Erase to Saved

Step 1 Heres our image of a skier, carefully knocked out of the background. Nice bright colors, but she doesnt look as if shes going fast enough for us.

Step 4 Now start cloning in a sharp, clean image. The pressuresensitive pen lets you control the exact amount of blursimply press hard for a sharp image, and lighter as you go back to feather in the blurred image.

Step 2 Photoshops Motion Blur filter is applied, 20 pixels of blur and at an angle of 15 degrees.

Step 5 Now that you have the skier exactly the way you wantzipping by, not a freeze-framesimply copy and paste her into a snowy background.

Step 3 Unfortunately, Motion Blur blurs the image in two directions instead of zipping down a mountain, it looks like were shaking our head as she goes by. But dont worry- pick up the clone tool, and set it to clone from saved.

2003 Wacom Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Gaussian Blur and the History Brush

Step 1 We want to take Number 85 here and focus attention on him-- make him come out off the pack, so to speak. To start, click on the icon to add a new layer.

Step 5 Flatten the image, and then take a snapshot for the History palette to use. Title it Unblurred--were going to use this snapshot to paint back to in a bit.

Step 2 Now sample some browns with the eyedropper tool. Choose a lighter brown and a darker, almost blackish brown to get the effect of a dirty sepia tone.

Step 6 Use a light Gaussian blur to make the image recede a bit. (You can also try the radial blur for another cool effect.)

Step 3 Use the Render Clouds filter, and hold the shift key down to get more contrast. (We could have simply filled in the layer with one color of brown, but I like the organicness of the Render Clouds filter for this type of effect).

Step 4 Set the blend mode of the cloud layer to Color. (If youre a key command junkie, hit shift-option-c to do this from the keyboard). Then turn your Intuos Pen over and start scrubbing out the sepia with the pressure-sensitive eraser. The eraser gives you the control to erase as much or as little of the layer as you want, simply by pressing harder to erase more, or softer for a gentle touch.

Step 7 Now use the History brush to paint back in the unblurred Number 85. Make sure Size and Opacity are turned on to get the full benefit of the Intuos Pens 1,024 levels of pressure. Press harder near the right side of the motorcyclist to get a sharp clean image; and press lighter as you go to the left to softly blend into the blurred image.

Step 8 All the excitement of the real thing, with none of the mess.

2003 Wacom Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Big Fish Magic

Step 4: This looks pretty good-- Ill hit the Return key to make it happen.

Step 1: Heres a great tip when you want to make your daughters fish a little bigger than normal. Im doing this in Photoshop LE on a Mac, but its the same for a PC.

Step 5: One last finishing touch-- use the pressure sensitive Smudge tool to gently smooth the edges to give it a realistic look. By the way, this tip works if its Dads fish thats a little too small, as well...

Step 2: First off, lets select the fish. I used the Lasso tool-- its a quick and easy way to select a simple object, especially with the Wacom pen. A quick tip-hold down the option or alt key to select straight lines, and let up on it for curves.

Step 3: Once you have your fish selected, use Edit-- Transform-Scale. Click, hold and drag on one of the corner handles to scale it to the size you need. In this case, Im going for the Look, I caught a shark! size. Holding down the Shift key while you do this keeps its size uniform.

2001 Wacom Technology Corporation. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Create Cool Edges

Step 1 Heres a great photo of New York City--but Id like to give it a cool edge treatment. Ill start by double-clicking on the layer so its not a background layer, and then add a layer mask by clicking on the Layer Mask icon.

Step 5 Heres a piece of art I created in another tip--this time lets give it a painterly edge.

Step 2 One of the things I really like about Photoshop 6 is the new natural media brushes. Im using a 39 pixel spatter brush to paint in my layer mask.

Step 6 Start the same way as with the New York photo, doubleclicking and creating a layer mask. This time, I selected a soft airbrush set to size and opacity to paint a rough border in my layer mask.

Step 3 I have the brush set to have the pressure of my Wacom pen affect the size only--I want to keep it at 100% opacity. This way I get a natural looking stroke with enough variation to make it look interesting.

Step 7 After I had a pretty good layer mask, I selected the layer mask and ran the Spatter... filter from the Brush Strokes menu. Play with the settings a bit--theres some cool things you can do with it.

Step 4 Add a little drop shadow from the Layer Effects drop down menu, and Im done. Ready for a slightly different effect?

Step 8 And there you go--I added an Inner Glow set to Multiply from the Layer Effects menu to bring out a little of the painterly effect.

2003 Wacom Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Clean-up an Image

Step 1 Trunk full of old photos... and suddenly its time for a real world try at removing dust and scratches. Luckily, Photoshop has a great way to do this...

Step 4 ... I have a blurred image of the original-- but with no blotches. Im going to use the History brush to paint out the scratches, so I need to make a snapshot-- click on the little triangle at the top of the History palette to take a snapshot.

Step 2 First of all, use the Dust and Scratches filter-- Im using the large dark splotch on the cheek as my guide.

Step 5 Heres the important part-tap on the original image (in this case, Black Hat.jpg). Then, set the source as Snapshot 1 by clicking in the little box to the left of the Snapshot 1 icon. Now, paint gently over the splotches and scratches with the History Brush-- the Wacom pressure sensitive pen gives you the control to get as much or as little as you want.

Step 3 On this image, 6 pixels seems about right, so I hit OK and...

Step 6 And here you go-- cleaned up and ready for the public again

2003 Wacom Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Improve Old Photos

Step 1 If youre like me, you probably have a box full of old photos. This photo, and how to improve it, is courtesy of Wacoms own Bill Lindsay. (The young lady in the middle, by the way, is Bill s mother).

Step 4 You wont notice any change-the neutral color doesnt affect anything. But paint in the layer with black, and watch the over-exposed city buildings come out of the haze

Step 2 We want to change the look of the pixels without actually changing the pixels until were ready. Start by creating a new layer from the triangle in the Layers palette.

Step 5 ...and then paint in the underexposed brickwork with white, and watch the hidden details come out. This is one of my favorite things to show off a tablet with, as its so cool to watch this happen live.

Step 3 Heres the tricky part--make your new layer with Soft Light mode, and fill it with Soft Light neutral color (50%gray).

Step 6 And there you goand thanks again to Bill and, most importantly, Bills mom!

2003 Wacom Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Step 4 Finish by lightly softening the higlight using Photoshop LE's Blur tool. Again, turn on "Opacity" in the "Options" palette to make sure you get maximum control of the Blur tool and don't overdo it.

Step 5 Next, let's take care of this "bad tassle-day" by using Photoshop LE's Stamp tool. First, I'll set set the anchor point (the place in the image that the Stamp tool is going to copy pixels from) by holding down the "Alt" key ("Command" key on the Mac) and clicking. Then, I simply paint away the "bad" tassle strands, using the Wacom pen's pressuresensitivity to smoothly blend in the background.

Step 1 First, let's open an image with the dreaded red eye problem. This particular graduation shot not only has a red eye problem, but also a little "tassle fly-away" issue. We'll take care of both quickly and easily by using Photoshop LE's pressure- sensitive brush tools and, of course, a Wacom tablet.

Step 2 To get the red out, select a small Airbrush and 100% black from the color palette. Turn on "Opacity" in the "Options" palette to take advantage of the Wacom pen's pressure- sensitivity, then lightly airbrush the red out.

Step 6 Much better! Ready to be e-mailed to the girlfriend and grandparents!

Step 3 Painting the red out of his retina flattened his eye a bit, so now let's put that "twinkle" back into his eyes. Choose a smaller airbrush (I'm using the smallest one in the Brushes palette) and white from the color palette and lightly paint a little glint of light back into his eyes.
2001 Wacom Technology Corporation. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Layer Mask and Rubber Stamp Tool

Step 1 To start the mane event, lets do a quick drag-and-drop of the face onto our lion.

Step 2 Next, click on the layer mask icon to create a layer mask for us to work on.

Step 5 Now were going to clone a little hair onto the guys face. Choose a small brush, and select Use All Layers and Size and Opacity to get the most out off the Intuos Pen. You can literally paint hair in by sampling from a nearby section of mane and painting on the face.

Step 3 A layer mask is a great way of erasing part of an image while maintaining control over how much you want to erase. Paint in the layer mask with black to erase, white to unerase. The Intuos Pens 1,024 levels of pressure-sensitivity give you the power to blend the two images subtly and cleanly.

Step 6 And heres one more reason why the Intuos Pen is on the top of the food chain, Photoshop-wise. Click Preserve Transparency on the face layer, and set the rubber stamp to Color and paint in the color of the lions body on the face. If you set your DuoSwitch for the option or alt key, you can sample with a gentle roll of the finger and release for smooth, easy cloning.

Step 4 Once you have the layer mask the way you want it, drag the layer mask to the trash can icon to delete the layer mask (click on the Apply button to apply the mask before deleting it.)

Step 7 Bert Lahr would be proud.

2003 Wacom Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

Beer Into Broccoli...

Step 1 You and your buddies sitting in the wading pool... but this photos for Grandma, and you dont want her to know you enjoy the occasional beer. Hmmmm... Photoshop and the wacom tablet to the rescue!

Step 4 Use the transform (commandt for Macs, cntrl-t for PC) to scale and rotate your broccoli to fit. Once you have it where you want it, hit return, bring your opacity back up to 100%, and then click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a layer mask.. Step 5 Heres where the Wacom pen earns its keep-- the pressure sensitive control you get over size and opacity with the airbrush tool gives you the exact layer mask you need. Press harder to erase more, lighter for a more transparent look.

Step 2 Lets replace the drinks with good, healthy broccoli! Grab a photo of broccoli, knock it out against the background and do a quick drag-and-drop into your photo.

Step 3 Lets get it ready for the magic-- dim the opacity to around 70% so we can see whats underneath when we scale it.

Step 6 And there you go-- all set to email to Grandmas house!

2001 Wacom Technology Corporation. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.