channels

"Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals" Goes Live Today

Submitted by deke on 4 November 2011 - 7:15am.

Photoshop Channels & Masks has traditionally been one of my most popular video series in the lynda.com Online Training Library. Which is why I decided to update the course and rename it Photoshop Masking & Compositing. After all, if it ain't broke, fix it.

It starts today with the release of my entirely reinvigorated primer course, Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals, in which you'll learn everything there is to know about selections, alpha channels, layers, compositing, clipping masks, Color Range, the Quick Mask mode, Refine Edges, everyday channel masking, Calculations, layer masks, vector path outlines, and knockout layers. Give me your time, and I'll make sure your compositions look their absolute best.

And this is just the beginning. There will be many satellite courses, including (but not limited to) Advanced Blending, The Pen Tool, and my personal favorite, Hair. (I'm working on Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Advanced Blending, complete with mathematical formulas for each and every one of the blend modes, as you read this.)

Here's my chosen splash screen, complete with a toucan. Because let's face it, toucan's are about as cool as masked birds get:

For a chapter-by-chapter analysis (there are nine chapters in all), read on: Read more » 

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Today I Finish Recording "Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals"

Submitted by deke on 5 October 2011 - 12:15am.

When I released my first "Photoshop Channels & Masks" course for lynda.com, it shot to the top of the Online Training Library and remained there for months. Naturally, I've been eager to update the videos, but as seems forever to be the case, there have been plenty of other things to occupy my attention.

Fortunately, that unfortunate situation officially changes today. Nearly four years after the release of my last "Channels & Masks" course, I am just today putting the finishing touches on its update. Only this time around, we'll be calling the video "Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals." And it contains all new content. (Okay, so there are a couple of archival projects, but I thoroughly rehashed them, so they're new too.)

Here's a sample project, in which I take a couple of foreground subjects, one with lots of hair and the other with lots of feathers:

A woman with hair and a bird with feathers, ready to mask in Photoshop

And I arrange them against a new background, complete with some adventurous compositing techniques and a few synthetic effects:

The two images masked into a new background, with effects, courtesy of Photoshop Read more » 

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Deke's Techniques 028: Adding Stereo-3D Text and Shapes

Submitted by deke on 12 July 2011 - 12:15am.
Deke's Techniques 028: Adding Stereo-3D Text and Shapes

Hey gang. This week's Deke's Techniques videos are all about adding text and shapes to a 3D stereoscopic photograph, like the one created in last week's technique. In today's free movie, I show you how to add text and shapes at different planes of depth. In the follow-up video at lynda.com, I show you how to tilt the text and shapes so they incline in 3D space toward the viewer.

Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

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Deke's Techniques 027: Making a Stereoscopic Photo

Submitted by deke on 5 July 2011 - 12:15am.
Deke's Techniques 027: Making a Stereoscopic Photo

As I write this, I've published 20 hours of video training on the topic of 3D imaging in Photoshop. (For those who may be curious, it begins with the 5-hour Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D Fundamentals, about which you can learn more at lynda.com.) These movies are all about creating photorealistic 3D artwork from scratch. But what if you're not interested in 3D artwork? What if you want to create 3D photographs? Well then you're in luck, because that's precisely what this week's technique is all about.

Remember those old View-Master images? It's like that, only with glasses. Plus loads of fun and really easy.

In today's free video, I show you how to shoot two photographs---one for each of your naturally stereoscopic eyes---using a standard single-lens camera. And then I assemble them in Photoshop so that the composite image appears in everyday-average lifelike depth when viewed through a pair of red-cyan glasses, like the ones pictured below, provided by Fotolia.

3D glasses from the Fotolia image library

Red, white, and blue. What a fitting day-after-Fourth-of-July tribute! Meanwhile, here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

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The Self-Made Mask

Submitted by LouBrz on 8 December 2010 - 8:00am.

Today's tip comes from from Chapter 26, "Masking Essentials," of Deke's video course Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery from lynda.com. And because this course is all about mastery, Deke takes on tougher masking challenges in this chapter, delving into such deep techniques as exploiting the native components of an RGB image to create highly exacting alpha channels and masks.

Photoshop CS5 self-made mask

Some of you may recognize this image (care of Stas Perov of the Fotolia image library) from Deke's Photoshop Top 40 videos, starting with Feature #33: Calculations. But this is a more detailed analysis, which includes compositing the masked image against a blue sky background.

We'll focus on the segment entitled "Making an alpha channel," where Deke demonstrates how the art of masking lies in using the image to select itself. Read more » 

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