Lesson 1

Aim: To learn to use the eyedropper tool to select an area, or background. Using the Invert select command, use of layers, scaling . duplication.

Flyingsheep.jpg

NZbackground.jpg

Right click (with your mouse) on the above text links and select Save Link Target to save these files to your folder on your computer.

Open the flyingsheep.jpg in Photoshop. Use the Magic Wand Tool from the toolbox to select the sky around the sheep.

Fig1.

Note
There is a menu with more information about whichever tool is picked just below the Menubar (the one with File, Edit, Image, etc). We set the Tolerance of the Magic wand at 30 (experiment with this for different backgrounds later).

Hold down the Shift key (above Ctrl) on your keyboard to add to the selection. This method of selection works best for images that have plain backgrounds or contrasting colours.

Fig2

Once you have all the background selected you want to select the sheep instead. Go to the menu along the top until you come to Select. Then choose inverse from the drop down menu. Notice that it is now the sheep rather than the background is selected.

Fig3

Next go to Edit (next to File on the Menubar) and down to Copy. This stores a copy of your selection (the flying sheep) in a temporary scratch folder. Open the New Zealand background that you saved to your folder earlier.

Go to Edit again and select Paste. The flying sheep image is pasted into your New Zealand background image. Now Save your work as poster.psd.Notice that on the right side of the workplace in the Layers window that a new layer has been created.

Click on the Move Tool.

Fig 4

Position the sheep where you want on the sky. Maybe you want to scale down the sheep slightly. Go to Edit, then Transform, then Scale.

Fig 5

A bounding box appears around the sheep. You can drag with the mouse on the squares to adjust the scale of the sheep.

In the Layers Window right click on the layer that the sheep image is on. The active layer is coloured blue. Choose Duplicate Layer . This makes a copy of the sheep on another layer. You can now go and give the different layers appropriate names. This helps when you are using files with lots of layers. To do this right click the layer whose name that you want to change and select Layer Properties. You can then overwrite the name.

Fig 6

You can move the second sheep to the left of the sheep on the first layer. You can scale it in the same way as the first sheep in Fig 5 ( go to Edit, Transform, Scale).

Repeat the Duplicate Layer process to create another sheep. Move this sheep and scale as before.

Now we want to add some text to the poster. You can use the Colour Picker Tool to pick a colour direct from any iog the images or you could pick it from the Colour Picker Window. You open this window by clicking on the left square on the toolbox (it's near the bottom, just below the Magnifying Glass icon).Use the sliders on the colour bar to get a rough colour, then you can click on the large graded box to get a more accurate colour. The other options are for you know the colours exact value which we will cover in another tutorial.

Fig 7

Now click on the Text Tool

Fig 8

The Text Tool is shaped like a 'T'. Click anywhere on your Photoshop image and type in Fly New Zealand. Notice that if you want to change the font of the text or the size of the text you drag across the text to highlight it then look below the Menubar. There is another menu giving you details eg Times New Roman, 10, B,I etc. Here you can use the drop-down menus to chenge the font, size, boldness, italics..

Fig 9

To emphasize text you coud add a drop-shadow to it. To do this go to the Layer menu (on the Menubar) and select Layer, Layer Style, Drop Shadow. You can experiment with the opaqueness of the shadow, direction, colour etc in the Layer Style box that opens up.Use the Move tool to position the text.

All you have to do now is to set it up for printing.

Fig 10

Go along the Menubar to Image. Go down the menu to Image Size. The Image Size box oens up. Since it is for print make the DPI (or pixels/inch) and Resolution 300 (web images are 72). A4 sheet dimensions are 21cm by 29.7 cm so make sure the Document Size of Width and Height are not bigger than this. Then click OK. Save your image. Now you can print off your image.

Note

You could try visiting www.century-23.com and look at their requirements and templates. This will give you an idea of usual sizes for printers. Note that they want your image in CMYK. By default Photoshop uses RGB colours. To change fro CMYK go along the Menubar , select the Image drop-down menu, select Mode then CMYK color.

This lesson can be downloaded in Word format.

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