Three Tips on Photoshop for Artists

I know I swore I was going to be mirroring my writing blog over here from now on, but that didn't sit well with me -- because I want to talk about art and writing. So I figured out a compromise: during the week, I'll be mirroring my Livejournal blog's contents over here, but every Sunday, I'm going to do an installment in my new Three Tips series.

The Three Tips posts are going to be short (like me) but hopefully a little useful (like me). The sort of thing that can be read over a cup of yogurt or a bowl of dog food on Monday morning.

So this week is Three Tips on how Photoshop can help you as an artist. Now, the tips in this post can be used in other photo manipulation programs, as the functions I'm pointing out here are not advanced creatures.

Many of you probably already know these techniques, but they were invaluable for me as an artist starting out. We're going to use a photo of a pelican rummaging around in his feathers that I took at the zoo earlier this year.

1. Photoshop allows you to easy change your references into grayscale. For me, I simply go to Image>Mode>Grayscale at the top of the screen. Why do you want that puppy in grayscale? Because instantly you can see the true values of all the brilliant colors. As a newbie artist, I would've been tempted to make that brilliant blue background really light -- I would've mistaken intensity for value. But in actuality, that blue background is a very dark midtone. The grayscale makes that pop out at us.


2. Let's see your true colors, baby! Another problem I had as a novice artist was identifying the real colors of my reference. Color, like value, is relative -- our eyes can see the same color or value differently depending on what color or value it appears right next to. So while I could easily look at an isolated color and tell you exactly which colored pencil I need to pick it up, I have to train my eye to be able to see it when it's surrounded by other colors. Photoshop lets you isolate a color with the eyedropper tool. It's in the hovering toolbar (which I have cleverly and amazingly provided for you here at left). See the one I put in the red box? That's the eyedropper.

Selecting that option will transform your cursor into an amazing weapon of power that will tell you what the true color is of anything you click on. Ohhhh, the power!! So you can see how I took Mr. Pelican and clicked on the area that I've boxed in red, on the right. And you can see how it isolated that color for me there on the toolbar on the left. That's nice peach color. Mmm. I know exactly which pencil I would pick up for that. I've internalized the whole process now, but I taught myself with the eye dropper.

3. Our last tip is exaggeration. As an artist, one of the things we do is change the photo reference. We stylize it, make it more our own. Make it look better than real life. There are a lot of different tools in Photoshop that can help you mimic the effects you'd use, before you even try them on your finished piece. One of my favorites is adjusting the contrast. I do that with Image>Adjust>Brightness/Contrast. Another good one is Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. Play with the sliders to get different effects.


And that's our three tips on Photoshop. Over and out!