Archive for category: Photoshop

Easily remove a white background from your Photoshop images

Easily remove a white background from your Photoshop images

I’ve linked to a lot of free textures here at The Graphic Mac over the years, and there are tons more to be found with a simple Google search. Quite a few of them are paint splatters or textures that you wish you could drop a white background out of. This can be quite tedious to do manually. Thankfully there’s an easier way that works pretty darn well.

White background removal

MediaMelitia has a fantastic Photoshop Action set called Background Removal that’s free to download and use. The set includes three different actions to achieve different results. One version maintains the color of the foreground image, the other two remove the white background using the color parts as a black mask, as seen above. They offer clear instructions on the download page, along with when you might want to use the different action files.

Download Background Removal Photoshop Actions.

01/09/2012 Read More
Turn your Photoshop images into comics

Turn your Photoshop images into comics

Comics action

Simple to use Photoshop action to turn your images into comics

Photoshop actions can save you lots of time by automating tasks. Aside from productivity, they can also be used to create some really cool effects. This action turns your images into colorful vintage comics, complete with oversized halftone dots.

Download Comics Photoshop Action.

12/14/2011
Easily improve the performance of Photoshop without buying more RAM

Easily improve the performance of Photoshop without buying more RAM

Last August I wrote a brief post sharing some of my favorite tips for speeding up Adobe Photoshop. If you’re new to the site, or using Photoshop, I encourage you to read through the article.

Improve Photoshop performance

If you want more information, you can read a rather lengthy post directly from Adobe on how to optimize Photoshop that mirrors what I said, as well as adds more in-depth coverage on the topics.

11/28/2011
Adobe Photoshop CS6 to bring new interface, upgrade policy

Adobe Photoshop CS6 to bring new interface, upgrade policy

Photoshop beta

Adobe Photoshop's new appearance

While in early beta stages, Adobe appears to be working on a new, darker interface for the next version of Photoshop that resembles Pixelmator. In addition to the new appearance (which in beta stage at least, offers an option to revert to the existing platinum appearance), Photoshop will feature new 3D tools, healing brush and red-eye reduction enhancements, and a perspective cropping tool. AppleInsider has more details and screenshots here.

11/16/2011 Read More
Blow Up 3 makes stunning image enlargements effortless

Blow Up 3 makes stunning image enlargements effortless

The situation is all-too familiar, and frequent. You’re working on a large poster and your client sends you a 3×5 photo to work with. Using Photoshop’s image sizing tools are of no help, and other 3rd-party options are overly slow and complex. This situation is where Alien Skin Software’s Blow Up 3 shines.

Blow Up 3

Blow Up 3's simple interface offers a very Mac-like simplicity

Blow Up 3 focuses on simplicity, as evidenced by a quick look at the interface of the Photoshop plug-in. A large preview window, and an input area with just a few controls are all that is necessary to enlarge your images with stunning results (see image later in this article).

11/08/2011 Read More
Where to find Adobe Photoshop custom Workspaces on your hard drive

Where to find Adobe Photoshop custom Workspaces on your hard drive

PhotoshopIf you’re like me, you set up custom Workspaces in Adobe Photoshop. I like having certain panels located in certain places, some fully open, and some reduced to icon-only state. Saving those panel locations makes it easy to return Photoshop to your preferred setup quickly and easily if you move Panels around during a work session. It also allows you to have different configurations for different tasks, such as one setup for general Photoshop work, and another for color correction.

Recently I did a clean install on my MacPro, and wanted to pull my custom Workspaces from a backup so I wouldn’t have to re-configure them – a time-consuming task. But where does Adobe Photoshop store these custom Workspaces?

They’re found where you would probably most expect them to be:
Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS5Settings/WorkSpaces

Make a backup copy of this file for easy recovery if you decide to reformat you drive at a later date – it’ll be easier to get up and running again when the time comes.

And if you’re interested in finding where other custom files and preferences are stored, you can visit this knowledge base article on Adobe’s website.

09/21/2011 Read More
Turn your image into a beautiful work of art with Snap Art

Turn your image into a beautiful work of art with Snap Art

Alien Skin Software released Snap Art 3 a while back, and I’ve been playing with it for a while now and found it to be yet another excellent Photoshop add-on from my favorite plug-in maker.

Snap Art 3 is definitely made for photographers, but designers can make use of it as well. It’s easy to use, highly flexible, and at $199 it’s affordable for what it does. Not only do the multitude of effects work on photos, but you can apply Snap Art filters to videos imported into Adobe Photoshop Extended as well.

Snap Art sample

Snap Art turns your images into works of art

I won’t bother to go into all the filters and features, you can check them out on the Snap Art examples page. But know that Snap Art now offers a Detail Mask feature that allows you to adjust the details in specific areas of your images. Very slick! All of Snap Art’s oil paint, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, comic art, and dozens of other filters, offer non-destructive editing. And experimenting is easy with the large preview window.

Snap Art 3 works with Photoshop CS4 or later, Lightroom 2 or later, and Photoshop Elements 8 or later, on a Mac running OS X 10.5 or newer, including in 64-bit mode. A downloadable demo of Snap Art 3 is available.

09/08/2011 Read More
Pixel perfect art when rotating layers in Photoshop

Pixel perfect art when rotating layers in Photoshop

When you’re working on your pixel-perfect artwork in Photoshop, some common functions like moving, rotating and pasting can undo your hard work, resulting in a blurry mess. In fact, if you’re not careful, rotating layers in Photoshop can damage them in a very noticeable, pixel-mashing way – as illustrated below. But with some small changes to your workflow, you should be able to maintain the highest-quality artwork from the start to the end of the project.
Pixel-perfect rotation
Marc Edwards at Smashing Magazine has a great pixel perfection tutorial outlining a few methods that most designers are unaware of that avoids the problem.

One of the easiest solutions that I’ve used for years is to simply change the rotation orientation to the top left axis when rotating objects.

09/06/2011 Read More
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