Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P7 pps

147 Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors When you choose Image ➪ Mode ➪ Bitmap, Photoshop displays the Bitmap dialog box, shown in Figure 4-5. Here you specify the resolution of the black-and-white image and select a conversion process. The options work as follows: ✦ Output: Specify the resolution of the black-and-white file. If you want control over every single pixel available to your printer, raise this value to match your printer’s resolution. As a rule of thumb, try setting the Output value some- where between 200 to 250 percent of the Input value. Figure 4-5: The Bitmap dialog box converts images from grayscale to black and white. ✦ 50% Threshold: Select this option from the Use pop-up menu to change every pixel that is darker than 50 percent gray to black and every pixel that is 50 percent gray or lighter to white. Unless you are working toward some special effect — for example, overlaying a black-and-white version of an image over the original grayscale image — this option most likely isn’t for you. (And if you’re working toward a special effect, Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Threshold is the better alternative.) ✦ Pattern Dither: To dither pixels is to mix them up to emulate different colors. In this case, Photoshop mixes up black and white pixels to produce shades of gray. The Pattern Dither option dithers an image using a geometric pattern. Unfortunately, the results are pretty ugly, as demonstrated in the top example in Figure 4-6. And the space between dots has a tendency to fill in, especially when you output to a laser printer. 148 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching ✦ Diffusion Dither: Select this option from the Use pop-up menu to create a mezzotint-like effect, as demonstrated in the second example in Figure 4-6. Again, because this option converts an image into thousands of stray pixels, you can expect your image to darken dramatically when output to a low- resolution laser printer and when reproduced. So be sure to lighten the image with something like the Levels command (as described in Chapter 17) before selecting this option. Figure 4-6: The results of selecting the Pattern Dither option (top) and the much more acceptable Diffusion Dither option (bottom). ✦ Halftone Screen: When you select this option from the Use pop-up menu and press Enter, Photoshop displays the dialog box shown in Figure 4-7. These options enable you to apply a dot pattern to the image, as demonstrated in Figure 4-8. Enter the number of dots per inch in the Frequency option box and the angle of the dots in the Angle option box. Then select a dot shape from the Shape pop-up menu. Figure 4-8 shows examples of four shapes, each with a frequency of 24 lines per inch. 149 Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors Figure 4-7: This dialog box appears when you select the Halftone Screen option in the Bitmap dialog box. Figure 4-8: Four random examples of halftone cell shapes. In all cases, the Frequency value was set to 24. Round Diamond Line Cross 150 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching I cover screen patterns and frequency settings in more depth in the “Changing the halftone screen” section of Chapter 18. ✦ Custom Pattern: If you’ve defined a repeating pattern using Edit ➪ Define Pattern, you can use it as a custom dither pattern. Figure 4-9 shows two cus- tom examples. I created the first pattern using the Twirl Pattern file, which is stored in the Displacement Maps folder in the Plug-Ins folder. I created the second pattern manually using the Add Noise, Emboss, and Ripple filters (as discussed in the “Creating texture effects” section of Chapter A on the CD-ROM for this book). Figure 4-9: Two examples of employing repeating patterns (created with Edit➪ Define Pattern) as custom halftoning patterns. For a complete guide to creating and defining patterns in Photoshop, see the “Applying Repeating Patterns” section of Chapter 7. Cross- Reference Cross- Reference 151 Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors To use a custom pattern, open the Custom Pattern palette in the Bitmap dia- log box, as shown in Figure 4-5. Click the icon for the pattern you want to use. If you don’t feel like creating your own patterns, use one of the preset patterns that ship with Photoshop 6. A number of these patterns appear by default in the palette; to access additional patterns, choose Load from the palette menu (click the right-pointing triangle in the upper-right corner of the palette to dis- play the menu). You can find the patterns in the Patterns folder, which lives inside the Presets folder. To delete a pattern from the palette, click its icon and choose Delete from the palette menu. Photoshop lets you edit individual pixels in the so-called bitmap mode, but that’s about the extent of it. After you go to black-and-white, you can neither perform any serious editing nor expect to return to the grayscale mode and restore your original pixels. So be sure to finish your image editing before choosing Image ➪ Mode ➪ Bitmap. Even more important, make certain to save your image before converting it to black-and-white. Frankly, saving is a good idea prior to performing any color conversion. Using Photoshop’s Other Color Selection Methods In addition to the Color Picker dialog box, Photoshop provides a handful of addi- tional techniques for selecting colors. The sections that finish out this chapter explain how to use the Custom Colors dialog box, the Colors palette, and the eye- dropper tool. None of this information is terribly exciting, but it will enable you to work more efficiently and conveniently. Predefined colors If you click the Custom button inside the Color Picker dialog box, Photoshop dis- plays the Custom Colors dialog box shown in Figure 4-10. In this dialog box, you can select from a variety of predefined colors by choosing the color family from the Book pop-up menu, moving the slider triangles up and down the color slider to specify a general range of colors, and ultimately, selecting a color from the color list on the left. If you own the swatchbook for a color family, you can locate a spe- cific color by entering its number on the keyboard. The color families represented in the Book pop-up menu fall into seven brands: ANPA (now NAA, as I explain shortly), DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo, and Trumatch, all of which get a big kick out of capitalizing their names in dialog boxes. I honestly think one of these companies would stand out better if its name weren’t capitalized. Anyway, at the risk of offending a few of these companies, you’re likely to find certain brands more useful than others. The following sections briefly intro- duce the brands in order of their impact on the American market—forgive me for being ethnocentric in this regard — from smallest to greatest impact. Caution 6 Photoshop 6 152 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching Figure 4-10: The Custom Colors dialog box enables you to select predefined colors from brand-name libraries. The color families represented in the Book pop-up menu fall into seven brands: ANPA (now NAA, as I explain shortly), DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo, and Trumatch, all of which get a big kick out of capitalizing their names in dialog boxes. I honestly think one of these companies would stand out better if its name weren’t capitalized. Anyway, at the risk of offending a few of these companies, you’re likely to find certain brands more useful than others. The following sections briefly intro- duce the brands in order of their impact on the American market—forgive me for being ethnocentric in this regard — from smallest to greatest impact. The number-one use for predefined colors in Photoshop is in the creation of duo- tones, tritones, and quadtones (described in Chapter 18). You can also use prede- fined colors to match the colors in a logo or some other important element in an image to a commercial standard. And you can add an independent channel for a predefined color and print it to a separate plate, as discussed later in this chapter. Focoltone, DIC, Toyo, and HKS Focoltone, Dianippon Ink and Chemical (DIC), Toyo, and HKS fall into the negligible impact category. All are foreign color standards with followings abroad. Focoltone is an English company; not English speaking (although they probably do), but English living, as in commuting-to-France-through-the-Channel England. DIC and Toyo are popular in the Japanese market, but have next to no subscribers outside Japan. HKS formerly was provided only in the German and French versions of Photoshop, but enough people asked for it to be included in other languages that it now is available in all versions of the program. Tip 153 Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors Newspaper Association of America American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) recently changed its name to NAA, which stands for Newspaper Association of America, and updated its color cat- alog. NAA provides a small sampling of 45 process colors (mixes of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink) plus 5 spot colors (colors produced by printing a single ink). The idea behind the NAA colors is to isolate the color combinations that reproduce most successfully on inexpensive newsprint and to provide advertisers with a solid range of colors from which to choose, without allowing the color choices to get out of hand. You can purchase a swatch book from NAA for $35. Members pay $25. Trumatch Trumatch remains my personal favorite process-color standard. Designed entirely using a desktop system and created especially with desktop publishers in mind, the Trumatch Colorfinder swatchbook features more than 2,000 process colors, orga- nized according to hue, saturation, and brightness. Each hue is broken down into 40 tints and shades. Reducing the saturation in 15-percent increments creates tints; adding black ink in 6-percent increments creates shades. The result is a guide that shows you exactly which colors you can attain using a desktop system. If you’re wondering what a CMYK blend will look like when printed, you need look no further than the Trumatch Colorfinder. As if the Colorfinder weren’t enough, Trumatch provides the ColorPrinter Software utility, which automatically prints the entire 2,000-color library to any PostScript- compatible output device. The utility integrates EfiColor and PostScript Level 2, thereby enabling design firms and commercial printers to test the entire range of capabilities available to their hardware. Companies can provide select clients with swatches of colors created on their own printers, guaranteeing what you see is darn well what you’ll get. Pantone On the heels of Trumatch, Pantone released a 3,006-color Process Color System Guide (labeled Pantone Process in the Book pop-up menu) priced at $79. Pantone also produces the foremost spot color swatchbook, the Color Formula Guide. Then there’s the Solid to Process Guide, which enables you to figure out quickly if you can closely match a Pantone spot color using a process-color blend or if you ought to give it up and stick with the spot color. Pantone spot colors are ideal for creating duotones and adding custom colors to an image for logos and the like, both discussed in Chapter 18. Furthermore, Pantone is supported by every computer application that aspires to the color prepress mar- ket. As long as the company retains the old competitive spirit, you can, most likely, expect Pantone to remain the primary color printing standard for years to come. 154 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching The Color palette Another means of selecting colors in Photoshop is to use the Color palette, shown in Figure 4-11. The Color palette is convenient, it’s always there, and it doesn’t hog your screen like the Color Picker dialog box. Frankly, this is the tool I use most often to select colors in Photoshop. Figure 4-11: The Color palette as it appears normally (top) and with the Web Color Sliders option selected (bottom). To display the palette, choose Window ➪ Show Color or press the F6 key. If you want, you can dock the palette in the Options bar palette well. For details on that intriguing offer, flip back to Chapter 2. Either way, you use the elements and options inside the palette as follows: 6 Photoshop 6 Alert triangle Foreground color Color bar Background color Slider Alert cube Default color swatches Option box Palette menu 155 Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors ✦ Foreground color/background color: Click the foreground or background color icon in the Color palette to specify the color you want to edit. If you click the foreground or background color icon when it’s already highlighted —as indi- cated by a double-line frame —Photoshop displays the Color Picker dialog box. ✦ Sliders: Drag the triangles in the slider controls to edit the highlighted color. By default, the sliders represent the red, green, and blue primary colors when a color image is open. You can change the slider bars by choosing a different color model from the palette menu. ✦ Option boxes: Alternatively, you can enter numerical values into the option boxes to the right of the sliders. Press Tab to advance from one option box to the next; press Shift+Tab to go to the previous option. ✦ Alert triangle and cube: Photoshop displays the alert triangle when a color falls outside the CMYK color gamut. The color swatch to the right of the trian- gle shows the closest CMYK equivalent. Click the triangle or the color swatch to replace the current color with the CMYK equivalent. If you select the Web Color Sliders option from the palette menu, the alert cube appears to indicate colors that aren’t included in the Web-safe palette. The palette also displays the hexadecimal values for the color, as shown in Figure 4-11. And as you drag the sliders, they automatically snap to Web-safe hues. To limit the palette so that it displays Web-safe colors only, choose Make Ramp Web Safe from the palette menu. After you define a Web color, choose Copy Color as HTML from the palette menu to save the hexadecimal code for the color to the Clipboard. You can then paste the code into an HTML file by choosing Edit ➪ Paste in the Web application. ✦ Color bar: The bar along the bottom of the Color palette displays all colors con- tained in the CMYK spectrum. Click or drag inside the color bar to lift a color and make it the current foreground or background color (depending on whether the foreground or background icon is selected above). The sliders update as you drag. Alt-click or drag to lift the background color if the foreground icon is selected or the foreground color if the background color is selected. You needn’t accept the CMYK spectrum in the color bar, however. To change to a different spectrum, just choose the spectrum from the palette menu. Or Shift-click the color bar to cycle through the available spectrums. You can opt for the RGB spectrum, a black-to-white gradation (Grayscale Ramp), or a gra- dation from the current foreground color to the current background color (Current Colors). The color bar continuously updates to represent the newest foreground and background colors. Notice the black and white squares at the right end of the color bar? You can click ’em to set a color to absolute black or white. But if all you want to do is set the foreground color to black, don’t bother with the Color palette—just press D. For white, press D and then X. The first shortcut restores the foreground and background colors to black and white, respectively; pressing X swaps the col- ors to make white the foreground color and black the background color. 6 Photoshop 6 Tip 156 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching The Swatches palette Shown in Figure 4-12, the Swatches palette enables you to collect colors for future use, sort of like a favorite color reservoir. You can use the palette also to set the foreground and background colors. Figure 4-12: You can create custom swatch collections in the Swatches palette or in the new Preset Manager dialog box. Here’s how to take advantage of the Swatches palette: ✦ Click a color swatch to make that color the foreground color. Alt-click to set the background color. ✦ To add the current foreground color to the reservoir, Shift-click an existing color swatch to replace the old color or click an empty swatch to append the new color. In either case, your cursor temporarily changes to a paint bucket. After you click, you’re asked to give the swatch a name. Type the name and click OK. If you later want to change the name, just double-click the swatch to redisplay the name dialog box. You can bypass the dialog box and add an unnamed color to the palette by Ctrl+Alt-clicking an empty swatch. ✦ To insert a color anywhere in the palette, Shift+Ctrl-click a swatch. The other colors scoot over to make room. ✦ To delete a color from the panel, Ctrl-click a color swatch. Your cursor changes to a pair of scissors and cuts the color away. Tip [...]... Grayscale Instead of the usual Discard color information? message, Photoshop displays the message Discard other channels? If you click the OK button, Photoshop chucks the other channels into the electronic abyss 6 When the warning dialog box appears, select the Do not show again check box if you don’t want Photoshop to ask for permission to dump color information or channels when you convert to grayscale... the sky and water are rich with blue 165 166 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching Grayscale composite Red Green Blue Figure 4- 16: A grayscale composite of the image from Color Plate 4-2 followed by the contents of the red, green, and blue color channels Notice how the channels in Figure 4- 16 make interesting grayscale images in and of themselves? The red channel, for example, looks like the sky is darkening.. .Photoshop Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors 6 ✦ The Swatches palette in Photoshop 6 includes a new icon and trash icon, similar to those you find in the Layers palette The icons provide alternative methods of adding and deleting colors: Click the new icon to add a new swatch in the current foreground color; Alt-click to display the name dialog box... Otherwise, Photoshop deletes the swatch if you replace the current swatch collection with another The eyedropper tool The eyedropper tool — which you can select by pressing I — provides the most convenient and straightforward means of selecting colors in Photoshop This is so straightforward, in fact, it’s hardly worth explaining But quickly, here’s how the eyedropper tool works: ✦ Selecting a foreground... But if you’re having problems getting the color balance right, give it a tweak 175 1 76 Note Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching Although Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Channel Mixer didn’t arrive until Photoshop 5, I’ve been including my own channel mixing filter with the Photoshop Bible for better than three years now Created in Photoshop s Filter Factory (see Chapter A on the CD-ROM), this filter coincidentally... the Color palette pop-up menu Photoshop determines the hexadecimal code for the color and sends the code to the Clipboard so that you can use Edit ➪ Paste to dump the code into an HTML file Tip To access the eyedropper tool temporarily when using the type, paint bucket, gradient, line, pencil, airbrush, or paintbrush tool, press Alt The eyedropper cursor remains in force for as long as the Alt key is... Introducing Color Channels After I’ve droned on for pages about color in Photoshop, it might surprise you when I say that Photoshop is at its heart a grayscale editor Oh sure, it offers an array of color conversion features and it displays and prints spectacular full-color images But when it comes to editing the image, everything happens in grayscale This is because Photoshop approaches every full-color image... not an orthodontist How channels work Photoshop devotes 8 bits of data to each pixel in each channel, thus permitting 2 56 brightness values, from 0 (black) to 255 (white) Therefore, each channel is actually an independent grayscale image At first, this may throw you off If an RGB image is made up of red, green, and blue channels, why do all the channels look gray? Photoshop provides an option in the... Presets folder, located inside the main Photoshop folder, contains folders for all the available preset items, color swatches being one of them The Color Swatches folder, found inside the Photoshop Only folder of the Presets folder, contains palettes for the major color libraries from Pantone, Trumatch, and others In Version 6, you can load these palettes by simply selecting them from the palette pop-up... palette Photoshop You can also save and load color palettes on disk using options in the pop-up menu Load Swatches appends swatches stored in a swatches file to the current set of swatches; Replace Swatches replaces the current swatches with the ones in the file Save Swatches lets you create a new swatch collection and save it to disk 6 Photoshop Tip The Presets folder, located inside the main Photoshop . to delete it — but for some reason, you press Alt to get the scissors cursor in the Preset Manager, not Ctrl as you do in the Swatches palette. 6 Photoshop 6 Tip 6 Photoshop 6 6 Photoshop 6 158 Part. follows: 6 Photoshop 6 Alert triangle Foreground color Color bar Background color Slider Alert cube Default color swatches Option box Palette menu 155 Chapter 4 ✦ Defining Colors ✦ Foreground. respectively; pressing X swaps the col- ors to make white the foreground color and black the background color. 6 Photoshop 6 Tip 1 56 Part II ✦ Painting and Retouching The Swatches palette Shown