There are so many cool things you can do with Photoshop. I love messing around with that application probably more than any other. I wish I had time to teach you everything, but it just isn’t possible.

So it’s your turn to learn something new that interests you!

There are a LOT of great Photoshop tutorials online, both via Adobe and on the web and on YouTube. Your job is to pick 3 tutorials that teach you new skills and help you create things that you didn’t know before.

Remember that to get the most out of the tutorials, you should have HEADPHONES/EAR BUDS. (Remember the one thing you were supposed to bring for this class?)

You’ll pick a tutorial, learn a new technique or project, then create something using that idea and your own creativity. I do not want you to hand in the exact same photos/results as in the tutorial! I want you to take that idea or technique and apply it to something different and original. Ideally, you will come up with new ways of applying the techniques that you see in the tutorials. Use UNSPLASH if you can to find your photos. If you are going to use another source, make sure you choose GOOD QUALITY IMAGES!

Once you are finished a tutorial, you need to provide some information in a reflection. Most people just create a Word document and hand that in alongside the finished .psd Photoshop files.

Remember that in Photoshop, I ALWAYS expect/want to see a copy of the original, untouched photos! You should always be making a copy of every photo and leaving one copy untouched and turned off or hidden.

For each of your 3 chosen tutorials:

1) Provide a link to the tutorial you chose

2) Explain the techniques & tools used. Explain the major steps involved.

3) Explain what you LEARNED that was NEW TO YOU. If you didn’t learn anything new, you picked a bad tutorial!

4) Try to think of ways that you could use these new skills & techniques in Graphic Design. What kind of products could you create using this technique? How could you use those skills to help a potential customer?

I don’t want you to hand in the sample files. Most tutorials give you sample files and show you how to create the exact same picture described in the video/write up. I don’t need to see that. I need you to find YOUR OWN IMAGES and create something ORIGINAL and CREATIVE!

Take your time and do a good job! Remember what I always say, you can use Photoshop two different ways, but you have to choose:

You can do things well

or

You can do things quickly

You have to choose! You’ll always get better marks if you take your time and do something creative!

There are so many great Youtube channels with Photoshop tutorials! You probably want to look for ones that are fairly recent, not from years and years ago when Photoshop looked and worked differently!

Here are some great channels you may wish to use (but feel free to find your own. It would be very wise to ASK ME if a tutorial looks like one that will get you full marks!)

https://www.youtube.com/@PhotoshopTrainingChannel/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@LetsPS/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@NewWorldOps/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@BLTV_Photoshop/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@TutorialsJunction/videos

Samples:

Open Photoshop.

Your file should be called “Creature” and should be 8 inches by 10 inches OR 10 inches by 8 inches. Your resolution should be 300 pixels/Inch. I like a transparent background for this one.

As always, we should save the project right away. Go into the File menu and Save As… (NOTE: You only need to Save As… the FIRST time. After that, you just Save (Ctrl + S)

As always, save your work in your OneDrive folder. If you have a Graphic Tech folder or a folder for work for this class, you should use that. You should NOT put it in your hand-in folder until you are finished!

Make sure you are saving On your computer:

I like using the Essentials workspace

I always like to have my Layers panel open, especially for this project:

The first job is to place the photo of the person you are working with. In Photoshop, it’s best to choose Place Embedded so all of your files are together:

You can start with whatever photo/person you like, but make sure it is HIGH QUALITY.

You may wish to start from a photo of me, which you can find HERE

or you could just go to UNSPLASH and find your own photo

The photo will pop onto the background and look something like this:

You do NOT need to fill the entire background (yet), so just hit Enter on your keyboard or click the checkmark near the top of the window:

You need to remove your Subject from the background. The simplest way is to go to the Select menu and choose Subject:

You should see a flashing line appear around whatever you’ve selected. It’s often called the “dancing ants.”

If you need to refine your selection (it didn’t perfectly select the subject), you may need to use one of the other Selection Tools to either Add to Selection or Subtract from Selection. See the previous post about those tools HERE

Now what we’ve got is just the person selected, no background. We want to take the person and put it on a separate layer without the background. To do this, we need to go into the Layer menu and choose New then Layer via Copy (Ctrl + J)

If you look in your layers panel, you should now have a separate layer.

In Photoshop, you often end up with a lot of layers, and sometimes it can get really confusing figuring out which layer is which. For this reason, I want you to get in the habit of renaming your layers as you add them. To change a layer’s name, all you have to do is double click on  it in the Layers panel and then type in a new name.

Name your bottom layer “Original” and the new one “cutout”

You can turn off a layer so that you can’t see it by clicking the eyeball icon next to the layer. Do this with your “original” layer so you can see your cutout.

The next fun thing to do is to change your character’s skin colour.  For this one, we’ll make sure the Quick Selection Tool is activated

That tool isn’t always as precise as we’d like, but it lives up to its name as a Quick Selection Tool. Just go draw on the face:

You should see the Dancing Ants around the whole face. If not, or if you select too much, you may need to adjust by switching your tool to either Add to Selection (if you miss a piece and want to add on – like if your arms or hands are showing in the photo and you want to add those on)

Or you can use Subtract from Selection if it grabs too much. I like to remove my hair, eyes, and lips from the selection with this:

I also like to remove my mouth from the selection and leave that alone.

 

If that tool isn’t working well for you (it doesn’t really do a good job for everyone), you might want to switch to the Magic Wand Tool

The Magic Wand Tool selects an area of a similar colour. You can control how many shades of that colour you select at once by adjusting the “Tolerance” slider. For my skin, we’ve found that a number around 67-70 works well.

Now all you have to do is click on my face to select just my skin.

If your number is too high, you’ll select too much. If it’s too low, you won’t select enough. No matter what you choose, you’ll likely have to fix up a few areas, like for example my many chins.

Here it might help to zoom in a bit to get a closer look.

Some of the most useful shortcuts I know are:

• Ctrl – (control and the minus key (next to zero)) to zoom out
• Ctrl + (control and the plus key (next to backspace)) to zoom in
• Ctrl 0 (control and zero) to zoom out to see the whole image

You could also use the Zoom Tool (looks like a magnifying glass)

It can either zoom in or out, so make sure to select the right function.

With the Zoom Tool activated, just click on the area that you want to zoom in to.

There are a few selection tools that could help us here but we’ll stick with the Magic Wand Tool for now. It would be wise to turn down your tolerance for now though.

These selection tools can do 4 things. Start a new selection, add an area to an existing selection, subtract an area that you don’t really want selected, or merge selections.

You could also try the Quick Selection Tool

You may have to play with the size of your brush though

Depending on whether you want to ADD parts in that the initial selection missed or SUBTRACT things that shouldn’t be selected, you may need to adjust the buttons at the bottom.

I like to make sure that the eyes are not included (leave those alone)

 

Once you’ve perfected your selection, you may wish to zoom out. You can use the Zoom tool OR use the shortcut Ctrl + 0 (I use that one a lot)

Now it’s time to give your creature a new skin tone. Go into the Enhance menu, choose Adjust Color, and then Adjust Hue/Saturation (Ctrl + U)

Make sure that the new box that pops up isn’t blocking your creature’s face. Grab the top of the box and move it over so you can see the face.

Now basically you just play with those sliders and have some fun.

Hue changes the shade. Move it one way and the face should turn red/purple, the other way it turns green

The Saturation slider makes the face more or less colourful (it adds in or removes colour)

The Lightness slider does exactly what you’d expect. It makes it brighter or darker.

Please do NOT go crazy with any of the sliders. If you adjust any of them too much, you will lose detail and won’t be able to recognize the person any more.

The ones below look TERRIBLE:

Once you’ve got your sliders adjusted the way you like, click OK

Now we’re going to turn off that selection (those Dancing Ants.) To do that, we need to go into the Select menu and choose Deselect OR Ctrl + D

Now for the most fun part! Go into the Filter menu, choose Distort, then Liquify.

There are 3 tools that I really like, but feel free to play around with all of them and see what they do. The first (top) one is called Warp.

For all of them, you may have to experiment with different brush sizes. Warp looks better with a bigger brush, but don’t make it too big!

Once you have a decent brush size, click on an area that you want to stretch and pull on it!

It’s that simple. That’s a lot of fun, but again, don’t get carried away. We always want to at least recognize the person.

Another fun one is Pucker, which closes an area in

Again, experiment with your brush size

Click on an area and hold down your mouse to close that area in. THis works great on open eyes or mouths.

Bloat is the opposite. It works the same way, but expands an area. Again, great for eyes and mouths.

You can also twirl an area clockwise or counter clockwise. It just takes something and twists it either way.

If you get carried away, you can press Revert (try again) or Cancel (no thanks.) If you like your work, though, press OK!

Make sure you’re zoomed out (Ctrl + 0) and you have nothing selected (Ctrl + D)

Click on your original (background) layer

We’re going to put your creature into a new habitat. Figure out what type of environment might be suitable for this character.

I highly recommend a photo site called Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/)  There, you can download Creative Commons images that you can legally use in your projects. This one is great because you don’t always have to even give them credit for the photos, which works really well for projects like this.

If you wish to use another photo site, please use a Creative Commons site. You can find many on my website on the Links page, under Copyright Free Content.

If you go to Unsplash, all you have to do is search for whatever background you want. Keep it general. Things like “mountains,” “trees,” or something like that will give you good results, but something very specific (George Waters Middle School) will likely not show up.

Type in your search and look for a good image. If you find one, you just have to click the little downward arrow at the bottom of the photo to get it:

When you use someone else’s content, you’re usually supposed to give them credit. Most Creative Commons sites make this easy. Normally you’d follow the directions below, but we don’t really have anywhere to put the credit, so we’ll skip that step.

Make sure you Save your photo. It’ll likely go in your Downloads folder.

Now you just Place the image into your file in Photoshop.

Use the Move Tool to stretch it out and fill up the background

Rename your picure layer to represent what is on it:

You should also use the Move Tool to move your cutout layer into the best position on top of the new background.

If you want to, you could add some neat effects to your character as well.

On the bottom of your Photoshop window, look for Styles and click it.

This gives you a variety of effects that you can add. It opens on Bevels (which are neat rounded edges) but there are many others hiding underneath. My favorite for this part is Outer Glows:

This is a bit of a common (overused) one:

Try some others:

If you like the style but don’t like the colour, you can adjust it:

 

The last real thing that we have to do is figure out what this creature will be called. You’ll have to come up with a clever name for your new creation.

Switch to the HOrizontal Type Tool (looks like a T)

As with anything else, I always want you to make your own choices about how your text should look, so make sure you take your time and choose a font that looks good to you. Never just go with the font that the program recommends.

Choose a colour that makes sense with your background and creature.

I chose one that was close to the colour of my creature:

It doesn’t stand out very well yet and is somewhat hard to read.

Again, switch to Styles down at the bottom

And look at your various options for making your text look better. Feel free to play around with any of the options and see how they look. You can always Undo (Ctrl + Z) if you don’t like an effect.

The two I like most for Text are Stroke and Drop Shadow. Stroke creates an outline around your text, making it much easier to read:

See, much easier to read!

But maybe you don’t want it black or want to adjust the size, or something else. Click on the little wheel at the top right of that panel (right below Share)

Here you can adjust the colour, size, position, or kind of fade out the effect

Drop shadows also make your text stand out. It kind of raises the text off of the page and gives it a bit of a 3D effect:

And that’s pretty much it! Just check that everything looks good.

Open your Layers panel

And make sure that your layers are named properly. Make sure that there are no extra, unnecessary layers. If you want to get rid of a layer, just highlight it and press Backspace or Delete or press the little trash can above the layers.

 

When closing/saving your work, make sure that you save it in your OneDrive folder!

 

Once you’ve got all of that done, DROP IT OFF!

OneDrive login

Drop Off instructions

I have some videos that will show you how to do this but they are with a different version of the program. All of the same tools exist in our version, things just look a little different:
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Your next assignment will be to use the drawing and shape tools in Illustrator to outline a drawing, then create shapes and fill them in to colour your artwork.

You should definitely know how to use the Pen tool in order to do this correctly. Here’s a good overview/review:

Once you know how to use the Pen tool, you can watch this quick overview for a great demonstration of how to fill your outlines in:

The first step is to download simple line drawing art from the Internet and trace, then colour that. You should add some of your own elements in after that. So for example, you could download a photo or drawing of a person or character, then use the tools in Illustrator to draw that person or character, then ADD in a background and/or other elements.

When you are done, I should be able to see the original image on a layer that is turned off. You need to EMBED that image file!

When you go to PLACE your image file into Illustrator, turn OFF the Link option:

or choose EMBED on the Properties panel:

Although you don’t need to be able to cut this out later, I do need to see that you’ve coloured your design in properly. If you’re scribbling with the Pen tool to fill these in, you’re doing it WRONG. In order to create shapes that are easy to fill in, it might be wise to look back at the example of SUNNY THE SNOWMAN.

Some students will have more experience and will need less review, but EVERYONE should take the time to make sure that you are doing this correctly.

If you need help with your DRAWING, I recommend this set of tutorials

I HIGHLY recommend learning about the Shape builder Tool. I like THIS TUTORIAL

Here’s a very fast, but very effective tutorial that will take you through how to outline a drawing and colour it in

 

examples:

 

Here’s a little challenge for you. You should probably know something about logo design already. You’ve probably had to design one in this course previously. If you need some information about logo design or a good review, there is some good information HERE, in a set of instructions you might have seen before.

You should also know something about Illustrator and how to create illustrations in that application. You can find great tutorials in the program or go back to earlier projects HERE and HERE.

Assignment: Using Illustrator drawing tools AND text, create a logo. Here’s the twist. When you design a logo for a customer, you generally have to come up with a few different concepts so that the customer can have some choices. You will design THREE DIFFERENT logos. THREE. Each one should be unique.

You can either come up with one logo for 3 of the different ideas below, OR do three for one of these ideas/uses:

• Westwood Graphic Technology
• Never Alone Cancer Foundation
• AAA Basketball Provincials
• Westwood Commons

Think carefully about all of the elements you include. Your reflection this time will involve explaining WHY you chose the images, words, fonts, and colours that you did. You’ll also have to get feedback from your customer (ME!) and from your peers, and make changes if necessary.

It doesn’t really matter what size your document is for now, but for easy reference, I’ll make mine Letter sized (the size of a standard piece of paper), 8.5 x 11 inches

STUFF YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW (if not, get learning!):

• The difference between VECTOR and RASTER images,
• how to draw using various tools (ellipse, rectangle, line, polygon)
• How to “constrain” to draw perfect squares and circles
• How to round the corners of a shape
• How to use the Direct Selection tool to modify shapes
• How to use the pen or pencil tool to draw freehand
• Combining shapes with the Pathfinder or Shape Builder Tool
• Tracing raster images

If you already know how to use Illustrator, or if you think you can pick it up very quickly, this tutorial is very quick, but might be a good reminder/start: Combine shapes to build a logo.

Here’s another excellent tutorial on how to create a logo

If you need more information or help, I recommend looking in the Help menu!

Or go to YouTube or LinkedIn Learning.

Here are some good examples from previous students:

 

Make sure you have learned how to use Photoshop’s Selection Tools and Layers properly by following THESE INSTRUCTIONS before you attempt this assignment!

Your task is to take 4 or more images and create a composite image (which is just an image made up of multiple parts.) You should have fun and be creative with this one! Think of 3 parts/pieces that might go together, stick them in a new background, and you’ve got yourself a fun composite!

NOTE: I want to see an untouched copy of all of the images that you use! COPY pieces onto new layers as you PLACE images/Layers into your composite.

MAKE SURE YOU USE HIGH-QUALITY IMAGES! I HIGHLY recommend using Unsplash for this! Want to incorporate a picture of me for some reason? Get those HERE

Make sure you create a file that is the right size before you start:

Either Letter size (8.5 inches by 11 inches):

or if you want something bigger, you can use Tabloid (11 inches by 17 inches):

For this assignment, you CAN NOT USE AI! You must source images yourself and use SELECTION TOOLS to COPY elements on to new layers!

Example:

THIS odd creation:

is made up of all of these pieces:

Make sure you include an untouched copy of all of the images you use! You should also rename your layers!

My file’s layers look like this:

If you do this assignment any other way, you WILL LOSE MARKS!

 

examples:

I HIGHLY recommend beginning by completing a tutorial on Selection Tools, like THIS ONE. You can get to it from the Learn tab inside of Photoshop or by clicking THIS LINK. You can download the sample files from the HANDOUT FOLDER but you can use any photo to practice on!

THIS ONE is also good.

Find even more HERE!

Here are some fabulous photos that will work for this assignment: PORTRAITS

This one is clear and easy to work with IMG_1705.JPG:

Click Download, then Direct download

The photo will almost certainly end up in your Downloads folder

To open it in Photoshop, there are a couple of ways.

First, you could RIGHT CLICK on the photo and choose Open with, and then select Photoshop:

Or you could open Photoshop first:

Right on the Photoshop Home screen there’s an Open button

You could also open the File menu, then Open.

You’ll notice that things look a lot like they did in Illustrator and InDesign. Again there are Workspaces that you can choose from. I’m on Essentials:

Normally, the first step would always be to Save your work, but this is just a practice/demo, so I’m not even going to bother with this one. Feel free to Save your file if you wish.

Make sure your Layers panel is open (look at the bottom right of the window). At this point, you’ve got only one layer (Background)

We’ve spoken about Layers before, so you should be familiar with the concept, but think of them as papers piled on top of one another. You can have multiple Layers/papers and you can rearrange them in the pile however you wish, but remember that the top Layer may hide other layers below.

Also remember to select whatever layer you wish to work with! The selected layer will have a lighter grey box around it.

First off, Duplicate that Background layer. You should always keep a copy of the original, untouched photo in case you need to go back to it.

3 ways to do the next step:

Easy way: Ctrl + J

or

go into the Layer menu and New, then Duplicate Layer…

OR…

Go into the Layer menu and hover over New, then click Layer via Copy

Now you’ll have two layers,  the Background and Layer 1

You’ll notice that the Background layer is locked, so you can’t do anything with it at all. Click the lock and it will unlock

Rename your layers. Background should become original

and Layer 1 should become copy

We’ll just leave that original alone in case we mess something up, so turn the visibility off by clicking the eyeball

Make sure that top layer (copy) is selected so that we’re working with it.

We’re going to use the Quick Selection tool

If you don’t see it, your tool may look like the Object Selection Tool or the Magic Wand Tool. You can hold down your mouse button on any of those to switch between them.

Using that tool, we’ll draw on ME, NOT the wall around me to select it.

If you mess it up at all, press Ctrl + D to deselect and then try again.

Once you’ve got something selected, you are able to use the Move Tool to move that object somewhere else. Turn on the Move Tool (v)

Click on me anywhere inside the selection

And just slide it over to move!

You’ll notice that there’s now a hole in the original picture when you move the selection, though.

UNDO that move and put me back where I belong. (Ctrl + z)

Hopefully you still have me selected. Look for those Dancing Ants going around me.

We’ll look at a few fun ways of getting my ugly mug out of there.

The first thing that you could do is to fill that selection with a colour.

Go into the Edit menu and choose Fill…

Fill it with the Foreground Color

The Foreground Color is the one that’s in the top box you see near the bottom left of your window:

Right now I have black on top, so if I fill it with that, I get something like this:

Undo that (Ctrl + Z) and we’ll try something else

This time, let’s fill the selection with the same colour as the wall.

Switch to the Eyedropper Tool (I)

And click on the wall

You’ll notice that the foreground colour changes to be the colour of whatever pixel you clicked on

So we can try to remove me by filling the selection with that colour

Go into the Edit menu and choose Fill…

Fill it with the Foreground Color

Now you’ve got this:

As much as it looks like one colour, the wall is actually a bunch of shades of grey, so this doesn’t look very natural at all.

Again, let’s Undo that Fill (Ctrl + Z)

This time, we’ll go to the Edit menu and choose Fill…

And now choose Content-Aware. This is a cool tool that looks around your selection and tries to figure out what to fill it with.

Or just choose the Content-Aware Fill option from the Edit menu

This time, you get a much more natural looking fill

However, when you turn the selection off (Ctrl + D), you can still see the outline of me:

Let’s Undo again (Ctrl + Z)

This time, let’s select just a tiny bit more to get rid of that outline.

Go into the Select menu and choose Modify, then Expand

You don’t really have to expand it by much. 10 pixels should do:

Now try to fill the selection again

Make sure it’s Content-Aware

And that looks a lot better.

Undo (Ctrl + Z), Deselect (Ctrl + D) and let’s try something else.

Let’s spend some time with the Magic Wand Tool.

There are 4 options with this tool (and most selection tools), New, Add, Subtract, and that other one that I never ever use and can never remember the name of…

If you take the wand and click on the wall, it looks for areas of a similar colour. Again, the wall is not one shade of grey, so it doesn’t select everything. In this case, it doesn’t even select enough of the wall.

Deselect (Ctrl + Z)

The Tolerance setting kind of helps us to adjust how many shades of the colour the tool will select at once. Try increasing the number to 100.

Click on the wall again and you’ll see that it actually selects too much now. It’s grabbing my face as well.

Deselect (Ctrl + D)

and bump the Tolerance down a bit:

This time when we click on the wall, it selects just the wall and nothing else, which is perfect.

Deselect (Ctrl + D)

This time we’ll switch tools and select the Rectangular Marquee Tool

Click on the wall and drag out a box roughly the size of my big fat head

Make a new Layer Via Copy (Ctrl + J)

You’ll see that you now have a new layer with just a box of wall on it

Switch to the Move Tool (v)

Grab this selection and move it. It’s like patching a hole in the wall with another section of wall.

Kind of cool, but not entirely useful because it’s the wrong shape.

Switch back to the Quick Selection Tool (w) and just select my massive head:

Switch back to the Rectangular Marquee Tool:

Click inside of the selection and move the Dancing Ants to a spot on the wall:

Again we’re going to make a New Layer Via Copy (Ctrl + J)

Again we’ve got a new layer

Again click on the selection and move it

This time try to put the patch over my head.

A great improvement!

Deselect (Ctrl + D) and you’ll see that it looks pretty good

Undo (Ctrl + Z)

Deselect (Ctrl + D)

This time we’ll switch to the Clone Stamp Tool

You might have to play with your brush size a bit here. I chose 100

What the Clone Stamp does is it copies an area from one location and paints it into a new one.

To use the tool, you have to set where you want to copy from. Put your cursor over my cheek

Press Alt and click to set the copy point.

Then go click and paint over another area (like my eye.) You’ll see that it’s copying whatever the little crosshairs (+) touches into the circle. In this case, I let the crosshairs go over my nose a bit, so it started drawing me a new nose.

Have some fun with that tool for sure. It takes some practice to get the hang of it because you have to paint with little strokes (just do a bit at a time) and you have to go and set your copy point over and over again (go to a new area and press Alt then click)

Undo (Ctrl + Z) as many times as you need to restore my face (or just leave it)

Ctrl + D to deselect

One more tool that’s pretty fun is the Content-Aware Move Tool

Make sure you’re on New or Add to selection

Draw a circle completely around me and then click and move it over

You’ll see that I’m magically moved over and the previous spot is patched at the same time! Cool, huh?

Play around and make sure that you have the hang of those tools. You’ll need a good grasp of them for the next assignment, which I’m not going to show you how to do…