What You’ll Learn in This Hour:
<objective>How to turn a picture to liquid—or at least dampen it a bit
</objective> <objective>Ways to twist a picture’s colors inside out and backward
</objective> <objective>Unusual effects to give your pictures a glow and distort their shapes in interesting ways
</objective> </feature>In this hour, we forget all about practicality and just have fun in the Editor’s Full Edit mode—the kind of fun I remember having when I first discovered Photoshop’s Distort filters. Photoshop Elements has those same filters (and a bunch that didn’t exist back when I learned Photoshop), and I think it’s time to give them a workout. None of the effects in this hour will ever appear in a picture on the front page of The New York Times, but they should give you some fodder for making your own desktop wallpaper, chat icons, and funny birthday cards. We’ll smear pictures around, change their colors, make them glow, and generally mess them up in a bunch of entertaining ways. Let’s do it!
The first stop in our Fun Tour of Photoshop Elements is the Liquify filter, which distorts images as though their components had softened in the warm sun and run together. To get there, open the picture you want to liquify and choose Filter, Distort, Liquify. This is another one of those huge dialog boxes with its very own toolbox (see Figure 23.1). To liquify the picture, all you have to do is paint in the image preview, but you have a choice of several tools to do that with; each has a different way of distorting:
Warp—. Works like the Smudge tool, enabling you to push pixels around.
Turbulence—. Creates a jittery effect, like a mirage. You can drag the Turbulent Jitter slider in the Tool Options area to the right to increase the amount of turbulence applied with each click or brush stroke.
Twirl Clockwise—. Rotates the image area under the brush clockwise. Click and hold in one spot to keep turning the area.
Twirl Counter Clockwise—. Rotates the image area under the brush counterclockwise. Click and hold in one spot to keep turning the area.
Pucker—. Pulls surrounding pixels toward the brush as you paint.
Bloat—. Pushes surrounding pixels away from the brush as you paint (see Figure 23.2).
Shift Pixels—. Moves pixels to the left of the direction you drag. Press Alt as you drag to move pixels to the right instead.
Reflection—. Copies pixels from one side of your brush stroke to the other.
You can set the Brush Size and Brush Pressure for all these tools in the Tool Options area of the dialog. Higher Brush Pressure settings distort more with each click or brush stroke. The Liquify toolbox also supplies you with a Reconstruct tool; paint with this tool to remove distortion and restore the image to its original appearance. You’ll also find the customary Zoom and Hand tools, which work just like their counterparts in Photoshop Elements’ regular toolbox so that you can move around in the image preview and see what you’re doing.
Did you Know?
If you’re using a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet, choose Stylus Pressure in the Brush Pressure pop-up menu. And if you’ve never tried a tablet, I highly recommend it. Think about how much easier it is to sign your name with a pen than it would be to make that signature with the mouse. Now think about how much more free and easy your brush strokes could be with a tablet and stylus. I like the Wacom series of tablets; they’re well designed. The Bamboo Fun tablet sells for $99 or less and includes Photoshop Elements in the box—such a deal!
To paint in a straight line, click and then Shift+click to set the end of the line; this works with the Warp, Shift Pixels, and Reflection tools (see Figure 23.3). If you decide you want to undo everything you’ve done so far and start over, either click Revert to restore the original picture and reset all the tools to their original settings, or press Alt and click Reset to bring back the picture but leave the tools as they are.
Tired of the same old colors—blue sky, green grass, red brick buildings, and black asphalt? I can show you more than one way to fix that problem. Keep reading to learn how to twist the colors in your pictures four different ways, and then how to turn everyday objects into gold, silver, or copper.
When you apply the Gradient Map filter, you get to choose or create a color gradient, with each color shading into the next (see Figure 23.4). Photoshop Elements turns the darkest areas of your image into the color at the extreme left end of that gradient, and does the same with the lightest areas of the image and the extreme right end of the gradient. Everything in between is mapped to its corresponding position on the gradient. So if you used a simple black-to-white gradient, the picture would just be converted to grayscale. If you used a red to white gradient, the picture would be rendered in shades of red, ranging from pure red to palest pink and then white.
Start by opening an image and choosing Filter, Adjustments, Gradient Map. To change the gradient the filter will use, click the gradient swatch in the Gradient Map dialog to open the Gradient Editor. Pick a gradient from the Presets area or edit one to create your own (see sidebar); the More menu gives you additional gradient collections from which to choose. When you’ve chosen the gradient you want, click OK; then check the appropriate box if you want to turn on either of the Gradient Options: Dither, which adds random noise to make the gradient look smoother, or Reverse, which swaps the direction of the gradient fill, changing which colors get mapped to black and white in your image. Click OK again to admire your picture in its full glory (see Figure 23.5).
Mixing Your Own Gradients
Photoshop Elements’ Gradient Editor dialog looks a bit intimidating, but don’t let it slow you down. The process of creating a new gradient is really very simple (see Figure 23.6).
First, pick a gradient that’s close to what you want. Then you can start changing it.
Want to change an existing color? Click its color stop, the little square handle below the gradient preview bar, and then click the Color swatch in the Stops area to open the color picker and choose a new color. Want to add a new color in its own position? Click beneath the bar to add a new stop; then click the stop to change its color (all new stops start out black).
Click a color stop and move the small diamond-shaped color midpoint sliders to either side of it, to control the abruptness of the transitions between that color and those adjacent to it.
If you want to make some or all of your gradient less than fully opaque, click above the bar to add an opacity stop; then enter an Opacity percentage for it in the Stops area. Click an existing opacity stop to change its Opacity percentage.
And to move either kind of stop, just click and drag it. When you’re happy, enter a name for your gradient and click the New button to put it up into the Presets area so you can use it again, and then click OK.
Did you Know?
You can also create a gradient map using an adjustment layer instead of a filter; this way, you can change its settings later in the editing process. In the Layers palette, choose Gradient Map from the New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu, and then proceed just as if you were using the filter. To change the settings, double-click the layer’s icon in the Layers palette.
The Invert filter does two things at once. First, it changes each color in an image to its opposite on the color wheel. So red changes to light blue, green changes to pink, and so on. The filter also inverts the brightness of each pixel in the picture so that shadows become highlights and vice versa. To apply the Invert filter, choose Filter, Adjustments, Invert (see Figure 23.7).
You might think that you could scan a color negative and then apply Invert to the image to make a positive. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong because color print film is tinted orange. If you do invert a negative, however, you can work with the Adjust Color commands in the Enhance menu to restore a natural color balance.
Posterizing is another fun effect that I like to combine with Invert. It enables you to dramatically reduce the number of colors in the picture, to achieve a pop art feel. Choose Filter, Adjustments, Posterize to get started (see Figure 23.8). The only choice you have to make for the Posterize filter is how many color levels you want to use in the resulting picture. The number you choose determines how many levels are used in each color channel, so multiply that number by three (for the red, green, and blue channels) to determine how many colors the image will contain overall.
If the Posterize filter leaves in too many colors for you, you need the Threshold filter. This command converts the image into all black and white pixels. Choose Filter, Adjustments, Threshold, or create a new Threshold adjustment layer. In the Threshold dialog box, first click the Preview box and then drag the slider to determine the point at which black changes into white (see Figure 23.9).
After you’ve turned your picture into black and white, however, it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can substitute any two colors for black and white, or leave the white and just change the black to a color. To do that, choose Enhance, Adjust Color, Adjust Hue/Saturation, and check the Colorize box. Drag the Lightness slider to the right so that you can see the color in the formerly black areas, and then drag the Hue slider till you get a color you like.
You can also use the Threshold command to find the darkest and lightest areas of your image. Drag the slider all the way to the right and then back to the left again until you see white; that white is the lightest part of the image. Do the same in reverse—drag the slider all the way left and then slowly right—to find the darkest point in the picture. You can use this information in many ways; for example, the darkest and lightest areas of the image are the best spots to click with the eyedropper when you’re using the Remove Color Cast command because they’re the closest to pure black and white.
I think you’re going to enjoy these next effects. These tend to produce pictures that look, well, downright odd in some way. But you never know what might inspire you to produce something truly unique; give these filters a try and add them to your repertoire. Maybe someday one of these will be a part of your masterwork.
By the Way
Several of these filters are available in the Filter Gallery, which you might recall makes it very easy to compare their effects with those of other filters and offers a nice, large preview area. You can also use the Filter Gallery to apply more than one filter or more than one instance of the same filter at the same time.
Using three different colors, this filter adds an eerie glow to the picture. All right, technically it doesn’t have to be eerie, but it usually ends up that way. When you apply Neon Glow, Photoshop Elements blurs the picture a bit, turns the highlights into the Foreground color, turns the shadows into the Background color, and adds the glow color, which you choose in the Neon Glow dialog, to the shadows, edging into the midtones. The higher you set the Glow Size, the more glow color is added to the image; you have a second slider to control Glow Brightness (see Figure 23.10). Choose Filter, Artistic, Neon Glow to get there.
Ever wanted to wrap a picture in plastic wrap, just to see how it looked? Me neither. Nonetheless, you can simulate this effect using the Plastic Wrap filter. The effect actually looks sort of like a shiny embossing method; choose Filter, Artistic, Plastic Wrap to try it out (see Figure 23.11). You can use three sliders to fine-tune the effect:
Highlight Strength—. Controls the height of the embossing effect.
Detail—. Determines how closely the plastic follows the apparent contours of the objects in the picture. I say “apparent” because Photoshop Elements interprets a patterned area as a bumpy surface. This explains why there are so many more wrinkles in the plastic covering the tiger cat in Figure 23.11 than in that covering the black-and-white cat.
Smoothness—. Sets the gloss level for the surface of the plastic.
This filter yields an effect much like that of Neon Glow, but with just one glow color. That’s the Background color, and it’s applied to the image’s highlight areas. Because it adds only one color to the picture, this filter is slightly less likely than Neon Glow to take the picture entirely out of this world; just make sure your Background color is set to a nice, friendly color before invoking the filter, and you should be fine. Choose Filter, Distort, Diffuse Glow, then adjust the filter’s three sliders (see Figure 23.12):
Clear Amount—. Enables the glow color to emanate from the entire layer or selection. Turn it all the way down to make the entire image glow and all the way up to make the whole thing clear, with just a few glowing spots.
Glow Amount—. Controls the size of each glowing area.
Graininess—. Adds noise to the glowing areas.
The Ocean Ripple filter (choose Filter, Distort, Ocean Ripple) is supposed to make it look as though the picture is underwater. I think it actually looks more like an Impressionist painting (hmmmm...), but it’s definitely funky, whatever you think it resembles (see Figure 23.13). You have two sliders to control the effect: Ripple Size and Ripple Magnitude. The former controls the size of the ripples themselves, and the latter determines how many ripples are placed in the picture.
If you’re serious about watery effects, Wave should satisfy you (choose Filter, Distort, Wave). Wave offers a lot of settings to fiddle with, and the preview area in its dialog box is tiny, so you can easily spend an entire afternoon going back and forth between the image and the Wave dialog box, undoing and redoing to get the effect just right (see Figure 23.14). Waves are much like Ocean Ripples, only larger, and you can determine how many points they originate from. Here are the controls that the Wave filter offers:
First, you can choose a wave type in the Type area: Sine (curved), Triangle, or Square.
Drag the slider to set a value for Number of Generators.
Adjust the minimum and maximum Wavelength sliders to set the relative distance from one wave to the next and determine how much that distance varies. If both sliders are set to the same number, the waves will be evenly spaced.
Do the same with the minimum and maximum Amplitude sliders to set the relative wave height.
Drag the horizontal and vertical Scale sliders to set the actual height and width of the waves.
Choose Wrap Around or Repeat Edge Pixels to determine how the image’s edges are handled. Wrap Around uses pixels from the opposite side of the picture to fill in any gaps along the edge, and Repeat Edge Pixels just stretches the pixels along the edges of the image to fill in gaps.
Click Randomize to insert a random group of settings generated by Photoshop Elements. Keep clicking until you like what you see.
Everyone knows that you shouldn’t expose undeveloped film to regular light, or you’ll destroy the image. But what a lot of people don’t know is that, actually, if you allow in some light at just the right second during the developing process, you can create a cool effect that combines a negative and a positive image (see Figure 23.15, both here and in the color section). This filter doesn’t have any dialog box; it’s executed as soon as you choose the command, and you don’t get to set any options.
The Solarize filter (choose Filter, Stylize, Solarize) generally produces a somewhat dark image, so you’ll probably want to brighten the picture either before or after you apply the filter. Try it both ways to see which works better for the particular image you’re editing.
The effects you learned about in this hour are unconventional, but they can potentially turn a picture into something really special. And I still haven’t shown you all the filters Photoshop Elements has to offer; you’ll just have to check out the rest for yourself. Meanwhile, however, you learned how to use Liquify, Gradient Map, Invert, Posterize, Threshold, Neon Glow, Plastic Wrap, Diffuse Glow, Ocean Ripple, Wave, and Solarize.
Why does the Liquify effect look so familiar? I’ve seen it before, but I can’t remember where. | |
As it happens, the artist I mentioned in the last hour, Salvador Dalí, was known for painting “soft” objects that drooped all over the place. His most famous painting is The Persistence of Memory, featuring liquefied clocks (see www.artchive.com/artchive/d/dali/persistence.jpg). | |
Can I use Threshold to convert a picture to red and green, or blue and orange, instead of black and white? | |
No, but you can replace black and white with other colors after applying the Threshold filter. You’ve learned several ways to accomplish this: using Hue/Saturation, selecting and filling an area, and using the Replace Color command. | |
I can’t seem to get anywhere with the Wave filter settings. There are just too many sliders, and I don’t know what to do with them all. | |
If you can’t settle on numbers that you like for the Wave filter, click Randomize to generate a random group of settings. Keep clicking until you come up with something you like. As you try different combinations, try to pay attention to how the different numbers affect the results. |
We’re almost done! You’ve accomplished so much, and I hope you’re enjoying learning about Photoshop Elements as much as I’m enjoying showing it to you.
Pick one of the filters you saw used in this hour and choose an image to use it on. First, apply the filter to the original image; then go back and process the picture in different ways before you apply the filter. Try lightening it, darkening it, increasing the contrast, increasing the saturation, and anything else you can think of.