Can’t find what you’re looking for to remedy your photos?

Digital Imaging could be your Answer ...

 

“Looking for A Solution

To Perfect Your Photos

using Photoshop Software?”

 

From: Yvonne Grubb

 

Dear Digital Imaging Friend,

 

Improvement can always be made to those camera shots and old photos ... whether it’s just to brighten up your image, remove a colour cast or unwanted object, repair tears, or even crop out unwanted background and fit your photo to a frame ... So if you’re wanting something doing to perfect your photos, then ...

 

Welcome to the age of the Digital Darkroom.  Yes, all you need is a computer and some image editing software, like Photoshop, and you have your own digital darkroom ready to start editing and retouching your photos ... a fantastic and flexible way to do whatever you desire!

 

Go For It!

If you’re up for it and want to have a go yourself then GO FOR IT!

We live in a great age to take advantage of technology, and what’s more you don’t have to mess with chemicals, as your digital darkroom is clean ... You just make some changes to your image and save the changes ... Ready for returning to or printing out!

 

You Also Save Money and Avoid Disappointment

With editing and retouching your own photos, you have full control ... you don’t have to rely on others to do this and charge you for it.  Mind you, they may not always get your photos the way you want them to look, and you’ll still have to honour them to pay for their services ... is it really worth chancing it?

 

Getting Started

It took me a little while getting to grips with editing and retouching my photos (I’m going back to 1999 when I started using Photoshop 5).  As Photoshop is a professional package, I had to buy a video tutorial to speed things up, otherwise it would have been a much longer and more arduous learning curve.  The tutorial videos back then really did help me, but I didn’t have anyone personally to turn to when I got stuck with things.

 

Getting Into It

As I started getting into retouching and editing my photos ... through experience, I started to realise why I was using certain tools, and this made things much easier for me to grasp.

 

A Fun Challenge

A framed picture had fallen from my wall and smashed, damaging the picture, so my only alternatives were to either buy a new picture to fill the gap on the wall, or create something myself.  I decided to create my own artwork image, saved it to disc, had it printed at my local printers to a poster size ... And it proudly hangs on my wall to this day!

 

I created a montage using these four images ...

 

... and with my Photoshop skills, here is what I came up with ...

My   ‘Sun With A View’

 

Excitement

When I grasped how to perfect my digital photos, I printed them out and saved them in a portfolio book for my own interest.

Here’s the best bit …

I decided to take them into work one day and show them around … just with the sheer excitement to ‘show them off’ …

 

I started getting people asking me if I could retouch one of their photos … this led to another … then another … it certainly helped pay back my investment in Photoshop and tuition costs!

 

A Small Sample of some Friend’s Before’s and After’s ...

 

    Taken from a postcard ...

 

 

 From a digital camera ...

 

 

From an aged photo ...

 

    From a negative ...

 

 

From 2 separate Photos ...

 

To One Photo ...

 

Photoshop Versions

Since using Photoshop 5, of course I have had to upgrade from this very old version (I now use CS3 with Windows XP).  You’ll find its worth keeping fairly up to date with your Photoshop version (although you don’t have to have the latest version), but because Windows software is always upgrading (I think it was Windows 98 software when I used Photoshop 5) then you won’t get behind with your Windows system software.

 

Tips

Now although I’m using CS3, I mainly stick to the more conventional tools (the tools that have been around in earlier versions of Photoshop).  Comparing some of them with the automatic features like Red Eye Tool, Spot Healing and Patch Tools for retouching, for example, I still find the good old Clone (Rubber Stamp) Tool has the most flexibility because it works using opacity (so you can use 1% to 100% opacity to achieve better blending ... and you have full manual control!

 

I’ve found you don’t need to know everything in Photoshop ... It’s mammoth!  I have found if it works for you then stick to it!

 

Having Fun with Your Photos

Since creating my own website at Yvonnes Digital Artwork I love working with images and find it great fun exploring ideas with photos to create montages, as well as retouching photos.  

 

Making the Best of Your Photos for Internet Display

Having set up websites for clients, I have been able to edit and retouch my client’s photos to give them the best impression.  A fundamental point, too, if you are using photos to place on a website or blog, it’s important to know about resolution of an image and how to optimise a photo, making sure it’s in low resolution for quicker loading.  You must make sure your photos are in 72 or 96 ppi (pixels per inch) for display on the Internet.

 

Help at Hand ... a Digital Imaging Tutorial

I noticed on the Internet, there are a lot of people searching for that ‘holy grail’ to help them remedy their photos ... Now having a passion for doing this sort of thing, I thought it might be a good idea to put a video tutorial together, which maybe of good use, bearing in mind I have been using Photoshop for over 10 years, and it would be great to impart my knowledge and experience.  

 

Why a Video Tutorial?

Well, going back when I learned from a video tutorial, I certainly found it a much quicker and easier approach to learn something that was quite technical ... It would have taken me ages to fathom Photoshop out from a thick book.  And what’s even easier, you can see what’s happening, so you instantly pick up the gist of it and remember it far more quickly.

 

What does this Tutorial Include?

32 Chapters (containing 70 videos ) ... Over 8 Hours duration, which gives my knowledge and experience of how you could Make the Best of Your Photos ... even if you don’t know much, or perhaps a little about Photoshop.

 

Here’s the Details ...

Making things Easy

After discovering many people struggle using Photoshop for editing and retouching their photos, knowing it is a professional software package … to make things easy, I have created a ‘hands-on’ video tutorial, to help you Make the Best from your digital photos, bearing in mind what others have been looking for.  

 

I have designed the tutorial not only to show you how, but also give you an easy understanding about using certain tools to retouch and create projects with your photos.  

 

I’m using version CS3, but it doesn’t matter if you have an earlier or later version, as the tools I mainly use basically do the same job.

 

Some Screen Grabs from my Tutorials ...

 

Brightening up part of your image ...

To This ...

 

Moving One Image Into Another Image ...

To This ...

 

Selecting an Area of Your Image before colourising ...

After Colourising ...

 

Cloning Squirrel from One Image into Another Image ...

Cleaning Up ...

To Making Final Adjustments ...

 

Adding Lens Flare to Your Image ...

 

To This ...

 

A Better Understanding

I don’t know about you, but when I’m doing something, if I know why I’m doing it, it really makes the task so much easier to pick up ...

 

So because Photoshop can be a bit overwhelming, what I’ve done is include some overview chapters purposely on 3 main areas: the basic Selection Tools, Brush Tools and the Layers Palette.  This way, I feel you will grasp why you are using certain tools for certain tasks.

 

The Importance of Resolution of an Image

When working with images, they do contain pixels (small coloured squares that make up data in your photo).

 

Unlike vector graphics, where you can resize them - there’s no loss of quality, but with images - when resized, they can pixelate, if you are unaware you’re working in a lower resolution, which means the image becomes very unclear and has jaggy edges.

 

Now if you spent time on editing, retouching and maybe cropping out some background on your image, to have it printed at a larger size, then discovering you only have a low resolution (not much pixel data), you would be very disappointed if your picture printed out very jaggy and unclear.

 

Tip

You can avoid this if you check your image’s resolution before you start to do any editing or retouching ...  You should be working with high resolution (no less than 200 ppi) if you intend to print out your photo.  

 

In fact it’s best to work and save your image in a higher resolution ... Then you have the choice of printing it, or re-saving it under another name, putting it in lower resolution if you want to display your photos on the Internet.

 

Because of the importance of resolution, I have included a chapter explaining about it, also including working with manageable file sizes.

 

 

32 Chapters on CD Disc ... Plus Bonuses

See Below For Details ...

 

 

Introduction & Tutorial Chapters:

 

Chap1 - Get Familiar With Your Work Space

Chap2.1 - Opening & Importing an Image

Chap2.2 - Opening an Image & Rotating to Portrait

Chap3 - Viewing & Panning Your Image

Chap4 - Moving Objects & Images

Chap5.1 - Image Size & Resolution Explained

Chap5.2 - Image Size & Resolution Summary

Chap5.3 - Working with a Manageable File Size

Chap6 - Setting Page Size & Printing Properties

Chap7.1 - Crop Your Image to Zoom In

Chap7.2 - Crop Your Image to Size

Chap7.3 - Crop to Correct a Crooked Object within Your Image

Chap7.4 - Crop to Correct a Crooked Image

Chap8 - Changing Ruler Measurements

Chap9 - Brightening Your Image

Chap10 - Removing a Colour Cast

Chap11.1 - Selecting Areas of an Image – Overview

Chap11.2 - Selecting an Image Area using Lasso & Magnetic Lasso Tools

Chap11.3 - Selecting an Image Area using the Polygonal Lasso Tool

Chap11.4 - Selecting an Image Area with the Magic Wand Tool

Chap11.5 - Selecting an Image Area using the Quick Selection Tool

Chap11.6 - Selecting an Image Area using the Marquee (or Shape) Tools Part 1

Chap11.7 - Selecting an Image Area using the Marquee Tools – Part 2

Chap12 - Cleaning up Selection Edges

Chap13.1 - Drawing Smoother Curve Edges with Selection Tools

Chap13.2 - Modifying Your Selection Edges Using Modify Options

Chap13.3 - Blurring a Background after Modifying Your Selection

Chap14.1 - Looking at Colour Modes

Chap14.2 - Looking at Colour using the Colour Picker (To Change Colour)

Chap14.3 - Looking at Colour using the Colour Palette

Chap14.4 - Looking at Colour using the Colour Swatches (Save a specific colour)

Chap14.5 - Looking at Colour Sampling Colour from an Image using the

Eyedropper Tool

Chap14.6 - Replace Colour in an Image

Chap14.7 - Colour Image to Black & White or Sepia Tint

Chap15.1 - Using Brush Tools for Different Reasons – Overview

Chap15.2 - Sizing the Paintbrush Tool & Using a Soft (or Feathered) Edge Brush

Chap15.3 - Painting Straight Lines, Paint Opacity & Flow using the Paintbrush

Chap15.4 - Create Artistic Effects – Creating Your Own Pattern Brush from a

 Selection in an Image

Chap16.1 - Remove Unwanted Areas in an Image

Chap16.2 - Cloning an Object (Squirrel) to Paint into Another Image

Chap16.2 - Appendix

Chap17.1 - The Understanding & Flexibility of the Layers Palette (Part 1)

Chap17.1 - Unlocking a Background Layer for Flexibility (Part 2)

Chap17.1 - Demonstrating using basic icons on the Layers Palette (Part 3)

Chap17.2 - Rotating Daffodils using Different Layers

Chap17.3 - Mask out Areas of Your Image Very Easily

Chap18 - Removing Red Eye

Chap19.1 - Repairing an Old Photo – Removing a Stain

Chap19.2 - Repairing an Old Photo – Removing Scratches, Tears & Spots

Chap19.3 - Repairing an Old Photo – Patching Over Damage in Open Areas

Chap20 - Reducing Bright Sunlight & Shadows

Chap21 - Sharpening a Blurred Image after Removing any Imperfections

Chap22 - Adding Spot Colour to a Black & White Photograph

Chap23 - Create a Soft Focus Around Your Image

Chap24 - Adding Lens Flare to Your Image

Chap25 - Creating Speed Effects in Your Image

Chap26 - Adding an Artistic Effect Over Your Image

Chap27.1 - Adding a Textured Background to your Photo

Chap27.2 - How to Create Your Own Pattern Texture

Chap28.1 - Adding a Gradient Colour to a Bland Looking Sky

Chap28.2 - Creating Your Own Gradient Colours to add to a Background

Chap29 - Creating a Simple Motif or Logo from a Copyright Free Design

Chap30 - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect and Add a Special Effect

Chap31.1 - Adding Text with Effects to Your Photo

Chap31.2 - Adding Text with Effects to Your Photo

Chap31.3 - Adding Text with Effects to Your Photo

Chap32.1 - Saving Your Image – Overview & Summary

Chap32.2 - Saving Your Image in Different Formats & For Printing

Chap32.3 - Saving Images for Internet

Preference Settings

 

 

Chapter Titles, Bonuses & Tutorial Photos:

 

BONUS 1:

 

 

This PDF fact sheet will save you falling into the pitfalls many others fall into when image editing …

 

These tips are not widely known, and are common sense, to help you avoid disappointments when image editing, sizing and printing your photos... and I  feel are crucial to know about.

 

 

 

BONUS 2:

Handy PDF Guide ...

 

In addition to my video tutorials, it makes sense to include an Actions, Short-Cut Keys  & Menus Guide, which follows my video tutorials through ... so if you forget what the short-cut is, or which menu you need to go into, then it’s there, at hand.

… I have also added at the end of this Guide The Most Common Shortcuts used …  again a few extras you may find helpful, if you prefer to use shortcut keys.

 

 

 

BONUS 3:

 

 

‘Hands-On’ Help with these photos ...

 

To make learning a little more easier, I’ve included most of the photos I use in my video tutorials, along with the videos ... which will help give you that extra confidence after watching the videos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TO RE-CAP ... THE CD contains ...

 

• 32 CHAPTERS ... Over 8 Hours duration (CD format for PC)

• BONUS 1 ... Top 10 Tips You Don’t Hear About (PDF format)

• BONUS 2 ... Handy Actions, Shortcut Keys and Menus Guide (PDF)

• BONUS 3 ... Tutorial Photos to help speed you along!

 

If you wish to buy the package ... Just click on the BUY NOW Button below for secure shopping through PAYPAL, then I will send your CD ... And you don’t need a PAYPAL account to purchase ... That’s it!

 

For just ... £29.97

          (incs Postage and Packing for UK and Abroad)

 

On that note, I would love to be able to help you ... and whatever you decide, I wish you great success in your digital imaging endeavours!

 

Warmly,

 

 

Yvonne Grubb

 

 

 

 

 

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© Copyright 2009 Yvonne Grubb, Blackpool, UK.  All Rights Reserved.

 

 

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