The news of this little freebie has been making the rounds so I thought I would share it here as well. Thus is the way of all things viral.

Sitepoint is offering a copy of their book “The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques” as a free download in PDF format.

According to their site:

It’s brimming with tried and tested real-world Photoshop solutions that will add impact to your next web design project. If you’ve ever been stuck for inspiration, have puzzled over just how to create a shiny aqua-style button, or wanted to create that seamlessly tiling background image you saw on a site recently, you need download this book.

The giveaway is sponsored by 99 Designs and expires in 22 days!!

Click here to go to their site.

david

You can use a displacement map to make a graphic follow every contour or corner of an underlying texture or shape, such as a flag or cloth.

Note: This tutorial uses CS3 menus and assumes you possess some working knowledge of photoshop including using channels and layers.

You can follow along with your own images or use the texture and logo I supply here.

Download Assets (2.3MB)

Adobe Photoshop CS4 – Full Adobe Photoshop CS4

STEP 1: YOUR TEXTURE
Open the file silverpeak.psd, turn off the LOGO layer, select the CLOTH layer and ensure you are in RGB mode. Click on the CHANNELS palette. Choose the channel with the most contrast and click on it. I chose the RED channel.

You now need to “duplicate channel” in order to create a new document, which will be your “displacement map”. In your channels palette, with the RED channel selected, go to the drop-down menu and click “duplicate channel”.

Under “Destination / Document”, choose NEW. Click the OK button.

You now have a new document. You can choose at this time to increase the contrast with your curves (see image) and apply a slight Gaussian Blur to it in order to smooth things out. How much Gaussian blur you use will depend on your image resolution and the amount of texture in it. The higher the resolution the more blur you need to have any effect. Please be sparing, for this tutorial use a 1.0 pixel blur.

optional curves settings to increase contrast

Save your document as displacementmap.psd and close it.

STEP 2: YOUR LOGO
Now, return to the original silverpeak.psd document, turn on the logo layer and click on the RGB Channel at the top of the palette to ensure all channels are selected.

ALTERNATE CONTENT: TEXT
If you want to use text on your displacement map you need to rasterize it. To do this go to the menu LAYER / RASTERIZE or right click on your type later and choose “rasterize layer” from the menu.

STEP 3: DISTORT
With your logo layer selected, go to the following menu FILTER / DISTORT / DISPLACE. Use the settings as you see in the image below. Click OK.

You will now have to find your file displacementmap.psd. Navigate to it and click OPEN.

Your artwork is now distorted to fit the underlying texture and folds.

If you don’t like the effect, click UNDO and you can play with the vertical and horizontal settings to suit your creative… I have used Horizontal and Vertical Scale up to 10.

STEP 4: BLEND
You can now use different layer styles and blending modes to further refine your image.

You can choose OVERLAY, or indeed experiment with them all, to see the colour come through a bit more. If your texture is very rough you can also add shadow layer effects to your logo too add more depth. Experiment.

Logo with OVERLAY at 100% opacity selected.

However, I like to use masks to keep the white of the logo and further blend it with the folds.

Turn off your LOGO layer so that you only see the background. go to CHANNELS mode and again select the RED channel. COMMAND – CLICK that channel to create a selection.

Click on the RGB Channel at the top of the palette to activate all channels again and return to the LAYERS view. Turn on your LOGO layer and click on the “Add Layer Mask” button at the bottom of the palette.

Your layer should now look like this in NORMAL blend mode.

Select the layer and go to the drop-down menu and DUPLICATE LAYER, call the duplicate “screen layer” and choose SCREEN, 100% for the blend.

Select the original LOGO layer and set it’s blending to SOFT LIGHT at 50% opacity. Then, duplicate the LOGO layer, calling the new layer “lighter layer” and selecting it change the blend mode to LIGHTER COLOUR at 100% opacity.

You can experiment further by changing the contrast or opacity of any of the layer masks, adding more blended layers or other effects. It’s up to you.

Your final image for this tutorial should look like this now… and this is where we’re done!

david

What you may find is that two images were pasted together in a collage that both had “black” backgrounds but that they were made up of different formulas…ie one background would be 100K and another may be 30c30m30y100K… on screen they might match but when ink hits paper this can turn into a disastrous print job with the 100K black seeming like a grey next to the richer black.

The solution to spotting this problem can be found in your channels.

Switch to channels view and look at your image background in each of the CMYK or RGB channels. If the colour mixes of your supposedly solid colour background do not match they will quickly show up here (see sample below).

Then, simply go back to your layers and adjust your colours.

Finally: You may also be interested in my post on Ink Density.

david

This TIP is one of my most used, and has saved me hours of computer time.

If you have to do the same thing to a great number of files use your ACTIONS palette to record the changes and then BATCH process either an entire folder of images the same way or just one at a time. Either way it’s a great time saver that I have used for watermarking, resizing, adding effects or whatever to large or small groups of images at the same time or – since the action is saved – at a later date. You can even export the actions to transfer to other computers.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE:
You have thirty CMYK EPS files and you need to change to thirty 800-Pixel wide RGB JPEG files.

Step One:
Open you ACTIONS Palette (Option/F9 or Window > Actions)

Open one file and select “New Action” from the palette options… name it “800 Pixel RGB” and click “Record”

Perform the following steps on your image:
a) convert to RGB
b) change image size to 72pixels/inch and 800 Pixels wide.
b) go to File > Save As > JPEG
c) Close

Stop recording (click the square button at the bottom of the Actions Palette).
Your actions palette should now look like this:

You can now delete your new JPEG file as the BATCH processing will create another.

Step Two:
In Photoshop choose the menus:
FILE > AUTOMATE > BATCH
Set up your options like the following image, all you need to do for yourself is to choose your source and destination folders.

Notes Re Options:
1) Always Click “Override Action “Save As” Commands” This allows you to keep the original filename of the image with only the new .jpg extension and gives you the option of adding a notation to the filename as I have done here with “_800pix”.
2) If you have an “Open” command in your recording you will need to click “Override action “Open” Commands”
3) Never use the same folder as your source and destination. Use separate folders to keep things organised and to avoid over wrighting files.
4) The destination folder can only be within (but not the same as) the root folder if you do NOT click “Include All Subfolders”.

Your batch dialogue should look like this:

david

You need to have a target skintone in order to achieve predictable results when the images print.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Standard – Upgrade Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Standard

SKINTONES BY THE NUMBERS
You can only go so far adjusting skin tones visually, your screen, ambient light and your skills all play a role in the result. BUT, if you adjust your skintones by the numbers… ie to targetted values, you will have more control and more predictable results.

USING THE CHART
The chart below gives tonal targets for skin MID-TONES. Put your eye dropper over an area in your image, like the cheek, that is neither in shadow nor in bright light and note the RGB or CMYK values. Compare those colour values with the chart below and using it as a guide only, correct your colours, one channel at a time, using Photoshop’s Curves (Menu: Image/Adjustments/Curves).

BUT, the question remains, “Should you adjust in RGB or CMYK mode?”

STEP 1: Start in RGB mode
RGB mode has more colour range than CMYK, so your adjustments can be more refined. Do your visual correction in RGB, make the image look pleasing to you on screen, then use the RGB colour targets in the chart below to further refine your adjustments. If you are staying in RGB mode then you are done, otherwise it is time to switch to CMYK.

STEP 2: Switch to CMYK (if going to press)
Make your final tone adjustments in CMYK mode – again, one channel at a time – to your Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black channels.

COLOUR CHART
The colour chart below is an RGB image representing the mid-tone skin values in the table above. Please keep in mind through all of this that interpreting skintones is often subjective, there is a wide range of skintones in the people around us and it would not hurt to start collecting your own samples like the chart below. Use these numbers as a starting point and keep refining your own charts and you will be one step closer to predictable results every time.

click to download:

david

Recommended total ink densities change depending on the type of printing your project will be put through so it is important to keep track of this, especially when creating a composite image in Photoshop® or a large black background in InDesign® or Illustrator®.

Following are some guildelines for ink densities relative to how the image will be printed.
The ranges described below are ideal densities for these media:

Newsprint – 240 to 260

Web Offset Printing – 290
Web offset printing is used for very large runs of things like Magazines…so a magazine ad would require this density unless otherwise specified.

Sheetfed and Digital – 290 to 340
Digital has the most flexibility for densities and could go beyond 340, but by using these guidelines your file could also be used for sheetfed without having to create yet another file.

WHAT IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW IT WILL BE PRINTED?
When you are not sure how it will be printed choose 290. I have found from experience that this is the best generic density for as many print media as possible.

david