Using Adobe Photoshop

1.        Go to File-New

 

On the Preset drop down menu select A4 if you are making a Poster or Magazine front cover, otherwise chose the size you desire. If you want to CUSTOM your width and height do so in the sections underneath the Preset menu.

Make sure your Color Mode:  RGB Color 8 bit and chose your background contents colour if you desire, otherwise leave this as White.

 

2.      Create a duplicate of your background layer so that you can work on your background regularly. Background layers lock once you have created a new layer so it is safest to do this!

3.      Chose a background colour for your project.  Select your background copy layer to work on in the layers window. If it becomes a blue bar then it is selected.

Change the foreground and background colour to that which you desire.  Then use the Paint  tool in the tool bar to fill the project window your preferred colour.

The arrow above the foreground and background colour squares allows you to swoop them over.

4.      Chose your images- either your own images from your my pictures folder or images off the internet.  COPY and PASTE them from the internet or another document. Shortcuts for copying, cutting and pasting are as follows:

 

Ctrl X = Cut.

Ctrl C = Copy.

Ctrl V = Paste.

 

This is the same in all Adobe programmes- including Premier and After Effects.

Your picture will automatically be placed on a new layer, you should check that you are selected on this layer whenever you want to work on it. Your picture will probably look the wrong size in Photoshop - to change the size of your picture go to Edit-free transform.

A box with small boxes in each corner and on the sides of your picture will then appear, hold down shift and drag the bottom right hand corner to enlarge your picture. It will look pixelated- DON’T WORRY! Once you have applied the transformation it will adjust.

 

When you click off the picture or onto another tool on the tool bar a window will appear asking you if you want to apply the transformation- click YES.

 

PHOTOSHOP TOOL BAR:

 

The marquee tool allows you to select things in lines, circles on squares. All on the tools on the tool bar have a small triangle in the bottom right hand corner, if you right click on this then it gives you a sub menu:

 

The Move tool allows you to click on things and move things, for general tasks, clicking in windows and using File, Edit etc and moving images about this is the tool you want selected on the tool bar.

 

The lasso tool is a really useful tool, it allows you to select areas freehand, this can be a bit tricking by the magnetic lasso or the polygonal lasso are the easiest to use. The polygonal lasso allows you to click to points in straight lines to cover an area you want selected. The magnetic lasso sticks to the nearest edges. It is important that your start and finish points match up, once you have made your selection you should double click.

 

Now to get rid of the black in the picture but to keep Kate Moss’s face, you need to go to Select- Inverse.

 

This now inversing your selection, so instead of Kate Moss being selected, the background of her image is selected. Now all you need to do is press DELETE and you have this:

 

You can see your original blue background behind the image of Kate.

There is another way you can do this when you have a block of one colour that you wish to get rid of, this is using the magic wand tool.

Note: To get back to my image behind I started to play with the lasso tool I went back through the history window above the layers window on the right of the screen. The History window is great because it allows you to go back step-by-step to the beginning of your project.

 

Select the Magic Wand Tool on the toolbar next to the lasso and click on the black area, it will appear as a selected area as thus:

 

Press Delete and then repeat for the other black area too. You again have an image that looks like this:

 

Using the move tool you can now move your picture to wherever you want, like thus:

 

Though this looks quite nice, the picture of Kate Moss does look like it’s just been cut out and stuck on the page. To alter this you need to go to select your picture again and inverse so that the surroundings of the picture are selected and then go to SELECT- FEATHER:

You want to feather at 20 pixels, this is standard.

 

Then go to EDIT-CLEAR and keep doing this till the edges of your image have faded to a satisfactory standard.

Next we are going to move on to adding text.

Image adjustment and gradient map.

Effects.

Levels.

How to change the background:

http://www.crystal-reflections.com/technical/photo_03.htm