Current Rating:

In what was a record turnout of over 1,200 attendees, the one day Photoshopworld Asia Pacific workshop at Suntec Singapore on November 2, 2007 saw Adobe experts dazzle beginners and professionals alike with their array of tips and tricks for work on the Adobe Photoshop.

With the digital imaging software having found its place in almost all creative processes in the advertising, animation, post production and broadcast industries, Photoshop in its Creative Suite 3 (CS 3) edition boasts further integration with other Adobe software components including post production software Adobe Premiere CS3 to provide greater versatility and more value to users.

Adobe master instructor Shirley Tan, who is also chief instructor at Singapore-based software training firm ACE Training Pte Ltd has the following tricks to share:

Creating broadcast-safe colours automatically

While broadcast practitioners are accustomed to having professional hardware check for colours and luminance, Adobe Photoshop CS3 helps the work on by providing automation functions for tasks including constraining luminance range and saturation levels to comply with broadcast standards for use in DVD slide shows. This is applicable for NTSC and PAL, as well as standard and widescreen aspect ratios.

Loading video actions

1. Choose Window > Actions to display the Actions panel.

2. Click the triangle in the upper right corner to open the Actions palette menu, and choose Video Actions.

3. Once loaded, we are ready to use each relevant action to execute our task.

4. To play an action, select the Broadcast safe action, and click the Play button (at the bottom right corner) in the Actions palette.

5. Once the action is completed, observe that you now have a closer approximation of what you started with.

Tip: Preview your image on your video monitor by selecting File > Export > Video Preview. The Video Preview plugin lets you preview the current frame or any image opened in Photoshop through FireWire (IEEE 1394) on a display device. You can also adjust the aspect ratio for proper display of images. The Video Preview plugin supports RGB, grayscale, and indexed images, but does not support alpha channels. Transparency is displayed as black.

Retouching content in video frames

The ability to restore and retouch videos is a critical capability for creatives in post production. This practical Adobe Photoshop technique which uses a healing brush goes beyond the basics to handle stack processing.

• Removing unwanted elements from an image with Spot Healing Brush

The Spot Healing Brush tool quickly removes blemishes and other imperfections in your photos. The moles and marks on the model’s face will be digitally removed in a simple and quick process:

1. Select the Spot Healing Brush from the toolbox.

2. Click on or drag the flaw you want to remove. The retouched area is blended into the surroundings seamlessly. It does takes a little practice getting a feel for how brush size and healing work together.

Tip: Use the keyboard shortcut keys ‘[’ or ‘]’ to adjust the size of the brush without going to the tool options bar.

• Removing unwanted elements with Stack Processing

Stack processing combines a group of images with a similar frame of reference, but differences of quality or content across the set. You can remove unwanted or accidental objects from a series of video frames. For example, you want to remove a figure walking through an image, or remove a car passing in front of the main subject matter.

I have a stack of images with different figures walking through an image at different timing. Let’s use the Statistics script to automate the whole process.

1. Select File > Scripts > Statistics.

2. Choose Median from the Choose Stack Mode menu.

3. Browse to select your individual files.

4. Select Edit > Auto-Align Layers and click OK.

5. Photoshop combines the multiple images into a single multilayered image, converts the layers into a Smart Object, and applies the Median stack mode.

Tip: Depending on the content in the image, you can sometimes get some ghosted debris on your image. You can fix those flaws with any one of the retouching tools.