Creating Snazzy Effects in Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
By Kate Binder
Date: Dec 31, 2008
Kate Binder shows you some great effects you can use in Photoshop Elements, including the use of borders, gradient fills, posterization, and smart brushes.
With the invention of the electronic calculator, schoolchildren are the only ones who fret over doing arithmetic by hand. Similarly, you might be surprised at how many commercial artists don’t draw from scratch anymore. Many of them earn their daily bread using computer graphics software such as Photoshop Elements to make photos look like fine art.
When you’ve worked through the tasks in this Part, you’ll know many of their secrets. You can make greeting cards and party invitations look as if they were hand-drawn by a skilled sketch artist, create photorealistic illustrations for flyers and newsletters, and add expensive-looking graphics that give a professional touch to your personal Website.
Photoshop Elements helps you achieve artistic effects by way of filters that can transform an image with a click, but in complex ways. The program comes with a wide variety of filters, and you can download even more of them (called plug-ins) from www.adobe.com and other vendors’ Websites. There are far too many filters to cover them all here, but you’ll see enough to show you how easy they are to apply—and to start you thinking about all the creative possibilities.
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How Did You Do That?
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Before It helps to start with a photo that has an interesting composition, and some bright colors and contrasts.
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After Here’s some “fine art” that took less than a minute to make. It’s the result of adding both the Palette Knife artistic filter and a Sandstone texture, and finally adjusting Hue for brighter greenery.
Adding a Decorative Border
A frame is just one example of the wide variety of custom, prebuilt shapes available in Photoshop Elements. To make the frame even fancier, this example applies a Craquelure filter to give the frame a rich, dimensional look.
With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose Image, Resize, Canvas Size.
Type a Width the same as the print size and about 2 inches wider than the current image size. Do the same for Height.
Click OK.
Right-click the Shape tool in the toolbar and choose Custom Shape Tool.
In the options bar, open the Shape pop-up palette.
Double-click any Frame shape.
With the Foreground color set to the color you want the frame to be, click and drag in the image to surround the photo with the frame.
Click the Simplify button.
Choose Filter, Texture, Craquelure.
Click OK again.
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The frame used here is just one of many Custom Shapes, which are ready-made so that you don’t have to do any freehand drawing. Categories include Animals, Arrows, Banners and Awards, Characters, Default, Frames, Fruit, Music, Nature, Objects, Ornaments, Shapes, Signs, Symbols, Talk Bubbles, and Tiles.
Creating a Gradient Fill
A gradient fill is a blended transition—usually between two colors—within a selected area. In this example, the gradient is applied to the entire background, but it could also be used to fill any object you select, even hollow text.
- With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose the Quick Selection tool, or press A.
- Click to select the area in the image to which the effect will be applied.
- Choose the Gradient tool, or press G.
- Click and drag across the area to be filled in the direction you want the color gradation to take. (Press Ctrl+D to release the selection.)
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Adding a Vignette to a Portrait
Somehow, putting a soft edge around the subject of a portrait just seems to make the image more special. It’s a traditional darkroom technique that’s incredibly easy to emulate with Photoshop Elements.
- With a picture open, right-click the Rectangular Marquee tool.
- Choose the Elliptical Marquee tool.
- Click and drag in the image to draw an oval selection marquee.
- Choose Select, Inverse or press Shift+Ctrl+I.
- Choose Select, Feather or press Alt+Ctrl+D.
- Enter a number of pixels in the Feather Radius field and click OK.
- Press Delete to remove the background.
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Creating a High-Contrast Black-and-White Picture
Back in the ancient days of film, high-contrast (hi-con) transparencies were called Kodaliths, the name of a Kodak product for mastering printing plates. You can create some dramatic artistic effects doing the same thing digitally—by converting a photo to black-and-white, with no shading.
- With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose Image, Mode, Grayscale.
- Click OK on the warning dialog box.
- Choose Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Brightness/Contrast.
- Adjust the Contrast slider to 100.
- Click OK.
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Fading Out Color
You’ll often see this effect used in advertising—it’s a neat way to convey the idea of an object moving from the past to the present, or from a humdrum world into an exciting one. One side of the image is black and white, and the other side is full color, with a smooth transition between the two modes in the middle.
- Click to choose the Gradient tool, or press G.
- Making sure that the foreground color is black, choose the Foreground to Transparent gradient in the options bar.
- Choose Saturation from the Mode pop-up menu on the options bar.
- Click and drag horizontally across the middle of the photo.
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Coloring a Single Object
Remember the striking image of the little girl’s pink coat in the black and white movie Schindler’s List? One color object really stands out against a black-and-white background. Here’s how to achieve that effect in your own photos.
- Click to choose the Selection Brush.
- With the Selection Brush, paint over the object you want to leave in color.
- After the selection is made, choose Select, Inverse.
- Choose Enhance, Adjust Color, Remove Color or press Shift+Ctrl+U.
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Deleting the Background
Backgrounds can be useful, but they can also be distracting. When you want to pull an object out of its environment by removing its background, turn to the Magic Extractor.
- With the photo open, choose Image, Magic Extractor or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+V.
- With the Foreground Brush tool, click several times or scribble on the object you want to keep.
- With the Background Brush tool, click several times or scribble on the rest of the image.
- Click Preview to see how the object looks with the background removed.
- Use the Selection Eraser and the Smoothing Brush tools to delete leftover background areas or restore missing foreground areas.
- Click OK to finalize the background removal.
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Making a Photo Look Like an Oil Painting
No one’s proposing you start cranking out fake Rembrandts, but there’s something about brushstrokes on canvas that says high class. Try this with the family portrait and pretend you sat for a Dutch master.
- With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose Filter, Brush Strokes, Angled Strokes.
- Adjust the Direction Balance, Stroke Length, and Sharpness sliders until you achieve a combination of settings you like.
- When you see the desired effect in the Preview window, click OK.
- Choose Filter, Texture, Texturizer.
- From the Texture pop-up menu, choose Canvas.
- Click OK.
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Posterizing a Picture
Posterization became popular in the psychedelic movement of the 1960s as a way of making images seem more intense. Photoshop Elements includes a filter called Poster Edges to create this effect.
- With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose Filter, Artistic, Poster Edges.
- Adjust the sliders for Edge Thickness, Edge Intensity, and Posterization until you like the look of the image.
- Click OK.
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Making a Photo Look Like a Sketch
Whether your drawings look like stick figures or you’re just in too big a hurry to sit down with your sketchpad, Photoshop Elements can make any photo look hand-drawn. For example, take a photo of the curbside view of your home, convert it to a sketch, and use it to illustrate personalized party invitations or stationery.
- With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose Filter, Sketch, Chalk & Charcoal.
- Adjust the sliders for Charcoal Area, Chalk Area, and Stroke Pressure until the image looks right to you.
- Click OK.
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Applying the Pointillize Filter
Pointillism is a technique pioneered by French Impressionist painter Georges Seurat more than a century ago. His paintings are composed of thousands of tiny dots of bright colors—and the overall effect is apparent only when viewing the work from a distance. In a sense, he invented pixels, which are the building blocks of today’s computerized, digital images.
- With the Editor in Full Edit mode and an image open, choose Filter, Pixelate, Pointillize.
- Adjust the Cell Size slider to get the look you want.
- Click OK.
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Trimming a Photo into a Custom Shape
Who says photographs have to be square or rectangular? The sky’s the limit as far as the Photoshop Elements Cookie Cutter tool is concerned, so you can make the shape of the photo part of the message it communicates. Try them all!
- With an image open in the Editor’s Full Edit mode, choose the Cookie Cutter tool from the toolbox.
- Click to open the Shape pop-up menu, and then select a shape.
- Click and drag in the document window to create the shape.
- Click the Commit button to hide the parts of the image outside the shape.
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Applying Effects with the Smart Brush
Using the Photoshop Elements new Smart Brush, you can apply special effects with a paintbrush, putting them right where you want them and nowhere else. It’s a great tool for cleaning up snapshots with a minimum of fuss.
- With an image open in the Editor’s Full Edit mode, click the Smart Brush tool.
- Choose an effects category from the pop-up menu at the top of the Smart Paint palette.
- Click an effect to apply.
- Paint over the area to which you want to apply the effect.
- To remove an area from the selection, click the Remove from Selection brush.
- Paint over the area that shouldn’t have the effect.
- To modify the settings, double-click the Pin in the image window or the layer’s thumbnail in the Layers palette.
- Make your changes and click OK.
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Touching Up with the Detail Smart Brush
The Detail Smart Brush works the same way as the Smart Brush, only instead of helping you make your selection the way the Quick Selection tool does, it only goes where you put it, so you have more control. This tool is great for fixing up small areas where you need to make sure that the effect is applied exactly where you want it and nowhere else.
- With an image open in the Editor’s Full Edit mode, click the Detail Smart Brush tool.
- Choose an effects category from the pop-up menu at the top of the Smart Paint palette.
- Click an effect to apply.
- Paint over the area to which you want to apply the effect.
- To remove an area from the selection, click the Remove from Selection brush.
- Paint over the area that shouldn’t have the effect.
- To modify the settings, double-click the Pin in the image window.
- Make your changes and click OK.
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