Jay Arraich's Photoshop Tips


	How Much? page two After you’ve clicked OK to exit the Levels dialog, press the Alt key, and click on the adjustment layer’s mask. The mask is the white square to the right of the adjustment layer icon on its layer in the Layers palette. In the toolbox, choose the gradient tool. From the gradient tool’s options bar, pick the foreground to background gradient from the pop-up palette. It’s the first thumbnail; top left corner. Next, on the options bar, choose the Linear option. Linear is the first icon in the group just to the right of the large gradient thumb at the left end of the options bar. Make sure that your foreground and background colors are black and white. When you enter mask-edit mode by clicking the mask, your colors will automatically change to grayscale, but they may not be pure black and white. Press the D key to make sure. With the gradient tool, click on the left side of your image and drag straight across to the other side. Next, choose Image > Adjust > Posterize. In the Posterize dialog, enter 4. In the future, you can enter as many steps as you’d like, though I recommend using from four to eight steps, depending on how uncertain you are of what you’re after. Once you click OK to exit the Posterize dialog, your gradient will separate into four distinct shades of gray, as shown below.	next back start Tips 7 Tools 7 Palettes
Tutorials Brushes in 7 Using PS7 Brushes 7 Basics 7 Reference: Tools 7 Reference: Palettes Reference: Filters Reference: Effects Selections Channels Basic Layers Basic Pen How Much? Color Management Color Correction Combining Images Combining Images II Combining Images III Compositing in Photoshop Perfect Blend Multicolor Fill Curves, Levels, or Brightness/Contrast? Dodge and Burn Duotones Styles On Masks Organic Textures Abstract Background Make a Frame 3D Wire Text Doodling
Older Tutorials Quick Mask Rubberstamping More Adjustments Sharpening Filters Color Elements Tutorials Elements Basics Reference: Elements Tools Reference: Elements Palettes How Do I...? Gotcha Pre-Beginner Pre-Beginner II Why Layers? Holes Fade In Playing With Styles Learning Effects Redeye Removal Artistic Filtering Symmetrical Flowers Simulated Alpha Channels Layer Masks Multilayer Masks Displacing Textures	Press the Alt key, and click on the adjustment layer mask to see your image again. My example, with its new striped mask, appears as shown above. You Layers palette, at this point, should look like this: In case you don’t know how masks work, here is a brief explanation. Wherever a mask is black it totally excludes whatever it is masking from affecting or being included in your image. At the opposite end of the spectrum, any part of the mask which is white is allowing that which it is masking to be fully effective; or rather it is not masking at all wherever it is white. Any shades of gray constrain the effect, in this case, a Levels adjustment, in proportion to the shade of gray. So, if you look at the striped image above, the first stripe on the left side is black. Therefore, the Levels adjustment is having no effect on that part of the image. You are seeing the original, uncorrected photograph, there. On the right side of the picture, where the mask is pure white, you are seeing the image with the full, over correction that I made in the first part of this lesson. The two stripes in the middles show two possible variations from which you can choose the one you prefer. I chose the one on the left which is the darker of the two. I was more interested in keeping the detail in the clouds than in making the trees more visible. Once you’ve chosen the variant that you prefer, you want to Alt-click on the adjustment layer mask, once again. Then choose the eyedropper tool in the toolbox, and click on the gray stripe that corresponds to your choice. Clicking a color with the eyedropper makes that your foreground color. Press Alt-Backspace (the keyboard shortcut for Edit > Fill > Foreground Color) to fill the mask with the chosen shade of gray. Press Alt and click on the adjustment layer mask to see your image. If you look at the adjusted photograph that results from this intermediate correction, shown below, you’ll see that it is not a happy compromise. The clouds are now a little too light, and the trees are still quite a bit too dark. Use Ctrl-Z, or the History palette to undo the mask fill and return to where you have the striped mask. Now that you’ve seen the basic procedure I’ll show you the better, multi-step correction, next. Continue on page three

PS Elements Tips Unreal Nature Shadows and Light Photoshop Books Photoshop Links FreePhotos Filler Images Elementary School Advanced Elements The Belief Game Animal Rights	Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich. All rights reserved. All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich jay@arraich.com	next previous start Tips Index 7 Tools 7 Palettes Site Index

How Much?

Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich. All rights reserved. All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich jay@arraich.com

Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com