I’m incredibly excited to let you know about a series of live Photoshop workshops we have planned over the next few months, in conjunction with Martin Perhiniak. They’ll be taking place in London, UK, and it’s a great chance to take your Photoshop training to the next level! Read on to find out more, and book your place…

Professional Face-to-Face Training

Martin Perhiniak is one of our most popular authors on Psdtuts+, a Certified Adobe Design Master and Instructor, and an incredibly talented teacher. Martin has worked with companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, Cartoon Network, Sony Pictures, Mattel, and DC Comics. He will be running a series of Tuts+ Live Workshops over the next three months, giving you the chance to become a Photoshop expert.

The workshops are taking place in London, UK, in a state of the art learning environment (here’s a video of the training centre), and over each two-day course you’ll learn everything you need to know about a particular area of Photoshop. We’ll even provide an iMac, second screen, and a tablet for you to use during the course!

It’s an amazing opportunity to take your Photoshop career to the next level, learning skills that will make you a better creative professional. If you’re wanting to take the first step into being a full-time Photoshop professional, these workshops are the perfect start.

Dates, Prices, and Topics

Digital Art

Have you ever imagined yourself working on blockbuster movies or computer games? Designing characters, monsters, weapons, cities, castles, spaceships and planets? In this intense but fun two-day workshop, you can learn all the techniques used by professional digital artists. Topics covered will be:

• Digital art basics & theory
• Brushes
• Finding and using references & inspiration
• Using a tablet
• Digital sketching and painting techniques
• Portraits and dynamic character poses
• Concept art projects
• Vehicle, character, monster, weapon, and environment design
• Matte painting projects
• Futuristic and fantasy cityscape

You’ll need a basic understanding of Photoshop for this course. If you are not confident, you can prepare for the course by watching Martin’s Photoshop Basix series!

Graphic Design

Have you ever wanted to learn all the best practices used by a professional graphic designer? This is the best place and time for you to do that. You can learn everything you need to know through real life design examples, which makes the training extremely useful and exciting. Topics covered will be:

• Logo design workflow and project
• Brochure design workflow and project
• Poster design workflow and project
• Product packaging design workflow and project
• Identity design workflow and project
• Album cover design workflow and project

You’ll need a basic understanding of Photoshop for this course. If you are not confident, you can prepare for the course by watching Martin’s Photoshop Basix series!

Photo Retouching

In this two-day course, you’ll learn all the most advanced retouch skills you need for professional work in several fields in the industry. The techniques we cover in this special course are used by high-end fashion photo retouchers, digital artists, professional photographers and graphic designers. Topics covered will be:

• High-end portrait retouch
• Skin softening, and changing hair and eye colour
• Modifying facial and body features
• Artistic portrait effects
• Removing unwanted elements
• Extending photos for better composition
• Professional sharpening and noise-reduction
• Creating the perfect group shot
• Photo montage techniques
• HDR techniques
• Adding colour to black and white photographs
• Vintage and colour pop effects
• Restoring old photographs & cleaning up backgrounds
• Working with Camera RAW files
• Retouching landscape photographs
• Professional fashion/wedding shoot retouch and montage project

You’ll need a basic understanding of Photoshop for this course. If you are not confident, you can prepare for the course by watching Martin’s Photoshop Basix series!

Have Your Say & Win!

While our first set of workshops are taking place in London, we’d love to have your thoughts on how we can continue this project. Let us know where you think other live workshops should be held, if you’d like to participate in an online workshop, and what topics you think we should cover:

Take our thirty second survey

We’ll pick a random respondent to win a three month Tuts+ Premium membership on Friday 31st May!

In this tutorial we will explain how to create a metallic copper text effect using layer styles in Photoshop. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

• Concrete Bunker Texture
• Argel Font
• Palace Balls Picture

Step 1

Create a new file. Set Width and Height to 700 px and the resolution to 72 PPI. Name: Angel text

Step 2

Fill the canvas with the Concrete Bunker texture.

Step 3

Marge the concrete bunker texture to the background.

Step 4

Go to menu > Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation > use the values as shown below.

Step 5

Apply Sharpen twice: Go to menu > Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. Add Noise: Go to menu > Filter > Noise > Add Noise > use the values as shown in the pop-up, in the left side of the image below. Create a new empty layer over the background; fill it with color code #252829. Apply Blend mode "Color" as shown in the menu, in the right side of the image below. Finally merge it to the background (Command/Ctrl+E).

Step 6

Type the word “Angel” using the “Argel Font”, font size 310 pt, tracking 0. Select the letter “A” and set tracking to 40. All values as shown in the image below.

Step 7

Using the "Move Tool", select the text and background layer, then click the align commands: "Align Horizontal Center" and "Align Vertical Center" on the top menu to center it.

Step 8

Apply a Layer Style on the text layer (right click over the layer > Blending Options). Set Blending Options step by step as shown in the image below and click ok.

Note: to edit the Gloss Contour in the Bevel and Emboss step: click the contour thumbnail to open the Contour Editor pop-up > click in the contour mesh to add points and enter values for Input and Output.

Step 9

Copy the image “Palace Balls” from the browser, paste it over the text layer “Angel” and rename the image layer to “Reflection01.” Using the "Move Tool," select "Reflection01" image layer and background layer, then click the align commands: "Align Bottom Edges" and "Align Left Edges" on the top menu, as shown in the image below.

Step 10

Select “Reflection01″ image layer and using the “Rectangular Marquee Tool”, right click over the picture and choose “Free Transform”. Then lock the proportions with the loop icon “Maintain Aspect Ratio” on the top menu, as shown in the image below and reduce Width and Height to 70%, set Horizontal Position to 1099.2 px and set Vertical Position to -7.8 px and press enter.

Step 11

Apply a Layer Style on “Reflection01″ image layer (right click over the layer > Blending Options) and apply Gradient Overlay values as shown below and click ok, to get a metal copper tone.

Step 12

Apply Sharpen thrice: Go to menu > Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen (remember repeat this step three times).

Step 13

Reduce Noise: Go to menu > Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise. Using the values as shown below.

Step 14

Duplicate layer “Reflection01″ and rename to “Reflection02.” After renaming it apply: Blend mode to Lighten and Opacity to 50% as shown below.

Step 15

To achieve a stunning reflection effect, select “Reflection02″ image layer and using the “Rectangular Marquee Tool”, right click over the picture and choose: Free Transform > Flip Horizontal > and reduce Width to -90% and Height to 90%, set Horizontal Position to 513 px and set Vertical Position to 108 px as shown below and press enter.

Step 16

Select the two image layers and go to menu > Layer > Create Clipping Mask. To put the reflections inside the layer font. Finally, select the two image and text layers to link them by clicking over the "Link Layers" icon at the bottom of the layers palette. To have the final text effect linked.

Final Image

In this past, working with a lot of text in Photoshop was a hassle. Global changes to text simply could not be made easily. In Photoshop CS6, Adobe has given us new ways to manage our text. This episode of our Introduction to Photoshop CS6 series will explain the new Paragraph and Character style panels. Let’s take a look!

For many professional illustrators, Photoshop is the tool of choice to create hand-drawn digital artwork or paintings. With the right knowledge and skills, it can be used to create stunning works of art. With that said, we’re not all professional illustrators. In this tutorial we will explain how to achieve similar results by applying Filter Forge effects to quick hand-drawn sketches. Let’s get started!

Filter Forge is a powerful third-party plugin that allows you to apply over 4,000 amazing effects to your images, and even create your own. To learn more about Filter Forge, you can visit their website, download the trial version of the software, or check out their filter gallery.

Split Frequency Healing is a technique that you can use in Photoshop that will allow you retouch photos without affecting the photo’s respective tone or texture. In this tutorial, commercial retoucher, Daniel Meadows, who has worked for clients such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire, Chanel, and L’Oreal Paris, will explain this technique and how it can be used in your workflow. Let’s get started!

Special thanks to Dubai Photographer, Sherif Mokbel for providing the photography for this tutorial.

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

• Model

Before You Begin

Let’s take a look at the image that we’ll be using for this tutorial. Below you’ll see a typical example of markup you might receive from a client. It might be a jpeg like this, a scan of a pen-annotated print or simply a set of instructions or suggestions, but ultimately you’ll be expected to deliver on a set brief.

We have instructions to clean up the image, a little liquify for a more pleasing curve to the back and waist, and to remove the purple-blue tone from the model’s legs. I’ll cover the techniques you’ll need to complete the shot over the course of several tutorials. Remember not to deviate too far from what your client is asking for, run it by them first. If you think a background color change is really going to make the subject pop, try discussing your ideas, especially if it’s for a portfolio project. If it’s a commercial or editorial job however and the art director wants neutral white, he or she of course, gets white.

There are quite a few ways to achieve a similar result in Photoshop, and I’ll be going through a number of them, often focusing on one in particular and giving a couple of alternatives you might want to try.

The first step we’re going to follow in completing this shot is the healing, the ‘basic cleanup.’ For this we’re going to be mostly using the clone stamp (S), but we’ll do it a little differently to the way the software intended. Be sure to start off using the key commands for your tools, you’ll save yourself a lot of time in the long run. When you’re trying to meet an unreasonable deadline and your left hand is bringing up every tool and command without giving it a thought you’ll thank me for it. Take a look at the look at the shot we have to work with:

The lighting’s a blessing, the well defined shadows and highlights give us a great guide to follow when we come to carving, but we’ll get to that. The skin is very good, with just enough marks and texture variance to give us a good run at the exercise. Remember that with high end commercial retouching you’re going to be getting professional models with great skin, great lighting, make up, wardrobe etc. It isn’t about changing the shot, or the model, it’s about perfecting it. Here’s a close up of the kind of texture variations I mentioned:

It might be instinctive to head straight for the clone stamp or healing tools, but the clone stamp will carry luminosity and tone with it, causing problems in light to shadow or vice versa. The healing tools carry the texture and then attempt to approximate the tone and luminosity with an algorithm. What if there was a way of cloning nothing but the texture, ignoring the luminosity and tone, and simply replacing a piece of texture elsewhere? Well we’ve got one, and it’s called frequency separation.

Split Frequency Healing

Now we’re going to split the image into its low and high frequencies. To get a better idea of what that means, take a look at this blog post regarding the reason for the famous ‘Mona Lisa Smile.’

It was very clear to me that when I looked at her mouth, she wasn’t smiling as much as when I looked at her eyes.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa smiles in the blurry low frequency, but not in the high frequency texture. Look directly at the lips in the full image on the left, and then at the shadow that suggests a more pronounced smile in the blurred image to the right:

To split an RGB image into it’s low and high frequencies do the following. Create two copies of your background layer (when we’ve finished the following steps, one will be low, one high, and the original background image is kept for reference).

You’ll notice I’ve renamed them to ‘LF’ and ‘HF.’ As you might expect, to achieve the low frequency image, we use a blur. Gaussian Blur the LF layer at a radius of around 15.

The interesting bit is how we turn the HF layer into one that contains only the high frequency data, so we can view it together with the low frequency layer as one composite image. For an 8bit image, select the HF layer, head to Image > Apply Image, and use the following settings:

For 16bit images use the settings in this box:

Hit ok and you’ll have an image that looks like this:

In that layer is all the sharp, high frequency texture detail we’ve been hoping to isolate, against a neutral grey. To tell Photoshop to ignore the unhelpful grey, set the Layer Mode to Linear Light:

Our image should now look like the image below which is indistinguishable from the original (the eagle-eyed amongst you might notice a barely perceptible difference if you look very closely).

If you switch off the Background layer for a moment and toggle the visibility between just the LF and just the HF layers, you’ll notice that the image we now have is a true composite, one layer without the other doesn’t work.

But together we get the full image. The benefit we have now is that we can clone and heal on just the HF, or ‘texture’ layer without affecting the tones, and we also have the opportunity to fix tones and luminosity on the LF layer without ever affecting the texture.

Grab your Clone Stamp (S), making sure it is set to ‘Current Layer’ (we don’t want to carry any of the low frequency information onto the texture layer):

And begin to remove any blemishes by Alt (Mac: Opt)-clicking an area of good texture and painting over the areas of poor texture:

As you can see, the overall tone and lighting has remained, with only the texture affected. It’s not something we can usually do with the Clone Stamp, and the Healing Brush can fall short.

You may notice that this method fails when dealing with hard edges, and areas where there is a dominant tone beneath the texture, such as the rather extreme example below:

For this reason, it’s necessary to start a new layer above your frequency layers, and clone over any problem areas this way. Don’t forget to set the Clone Stamp’s Sample back to Current & Below.

Healing Completed

And here’s a close up of the skin after nothing but some careful cloning, 95% of which was done on the high frequency layer:

Conclusion

At this point, we’ve improved the condition of the model’s skin so we don’t have to worry about print size, we know the blemishes are gone and for many purposes this is far enough. Not for us of course, in the next tutorial we’re going to head into dodging and burning, locally adjusting luminosity to even out tones. Please share and post your comments, and I’ll see you soon!

In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial, author Marcela Bolivar will explain how create a surreal and dreamy photo manipulation using atmosphere, lighting, masks, textures, and custom brushes. This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members. If you are looking to take your photo manipulation skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

Tuts+ Premium Members can login now for instant access to this tutorial. Membership to Tuts+ Premium gets you access to hundreds of exclusive premium tutorials, top selling ebooks, in-depth courses, member forums, and much more. To learn more about Tuts+ Premium, Take the Tour or Join Today.

In this article we will showcase the work of Ukrainian artist, Alla Mingalyova (AKA AllaD8). Mingalyova’s photo manipulations are fun, feminine, and beautiful. Let’s take a look!

The Swan Princess

I Need a Hero

My Secret Friend

Spirited Away 2

Waking Up

Farewell

Blonde

Miss S.

2008

The Brush Panel in Photoshop CS6 includes plenty of new features. In this episode of our Introduction to Photoshop CS6 series we will explain how to work with Live Pen Tilt Preview, Brush Projection, as well as the new Erodible Tip and Airbrush brushes. Let’s get started!

We know how much you guys like to test your knowledge of Photoshop so today we are giving you an opportunity to do so with another quiz from Martin Perhiniak. Please take a moment to complete this 10-question quiz and see if you’re prepared to pass our test! Good luck!

Editor’s note: this quiz is for Photoshop CS5.

We’re planning our next few Tuts+ sites, and would love your opinion and advice on which topics you think we should cover next! We’d be really grateful if you could take a minute to answer our quick poll and share your thoughts…

Have Your Say

We’ve been considering lots of different ideas for our next Tuts+ sites over the past few weeks, and wanted to also ask the opinion of our awesome community!

A selection of different concepts are included in the poll to the right, along with the option for you to submit your own ideas as well.

The important thing to note is that these are just ideas. Some of these are close to making our final cut, and others aren’t… We’d love to hear what you think, to help guide our decision.

Thanks for taking the time to offer your suggestion — I can’t wait to see what you have to say!

Win a 6-Month Tuts+ Premium Membership

Our poll will be running for the next couple of weeks, and we’ll be choosing one respondent at random to receive a six-month Tuts+ Premium membership!

To be entered into the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post to go into a bit more detail about your site suggestion. We’ll choose one comment at random to win the Tuts+ Premium membership when the poll ends.

Best of luck!

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