Photoshop cs5 cho nhiếp ảnh gia part 23 pdf

131 ■ FOUNDATIONS 4 Foundations We know that you want to continue work- ing on your images as soon as possible, but there’s some groundwork to be laid. Much of the work you’ll do in Photoshop, and in fact most of the advanced work, involves using the various tools in the Tools panel. In this chapter we’ll introduce you to some of these tools to help you build a strong foundation for the adjustments we’ll cover in later chapters. But before we do that, we’ll help you set up Photoshop so that you can be as efficient as possible. In later chapters, you’ll put these choices and tools to good use, in some cases extensively. Chapter Contents Customizing Settings Views and Zoom Selection Tools Brush Tools Building Tool Knowledge 607343c04.indd 131 4/11/10 11:04:11 PM 132 c h a p t e r 4: FOUNDATIONS ■ Customizing Settings It might seem tempting to assume that Photoshop’s default settings will be fine and to skip ahead and get to work on your images. However, the fact is that spending a few minutes carefully adjusting the settings will prevent frustration and save you consider- able time in the long run. That way, you’ll work more efficiently and more effectively. Once you customize the settings, you’ll rarely need to revisit them. The settings that you need to customize fall into two categories: Color Settings and Preferences. Color Settings Photoshop allows you to establish color-management settings that determine its behavior related to the color in your images. Establishing appropriate settings is important to ensuring that your workflow results in accurate color and maximum image quality. You can adjust these settings by choosing Edit > Color Settings, which opens the Color Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 4.1. Figure 4.1 The Color Settings dialog box allows you to establish settings related to color management within Photoshop. The Color Settings dialog box includes a More Options button that, when clicked, enlarges the dialog box to include additional controls. (It also enlarges the list of profiles on the Working Spaces drop-down menus to include all profiles available rather than only those designated as working space profiles.) Once you’ve clicked this button, it changes to Fewer Options, which returns you to the “basic” dialog box. Since we recommend leaving the advanced settings at their default values anyway, you’ll rarely need to use the More Options button. A working space profile defines the range of colors (the color gamut) that will be available for your images. The Working Spaces section includes options for speci- fying which profile should be used as the working space for each of the color modes available (RGB, CMYK, Gray, and Spot). For most photographers, the only working space you need to be concerned with is RGB, which is the mode we recommend work- ing with for all images until you have a reason to convert them to a different color space (for example, if a printing service insists that you perform the RGB-to-CMYK 607343c04.indd 132 4/11/10 11:04:11 PM 133 ■ CUSTOMIZING SETTINGS conversion). In most situations (including printing to most desktop printers), you will work on your images in RGB and keep them in RGB for the entire workflow. Note: Most of the time you want to work in RGB because either you’re printing to what is effec- tively an RGB device (photo ink-jet printers are RGB devices, even though they use CMYK inks) or your print service prefers to receive RGB images and perform CMYK conversions for you. For the RGB working space, we generally recommend using the one named Adobe RGB (1998). This is a good general working space with a relatively wide gamut, provid- ing an appropriate space for a wide range of output options. This doesn’t mean it’s the best answer for everyone, but when in doubt Adobe RGB (1998) is a good choice, and it is what we recommend unless you have a good reason to use something else. For exam- ple, some photographers may want to utilize the sRGB space as their working space if their printer uses a workflow based on sRGB or if their images will be displayed primar- ily on the Web or via digital slide shows. Others may want to use the ProPhoto RGB space because it contains a few colors that most printers can print that are not contained in the Adobe RGB space. The downside of working in ProPhoto RGB is that it contains many colors that will be out of gamut when you go to print, so more colors will have to be converted. Note: If you are using Adobe RGB (1998) as your working space in Photoshop, it makes sense to capture in the same color space if your digital SLR camera offers it. This really matters only if you’re not shooting in RAW, because you can specify the color space to use in your raw converter. Within the Color Settings dialog box, the Color Management Policies section provides settings that allow you to determine what Photoshop should do when you open an image that has a different embedded profile than the one you are using for your working space. As with the Working Spaces section, here you need to be concerned only with RGB. We recommend using the Convert to Working RGB setting most of the time with the assumption that if you’ve decided on a working space profile that’s appropriate for your workflow, it makes sense to use that as the working space for all your images. Should you decide to use an image on a website, you can always convert to sRGB as part of the process of preparing the image. However, if you’re doing further editing of some images that have already been converted to sRGB for output purposes, you might want to open them in sRGB. For that reason we check the Profile Mismatches option to Ask When Opening and Ask When Pasting. Similarly, we also check the option to Ask When Opening in cases of Missing Profiles. Note: If you regularly work on images for other people, you may prefer to choose Preserve Embedded Profiles so that you work with the image in the same space as the other person. 607343c04.indd 133 4/11/10 11:04:11 PM 134 c h a p te r 4: FOU N DATI ONS ■ The effect is that the options selected from the drop-down menus will be the default (for instance, RGB images will be converted to the current working RGB space), but each time an image is opened that has a different profile embedded than your work- ing space or no profile embedded at all, you’ll be prompted so you can apply a different action on a case-by-case basis. Note: If you select the check boxes in the Color Management Policies section but find you are always confirming the default action, clear the check boxes to prevent the extra step of dealing with the Missing Profile or Profile Mismatch dialog box. For Photoshop Elements Users: Color Settings Elements 8 has a far simpler but less robust approach to color management than Photoshop CS5. It limits you to no color management, sRGB, or Adobe RGB. Select Edit > Color Settings to bring up the color settings window you see here. The first option, No Color Management, is obvious, and you should never use it. The second, Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens, means that if an image already has a profile embedded it will be converted to sRGB, and any images without a profile will be assumed to be sRGB. For most point-and-shoot cameras, this gives something roughly correct. Plus, if you usually post your images to the Web, this is a good choice so that when people with uncalibrated monitors look at your photos, they see something reasonable. The third option, Always Optimize for Printing, behaves similarly to Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens but uses Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. If your camera supports the Adobe RGB color space, if you care most about having a wider gamut (possible available colors), or if you are printing your images a lot, we recommend selecting this option. The last option, Allow Me to Choose, will automatically convert images to sRGB unless the image doesn’t have a profile. If it doesn’t have a profile, Elements will ask if you want to use sRGB or Adobe RGB with the image. We recommend against using this option, because photographers aren’t usually working with untagged images. 607343c04.indd 134 4/11/10 11:04:11 PM 135 ■ CUSTOMIZING SETTINGS Once you’ve established the preferred options in Color Management Settings, click OK to apply the settings. You don’t need to restart Photoshop for the changes to take effect. Preferences In addition to the color settings, there is a large number of preference settings you can establish within Photoshop. As the name implies, many of these are a matter of personal preference. However, we do have recommendations for some of the settings. Access the Preferences dialog box by choosing Edit > Preferences > General from the menu. (On a Mac, choose Photoshop > Preferences > General.) Note: Because the Preferences dialog box contains so many settings, we won’t cover all of them. Instead, we’ll focus on the settings we think are most important. Elements users will find a sidebar (“For Elements Users: Setting Preferences”) with specifics for them at the end of this section, but there is considerable overlap, and for full details they should read through this entire section. General Settings The General page includes a variety of settings that affect your overall experience in Photoshop, as you can see in Figure 4.2. Figure 4.2 The General section of the Preferences dialog box includes settings that aect your overall experience in Photoshop. 607343c04.indd 135 4/11/10 11:04:12 PM 136 c h a p t e r 4: FOUNDATIONS ■ Here are the settings you should be concerned with: Color Picker: Adobe Leave Color Picker set to the default of Adobe rather than using the Color Picker from the operating system. HUD Color Picker: Hue Strip Most photographers will rarely use the HUD Color Picker, but when they do we suggest starting with the Hue Strip. We find it slightly easier than a color wheel to use accurately. But if you find yourself using the HUD Color Picker, try both and see which style you prefer. To access the HUD Color Picker, with an image open, select a brush tool or an Eyedropper tool. Next hold down Command+Alt+Ctrl on a PC and Control+Option+F on a Mac while left-clicking and holding. You can immediately change the hue and then the luminosity by continuing to hold the keys and dragging the cursor. But to modify the hue after setting the luminosity you have to be a bit dexterous because you’ll also need to use your thumb to hold down the spacebar while continuing to depress the other keys. Don’t release the cursor; just drag it over to the hue you want. As soon as you release the keys or the cursor, the HUD Color Picker disappears. Image Interpolation: Bicubic This is the best general option for interpolation, while other settings are useful in specific situations. We’ll address the details of interpolation in Chapter 10, “Output.” Options Check Boxes The General page in the Preferences dialog box is dominated by a large number of check boxes that allow you to set a range of preferences. Here are some of the settings we find helpful in this section: Auto-Update Open Documents: O This option causes Photoshop to automatically update files that are opened and modified in another application. Since this rarely pertains to nature photographers, we leave it unchecked. Beep When Done: Personal Preference Turning on this setting causes Photoshop to beep when a task is completed. That way, you can turn your attention to other matters while wait- ing for a major task to complete, knowing you’ll be alerted when you’re ready to con- tinue. We find it annoying to have machines beep at us and prefer to check to see when a task is done. We rarely have to wait long enough for it to be an issue. Dynamic Color Sliders: On When selecting a color in the Color panel, it can be helpful for the sliders to change color as you adjust the color value so you can get a better sense of what color you’ll achieve by moving a slider in a particular direction. We don’t use the Color panel very often, but we keep this setting enabled for situations where we put the panel to use. Export Clipboard: O This setting determines whether anything copied to the clipboard in Photoshop will be exported so other applications can use it. We recommend turning off this feature to reduce the amount of memory being used. Use Shift Key for Tool Switch: On Each tool in Photoshop has a shortcut key associated with it, allowing you to activate the tool quickly. Some tools have more than one tool associated 607343c04.indd 136 4/11/10 11:04:12 PM 137 ■ CUSTOMIZING SETTINGS with the same shortcut. By default, to switch among tools with the same shortcut key, you need to add the Shift key. We recommend leaving this option set because other- wise you can get some unexpected changes in tools when you press the shortcut key. Resize Image During Paste/Place: On When you are compositing images, this setting causes components to be automatically resized to fit, which is often helpful. If you don’t com- posite images, you can leave this option unchecked. Animated Zoom: Personal Preference This determines whether zooming is animated. It’s nice to have but not essential, and it requires OpenGL drawing, which may not be avail- able on some older computer systems. Zoom Resizes Windows: On This determines whether a document window will automati- cally be resized as you zoom in or out in Standard Screen mode. When this setting is turned on, as you zoom out on an image, the document window becomes smaller when the image no longer fills the screen; when you zoom in, the document window enlarges until the image exceeds the space available on the screen. This setting is a matter of personal preference, but we find it helpful. Zoom with Scroll Wheel: On If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, this setting can be helpful. It allows you to zoom in and out on your image by scrolling the wheel. We recommend turning this setting on. Zoom Clicked Point to Center: On When using the Zoom tool, this option will center the magnified version of your image around the point where you clicked. That’s a real time-saver. Enable Flick Panning: Personal Preference This option enables you to move within the docu- ment by “flicking” the Hand tool (click, drag, and abruptly let go). After you give a flick, the visible part of the image will continue to move and will drift to a halt. If you’re checking for dust in an image with very few dust spots, this can be a less tiring way of navigating through the image. Besides, the animation is fun! However, if you don’t have OpenGL, turn it off. Place or Drag Raster Images as Smart Objects: Personal Preference Most photographers will rarely, if ever, use this feature. Note: Use the Reset All Warning Dialogs button in this interface if you have opted to have Photo- shop not show some of the warnings while working, and then later you discover you’d prefer to have the safety cushion that some of these warnings provide. History Log The History Log section provides settings that can help you figure out how you per- formed a particular action on an image. When you enable this setting, you can have every step you perform on an image recorded in metadata so you can review the infor- 607343c04.indd 137 4/11/10 11:04:12 PM 138 c h a p t e r 4: FOUNDATIONS ■ mation later. We generally prefer to leave this setting unchecked because there isn’t an easy way to remove the information later. However, it can save the day if you apply a series of steps on your images and then want to know how to apply the same changes on another image. This option is particularly helpful, for example, when you’re apply- ing a series of filters to an image or experimenting with any creative technique. When you select the History Log check box, additional settings become avail- able. If you’re going to use this option, we recommend setting the Save Log Items To option to Metadata so the information will always be saved with the image file. We also recommend you set the Edit Log Items option to Detailed so the information you collect is actually useful. The other options—Sessions Only and Concise—don’t record the actual settings you used. Although they are helpful for other fields, such as forensic work, they are not useful for most nature photographers. Note: If you save the log information to a text file, the information for all images is saved in a single file, which isn’t very efficient. If you use the History Log option, you can review the saved information (which accumulates only after you enable the setting) by selecting File > File Info and clicking the History option in the left column (see Figure 4.3). Alternatively, you can view the information by selecting Bridge > Metadata > Edit History. Edit History will appear only if the History Log has been enabled. Figure 4.3 If you use the History Log feature, you can review everything that has been done to your image in the History dialog box (File Info > History). 607343c04.indd 138 4/11/10 11:04:12 PM 139 ■ CUSTOMIZING SETTINGS Interface The options in the Interface section of Preferences (Figure 4.4) relate to the appear- ance of your workspace. We’ll talk more about setting up your workspace later in this chapter; however, you establish some of the basics here. Figure 4.4 We recommend conguring these options as shown here. The first options are drop-down menus offering choices as to the background color for the interface. We suggest using Gray since it’s easiest to make the most accu- rate color and tonal adjustments against a gray background than against any other color. Black often looks dramatic, but it can mislead you about some of the contrast and tonalities within the image. For that reason we choose Black only for Full Screen mode, which we might use to showcase an image, but not for those modes we use when we’re actively working on an image. For similar reasons, we turn off the options for a border. Although a line or drop shadow can enhance the final presentation of an image, it can be disconcerting if you’re trying to create a drop shadow on your picture or when you’re making other decisions about the edges of your image. If you opt for a color other than black for Full Screen, you may want to use the drop shadow or line options for presentation purposes. The following are our preferences for the other options in this section. Show Channels in Color: O We prefer to view the individual channels in grayscale so we can easily assess what detail information is contributed by each channel, so we leave this option off. Turning this on causes the channels viewed through the Channels panel to be displayed in their actual colors (red for the Red channel, for example), 607343c04.indd 139 4/11/10 11:04:13 PM 140 c h a p t e r 4: FOUNDATIONS ■ rather than as grayscale images. Although this sounds like a good idea in terms of being able to interpret the color values for each channel, it actually becomes a chal- lenge, because each of the component colors has a different perceived tonality, making comparison (and even viewing at times) difficult. Show Menu Colors: Personal Preference This option is useful if you are new to Photoshop and use some of the preset workspaces that make certain menu items more obvious. We rarely take advantage of these features. Show Tool Tips: On We recommend turning on this option so that as you hover the cursor over an icon in the workspace, a brief explanation of the function associated with that icon appears. Enable Gestures: Personal Preference If you’re using a multitouch track pad and find that you are inadvertently rotating your images, you’ll want to turn this preference off. It can make many users crazy (Ellen is one of them), but some people do like to use the gesture controls in Photoshop. Auto-Collapse Iconic Panels: O Although it can be handy to save space on your monitor by collapsing the panels, when we expand a panel, such as the Layers panel, we prefer it to stay open. Note: Only one panel at a time can be expanded when the panels are set to the collapsed mode. Auto-Show Hidden Panels: Personal Preference When this option is checked, panels that are hidden are temporarily visible as the cursor rolls over them. We don’t often use hidden panels, so we don’t often use this feature. Open Documents as Tabs: Personal Preference Checking this option causes new documents to open as tabs in the window rather than as individual floating windows. We have become accustomed to using the tab view for most of our work, but if you prefer float- ing windows, leave it unchecked. Enable Floating Document Window Docking: Personal Preference Checking this option makes it possible to dock a window into the tab by dragging it. This can be convenient, but we’ve found it’s quite easy to accidentally dock images when you’re trying to move them on the monitor. We prefer to leave this option unchecked. Then if we want to dock the floating window we right-click/hold down the Ctrl key while dragging. UI Font Size: Medium or Large This setting provides relief from the tiny text size that results from running our monitors at extremely high resolutions. You’ll find it very helpful from a readability standpoint to set this to Medium or Large. Note that this setting does not take effect until you restart Photoshop. File Handling Settings When you’re finished with the General settings in the Preferences dialog box, click Next to continue to the File Handling section, shown in Figure 4.5. This section con- tains options related primarily to how files are saved. 607343c04.indd 140 4/11/10 11:04:13 PM . Profile Mismatch dialog box. For Photoshop Elements Users: Color Settings Elements 8 has a far simpler but less robust approach to color management than Photoshop CS5. It limits you to no color. some of the settings. Access the Preferences dialog box by choosing Edit > Preferences > General from the menu. (On a Mac, choose Photoshop > Preferences > General.) Note: Because. need to restart Photoshop for the changes to take effect. Preferences In addition to the color settings, there is a large number of preference settings you can establish within Photoshop. As