Tagged: Photoshop

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.

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.

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. (more…)

Extensis adds Google Web Fonts to the Web Font Plug-in for Photoshop

Extensis Web Font Plug-in

Extensis' Web Font Plug-in makes website mockups in Photoshop easy

Designers have been able to use actual fonts in their websites for quite a while now, but integrating web fonts at all points throughout the creative workflow has been a challenge until now. Extensis closes the web font gap in the traditional web design workflow by adding Google Web Fonts to their plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. Extensis’ Web Font Plug-in already provides web designers with free access to thousands of WebINK web fonts, and now adds convenient access to hundreds of fonts from Google Web Fonts.

The advantage of using Extensis’ WebINK technology with the Web Font plug-in is that you can design your site mockup in Adobe Photoshop even if you don’t already own and have installed the actual web font you want to use on the site.

The free WebINK Photoshop Plug-in is included with Suitcase Fusion 3. If you’re not already a Suitcase Fusion user, you can download the trial version. The free plug-in will continue to work even if you choose not to keep Suitcase Fusion 3.

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). (more…)

Use Web Fonts in your Photoshop website mock-ups

The Extensis Web Font Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop allows you to use WebINK fonts in the creation of website mock-ups in Photoshop. Extensis offers the WebINK service which allows you to easily use high-quality fonts on your website through their Suitcase Fusion font manager. The significance of this free plug-in is that you don’t have to already own or have installed the fonts during the design process.

Extensis Web Font Plug-in makes using Web Fontss in your mock-ups easy

Most of the Foundries available in the WebINK service have made their fonts available for use in the Photoshop plug-in, and more are being added. The fonts are available in an easy to use Photoshop panel after signing-in to the service right in the panel.

To use the free Web Font Plug-in, you need to download and install the Suitcase Fusion font manager demo, and set up a free WebINK account. If you already own Suitcase Fusion, you can simply update the app. If you don’t want to use the Suitcase Fusion app to manage your fonts, the plug-in will continue to work after the demo expires.

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.

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.

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