How to use Photoshop?

In our first  practical lessons we have explored Photoshop and realized how interesting it is to change an image so easily and so effective in the same time! It is a great programm for sure!!

Adobe Photoshop is a graphic and picture editing tool. It enables the user to alter, manipulate and create images either from existing photos or found images.

Photoshop CS2 is the package we use here.

It is very important to keep track on the layers! Otherwise it is very easy to make a mistake, so be careful:) There is one Background layer and every other layer comes on top of it. If you want to work on something particular, you have to be on the right layer, otherwise it would not work:)

We used the basic tools in Photoshop as:

"Spot Healing Brush Tool"

- it fixes most every blemish you klick on, it is very easy to use it, but you have to be careful not to klick too many times on one spot because it is hard to correct the mistake (it doesn't work every time to do it backwards). For example, I wanted to get rid of spots on a face around the nose and I have klicked so many times that I have deformed the nose and had to start again. Although, it is a nice and very easy tool to use!

"Clone Stamp Tool"

- this tool makes a perfect copy of a highlighted part of the image. E.g. if you need some hair on a spot, you just need to use the clone stamp tool and to put it on the right spot or you could copy different faces or eyes and put them on the picture. It is also very easy to use and it is very useful for creating interesting effects.

"The Lasso Tool"

- The Lasso Tool is one of the most useful of tools when it comes to selecting part of an image. It can be used to outline an image from a picture almost perfect and then to be pasted on other picture. I have used it to select a robot and to put it on Cloverfield poster, so it looks like the robot comes from the water.

"The Marquee Tool"

- cuts box shapes around a part of the image, it is again very easy to use this tool and it helps us to copy images;

With every tool you can use different size of a brush, it is better to choose a smaller size, so you cannot damage fine details of the picture.

We have created  a shadow of an object or a person, which I personally found a little bit trickier than the other tools. In addition, we have learnt how to blur images and soften hard edges. To manipulate the light and in order to match the calours of the copied image onto the background image, we needed to change the contrast, which was very helpful to make both pictures more believable.

I enjoyed using Photoshop very much, it was amazing to realize how movie posters or adverts are made! I think that using Photoshop is not hard, but it takes practise to get used to the tools, layers etc.

Photoshop is absolutely needed in creating an image of a Media Product, that could be a movie poster, advertisement for clothes, cosmetics etc. Every product need to be presented in a way that the customer gets interested in that product. Photoshop helps to create that perfect image and to present a Media Product in the best possible way.  

This is a Cloverfield poster which I photoshoped and this was my first photoshop poster. I have used the Lasso Tool to take the robot from another poster and use it for the Cloverfield one. The robot was too big for the poster, so I changed its size. In addition, I added the shadow, so it looks more believable. The colours have matched, therefore I did not need to change them.