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June 2006 1) Plug-In Review 2) Copying Between Documents 3) Brush Review 4) Free Brushes 5) Hide the Transparency Checkerboard 6) Drawing a Straight Line ----------------------------------------------------- Plug-In Review ----------------------------------------------------- Now that my exams are over (finally) I've had time to prepare a 'bumper' June newsletter for you! First in store is a review of this great plug-in by Philipp Spoeth, titled 'Sinedots II'. Before I go any further, you just have to check out what I got out of this tool in the first five minutes of use! See the image here: http://images.easyelementsextra.com/sine-dots-2-examples.jpg The plug-in is great for creating futuristic 'light-show' effects, atmospheric smoky scenes, or just attention-grabbing abstract drawings. The authors website contains the download link at the bottom of the page, plus a few good tutorial links at the top of the page. Take a look here: http://www.philipp-spoeth.de/photoshop/sinedots2.php One important thing to remember is that whilst the interface looks a little daunting at first, you can get great effects just from pressing the 'Randomize' button, and changing the color. I found that usually the 'Normal' blending mode gave the best results. ----------------------------------------------------- Copying Between Documents ----------------------------------------------------- Often when working with multiple documents, you find you want to copy a section of the image from one document to another. You could use the marquee tool to make a selection, then copy the selection to the clipboard, and then paste it into the other document. The only issue with this is that when working with large images, the clipboard data can take up a lot of memory (RAM), and this can cause the computer to run slowly, especially on older machines. An alternative method is to use the move tool. With the move tool selected, you can simply drag image sections from one document to another. You can drag images, selections, or entire layers using this method, and they will appear in the second document. To center the copied section in the new image, just hold the Shift key when dragging. ----------------------------------------------------- Brush Review ----------------------------------------------------- Generally I don't ever really consider paying money for brushes, but I came across a set the other day that made me change my mind. For anyone doing a lot of abstract art, these brushes might be particularly interesting. What got my attention was the sheer volume of them. 10,000 brushes. (Yes, Ten-Thousand). Now for many, these brushes won't provide any particular advantage, but to those who do a lot of artwork, or produce artwork for a living, they could provide a very good resource. Find information about the brushes and example images, along with two free sample sets, using the link below: http://www.graphicxtras.com/products/psbrush.htm That site also supplies many other resources, including plug-ins, shapes, gradients, styles and many other things. For a range of their products, visit this page and look under 'Photoshop and Photoshop Elements': http://www.graphicxtras.com/products.htm ----------------------------------------------------- Free Brushes ----------------------------------------------------- Purchasing brushes is not for everyone, and we all love getting something for free! So don't forget about the five free brush sets available from my download page: http://www.easyelements.com/photoshop-brushes.html You can also look through my list of great sites which offer free brushes. Only the best of the best appear on this page, so you'll be presently surprised with the quantity and quality of free brushes available: http://www.easyelements.com/download-free-photoshop-brushes.html Due to the amount of people using Photoshop Elements 1 and 2, I recently bought Photoshop Elements 1 for myself, and am currently converting the brush sets on the site so that they are compatible with all versions. Look out for a special bulletin appearing soon that will give more details about the changes I'll be making to the site concerning that. ----------------------------------------------------- Hide the Transparency Checkerboard ----------------------------------------------------- Time for two last tips! Working on images which have multiple layers usually involves some large areas which are transparent. If you're doing fine detail work, or working on grayscale images, the checkerboard pattern which Photoshop Elements enforces can become more than a little frustrating. To disable the pattern, select 'Edit - Preferences - Transparency...' from the menu. In the dialog box that is displayed, change the 'Grid Size' option to 'None'. This will hide the pattern while you work. If you wish to re-enable the pattern afterwards, return here and re-select 'Medium'. ----------------------------------------------------- Drawing a Straight Line ----------------------------------------------------- Someone was asking me the other day about drawing techniques in Photoshop Elements. Many people find that they can easily edit or manipulate existing images, but have difficult creating new ones. Obviously this is a massive topic, but one very useful tip that I was able to supply concerns drawing a straight line when using the pencil or brush tool. If you hold the Shift key as you draw with either tool, all the marks you make will remain in a straight line with the original point at which you started drawing. This can be a vertical or horizontal line depending on which direction you initially move the tool in. Experiment with pressing and releasing the Shift key at different points during the same click-and-drag movement to see exactly how this works. Another method, which can be used to draw many connected straight lines, is a point-to-point method. This technique allows the straight lines to be in any direction, not just horizontal or vertical. Click once on the image, where you want the line (or lines) to start. Then hold the Shift key, and click in various other place on the image, and Photoshop will draw lines between the points at which you click. ----------------------------------------------------- That's it for this issue! I hope YOU found YOUR newsletter useful! Please do contact me with any requests for the July edition of Elements Express, as all these requests go into the making of my next newsletter. Any other comments or requests for this newsletter? Just let me know via my contact page here: http://www.easyelements.com/contact.html Until next time! Kind Regards, Robert Redwood. |
