Photoshop CS2 workflow tutorial

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL
BY DAVID PASTERN
I use Adobe Photoshop CS2; most of this tutorial should be similar for Photoshop CS I suspect. I would highly recommend Scott Kelbys The Photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers its a most excellent read and I firmly believe itll help you both become a better Photoshop user, and more confident in your abilities in the realm of digital image editing. Much of what I have learned is from this book. This tutorial is written with Microsoft Windows XP professional in mind as well as the Windows version of Photoshop CS2. The first thing is to set up Photoshops Auto Colour to be more accurate. This will probably work well for 95% of your images from my experience. This is detailed in Kelbys book on pages 177-179. Ill guide you through this process in this tutorial. The first thing that Id highly recommend that you do, although we wont actually use it in this tutorial, is to set up accurate auto colour. This step is optional, but can be sometimes be handy in replacing the manual colour balancing steps via the thresholds/curves technique described below if youre in a hurry. Its not quite as accurate as the manual way.

SETTING UP ACCURATE AUTO COLOUR

The first thing to do is to bring up the Levels dialog box. To do this, press Control + L for a PC, or Command + L for a Mac. You will see the following window:

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Click on the Options button. Youll now see the follow window:

Make sure to select both Find Dark & Light Colours and Snap Neutral Midtones. In the Target Colours && Clipping section you will see Three options: Shadows Midtones Highlights We will need to click on each of these options individually and enter in our settings. Lets start with clicking on Shadows you should see the following window:

You want to enter in the value of 20 for the R, G & B sections and then click the OK button. Similarly, you will want to click on the Midtones and Highlights options. For Midtones you will want to enter in the value of 133 for the R, G & B sections, and for the Highlights you will

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want to enter in the value of 244 for the R, G & B sections. When you are done, you will want to tick the Save as defaults checkbox and then click the OK button. We are done! With the auto colour set to our custom settings for increased accuracy, we can now proceed with the rest of the tutorial.

TUTORIAL
The first thing that we need to do is open the image in Photoshop CS2 and I then get rid of any dust spots, etc. I use the spot healing tool, the clone tool, and sometimes even the patch tool, depending on the image. I usually select the zoom tool, and then click on the Fit Screen button, followed by the Actual Pixels button. This gives you a larger working area on the main image canvas, making it easier to de-spot the image, with less having to drag the zoomed area around the navigator window. For most dust spots, the spot healing tool does just fine. Remember, you can change the size of the brush by using the [ and ] keys on your keyboard. For large areas where Ive cloned, Ill usually do a rough selection with the lasso tool, feather it (usually around 30 pixels), and then add around 1% Gaussian blur, followed by 0.3% noise. I find that this helps make the cloned area look a bit more natural. Feel free to experiment with the amount of blur and noise, depending on the image etc.

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Once youve done all of this, you can deselect the area by pressing the CTL and D keys on your keyboard.

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This is where the fun begins! Our first real step is to colour balance the image. I do this by using a Thresholds layer and curves as per page 152 of Scott Kelby's book. A tip - I find it's more accurate to zoom into the very first black dot or white section and mark them with the colour sample tool. I do this for both the darkest and lightest sections of the image. Once you have the highlight/darkest sections marked, youre half way there!

Default look of the threshold tool note the triangular pointer is centred. We will adjust this shortly, but for now, just take note of what it looks like by default.

When you select the threshold tool, your image will change, and will look roughly like the image below:

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Dont be alarmed by this, its normal. Now, drag this triangular marker all the way to the left. The threshold tool will look like the image below:

The image canvas will probably be White now. What you want to do is to now slide the triangular marker slowly back in towards the first black section of the histogram. You can use the mouse for this, but I dont recommend it, as its not very accurate from my experience. You are much better to use the up/down cursor keys on your keyboard. Drag the marker in until you see your very first Black dot on the main canvas. When you have done this, you can click on the OK button to close the threshold tool for now. We will now use the colour sampler tool to select this black dot.

The shortcut keys for cycling through this group of tools and selecting the colour sample tool are Shift + I. You will see the cursor in Photoshop change accordingly. When youve selected the colour sampler tool, you can either click on the black dot to mark it, or, as I said earlier, zoom in and click on it. I find zooming in is much more accurate. I usually zoom into actual size, but sometimes you will need to zoom in even tighter. When youve marked the darkest part of the image, you can repeat this process to select the lightest part. Double click on the Threshold layer in the layers palette. This will bring up the Threshold tool again. Drag the triangular marker all the way to the right. Now, you can slowly drag the marker back in towards the centre by using the down cursor key on your keyboard until you see the first White dot on the main Photoshop canvas. Then simply click the OK button and use the colour sampler tool to mark it. Again, use the zoom tool as needed. Another tip if you dont mark the spots quite properly the first time, you can use the Undo option (shortcut keys are CTL & Z) to undo it and try again. When youve done this, youll note that both spots are now marked:

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OK, now thats the halfway point reached. Do not delete the Threshold layer, we still need it. Our next step is to mark our mid tone point. You can try and do this by eye, or do it via a method that Ill show you below. We are going to create a new layer, by clicking on the create new layer button at the bottom of the layers palette.

You will now have a new layer added to the top of your layer stack. We now need to fill this with 50% grey. Make sure that the new layer is selected. Hold the Shift button down and press the F5 button on your keyboard. This will bring up the Fill window:

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Make sure to change your settings to match the image above, otherwise this step will NOT work correctly. The new layer will now be filled with grey. Our next step is to change the blending mode from Normal to Difference.

Now, the trick is to drag the new layer (called Layer 1) below the Threshold layer, but above the Background layer. Your layer stack should look similar to this:

Note that the Layer 1 is still selected, and the blend mode is now showing Difference. Now, simply double click on the Threshold layer to bring up the Threshold tool again. It will probably look similar to this:

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Note that the triangular marker is all the way to the right. Drag it all the way to the left. Now, slowly drag it towards the left hand edge of the histogram, until you start to see some Black sections on the Photoshop canvas. I usually get a small amount of Black showing.

I then use the colour sampler tool to select the mid tone area. Once youve done this, you can delete both Layer 1 and the Threshold layer, as we no longer need them. Now well actually apply our selections to a Curve layer to help balance the image. If youve zoomed in to mark any of the spots, zoom in first. Make sure you can see the selection in the Photoshop canvas. I usually do the darkest section first, then the lightest, and then the mid tone. To make our changes, you now need to open up a Curves adjustment layer.

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The Curves tool looks like this:

You will notice the three pickers near the bottom Right hand corner. From left to right, dark, mid tone and highlight. Use the droppers to select the corresponding marks on the Photoshop canvas. An example image below illustrates the process:

Note: You cannot move to new parts of the image whilst the Curves tool is open. Once youve marked the darkest section of the image, click the OK button. You are now free to move around the image and select the lightest marker. Double click on the curves layer in the layers palette to bring up the curve tool again. Now select the lightest picker, and then use it to mark the corresponding marker on the Photoshop canvas. Repeat this process to mark the mid tone selection. Once done, click the OK button. You should have noticed the image change appropriately. In most cases, this technique works wonders, and removes unwanted colour casts, correctly balancing the image. Sometimes, though, it will not work, and you might end up with a slight colour cast. Dont panic, there is a way to fix this as well.

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If there's a slight colour cast from earlier steps, I usually add a colour balance adjustment layer. Before we go through this process, I would like to mention that I have my monitor calibrated now after recently buying a Pantone Huey Pro, so that it's pretty accurate. This allows me to accurately gauge colours in the image, and hence any potential unwanted colour casts. I also have the camera set to Adobe RGB, and my working space in Photoshop is set to Adobe RGB as well. Im using Adobe RGB because it offers a wider colour gamut over the sRGB workspace. You don't have to do any of this, just as long as your monitor is reasonably set up by eye (for example using Adobe Gamma), and you're shooting sRGB, you should be mostly OK for web based image displays. Since I'm trying to work on making my images both more accurate, and consistent, colour management has become an important part of my workflow. I would strongly suggest that you consider purchasing some form of hardware calibrator for your monitor. Your images will improve. Anyways, that out of the way, Ill walk you through adding an adjustment layer. You will want to click on the create new fill or adjustment button at the bottom of your layers palette and select Colour Balance from the menu:

The Colour balance tool looks like:

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I usually leave the Tone Balance option set to Midtones, and simply adjust the corresponding slider as appropriate. I make all adjustments by eye. You usually dont need to make too drastic an adjustment, just keep an eye on the screen, when it looks right, it usually is. Once this is done, I flatten the image (Layer > Flatten Image), ready for the next step. Now, this next step is optional for most images I dont do it as I find that it generally makes the image too contrasty and dark. Use as you feel appropriate. Basically, Ill add a Levels adjustment layer:

You will now have the Levels tool showing:

Note that the Channel is set to RGB by default. You can adjust the RGB layer, but I prefer to adjust each layer separately.

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Select Red from the drop down menu, instead of RGB. You should see something similar to this:

You will notice the histogram, and where it starts and finishes, etc. You will also note that there are 3 triangular markers Black, Grey and White. As you can probably imagine, they represent the dark, mid tone and highlight points. I usually dont touch the mid tone marker, but I do make adjustments to the Black and White markers. You can simply grab them with your mouse and drag them along until you reach the start (or edge) of the histogram. As an example, with the above histogram, my White point needs no adjustment it goes all the way to the right hand edge of the histogram window (i.e. clipping in the brightest sections of the Reds). However, the Black marker can be dragged in slightly. After youve made the adjustment, the Red channel would look something like this:

Repeat this process for the Blue and Green channels. When done, click on the OK button. Thats it. Were done with this stage of the workflow. Remember, this stage is optional, most of the time I dont use this step. As you get a feel for things, youll know when to use it. When done, flatten the layers, so that you are ready for the next stage of my workflow.

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The next step in my workflow is to add some contrast to the image. I don't do it via the traditional Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer, well not quite. I start by duplicating the layer (the shortcut keyboard command is CTL + J). I then select the duplicated layer (it should be called Layer 1) and desaturate it (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate). I then invert the image (Image > Adjustments > Invert). I then apply a Gaussian blur of 10.5% to this adjustment layer.

The next thing is to change the blending mode for this layer from Normal to Overlay. I then change the Opacity to 25% (seems to be a value that works well for most images). You can adjust this to suit of course. It should look like the image below:

Once this is done, I do add a separate Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer, usually with contrast set to +3. Again you can vary this if you think you need to.

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Once this is done, I again, flatten the image. The next stage of my workflow is to adjust the Hue/Saturation of the image. Again, I do not use a standard Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. I start by duplicating the layer (the shortcut keyboard command is CTL + J). I then select the duplicated layer (it should be called Layer 1) and apply a Gaussian blur of 3% to this adjustment layer. The next thing is to change the blending mode for this layer from Normal to Colour. You do NOT need to change the opacity of this layer, leave it at 100%. It should look like the image below:

Now, you can add a standard Hue/Saturation adjustment layer:

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I typically only adjust the Saturation slider for the Master channel. On the odd occasion, I will select one of the other channels as appropriate, and make any necessary adjustments. Most times, the Master channel will be the only thing youll adjust. I again adjust by eye, if it looks right on screen, it usually is. A word of warning dont overdo saturation, or youll block the colour. Ill show you an example of what I mean by a blocked colour below:

Unblocked Greens

Blocked Greens See how it looks clumpy? I usually adjust the Hue/Saturation by no more than probably 8 points. Sometimes, depending on the image, Ill decrease the Saturation as needed. Just remember not to overdo it, I cant stress that point enough. I adjust the Hue/Saturation via this particular technique, as I feel that it tends to make it harder to block out colours, than if you were adjusting it via the standard method. It also tends to just look better.

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When this is all done, you need to clip the two layers together. The horizontal Black line that separates the Hue/Saturation layer and duplicated layer (Layer 1) from each other is what you're after. Hold the Alt key down on your keyboard, and click on this line. You will see what looks like a tiny icon Two overlapping circles, one black, and one Grey.

Unfortunately, theres no way to do a screen dump to show this tiny icon, so Ive circled where you need to click Red. Remember to hold down the ALT key when doing this. It will link the 2 layers together and should look like the image below:

See how Layer 1 is now underlined? And the description for the Hue/Saturation layer is subtly different? When this is all done, flatten the layers. Were ready for the next step sharpening the image. Now, the sharpening that were applying in this step is typically called creative sharpening, as opposed to output sharpening, which would generally be the very last step after youve resized the image for printing or web display, etc. Ill deal with the output sharpening later. There are many ways to apply sharpening to an image the traditional USM (Unsharp mask) filter, the Smart Sharpen filter, high pass filter sharpening, etc. Each method has its own advantage: USM quick and easy Smart Sharpening More powerful and flexible, generally only sharpens areas with detail in them. Areas such as sky etc are not generally sharpened, avoiding artefacts High pass filter sharpening can result in aggressive sharpening with few artefacts Each method has its own disadvantage: USM affects everything in the image, less flexible than other options Smart Sharpening more complicated (potentially) High pass filter sharpening can lead to over aggressive sharpening if not used carefully (true for any sharpening method though in all honesty)

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These are my personal thoughts, based on my experiences, and a fair amount of reading and experimentation on the subject. Feel free to try whatever methods you like. In this tutorial, Im going to cover using the smart sharpening filter, because thats what I use in my workflow for creative sharpening. Now, I just dont use a standard technique for the Smart Sharpen filter and there are good reasons for this. I actually convert my image from RGB mode (default for colour images) to LAB mode. The reason for doing this is simple it helps avoid colour fringing etc as it only sharpens the detail in the image, not the colour data. Some Photoshop gurus such as Martin Evening advise you not to use the LAB mode technique, as they feel that it damages the image more than it helps it. Others recommend it as a solid technique. I guess everyone can make their own decision in regards to this. Firstly, you can find the Smart Sharpen filter via Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.

When opened, the Smart Sharpen tool looks similar to this (depending on how you set it up to look of course):

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These are my settings, and from my experience they seem to work well: Advanced Preview: On Sharpen Tab: Amount 53%; Radius 0.3 pixels; Remove: Lens Blur; More accurate I leave the Shadow and Highlight tabs at their defaults, but feel free to experiment with any of the settings to suit your own needs. As an aside, the traditional USM tool uses Gaussian blur, which as I stated earlier, doesnt deal with empty areas like the sky as well as Lens Blur does. Now, thats the basics of the Smart Sharpening tool. Before we actually use it, we need to convert our image from RGB mode to LAB mode. You can do this via Image > Mode > LAB Colour.

The image will still look the same in the main Photoshop canvas. We now need to select the Lightness channel which is available via the Channels tab. Look at the layers palette:

You can see that Ive circled the Channels tab. You need to click on the Channels tab. You should then see something similar to the image below:

You now need to click on the Lightness channel, so that it is the only channel thats highlighted Blue.

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You will see that your image in the main Photoshop canvas turns into a greyscale image. This is only temporary, so do not panic. Now you can apply the Smart Sharpen filter. Once this is done, you need to re-activate the Lab channel; you can do this by clicking in the box to the left of the channel preview image (which Ive circled in Red for you):

Once this is done, the image should return back to colour. Now click on the Layers tab which is just to the left of the Channels tab, so that you can see your layers again. You can now convert the image back to RGB mode via Image > Mode > RGB Colour. Thats it, pretty simple isnt it? Out of curiosity, click on the Channels tab now and see what channels are available. Were now ready to clean up our image, using Noise Reduction software. Some people shoot at lower ISO speeds and avoid this type of software; others use it on a regular basis. I fall into the latter group I pretty much apply noise reduction to every image, irrespective of the shooting ISO. I use Neat Image Pro+, which allows me to use Neat Image as a filter within Photoshop. The standard free version of Neat Image only works in stand alone mode; it does not offer a Photoshop plug-in. Also, the standard free version does not work with TIFF files only JPEGs. Since I shoot in RAW mode and convert to 16 bit TIFF files for Photoshop, the standard Neat Image is no good to me. I strongly suggest shooting in RAW mode, the degree of flexibility that it offers in post production can be a life saver. You can download Neat Image from their website: http://www.neatimage.com/ If you shoot in JPEGs, dont panic save the image in Photoshop as a high quality JPEG (I recommend quality 12). Open the image in Neat Image standard and follow the noise reduction steps outlined below. I find that the main drawback to using the free version is that it slows me down its much quicker to access Neat Image via the Filter menu. Once youve done with cleaning up the image and removing any noise, simply save the file. You can then scroll down in this document and continue with the section on resizing the image and output sharpening for printing and web use. For those that use other Noise Reduction software, apply the noise as you usually would. I dont use Noiseware or Noise Ninja, and I dont have their software on my PC, so I cannot describe the process in detail.

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The rest of my tutorial will deal with using Neat Image Pro+ as a filter step. Select the Neat Image filter via Filter > Neat Image > Reduce Noise.

You will now see the main Neat Image window note that it has 2 tabs Device Noise Profile & Noise Filter Settings:

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You want to select the Device Noise Profile tab (which it does by default). You will see a button called Auto Profile (marked with a Red circle in the above image) click on it. Neat Image will now attempt to find a suitable section of your image to use as a profile this works probably 95% of the time. Once this is done, youll see a Blue square where Neat Image decided was the best part of the image for profiling. Now click on the Noise Filter Settings tab. The Neat Image window will look similar to the image below:

Now, I use Neat Image with its defaults, which work fine for the vast amount of images. You can see the adjustments palette over near the top right hand corner of the window if you want to make any adjustments to the defaults.

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I simply click the Apply button (circled in Red) to apply the default noise reduction. Feel free to make adjustments to Neat Image as you desire. Once done, save the changes to the image. By this stage, whether youve applied the noise reduction as a filter within Photoshop, or via the stand alone version of Neat Image, or even some other noise reduction software, your image should be cleaned up. If you worked on the image within Photoshop, youre ready to go to the next step. If you worked on the image from outside of Photoshop, open the image back up into Photoshop. Our next step is optional. If your image is saved in the sRGB workspace, ignore this step. If like me however, your working space is Adobe RGB (or something else like proRGB), you are best to convert the image to a sRGB profile. sRGB works best for both printing to a local photo printer, or for saving for the web. You can do this via Edit > Convert to Profile (circled in Red):

You will now see the Convert to Profile window, which will look like the image below:

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I recommend the following settings be set: Profile: sRGB IED61966-2.1 Engine: Adobe (ACE) Intent: Relative Colorimetric Use Black Point Compensation Preview: On Then simply click on the OK button. Thats it; the image is converted from Adobe RGB (or any other non sRGB working space) to sRGB. As I said earlier, you can ignore this step if you work in the sRGB working space which is probably most people. If you want to learn more about colour management and working spaces, etc, I would highly recommend that you seek out Ren Damkots excellent posts on the subject. Thanks Ren. With that all done, were onto our second last step image resizing. You can do this via the Image > Image Size menu, or via the keyboard shortcut CTL + ALT + I. When youre doing this a lot of times, the keyboard shortcut, as with any shortcut, are much quicker. I really suggest that you take the time to learn Photoshops shortcut key combinations, at least for the most common tools.

You will then see the Image Size window, which should look similar to the image below:

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Now, many online forums limit your image size to the longest dimension being no more than 800 pixels, including photography-on-the.net (POTN). This is pretty easy to do simply enter 800 as the pixel size for the largest dimension in your image, i.e. where it says width and height. In my example image above, my longest dimension are 3072 pixels, so I would change this to 800 pixels. This will automatically reduce the height and keep the dimensions the same as the original image size, provided you have both Scale Styles and Constrain Proportions selected. You also should have the Resample Image option selected. I recommend that you choose Bicubic Sharper as your re-sampling method. When done, click the OK button and you will see your image resized on screen. Our final step is to apply the output sharpening. For this stage, I use the unsharp mask (USM). If you prefer to use the Smart Sharpen filter, or some other method, go ahead and use it.

You can see my typical settings in the above image I always keep the preview option turned on, and the Radius set at 0.3 pixels. I adjust both the Threshold and Amount settings on a per image basis. The higher the number in the Threshold setting, the less affect the sharpening will have on the image. 0 Threshold applies the maximum threshold effect. I generally avoid using 0 as my threshold. I tend not to over sharpen my images; I know many users typically use settings like 100%, 1 pixel, and 0 levels. I find that this really over sharpens the images in all honesty. Again, adjust as you see fit for your images. Remember that you can see the before and after effects of the filter by clicking on the preview window. I recommend leaving the image preview at 100%, but, if you want to change it, go ahead. With everything done, were now ready to save the image as a JPEG for printing or web usage. There are two ways of doing this via the File > Save As option, or via the File > Save for Web option. I will cover both methods in this tutorial. I primarily use the Save for Web option, although many prefer not to use it as it strips the EXIF information from the image. See the image on the next page:

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Ill deal with the Save As option first. For most people, who probably shoot JPEGs, they can simply select the save as option and save the image. For those that use TIFF files in Photoshop, there can be minor complications, depending on if you shoot 8 bit or 16 bit TIFF files. If you shoot 8 bit, there should be no issues and you can select the save as option from the file menu. However, if you shoot 16 bit TIFF files, you must convert the image to an 8 bit format first. You can do this via Image > Mode > 8 Bits/Channel. This is because the JPEG format is only 8 bits. You cannot have 16 bit JPEGs!

If you try and use the save as option with a 16 bit TIFF file, you will notice that JPEG is not an option to save to. Since I shoot in 16 bit mode, this is a nuisance, although one that I could easily fix with a Photoshop action if I really wanted to. Note that this problem does not apply to the Save for Web option.

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The Save As window looks like:

You can see that the JPEG option has been highlighted as I selected it. Simply click on the Save button. You will see the following window:

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To change the size of the file, simply drag the triangular marker between the large file and small file ends (indicated by the topmost Red circle and Red double sided arrow), until you reach a file size under 100kb (if posting as an attachment on the POTN servers), or reach a suitable file size (if hosting the image yourself and inserting the image into a POTN post). You can see that Ive also circled the size indicator in Red. Once youve done this, click on the OK button. Youre finished, unless Now, lets look at the Save for Web option. File > Save for Web will bring up the Save for web window. An alternative is the keyboard shortcut CTL + ALT + Shift + S.

You can dictate the file size by selecting High, Very High, etc from the relevant drop down menu (leftmost Red circle), and you can fine tune it by manually entering in a number in the Quality section (the second Red circle), so that you can keep it under 100kb in size if you are attaching it to a thread on POTN. Why do I prefer the Save for Web option? Quite simply, the size estimation feature for Save As is horridly inaccurate. Its also slower for me, since I work with 16 bit TIFF files. That's, pretty much my workflow. It sounds hard, and time consuming, but it isn't. When you're confident, and have it down to pat, you'll be fine, and this entire process will probably take you no more than a few minutes at most for each image. And, as I said earlier, you could create Photoshop actions to speed some parts of the process up if you wanted to. I hope this workflow tutorial has helped you. Many thanks for taking the time to read it.

Dave W Pastern Please see the next page for the licence agreements for this document.

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Copyright David Pastern 2007

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License"
The GNU Free Document License can be found (and downloaded in full), from here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/#FDL This Photoshop tutorial document can be found in electronic format (MS Word format for greatest compatibility with the average user) here:

http://www.macro-images.com/Photoshop_workflow_tutorial.doc
Feel free to download it and modify it as long as you abide by the terms of the GNU FDL. If you do not wish to abide by the terms of this license, then do not modify and distribute the document. Do not remove this page from the document; doing so will result in a violation of the GNU FDL. Trademarks: The use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Warning and disclaimer: This document is designed to provide a basic tutorial on my Photoshop workflow. I have made every effort to ensure that the document is as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty for fitness is implied. The information is supplied on an as-is basis. I shall have neither the liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this document or from the use or Microsoft Windows, Photoshop CS2 or any other software application.

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