Photoshop Touch Ups and Illustrator Pen Tricks

It’s time to whip out your newly sharpened #2 pencils and get ready to get down to some serious work. That’s right, summer vacation has disappeared, again, leaving you nothing but a few sombrero-like vacation “gifts” and a smidgeon more color than you had in May. Don’t despair. If you’re looking for a way to stay in denial of those early nights and sixty-degree afternoons, we’ve got it. This month’s article is rife with projects, tips, and tricks to distract you. Time to bust out your photo album, or rather, that overflowing shoebox in your closet—we’re gonna have some fun…

In Your Face Photoshop

How to Touch up with the Clone Stamp Tool and use the History Palette

While rifling through my own personal shoebox, I found this picture, perfect with the exception of that pesky date on the bottom. It happens all the time: a new digital camera with a manual in Greek and many intimidating buttons and knobs. It’s kind of like programming your VCR…you could fix it if it got annoying enough. Here is a current favorite of mine taken not too long ago, as you can tell, with the same problem. We could always fix the camera, re-pose the picture, and download the pictures again from the camera. Instead, we have an option in Photoshop that should save us some time and screaming children.

Let me introduce you to the Clone Stamp Tool.

Once you click on the Clone Stamp Tool (above), a toolbox will appear at the top of the screen.

You can pick:

• brush size (the size of the area you are copying)
• mode (which changes the way you copy the pixels
• opacity (the transparency of the area you are producing)
• flow (the relation of your selected pixels to the area you are producing)
• the airbrush option and whether you want it aligned or to use all layers

The smaller the brush you have, the more precise you can be; however, you also control the amount of pixels you select in addition to the size of the “brush” you are using to clone the pixels. The smaller the selection area, the less flow you may have with the rest of the image.

You may want to zoom in on the area before you begin. Click on the Zoom Tool, which looks like a magnifying glass. This tool also has a toolbox at the top of the screen, which you should check out if you have time.

By pressing Alt and clicking on the area you want to clone, you are painting or stamping the flawed area with the original pixels from a different part of the picture. For this picture, I selected from an area with similar skin tone. Refer to the picture below on the right—the cross is where the pixels are being cloned from and the circle is where you are painting those pixels in. You may want to experiment around. Always remember that Edit > Undois your best friend. If you want to go back more than one step, click on Editand select Step Backwards or go into your History Palette on the right (accessible by clicking Window > History) and clicking on the stage where you want to return. The History Palette records all actions, not just those with the Clone Stamp Tool.

Work your way along the edge of the trouble area. Selecting “flow” from the toolbar and judging the right-sized brush are vital in making the pixels look natural. A few things to remember: 1.) The smaller the trouble area, the less you have to worry about pixel visibility and 2.) The bigger a picture gets, the more obvious a manipulation will appear.

Small Size:

Large Size:

Notice that in the largest version of the picture, you notice the manipulated pixels if you look hard enough at the area where the “2004” was.

Now we just have to get rid of the “May” the same way.

There. Isn’t that much better? I could have gotten rid of the bruise on my niece’s forehead, but sometimes the picture is just more true to life with a few “flaws.”

Tune in next month for converting to Black and White and manipulating Levels for dramatic effect.

That Puppy-Dog Face

Mastering the Pen Tool in Illustrator

Practice is the only way to deal with that pesky pen tool in Illustrator. Getting a handle on the frustration that is the pen takes a tracing project. It can turn out pretty trendy if you play around with the colors and choose an interesting shape. If you’re having trouble coming up with example pictures, search Google Images.

Choose File > Place to put in a picture to trace. If the picture needs to be fitted to the page, click on a corner of the picture and press Shift (to keep proportion—there’s nothing worse than a warped picture) and drag to resize. Though we’re going to cover layers more in-depth next month, this picture is automatically placed into Layer 1 if you take a look at your Layer palette (to open click Window > Layers). Click on New Layer, highlighted in the picture below on the Layers palette.

The basic principle of layers is what you would assume: changes made in one layer stay in that layer. One layer can rest upon another layer (and its contents), or rest under another layer. You can have as many layers as you want, and have a collage of elements. You can hide the layer (click the eye to the left of the layer title, visible in the above screen shot) and lock it (click the box next to the eye) so that you can’t manipulate anything within the layer.

In events like these, when you want one layer to remain unchanged, you should lock the first layer, Layer 1, and always make sure Layer 2 is highlighted. You can cut and paste into different layers by cutting, changing layers, and pasting, but you should always be attuned to what layer you are working in. You will be tracing with the pen in Layer 2.

The pen tool is tricky in the respect that each point (anchor point) can have an axis. The further you drag on the anchor point, the further the curve. This is demonstrated in the picture above.

To continue with the next anchor point, click on the current anchor point again, so that you don’t have an overcorrection with the next anchor point. Even though it is difficult to do, you’re best bet is not to just click away, creating jagged anchor points, but to curve as you go along, being careful not to mess up (control+z works better in Illustrator because there is no limit to the amount of Edit-Undo unless you reset it in Preferences). Take your time.

If you need to get rid of the white fill, click on the white box with the red line crossing it out (highlighted above).

To close out the figure, just make sure your final click is on the first anchor point. Now you have your outline. You can fill it with another color or move it away from the original picture.

Now you have your own puppy face. Isn’t he cute? Next month we’ll work on adding a few more attributes to that face and creating a background. Until then, pick out a few more pictures in need of touching up. A suggestion? Take the time to change the date settings on your camera…it’s not as scary as your VCR timer, I promise.