look quite rough and ready and hand-made looking. I used Photoshop to complete my hand-drawn work, which broke up parts that had too much photographic reference.” Beginning with an old-fashioned sketchbook, Tim created his designs by working out the positioning of the various photographic elements, trying to imagine them as ten-foot prints. “I tried to exploit that by writing little things that people might stumble across,” he explains. “If I did it again I might push that further. Much of it is very basic sketches, but I do a lot of it in my head, which comes with experience. You

have an idea and you see it in your head and you almost skip the sketchbook stage, which isn’t always a good idea – it’s something you certainly don’t tell the students. You have a vision and you build on it. Quite often the theme is set and you go with it in a very organic way.” Aside from Tim’s preliminary worries about the abundance of photographic imagery, Nike turned out to be a very compliant client, allowing the artist pretty much a free rein over the projects Tim completed for the company. “There were never many changes, which was something I was quite blessed with. I would send a high-resolution rough and they tended to want something moving or something written, but that was usually it. It all went pretty well.”

Despite such high-profile experiences, Tim still describes his profile as “kicking under, as opposed to being totally known.” His career is continually blossoming though, thanks in part to a firm grounding and educational background. After completing an art foundation course, he was faced with the choice of opting for an Illustration or Graphic Design degree. Plumping for Illustration, he found himself at Hull University, which prepared him for the trials of working as a jobbing creative in a somewhat unusual way.“The course was a bit dire,” he remembers. “We were

Tim Marrs METHOD MAN: Tim creates his

works exclusively in Photoshop. He has a fine-honed technique that involves building hundreds of layers in Photoshop, and then altering the Opacity before bringing in scanned textured elements to the composition

SPOT THE LITTLE DETAILS: This is one of

Tim’s favourite magazine illustrations, and features the image of Bruce Springsteen walking along a sidewalk in Reno, America

kind of left to our own devices and then spat out into the big wide world feeling a little bit numb. I had two years out working for local companies up in Nottingham, and then eventually moved down to London where I did a Masters at St Martin’s.” This final course saved the artist from oblivion, gave him confidence and introduced him to exciting new ways of working. Like many artists, Tim found that the best way to launch himself into the design world was to become his own most vocal PR. “I started by sending out personalised samples of my work, and got various music mags interested, giving me jobs that were either unpaid or not paid very well. From that you have a couple of images people know you for, and you start getting commissions.” Interest in Tim’s work soon whipped up into a frenzy, and he was commissioned to work on a Lucozade ad campaign just from what the company had seen in Tim’s sketchbooks. “In the end, they only used my hand-rendered type, which was absolutely fine as they were paying me lots of money, and I didn’t have the experience to be able to respond to their bastardised

THE COURSE WAS DIRE – WE WERE LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES AND SPAT OUT 27 Advanced Photoshop

Inter view

versions of my work,” he says. “Some time after that, I got onto the Central Illustration Agency’s books, and they certainly helped me get work. The American agency helped me get some exciting jobs that side of the pond.” Despite his successes and creative prowess, Tim is surprisingly blasé about his work being in the public eye, admitting that he hardly notices the fruits of his own handiwork. Thinking hard, he does manage to point to a couple of further clients who he feels have spurred him to create his most memorable works. “I did the hand-rendered type for the book cover of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ,” he remembers. “It was quite nice to be commissioned to just do the type, because it’s anothe r string to your bow.” This, and a cover for MOJO magazine featuring Missy Elliott, have brought his work to the fore and led to new-found avenues of working, as well as opening up his creative potential to all-new clients. “My Missy Elliott work seems to crop up a lot. I did that for MOJO magazine, which got me a lot of jobs on other American hip hop magazines, but I can’t stand that music. Sometimes I think it’s good to work on something that you’re not necessarily passionate about, because you can respond to it in a more honest way.”

There can be little doubt that Tim’s latest and greatest triumphs mean the artist is currently riding high in the design world, frequently having the pick of multiple commissions at any one time. It’s not all plain sailing however, as the artist admits that he is yet to stumble across his dream commission, an opportunity that would mark a clear departure from his traditional method of working. “I would love to get my art moving,” he muses. “The way it’s made shouts to be moved, because of the layers and the different sort of compositions with line-drawn stuff and textures.” Despite his multimedia ambitions, the selfconfessed ‘one-trick pony’ is quick to acknowledge that his dream job would require collaboration. “I’d have to work alongside someone who was good

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ABOVE: The

unconventional style of Tim’s work has ensured he has been able to work on a diverse range of projects both in the UK and in the United States. His renowned agency, the Central IllustrationAgency ensures he benefits from exposure both sides of the pond

with after effects – a music video would be pretty cool. It would be in the style of the iPod adverts. Just the idea of mixing live footage with my stuff would be pretty exciting.” In this respect, Tim has remained intensely loyal to Photoshop, never straying into video editing or even vector art software packages. This latter point is quite often a surprise to viewers of his work, not least because of the heavily graphic impression it portrays. This appeal is generated by creative use of layers within Tim’s chosen software. As the artist explains: “It’s quite literally a process of building hundreds of layers in Photoshop, no filters, no dodgy-ness. I just play with the Opacity and bring in textured elements, pretty much like you would in a screen print. I don’t get involved with funny vectors. I’ve never really had time to extend my knowledge.” Throw in a digital camera, a scanner, a sketchbook and the odd bit of screen printing, and Tim’s succinct but highly effective hard and software setup is complete. Tim’s future aspirations by and large concern artistic creativity. Far from extending his digital prowess, he looks forward to trying more traditional methods of creation. “I’d love to get back into screen printing. I’ve only ever done basic

screen prints, but I think it would be really lovely to make proper physical artwork.” His rough-and-ready digital style seems set to remain his trademark for much longer, not least because he’s currently getting to grips with a new commission designing a series of book covers for Elmore Leonard. This he describes as a “dream” commission. Having the opportunity to create a whole series has made this success story all the sweeter. Far from looking forward to projects in the pipeline, his final thoughts are of the past, and what lessons his own history can teach to up-and-coming creatives. “When I finished my MA, my work was so rough, but that didn’t deter me from going out and speaking to potential clients,” he reflects. The response was good, and they offered Tim advice about keeping his integrity and being flexible with clients’ ideas – whose money it is. “It’s a question of keeping the faith. You have to be realistic; you’re not going to make money straight away,” he says. “Sharing a studio helps the whole work ethic, as you have like-minded people motivating you. You have the option then of working as a collective and promoting yourself as a group. Just keep believing – keep the faith!”

Tim Marrs HOT WHEELS: “I consider

myself a hyper-realist artist. I love to paint. I use the word paint for lack of a better word. My medium is actually light. I have a passion for making things happen on the screen. Finding a new way of doing something and finding a new room in my imagination is what I love about the work.” From his website www. bertmonroy.com

LARGER THAN LIFE: Tim’s work was blown up and hung as ten-foot-wide wall hangings at the launch of Brand Jordan’s ‘Air XX’ high performance balling show in Colorado and California. When the company finished with the prints, it allowed Tim to keep them as a larger-than-life record of his achievements

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Pre-press Photoshop These ink splats look great in CMYK. They looked even better on the cover of last issue printed over a metallic spot colour base


D

esign for the screen and you’ll probably think in terms of RGB, index and Hex colour. Design for print however, and you’ll never really feel comfortable stepping outside the bounds of CMY and K. Unless that is, your project demands a little bit more than cyan, magenta, yellow and black can deliver, in which case it’s time to check out your spot colour options. Either way you’ll need to learn how to get the most out of your four, five or even six colours, and that’s where our simple pre-press techniques come into play. First up is working with the right colour settings. Preferencing Photoshop up to play nicely with your printer ensures you get consistent results you can rely

Stop the press. Discover the techniques you need to achieve print perfection BY ROSS ANDREWS

on. With the settings in place, and an understanding of the relationship between Photoshop’s colour channels and the ink on the press, you can make sure you colour correct your images to get the maximum punch. In this tutorial you’ll also find out how to work with Spot channels in Photoshop to print colours and create effects that would be impossible any other way; you’ll even learn the techniques we used to create last issue’s stunning and shiny metallic cover… OUR EXPERT

Ross Andrews

With over eleven years of industry experience, Ross remembers a Photoshop before layers, reminisces about Chops and still holds a reverence for Kai Krauss. Mmm... Fractals.

1

Check your colour settings Before doing anything to your image it’s worth checking out your colour settings, so open them up from the Edit menu. If you work a great deal with a particular printer they may recommend (or insist on) a specific or bespoke setting – otherwise pick Europe Prepress 2 for most printing within the UK. If you’re an international reader of the mag, choose the setting that best suits your situation.

2

Join the dots When ink hits paper, it spreads. In printing this means that colours can appear darker than intended, because the dots the image is composed of bled. This is known as Dot Gain, and Photoshop will do what it can to compensate for it. For most papers and presses the default setting of 15% is fine, but if you know you’re going to be printing on especially absorbent paper, it may be worth selecting a higher figure.

3

“WHEN INK HITS PAPER, IT SPREADS...THIS MEANS THAT COLOURS CAN APPEAR DARKER THAN INTENDED”

Issue 21

What’s the K for? Four and four+ colour printing relies on mixing the colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black to create any colour in its gamut, so if your image is RGB you’ll want to convert it to CMYK (from the Image>Mode menu) straight away rather than rely on on-the-fly conversion when printing. Oh, and for the record, K stands for Key, as the other colour plates used to be keyed up to it.

A MetalFX finish

4

All about colour channels Open up the Channels palette and click on each channel. You’ll notice that, when viewed individually, each one is grey. Colour channels represent ink strength in the same way that Alpha channels do transparency; so a black area in the Cyan channel represents 100% cyan, while a white area lets the paper show through.

5

Brighten things up a little If you’re not happy seeing things in black and white, open up Photoshop’s preferences, select Display and Cursors, and click the first check box next to Color Channels in Color. It does what it says on the tin and can be a vital aid in working for print – especially when adding spot colours, as we’ll do in a minute.

The decision to try a radical new, metallic finish on last issue’s cover was inspired by the fantastic skin tones of the image, combined with the great green and blue tones of the ink splats. The printing itself is made possible by MetalFX technology (www.metalFX.com), which allows you to make any CMYK tone metallic by combining the inks with a metallic base colour. This mean just one spot colour, making the process cheaper, and easier than attempting to print multiple metallic spot colours. MetalFX Technical Director, Richard Ainge, comments on the success of the piece: “The Advanced Photoshop cover is a visually striking example of MetalFX. The designer has fully understood the best ways to integrate MetalFX into artwork, using it sparingly and against a white background to create ultimate impact. The metallic colours are bright and lustrous, giving the magazine an inherent feel of quality and value. Utilising MetalFX has created a stunningly unusual front cover, making the magazine stand out on the shelf above the competition.”


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6

7

Seek correction Unless you received your source images from a bureau or a well trained photographer, the chances are they’ll need colour correction. It’s far too vast a skill to go into in this tutorial, and tool preference will always be divided between Levels and Curves, but whatever your weapon of choice, adjust the colours to give your image some punch.

8

It’s a knockout Unless you’re going for a specific effect you want to knock a hole through the CMYK channels so the spot colour ink can print directly on the paper. With the layer’s transparency locked, fill the layer with white. This will create your hole (the drop shadow is a Layer effect, which is fine because we want it to be CMYK). Ctrl/Cmdclick the layer thumbnail to select your elements.

Adding spot colour elements Here’s our top tip for this tutorial. When adding spot colour elements, don’t worry about creating a Spot channel until much later. Designing in a black-and-white channel isn’t much fun or very creative, and you’ll probably find it extremely frustrating (no layers!). Instead, work on new layers on the CMYK image to add and create your spot colour elements. When you’re done, merge them together and lock the layer’s transparency.

9

New Spot Channel Now that the elements you want to print in a fifth colour are in place, you can create your Spot channel. Do this by choosing New Spot Channel from the fly-out menu on the Channels palette.

10

Spot the difference As you’d expect, the New Spot Channel dialog will pop up, with a default spot colour applied. As your elements were selected when you created the channel, they’ll be automatically filled with the default colour. To change the ink, click the Color square.

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“DESIGNING IN A BLACK-AND-WHITE CHANNEL ISN’T MUCH FUN OR VERY CREATIVE” 32 Advanced Photoshop

Pick a colour The Spot Color Picker window will open up; choose your ink set from the top menu. In most cases this will be one of the Pantone libraries – which one depends on your ink, paper and finish. Once you’ve selected your library it’s time to select a colour. You can do it by sight, but the best way is still to look at an old-fashioned printed swatch book, although they can be expensive to get hold of.

12

It’s all in the name Click OK to go back to the New Spot Channel dialog. The name should be automatically set (but check it – that’s very important!) and your elements will change colour to reflect your choice. You can disregard the Solidity setting unless you’re working on a varnish or semi-opaque finish.

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Finishing spot If all you’re looking to do is create a flat, spot-coloured element, then you’re pretty much done. You should have a channel containing the spot elements, and a hole through your CMYK image to the paper below. You can check the registration (lining-up) by toggling the visibility of the Spot Color channel.

“HERE’S THE PROCESS WE WENT THROUGH TO CREATE ISSUE 21’S WONDERFULLY SHINY METALLIC COVER”

14

Create the cover Working with spot colours doesn’t always have to be that straightforward. Here’s the process we went through to create issue 21’s wonderfully shiny metallic cover. As the metallic ink is mixed with the CMYK inks across the whole area, it requires a pretty complicated and bespoke Spot Color channel. Luckily, the company (MetalFX, www.metal-fx.com) provides a Photoshop action to take a lot of the hard work out of the process for you. We’ve turned off the Channels in Color option so we can work more accurately with the ink (it’s a little pale to see clearly otherwise).

15

Don’t be negative Here’s the result of the action. Rather than being a simple negative version of the image, the action applies the ink differently depending on the tones – notice how the whites remain white, otherwise the grey colour of the metallic base ink would show through.

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Spot the channels Turn on the visibility of both the Spot Color channels and you get a colour preview of the ink coverage. This gives a pretty good idea how the metallic basecoat will be applied. It’s good for the most part, but we only want specific areas to be reflective, removing the metallic effect from the background and reducing the amount in the skin tones to give more contrast with a subtler effect over the face.

Options for

outputting Most printers will ask for a composite PDF that contains both the CMYK and Spot Color channels. These are easy to produce from either Photoshop or, more frequently, InDesign. For special finishes though, such as the spot varnish stripes on many Advanced Photoshop covers, you’ll have to produce a separate PDF.


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Back to CMYK To remove the ink from the background use a similar technique to step seven, because working on a layer over the CMYK image gives much greater control and puts more tools at your disposal. First use the Pen tool to cut around the face.

17

On the level Work on the CMYK image and you’ll only be able to colour correct the CMYK channels, but switch to the Spot channel and you’ll be able to use either Levels or Curves to adjust the metallic ink’s coverage and density. We’ve lightened the mid tones a little.

19 “YOUR GOAL IS ONLY TO DELETE THE SPOT INK, NOT THE CMYK IMAGE ITSELF”

It’s all white Turn your path into a selection (inverse it if you need to), and on a new layer fill that selection with white to temporarily erase the background.

20

The right tool for the job The joy of this technique is that you can use any tool to work on the selection. The path gives a very harsh edge, so deselect the white area and use the Blur tool to soften the transition, especially where depth of field has dropped certain areas out of focus, against which the hard edge looks unnatural.

Spot

finishes Spot channels can mean mo re than just colour. Laminations, embossing and varnish effects can also be defined in a Spot channel. In case of the stripes that adorn most Advanced Photoshop covers, a PDF of the Spot channel is created where black depicts where the varnish is to be applied, creating the ridged effect.


21

Filter fun You can also use filters to help you out – in this case the Gaussian Blur makes short work of softening the edge. At the end of the day, you can use any tool you’d normally use, such as the Smudge tool to tease out strands of hair to make the deleted selection look right. Remember not to flatten the image, though. Your goal is only to delete the spot ink, not the CMYK image itself.

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Copy and paste When you’re finished, copy the layer that you’ve been working on and paste it into the Spot Color channel to knock out the ink. It’s work done – you can now delete the white layer to bring back the complete CMYK image.

23

Finishing touches That’s the background sorted out, but there’s still too much metallic ink in the skin tones and not enough in some of the more sparkly areas. Luckily, the Dodge and Burn tools are perfect for working on the channel itself to finish things off.

Why a

spot colour? There are three main reasons to use a spot colour in a design for print. The first is simply because you need certain elements, such as a logo, to be printed in exactly the right colour. No matter how good your printer, colours consisting of combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow and black can be unpredictable, while Pantone colours can always be matched. The second reason is that you may want to use a colour outside the CMYK range, such as a fluorescent or metallic ink. The final reason is that it may be a two or three-colour job, and it’s cheaper to use a Pantone red, for example, than to mix a red out of yellow and magenta.

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Print and check Choose Print With Preview and choose Separations from the Color Handling menu to print each individual channel on a separate sheet of paper – perfect for making sure that everything lines up and looks right.

“THE DODGE AND BURN TOOLS ARE PERFECT FOR WORKING ON THE CHANNEL”

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Saving graces To preserve the Spot channel (and all your hard work) it’s vital that you save your file as a Photoshop file (PSD), Photoshop PDF, TIFF or Photoshop DCS 2.0 (EPS). If you’re heading into InDesign, you might as well stick with a PSD – you’ll get far better previews than with a DCS.

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Into InDesign Import the image into InDesign and the spot colour (or colours) will automatically appear in the Swatches palette for you to use elsewhere. Do it the other way around, and you’ll need to make sure the name given to the Spot channel in Photoshop exactly matches the name in InDesign. You can check consistency and usage using InDesign’s Separations Preview palette. 5


Feature

d y o l L y n n e J y b n o i t a r t s u l l I


Turning

Japanese In every far-flung corner of the earth the Japanese design industry has a predominant influence. We track the history, trends and effects of this artistic empire

T

he economic success of a country is predominantly dependent on its exports. Associations may not be statistically correct, but being a generation that likes to pigeonhole facts for simplicity, we tend to make produce and nations stereotypically synonymous: Brazil has its coffee, France its wine and Sweden has… well, Abba and football managers. Japan is traditionally known as an exporter of machinery and transport equipment and a country at the forefront of technological design. However, as Photoshop enthusiasts there’s a far more important industry that we should be keeping our eye on. It’s not one that can be neatly recorded with histograms and pie charts, but Japanese digital art has taken the world by storm. Take the time to browse the Internet or wander down the high street and pop into your nearest games store, and you’ll see that it’s everywhere. Of course, it would be flippant to label every Manga, Anime or character-based image as Japanese in origin. The digital art that has sprung from this area has a distinctive style that can be traced back to Japan, but this almost certainly would never have arisen without the influence of the West and more specifically American culture. Digital Japan has many branches and vast historical chasms to its history, like a complex family tree. For its influence on the art around us, the doors it opens for new and exciting digital creations and the sheer fact that it’s such a colourful, glorious tale, this design culture is worth exploring more deeply.


Adobe is now rightly famed for its certification OTAKU system, which enables keen Photoshop users to additional training and refers professional Ingain Japanese the term ‘Otaku’ to a variety of credentials. While just about any Photoshop user geek who has only recently become obsessed is likely to benefit from the additional experience with Anime and Manga. In Japan, to be an Otaku and training it offers, whether it makes financial isn’t really a good ’s generally usedon to sense to take thisthing extra and stepitdepends not only ridicule those who have only recently started an how serious you are about making money from interest in Anime Manga. It’snature regularl y used on Photoshop work,or but also the of that work. Internet Forums. The word ‘Otaku’ is derived from an honorific Japanese term for another’s house or family. The Japanese style that we’re now familiar with has a colourful background and it’s hard to pinpoint its exact origins. Even the most Westernised of Japanese-influenced art has strong traditional roots, although it might not be obvious at first glance. Traditional Manga art has existed for around 50 years and the origins of this artform can be traced back to the Nineteenth century. Ukiyo-e (translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’) was a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings often featuring motifs of landscapes and daily life scenes involving men, women and animals. It was really the first form of commercial art in Japan, as the wood etchings were affordable to produce and could be mass-marketed. Many of the Japanese townsfolk weren’t wealthy enough to afford elaborate paintings, but Ukiyo-e was accessible to all. The etchings often featured recognisable characters such as beautiful courtesans

BACKTRACKING

If you’re selling merchandise to consumers it will be of little value, but if you’re planning on offering logo or template design services to businesses then being able to flash the Adobe Certified Expert qualification will help you get noticed, instantly gain the confidence of potential clients and stand out from the crowd. Needless to say, it really comes into its own if you’re hoping to teach others your skills. Some

and bulky sumo wrestlers. Expressions were often exaggerated to communicate an emotion, and in a similar way to Manga art, the drawings told a story. Shortly after World War II America started trading with Japan, and the States’ popular culture and its established comic book industry began to heavily influence a new style of art. Although Ukiyo-e artists had mastered the skill of story-telling, restrictions on the medium of their work meant they weren’t proficient in line, form and colour, and foreign artists were shipped over to teach them these techniques. Tezuka Osamu was a big influence on the style of Manga as we know it today. After seeing a children’s war propaganda animation called Momotarou and being entranced by the ‘Fantasia’-esque way in which the film tackled adult concepts, Tezuka introduced a film-like story-telling technique to his comic art. In a similar way to Ukiyo-e, Tezuka’s Manga art was like snippets of film cels rather than perfect, realistic tableaux. In fact, the term ‘Manga’ has been translated to mean ‘whimsical pictures’ and ‘involuntary sketches’.

Manga art and character design

KUNISADA: An example of Ukiyo-e – Kunisada’s ‘Fifty-three post stations of Tokaido’


In contrast to Ukiyo-e, Manga art introduced the use of strong bold lines and heavily applied block colour (although the majority of Manga is still only printed in monochrome to save on mass reproduction costs, front covers and advertising are in full colour). During its lifetime, Manga has developed a number of symbolic conventions to suggest a scenario or emotion quickly without having to resort to heavily realistic imagery. For example, sweat drops on the forehead indicate bewilderment or nervousness, while a large sweat drop on the side of the face implies embarrassment or exasperation. Eye shapes and sizes are particularly important in Manga design, with large eyes symbolising beauty and purity, while narrow eyes represent coldness or evil. Some of these symbols have been adopted in other branches of comic illustration and are also the standard for Anime film. The Western world has embraced the style of Manga, but it’s by no means a way of life as it is in Japan. Take a visit to this country and you’ll see it everywhere. Designated Manga cafes or ‘Manga

NINJA CUPIDO:

“Tokidoki means ‘sometimes’ in Japan. I chose I a Japanese word because I love Japan.”

HELLO KITTY: Sanrio’s ambassador character is traditionally

aimed at young girls. However, the appeal of ‘Kawaii’ to a broader market has brought about the creation of some unsavoury gadgets Kissaten’ are set up to allow people to drink coffee and read Manga at the same time. The style has been adopted for even the most unusual of circumstances such as ‘wanted’ posters for criminals. Manga is used to illustrate a huge variety of subjects and themes, from science fiction, action and fantasy to comedy and even politics. Although there’s a stereotype bound to Manga that depicts excessive sex and violence, this covers only a small portion of the Manga industry. The design concepts of Manga have had a big influence on Western art. Illustrators have gone crazy about accentuated facial expressions, bold and brash colours and strong lines. But it’s not so much the simplicity of its aesthetics that makes it popular with the masses – the concept of character-based art is the real big winner here. Big business merchandise products like ‘Hello Kitty’ started off the trend for using caricature animals as the basis for the design. The

THE CONCEPT OF CHARACTERBASED ART IS THE REAL BIG WINNER HERE

development of this brand, copyrighted in 1976 by Sanrio designer Ikuko Shimizu, wasn’t strictly a groundbreaker in terms of its looks. Many have commented on the similarity in approach to the character designs of Netherlands-based author and illustrator Dick Bruna, famed for characters Miffy and Snuffy created back in the Fifties. The style of simplistic line drawing may not have been totally original but the marketing approach certainly was. Although originally created for young Japanese girls, the commercial prospects of Hello Kitty grew from strength to strength and have since been embraced by an abundance of nationalities as well as ages. It’s a perfect example of how illustrative art can be made into a thriving merchandise industry if the right tactic is adopted. Thirty years on, the Sanrio creation is still a winner worldwide. Not only can you adorn your wall with a Hello Kitty calendar, you can check the time with your Hello Kitty watch, give your toasted bread a Hello Kitty burn mark with a novelty toaster, or even travel on a Hello Kitty decorated jumbo jet. This is all very innocent and sweet, but the lines for the brand’s target audience were drastically broadened when novelty adult items such as the Hello Kitty vibrator came on the market. It’s astonishing to see how such a simple design concept hit off to such a scale, yet some artists have acknowledged the trend of ‘copycat’ illustrators. “My only rule is not to purposely set out to create

TOKIDOKI: Carmen Electra and Fergie are just two of

the big fashion names who have fallen for Tokidoki’s Japanese style of illustration


WHEN CARMEN ELECTRA AND FERGIE ARE SPORTING YOUR DESIGNS, YOU KNOW THIS ISN’T A FAD Japanese-style art,” says David Horvath, co-creator of Uglydolls. “We make what comes out naturally. To bust out Adobe Illustrator, throw some rainbows, drips and Hello Kitty-proportioned characters brings about a certain doom deep in your soul.”

Influenced art

MEGA MAN:

C a pcom’ s Mega Man ser ie s i s a ct e x am ple of per fe how the Manga st y le tr an sf er s w ell into game ar t

If you can divert your mind from the unoriginal creations that disturb David Horvath so, there are a few unique artists who have been heavily influenced by the Japanese digital style but have put their own distinctive mark on their work. ‘Tokidoki’, fronted by Italian artist Simone Legno, is a big name in illustration. An Italian wouldn’t be the obvious choice for someone who leads the way in contemporary Japanese-influenced design, but Simone is proud to acknowledge his influences. “Tokidoki means ‘sometimes’ in Japanese. I chose a Japanese word because I love Japan.” Simone started out by building an online personal website in order to showcase his work. In early 2003 he received an email from the co-founder of Hard Candy Cosmetics who had seen his website. “They wanted to meet with me in Los Angeles immediately and sent me a plane ticket. Hours after I landed in LA, they made me an amazing offer – move from Rome to Los Angeles and build Tokidoki into a brand to share with the world.” Tokidoki’s success isn’t exclusively down to its appealing colourful images and carefully crafted characters. Just as Sanrio became successful with its Hello Kitty merchandise empire, Tokidoki has targeted its designs towards the fashion market. New projects such as LeSportsac were launched this year, and the range was embraced by the crème de la crème of the US fashion industry. When

glamorous types such as Carmen Electra and the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie are sporting your design, you know this isn’t a fickle fad.

Why Japan? We’ve taken a look at how Japan has pioneered contemporary design trends and explored the vibrant, complex path of its history, but we haven’t yet tackled the question ‘why is Japan the initiator of such a successful style?’ Popular culture is a big part of day-to-day life in Japan, with magazines, television and film having a huge impact on individual lives. Take a walk through Tokyo and your senses are completely obliterated with soundbites and images fighting for your attention. An image that would be seen as cute or childish in Europe or America doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it in Japan. A cute style has been proven to sell products and appeal to the right audience, and even the most straightlaced of companies such as major national banks have adopted characters like ‘Snoopy’ for their promotions.

MEGA MERCHANDISE: Capcom has jumped on the bandwagon when it comes to marketing. To tie up with the game, you can kit yourself out with a Mega Man watch, T-shirt or action figure


‘Kawaii’, the Japanese term for ‘cute’, is bandied around to describe many things including animals or people. Kawaii imagery sells itself perfectly to many forms of entertainment from animation to game art. Because of the clean-cut style of the character-based imagery which utilises bold lines, strong colours and very basic styles, patterns and shadings, it lends itself well to all forms of digital art. The ease with which you can communicate a personality with a simple raised eyebrow or wide-eyed glazed look means that character-based art adapts just as well to the small screen as it does to large-scale banner art and mass-produced merchandising. The console industry is ge tting bigger and more powerful, and software manufacturers are battling it out to see who can draw the crowds with games that have the most impressive-looking graphics. Utilising a Manga/Anime style, artists can go to town with bright palettes and patterns. The simplicity of design also means it’s perfect for Flash-based animation, because expressions and actions can be easily communicated with basic actions. Generally, Japanese designers are more willing to try out fresh, radical ideas. In comparison to the United States, Japan is a small, concentrated country. For a large multicultural nation like the States, graphic design and advertising have to be carefully pieced together to appeal to all cultures and ethnic groups. Because of the lack of immigration in Japan, these rules don’t have to be followed. The huge gap in communication between Japan and the Western world also means that graphics-led designs work just as well across both cultures. Who cares if some of the script is unreadable? If the designs are so successful in communicating an emotion or a situation then that’s a job done. On the topic of why Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth, Sanrio claims: “Hello Kitty speaks from the heart. She is Sanrio’s ambassador to the world who isn’t bound to one language.”

Character style: Uglydolls

Competition! We have three copies of the s tunning book Graphic Japan: from woodblock and zen to manga and kawaii to give away courtesy of Rotovision (www.rotovision.com). For a chance to get your hands on a copy, send in your Japanese-influenced Photoshop creations to [email protected] . Anything goes, but you must ensure that your images are set to a resolution of 300dpi. Our three favourite artists will be showcased in next issue’s Peer Pressure gallery. Don’t forget to include a description of how you created your design.

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Sun-Min Kim and David Horvath were always creating new characters and working on toy ideas, but their most famous creation, ‘Uglydolls’, came about by accident. “Sun-M in had to move back to Korea in 2001 so I sent her many letters with my little WAGE character at the bottom. For Christmas she sewed a handmade plush version of him for me. I showed this to my pal Eric Nakamura, who owns the Giant Robot store and magazine, and he wanted to sell them in his shop. We made a few more and every time I would drop them off at his shop they would se ll out within a few hours. This grew and grew until we were in several shops, s o we set up a toy company of our own to handle slightly larger production. We’re still trying to keep up.” David grew up on toys his father brought back for him from Japan, mostly metal robots and strange figures. On the s ubject of why he thinks Japanese character desi gn is so popular, he has a lot to say: “They are popular because they’re honest. Craz y toys and animations exist for passion as much as they do for profit. In the USA all mainstream projects exist to make money, and toy companies won’t make something unless they think it’s going to become a mega-mill ion dollar seller. In Japan you find Kaiju monsters that exist simply because thei r creators have had some insane creative spark and they need to make it. They end up selling those like crazy.” Sun-Min and David work with several clients in Japan, but the Uglydolls are still quite hidden over there – and they plan to keep it that way for a bit. “You can find Uglydoll s at the incredible shop ‘Few Many’ in Tokyo. Last year, there were little plastic Uglydolls on bottles of Coca Cola at every Sankus convenience store in Japan. They made two million of these bottl e cap toys, and the three-week programme had sold out in four days.”

UGLYDOLLS: “At first you may want to

decorate your flat Uglydolls. But soon after that they become your pal. Next thing you know you’re sharing your life with them. It’s less of a style and more of a pal”


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Create an apocalypse Braving sub-zero temperatures, Tim Shelbourne dons his thermals and enters the second ice-age, thanks to the wonders of Photoshop CS2.

BY TIM SHELBOURNE

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he Day After Tomorrow Tomorrow . Ecologically, it’s the planet’s worst nightmare. Global warming accelerating to the extent that the Earth enters a new ice age. It’s an almost unimaginable scenario, but, as the Hollywood film showed us, the results are well within the grasps of the digital imageer. So here, we’ll visualise this frozen world in Photoshop, where we’ll transform a singularly ordinary digital photograph into a vision of the world in the grip of another ice age. First, we’ll need to replace the featureless sky in the original start image. This means manipulating the levels on one of the individual colour channels to create a purely black and white image that can be used as an effective layer mask. After replacing the sky, we can use simple copies of the original Background Layer, in conjunction with layer Blending Modes to give the entire image an arctic-like frozen feel.

For adding more realistic fallen snow, we’ll use one of Photoshop’s textured brushes. Ideally you’ll want to use a pressure sensitive graphics tablet for this, as you’ll have far more control over the opacity of the brush by using a stylus rather than a clumsy mouse. Where you place the fallen snow, and how much you add is really up to you, Although we’ve included a “snow map” on the cover disc to help you.

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Duplicate a channel Open the start image and then click the tab for the Channels palette. Here we’re going to make a super accurate mask for the bridge and landscape. Start by right-clicking the blue channel and choosing Duplicate Channel. On the duplicated channel, go to Image> Adjustments>Levels. Drag the Black slider to the right, achieving an Input Value of 132. Set the White Point slider to 208, and the mid point slider to 0.64. Then click OK to apply.

ON THE DISC

If you fancy having a go at this tutorial boot up the CD and load u p the starting image and snow map. Alternatively, why not turn one of your holiday snaps into a snowy scene? OUR EXPERT

Tim Shelbourne

With 20 years experience as an artist and illustrator, Tim is one one of Photosho Photoshop’ p’s leading leading lights. lights. As well as writing tutorials, Tim’s book Photoshop Photo Effects is a must-read. Cookbook is

Paint with black Ensure that your Foreground colour is Black and choose the Brush Tool. Select a hard round brush from the Brush Picker. Now paint over any parts of the landscape which are not black to create a solid silhouette of the bridge and the land. When you’ve painted out all of the grey areas, go to Select>All, followed by Edit>Copy. Now click on the RGB channel at the top of the channels stack and return to the Layers palette.

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Add a layer mask Add a layer mask to this layer via Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All. Return to the Channels palette and click the visibility eye next to the Background Copy Mask channel. Go to Edit>Paste. Now invert this mask via Image> Adjustments>Invert. Click again on the visibility eye for this channel to hide it. Now click the RGB channel again and return to the Layers palette.


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Paste the sky Now click on the original Background Layer. Find and open a suitable sky image and go to Select>All, Edit>Copy. Now close this image, returning to the main composition. Go to Edit>Paste to paste the sky. Now go to Edit>Transform> Scale. Drag on the handles around the transform Bounding Box to increase the size of the sky to fill the existing sky area. Click the tick in the Options Bar to commit the transformation.

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Duplicate and desaturate Click on the Background Copy layer and duplicate it via Layer>Duplicate Layer. Now click the upper duplicate layer and Desaturate it via Image> Adjustments>Desaturate. Set the Blending Mode for this layer to Linear Dodge in the Layers palette.

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Colourise Click on the lower duplicate layer and go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Check the Colourise box. Drag the Hue slider to the right to a value of 223 to create a blue/cyan tint. Use a Saturation value of 32. Click OK to apply. Leave the Blending Mode for this layer set to Normal.

Paste and distort To exactly exactly replicate replicate this image you’ll also need and image of a ship. Open this image and make a selection around the front half of the ship with the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Return Return to the main image, image, click on the top layer and go to Edit>Paste. Go to Edit> Transform>P Tran sform>Perspective. erspective. Drag the top left hand corner handle up a little to increase the perspective. Then hit the Enter key to commit.

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Editing! In this exercise, we use the Edit>Transform>Distort command to create the shadows being cast from the two figure we’re adding to the image. After you’ve chosen this command, you’ll see that the elements on the target layer are enclosed by a transformatio transformation n Bounding Box. There are “Handles” placed around this box, and it’s by dragging on these handles that we can distort the elements on the layer. You can drag each of these handles individually to stretch or skew the image elements within the Bounding Box. You can move the image elements by simply clicking and dragging within the Bounding Box. Hit Return to apply the transformatio transformation. n.


Move and size Choose the Move Tool and drag the ship over to the right of the image. Now go to Edit>Transform>Scale. Hold down the Shift key on the keyboard, then grab the top left corner handle and drag it out and up to increase the size of the ship just a little. Release the Shift key and hit Return to commit.

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Mask around the ship Add a layer mask to t his layer via Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All. Click on the layer mask, choose the Brush Tool and paint around the ship with black to hide the surroundings. Take Take your time, using a small hard brush to isolate the ship, then right click the layer mask thumbnail and choose Apply Layer Mask.

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Colourise again To col colour our the shi ship, p, go to Lay Layer> er>New New Adjustment ustment Layer>Hue/Saturation. Drag the Hue slider to 214 and set Saturation to 37. Click OK to apply the Adjustment Layer. Position your pointer on the dividing line between the ship layer and the adjustment layer in the Layers palette and hold down the Alt key. You pointer will change into two overlapping circles, click to group these two layers.

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Start painting snow Hold down the Alt key and sample one of the lightest blues from the image with the Eyedropper. Click on the upper Background Copy layer and add a new layer (Ctrl-Shift-N). You’ll need to refer to the snow map on the cover disk to see where to paint the snow. The important point is that this brush will give nice, broken edges to your snow. Begin to paint with the brush at a fairly large size in front of the ship to make a snow bank.

Add a photo filter filter Add a Photo Filter to unify the colours in the image. Go to L ayer>New Adjustment Layer>Photo Filter. From the list of filters choose Violet, and reduce the filter Density to 7%. 7% . Click OK to apply the adjustment layer.

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Chalk brush settings For the fallen snow we’ll modify a Photoshop brush. Choose the Brush Tool and click in the Brush Picker. Hit the small right pointing arrow in the Brush Picker and choose Reset Brushes. Scroll down the list of brush thumbnails, locate the Chalk brush and double-click on it . If you’re using a graphics tablet, click on Other Dynamics and set the Control for Opacity Jitter to Pen Pressure. In Shape Dynamics set Minimum Diameter to 50%.

Snow build-up As you paint, vary the tone of the colour slightly by clicking the foreground swatch and choosing a slightly lighter tone. We’re going to paint some highlights over this tone, so don’t worry if your snow cover still looks a bit flat. Continue to paint over areas of the ground, building up snowfall on the horizontal planes in the image and over the distant hills.

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Snow shadows Remember that here we’re actually painting the areas of the snow which are in shadow, so you need to bear in mind the light direction as you paint. You can see from the bridge itself that the light is actually coming from the top right of the image, just outside of the image image frame. As you paint over the rocks in the bottom left of the image, ensure that you leave a few dark areas of rock showing through the snow.

“THE CHALK BRUSH DOES A GREAT JOB OF RECREATING RECREA TING THE EFFECT EFFEC T OF FALLEN SNOW” 45 Advanced Photoshop

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Breaking up Paint some snow along the tops of the buildings, covering up the hard, straight lines. Also, with a smaller brush, you need to paint over the sides of the parked vehicles, making sure that you leave some of their upper outlines showing, as we’ll be adding some highlights here at a later point.

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Feel the pressure It’s vital here that you blend the highlights in with the snow you’ve just painted. You can easily do this by using the pressure sensitivity of your graphics tablet, using the white at lower and lower opacity to achieve the blend. Again, bear in mind the light direction when adding the highlights.

Painting

Icicles Of course, no ice age is complete without the odd icicle or two! Fortunately, these icicles are very simple to paint using a pressure sensitive graphics tablet. In the Brush Dynamics palette, displayed by hitting F5, you can set the Size Jitter control in the Shape Dynamics category to Pen Pressure. Now to paint the icicle, start at the top with heavy pressure, using less and less pressure as you move towards the icicle tip. As you reduce your stylus pressure the size of the brush will become smaller and smaller, resulting in a really effective pointed end. Remember to add some white highlights!


Adjust the highlights highlights Still using the Brush Tool, hold down the Alt key to activate the Eyedropper Tool and click to sample White from the image. Hit F5 to call up the Brush Dynamics palette, and in Other Dynamics set the Opacity Jitter control to Pen Pressure. Now we need to brush some highlights into the areas you’ve just painted.

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Snow detail This part of the process process can be very very timeconsuming, as you go around the image adding areas of fallen snow. The more subtle areas of snow build-up you add, the more effective the finished piece will be. If you feel that some areas of tonal changes in the snow are a little to harsh, soften them with the Blur Tool.

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Get effective You need to make sure that you add plenty of small areas of snow to the bridge itself, sampling various tones of blue/white from areas of the image by holding down the Alt key and then clicking on them. Also you should add snow to the ship, with some especially bright highlights where the sun is hitting most strongly.

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Adding the figures Choose some wintry people images from your own photo stock or use an image library and choose the Lasso Tool to make a rough selection around them. Paste into the main image. Go to Edit>Transform>Scale Edit>Transform> Scale and size the figures by dragging on one of the corner handles, holding down the Shift key to constrain the proportions. Hit Return to commit the transformation.

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Create a shadow Zoom into the figures and use the Eraser Tool to erase any unwanted areas around them. Duplicate this layer (Ctrl-J) and go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical. Use the move tool to drag the copied figures down to create the shadow. Go to Edit>Transform>Distort. Use the handles to distort the shadow figures to the correct shape and orientation on the ground.

“THE MORE SUBTLE AREAS OF SNOW BUILDUP YOU ADD, THE MORE EFFECTIVE THE FINISHED PIECE WILL BE”

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Blur the shadows Hold down the Ctrl key and click the thumbnail for this layer to generate a selection. Choose a deep blue/black for the Foreground swatch and go to Edit>Fill choosing Foreground Colour for Contents. Set the Blending Mode for this layer to Hard Light. Now choose the Blur Tool and blur the shadow a little as it trails away from the figures.

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Softly does it Choose the Eraser Tool with a soft round brush. Set the Opacity to 10% in the Options Bar. Now click with the eraser over the top parts of the shadows to fade them a little.

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Icicles Return to the painted snow layer and choose the Brush Tool. Refer to the Icicles boxout and paint some icicles hanging off the bridge. Continue to add lots of small areas of snow to the bridge. When you’re happy with the amount of snow, flatten the image via Layer>Flatten image. 5

Blurring

Edges Although the Chalk brush does a great job of recreating the effect of fallen snow, you may find that the grain applied by the brush needs softening here and there to make the shadows in the snow more convincing. The B lur Tool is the ideal candidate for this. The tool itself is nested with the Smudge and Sharpen Tool in the Toolbar. You control the degree of blurring via the Strength slider in the Options Bar. It’s best to set the strength at a fairly low level (20%-30%) and use the tool repeatedly over your chosen area until it is blurred sufficiently.


Feature

G o i n g o h e a d h e a d t s. P r o ) v e a m ( B w e r D e a d e r ) R u d d ( R n o S i m

Night club

Two artists from either side of the pond at different stages of their careers. How would they fair in a Photoshop dual? Every artist will tackle a brief in a different way and so many factors determine what the outcome will be. If you can draw, your creations might be predominantly illustrative; if you have a penchant for image manipulation, you pool together a number of different resources, mix them in the Photoshop melting pot and come up with something completely unique. To be a successful Photoshop artist you need to be able to pluck creative spirits from your head at an astonishing speed. You won’t make any waves if you churn out copycat designs and, similarly, you haven’t got much chance to gain another commission if you present a final design at snail’s pace. Here at Advanced Photoshop we’re always fascinated at how our readers tackle the same brief. Issue 18 saw design masters Jeremy Prasatik and Teis Albers strive to create the best image with only a one-word brief of ‘goddess’ as a guide. Since then, forum readers have been battling it out against each other, head-to-


head style, in an attempt to outdo one another with their Photoshop prowess. We thought it was time to try this experiment again, but raise the stakes a little. We plucked talented forum regular Simon Rudd, aka Rev Jesse Custer, from the comforts of his Internet alias and set him the challenge of creating a nightclub poster that would bring in the crowds. To spice things up a wee bit, we secretly set the same challenge to one of the most talented artists the other side of the pond, Drew Beam. We knew that each would tackle the brief with their very different styles with Simon being the master of manipulation (not in the Machiavellian sense of course) and Drew having the ability to doodle out a wonder that would make Michelangelo break down and weep. The brief was fairly simple, although a few elements were asked to be included on the poster such as the time, place and price. With inspiration from the given theme night name of ‘disco pop’, here’s what they came up with…

“TO BE A SUCCESSFUL PHOTOSHOP ARTIST YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO PLUCK CREATIVE SPIRITS FROM YOUR HEAD”

Going head to head: Night club


Feature

Drew Beam Drew was declared the longest baby to have ever been born in the state of Minnesota, USA. He began pitching his design ideas at an early age: “I OUR EXPERT Drew Beam

Age: 29 Place of birth: Minnesota Now lives: Brooklyn Works for: Levis US and Europe, Apple, Time Warner, Geico Studied: Classical Baroque Painting in Rome, Illustration, Glass Casting, Algebra First commission: Airbrushing onto jeans Heroes: Belgium, nectarines, the band Foghat Last commission: A comedy book published by Time Warner called Jewtopia Future projects: “I want to create humorous animated shows for kids and adults. I will also have a travelling theatre show comprised of chinchillas dressed in Viking regalia re-enacting battles and they will perform for the poor… I care about people like that!” His message to Simon: “I’ve got the touch, I’ve got the power. YEAH! I’m the winner It’s in the blood, it’s in the will, it’s in the mighty Hands of steel. I’ve got the touch, I’ve got the power, When all Hell’s breaking loose, I’ll be right in The eye of the storm.”

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was known as that ‘weird kid in the corner’, but I was also known as ‘that kid who can draw’. My first commission was to airbrush quazi-graffiti slogans like ‘Frresssh’ and ‘Bitchin!’ onto a pair of jeans. This quickly led to grander and far more magnificent projects like airbrushing onto jean jackets. I was 11, it was 1989.“ On this challenge he says: “When thinking about the idea of ‘disco pop’ and what it meant to me, I immediately thought of a dear friend of mine’s song called Everybody Dance. My friend, Andy Samburg, is a comedian and cast member for Saturday Night Live and wrote this song two years ago. It’s so damn funny and embodies all that is disco and pop to me.” His inspiration from the visual look of the final design came from Trapper Keeper folders, popular in the Eighties, Nintendo game covers from the same era and The Beatles’ album cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . You can see more of Drew’s work by taking a visit to his website at www.drewbeam.com.

Electric blue The same steps were applied to the ‘Liquify’ text. I wanted to experiment with the colour as I didn’t want all of the text to appear in the same shade of pink. Hue/ Saturation was used to alter these words to blue.

Try it out “I always sketch out my designs in pencil first. It’s faster and more comfortable for me. I find it allows me to be loose, which inevitably leads to new ideas. Originally I thought the theme would lend itself well to liquid and I started writing out all my text in honey and photographed it. I didn’t end up using this is the end, but maybe that weird idea will be fitting for a new project. My advice is to get all your ideas down on paper. Nothing is too unrelated to explore.”


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Laser lines Next a green grid was drawn originating from the same horizon point as the text lines (positioned below the text that was added in the last step). To start with this was more of a guide so I knew where to place my drawn elements and how much to shrink them into the distance of the horizon. However, I decided to keep it aesthetically p leasing as I knew it might ultimately be kept in the final design.

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Sketch it out I started out by hand drawing my text. I prefer to do this wherever possible as I hate searching for the right fonts and, most importantly, I dig presenting hand-drawn stuff, as it displays a human element behind the work. Once the text was scanned in I adjusted the levels in Photoshop to make it a clean black and white for use in the rest of the design.

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Central point A new layer was added and, using the Paintbrush, I made connecting lines from all of the outside points of the text joining them to a single point on the horizon. Rulers were helpful to make sure that the points were accurate and consistent.

Going head to head: Night club 3

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Text layers I made a copy of my text layer, as I tend to mess with my art so much that it can be hard to get back to the original beauty. I find it easier to make a copy and turn its visibility off just in case it needs to come back into play. Nothing sucks more than when you get so far ahead and something becomes merged, blurred or filtered and the History command won’t let you go back far enough to fix the problem.

Invert it I had already decided that I wanted the poster to have a dark background and the white background of the text didn’t really fit into this. I fixed this by inverting the image using the menu command Image>Adjustments>Invert (Apple/Ctrl+I).

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Colour shift I wanted to change the colour of the text and lines using the Hue/Saturation command. Be sure to write down all of the specs when doing something like this to a layer as you never know when you need to add the same settings to an element somewhere else.

A bit of blending Using the Blending Options on the text layer I gave the words a neon feel with the Outer Glow filter. The Blend Mode was adjusted to Screen and the Opacity was knocked down to 45% to keep the effect subtle.

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Hand-drawn hairpieces On the left are my hand-drawn heads. I brought each of them onto the poster pages and selected the white areas with the Magic Wand and deleted them. I coloured them directly onto the poster page. I prefer to colour whilst placing them because I like to see how things relate to one another.

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Filling in I selected all of the open spaces between the lines and filled them with a gradient using the Gradient tool, found underneath the Paint Bucket tool. Each fill was carried out one at a time, adjusting the properties of the gradient gradually to give it a 3D appearance.

Making stars Lines in various weights were added, again connecting to the same horizon point. Some parts of the line were removed with the eraser to tone down the opacity. I always keep my Wand, Burn tool, Dodge tool and Eraser at a low tolerance. With a high opacity soft brush I added my stars to the ends of the point of each line. This gives the effect that they ’re moving with everything else.

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Sense of perspective I drew tiny heads in the back simply with my Paint Brush and added a stroke using blending options. Finally, I created a new ‘clean up’ layer. Rather than trace the layer to which they belong it’s easier to conceal them with a new layer.


Feature

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Simon Rudd Simon is a regular contributor to the Advanced Photoshop forum Peer Pressure section. He first became interested in image manipulation after visiting websites such as www.b3ta.com and www.tattyworld.org . At the moment he’s a self-employed photographic artist and image-manipulator and is willing to work for “anyone who will give him money”. Simon normally likes to work on macabre images due to his interest with horror and fantasy. However, we’re testing his Photoshop skills to the max with this head-to-head challenge, as he’s required to produce something colourful and clean-cut. See more of his work at www.pompeysworst.co.uk . OUR EXPERT

Simon Rudd aka Rev Jesse Custer

Age: 29 Place of birth: Peterborough Now lives: Portsmouth Works for: “Anyone who will give me money” Studied: Computer studies and software engineering at the University of Portsmouth First commission: To manipulate a photo to give a zombie effect Heroes: Maggie Taylor – “I think her style is amazing” Last commission: “I’ve been in talks with a publishing house who are interested in me writing tutorials for them” Future projects: “I’d like to get commissions making books, magazine and CD covers. I would also like to continue writing Photoshop tutorials” His message to Drew: “I just want to wish him the best of luck – he’ll be needing it!”

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Dance floor The dance floor and the lights came next. I altered the perspective of the dance floor so the front tiles looked bigger and a Gaussian Blur of 25 pixels was applied. This element was then dragged to the bottom of the canvas and a layer mask was applied.

“WE KNEW THAT EACH WOULD TACKLE THE BRIEF WITH THEIR VERY DIFFERENT STYLES” 52 Advanced Photoshop

Setting up I started off by creating an A4 canvas at 300dpi, setting the background colour to black. Then I plunged right into the project by creating a column of smoke. This was made by drawing a random shape and Smudging, Dodging and Burning it until I was happy with the outcome. A Wave filter was applied by selecting the menu command Filter>Distort>Wave.

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Cutting out I used a picture from www.istockphoto.com to give a human element. I cut out the model and placed her above the ‘abstract’ layer. Ctrl-click the model layer to get a selection, then hide by unselecting the visibility.

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Stroking The ‘abstract’ layer was copied again and renamed ‘abstract cutout’. I hid the ‘abstract’ layer and made a new layer called ‘stroke’. With the selection from the model layer in place, I chose Edit>Stroke, set a width of 10 pixels, chose a white palette and picked the Outside option.

Going head to head: Night club 2

Abstracts A new group folder was created (Layer>Group) and labelled ‘abstract’. The smoke was moved into this group, then it was copied by selecting Layer>New>Layer Via Copy. The Free Transform command was used to alter the dimensions. The width and height were set to 95% and rotated 170 degrees. This was repeated nine times.

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Chrome The layers in the group were merged. The ‘abstract’ layer was copied and a Chrome filter was applied. The blending mode of the new chrome layer was altered to Overlay and merged with the two ‘abstract’ layers. The new ‘abstract’ layer was then tweaked with Hue/Saturation.

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Masking I masked out the centre of the red ‘abstract’ layer leaving the ends. A new layer was created and filled with a foreground to background Linear Gradient (blue #93aad4 to black #000000). The Opacity of this gradient layer was reduced to 75%.

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Clothing the model Using the Pen tool I drew on a bikini and coloured it bright pink. I also drew the hands and stroked them to give them an outline. Finally, I drew long white strokes with a brush to give the model some hair.

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Lighten up Some disco lights were added – this is very easy. First, I created a new layer called ‘lights’ on the top of the Layers palette. The Polygonal Lasso can be used to draw three triangles, one either side of the model and one between her legs. Fill them with white and deselect them. Now blur them by going to Filter> Blur>Gaussian Blur, set at 250 pixels.

Disco I added some elements for the disco scene including a disco ball and a chequered floor. I placed the disco ball near the top of the picture and positioned it over the model. The ball then needed to be masked out to appear as if it were behind the model.

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Finishing touches Next I un-hid the model layer so that I could see what I was doing and placed a selection around her. I then applied a 50-pixel Gaussian Blur and changed the blending mode to Soft Light in the Layers palette. Highlights were then added to the left-hand outline and Shadows to the right hand, as shown in the screenshot below. Finally the saturation of the picture was raised using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to finish off the effect.

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The text The final step was to add the text. I used the fonts ‘I want my TTR!’ for the top, setting the colour to black. For ‘Disco Pop’ I used ‘Disco Inferno’. The graphic of the DJ came from the font Deejay Supreme and the rest was completed in Arial Black. Fonts from taken from www.dafont.com. 5


Step-by-step Workshops

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7 Never chuck anything away, you never know when the odd envelope or newspaper cutting can come in handy. Paul Bateman shows you how to recycle your images in order to create a brand new collage masterpiece

RECYCLED COLLAGES

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7 Once again Advanced Photoshop readers have come up trumps in this month’s readers’ gallery. Here’s your chance to browse through our pick of the best. Seek inspiration for new design concepts, swot up on new techniques and check out the competition. If you think you’re up to the challenge then get your designs to us by e-mailing advancedpshop@ imagine-publishing.co.uk. You never k now who’ll be flicking through next issue and some fantastic prizes could be up for grabs

PEER PRESSURE

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PDF PRESENTATIONS 62 Wow prospective clients with a snazzy but easy to set up Adobe Acrobat document

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DATA-DRIVEN 70 Generate multiple graphics from a single template and cut down you workload

MANGA ART

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7 Hayden Scott-Baron, professional artist and author of published books Digital Manga Techniques and Manga Clip Art takes you through the process of designing your own Manga-style artwork. From initial sketch to the fine art of subtle colouring and shading all the main topics are covered. Find out how to give your character a Manga look by drawing perfect eyes and neat noses. Using the sketch on the CD you can recreate this design or if you’d rather, draw your own

HELPDESK

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Sometimes even the pros need some sound advice. We have the answers to all your technical angst in this month’s helpdesk

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COLLAGE COMPOSITION

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We take so many digital photos it can be har d to know what to do with them – so why not recycle? BY PAUL BATEMAN

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here are many people out there who never throw anything away because it may just come in useful one day. This could apply to images that grab your eye, whether it’s a picture in a magazine or something that you’ve photographed. In this tutorial we’ll be seeing how you can create new artwork by combining found graphics and self-made images using your scanner, digital camera and the power of Photoshop. You can follow the steps using the source images provided on the disc, but hopefully you’ll seize the opportunity to try and incorporate

some imagery of your own from your digital collections. Why not create the face from friends and family photographs for that personal touch? In many ways the approach to this illustration is traditional; collages with found materials have always been created by cutting and pasting, but with Photoshop a whole new world opens up that allows much more control, flexibility and experimentation – with the option of going back and starting again if it doesn’t work out. For this project you are only limited by your own imagination, so free your mind and, most importantly, have fun.

Faces in a crowd The face is crucial to this image and so it’s the ideal starting point. We need to source pictures of a 3/4 view of faces; these can be from magazines, stock libraries or your own photographs. We are looking to create a new fragmented, almost cubist face from several other images.

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The art of creation Once the images are imported into Photoshop you can start to have fun selecting areas of the different faces, and cutting and pasting them together. We want to create angular shapes, which will reflect the triangular shapes that make up the structure of the envelopes, so cut with straight edges not curved.

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The eyes have it Now we really need a strong focal point and this will be a visually strong eye that is shot from a straight-on face view, looking directly at the viewer. Cut out the eye in a rectangle, but place it at an angle. To ensure that it is dominant make it larger than it would actually be on a normal face.

A little head rotation Now we copy and paste the image onto the face we’re creating. Select Scale and hold down the Shift key to maintain its proportions; reduce it until it looks roughly okay. Don’t worry about an exact alignment, but if you can get the nose to line up with the face beneath it’ll look better.

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ON THE DISC

You’ll find all the elements you need to recreate Paul’s fantastic collage on the CD. Alternatively why not get all your old images together and make something from them – a unique piece of art. OUR EXPERT

Paul Bateman

Paul Bateman has been manipulating and recycling found images in a career spanning nearly 20 years. His work has been seen on everything from magazines to billboards worldwide, so he’s got plenty of experience in this area. This makes him the best person for this tutorial. See more of his work at www.paulbateman.co.uk for inspiration and aspiration.

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Cut it out Selections from each of the images are made with the freeform Lasso tool and using straight lines, as in this instance. It’s not necessary to get in close and carefully cut the face out as creating a blocky look will be much more in keeping with the rest of the overall image, so don’t worry about taking your time.

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Set yourself a challenge A good exercise to try is to set yourself a challenge of sourcing and creating a collage using a single word. As an example, this image was created from the word ‘fly’. It developed over many months, adding images as they were found. Keeping an image symmetrical can be quite striking and is always pleasing to the eye.

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Workshop “PHOTOSHOP IS A WONDERFUL TOOL FOR CREATING THE BIZARRE. THE ONLY LIMIT IS YOUR OWN IMAGINATION”

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A little less blusher The bottom part of the face is looking a little too dark compared to the rest and, even though we don’t want the skin tone to be totally consistent, it would be better toned down. Using the colour balance controls we can reduce the tone down using the sliders until it looks better within the montage.

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Getting in a flap Next we shall scan in an envelope as a torso for the head at 300dpi. The opening of the envelope will become the neck of a garment and this ties in nicely with the writing paraphernalia we will be placing on the head. If you don’t have a coloured envelope you can use the Hue/Saturation sliders to add colour.

Let your mind take flight Photoshop is a wonderful tool for creating the bizarre and the surreal. The only limit is your own imagination. Try and combine the unusual and you will inject a great deal of humour into your artwork, plus you’ll have fun too!

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Burning up At first the envelope might appear a little flat and lacking the definition we want, so make a selection along the internal edges. Using the Burn tool set at about 20 per cent, run it along the edges to darken and create slight shadows, which will give it a more 3D feel.

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Life can be a drag Make a selection of the entire envelope by zooming in and carefully selecting the outline using the Lasso tool and then cut and paste into your document. Now drag your locked layered face into the same document. Scale each down to size so that the neck of the face fits into the neck of the envelope.

From many, the one! The face is looking good and we can now add the ear and the neck using the same principles as before. Be prepared to alter the position, angle, colour, etc, later on when you look at the picture as a whole so don’t flatten the image yet. Finally, lock all the layers together.

Hitting the canvas Now it is time to create your actual document canvas, the size being 112mm wide x 128mm deep, CMYK at a resolution of 300dpi. Using the Fill tool, colour the background a sky blue. We will add detail and texture to this surface later, but for now just get the colour right to work on.

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Headstart We are now ready to start building the structure on top of the head itself. Whilst planning this design I had envisaged the top of the head as a harlequin hat because of the pointed design of an open envelope. This would represent a busy and confused mind.

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Roll with it The envelopes are looking a little flat so it’s a good idea to introduce some more 3D elements. Take a sheet of coloured paper and fold it as if it had come out of an envelope; bend the left-hand corner around a marker pen to create a curl.

Get wise and Colorize We can alter the colour of elements in the document, so one of the blue envelopes can become a red one. To do this, select the layer and Choose Hue/Saturation from the Edit>Adjustments menu. Tick the Colorize box and, using the sliders, you will find you can turn the envelope into any colour.

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Curly hair Cut and paste the paper sheet into your document and scale and align it so it looks like it’s poking out of the top of the envelope. Reducing the Opacity of the layer by 50% will allow you to see the neck of the envelope so you can cut away the area of the sheet that would usually lie inside the envelope. If you need to make some additional trims once you’ve positioned your paper image, then you can apply a Layer Mask to ensure the final effect is neat and tidy.

Joy in repetition Duplicate the blue envelope twice so we can arrange these on the head. You should change the orientation and size to fit the curve of the hairline. You can scan in other coloured envelopes as before and add those too.

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Start collecting It is well worth building up a collection of assorted ephemera and printed matter that catches your eye – the more unusual the better. This can include tickets, stamps, labels, etc, all of which can add extra interest to your work. Keep all of these clippings in a box by your scanner so they’re always to hand. If you have a plain background these can be used to add subtle texture to your creations.

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Time for bed We are now going to scan it at 300dpi so we need to protect the paper from being squashed by the scanner lid and losing the curled and folded effect. A couple of marker pens placed at either end of the scanner will do the trick and keep the lid and paper apart.

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Size matters Creating an image using found objects and imagery allows you to combine elements in unusual ways. Try and think with slightly surreal tendencies; don’t feel confined by convention. There are no rules… anything is possible in a Photoshop world. So feel free to have fun and add images you have found yourself, the crazier the better.

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Workshop Just cut that out There’s only one way to cut images out which is really effective and allows you complete control, and that is to zoom into the image to a range in excess of 300%. This way you should be able to isolate the image from any of the surplus background. It may be time consuming, but the end results are worth it. If you don’t zoom in you will find that your edits are imprecise.

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These will come in handy Now we need to add some hands to the body of the figure. These are from a royalty-free collection, but once again you should feel free to add your own selection, arranged to your own choice of scale and positioning.

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Letterhead We want to build up the material on the top of the head into a mass of communication imagery, like note pads, paper, envelopes, stamps, pens, post boxes and telephones. These can be images you’ve scanned or pictures you’ve found. If you’re lacking in source photography then have a scout on royalty-free websites, such as www.sxc.hu to find what you need. Vary the image size; for that element of surprise and why not make objects which might be small in reality, loom large in your artwork?

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Transformers We can begin to start work on the building and the hand holding the flower. If we open the image of the office block we can see it is okay, but lacks the power and stature of the major corporation that we are trying to represent so we need to transform it so that it does.

“THERE’S ONLY ONE 23 WAY TO CUT IMAGES OUT WHICH IS REALLY EFFECTIVE... AND THAT IS TO ZOOM INTO THE IMAGE TO A RANGE IN EXCESS OF 300%”

Hold it right there We now need to have a hand emerging from the top of the skyscraper as if the building itself is a sleeve for an arm. You could find this hand in a magazine, rip it out and take a scan to use in your creation or alternatively you can scout through an online stock library such as www.istockphoto.com. You could also photograph your own hand holding a marker pen. This you can later replace with the stem of the flower as the fingers will be well positioned. If you’re taking your own photograph then try and illuminate the image with natural light. Forcing a flash in a poorly illuminated room will mean that your shot may be bleached out and will need some heft y colour correction.

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Things are looking up This is when simple things that are so easily achieved in Photoshop can prove the most effective. Select the layer with the building on it and then go to Edit>Transform> Perspective. We can increase the base size and reduce the top so it looks like it is more of an imposing tower.

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Zoom We need to cut the hand out from the background and the method used here to get accurate results is to zoom in close and use the Polygonal Lasso tool to trace around the outline of the hand. You can then copy and paste the image as a new layer behind the skyscraper and scale to the right size.

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Get things in perspective Repeat the same process, as with the skyscraper, with the hand to create the impression it is emerging from the top using the Perspective Transform feature. We are then ready to import the stem image; scale and angle it so it looks like it is being held in the hand and obscures the marker pen from view.

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Spilt splat splot To create some inksplats get a sheet of paper and some ink. Drop small amounts of the ink from about 12 inches onto the paper. Once dry you can scan these in, select them using the Magic Wand tool set at a tolerance of about 50. Copy and position them on the background.

Getting to grips Reduce the Opacity to 50% and zoom in. Using the hand visible beneath as a guide remove the sections of stem that would lie below the fingers. Finally return to 100% Opacity and use the Burn tool to create slight shadows so that it looks like the hand is actually holding the stem.

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Coming up roses Now we need to add a flower head to the top of the stem; perhaps you have one you have taken in your own garden that might be suitable. Once that is done we will need to look at the background, as it would be good to add some interest to what is, at present, a flat area.

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Effective ephemera For the background we are going to use some found ephemera of postmarks, and create some ink blots and a signature to scan. It is well worth building up a collection of assorted bits of printed matter, that catch your eye. You can then use to add extra interest to your work.

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In the blender Experiment with blending modes and see what fascinating effects can be achieved, transforming the mundane into something visually exciting. Overlay was used here for the ink blots, and Screen on the postmarks because we wanted a subtle effect.

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Finishing touches We can also add some postmark circles using the blending modes to make them more subtle so you won’t distract from the main image. While we have the image still in layers it’s also a good idea to see if anything needs tweaking, possibly adding a shadow here or moving things slightly. 5

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Portable PDF presentations If you’re looking for a fast, simple and attractive way to distribute your images to clients, friends or family, then PDF Presentation may be the perfect solution

P

DF Presentation is basically a multi-page Acrobat document that opens in full-screen mode and optionally transitions from one page to another at specified intervals. PDF Presentation is convenient for quickly creating portfolios or slideshows, and because the PDF format is ubiquitous, you can send your presentation to just about anyone, regardless of whether they’re using a Mac or a PC. Also, since PDF embeds all images, fonts, etc, you can be sure that your target audience is seeing the presentation exactly as you intended. Creating a PDF Presentation is simplicity itself. Before you get started, copy the images you’d like in your presentation into a single folder (or create a collection in Bridge). Although it’s not necessary to have all files in one place, it does make it much easier to assemble the presentation.

Bridge the gap If you’re using Bridge, select the files to include in the presentation. Press Cmd/ Ctrl+A (or Edit>Select All) to select all files in the current folder/collection. PDF PRESENTATION DIALOG: The PDF Presentation dialog allows you to reorder Use the Shift key to range select files your slides by simply dragging them up and down in the Source Files list. Use the (or drag-select with the marquee), and the Browse, Duplicate and Delete buttons to add, copy and delete slides, respectively Cmd/Ctrl key to select/deselect individual files. Then choose Tools>Photoshop>PDF multi-page document. Selecting Presentation. Presentation enables the Presentation SAVE PDF OPTIONS: The number of controls in the Save PDF Options dialog Alternatively, you can create the Options panel, which allows you to can be daunting, but the available presentation from within Photoshop, designate the delay between slides, the The latest version of Adobe presets make it quick and easy to either by opening the files to be included, transition between slides, and whether or Reader (7.0.8 at the time of writing) complete. You can also choose the or by selecting them from the PDF not the presentation will loop upon launches up to 50 per cent faster desired compression levels, output than version 6.0, provides improved options and security settings Presentation dialog. Choose File> completion. Select Random Transition to security, and has a whole host of Automate>PDF Presentation. When the randomise the transitions. new features and improvements. PDF Presentation dialog appears, enable Press the Save button and choose a Download it for free from the ● The PDF engine in each of the the Add Open Files checkbox to include location in which to save your PDF Adobe website: Adobe Creative Suite 2 applications, all open files, and/or use the Browse presentation. The Save Adobe PDF dialog including Photoshop, has been ● www.adobe.com/products/ button to add files to the presentation. box now appears. While there are a lot of significantly updated to make them acrobat/readstep2.html All selected files appear in the Source options in this dialog box, don’t be compatible with Adobe Acrobat 7. In The download size for this is intimidated; there are presets available Files list. Drag the files up and down to addition, the Save Adobe PDF dialog approximately 28MB with the change their order in the presentation. and the majority of the options are selfused throughout the suite provides a optional Adobe Yahoo! Toolbar and You can also duplicate or remove files explanatory. consistent approach to creating PDF Adobe Photoshop Album Starter using the corresponding buttons (located The save options you choose will documents. A welcome addition is Edition. (Download is around 20MB under the Browse button). depend on your intended use, method of the Preserve Photoshop Editing without all the extras.) Capabilities option, which allows you The Output Options dialog allows you distribution and target audience; to preserve all i mage components, to save either a simple multi-page however, for the sake of example, choose such as layers, paths, styles, etc. document, or a presentation-style Smallest File Size from the The Summary page provides a detailed drop-down. If your viewers have the breakdown of the selected options, as latest version of Acrobat Reader, you may well as any potential warnings. You may also take advantage of its superior even save your preferred settings as a compression by choosing Acrobat 7 (PDF custom preset via the Save Preset button. In this episode of the Adobe Creative Suite podcast, host Terry White shows you 1.6) from the Compatibility drop-down. Finally, press Save PDF and kick back how to add some polish to those presentations, as well as take advantage of Turn on View PDF After Saving to see the while Photoshop does all the hard work. Acrobat-specific transitions and settings. He also demonstrates how to tweak the settings to do automatic or manual slideshows. Available online at: presentation upon completion. When it’s finished, you can email your You can also establish compression presentation, or distribute it via the web, ● http://creativesuitepodcast.com/index.php?post_id=114895 levels, output options and security and anyone with the free Adobe Reader Direct download (requires QuickTime) – 15.7MB ● http://media.libsyn.com/media/cspodcast/Acrobat-PDFPresentations.m4v settings via the corresponding pages will be able to view your images as a along the left-hand side of the dialog box. full-screen slideshow, transitions and all.

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Step-by-step

Workshop

DRAWING MANGA

Learn the ins and outs of creating Manga art with impact from a professional videogame artist well versed in character design BY HAYDEN SCOTT-BARON

ON THE DISC If you’re confident enough to draft up your own sketch you can make your own original Manga art from scratch. Alternatively, use the ‘aps_ manga_sketch’ file on this month’s CD as a guide.

OUR EXPERT

Hayden Scott-Baron

Hayden Scott-Baron is a professional videogames artist, specialising in character design. He is the author of Digital Manga Techniques and Manga Clip Art . Hayden is a founding member of Manga group Sweatdrop Studios and has produced a number of Manga-style comics. www.deadpanda.com

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Sketch it out This image is being sketched directly into Photoshop, but you can of course draft the character on paper first and then scan in the image. Using a coloured line such as blue helps the sketch lines stand out more from the black when coming to ink the finished picture.

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n this tutorial, we will be creating an illustration of a Japanese girl in traditional kimono dress. The cherry-blossom trees seen in the background are known as ‘sakura’, and represent the coming of spring in Japan. I was keen to use soft colours throughout the image to maintain a romantic and sentimental feel of a softly lit afternoon in Japan. Drawing in a Manga style is generally a very personal and subjective thing. There are so many different styles encompassed within the look of Manga, with a few commonalities throughout. If

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Check for errors Almost all errors with an image become painfully obvious to the artist when the image is flipped, and if you can fix the image so that it looks correct facing both directions then you have probably got a high quality illustration. Most artists are too afraid to see their image flipped, but it is worth doing to spot the flaws early on.

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Start inking Fade the Opacity of the sketch layer and then begin to produce line art on a different layer. You may wish to apply the layer lock to your sketch by clicking the padlock icon to ensure you don’t accidently do any inking on this layer during this stage.

you’re new to drawing Manga it will help you to find example images and refer to these as style guides. The style I’m using here uses relatively realistic proportions but still captures the look of Manga thanks to the simplification of facial details, line work, and colouring methods. Using Photoshop for this illustration makes it possible to break the image into different elements such as line art, base colours, shading and patterns. The distinctive flat colours of a Manga-style image such as this benefit greatly from this level of control. It is also important to be able to easily colour the line art.

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Add definition It can sometimes be useful to add more to the sketch, but without the effect of making the sketch more complicated to make out, leaving the air of simplicity. Here the kimono area is being redrawn with a contrasting colour. This will help to effectively define certain areas of the image and correct the drawing. It will also act as a stopgap between the sketch and the inking.

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Workshop Coloured lines Introducing some colour to your line art can really help the overall look of an image. It can even make the line art appear thinner and more complementary to your overall image. If you have your lines cleanly defined on their own layer you can simply lock the Opacity, set the layer style to ‘normal’ and paint whatever colour you desire on the line art layer without fear of disturbing the rest of the image.

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Pen and eraser This may seem as though it produces blocky, pixilated lines but it actually creates fantastically smooth lines as long as the DPI of the image is high enough. Working with aliased artwork such as this also makes it much easier for colouring and selection of areas. Tapping the B and E key to swap between pencil and eraser can speed up this process too.

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Pencil sizes Adjust the pencil size with the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keys to maintain a clean and crisp illustration style. Generally a thicker line will be used for the outlines of a character and then a thinner line is used to show details, folds and overlaps on the surface. For example you may use an 8 pixel wide brush for the outline of a garment and then a 4 pixel wide brush for details and seams on the fabric.

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Working on the eyes One of the most common aspects about drawing eyes in Manga style is that the sides of the eye are not actually defined with the pen, but rather they are left open. At first this may seem somewhat odd and, certainly, unrealistic but you should see that it will help to make the eyes seem more vibrant and blend neatly with the face.

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Checking for differences It can sometimes be helpful to use the square area Marquee Tool at this stage in the process to check that the eyeballs and general eye areas are the same size. If one eye is larger than the other it is worth adjusting now before it is too late.

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Mouth and lips This image has a little more lip definition than most Manga-style artwork, but even still it is helpful to avoid joining up the lines completely. The small gap on the bottom lip shows where the teeth start to touch the lip, and it softens the definition of the mouth.

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Draw the hair Firstly, lots of individual strands are drawn falling down from the hairline, and then add lines to represent hair pulled backwards across the scalp. Select the area of the head you wish to add hair detail to, as this will help your lines stay within this area. For the hair on the top of the head thin lines are drawn outwards in an arc from a central point.

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Avoid too much definition The nose on a Manga character can quite often be defined e xtremely simply, with some artists opting for incredibly small mouths and dot-like noses, and some others avoiding drawing the nose at all from certain angles. With this picture the nose will be defined more with shading, so just drawing nostrils will be sufficient in this case.

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Selecting the image area Now the line art is ready, it’s time to block out the colours, but first it is helpful to create a layer mask to keep colours within the outline of the image. Use the Magic Wand tool with your anti-alias set to ‘off’, all layers ‘on’ and contiguous set to ‘on’. Select the areas of the image ‘outside’ of the main line art, and then invert the selection.

Clipping Masks Create another new layer with layer style set to ‘Multiply’ and link the layer to the template layer with a clipping mask. Hold ‘Alt’ and click the line between the t wo layers to create a mask. For this layer, and all others above it if you apply a clipping mask, you don’t need to worry about colours bleeding beyond the line art area.

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Creating a silhouette Create a new layer and fill it with any colour (press Cmd/Ctrl + Del to block this out with background colour), then lock the Opacity of the layer. Or, define the area as a mask and place your base colours on this layer. This is to set the area for colours to be applied without area selection.

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Applying base colours Block out the basic colours for the image using the Paint Bucket tool. You may need to switch to the Pencil Tool in order to manually fill in areas where the line art doesn’t join up completely, or simply to block gaps in the line art.

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Filling in colours For areas of detail it’s useful to select the entire area with the Marquee Tool and then start deselecting unwanted areas. This is much faster than filling in each area individually and ensures that no small areas are left uncoloured.

“THE NOSE ON A MANGA CHARACTER CAN QUITE OFTEN BE DEFINED EXTREMELY SIMPLY” 17

Creating a layer for lighting In Photoshop you can work shading independently of colouring. This makes it possible to ensure that the image has realistic lighting and all areas receive apt shading and shadows. Create a new layer for shading with the layer style set to ‘Multiply’ and hide the base colour layer.

Clipping masks You will find that an excellent way to speed up production of a character image is to use a clipping mask. Once the opaque area is defined for the outline of the character you don’t need to worry about colours, shading or details leaving this boundary. It also has the effect of leaving you free to do things like additional masks or selections, and will dramatically reduce the sheer amount of work that is necessary when adding more layers.

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Workshop 18

Drawing in the shadows Using a deep pink tone and the Pencil Tool shading is added to the character assuming a light source from the top-right of the image. Shadows are cast from the overlapping parts of the body, and the face receives more definition from the areas around the nose, lips and eyes.

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Define the fabric Particular attention is paid to the folds in the fabric, introducing lines and detail that are not present in the line art itself. A kimono is made of relatively heavy and layered material, so folds will be large, chunky and boldly defined.

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Soften the shading An Airbrush is now used on some small areas of the image to soften the lighting slightly, such as around the nose, cheek and chin of the face, as well as around the base of the neck. This will help to define these areas as being especially soft compared to the fabric and to the hair of the character.

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Checking your progress Once you have finished with the lighting you can turn the colour layer back on and see the results of the image with the lighting applied. If you feel the shading doesn’t look correct on certain areas of the picture, highlight the area (such as the blue kimono area) and adjust with the Hue/Saturation tool until it looks correct.

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More detail for the kimono Now we are happy with the shading we can turn off the shading layer and introduce more detail to the kimono design. Here some of the kimono is being coloured grey and then pale yellow vines are being drawn over it. These details are all painted directly on to the base colour layer.

Capturing a pattern for the illustration The main pattern for the kimono is actually taken from some origami paper bought from a Japanese shop. The origami paper is scanned in and the fill tool is used to remove texture from the white areas of the image. The paper is then placed on a layer set to ‘Multiply’.

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Using flowers for decoration Creating a new document temporarily, a simple flower is drawn on its own. By pasting this along the irregular border between the grey and the blue we have an attractive design. Using Shift + Alt when dragging the cursor makes it possible to duplicate objects on the image quickly, which can be collapsed down to the base colour layer once finished.

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Reapplying the pattern Now cut different sections of the origami paper and then use the ‘Transform’ tool to flip and rotate the pattern into position so that it falls in line with the kimono. Some areas of the pattern are erased using the eraser tool in order to avoid the pattern ending in an abrupt manner.

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Adding detail to the Obi Using the Magic Wand tool to select the area of the Obi (the belt of a kimono) – vertical stripes of colours with low transparency are drawn all over. This gives the impression of a pattern and variety of colours. Another origami paper design is scanned in, desaturated (to remove colours) and placed over the Obi with a layer set to ‘Overlay’. This allows the pale dots to show over the Obi.

Aliased graphics It may seem undesirable to use aliased or ‘jaggy’ lines in artwork such as this, but you should find that it actually makes it considerably easier to work with and that it will generally improve the crispness of the overall result. It is, however, very important that you remember that you must work at a fairly high resolution such as 600dpi when using aliased graphics. If you fail to do this you will f ind that the pixels will become visible when printed and, it’s hardly necessary to say, this is not a desirable effect.

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Facial detail Details are added to the face using the Brush Tool and soft brush settings. Details such as lipstick and makeup are added. Some highlights are added to the cheek, nose, lips, eyes and hair to imitate reflective light. In this image highlights are sparse to maintain the softness of the atmosphere.

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Colouring the line art To complement the hues, colour the line art so that it isn’t completely black. The line art is on a transparent layer so it’s possible to colour the line art individually by using the ‘lock opacity’ option and then fill in the black with whatever colour you feel most appropriate. A rich burgundy tone (47100B) is applied to the lines for this image.

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Subtle sunlit glow Now add a soft glow to the image. Select all the areas from the shading layer (by holding ‘ctrl’ and clicking on the layer thumbnail), and then invert the selection. Create a new layer and fill in the layer with a warm colour such as FFC479. Set the layer to ‘Vivid Light’ and apply the Gaussian Blur filter from the Filter>Blur menu. This will give the image a warm glow and complement the colours.

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Bringing it together The character is finished – a few simple details are added to the background to complete the picture. The background was achieved using the Gradient Tool multiple times with pink and white. The cherry blossom trees are drawn out with shades of white and pink, and some dull brown branches are added to give the impression of trees. 5

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Data-Driven Graphics Data-Driven Graphics aren’t widely used, but they’re incredibly useful for generating multiple graphics from a single template – once you understand how to use them

OUR EXPERT Trevor Morris

Trevor Morris is an official Photoshopbeta tester and amateur digital photographer with more than a dozen years’design experience. He works as a senior graphic designer for a Canadian web design company and also maintains the Photoshop-centric website GFX™ (http://user.fundy.net/morris).

DEFINING A TEMPLATE: This mock banner template was created with a few shape layers, some type layers and a photo from www.iStockphoto.com. We’ll use Photoshop’s new Data-Driven Graphic capabilities to create a variety of banners from this single template

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hile Data-Driven Graphics, or variables, are new to Photoshop, they’re not an entirely new concept. Variables were actually introduced in ImageReady 7 and then ported to Photoshop in CS2. In a nutshell, Variables allow you to generate a series of graphics from a single template by changing the content and/or properties of specific layers. This can be done via the new Variables dialog, or by importing an external data set, such as a text file or spreadsheet. Variables are ideal for creating web banners, digital displays, charts and diagrams, icons and so on. To demonstrate how Variables work, we’ve created a mock banner, promoting Photoshop’s Data-Driven Graphics. The banner is made up of nothing more than a few shape layers, some type layers and a photo from iStock. We’ll use Variables to create a variety of banners from this template. Before defining Variables, it’s a good idea to give each of your layers a meaningful name. The Variables dialog references image content by layer name, so if you have a lot of layers, it’s easy to get them confused.

Defining variables Choose Image>Variables>Define. The Variables dialog is comprised of two pages: Define and Data Sets. However, you can’t access Data Sets until you define at least one variable. Variables are used to define which

VARIABLES DIALOG  DEFINE: The Define page of the Variables dialog

enables you to define which layers (variables) within the document can change and how they can be changed. Variables types include: Visibility, Text Replacement and Pixel Replacement layers in a template change and how they change. Currently, there are only three Variable types: Visibility simply turns a layer on or off ; Text Replacement allows you to change the text within a type layer; and Pixel Replacement lets you substitute the pixels in an art layer with an external image file. Select a layer from the Layer dropdown menu and then enable the desired variable type(s). Note that an asterisk appears next to the layer name, indicating that it’s a variable. Enter a name for the variable (or accept the default name), or select an existing

variable from the Name drop-down to link variables together. Linked Variables are displayed to the right of the Name drop-down, along with a link icon. While the Visibility and Text Replacement variable types are simple toggles, there are several options available for Pixel Replacement. The Method drop-down allows you to choose one of the following scaling methods for the replacement image: Fit Uniformly scales the image to fit within a bounding box defined by the original image (which may leave parts of the bounding box empty in one dimension);

Importing data sets

Sample files

The real power of Data-Driven Graphics isn’t the ability to manually create a few controlled graphics, but in being able to automatically generate dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of graphics based on imported data. To learn more about creating and importing external data sources, such as text files and spreadsheet (CSV) files, refer to the ‘Creating data sets in external files’ and ‘Import a data set’ help topics in the Adobe Help Center (accessed by pressing the Help/F1 key, or choosing Help>About Photoshop).

Data-Driven Graphics are particularly well suited for weather icons – you know, the kind that is a picture of a sun or clouds, along with the temperature and weather conditions. Well it just so happens that Adobe has included exactly such a template in your Samples folder: ●Mac: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Samples ImageReady Files/Weather.psd ●PC: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Samples\ImageReady Files\Weather.psd


s e u q i n h c T e Fill Uniformly scales the image to fill the you want to generate. bounding box (which may cause the If the Variables dialog is already open, image to extend outside the bounding you can access Data Sets via the dropbox in one dimension); As Is applies no down at the top of the dialog (Cmd/ scaling to the image; and Conform scales Ctrl+2), or by pressing the Next button; the image non-uniformly to fit the otherwise, choose Image>Variables > bounding box. When you hover over the Data Sets from the menus. Method drop-down, context help and a First create a data set for the default sample image are displayed in the state (first graphic) by clicking the New Description area for each scaling method. Data Set button – the one that look s Click on an Alignment node to suspiciously like a save icon – then give determine the relative placement of the it a name (or accept the default). Click new image inside the original image’s the New Data Set button again to bounding box. (This option is not begin defining the second graphic. available when the Conform method is Select a variable from the Name selected, since it’s not applicable.) drop-down (or use the Next /Previous Finally, the Clip To Bounding Box Variable buttons) and change its value. option clips any portions of the image You can also select variables f rom the that fall outside the bounding box. (This list at the bottom of the dialog box. option is only available for the Fill and As The lis t area show s the valu es and Is scaling methods.) layers associated with each variable, For the banner template we wanted to and allows you to sort them by clicking change the caption text (using the Text on the column headers. Replacement variable), hide the Define additional data sets for each download text and graphics (with the version of the graphic you want to Visibility variable), and change the image generate. For this particular example (with the Pixel Replacement variable) to see Table 1 for the data sets defined. create a variety of banners. Table 2 Click OK and save your work. You (below) details which layers are assigned can return to the Data Sets dialog at to variables, as well as their variable any time to create additional data sets, types and properties. Once you’re or to edit, rename, or delete existing finished defining variables, press the OK data sets. button and save your work.

Previewing data sets

Creating data sets Now that we’ve defined our Variables, we’ll use the Data Sets page of the Variables dialog to assign new values to them. A data set is a collection of Variables and associated data, used to define each version of the graphic that

You can preview and apply data sets, using the Image>Apply Data Set command, or the Data Sets page of the Variables dialog. To preview a data set, enable the Preview checkbox and select a data set from the list; click the Cancel button to exit the dialog without

TABLE 1

Variables Name

Data Sets Value (Banner 1)

Value (Banner 2)

Value (Banner 3)

Text_Caption

Now with DataDriven Graphics!

Dynamic Graphic Capabilities!

More Value with Variables!

PixelReplace_Image

Photo of woman/eyes

Photo of flowers

Photo of jets

Visibility_Download

Visible

Visible

Invisible

VARIABLES DIALOG  DATA SETS: The Data Sets page of the Variables dialog is

where you assign new values to collections of layer variables, called data sets. Each data set defines an alternative version of the graphic to be generated

applying the data set. To apply a data set, simply click the Apply button.

Generating final results Once you’ve defined your Variables and data sets, you can batch export the final images using the File>Export>Data Sets As Files command. Choose a destination using the Select Folder button, and select the data set(s) to apply from the Data Set drop-down. Use File Naming drop-downs to define the naming scheme you wish to use for the output THREE FOR THE PRICE OF ONE: Three files and select any applicable versions of this mock banner Compatibility options. Press OK. ad were generated from a single Unfortunately, you’re currently limited template using the following variables: to saving images in PSD format, but you A – Visibility variable (comprised of three linked variables); B – Text can use the standard File>Automate> Replacement variable; C – Pixel Batch command to convert them to Replacement variable another format if you wish.

“VARIABLES GENERATE A SERIES OF GRAPHICS FROM ONE TEMPLATE”

TABLE 2

Layers Name

Type

Variables Type

Name

Linked?

Caption

Type layer

Text Replacement

Text_Caption

No

Image

Raster layer

Pixel Replacement Method: As Is Alignment: Centered Clipping: Off

PixelReplace_Image

No

Download

Type layer Visibility

Visibility_Download

Yes

Arrow

Shape/vector layer

Disc

Shape/vector layer

Things to watch out for You cannot define variables for the Background layer. You must first change the Background into a regular layer by simply Opt/Alt-double-clicking on its thumbnail in the Layers palette. Variable names must begin with a letter, underscore, or colon, and they cannot contain spaces or special characters (except for periods, hyphens, underscores and colons). Adobe GoLive recognises all Text Replacement and Visibility variables, but not Pixel Replacement variables.


Eye-catching imagery that inspires and challenges emperatures have been soaring, barbecues sizzling and designers a-frazzling, but that hasn’t stopped you from entering your wondrous creations to us here at Advanced Photoshop. This month we’ve been more impressed than ever before at the quality and diversity of your images. It’s also great to see our forum at www. advancedphotoshop.co.uk/forum kicking off. Even if you’re not lucky enough to see your images in print it’s a fantastic place to post your designs and gain some valuable feedback from your fellow readers. If you would like to submit your images for these pages as well as posting links on the forum you can email us low-res versions to advancedpshop@imagine-publishing. co.uk and we’ll get back to you for more information and higher resolution copies if we want to print them.

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You’ll stand a better chance of seeing your work in print if you adhere to the following criteria: make sure that your images are high-quality TIFFs or JPEGs ( RGB or CMYK), 300dpi minimum, and can be printed at 15cm x 15cm minimum. Don’t forget to include a short text file detailing how you created your work, too.

“I’M CURRENTLY A FREELANCER BUT AIM TO SET UP A DESIGN STUDIO ONE DAY” 72

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Almost Famous NAME: James Chinemana EMAIL: [email protected]

James Chi nema na is a sel f-taug ht ent husi ast o f Photoshop and Illustrator but will soon be going on to study for a degree in Illustration at The Ar ts Institute at Bournemouth. For his first piece, ‘In Women We Trust’ James want ed to crea te a pie ce t hat “ il lust rate d the beauty, strength and courage of women”. He started by designing the text using var ious layer styles. Vector images were then added from Illustrator and f lowers and gradients placed on top. The second illustration, entitled ‘Almost Famous’ was created using similar techniques. James brought a vect or ima ge int o Photos hop and went a bout ad di ng Sev entie s-i nspi red c olour tones, microphones and circles. “I find inspiration for my work from a wide ra nge of sources but particularly fashion, extreme sport s, music and photography. I currently do freelance work but aim to set up a design studio one day,” James tells us.

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Digital Distillations NAME: Alastair Tattersall EMAIL: [email protected] WEB: www.abat.co.nz

Ala stai r has b een work ing i n the g raph ic desig n and pu blis hin g indus tr y for over 20 years and fi rst dabbled with the layer-less Photoshop Version 2 but only over the past five years has begun to create his own ar t digitall y. For the red image ‘Lava Tunnels’ Alastair created the image by rendering black and red clouds, airbrushing the ridges and valleys with black and red tones for depth. “I use the Tw irl Filter a lot in my work as it gives it a real orga nic feel. A quick Plastic Wrap to high light the ridges, a touch of lighti ng for effect and hey presto – lava!” Rather than j ust keep his images on fi le on his computer, when he’s happy with the final outcome Alastair likes to print his images up to a metre high onto canvas or framed paper.

Zip It Up NAME: Nick Truch EMAIL: [email protected] WEB: www.knowledge-partners.com

Nick created this image after being inspired by the ‘Zip It Up’ tutorial in Is sue 16. “I wanted to go a step further than the original orange tutorial and see what was inside.” This image was created from three photographs. “I s tarted wit h a photo of a whole apple. To get my second photo with the zip I stuck it on the apple with sticky tape. I then took a photo of an apple sitting on the g rass to make it easier to bring out the blades of grass in front of the apple.” Using a mask on the whole apple layer, Nick careful ly brought the bottom layers to the foreground, including the zip and the blades of grass. Finally, he applied various layer style effects to the apple in order to add a convincing shadow.

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Discover the thinking behind the art

B E S W T ! i n I N N S e H I f y o x t O i W s B e u t h i n k

s u e

s y P h o t t I n S h o u ’ v e g o o o w t w h s h a dv a o p ed t h e n s e i n n e x t m a t i t t a k e Y o u r nc n d y o u r o n t h’ s A s t o b e e f f o p sh @ i m i m a g e d v a n c t h e r t s o p c o u l s e d d w i a gi ne p - u bt o u s a t n y o F o r u li i a f a m o r e n g. c n t a s sh w w w i n t i c o .u k . c o l o f o r m a t i o n u r c o n o nfi d t h i s p e n c r o d u c t e . c o m v i s i t

P a n t on e H u e y

Nevermore NAME: Randy ‘Snowdog’ Monteith EMAIL: [email protected] SOURCE: www.sxu.hu

“When I saw th is image of the Toucan, for some reason it reminded me of the poem ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Alla n Poe. Of course, I do reali se that I used a toucan and that Poe’s poem was about a raven, not a toucan but I wanted to do my own surreali st version”. Snowdog started off by creating the background wall using brushes of var ious opacities to start to build up the texture starting with darker colours and then adding layers with the lighter colours. “I u sed an adjustment layer to achieve the final blue colour. The bird was added and a mask applied to make it look as if h is body was ti nier t han it s hould b e. The text wa s added wit h a 3-pixel bru sh and the Opacity changed. Then, a layer mask was applied with varying levels of grey until a chalk y look was achieved”.

Morning Star NAME: Daulton Waren EMAIL: [email protected] WEB: www.myspace.com/ov3rdo5er

Daulton, from Phoenix Arizona, started off this image by taking a photograph of himself standing and another of himself sitting with his feet hanging. “I knew I was going to need to edit t hem on layer for the effect of being i n the air.” Stock photographs were used for the background and then manipulated using blending modes. “I copied the right side of the LA buildings and pasted them onto a new layer, flipping them horizontally and messing them around with the Saturation and Contrast. T hen I added some stars and an orange ci rcle with some outer and inner glow to give it a sun/halo look. T he background was given its final touch by adding some smoke and fire to the buildings usi ng a black brush, blu r and Opacity”. For the angel, Daulton duplicated his i mage, desaturated this and t hen altered the blending mode to Overlay and altered the saturation, brightness and contr ast. The wings were taken from an image of a vultu re which he flipped to make a pair. “ I rendered some lighting effects on the wings to give them a red ti nt and raised the saturation and contrast”.

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o f a

T O W e p r o u d o w n e ro r S E B S H t t i s n o w t h M o n i t 9 5 I N o n P r e s c o P R O t h £ 1 e r 2 o r w o n r fi d e n c e u c t v i s i t d y p S ib r a t o l o u r C o t h i s p r o d m C a u l r t e s y o f C f o r m a t oi n fi o d n e n c e . c o

J a s

c o o r e i n r c o n u m F o r . c o l o

w w w

Fine Art NAME: Jason Prescott EMAIL: [email protected]

Jason became a dab ha nd at Photoshop ten years ago. The series of images here were created for entry into a Fine Art exh ibition back in 1996 and was his fir st introduction to layer masks and blending modes “but they were rejected!” The dog image is a more recent venture and was based on a photograph taken a few weeks back. “I masked out the background and played with Shadows, Highlights, Curves and the Unsharp Mask to get the best possible starti ng picture. I added a blurred background layer and used the Dodge and Burn tools on that too.” A sepia toned image of an old wall was brought in to provide the texture and background. A hard light mode was applied to the dogs so t hat the textur e showed through. Finally, rough edges were created using about eight different organic photo frames. Despite the amount of time he has been experimenting with Photoshop there’s no wish for Jason to sit back and put his feet up. “Even after ten years I still regularly buy Photoshop books and am constantly amazed at the possibilities of t his wonderful app.”

By submitting images to Advanced Photoshop ’s Peer Pressure, you hereby grant Imagine and, if relevant, clients to whom the relevant work has been provided, an i rrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free licence to use intellectual property in relation to work similar or equivalent to the work. This includes the right to showcase work on multimedia formats.

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Helpdesk Our Photoshop pro tackles your editing woes and sets you on the path to image enlightenment BY JULI E E ASTON LENTICULAR PRINTING I run m y o wn clothing compan y and I am looking to design some promotional material with a twist. One thing I’m keen to tr y is to use lenticular printing on some of m y graphics for use as postcards. I lo ve the effect, but ha ve no idea where to start finding out more about the process and where I can get it done. An y ideas? Antony Baker, Southampton

Lenticular printing is a great technolog y that can work e xce ptionall y well for promotional material. It uses a number of lenses over a two-dimensional image to create de pth and motion. The technolog y is often confused with holograms , but these are achieved using lasers rather than lenses. A great place to start finding out more is at www.edmonds.co.uk /lenticular-faq.html#1 , which answers most frequentl y asked questions in an eas y-tounderstand manner. Another good site to take a look at is www.big3d.com , which has some great e xam ples of how lenticular printing can be used. It also has estimates of prices , although these are in US dollars. The price is usuall y determined b y si ze , quantit y and lens material and thickness , so you’ll need to obtain a quote once you have the s pecifics worked out. For a UK service and further e xam ples , check out www.riotofcolour.co.uk .

SELFPROMOTION: Portfolios.com is a great place to start putting your work online

PORTFOLIO NEEDED I have onl y been a digital artist for a year, and I’m keen to explore methods of getting m y work noticed so that I ma y one da y begin selling m y art. I’ ve done some research and feel that m y best option is to use an online portfolio, but I’m not sure which one to go for. There seem to be so man y options – some that charge and some that don‘t. An y ad vice you could offer would be much appreciated. FOR LENT: Lenticular printing has some well-known u se s

Simon Banks, Richmond

One of the best sites that you can use to showcase your work is www.portfolios.com , which has been online for ten years now. There are four packages available, covering all price ranges. If you’re starting out with an online presence for the first time, the basic package is free and enables you to show off five images. You can then upgrade as you need more space and are willing to put money into the site. Other sites worth checking out are www.photoportfolios. net, www.pbase.com and www.foliolink.com , all of which offer various price levels. It’s a very personal decision, so take a look around these sites to get a feel for them. Always start with the free versions to find out if a site is right for you.

“MANY DIGITAL ARTISTS ARE SELF-TAUGHT, AND PRACTISING IS ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO LEARN” 78 Advanced Photoshop

s e u q i n h c T e DIFFERENCE DILEMMA I’m a fan of Pentax products and ha ve been using an Optio compact, along with m y film SLR. I want to upgrade to a DSLR, but am wondering what the difference is bet ween the *ist DL and the *ist DS. I’ ve also seen an *ist DS2, which confuses me e ven more. Sarah Broomfield, via email

You’ve got to love camera manufacturers and their insistence on naming products in a confusing way, where it’s not clear which came first. The *ist DS was Penta x‘s first DSLR and offers 6.1 mega pi xels , com patibilit y with Penta x lenses , a full range of manual e x posure and scene modes , as well as a two-inch LCD screen. This has been u pgraded in the *ist DS2 , which makes minor im provements. The *ist DL came out later but was aimed at the mass market , with a lighter bod y , a 2.5-inch LCD and lower price tag. The *ist DS2 offers better image qualit y overall and there are more o ptions , but the *ist DL offers better value. It comes down to what you need , but you won‘t be disa p pointed with either of these models.

CAMERA PUNCH: The Penta x *i st DL i s a smaller, lighter

version of the *ist DS aimed at the mass market

TABLET ISSUES I’m looking at getting a graphics tablet, but all I e ver hear about is Wacom. Is that because they are the best out there, or are some hidden gems being o verlooked? Chris Smith, Truro

Wacom tablets are considered b y Photosho p users to be the best around , thanks to the wide range offered , innovative technologies such as Bluetooth built into newer models , and practical benefits like e xce ptional sensitivit y and st ylish design. There are prices and designs to suit ever y level of user and ever y pocket ; see the range at www.wacom-euro pe.com. However , there are other manufacturers out there making good gra phics tablets who’ve been overshadowed b y Wacom. Check out models b y Trust (www.trust.com ) , Genius (www.geniusnet.co.uk ) and Ai ptek (www.ai ptek.com ). You will get better prices from these ranges , but some would argue that you get what you pa y for with Wacom.

they are. If the y‘ve had thousands of sales and their user rating is over 95 per cent , you might be on to a good thing. Another possibilit y is the y’re selling OEM software which came bundled with a high-end com puter or scanner. In this case you‘re unlikel y to get a bo x or manual , but the price will be low. This is a gre y area – while the software is genuine , the legalit y of selling it on se parately is ha z y. Finall y , it could be illegal pirated software , es peciall y at that price. This will come with a random generation ke y to activate the product, and it will probably work. However , you’ll be unable to get su p port and there are cases where products have sto p ped working. At worst , the products might contain bugs and viruses that can damage a com puter. We advise you to proceed with caution, and would alwa ys recommend the official Adobe version.

managing la yers. Until you’ve mastered these you will find Photosho p more difficult. Man y digital artists and imagers are self-taught , and practising on your own is one of the best ways to learn. Arm yourself with ste p-b y-ste p guides and online tutorials, and devote a cou ple of hours a week to getting to gri ps with the software. As well as reading through our magazine, check out the Adobe website which offers some great tutorials and ti ps, and there are a number of o ptions available from the start screen when you load u p Photosho p. If you learn better in a classroom environment , there are courses that will hel p you get to gri ps with the program. Pop along to www.s ystemati x.co.uk / photosho p-trainingcourses.htm for a list of courses (and prices) held at the com pan y‘s training centre in Reading. Check out local colleges for o ptions nearer home. There is no right or wrong wa y to learn Photosho p – just pick the method that suits the wa y you like to learn and ho pefull y you‘ll be mastering our tutorials in no time.

BARGAIN HUNT: Be wary of ‘bargain’ CS 2 price s on eBay

and students on a shoestring can check out Adobe’s Educational prices via their website

LEARNING PHOTOSHOP I’m new to Photoshop, but I am really enjoying learning all the tools. I picked up TRUST ME: Tru st – another manufacturer of gra phic s your magazine hoping that it would help me tablets , though not an option for Mac users to get on with more complex projects, but I am finding it a little too advanced for my PHOTOSHOP ON THE CHEAP level of experience. Is it worth getting a I use Photoshop CS and want to upgrade to course in Photoshop to teach me all the CS2., but being a penniless student, mone y is basic skills, or should I rather just carry on tight. There are listings on eBa y offering a full teaching myself? CS2 package for under £20. What‘s the catch? I will continue to buy your great magazine for inspiration, and hopefully at some point Darren Stamp, Bournemouth in the future I will be able to complete all the tutorials! Software on eBa y is a tem pting o ption , but it can lead to trouble. Sometimes eBa y does stock the real deal at incredibl y low prices – usuall y when a seller’s acquired a large quantit y of software and is able to pass it on chea pl y. Check out a seller‘s ratings and number of sales to get an idea of how trustworth y

HERE’S A TIP: U se the tutorial s and ti p s built into

Photo sho p to get to gri p s with the main tool s

HELPDESK CALL FOR QUESTIONS Want help with your Photoshop problems? Then let our team of experts sort you out. Send your emails to us at: [email protected]

Helen Thomas, via email

Most of our tutorials rel y on a degree of knowledge about basic skills such as cutting out with the Pen tool and

Remember to specify whether you are using a PC or Mac and the version number of your edition of Photoshop.

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HARD DRIVE ROUND UP n excessive number of files eating up computer memory seems to be a common problem for most creatives. Whether it’s the multiple layering in Photoshop or umpteen variants of your latest project, hard drive space gets gobbled up quicker than turkeys at Christmas. That’s why more and more pro creatives are opting for an additional hard drive to back up files and store countless bytes of information. Furthermore, small, portable hard drives are being snapped up in their dozens, perfect for presenting potential clients with your portfolio. The key elements to look for when deciding which hard drive to buy depends upon the use you have for it. The two most important factors are drive capacity (how many bytes it holds), and speed (how fast it transfers data). A ‘fast’ hard drive is one that has a rotational speed of around 7,200 revolutions per minute or higher, but the majority of hard drives will offer 5,400 rpm, which is adequate. As for data transfer rate, anything slower than 15 megabytes per second will become annoying. Experts recommend that you buy a hard drive that gives you more storage than you actually need, as you cannot accurately account for all future requirements. It’s always best to go for a well-known brand (like the five we’ve rounded up on these pages) but compare prices across the board to get the best deal.

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For those who have too many files and too little memory, an extra hard drive is the ideal solution. We round up the best of the bunch

LACIE LaCie is an American corporation, which began manufacturing in 1992. Today it produces and sells hard drives, DVD recorders and players, displays, computer accessories and computer software. Unlike many companies, LaCie does not outsource its tech support or repair centre. About half of LaCie’s workforce (approximately 400 employees) are part of the technical teams, to ensure consumers get top-notch merchandise.

Web: www.lacie.com

Brick Desktop Hard Drive 500GB The Brick is fun as well as functional as it is possible to stack these brightly coloured Lego-style blocks together expressing playfulness in a user-friendly high-performance hard drive. The Brick is a perfect storage system for users seeking to s tore digital photos, save MP3s or transfer home videos from a camcorder. The hard drive is available in white, red and blue. Price : £142.70 / $269.99 Capacity: 500GB Transfer Rate: 34 MB/s Size (LxHxD): 112 x 188 x 44mm Weight: 990 g

Hard Drive

ROUND UP

WESTERN DIGITAL

Passport Portable Drives

Western Digital produces many varieties of hard drives, from the ones in your personal computer, to those being carried around in people’s bags. The company designs and engineers hard drives that employ Serial ATA technology, to equal or exceed the performance and reliability of the SCSI hard drives that are common in high-demand computing environments.

The Passport Portable Drive is an asset for creatives seeking portable storage for business files, music, video, and games. It boasts capacities from 40 to 120 GB and is simple, light and easy to carry.

Web: www.westerndigital.com

Price : £105.70 / $199.99 Capacity: 120GB Transfer Rate: 480 Mbits/s

Media Center The attractive Media Center is the only storage peripheral to incorporate an external hard drive, built-in 8-in-1-memory card reader (compatible with eight major media card formats) USB 2.0 hub and versatile backup system. Furthermore a button glows blue to confirm that files will be backed up automatically.

Size (LxHxD): 89.1 x 21.1 x 144.3 mm

My Book Premium Edition

Price : £132 / $249.99

This easy to use external hard drive features a dual interface for all-out high-speed performance. The drive comes complete with backup software that ensures data is stored as easy and safely as possible. The unit also features a neat capacity gauge to show users at a glance how much space is available.

Capacity: 320GB

Price : £174.40 / $329.99

Transfer Rate: 400 - 480 Mbits/s

Capacity: 500GB

Size (LxHxD): 154.43 x 44.2 x

Transfer Rate: 400 Mbits/s

218.75mm Weight: Not Listed

Size (LxHxD): 56.7 x 172.2 x 143 mm

Weight: 0.2778 kg

FOR CREATIVES ON THE ROAD

Weight: 1.32 kg

Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive This is the storage system for creatives on the road. Delivering up to 120GB in a small portable unit with an orange rubber bumper and scratch-protected aluminium shell for shock-resistant protection. The drive inside can sense motion, so if your drive takes a fall the drive head will stop moving to fur ther protect your data. Price : £148 / $279.99 Capacity: 120GB Transfer Rate: Between 30 - 50 MB/s Size (LxHxD): 90 x 25 x 145 mm Weight: 250 g

Biggest F800 This is the ideal storage centre for audio and visual professionals who require high-end performance at an affordable price. Offering a titanic 2TB of space, with a r apid transfer rate of up to 55MB/s and secure RAID technology, it’s great for protecting your data too. Price : £1,003 / $1,899 Capacity: 2 TB Transfer Rate: 55MB/s Size (LxHxD): 298 x 153 x 176mm Weight: 6.65 Kg

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r ves FREECOM

e veloping mobile iness f or o ver 15 years, d Freecom has been in bus venien t, and con ts tha t are reliable and e x ternal s torage produc . The compan y p a t the touch o f a bu t ton allo w da ta to be back ed u es so cus tomers rran t y and suppor t ho tlin o f f ers a f ull t wo- year wa ter-sales care. ge t the f ull pack age o f a f

Web: www.f reecom.com

FSG-3 Storage Gateway ssionals or k s torage solu tion f or pro f e A per f ec t all in one ne twor f iles on tion space to s tore high resolu small companies who cra ve 1001 th wi er Ser v e s to ac t as a “S torag a ser ver. The produc t claim F TP r, er ve ebs er, W ser v p ser ver, Back u possibilities” including: File r ver. V se A nd er a ser v t prin USB ser ver, ser ver, Ne twork rou ter, USB Price : £426 / $805.87 / €629 Capaci ty: 500GB Trans fer Ra te: 480Mb /s Size (L xH xD ): 17.5 x 14 x 4.4cm Weigh t: 950 g

THE HARD DRIVE FOR MEDIA MAKERS AND CREATIVE PROS

MAXTOR Seagate was founded in 1979 and was the first company to build 5.25-inch hard disc drives for the PC. Since then Seagate has been developing the technology and manufacturing products to help Creatives store data. Maxtor is part of the company build up and specialises in hard drives.

Web: www.maxtor.com

Hard Drive 3.5” h doesn’t absorb desk This is a nipp y li t tle uni t, whic no noise, thank s to the x t to ne re tail space and emi ts the de vice simpl y uses a f ac t there is no f an; ins tead nica te wi th i ts user. small LED indica tor to commu Price : £121.20 / $229.30 / €179 Capacit y: 80 to 400 GB Trans fer Ra te: 480Mbi t /s 4 cm Size (L xH xD ): 20 x 11.5 x Weigh t: 750 g

SMARTDISK

FireLite USB 2.5”

SmartDisk manufactures portable, network and multimedia storage products and technologies that enable users to share and preserve digital content and information. The company’s top products include: FlashTrax XT, (palm-sized multimedia storage/player), PhotoBank (por table disk drive), FireFly (an ultra-portable hard drive) and the two models featured below.

This lightweight silver compact hard disk allows Photoshop artists to store information on the move as it is extremely portabl e, and ready to work after the cable is connected. Additionally it can be daisy-chained to meet the most demanding storage requirements.

Web: www.smartdisk.com

Capacity: 100 GB Transfer Rate: 400 Mb/s

CrossFire

BLAZES THROUGH APPLICATIONS ALLOWING YOU TO WORK MORE 82 vance

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Price : £130.42 / $246.70

The CrossFire external hard drive is a high-performance storage device and is presented in an attractive design. The product is powered by a 7200 RPM hard drive, and b lazes through demanding applications allowing you to work more and wait less. Price : £99.99 to £154.99 / $189 to $293.21 Capacity: 250GB Transfer Rate: 400 Mb/s Size (LxHxD): 221 X 127 X 39 mm Weight: Not Listed

Size (LxHxD): 84mm x 129mm x 18mm Weight: Not Listed

Hard Drive

ROUND UP OneTouch III FireWire 800

QUIRKY USBS

This is the hard drive for media makers and creative pros as it easily allows users to tap into the speed of FireWire 800 for lightning fast access to files. Preformatted for the Mac, with enough capacity to back up and store files for the entire studio, you will find that it easily formats for Windows too.

If you’re after something a little smaller, then a run of the mill USB pen can do the job just fine. However, where there’s a market there’s a gimmick.

Price : £132.12 / $249.95 Capacity: 300GB Transfer Rate: 33- 73 MB/s Size (LxHxD): 136 x 65 x 217 mm Weight: 1.45 Kg

OneTouch III Mini Edition The Mini Edition encourages its creative owners to hit the road and bring their portfolio in its small, lightweight, and highly portable hard drive. It is automatic-syncing so users can always work with current files, and the USB connection makes life even simpler. Price : £79.20 / $149.95 Capacity: 60GB Transfer Rate: 480Mb/s Size (LxHxD): 5.24 x 3.54 x 0.79cm Weight: 205 g

sAccess Time m rBuffer e tByte f oCapacity yData transfer rate r a sHub s oUSB l G

The crazy inventors of the SushiDisk www.sushidisk.co.uk, are manufacturing and peddling these sushi styled plastic USB pens including restaurant faves: kappa-maki (cucumber roll), ikura (salmon roe), tekka-maki (tuna roll), uni (sea urchin), and maguro (tuna). The prices range from £29.99 to £99.99 ($56.70 to $189) depending on how much memory you require.

If you’re more of an eco-friendly fan, then maybe these ‘Sticks’ will be more up your street (or tree). The Netherlanders www. oooms.nl have taken the ‘memory stick’ one step further and quite literally fashioned an usb from an ac tual ‘stick’. The 2.0 devices have been inserted into a real branch with dimensions of approximately 2 x 10 x 2cm, and are on sale from €39 (£26/$59) for 128mb, and stagger up to €90 (£70/$115) for 1G.

The amount of time it takes for the device to seek and connect to the storage device to retrieve information.

A storage area to temporarily allow for different rates of data transfer.

A sequence of eight binary digits, which acts as the unit of measurement for how much storage a hard drive can hold.

The amount of information, measured in bytes that can be stored on a hard drive. A megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes.

The rate that digital data transfers from one point to another, expressed in bits per second or bytes per second.

A device joining communication lines at a central location, providing a central connection to all devices on the network.

There are many USB pens on the market now, but what about the future of Hard Dr ive space? Dima Komissarov has created an original style of USB pen, currently a design concept, the Russian has invented the ‘Flashbag with Micro Pump’. The USB inflates as the device’s memory is used acting as a visual reminder of how much space is left. For more information visit www.plusminus.ru.

Universal serial bus connects external drives, pr inters, modems, mice, keyboards, etc, through a single, general-purpose port.

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Want to do more with your favourite app? Check out these essential resources GET FLASHY: The latest, greatest gadgets on page 90

shortcuts

86

Get nifty with your Photoshop work and memorise these shortcuts

printing

90

Adorn your walls with your own art using these online print services

books

92

From basic illustration to image manipulation, there’s a book for all

s m e n d R e c o m

plug-ins l l e w o H h a r a S

94

Expand Photoshop’s potential with these top additions

Tcolour casts. To really enjoy the whole process it’s worth venturing out and investigating some

here’s more to Photoshop work than simply toiling with troublesome layers and worrying about

of the more exciting possibilities for your images. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge of Photoshop or want to browse through a selection of inspirational images then check out our round-up of some new publications hitting the shelves. We always give our honest opinion and hope to help you pick only the best for your personal collection. It’s always a shame to think that after hours creating your masterpieces they’re left to gather dust on your hard-drive and never see the light of day. If you turn to page 90 you can take a look at some of the best online printing services around at the moment. We think you’ll be astounded at what you can do with your designs, you can turn them into simple prints or make a fashion statement with a unique bag or lamp for your home. Finally, we’ve included a directory of some useful plug-ins you can download to boost the potential of your favourite app.


25

p o T e h T

Photoshop Shortcuts Speed up your creativity by learning the top shortcuts used by the industry’s most admired imageers… 86 Advanced Photoshop

In association with Editors Keys.com. Editors Keys is the World’s number one website for shortcut Editing Keyboards. Their handy editing keyboards are world-renowned for speeding up workflow within Photoshop. They also turn your PC into a more attractive and professional workstation. For more info: www.editorskeys.com

“I think the transform (Apple+T) shortcut is great, especially now it incorporates warp with CS2. A lot of my images are multilayered and multi-imaged and I’m always playing with perspective and sizing images up or down.” Robin Preston (www.nw-5.com)

01

“I like the group layer shortcut (Command+G) or to ungroup (Command+Shift+G) in Photoshop because it allows you to link multiple layers together and move them all at the same time, which is very useful when an element needs to be aligned, for example, in an illustration.” Vincent Fraser (www.lemonadeillustration.com)

02

03

“I’d have to say the shortcut I use the most is holding the space bar to temporarily activate the hand tool. It allows you to move swiftly round an image without having to toggle between tools making for faster editing.” Sam Williams, Magictorch (www.magictorch.com)

FOR ME TO ACHIEVE MY TONY HART GALLERY DREAM, THE PALETTE SHORTCUTS ARE ESSENTIAL

“My artwork can be very complex with a great multitude of layers. A quick method to locate the layer without using the layer palette is to hold the mouse button down over the layer while pressing the Control key. A drop down menu of layers will then be displayed under the cursor, ready for me to select the layer I want.” Paul Bateman (www.paulbateman.co.uk)

06

“I’m always working with complex selections so the various selection shortcuts are in use frequently. These include shift to add to a selection, Alt (option) to subtract, and Shift+Alt (Option) to intersect. Likewise loading selections from a channel, layer or mask often results in a selection that’s the opposite way round to what you want so Cmd+Shift+I to invert a selection comes in handy.” Paul Bateman (www.paulbateman.co.uk)

07

08

“My favourite Photoshop keyboard shortcut, and the one I use most often, has to be Apple+0 (fit image to screen). As everything is hand drawn I’m constantly working close to the drawing, cleaning it up and then continually hitting Apple+0 to view the whole piece on screen.” Si Scott (www.siscottdesign.com)

LIKE A GLOVE: Fit your work to your screen like Si Scott with the Apple+0 command

“For me to achieve my Tony Hart gallery dream, the palette shortcuts are essential. The actions palette (F9), brushes (F5), colour swatches (F6) and layers (F7) are just a few of my definite must-knows.” Emma Cake (www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk)

09

“I use the power of layer masks a lot. Sooner than filling a mask with black to conceal the associated image layer, try holding down the Alt key as you click the New layer mask icon in the palette… an instant Hide All mask!” Tim Shelbourne (www.timshelbourne.com)

04

“I can’t do an illustration without using the magnify shortcuts zoom in (Apple+ ‘+’) and zoom out (Apple + ‘-’). Detail to me is everything, and when you pride your work on lines and detail that resembles perfection, you simply can’t achieve that at a view of 12.5% or the screen with is sort ‘fit to screen’. Getting in close to 200%, maybe sometimes 300% allows you to trace out your areas as closely as you desire for a professional finish.” Kev Speck (www.kevspeck.com)

05

TRANSFORMERS: Press ‘Apple/Cmd+T’ for Robin’s

quick access to all Photoshop’s transform tools


SIZING UP: Like Jerry Lofaro, Chintu’s favourite shortcut is the bracket keys SELECT TO IMPRESS: Jason Cook’s shortcut could help transform the way you work

“My favourite shortcut is the space bar. It allows me to navigate around my work to check the finer details whilst I’m zoomed in. This is especially helpful as a lot of my work is layered and very textured and the finer details can only be checked whilst zoomed in at a high level.” Kerry Roper (www.youarebeautiful.co.uk)

10

“I love the Image Adjustment, ‘Match Color’. All of my images and paintings begin with a photo collage with sometimes very disparate source material and Match Color makes it so much easier to fit the different photos into the same colour space.” Micah Ganske (www.micahganske.com)

11

12

“The shortcut I use quite a lot is, having created a clipping path, say around an apple, to turn it in to a selection so I can edit it I click the image/document image with the appropriate layer selected and hold down the Control key (Mac). This brings up a window which lets you select ‘make a selection’ and saves pressing the make selection button on the paths palette.” Jason Cook (www.jasoncook.co.uk)

“One I use a lot is the CMYK preview (Apple+Y) – this lets you see how the image will reproduce in four colour litho. Colours can often shift when you convert from RGB to CMYK, so toggling between these preview modes gives you the chance to compensate for any changes.” Derek Bacon (www.derekbacon.com)

13

“My favourite shortcut is ‘V’ for the move tool (with the auto layer select ticked at the top tool bar) because I do so much collage and there are so many layers that I need to push around quickly to get the composition right.” Sarah Howell (www.debutart.com)

14

CUSTOMISE YOUR KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS “I use Photoshop nearly every single day – both at work and home – to process tens, if not hundreds of files. So, to streamline my work, reduce monotony and minimise error, I use such things as Actions, Scripts and Batch processing. But, the one feature that probably makes the biggest difference in terms of expediting my workflow is keyboard shortcuts – and l ots of ‘em. As of Photoshop CS2, you now have the ability to configure your own keyboard shortcuts via the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts menu command. I’ve literally bound almost every available key to the commands, tools and features that I use most frequently, which allows me to work up to ten times faster in some situations. For more a complete listing of Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts (for both Mac and Windows), as well as my extended keyset, visit: http://user.fundy.net/morris/photoshop01.shtml” Trevor Morris


15 never have enough of them. Maybe I “I’m a complete layer junkie – I can

should be more economical, but Apple+Shift+ N (New Layer) has probably saved me hours over the course of a year! Also it saves the heartache of realising too late that you’ve painted something onto an existing layer, and not a new one.” Derek Bacon (www.derekbacon.com)

16 things so much faster. My two favourite “Using shortcuts in Photoshop makes

shortcuts in Photoshop are the ‘H’ and ‘F7’ Keys. When holding down the ‘H’ key you can track around a zoomed image using your mouse, to save you loads of time using those pesky scroll bars. Another simple shortcut to quickly get the Layers box up again is to just press the ‘F7’ key. It’s so frustrating when the layers palette just disappears out of sight!” Mark Brown The Jeremy Kyle Show, ITV Granada

17 Wacom in Photoshop my favourite

“Seeing as I’m often painting with my

shortcut has to be the letter ‘B’ for me. Unsurprisingly, that brings the Brush tool into focus, and it’s straight to the digital canvas!” Sam Gilbey (www.sam-gilbey.com)

In association with Editors Keys.com. Editors Keys is the World’s number one website for shortcut Editing Keyboards. Their handy editing keyboards are world-renowned for speeding up workflow within Photoshop. They also turn your PC into a more attractive and professional workstation. For more info: www.editorskeys.com

“Ctrl+J is amazing, Ctrl+F for repeating the last filter is great for difference clouds and when I use the tablet, I use the shortcut for the Eraser Tool (E) quite a lot.” Simon Rudd (www.pompeysworst.co.uk)

18

21

19 all my main tools, but the ones I tend to

22

“Hitting the tab key is a great one for quickly hiding your working palettes – especially if you’re working in Screen Mode or Full Screen Mode. I don’t have the luxury of running two monitors side by side so I use this one all the time.” Derek Bacon (www.derekbacon.com) “I use the keyboard shortcuts to access

use the most are the ‘brackets’. Being able to constantly change the brush sizes as I work (left bracket to reduce brush size, right to enlarge) is invaluable!” Jerry Lofaro (http://jerrylofaro.com)

20 every day, such as Apple+A (select all). “I use many of the most simple ones

For a full screen view I press F twice then Tab to get rid of tools, Apple+R to remove the rulers, and Apple+; to get rid of guides. Then I can see my image without any distractions.” Angel D’Amico (www.angeldamico.com)

I LIKE TO MOVE IT: Master movement with the ‘V’ Photoshop shortcut

“With the introduction of CS2 came two new fantastic shortcuts – the Image Size shortcut Alt+Apple+I and one for Canvas Size, Alt+Apple+C.” Debbi Allen (www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk) “My favourite shortcut is using the Shift + or Shift - keys to change the blend modes in Photoshop. I make sure I am using the Marquee Tool, or another non-painting tool, and then use those keys to cycle through all the blend modes and see how they change the image.” Maggie Taylor (www.maggietaylor.com)

23

“When changing the colour on the Foreground swatch quite a lot, although you can choose colours by simply double-clicking the swatch itself or choosing your colour from the Color palette, it’s much easier here to sample existing colours from the image itself. Although the Eyedropper Tool exists in the Tool bar in its own right, sooner than changing tools while you’re using the Brush Tool, you can simply hold down the

24

BRUSH UP: Quickly change the size of your brushes by means of the bracket keys like Jerry Lofaro

Alt key to temporarily access the Eyedropper Tool. Click in the image to choose your new colour and release the Alt key to return to the Brush Tool.” Tim Shelbourne (www.timshelbourne.com)

25

ZOOM ZOOM ZO

“For a full list of Photoshop shortcuts, see the website www.adobeevangelists.com/ pdfs/pscs2/power_shortcuts. pdf and get creative!” Adobe Evangelists (www.adobeevangelists.com)

OM:

’ f av ourite shortcut K ev s get s him u p clo se to hi s intricate w ork


printing services

If you’re proud of your images then why not show them off? Mugs, chairs, wallpaper, the list is endless

PhotoBox Web:

Print it

www.photobox.co.uk

S

ometimes showcasing your work on an online portfolio site, forum or in a photo frame isn’t enough. If you’ve spent hours producing an image you’re proud of, then displaying your talents should be top of your ‘ To do’ list. PhotoBox is here to help. From simple services like printing your photos or enlarging them, to showcasing your artwork on canvas or in photobooks, the site is a must visit when you’re after printing services. Adorn your office or home walls with artwork created by you and professionally presented by Photobox. If you want something less run-of-the-mill then PhotoBox isn’t for you, but for economic printing, this should be your first stop. The deliveries are fast and reliable too. 5 Rating: 4/5

Digitally Yours Web: www.digitally-

yoursonline.com

Digitally Yours can transform all R ec o m m e n d s your digital images, photos, films, memory cards, memory sticks etc onto canvas. Whether it’s your wedding photos, family portraits, holiday snaps or abstract art you want to print – it’s prepared. Offering print canvasses up to 44” wide and as long as you like (they’ve printed 8ft long images before!) Digitally Yours is the perfect resource for office walls and large lounges. Also offering picture framing services it can offer customers the choice of mounting their work, framing their work in the tr aditional way and also the more popular canvas printing and stretching service. 5 Rating: 5/5

Shutterfly

Print2Wallpaper Web: www.print2wallpaper.com

Web: www.shutterfly.com

Now you can really show off your art – by making it cover your whole wall! Not content with a canvas or poster print, Print2Wallpaper can produce wall coverings for your home – however big your wall happens to be. Although it’s quite pricey – £70 ($120) per square foot, you can ‘try before you buy’. Simply send a photograph of the area you would like to cover, along with the images you have in mind, and you’ll be sent a digitally produced example of what your feature wall could look like. The Try Before You Buy service is available for wallpapers, blinds and canvases and costs £39.00 for up to three different images, and is fully refundable against your first order. 5

I

f you’re like us and can never think of the gift to buy a loved one, then why not make something for them? As well as providing photo printing services to your door, Shutterfly produces a wealth of gifts; from a calendar, mug or photobook, to something more extravagant like personalised playing cards, puzzles or even a child’s reading book with your child’s image in, there are plenty of options. Here at Advanced Photoshop we’re loving the mouse mats – great for displaying that latest masterpiece, as well as the keepsake box – the perfect gift to store those scraps of paper with handy hints in. Straight photo printing starts at just $0.19/10p, although for those not based in the US you might be looking at a shipping charge for larger items. 5

Rating: 4/5

Rating: 4/5

Buyking Web: www.promo-mugs.net

Fluid Images Web: www.fluid-images.co.uk

Aon T-shirts is fun, nothing beats seeing something you lthough displaying images on mugs, in calendars and

created on a huge canvas. And if this is the route you’re taking with your images, then make sure it is done right. When getting a picture printed on canvas remember sunlight causes fading. Just like your paintwork, curtains or sofa, your canvas print will fade quickly under the sun’s stare unless it is treated properly. At Fluid Images, all canvasses are treated with a fade-resistant varnish then stretched around a 12mm board to ensure presentation and longevity are preserved. Run by Tim Scott, Fluid Images also allows you to choose images from its own gallery to print, or you can commission Tim to create something for you. 5 Rating: 5/5


s m e n d R e c o m

We say it time and time again but to get people’s attention in this industry, you have to stand out from the crowd. By producing memorable posters, flyers and the like you’ll stay in people’s minds until they have a desk tidy. Send them a mug and they’ll think of you every time they have a cuppa! Buyking offers an extensive range of mugs – ceramic, plastic, glass, travel and even recycled – suiting all requirements and budgets and all delivered in under a month.

As a promotional gift it might be a lit tle tacky but for producing personalised family tankards – it might just be perfect. 5 Rating: 3/5

Polystudios

Print it

Web: www.polystudios.com

Designer Print Web:

www.designerprint.co.uk

In this digital age we accumulate hundreds of digital images on our computers and yet often never see them in print. So if you really want to show off your favourite images, and keep up with the latest interior lifestyle trends, having them reproduced onto stretched canvas will turn them into amazing works of art that will last a lifetime. Designer Print offers canvas prints, block mounts, poster prints and designer prints – allowing you to turn your favourite images into artwork. Although its range of services is somewhat limited when compared to those offered by some other sites and the website is rather basic, its prices are perhaps a lit tle more realistic than some of its counterparts. 5

C a little different – abstract, industrial – then a different anvas art is great, although if you produce something

medium might work better. Polystudios provides printing services for canvas art – both wrapped and with white edges – as well as for printing on perspex. Delivering a modern feel to your images, there’s also the option of splitting or tiling your image. Dividing the image into two, three or even four parts, this technique will get you noticed. You can get an instant quote online for your image – just type in the dimensions and select the medium you’d like your image displayed in. Delivery charges may apply but all wrapping and lamination are included. It’s easy to use, though examples are slightly lacking on the site. 5 Rating: 4/5

Rating: 3/5

Transform Your Images Web:

www.transformyourimages.co.uk

This is one for those who are less confident about their imaging skills, but are a keen photographer – Transform Your Images offers a service where you provide the image and they enhance it to produce some bespoke artwork. Giving you the opportunity to use their team of designers to vamp up your photo, there’s nothing here that you couldn’t achieve at home with a little help from Photoshop. The Iconic Images are worth a look if you want a Dirty Harry , Breakfast At Tiffany’s or Beatles image, as they start from just £35 and look pretty cool. 5 Rating: 2/5

Spreadshirt Web:

Bags Of Love Web: www.bagsoflove.co.uk

W

ant choice? Then look no further than Bags Of Love. Offering perhaps the most comprehensive selection of products to print your images on, Bags Of Love is a one-stop printing shop. Show off your imaging talents by creating your own book. Alternatively why not have your images printed on folding screens, roller blinds or on wallpaper? Want something more subtle? Then go for their mugs, cushions or calendar. Then there’s the perfect gift for any girl – a personalised handbag or make-up pouch – complete with your image on the front. Also on the menu are traditional canvasses, lamps and diaries. The choice is endless. If you’re looking just to print your images on 4x6 however, you will be disappointed. 5 Rating: 4/5

www.spreadshirt.net

Founded in 2002, the Leipzig-based Spreadshirt offers online merchandising at no cost. The online shop system lets every website owner create a branded shop of customised textiles without set-up costs or minimum sales. Nearly 120,000 shop partners take advantage of this with users ranging from large companies and organisations to private artists and individuals. Whilst the large companies make use of the extensive, customised merchandise services those with a more unique need can design and order individualised textiles “on demand” online via the site. For lesser-known digital artists, choose between ordering a one-off design for yourselves or investing some more of your money and allowing the world to start wearing your designs. 5 Rating: 3/5

My Bigger Picture Web: www.mybiggerpicture.com

F Bigger Picture has you covered.

rom a personalised DAB radio to a director’s chair, My

My Bigger Picture uses digital printing equipment to reproduce photographic images onto textiles and wallpaper. Textiles for bags, cushions, canvases and deckchairs are printed using dye sublimation printing meaning your image is embedded into the fabric (not just printed onto the surf ace) and is extremely durable, so it can be washed without fear of dyes or inks running. Prior to printing, the photographs are scanned and art worked by a team of designers to get t he maximum from your image. Your product is then individually made by craftsman in the UK. If you can’t find what you’re after on the site, contact them as they produce a number of bespoke items to order! 5

s m e n d R e c o m

Rating: 5/5


books

Not all books are made equal, so we sort the wheat from the chaff in the digitally obsessed literary world Further reading

Designing Pornotopia

Reinventing Music Video Author: Matt Hanson Publisher: Rotovision Price: £25 / $46 ISBN: 29403 61258 Web: www.rotovision.com

Author: Rick

Poyner Publisher: Laurence King Price: £17.95 / $33.50 ISBN: 1856694895 Web: www.laurenceking.co.uk

It is a common mistake to make: assuming that Photoshop is out of its depths in mediums other than photo manipulation is a sin many of us are guilty of. Not many people truly experiment with the app’s wide variety of uses, especially not in the medium of music video. Showing how versatile Adobe’s image editing suite really is, we have Reinventing Music Video – a great read if you’re into knowing the behind-the-scenes details of some of the video greats, as well as highlighting the use of Photoshop where you might not notice. Emphasising the use of Photoshop to colour-enhance some music videos, for people who might like to go in this direction with their career, it’s a useful read. 5

esigning Pornotopia is not a book specifically focused

D on Photoshop, but it is an essential read if you’re

interested in art, the media and the role of sexuality in these areas. Written by Rick Poyner (author of Design Without Boundaries and No More Rules, among others) Designing Pornotopia examines visual culture, looking at brands, billboards, magazines, architecture, tattoos and trends in cosmetic surgery. This is really a collection of essays and, unfortunately, we found that it lacked the visuals to make it great. If you can get over this omission, the content is first class. Looking at the persuasiveness of sexual imagery and the media’s symbiotic relationship with porn, the book raises some key questions, showing how sexual imagery is invading everyday life. Poyner shows how commerce can exploit the blurring of art and advertising and argues that the personal makeover in the form of cosmetic surgery has become our most fundamental design task. As well as essays and the occasional image, the book is also scattered with interviews with the likes of architect Rem

Rating: 4/5

Koolhaas, satirical illustrator Paul Davis and performance artist Elliott Earls. Looking at the design world from a standpoint based on the consumers growing desire to design themselves, this is “a vivid, not always comfortable picture of where 21st Century design culture is heading.” 5 Rating: 4/5

Digital Collage And Painting Author: Susan

Ruddick Bloom Press Price: £26.99 / $39.95 ISBN: 9780240807058 Web: www.focalpress.com Publisher: Focal


Author: Sue and Jack Drafahl Publisher: Amherst Media Price: £21 / $39.95 ISBN: 1584281898 Web: www.amherstmedia.com

Although this book is aimed more at the photographer, than the digital artist, it’s still a great read. In just a few years the underwater digital camera has gone from novelty item to the predominant method of capturing first class underwater images. Adobe Photoshop For Underwater Photographers shows imageers how to use the app alongside several plug-ins to solve a range of problems that the underwater photographer often has to face. An interesting read although if you don’t often take your own underwater images, a possible waste of money. 5

Rating: 3/5

D

igital Collage And Painting Using Photoshop And Painter To Create Fine Art is a meaty read with a website to complement it. Describing how the computer can be used to paint on photographs and incorporate other visual material into images, this is one for the beginner to intermediate Photoshop user. With plenty of step-by-steps to help you create collages (like our tutorial on page 56), paintings and panoramics, the book and the associated website give you the techniques and the resources to practice. Although readers will be able to do most of the techniques here easily, the Painter aspects might give you a different view to your work. Using the two programs you will be able to create fine artworks, with a photograph as the foundation. Ideal for both Mac and Windows users you’ll find some useful resources on the website and the book provides a great reference section for essential Painter and Photoshop techniques. However, a basic working knowledge of Painter will stand you in good shape for this book and the Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop For Underwater Photographers

Basics Illustration: Thinking Visually Author: Mark Williams Publisher: Ava Publishing Price: £16.95 / $30 ISBN: 2940373159 Web: www.avabooks.ch

elements might seem too simple for the more advanced users. On the whole, unless you’re contemplating the switch to Painter, or thinking about incorporating more Painter elements into your art, then there are better books out there for you . 5 Rating: 3/5

R ec o The first book in the Basics m m e n d s Illustration series, Thinking Visually features the work of more than 100 illustrators, educators and students demonstrating diverse ideas, techniques and skills. The handbook’s aim is to introduce fundamental techniques to new designers, and to inspire, inform and act as a useful resource to them. Looking at how illustrators develop their own personal visual language by learning the basics, being open-minded, imaginative and hardworking Thinking Visually is a great read for any aspiring imageer. 5

Rating: 5/5

Advanced Photoshop Issue 022

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