Photoshop Top 40 with Deke McClelland
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Photoshop Top 40 with Deke McClelland
Imaging expert and award-winning author Deke McClelland presents his list of the top 40 features in Photoshop. Some are tools, others are commands, still others are conceptual. All are invaluable. Learn this 40 feature and you'll know Photoshop. Special bonus content: Deke's Photoshop CS5 Top 5, w...
Recent Episodes
46 episodes
Photoshop CS5 Top 5 Tip #5: Painting Tools
In today's installment of Photoshop CS5 Top 5, Deke demonstrates Photoshop's bristle brushes, which simulate traditional paint brushes—the kind your l...
Photoshop CS5 Top 5 Tip #4: Puppet Warp
In this installment of Photoshop CS5 Top 5, Deke McClelland explores a feature he calls fun to use, funny to watch, and extremely powerful. Take a fif...
Photoshop CS5 Top 5 Tip #3: Refine Edge
Refining selections and creating masks are unglamorous but utterly essential Photoshop techniques—you've got to master both in order to perform tricky...
Photoshop CS5 Top 5 Tip #4: High-dynamic range photography
Whether you want to be subtle or brash, the greatly improved HDR features in Photoshop CS5 are worth a close look. They're the subject of today's Phot...
Photoshop CS5 Top 5 Tip #5: Common Sense Enhancements
In this first episode of Photoshop CS5 Top 5 on lynda.com, Deke McClelland introduces us to the common sense enhancements, tweaks, and fixes in latest...
Photoshop Feature #1: Open and Save
Virtually every Photoshop project starts with Open (how often do you choose New?) and ends with Save. And unlike other apps, Photoshop treats all imag...
Photoshop Feature #2: The Layers Palette
Home to at least eight of the features Deke has mentioned so far in the Photoshop Top 40 Countdown, the Layers palette is command central—the place wh...
Photoshop Feature #3: Image Size
The essential Image Size command lets you scale an image on screen or in print. Here's your chance to understand resampling and resolution, both of wh...
Photoshop Feature #4: Navigation
Photoshop lets you modify your view of an image using a variety of tools, commands, and options. But you don’t need a single one of them. Learn a few...
Photoshop Feature #5: The Sharpen Filters
Photoshop doesn’t sharpen focus, it sharpens detail. Using any of three remarkable filters, Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, and High Pass. Apply them as...
Photoshop Feature #6: RGB, CMYK, and Lab
Photoshop doesn’t just support multiple color spaces, it supports infinite variations on the device-dependent ones. You can open an RGB photo, process...
Photoshop Feature #7: Undo, History, and Revert
The safety-net trio of Undo, History, and Revert protect the intrepid image editor from unexpected disasters. But they also let you toggle operations,...
Photoshop Feature #8: The Eyedropper
The ubiquitous eyedropper is simple in purpose and easy to use. But imagine a world without it, where you had to dial in every one of the 16.8 million...
Photoshop Feature #9: Levels
The Levels command, and its cohort the histogram, let you adjust luminance levels on a channel-by-channel basis. The upshot is that you can increase c...
Photoshop Feature #10: Color Settings
The Color Settings command is your way of establishing reliable color management policies across the entire Creative Suite. While admittedly techy, it...
Photoshop Feature #11: Opacity Mode and Blend Modes
Changing the Opacity is like mixing a cocktail with, say, 30% active layer and 70% all layers below. Assigning a blend mode is like shining a light or...
Photoshop Feature #12: Camera Raw
Camera Raw is an independent application that lets you develop your raw photographs and exploit every byte of the vast information captured by your di...
Photoshop Feature #13: File Info
Want to let the world know who made your photo? Then choose File Info. Here you can assign a title, an author (you!), a copyright, and a Web site. No...
Photoshop Feature #14: Gaussian Blur
Gaussian Blur is a filter that blurs an image. But its also the math behind the Feather command, drop shadows, and everything that is soft in Photosho...
Photoshop Feature #15: Alpha Channels
Much can be said of masking: Masking is the art of using the image to select itself. Masking lets you apply the entire weight of Photoshop to the task...
Photoshop Feature #16: Adjustment Layers
An adjustment layer is an independent layer of color adjustment that can edit any time you like. Plus it affects all layers below it, consumes very li...
Photoshop Feature #17: Layer Effects
Yes, layer effects let you make drop shadows. But they also let you create credible compositions, render simple layers in dimension, and add ambient l...
Photoshop Feature #18: Smart Objects
Smart objects aren't all that smart. And they aren't objects. What they are is envelopes. The kind that hold things. And keep them safe. So that every...
Photoshop Feature #19: Luminance Blending
Buried deep inside the Layer Style dialog box are two slider bars, This Layer and Underlying Layer, that let you blend pixels according to their brigh...
Photoshop Feature #20: Free Transform
As powerful as Photoshop is, there is little about the program that is obvious. Case in point: How do you rotate a layer? Right-click on it and select...
Photoshop Feature #21: The Gradient Tool
Every app offers a gradient tool. But Photoshops is special. Not only can you paint a soft transition from black to white. But you can soften the tran...
Photoshop Feature #22: The Healing Brush
Be they pits, pock marks, or pimples, we all suffer blemishes that we wish we didnt. Or so we would were it not for Photoshops healing brush. This ama...
Photoshop Feature #23: Color Range
If you use the magic wand tool, stop what youre doing and switch to Color Range. This outrageously useful command lets you select an image as easily a...
Photoshop Feature #24: Curves
Where luminance-correction is concerned, no feature gives you greater control than Curves. This one command lets you rein in highlights, open up shado...
Photoshop Feature #25: Selection Calculations
You may know that you can add to a selection by pressing the Shift key. But you can likewise press keys to subtract and find an intersection. Better y...
Photoshop Feature #26: Dodge and Burn
Photoshop offers two tools that paint with luminance: The dodge tool paints in brightness, the burn tool paints in darkness. Crazy useful, and they've...
Photoshop Feature #27: The Crop Tool
Since the first daguerreotype, photographers have cropped their images to hone in on the details that matter most. The crop tool does that, as well as...
Photoshop Feature #28: Hue/ Saturation
Hue/Saturation not only spins colors and intensity values, it lets you modify one color independently of all others. And it does so in such a credible...
Photoshop Feature #29: Liquify
The Liquify filter lets you paint in distortions, so you can perform digital nips and tucks. You can slim people down, edit their posture, and make th...
Photoshop Feature #30: Actions
The Actions palette lets you record your work so you never have to do it again. Plus, you can build up complex visual effects and share them with othe...
Photoshop Feature #31: The Brush Tool
The modest brush tool is one of the deepest, most versatile tools in Photoshop. It's not only a terrific painting tool, but it is also invaluable for...
Photoshop Feature #32: The Pen Tool
Many folks select images in Photoshop with the likes of the Quick Select and Magic Wand tools. Highly automated, but these tools rarely work accuratel...
Photoshop Feature #33: Calculations
One of the oldest, most abstruse, downright incomprehensible commands in Photoshop, Calculations lets you merge two channels to create a new alpha cha...
Photoshop Feature #34: Save for Web and Devices
If you're creating Web graphics, then there's no substitute for Save for Web and Devices. It disposes of non-essential data, reduces file sizes to the...
Photoshop Feature #35: Refine Edge
Photoshop offers lots of tools for automating selections, but two stand out from the pack: The first, Refine Edge, lets you modify your selection usin...