I’ve done many articles about Photoshop in this blog. And many of them concern photo montage where a composite photograph is created by joining two or more other photographs.

However, this article has come from something I’ve seen in studying my Google Analytics. An awful lot of people arrive at my site having typed the keywords “how to put one image on another image” or something like that. So I thought I would try to explain the basics of photo montaging in Photoshop.

The basics

In Photoshop, make a selection (see how later on) of one part of one image. Copy it (Cmd/Ctrl-C). Open another image. And paste it (Cmd/Ctrl-V). And now you will find the pasted element as an extra layer in the Layers palette (Window > Layers F7). Use Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl-T) to size, rotate and move it to where you would like it to go.

Making selections and cutting out

There are many different ways of selecting certain areas of an image in Photoshop. Different techniques will suit different images. For example, with Obama on the left, his head was shot against a very uniformly brown background. Because of this I was able to very easily select that color (with the Magic Wand Tool (W)), inverse the selection (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-I) and copy.

However, in the case of these selections, I’d feathered them first. Feathering applies a blur to the edges of the selection which helps to create the illusion of the pasted element “belonging” to the background image rather than looking definitely cut out with hard edges. In order to feather a selection: with the selection “live” (ie. you can see the “marching ants” as in the Obama head) go Select > Modify > Feather… (Cmd/Ctrl-Opt/Alt-D) and enter the width of the blur in pixels. Mac users: this keystroke hides/reveals the dock, anyone know how to stop this happening?

One of the other more usual methods of cutting out parts of images in Photoshop is with the Path Tool (P).

Putting a part of one image seamlessly onto another

Here is the original image of the babies. Don’t they look nice!

As always with images of people, skin tones and lighting are very important. It’s very rare that you can cut out a head from one image and paste it on to another without any further work. With this image I used Curves (Image > Adjust > Curves… (Cmd/Ctrl-M)) to match the skin tones of the heads to the skin tones of the babies’ bodies.

I have already mentioned feathering as a method of blurring the edges of the cut out. This process can be continued with Layer Masks. Click on the Add Layer Mask icon in the Layers palette (it looks a bit like a washing machine) and use the Brush Tool (B) with a black brush will “erase” areas of that layer. Use a soft brush and play around with opacities.

Who are these guys?

If you’re wondering, from left to right the babies are: Vladimir Putin (Russia), Hu Jintao (China), Gordon Brown (UK) and Barack Obama (USA).

I did this montage to illustrate marketing material that was highlighting Africa as a young and emerging economy.

I had a photo of an ordinary seedling growing out of earth in someone’s hands. I created another layer of this picture (Cmd/Ctrl-J) and cloned out the seedling using the Rubber Stamp Tool (S). I then went back to the original picture and cut around one of the leaves with the Lasso Tool (L) – there was absolutely no need to be precise with this cut out. This roughly cut out leaf was then pasted over the top layer of just the hands and earth. I then had to find an Africa shape.

Finding vector maps and images

Luckily there are some great free vector resources out there. I could give you a list here but just Google “free vector” and you’ll find some great ones. To find a map of the world in vector simply type “free vector map” or something like that and then have a look at the image search – I find this speeds things up a bit. Here you can compare at least 20 (hopefully) free vectors without having to go to the individual websites. The one at Vector Vault looked nice and simple.

Layer masks in Photoshop

Next, I simply isolated the Africa shape I wanted in Illustrator and copied and pasted it into my Photoshop document (choosing Smart Object) and sized and rotated it over the leaf I had cut out earlier. Then a Cmd/Ctrl click on the icon of the Smart Object in the Layers palette makes a selection of the shape and then a click on the Add Layer Mask icon with the leaf layer selected turns the leaf into the Africa shape. It’s at the bottom of the Layers palette and some say it looks a bit like a washing machine!

Finishing touches

Some areas of the map of Africa weren’t filled up with the leaf so I cloned areas of the leaf out to reach the edge of the Africa shape.

As the Smart Object of the Africa shape is vector I found it gave the leaf an unrealistic sharp edge. To counteract this I blurred the layer mask of the leaf not the leaf itself otherwise the sharp edge would have remained. For blurring I usually go Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and choose the Radius (usually somewhere between 0.5 and 2). I had to make sure I had the layer mask selected not the layer itself when applying the filter by clicking on the layer mask. When you’re editing the layer mask the rectangle of it will have a thicker border in the Layers palette. (If you click on the layer icon itself the thicker border will move from the layer mask on the right to the layer icon on the left so you know which one you are working on).

Lastly I added some Inner Glow to the leaves to give them a realistic yellowy edge.

Below is another one I did of a single leaf. Above you can see the layers palette from the image below – the leaf with the Africa shape layer mask is above the layer with the cloned out seedling.

So, I hope that made sense to everybody. Sometimes it’s difficult to explain Photoshop practices without doing loads of screen shots. Would anyone do this in a different way? How does this compare to your Photoshop methods?

Supplying initial ideas

Some designers will tell you that they always design one option for themselves and one for the client. One very beautifully “designed”; the other more commercial. Personally, I like to supply two or three options, all of them for the client.

Try to show the client variety in your options and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different designs so that you can understand exactly what is needed.

Choosing great typefaces

Sometimes I like to use a combination of a serif and a sans serif typeface. Here the title is in the elegant Didot font and the body is in Futura, mostly Futura Light. Also instead of making body, or even title fonts, in black, I’ve experimented with different shades of gray.

Dealing with photography

If your advertisement has a product image in it – or any image for that matter – it is necessary to get it to reproduce as well as possible.

The photo that was decided upon for this ad was of a mature man modeling the product. There were a number of things about the photo that were improved upon (blotchy skin, dirty fingernails, wrinkles, etc.) The original photo is on the left; the re-touched photo on the right.

To make these improvements in Photoshop I used the Clone Stamp Tool (S) to get rid of blemishes and the Dodge Tool (O) to lighten areas.

Lastly, I changed the image’s mode to CMYK and made sure in Image Size that it was roughly the size it will be when reproduced with a resolution of 300 ppi.

Writing great copy

I could write a lot more about this subject, especially about the headline. This headline actually came from the client and, along with the picture, fulfills most headline criteria. It is attractive, attention-grabbing and clear.

Always be at pains to make the text as simple as possible, being informative about the benefits of the product or service.

And … don’t forget the spell check.

Supplying the artwork

Make sure all images and logos were high resolution and CMYK. Also make sure that the text was CMYK, especially that the black or gray text is made out of K (key black), without any C, M or Y. There should be no RGB colors in the artwork.

I laid this out in Adobe InDesign and exported it as a PDF/X-1a:2001. I finally checked it in Adobe Acrobat Professional where you can see all four plates separately to check that there aren’t any rogue elements in the ad that may cause problems later.

I have written further information about preparing artwork for print and supplying artwork to printers in this website.

I would do catastrophically badly.

I am particularly bad at public speaking. But, even if I weren’t what would it matter if I said: “I am an excellent graphic designer and I have great marketing ideas when it comes to promoting businesses.”

Why would anyone believe me? This is why I am a great believer in the website being your permanent shop window.

It is much better (for me at least) to get your potential clients knocking at your door rather that the other way around. That is why I always eulogize about the benefits of writing constantly about what you do in order to advertise your services to the world.

How to create this in Photoshop

Re-sizing and putting perspective into type is easy in Photoshop. Here’s how I put the text onto the lectern picture.

First of all, create the text you want with the Type tool (T). When you are doing this it is important to make it as large as possible. The reason for this is that it need to be rasterized in order to apply perspective.

The next step (you guessed it) is to rasterize the type layer. Go Layer > Rasterize > Type or right-click (PC) or Cntl-click (Mac) on the type layer and select Rasterize Type.

Now go Edit > Free Transform, or Cntl/Cmd-T and you will see a box around the text with eight anchor points on it. In order to apply perspective Cntl/Cmd-alt-shift-click on one of the four corner anchors and drag. But what you will find easier is just a Cntl/Cmd-click on one of the four corners of the Free Transform box to move that corner to wherever you want. Finally hit return to render the transform.

This is was a Photoshop image I did to illustrate how Chinese national oil companies were active in Africa.

I’d tried recently many vector flags and country outlines solutions to similar illustrative quandaries and I thought this time it was nice to do it all in Photoshop.

I created the mask of the outline of Africa by copying the Blue Channel and adapting it to be a selection of only the part of the map that was Africa. Here is explained using Channels to make masks and selections on a similar image.

Once you are happy with the extra Channel, it’s a Cmd/Ctrl click on it to make it a selection then over to the layer you want masked and a click on the Add layer mask icon in the Layers palette. The beauty of this way of masking is that the mask can added to or subtracted from with the Brush tool(B) or even blurred to create the effect you want.

After this was done it was the usual playing round with layer blend modes to get the best effect. The top flag layer I had on Normal with an Opacity of 60% and under that I had another duplicate layer with a Hard Light blend mode. Underneath was just the original map image as a Background layer.

This is an illustration I did for a business card which I designed and created in Illustrator and Photoshop for a motorsports development fund.

Rather than the standard old 86.6 mm by 53.98 mm rectangular thing they asked for a graphic representation of a Formula One steering wheel. It’s great when clients come up with brilliant ideas!

I was really inspired by this job and, after searching Google images for examples of these steering wheels, I set to work first in Illustrator. Here is the basic outline I did together with two of the dials.

As you can see I did only the very basic outlines in Illustrator although I did take care to get the dials and lights looking fairly realistic. Once I had done one dial I grouped the objects, copied them and then re-colored them with the Recolor Artwork button that sits in the Control palette at the top of the screen (see above). This is a really great way to change the hue of a group of objects.

Once I was happy with it in Illustrator and had every major object on different layers I exported the document as a .PSD in Illustrator (File > Export…). Then I opened the same document in Photoshop and began the finishing touches.

The most important thing to do in Photoshop was to add the highlights, which really add realism to the illustration. I also added a bit of blurring to the main body of the steering wheel as well as noise to the dials.

Finally, the outline path from the original Illustrator file was used as the die cut for the printers to cut around the edge of the illustration.

The problem

Err, sorry, the challenge. How many times does this happen? You have an otherwise beautiful design and your client insists on including pictures of people who’s images weren’t taken by one of the world’s best photographers.

This is a reoccurring hitch; we have to include pictures of the CEO, the MD, the whoever, but there’s not the budget or the time to get a professional portrait done only a happy snap of 20k.

The solution

Or is it the workaround? As you can see above, it’s not difficult. Turn your original photo into greyscale and cut it out. Feather or blur the edges in certain parts of the photo by extreme amounts. This is particularly necessary if the subject is leaning up against a wall or has someone else standing in front of them. Go either Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur… or Filter > Noise > Median…, or, preferably, do both.

Prepare your Photoshop document with a white background while experimenting with swathes of colours and blends on different layers. Play around with the blend modes, “Multiply” will be useful. These different colour layers can be used for other portraits, simply change their hue and positioning. Add some more layers on top of white lines with some assorted brushes.

Now comes the clever bit. I found this much easier in Illustrator. Save your Photoshop document noting the pixel dimensions and color mode. Create a new Illustrator document mirroring the dimensions and color mode. Place the PSD on artboard, lock layer, create new layer, and with the brush tool (B) selected, trace certain areas of your image to make it look like an old-fashioned re-toucher has had a go at it. Set artistic brushes (found in the Brushes palette) to some of these lines (“Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencil” was my favourite). This is easier to do in Illustrator rather than Photoshop because the lines can be evened out (double click or the Brush tool in Illustrator and make sure the smoothness is around 0).

You may like to copy and paste these elements bit by bit over to the Photoshop document or, having put them on different layers in Illustrator, export it as a PSD and then copy over the layers. Either way, you will want to further experiment with layer blend modes and opacities for these artistic touches.

This was not my idea. I was contacted by The Talent Business to do this for their new staff members. See their “Who to talk to” section.

Here are the originals:

Web 2.0 in design and marketing

This is an image I made to try to explain the digital grapevine: A network of users that interact to answer questions, solve problems and have fun or the trend in the use of the internet and web design that enhances creativity, information sharing and collaboration among users that has been referred to as “Web 2.0″. The best description of this that I have read is from Stephen Fry:

… an idea in people’s heads rather than a reality … an idea that the reciprocity between user and provider is what’s emphasised. In other words, genuine interactivity, if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download.

The internet is now a teenager – it’s been 14 years since Marc Andreessen’s release of the Netscape Navigator browser in 1994. Now the technology has evolved to web-based communities such as social-networking sites, wikis and blogs.

I intend to harness the benefit of this trend both for myself and my clients as I see it as an important approach to both design and marketing at the moment.

How I made the image

I was very suprised I couldn’t find a sample series of binary numbers on the net quickly, so here are mine.


001001010111010101101001010011010100110010001100100001
011010011000010001100100010101001100110000100101011101
101011011001100001100100010110010010011001101101001100
010100100000110110101101101101110111001000110100101001
011011101011101110101000100101100000011000110111011101
110100000100010000011101011011110100101010100101011110
110110101010010001100100011001000110001111011011101001
0001000100000110101101010111010111100

These numbers were put in the OCR-A font. This font is used for a variety of purposes including the ISBN labels on books. After scrolling through Blend Modes in the Layers palette in Photoshop, I hit upon Soft Light and Overlay as ones that seemed to work.

A while ago I did an article explaining how to create a country’s flag inside its map outline and I used as an example the Australian map and flag. I’ve since had a lot of interest from Australians who wanted to use the image so I thought I’d do one for Americans as I get a lot of visitors from the United States.

I employed a very similar technique for this one as I did the other one. First, I got from a Google image search the country outline of the USA and a picture of the stars and stripes. I turned the country outline into vector form by using Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace. The flag I re-created manually in Illustrator.

Once the flag was finished, I grouped all the objects and position the country map outline over the flag and, with both selected, I went Object > Clipping Mask > Make (Cmd/Ctrl-7) to give the flag the outline of the country.

I then copied this and pasted it into a Photoshop document and added a Bevel and Emboss and a slight Drop Shadow layer style.

There is an ad campaign in London at the moment for Portuguese tourism. You can see 48-,24- and 16-sheet adverts in the tube with giant portraits of famous Portuguese celebrities (Cristiano Ronaldo, José Mourinho) with a landscape showing through the image. Something similar to this effect that can be achieved with only a few clicks in Photoshop.

It helps to find a picture, like the one below of José Mourinho, that is lit from the side so half the face is white and the other half black. However, failing that, find a portrait that has a white background. Once the image is chosen, cmd/ctrl-click on either the red, blue or green channel in the Channels palette. This will give you a selection.

Now find your “background” image and paste it over your portrait image. Now click on the New Layer icon in the Layers palette to give you a blank new layer. With the selection still live, fill this layer with white. To do this either go Edit > Fill… and in the resulting pop-up box chose White for your fill (the quick key for this pop-up box is shift-F5) or simply go cmd/ctrl-delete to fill the selection with the background colour (the default background colour is white; to get the default foreground and background colours, simply press D). You knew that!

You may want to copy this white layer (cmd/ctrl-J) or alter it’s opacity.

This is a simple and effective way of putting one image inside another with interesting and eye-catching results.

You can download the PSD of the top picture here. 3.4MB

You have a great photo. You have a great design. One problem: the photo doesn’t “go” with the design.

The solution is to change the image in Photoshop to more accurately match the colour scheme of the design or, more commonly, to match the client’s or brand’s colours.

In the above example the final image (on the left) was changed from the original image (on the right) to reflect my client’s corporate colours.

There are many different ways of doing this in Photoshop. For the different segments of the umbrella I cut around them using the Pen Tool (P) and, after feathering the resulting selection slightly to get rid of hard edges, I filled a layer with the red or the orange and set the layer’s blend mode to Color Burn. Linear Burn also works, as does Color. Play around with the layer blend modes.

However for the dress I used a different technique. After isolating the dress in the same way, by making a path with the Pen Tool and featuring the path’s selection (Select > Modify > Feather… (CS3); Select > Feather (before CS3!)) by 2 or 3 pixels, I changed the colour slightly using Hue/Saturation. Go Image > Modify > Hue/Saturation… (cmd/ctrl-U) and move the Hue slider.

To get the client’s or brand’s corporate colour, read the RGB or CMYK values by hovering over them in Photoshop whilst looking at the Info palette and see if you can emulate those values on the part of the image that you are trying to colour. Do this in order to get an accurate colour match.

I made this image of one of my favourite guitarists, Jimi Hendrix. He is associated with flamboyant clothing and psychedelic colourful artwork on his album covers and guitars so I tried to make this image as vibrant as possible.

To do this I followed the basic techniques of pop art that I’ve used before. Only this time instead of underlaying the image with flat Warhol-esque colours, I put in various colour gradients on different layers.

This was achieved by getting a new blank layer (clicking on “Create a new layer” icon in the Layers palette, or cmd/ctrl-opt-shift-N) filling it with a gradient of the colour spectrum (select the Gradient Tool (G) and in the Info palette select one of the two spectrums available, to apply the gradient simply drag the Gradient Tool across the image). This can be done repeatedly on different layers. I set the layers’ blending modes so that the colours on all of the layers can be seen and merge together in a complimentary way so that the result is kaleidoscopic. The blending mode I found most useful for this was Difference, but I also used Linear Burn and Soft Light.

I also used three different greyscale layers of the man himself of differing opacities. Multiply, Screen and Pin Light were the layers’ blending modes used here but Multiply is usually the most effective for the black in pop art. One or two of these layers were blurred.

Importantly, this effect can be used to resample a tiny web pic up to a large high resolution print ready image with no loss of quality!

You can download the low resolution PSD here. jimi-hendrix-psychedelic-pop-art.psd 4.6MB

A client of mine was illustrating an article about the World Economic Forum whose annual meeting is usually held in scenic Davos in Switzerland. My client was keen to stress the importance of interconnectivity within both the forum and the wider business community and gave me an image of connected wires of light to marry with the snowy village shot.

To cut out the sky of this pic I adjusted one of the RGB channels. This is a specially useful technique if the area you want to cut out is clearly differentiated by the tones in the picture already – like a figure shot against a white background for example. In these situations you already have a bit of information there that can do the job for you.

Have a look at the channels and select the one which is closest to the black and white mask you want to create – it’s usually the blue channel in RGB. Copy this channel by dragging it to the ‘Create a new channel’ icon at the bottom of the Channels palette. Firstly, create a stark channel of just white and black with no greys. One way to do this is to go Image > Adjust > Threshold… but you may want to use Curves…

This will never be enough to create the cut-out mask in itself but it should be possible to create a channel that closely fits the outline you want. It’ll then be necessary to select the Brush Tool (B) to fill in the areas of white or black as desired. Black hides; white reveals.

When you are happy with the channel, simply cmd/ctrl-click on the channel in the Channels palette go to the appropriate layer in the Layers palette and click the “Add layer mask” icon at the bottom of the palette (it looks like a washing machine). The channel copy will be applied to the layer as a mask.

I created this image to represent the idea of “Energy in a Box”.

The secret of making a box in Photoshop is to use guides and enabling the Snap to Guides feature to make sure everything looks as it should do.

I started with selecting a 2d side (or sides) for the box. I chose a sun image to represent energy. I added some Inner Glow around the edges and saved the document. I then created a slightly larger Photoshop file and proceeded to set my guides (see below).

Paste the 2d shape into the file and use the Free Transform tool (Cmd/Ctrl-T) and, holding down Cmd or Ctrl, drag the corners of the 2d shape to the correct point where the guides intersect.

You may decide to darken some areas of the cube to increase the 3d effect.

The image above has been stylised in Photoshop and Illustrator (I went for the American spelling of “stylized” in the heading for Google purposes).

To trace a photo in Adobe Illustrator, go File > Place and select the photo you want to trace. I find it useful to then lock this picture layer in the Layers palette and click on the New Layer icon to make sure your trace and your image remain separate in your Illustrator document. Then, as you can see below, I selected the Pen Tool (P) and traced the eyes, the nostrils and the lips. Tracing the picture gives you the added bonus of a good vector illustration to use elsewhere!

Now open up the original image in Photoshop. This is when you should perform the usual cloning and trickery to get rid of any blemishes, scratches or general untidiness in the photo. I used this technique to smooth the model’s skin. And I also brightened up the teeth, the whites of the eyes and the eyebrows.

Next you should bring in the elements of the Illustrator trace bit by bit. So, I selected the mouth first, copied it and pasted it onto the Photoshop image. The trace was done in black, so setting this layer of the pasted Illustrator lips to Overlay in the Photoshop Layers palette really makes the lips stand out and deepens the red.

Then the eyes were done in a similar way, first the irises, only this time I coloured them pale blue in Photoshop and set the Layer’s Blend Mode to Saturation. Then the highlight in the eyes was made white in Photoshop and their Layer’s Blend Mode was set to Overlay. Finally I pasted in the eyelashes.

The underlying image of the woman’s face is quite pale that is why employing this technique causes a really striking, almost “pop art” effect.

See below the original image on the left, the trace in the middle and, on the right, the finished piece.

Everybody knows that your marketing message will be enhanced by the creative use of graphic imagery. A competent graphic designer will be able to communicate your message to your market.

But have you ever wondered what is the best way to make the graphic communicate the message?

The above picture provides an answer. And it is … make the graphic the message or put the message in the graphic.

I was working with a well-known international credit agency who were pitching to a large bank. They were trying to convey to the bank the message that they would save money if they took them on. So I put the message on a till display or cash register. Some people were skeptical at first, saying that the cash till gave a negative message of spending money and would imply the opposite. But I was adamant about it. The message was powerful enough and the graphic provided context – much better than an image of dollar bills, for example.

The point is that the message fits into the image in an everyday way.

It’s an obvious one but it nearly always works. There is one thing I have loved doing over years and years of Photoshop usage. It’s getting a picture and incorporating an idea, a message, some copy, some type, an icon, a headline or a symbol into it. There’s something about it that instantly captures the attention.

The above picture of a couple has been treated in Photoshop to give it a gritty, grainy, reportage look. This has also been described as the “Dave Hill effect” after a Californian commercial photographer (not the guitarist from Slade) although, of course, this won’t be his exact method.

It immediately looks like a serious photo that could be used with a medical/lifestyle/reportage feature rather than the slick/studio/airbrushed shot that it is.

There’s two main parts to this. First, adding the particularly high contrast, and second, adding the grain.

The contrast can be changed to something more akin to contours on an aerial photo by the High Pass filter. After copying your layer go, Filters > Other > High Pass… and choose a radius you feel comfortable with. Set the Layer Blend Mode of this layer to Hard Light. You will start to notice a hardening of the edges. Copy the layer again to increase the effect. Experiment with this Filter and the Blend Modes of the layers to achieve the effect you want.

The grain can be added to a separate layer of 50% grey, applying Noise and setting the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay.

Cmd/Ctrl-Opt/Alt-Shift-N or click the new layer icon in the Layers palette to create a new layer. Go Edit > Fill (shift-F5) and choose 50% gray from the top drop down menu and Overlay from the second. Now go Filters > Noise > Add Noise… and choose your degree of grain.

This is a quick technique to even out blemishes in a model’s skin. I came across this by accident but I think it’s a really good way to instantly make people pictures look more eye-catching and professional. It also has the effect of brightening and adding contrast.

Very simple. Get the layer you want to work on with the less-than-perfect skin (if it is your locked background layer double-click on it to unlock it). Make a copy of this layer (Cmd/Cntl-J). Set the top layer to Screen blending mode in the layers palette.

You will notice immediately the picture has become brighter and the contrast has increased – maybe too much. If you want to decrease this effect then decrease the opacity of the top layer a little.

Next, with the top (Screen) layer selected, go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur… I blurred this image by about 9 pixels, I’d go for 25 if it were a high resolution. The more you blur this layer the more the skin smooths out and the more of a “glow” is created. The effects of the glow can be masked off around the face if desired.

I stumbled upon this trick whilst designing some packaging for a music software company.

After I had designed a vector logo for a client, I was asked to web 2.0-ify it.

This is what I did. The “Toby Beresford” and the cogs are on separate layers in Photoshop. Individually I set the Layer Styles of Gradient Overlay and Bevel and Emboss.

The Gradient Overlays are the same on both layers. I picked a light blue colour for my background colour and a dark blue colour for my foreground colour and selected them in the Gradient pull down menu in the Layer Styles pop-up box.

In the same pop-up box, but with the Bevel and Emboss style selected, I played around with Depth, Size and Soften, as well as the opacities of the highlights and shadows until I got the desired effect on both the elements of the logo.

Lastly I created a shiny table top reflection effect using the Free Transform tool.

I used this image as a title slide in a PowerPoint presentation for MasterCard, one of my clients. It was a great excuse to do a reflection and transform its perspective to make it look like the headline is actually there on the pavement.

The method I use to do perspective is much simpler that going Edit > Transform > Perspective. I prefer to do most of my transforming with the Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl-T) function. First, however, don’t forget to rasterize that type! Right-click on the text layer in the Layers palette and choose Rasterize Type.

With this done, go Cmd/Ctrl-T for Free Transform, grab the top-middle point and pull down. Now your type is a vertically flipped. Then, with Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-Option held down, drag one of the bottom corners for the perspective (see below). And then hit Return.

“Reflections are the new drop shadows!” If that’s the case, here’s how!

Copy the text layer – or layer – that you want to reflect (Cmd/Ctrl-J). If the layer that you want to reflect is a text layer then you should Rasterize it. To do this, right-click on the text layer in the Layers palette and choose Rasterize Type.

This is my method of quickly flipping something vertically in Photoshop. Go Cmd/Ctrl-T for Free Transform, grab the top-middle point, pull down (see below) and then hit Return. Simple, no need for cumbersome menus.

Next you need to create a gradient mask to fade the reflection from top to bottom. To do this, select the layer that is the reflection, click on the “Add layer mask” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (looks like a washing machine), select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag from above the top to below the bottom of the reflection. Easy! (Didn’t work? Make sure your Foreground and Background colors and your Gradient picker are defaulted.)

Lastly a bit of rippling and blurring. Go Filters > Distort > Ripple… and choose the desired level of wobble. Only blur it a touch.

The above picture is one of my snaps taken very quickly at the end of clearish autumn day. I have improved this picture with Photoshop by selecting certain areas and altering the colour, brightness and contrast.

I first thing I did was to copy the photo to a new layer (Cmd/Cntl-J) I then use my method for creating a layer mask with the Gradient tool which was explained in the previous post to mask out the sky. I then used Image > Adjustments > Curves… (Cmd/Cntl-M) and clicked the Auto button (this finds the lightest part of the selection/layer and makes it white and finds the darkest part of the selection/layer and makes it black). Further contrast can be added by creating an ‘S’ shape out of the curve (see below). Contrast essentially means making dark areas darker and light areas lighter.

Then to make the picture more interesting I isolated the people at the bottom right with the Lasso tool (L) with a Feather of 15 to blur the edges and applied contrast using the same technique.

The original layer is now the lower half of the picture. I used Image > Adjustments > Curves… (Cmd/Cntl-M) to brighten the sky and, more importantly, to take out some green and add some blue to give the sky a more interesting look.

Here, as promised, is a short tutorial about creating montages. Here is a montage of three different images which gel together without having to laboriously cut anything out.

Layer masking with a brush

I sized the cityscape image over the picture of the girl and played around with layer blend modes until I chanced upon one that seemed to do the trick. It’s Color Dodge at 88% opacity.

Then I needed to get rid of some of the building’s lights from her face. The way to do this is to create a layer mask. In the Layers palette, simply click on the Add Layer Mask icon. It’s at the bottom of the palette and looks a bit like a washing machine (see below).

When you’ve done this a white rectangle will appear adjacent to that layer and, when you’ve selected the Brush Tool (B) your foreground colour will be black and you’re ready to start editing the layer mask.

When the layer mask is white it is unmasked and black is masked. So “painting” on the layer mask with a black brush will “erase” areas of that layer. Use a soft brush and play around with opacities.

Notice when you’re editing the layer mask and when you editing the layer itself. The rectangles will have thicker borders in the Layers palette to show you which. Click on a layer’s mask and your are editing the layer mask (foreground and background colours are the default black and white). Click on the layer rectangle itself and your are editing the layer (foreground and background colours revert to the colours you had there).

Layer masking with a gradient

Then I overlaid an image of a band. I wanted the left-hand side of the image to show the drummer and the right-hand side to show more of the girl.

Same technique as above. Click on the Layer Mask icon in the Layer palette to give yourself a blank layer mask. Click on the Gradient Tool (G) and drag (in this case horizontally from right to left more-or-less in the centre of the image) where you want your gradient mask. You can do this as many times as you want to get the right effect (no need to Cmd/Ctrl-Z).

This band layer is set to Lighted blend mode at 50% opacity.

Adding a border around the image

Add a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl-alt-shift-N). Select all (Cmd/Ctrl-A). Go Select > Modify > Border… add a value of, say, 5 pixels. You may want to feather it a bit. And fill it with a dark colour from the image.

Here is the layers palette for the finished image.

The montages will eventually go on large sierra boxes (a sierra box is a large cardboard box for software containing a DVD case and other printed material), DVD cases and the DVDs themselves as well as other promotional material.

Dance music montage

The dance montage was to capture a dance, house, deep house, tech house vibe.

World music montage

This montage was for world, dub, latin, reggae and ethnic.

Rock music montage

And this was for alternative, grunge, rock and pop. What do you think?

If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do?

The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative!

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up over the years of doing this.

Make sure you import your client’s text into InDesign and Quark rather than copy and paste it

Why? Because it keeps the formatting (bolds, italics, heads, subheads, notes, etc). If your client has gone through the document and done this there’s no need for you to do it again. OK, you may not like your client’s choice of formatting or font, you can change that globally over the whole document in seconds. Use the Style Sheets or Utilities > Font Usage in Quark and Paragraph Styles or Type > Find Font in InDesign to turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse.

If you want a presentation to look good don’t do it in PowerPoint

I know this isn’t always an option as all the world and his wife seem to want to use PowerPoint for any purpose but, if you can’t persuade the client to go for Premiere or Keynote, there’s always the PDF. The good old PDF will give you an excellent presentation with vectors supported, movies played and excellent interactivity.

You’ve got to do it PowerPoint, now what do you do?

In PowerPoint go File > Page Setup and that’ll give you the size of the slide. Then go to Photoshop go File > New and type in the same height and width values from PowerPoint, create your attention-grabbing masterpiece, save it as a PNG (transparency is supported) and then back in PowerPoint go Insert > Picture > From File… and select your PNG.

OK, so you can do that for every page of a 40 slide deck if your client wants to edit the text, but it’ll add a bit of extra fizz to the proceedings.

Get your client to provide you with the source files

If there’s a blurry bitmap graph or chart that you need to beautify, ask if it exists as a PDF or ask for the source files. Even if it was the ugly result of a PowerPoint-Excel partnership the chances are it can be copied and pasted into Illustrator and the type can be changed and the excess crud can be deleted.

Similarly a PDF can be opened from within Illustrator with the type and the vectors editable, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, if you’re lucky!

For both of these routes you may find all the elements refusing to be ungrouped. If this is the case go Object > Clipping Mask > Release and Object > Compound Path > Release and then ungroup and see where that gets you.

I used a slightly different technique for the above picture of David Beckham than my earlier pop art example.

This time I put the Threshold layer (Image > Adjustments > Threshold) on the top and set it’s Layer Style to Multiply. Some of the underlying image was coloured in, some was Posterized (Image > Adjustments > Posterize). No matter what you do to the photo you can always tell who it is.

A similar method was used for the above picture of Osama Bin Laden. There was incredible detail in the turban and the clothes that I kept from the photograph. I hand traced the colours on the face.

A important thing to remember about this sort of effect is that the flat colours and posterization mean that the image can be scaled up much larger than a similarly size photo can.

I knew this picture of Lewis Hamilton with all his sponsorship logos would come up well with the posterize effect.

I was asked by a client to present their final figures in a pitch they were doing in the form of a receipt. I thought it was quite a nice little Photoshop trick and a nice idea. Here’s how.

Draw the outline of the receipt, or piece of paper, with the Pen Tool (P), and turn it into a selection by Cmd/Ctrl clicking the Path in the Paths palette. Switch to Quick Mask Mode (Q) and your selection will turn 50% red (you can change that in Preferences). Go Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize. A cell size of 3 will give you the torn edge effect. Switch back to Standard Mode (Q) to return the quick mask to a “marching ants” selection.

Fill the selection with a suitable linear gradient and there’s your paper.

Two typefaces I found that looked similar to the printing you get on these receipts were called FacsimileLL and Dot Matrix. FacsimileLL is above. I used the Free Transform Tool (Cmd/Ctrl-T) to size the type onto the paper. Remember, holding down Cmd/Ctrl whilst dragging the corner points creates the irregular shapes you need.

Lastly, for the drop shadow I, for once, didn’t use Photoshop’s own marvellous Layer Style. I opted to copy the paper layer, darken a blur it and Free Transform it irregularly (holding down Cmd/Ctrl whilst dragging the corner points) so it looks as though one corner is curling up slightly.

My client won the pitch, by the way, these little details really help!

Put type or whatever you want distressed, grunged or “rubber stamped” on one layer in Photoshop with a white background layer beneath it. The create a blank layer above it (Cmd/Ctl-Opt-Shift-N).

Then you need to create some clouds. Very easy. First of all make sure your background and foreground colours in the Tools palette are the default black and white. To do this click on the tiny black and white squares in the Tools palette to the bottom left hand corner of the foreground and background colours. Or, simply press D!

Now (see below) and go Filter > Render > Clouds.

Once you have your clouds you need to get rid of all the greys and turn the layer into just black and white. There are a number of ways to do this: Go Image > Adjustments > Curves (Cmd/Ctl-M) and alter the line as seen above or you could go Image > Adjustments > Threshold. (You can get the same effect through Contrast or Levels, in fact!)

Set this layer’s Blending Mode to Screen, Color Dodge or Linear Dodge and play around with the opacity. To get the “holes” smaller on this “dalmation dog” layer, make the layer smaller with Free Transform (Cmd/Ctl-T) and copy it (Option-click and drag the layer with the Move Tool (V) so it covers the desired area.

You can see in areas of the top, pink grunge picture I have copied some “dalmation dog” layers over other “dalmation dog” layers to create a specially distressed effect!

An earlier tutorial on how to make a shiny button in Illustrator using the Opacity Mask feature can be improved upon greatly by adding a sexy brushed steel surrounding ring to your amber jelly button!

As previously explained, the shiny “web 2.0″ button look can be made by placing a circle with a linear black-to-white gradient over a circle with a radial gradient and selecting Make Opacity Mask in the Transparency palette with both selected. See the first row in key below.

Other crescent shapes can be added by putting a smaller circle on top of another and Option-clicking on the second icon from the left of the Shape Modes row in the Pathfinder palette, the tool tip says “Subtract from shape area (Option-click to expand)”. This is a one click way to subtract one shape from another and something I use all the time in Illustrator. See rows 2, 3 and 4 below.

In row 5 below, the steel rim. Double-click the Scale Tool (S) enter 125% and hit Copy with the orange button selected (go Release Opacity Mask in the Transparency palette and get rid of the black and white circle. Put a linear gradient going white-to-black-to-white onto this larger circle. Duplicate the orange button again by pasting in front (Cmd/Ctl-F) get rid of the black and white circle and go Object > Compound Paths > Make (Cmd/Ctl-8).

Finally put all the elements on separate layers in Illustrator and go File > Export and choose Photoshop (psd) from the Format drop down menu. Choose RGB, 72 ppi and make sure you have the Write Layer radio button clicked on. Now we move into Photoshop for some final tweaking and blurring. Open the PSD you exported from Illustrator and you will see all your layers from Illustrator on different layers in Photoshop (top tip!).

Play around with it by blurring the crescent shapes a bit and copying and colouring layers a bit.

Most of the work I did was to the steel rim layer. Add a Drop Shadow and an Inner Glow in Layer Styles in Photoshop. Add Grain or Noise and a horizontal Motion Blur for the steel effect.

I put the orange button layer on top of the House layer and set it to Linear Burn Blend Mode.

They look quite nice as navigation icons.

Remember Adobe Streamline? Adobe stopped upgrading its vector conversion application some time ago. But with the advent of CS2, Illustrator’s old Trace Tool became the new super Live Trace and opened up a new world of possibilities!

As soon as you place or paste a photo into Illustrator a button on the Control Palette offers a Live Trace option. However, I like to see all the options first off by going, Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options…

Here you can choose Color, Greyscale or Black and White from the Mode drop down menu of the Live Trace pop-up box. Marilyn Monroe below was done by colouring up Live Trace with the default, Black and White option.

This is the Illustrator/vector equivalent of Photoshop’s Image > Adjustments > Threshold…

The drop down menu next to Presets: in the Tracing Options dialog box gives you thirteen different tracing presets. However, if you ignore the presets and choose Color from the Mode drop down menu and enter a value in the Max Colors box you will see an identical effect to Posterizing in Photoshop – a finite number of tones within a colour picture. There are only 5 colours in the illustration of a dog below.

Photos are made up of pixels and making them larger makes the pixels larger too and the result can be blurry and jagged or “pixellated”. They are bitmap images and their file formats are .BMPs, .JPGs, and .PSDs. Vector images are composed of mathematical formulas that consist of curves and points. They can be resized without losing quality. Vector’s file formats are usually .EPS (although EPSs can be bitmaps) and .AIs (Adobe Illustrator’s native file format).

You may find the colours chosen by Illustrator are a little dull. Hit the Trace button and go Object > Expand… to turn your pic into Vectors. At this point you cannot go back and edit your trace (only with a Cmd/Ctl-Z). Another advantage of these resulting vectors is the ability to re-colour them as above with Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers.

To re-colour: simply select one of the colours you want to change with the Direct Selection tool (A) and go Select > Same > Fill Color and move those sliders!

Lastly, play around with the blurring option in the Tracing Options panel in order to create more figurative, impressionistic illustrations as with Big Ben below.

Overview: Go Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options once you have Placed or pasted your image into your Illustrator document. Make sure you have the Preview check box checked so you can see your chosen options before you hit Trace. Remember you have to go Object > Expand to turn the trace to outlines/vectors.

This is one way of reproducing a striking image without having to pay for it!

The logical way of doing an image made of dots would be like this: Make sure that your image’s width and height are divisible by 10 pixels (the above is 450 by 300 pixels). Nice round numbers make the following mathematics a lot easier. In Photoshop go Filter > Pixellate > Mosaic… and make you cell size 10 pixels. This gives the “pixellated” effect with each 10×10 pixel square having a flat colour. Save it.

Then in Adobe Illustrator, create a new document the same size as your saved Photoshop image, go File > Place, or just copy and paste the image and move it until it snaps on to the Illustrator artboard (if you have View > Snap to Point checked).

The object of the exercise is two cover the image with circles. Click once with your circle tool and make a circle with a width and height of 10 pixels. Put your first circle in the bottom left corner of your artboard. Two ways of doing this is either by “feeling” it snap there (if you have View > Snap to Point checked) or by making sure you have zero in the x and y co-ordinates in your Transform palette once the bottom left corner of the box is highlighted.

Now there are two ways you could fill the bottom of the pic with adjacent circles. You could either hit Return and get the Move dialog box and put 10 pixels in the Horizontal field, clicking Copy and then going Cmd/Ctl-D again and again and again until the line fills up. Alternatively, you could copy the circle in the bottom left corner to make another one in the bottom right corner and with both selected go Object > Blend > Blend Options… and put 10 pixels in Specified Distance. Hit Cmd/Ctl-Option-B to Make your Blend and the computer will do it for you! You will need to go Object > Expand… to turn to paths.

Use one of these methods to copy the line of circles over the whole of the artboard. To make the circles as “holes” inside another object, simply draw a white rectangle behind the circles (but in front of the placed image) and, with them all (the rectangle and the circles) selected go Object > Compound Paths > Make (Cmd/Ctl-8).

Now what you should have is a flat colour in each circle. However, I was finding this very difficult so what you have here, above, is an image with 10 pixels wide mosaic squares overlaid with 20 pixels wide circles.

Although it’s important to cut out images well when composing a montage in Photoshop, it’s definitely not the most important thing.

Images should be chosen for their ability to fit in with the other graphic elements in the composition. Usually one piece or element should stick out more than others – the “hero”.

It is sometimes even more important to give the separate images in the composition a similar treatment so that they marry well when put together. In the picture above I bumped up the contrast in the usual way (Image > Adjustments > Curves (Cmd/Ctl-M) and hit Auto – this brightens the lightest point to white and reduces the darkest point to black). Contrast can be increase further by creating an S-shape with the diagonal line.

Contrast was then further added by copying each layer (Cmd/Ctl-J) and setting the top layer’s blending mode to Hard Light.

I had to come up with a graphic to illustrate how Russia’s President Putin was using his country’s energy resources as an economic and political weapon.

In the first instance I was really lucky with the main picture of Putin who, like most politicians, is not the most photogenic. In this main picture his eyes really strike you, it almost looks as though he’s taking aim.

Putin’s face was also given one of my favourite effects. Go Adjust > Adjustments > Posterize and choose the amount of different colour tones you want (6 or 7, I can’t remember).

Doing the montage in this way means that you don’t have to spend ages cutting out. You can do it really quickly by selecting bit of unwanted area with the Magic Wand (W) with Tolerance set to 20 or so and Contiguous checked (so it only selects adjacent pixels). Remember to Feather by 1 or 2 pixels before you hit delete!

How many famous faces can you spot, who are they, what’s the background they’re superimposed on?

I did this to illustrate an article I wrote commenting on the music industry. I used paths, marquees with a feather of two pixels and a brush eraser with a hardness of 0% to cut out the heads. It’s usually best to go for a layer blend mode of Hard Light or Linear Light with an opacity of 80 to 90%, or Normal with an opacity of 60 to 70%. The idea is to be able to see the layer on top and what underneath it equally to merge two images.

Due to extremely large demand I am only making pop art images for people who are prepared to pay £200 first. If you really want a pop art picture you can read the tutorial below and do it yourself.

Most pop art pictures in the public’s imagination contain a photograph that has been reduced to only two tones, black and white, for example Andy Warhol’s Marilyn. The best way to do this is to go Image > Adjustments > Threshold in Photoshop. Move the slider until you get the best result.

Flat colours should then be added on layers above your black and white background. Set these layers to Multiply so that the black shows through. Pick no more than about four or five quite vibrant colours. It was quite good to get the background cyan in the above picture of Rihanna. More on Rihanna plus another pop art image here.

However, other effects can be achieved by reducing a greyscale picture to four or five tones instead of just two. Go Filter > Artistic > Cutout and choose the number of tones you want. Then they can be coloured up by going Image > Adjustments > Hue/Satuation, checking the Colorize box, putting the Saturation back up to the middle point and playing around with the Hue. See George W Bush below.

I also added those little dots favoured by another famous pop artist – Roy Lichtenstein. To achieve this I had to add a “clouds layer”. Click the small black and white squares by the foreground and background color on your Tools palette to default the colours (or press D) and go Filter > Render > Clouds on an empty layer. This is a handy way to get something to play around with when you’re setting textures generally.

Then go Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. I chose the smallest dot, 4 pixels wide. The layer is set to Multiply at 10% Opacity – just enough to see it.

The image below of Kanye West was created by using the above techniques.

If you want me to do a pop art poster design or anything else – for a fee, of course – then please contact me.

This is cool technique I’ve discovered which uses the Polar Coordinates filter in Photoshop to make a globe or a planet.

Start with picture (I chose one of some nice clouds). You may or may not at this point convert it into a square, but at some stage you will need to. As the edge of the picture will end up in the middle it’s a good idea to get it all the same colour. To do this draw a feathered rectangular Marquee (M) a little bit inside your picture frame, inverse the selection (Cmd/Cntl-Shift-I) and fill with a harmonious colour (see below top right).

Now, go Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates… check Polar to Rectangular, go Image > Rotate Canvas > 180º, and then Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates… check Rectangular to Polar and you should have something that looks like above bottom left.

To further increase the spherical illusion go Filter > Distort > Spherize, choosing Normal +100%. You will notice that this leaves a funny crossed shape in the middle of the sphere. I knocked this out with a feathered circular marquee filled with a blue that merges in.

After a bit of brightening, re-cutting out and adding a drop shadow, you will have created another world! This’ll work with any picture.

Choosing a group of colours can be a daunting exercise. OK, so there’s some golden rules to follow, like “always choose from the same third of the colour wheel”. Golden rules are made to be broken.

Adobe has a colourful website to make this a bit easier. If you sign in you can download the colourways as a .ase which can be imported to CS2 and CS3 applications via the Swatches palette (InDesign CS2/CS3: Load Swatches; Illustrator CS2/CS3: Open Swatch Library: Other Library; Photoshop CS2/CS3: Load Swatches). A pleasure to use!

But there’s no need to keep the high resolution you would for ordinary print files. Some Photoshop files I’ve made have been 3 metres by 8 metres at 120 ppi and have printed out fine. A lot of these spaces are printed on white backed acetate or plastic translite which is back lit.

The results can be beautiful and won’t crash your computer!

And another thing. Don’t worry too much if you get the spinning wheel of death, the multicoloured pizza or umbrella or whatever you call it. Even when working on a souped up G5 Photoshop can still freeze – even saying (not responding) when one choses the force quit option (Command-option esc). But when this happens don’t force quit! Chill, make a cup of tea or coffee, it will spring back to life and you won’t have lost anything!

The Quick Mask Mode is a much overlooked method for making selections. In particular, “burning” or darkening skies more at the top of the image than at the horizon. To do this, go into Quick Mask Mode, either by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the tool bar or by pressing Q. Immediately, the foreground and background colours will go to the black and white default.

Select the Gradient Tool (G), make sure it is a linear gradient and black to white, and draw a verticle line from the horizon upwards. The picture will then look something like the one on the right. Don’t worry about the red, a 50% opacity is the default setting of the masked area. To make absolutely sure what you have selected switch back to Standard Mode (Q) and you will see those familar “marching ants”. Command -H to hide those destracting insects and Command -M for curves of whatever you prefer to increase contrast, colour or saturation to the sky.

Because this selection has a lovely seemless gradient border to it, you can now use it for the rest of the picture. Command-Shift -I to inverse the selection and you have the rest of the picture selected. For my picture, the London landscape at the bottom was selected, then gradually selected less and less upwards towards the horizon and the sky deselected. Adjust this selection accordingly to create a nicer more contrasty image.

I’m writing an article about the very basics of improving landscape photography. For years I’ve been taking rather bland photos of both natural landscapes and cityscapes and then pushing those pixels to bits in Photoshop.

One of the most important things to learn in Photoshop is selecting areas of pictures. For example, in the Tower of London above, how do you select the sky without leaving tell-tale white lines along the horizon once you’ve added contrast to it?

The Dodge, Burn, Sponge, Brush and Clone Tools all have a blending mode option and the same quick key will work in the same way when one of these tools is selected. I got this from the Creative Guy here.

If, however, you are cutting out a person with frizzy hair, then softened edges are needed. Feather selections by a few pixels or create an extra channel and paint with soft brushes.