Photoshop CS3 for Screen Printers- P4 potx

] Tip: Creating your own preset tool library can be quite helpful if you use the same tools often to perform specific tasks. Revisit this part o f t he c hapter after you’ve finished t his bo ok and create a library of your favorites using the Preset Manager available from the additional options. Other Common Terms and Options There are several options that you’ll see off and on when accessing tools and using the options bar. Words like tolerance, anti-alias, contiguous, flow, and others will pop up, depending on the tool selected. These words are defined briefly in this section. ] Tip: Bookmark this page and refer to it when using tools and the options bar. This section is meant to serve as a reference and should be referred to when questions about the items in the o ptions bar arise. n Actual Pixels/Fit Screen/Print Size: Used with the Zoom and Hand tools, these options allow you to configure how the image should look on the screen after modifying it. n Align and Distribute: These options allow you to align and distrib- ute layers or selections within an image. There are several ways to align or distribute objects: top, vertical center, left, horizontal center, and right. n Aligned: Aligned is used when repairing flaws in images (such as with the Healing Brush or Clone Stamp tool). Place a check in the Aligned box if you need to release the mouse button while working and still keep the sampling point; sampled pixels are thus applied continuously. Uncheck the box to apply the pixels from the original sampling point each time. n Anti-alias/Anti-aliasing: Anti-aliasing is the process of smoothing edges around a selection. It differs from feathering in that it does not blur the edges but instead softens them by blending the colors of the outer pixels with the background pixels. This results in no loss of detail. You must choose anti-aliasing before selecting; it cannot be added after a selection has been made. 66 Part I / The Photoshop Interface n Area: Area is used with the Art History Brush to specify the paint - ing area diameter. n Auto Erase: Available with the Pencil tool, checking the Auto Erase box allows you to paint the background color over areas of fore - ground color. This, in essence, erases what has been previously drawn with the foreground color. n Contiguous: This is used with tools such as the Magic Eraser, Paint Bucket, Magic Wand, and others to specify how colors will be selected, applied, or erased. When Contiguous is checked, the result - ing selection only includes pixels that are adjacent to each other. Otherwise, all pixels of the preferred color are selected. n Dither: Dither reduces visible banding related to gradients when using the Gradient tool. n Exposure: This sets the amount of exposure (coverage) used by the Dodge and Burn tools. n Feather: Feathering is the process of blurring edges around a selec- tion. Blurring the edges helps the selection blend into another object, file, or selection when it is moved, cut, copied, and/or pasted. Feathering causes loss of detail and should not be used with spot color artwork. However, feathering can be useful when working with photos, especially if you plan to cut from one photo and paste into another. n Flow: Flow is used to specify how quickly paint is applied when using a brush tool like the Airbrush. A heavier flow lays on more paint more quickly; a lower flow lays on less paint. n Front Image and Clear: Used with the Crop tool, Clear removes all text from the text boxes, while Front Image uses the settings from the front image for the width, height, and resolution. n Impressionist: This adds an impressionist effect (like Monet’s art) when the box is checked while using the Pattern Stamp tool. n Limits: Limits allows you to choose from Contiguous, Discon - tiguous, and Find Edges when using the Background Eraser tool. Contiguous erases colors that are next to the original sample, Discontiguous erases underneath the brush, and Find Edges looks for and finds the edges of an image and erases to those edges. n Protect Foreground Color: When erasing, check this box to pro - tect the foreground color from being erased. Chapter 4 / The Options Bar 67 n Range: This is used with the Dodge and Burn tools and allows you to select a tonal range to lighten or darken (midtones, highlights, or shadows). n Refine Edge: Use this option with the lasso tools to define the lasso’s sensitivity to the edges of the selection you’re trying to sur - round. Values can range from 0 percent to 100 percent. A lower value detects low-contrast edges (those that don’t have much contrast with their backgrounds), and a higher value detects edges that contrast sharply with their backgrounds. Configuring this prior to and during a selection can make manually selecting an object much more efficient. (Combine with the Zoom tool for best results.) n Resize Windows To Fit: This option resizes the active window to fit in the workspace area. n Resolution: Resolution determines how many pixels are shown per unit (such as inch or centimeter) in an image. Higher resolutions contain more pixels (thus more detail) than lower resolution images. You can set the resolution when you crop images. n Reverse: This reverses the chosen gradient’s colors and is used with the Gradient tool. n Sample All Layers: To apply the tool to all of the layers in the image, place a check in this box. For instance, when using the Magic Wand to select a specific color, you can choose to apply the selection to all of the layers in the image instead of the default of only the active layer. The same is true for Quick Selection tool, Blur tool, and others. n Sample Size: The eyedropper can be used to take a sample of a color for multiple uses, including choosing a foreground color. The sample size of the eyedropper can be changed in the Sample Size box. It is usually best to keep the sample size small. You can choose from Point Sample, 3 by 3 Average, 5 by 5 Average, and more. n Sampling: Sampling is used with the Background Eraser tool to specify how pixels will be erased (Continuous, Once, or Background Swatch). Continuous erases as you drag, Once erases only the colors where you first click, and Background Swatch erases only colors that match the current background color. 68 Part I / The Photoshop Interface n Set to enable airbrush c apabilities: This option, accessed by clicking the Airbrush icon on the options bar, simulates traditional airbrush techniques by gradually adding paint, similar to the way you use a spray paint gun or a spray paint can. n Source (Sampled or Pattern): This is used when repairing flaws in images (perhaps with the Healing Brush) to determine how exactly an image will be repaired. Sampled uses pixels from the current image, and Pattern fills the area with a pattern you select from the pattern pop-up palette. n Source and Destination: These are options used with the Patch tool to specify what pixels should be repaired (Destination) and with what pixels (Source). n Strength: Strength is used with the Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge tools and specifies how strong the stroke should be. Lower numbers reduce the strength; higher numbers increase the strength. n Toggle the Brushes palette: This allows you to toggle the Brushes palette on and off. This is a small button located on the far right of some options bars, such as Burn, Dodge, Sponge, Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge. It’s on the right side of the options bar, not the left. n Tolerance: This option is available with several tools and is used to set how “tolerant” a tool is with regard to the colors with which it is working. For instance, when using the Paint Bucket tool to fill an area with color, the Tolerance level determines how close the color must be to the original color (where you click) before it gets filled. Values can be between 0 and 255. A lower number only fills colors very similar to where you click; a higher number fills a broader range of colors. Tolerance can also be set for the Magic Eraser, Background Eraser, Art History Brush, and Magic Wand tools. n Transparency: To use a transparency mask for the gradient fill, place a check in the Transparency box. Doing so allows you to spec - ify gradient transparency (which is kind of like opacity for solid fills). n Use Pattern (Pattern): This offers a pop-up palette from which a pattern can be chosen to fill the selected area and patch it. n Width and Height: This allows you to set the width and height for a marquee or shape by manually typing in the dimensions. Width and height can also be set this way for the Crop and Slice tools. Chapter 4 / The Options Bar 69 . Note: Pen, Shape, and Type options are discussed in Chapters 8, 9, and 21. The Dock The Dock is located on the far right of the options bar. Those who are familiar with previous versions of Photoshop may remember this as the “Palette Well.” The Dock offers a place to dock palettes that you don’t want on the screen but still want to have access to without having to use the Window menu. To dock a palette, simply drag it from its place in the workspace to the um, Dock. Once in the Dock, click once on the appropriate tab to open the palette. Once opened, the palette can be dragged back onto the screen from its highlighted tab. You can also change the order of the palette list in the Dock by right-clickingonanytabandchoosingtomoveitleftorright,orbegin- ning or end. Each palette’s additional options have a choice to go to the Dock automatically (without dragging). ] Tip: In the next c hapter we create some workspaces that are personalized for specific industries, jobs, or clients. Use the Dock to organize palettes that you’d like to keep available but out o f the workspace. Summary In this chapter, you learned about the options from the options bar. Some common options include Style, Mode, Opacity, Brush, and adding to or subtracting from a selection or shape. There are other less-common options also; these options were detailed for use as a reference. Refer to this chapter often when questions arise concerning an item on the options bar. 70 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Chapter 5 Personalizing thePersonalizing the Workspace Now that you understand all of the interface elements, let’s personalize, configure, and save a workspace for a specific job or industry. Perhaps you are a screen printer working mainly with spot color images and logos and you rarely use styles. You can remove the Styles palette from the workspace and save the resulting configuration. If you have specific cli- ents who require mainly text-related jobs, you can create a workspace that contains the Character and Paragraph palettes and open this workspace each time that client’s file needs work. In essence, Photoshop can be configured to suit the needs of just about any industry or artist. The suggestions in this chapter can help you decide what your particular space should look like. As you streamline your business, you can also streamline the interface. In addition to configuring the interface to meet the needs of the task at hand, you’ll also need to configure preferences from the Edit menu, configure the Preset Manager, configure the color settings, and calibrate your system. These are generally one-time tasks, and are necessary to get Photoshop and the machine up and running and ready for handling your screen printing needs. Calibration and configuring color settings are very important parts of personalizing the system, and in-depth projects are included to assist you with these tasks. 71 Removing Items from the Workspace When working with certain artwork, you might find that the toolbox, options bar, palettes, and other items impede your work by taking up much-needed space on the screen. These items can be removed in sev - eral ways. The Window menu has a list of many of the items that can be shown in the Photoshop workspace, and there are checks by those that are showing. To remove the item from the workspace, simply uncheck the item from the Window menu. Figure 5-1 shows the Window menu with all of the items unchecked. Notice that the Dock is still available on the right, but it’s collapsed to icons. You don’t have to remove everything, certainly, and you can pick and choose what you want to leave in the workspace. For most of your work though, you’ll probably want to leave the options bar, the toolbox, the sta - tus bar, and a few palettes checked and available. 72 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 5-1: Removing everything from the workspace ] Tip: To reset the palettes, choose Window>Workspace>Reset Palette Loca - tions, which we’ve mentioned several times. Everything will return to its original place. You can also clear the workspace of all palettes and tools by pressing the Tab key on the keyboard. This includes even a collapsed Dock. This tog - gles the workspace from having nothing in the workspace to what you have configured by default. Pressing Shift+Tab removes only the palettes. . Note: When you close Photoshop, the positions of the palettes are saved. The configuration will be the same the next time Photoshop is opened, unless you configure Edit>Preferences otherwise. Docking Palettes Use the Dock to hold palettes that you want to keep hand y but don’t want on the screen. This was discussed in Chapter 4, but deserves a reminder here. Use the Window menu to choose the ones you want to show, and close the ones you don’t. Then, once you have the toolbox, the options bar, and the palettes the way you want them, you can save them using the Window>Workspace>Save Workspace command. Creating a Text-based Workspace There are plenty of industries that are generally text based, such as off - set print shops, graphic design shops that create yard signs, banners, and magnetic signs for cars, CAD cutters, and printers that create business cards, print ads, menus, and similar items. While many of these artists have word processing programs that they use for much of their work, and perhaps even vector-based programs, Photoshop can play an important role too, especially since Photoshop supports vector-based text in the latest versions of the software. For those artists who use Photoshop for their print work, a text-based workspace certainly increases efficiency. Chapter 5 / Personalizing the Workspace 73 ] Tip: You can make many changes now to a type layer and still edit the type, including but not limited to: changing the orientation, applying anti-aliasing, converting between po int and paragraph type, and using layer styles. There are several palettes designed specifically for working with text, including the Character and Paragraph palettes. From the Character pal - ette, a language can be chosen for checking the spelling in a file, and font, font size, and other text attributes can be set. The Paragraph palette can be used for configuring how paragraphs of text should be laid out. In addition to these palettes, the Layers palette is also useful since adding text also adds layers to the image and those layers can be chosen and manipulated using this palette. Finally, consider adding the History and Actions palettes to the workspace. In the additional options for the Actions palette, add the text effects actions. A sample palette group is shown in Figure 5-2. 74 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 5-2: A sample text-based palette group Even though I’ve put all of the palettes together in a single box, you can separate them into two, three, or even four boxes and configure them to fit on the screen any way you want. However, when the palettes are docked together as one, as shown in Figure 5-2, you can very easily drag it around the screen, moving it out of the way to optimize the workspace. Once you’ve arranged the text-based workspace the way you want it, choose Window>Workspace>Save Workspace and name the new workspace Text-Based. The new workspace will appear in the Window> Workspace options and will be available anytime you need to work with text. (When saving the workspace, make sure to check Keyboard Short - cuts and Menus if you’ve made additional changes to those items.) ] Tip: You can even dock the palettes in the Dock if desired, and then collapse the Dock. This will further keep the work area clean. Creating a Screen Printing Workspace Screen printers use some palettes for almost every job and other pal- ettes very rarely. Since there’s no point in having the workspace cluttered with unnecessary palettes, in this section we set up a work- space that suits most screen printers’ needs. There are a few palettes that you should certainly include: the Lay - ers palette, the Channels palette, the Info palette, and the Tool Presets palette. The History palette is also important but only if you are comfort - able with it. Some prefer to use the Undo command from the Edit menu. You probably won’t do as much with the Navigator, Styles, Swatches, or Actions palettes, so you can remove those. You can open those when necessary from the Window menu. Figure 5-3 shows a sample screen printing workspace (it’s the way mine is configured). My setup also includes the Paragraph and Character palettes. Chapter 5 / Personalizing the Workspace 75 [...]... to all of the images on your computer and any images stored locally for your business on CDs or external drives Open As allows you to open files that are in a format other than Photoshop s native psd format If you need more file management options than Photoshop and your computer’s operating system offer, you can use Adobe Bridge CS3 Adobe Bridge comes with all Adobe Creative Suite software, and is... layer when creating images or files for clients Some common backgrounds include cloudy skies, mountain ranges, a wallpaper pattern of logos that are scattered across a page, ocean scenes, and similar images Figure 5-9 shows a pattern that I’ve defined for my company, and I use it as stationery, for backgrounds on flyers, for images to send out as advertisements, and even for printing on promotional materials... materials (I change the opacity depending on the need.) 92 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Figure 5-9: Creating and using a pattern Summary In this chapter you began personalizing your version of Photoshop CS3 You learned to create different workspaces for different jobs and industries, including workspaces designed around printing text, screen printing, clients, artists, and more You also learned how to... settings Photoshop s creators didn’t create and configure the default settings so that screen printers would be ready to print In fact, Photoshop s default settings are configured mostly for those who want to print photographs onto paper That’s not what we’re after as a group, as we need to print on film, acetate, vellum, and other materials Not only do we print on different materials than “regular” Photoshop. .. file; it also allows you to locate, manage, rate, and organize files, all from inside Photoshop 93 94 Part I / The Photoshop Interface Opening Files One way to open files is by locating the file on your hard drive or network, right-clicking the file, and choosing Open With >Photoshop CS3 You can also open files from inside Photoshop from the File>Open Recent menu There are other ways though, including File>Open,... / The Photoshop Interface Creating an Artist’s Workspace Artists require different workspaces than screen printers Artists will certainly need layers but perhaps not channels Performing tasks on channels is the job of the screen printer or the person in charge of color separating the artwork Unlike a screen printer, the artist requires easy access to brushes, swatches, styles, color, paths, and actions,... materials than “regular” Photoshop users, but we have to consider dot gain, screen attributes, ink attributes, profile mismatches, the working color space, and even how much softness we’ll get after printing on a shirt or other material To customize Photoshop so that it is more screen- printer friendly, work through this last project for configuring color settings Project 5-4: Configuring Color Settings... operating system using the color settings available in Photoshop These settings are the best choices for screen printers but can also be applied to other industries 6 Caution! There are many, many different theories on how to set dot gain, working spaces, and color management policies in this Color Settings dialog box The theories differ also for automatic versus manual printing presses The settings... click Save again You may want to name the file ScreenPrint Add any comments and click OK Photoshop will remember these settings for you These settings will allow you to get the most out of the program and, as you’ve seen, even allow you to download ink color values from a supplier and automatically input those into the program’s customization settings Before ending this chapter, let’s take one last... few that can be quite helpful to a screen printer or graphic artist, and you’ll be prompted to make these changes However, if you feel the change isn’t necessary or doesn’t fit your organization’s needs, certainly leave the default or choose another option Project 5-1: Setting Optimal Preferences To configure the preferences in Photoshop for optimum results in a screen printing facility: 1 Choose Edit>Preferences>General . programs, Photoshop can play an important role too, especially since Photoshop supports vector-based text in the latest versions of the software. For those artists who use Photoshop for their. The same is true for Quick Selection tool, Blur tool, and others. n Sample Size: The eyedropper can be used to take a sample of a color for multiple uses, including choosing a foreground color These are generally one-time tasks, and are necessary to get Photoshop and the machine up and running and ready for handling your screen printing needs. Calibration and configuring color settings