Photoshop CS2: Filters

The “Other” filter included at the bottom of Photoshop’s Filter list presents a mystery – just what is “Other,” and what does it do? In this tutorial, Linda demystifies the Other Filter through a series of steps that show how to brighten pixels in relation to surrounding values, how to sharpen images without noise, how to mask quickly, and how to relocate and shift a selection – all through the “Other” filter.

Photoshop CS2: The Filter Gallery as a Starting Point

Photoshop CS2: The Filter Gallery as a Starting Point

In this article, Linda creates a self-promotional postcard with the use of templates and Photoshop’s Filter Gallery, Colour Range options, and the Layers Style Palette. Throughout, she explains how you can push these Photoshop tools to the limit to achieve a wide number of effects – in one case, as a neon-like effect that turns a simple photograph into an abstract representation. Further, she explains what you might want to include on a self-promotional mailer to advertise your business.

Filters: From So-So Images to Artistic Print Projects

I’m an advocate for saving images even when those images are far from perfect in resolution or in subject matter. My reasoning behind this obsession is supported by Photoshop’s filters. Photoshop filters can help you alter images for specific projects, such as changing a low-resolution photograph into a successful silkscreen image (see below). Additionally, filters can enhance subject matter, a change that can help the viewer perceive your image in a more positive light. If you sell your images, this change could mean more revenue.

Photoshop CS2: Levels and Curves

Photoshop CS2: Adjustment Layers, Levels, and Curves

In this tutorial, Linda explains why Photoshop CS2’s adjustment layers are important to use when altering images, and she begins to illustrate how these layers work with the use of the levels and curves. These two tools can help you to adjust tonal ranges and colour balances within your images manually so that you maintain more control over the outcome rather than using the “automatic” levels and curves adjustments.

Photoshop CS2: How to Recognize Deceptive Photographs

Photoshop CS2: The Bad and the Ugly

Photographers, graphic designers, and artists now have access to one of the most powerful tools that Adobe’s offered through their Photoshop CS2 software. Digital artists can alter landscapes, touch up faces, and create fantasy images that boggle the mind. Altered images, however, have pervaded the news media through deceptive photojournalism. In this article, Linda offers some infamous and not-so-famous photographic alterations that have been detected over the past century. Accordingly, she’ll lead you through the methods that were used to create these images.

Photoshop CS2: Beyond Colour – Black and White and Sepia

What if you need a Black and White image to enter into a contest? Or, what if you shot a historic photo and the newspaper only prints black and white? In this article, Linda shows how to successfully convert your colour images into monochromatic legends. The tools that you’ll use include adjustments, histograms, Colour channels, Channel Mixer, and Calculations. In addition, once you have that perfect black and white image, Linda shows two different methods to add a sepia tone to that image.

Some History

It wasn’t until 1861 when Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell demonstrated a colour photography system involving three black and white (B&W) photographs, each taken through a red, green, or blue filter. His first photo of a tartan ribbon was turned into lantern slides and projected in registration with the same colour filters. This was the beginning of the photographic colour separation method.

In 1906, panchromatic black and white film and therefore high quality colour separation colour photography were made available; and, in 1907, the first commercial colour film, the Autochrome plates, were manufactured by the Lumiere brothers in France. But, colour photography really didn’t catch on with the general public until 1936, when the development of Kodachrome, the first colour multi-layered colour film and the development of Exakta, pioneering 35mm single-lens reflex (SLR) camera were made available.

In fact, colour photography evolved rapidly during my lifetime. I remember when C-41 colour negative process was introduced in 1973, replacing C-22 in the darkroom. My fellow art students and I were mesmerized with the new process, a feeling that you might equate today with the introduction of any new technological product that makes life just a little bit easier.

But, as beginning photography students, we often were steered away from colour in our studies. B&W images, instead, became the vehicle to study depth of field and tonal values, and it was – in the long run – less expensive to develop in the darkroom. In addition, most magazines used B&W photographs until just ten years before this new colour development. Yes, hand-colouring negatives and prints was part of our education at that time.