PhotoShop as a Design Tool - A Basic Tutorial
Table of Content(You can get to everything in this tutorial from here. Go through everything first then print the pages you think you'll need before you begin applying what you think you've learned. Take notes on the printed copies - questions, comments, discoveries. You can send your questions to me - charlieb@accesscom.com -and I'll try and answer them - then revise the tutorial to incorporate the missing information you discovered)
Overview of Use
- simple changes to proportions (Free Transform Function)
- tapering changes to proportions (Perspective Tranform Function)
Basic Concepts
- Mediums / Modes (B&W, Gray Scale, Indexed Colors, RGB, CMYK)
- A Canvas To Work On- Layers / Tracing Paper /Sheets
- Transformation Functions (change the size and/or proportions of all or parts of a piece)
Free Transform function (change the proportions of all or part of a pieces)
Perspective Transform function (taper all or parts of a piece VERTICALLY)
Perspective Transform function (taper all or parts of a piece HORIZONTALLY)
Scaling
Numeric Transform function (change the size of parts of a piece without changing the part's proportions) and Image Size scaling
- Tools
Selection Tools - selecting all or part of an image
Move Tool: Coarse Move (grab, drag and drop) Fine Precision Move (arrow keys)
Clone Tool
Exercises
Step by Step Exercise #1 - Slicing & Dicing
Reverse Engineering (Seeing Vartiations and Figuring Out How They Were Done)
Tips & Tricks
Start with a PROFILE shot of the piece
Use a Green Screen background when you photograph pieces to work with in PhotoShop. This will make it easy to isolat the piece from its background so you can play with jus the piece. It'll also allow you to put anything you want as a background for your new design.
Identify where the TRANSITIONS are in the profile of your piece - where parts come together and where curves meet. It's at TRANSITIONS that you want to choose for SELECTING when working with just a part of the piece.