CTE218

LAB 1 Activities
Activity 1: Changing How Far Back You Can Go
If you think you might someday need to go back further than your last 20 steps, you can make
Photoshop remember up to 1,000 steps by changing the program’s preferences.

Here’s how:

1. Open the Preferences dialog box.

On a PC, choose Edit➝ Preferences and, from the resulting submenu, choose Performance.

On Mac, you need to select “Photoshop” sub menu then Preferences ➝ Performance

2. Look for the History States field in the upper right corner of the Preferences dialog box and then
pick the number of Undo steps you want Photoshop to remember.

You can enter any number

between 1 and 1,000. While
increasing the number of history
states might help you sleep better,
doing so means Photoshop has to
keep track of that many versions of
your document, which requires
memory and processing power. If
you increase this setting and notice
that the program is running like
molasses, try lowering it.

3. Click OK when you’re finished.

Activity 2: How to use the History Brush to undo a serious Gaussian Blur
1. Open an image—in this example, a photo of a person—and run the Gaussian Blur filter.

Choose File➝ Open and then navigate to where the image lives on your computer (ANY image).
Then choose Filter➝ Blur➝ Gaussian Blur.

2. In the resulting dialog box, enter a radius of 20 and then click OK.

Depending on the size of your image, this setting blurs your image pretty severely, giving you a lot to
undo with the History Brush.

3. Grab the History Brush by pressing Y and then choose a brush from the Options bar.

Once you’ve grabbed the History Brush, hop up to the Brush Preset picker in the Options bar and pick
a large, soft-edged brush (one that’s pretty big and blurry around the edges). You’ll learn about
details of brushes later.

4. Open the History panel (choose Window➝ History) and then click a saved state or snapshot.

This is where you pick which version of the image you want to go back to. Since all you’ve done is
open the image and run the Gaussian Blur filter, choose the Open state. Just click within the panel’s
left-hand column next to that state to pick it (you’ll see the History Brush’s icon appear in the
column).

5. Mouse over to your image and paint over the person’s eyes to reveal the unblurred eyes of the
original image.

If you keep painting in the same place, you’ll expose more and more of the original image (it’s a
gradual change). For example, a quick swipe over the eyes reveals traces of the original while a good
scrubbing back and forth in one area reveals the original in its full glory. As you can see, you can use
the History Brush to easily undo anything you’ve done.

6. Save the image as Lab1_Activity2_name_surname.psd

Activity 3: Working with Layers
Here’s a quick lesson in how to softly fade your photo to white and then add some text to it:

1. Open a soon-to-be-faded photo and add a new layer to the document.

To safeguard your photo, you need to put the white paint on another layer. Press Ctrl+Shift+N to
create a new layer, give it a clever name like white fade, and then click OK.

2. Set your foreground color chip to white.

Peek at the color chips at the bottom of your Tools panel. If they’re black and white, just press X to
flip-flop them until white hops on top.

If the chips are other colors, press D to set them back to the factory setting of black and white.

Ultimate display need to be as following.

3. Grab the Gradient tool and set it to create a “Foreground to Transparent” linear gradient.

Press G to select the Gradient tool and then head up to the Options bar at the top of your screen.
Open the Gradient picker (near the left end of the bar) by clicking the down arrow next to the
gradient preview and click once on the “Foreground to Transparent” swatch (second from the left in
the top row).

Move your mouse just a hair to the right in the Options bar to the gradient style buttons and click the
first one, named Linear Gradient.

4. Back in your document, create a white-to-transparent fade.

To paint a good-sized chunk of white, place your mouse near the right side of the photo (just past
center) and then drag to the left for about a quarter of an inch and release your mouse button. The
farther you drag, the wider the faded area. Don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time; just
keep clicking and dragging until you get the look you want.

Tip: If you want to start over, select all by pressing Ctrl+A and then press Delete (Backspace) to zap
everything on the layer so you can start your white gradient from scratch.

5. Press T to grab the Type tool and add some text.

You haven’t learned about the Type tool yet, but be brave and press T to activate it and then hop up
to the Options bar and pick a font and type size from the pop-up menus.

Click once on your document where you want the text to begin and start typing.

When you’re finished typing, click the little checkmark at the top right of the Options bar to let
Photoshop know you’re done (pressing Enter on the numeric keypad—not Return—or selecting
another tool works, too).

6. Save the image as Lab1_Activity3_name_surname.psd

Activity 4: Using Layer Mask
Here’s how to create the text-behind effect:

1. Open a photo and press T to select the Type tool.

Don’t worry about double-clicking the Background layer to make it editable; you don’t need to touch
your original image in this technique.

2. From the Options bar at the top of your screen, pick a font, a size, and a color.

For this technique, select a nice thick font like Impact and set it to a fairly large size, like 84 points.

3. Mouse over to your document and type some text.

Click where you want the text to begin and start typing. If you want to move the text around, mouse
away from the text and your cursor turns into a little arrow; at that point, you can drag the text
anywhere you’d like in your document.

4. Add a layer mask to your Type layer by clicking the circle-within-a-square button at the bottom
of the Layers panel.

In the Layers panel, you’ll now see the mask thumbnail next to the Type layer’s thumbnail. See the
thin black border around the mask thumbnail? That means it’s active and you’re about to paint on
the mask (good) instead of the photo (bad).

Tip: One of the biggest mistakes folks make is not paying attention to which thumbnail they’ve
selected in the Layers panel (it takes a single click to activate either thumbnail). The little black
border always lets you know which part of the layer is active: the mask or the layer content.

5. Press B to select the Brush tool and pick a soft-edge brush set to black.

After you activate the Brush tool (B), head up to the left side of the Options bar and open the Brush
Preset picker by clicking the down-pointing triangle next to the little brush preview.

Pick a soft-edge brush that’s about 60 pixels.

Since you want to hide bits of text (remember, black conceals and white reveals), you need to choose
black as your foreground color. To do that, take a peek at your color chips at the bottom of the Tools
panel and press X until black hops on top. Now you’re ready to start painting.

6. Mouse over to your document and paint the parts of the text you want to hide.

Position your mouse over the overlapping area and click to start painting (and hiding) parts. When
you release your mouse button—you don’t have to do all your painting with one brushstroke— you’ll
see black paint on the layer mask in the Layers panel.

7. If you accidentally hide too much of the text, press X to swap color chips so you’re painting with
white and then paint that area back in.

When you’re working with a layer mask, you’ll do tons of color-chip swapping (from black to white
and vice versa). You’ll also use a variety of brush sizes to paint the fine details as well as large areas.
To keep from going blind when you’re doing detailed work like this, zoom in or out of your document
by pressing Ctrl and then the + or – key.,

6. Save the image as Lab1_Activity4_name_surname.psd