Photography’s Digital Possibilities – Special Effects Using Photoshop- part 1

Posted by Fine Craft Guild on June 19, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Before you apply any of these special effects, it can be useful to apply a masking on your photo to select which areas you want to change and which you want to keep unchanged. You can easily get a nice soft fade between the effect and no-effect areas. This is called masking and there’s many ways of doing it. The one method I almost always use now (it took years before I discovered it) is the ‘quick mask mode’. It is very easy to use and usually gives acceptable results.

Quick masking

In Adobe Photoshop find the button called ‘edit in quick mask mode’. It’s located near the bottom of the main tool bar and looks like a circle in a rectangle. There’s also a short-cut key: Q. Once in quick mask mode, you can select and deselect areas simply by painting them with white and black respectively, using the standard brush tool. Zoom to 100 or 200 % for best accuracy. You might want to use a soft-edged brush to avoid hard edges. Alternatively, when you’re done, exit the masking mode and go to ‘Select > Feather’ and set the feather radius to 5-10 pixels or so. A nice option is that you can set the opacity to anywhere between 0 and 100%, allowing you to apply the effect stronger or weaker in one part of the image that another.

Layer masking

Slightly more complicated, you can add a layer mask. This allows you to apply any effect gradually from any point in your photo. Follow these steps in Photoshop:

1. Select ‘Windows > Layers’.

2. Right click on your layer and select ‘Duplicate layer’.

3. Click on the little icon in the bottom of the layer box called ‘Add layer mask’.

4. Select the ‘Gradient tool’ on the main tool box.

5. Choose a gradient style from the top ‘Options’ bar (linear, radial etc.).

6. Now click on your image on the point you don’t want to change, then drag the mouse away to the point where you want the full effect to take place. The effect will be applied gradually more and more along this line you’ve now create.

7. Finally, go back onto your original background layer and apply any effect you want. This will apply the effect in a soft, gradual way. Use opacity to turn the effect down to less than full strength if you want.

Click here for part 2 of ‘Photography Digital Possibilities ….’.