ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop Essentials

Overview

Becoming familiar with Photoshop's work area is a wise first step. The entire work area is designed not only to provide you with the tools you need, but also to surround the document window with useful information about the status of the image, the current tool, and Photoshop itself. Because Photoshop is used in many different and specialized ways, it's possible to customize the work area to a great extent.

Here is an overview of the Photoshop work area

• Menu bar. As in other programs, the menu bar contains commands you can apply to alter an image or Photoshop's behavior.


• Options bar. Located just below the menu bar, the Options bar presents controls for the tool you've selected in the Tools palette.


• Palettes. The Tools palette appears along the left edge of the work area, while other palettes appear along the right edge. You can arrange palettes by dragging the tab at the top of a palette, and you can show or hide palettes using the commands under the Window menu.


• Document window. Photoshop makes good use of the space around the document window. Along the top of the window you see the normal title bar. To the left of the title is a preview icon that's dimmed (on the Mac OS) if recent changes aren't saved. To the right of the title are the zoom percentage, the color mode, and the bit depthplus the preview mode, if View > Proof Colors is turned on.

Along the bottom edge of the document window, at the left edge, you'll find a numerical field you can use to control the view magnification. To the right of that is a Version Cue indicator icon (it won't do anything if Version Cue is disabled), and to the right of that is a status bar you can customize by clicking the triangle.
In the default Photoshop work area, you see the Tools palette on the far left, the menu bar across the top, and the Options bar under the menu bar. At the far right of the Options bar is the palette well, and to the left of the palette well is the Go to Bridge button that switches to Adobe Bridge (or File Browser in Photoshop CS).

Teaching Yourself Photoshop

While there's been much grumbling about the increasing rarity of printed manuals, information about Photoshop is much faster and easier to find onlineboth on your own computer, and over the Internet.

The online help system contains all of the topics in the printed manual along with additional topics, so you're more likely to find and answer there. Open the help system by choosing Help > Photoshop Help.



If you need a quick description of a tool or control that you can see in front of you, a tool tip might help. If tool tips don't appear when you hover your cursor over a tool or palette, you might need to turn them on; choose Photoshop > Preferences (Mac OS X) or Edit > Preferences (Windows) and turn on Show Tool Tips.



In Photoshop CS2, Adobe uses the bottom of the Info palette to provide a little more information than they could fit in the tool tips. The Info palette goes beyond simply telling you about the currently selected tool. It reminds you how modifier keys can change the tool's behavior.

The bottom of the Info palette for the Marquee tool with no keys pressed (left) and with Shift key pressed (right)

Upgrading Smoothly

Because Photoshop is upgraded every 18 months or so, you may experience the upgrade process a few times before you've even accumulated five years of experience with the program. But upgrading can lose files and settings that your workflow may depend on. Therefore, we want to include a few topics that help you upgrade Photoshop without throwing your workflow into a tailspin.

Migrating Your Plug-ins

Photoshop plug-ins are installed into the Plug-ins folder inside each Photoshop version's application folder. This means that plug-ins don't automatically appear in a newer version of Photoshopyou have to move them manually. Before you delete your old Photoshop folder, locate each non-Adobe plug-in and drag it to the corresponding folder in the Photoshop CS2 Plug-ins folder.



If you move a plug-in to a newer version of Photoshop and it isn't compatible, Photoshop displays an alert (when you launch the program) telling you that the plug-in wasn't loaded. At that point, you know that it's time to get a newer version of that plug-in.

Migrating Actions

Before you upgrade, save your actions from the Actions palette to a file on disk. (This is also a good way to back up your actions at any time.) Here's how:

• In the Actions palette, click the Create New Set button.


• Name the folder and click OK. Now you've got a folder where you can store just the actions you create.


• If you're storing any custom actions in Photoshop's default actions folder, drag your actions into the folder you created.


• In the Actions palette menu, choose Save Actions.


• Specify a name and location, and click Save.

Controls & Menus

Make UI Text More Readable

On large monitors or on monitors set to a very high resolution, the pixels get so small that text in windows and dialog boxes can become hard to read. In Photoshop CS2, you can change the user interface (UI) font size in the Preferences dialog box. Simply open the Preferences dialog box, and in the General pane, choose a size from the UI Font Size popup menu.

Your Keyboard, Your Way

Well, it's not easy to come up with a single set of keyboard shortcuts that works for everybody. In addition, Photoshop doesn't exist in a vacuum. Over the years, Photoshop has changed shortcuts to be consistent with the other Adobe products that people like to use together; also, the Mac and Windows operating systems have added shortcuts that sometimes clash with Photoshop shortcuts.

Fortunately, Adobe has implemented the right solution: If you can't please each person, let each person do what they want. Photoshop does this by letting you customize keyboard shortcuts

The Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus dialog box lets you assign any shortcut to any menu item.

• Choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.


• Choose a category from the Shortcuts For popup menu.


• In the commands list, locate the command you want to customize by scrolling and clicking the disclosure triangles as needed.


• Select the command, and type the shortcut you want to use. Photoshop warns you if the shortcut is already in use or not available for use, so that you can try again.


• Click Accept.

Search for the Missing Shortcut Card

It no longer makes much sense to print a card when the shortcuts are so easy to change. What you now have instead is the ability to generate a list of the current shortcut set. In the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of the Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus dialog box, click Summarize. You'll quickly get a reference list in HTML format. You can save the HTML document in any folder and make a convenient bookmark to it in any web browser, or you can print it out if you want to tack it up on the wall with your other shortcut cards. The great advantage of the Summarize button, of course, is that you can always keep your shortcut reference up to date if you change shortcuts.

Roll Your Own Menus

There isn't a way to turn features off (unless they're plug-ins), but you shouldn't have to worry about that anywaywhile all features are made available at startup, they don't actually load into memory unless you start using them. (That's why it often takes longer to use a feature the first time.)

On the other hand, there is a way to simplify the menus. Starting with Photoshop CS2, Adobe makes it possible for you to hide menu items. You can make Photoshop display only the commands that are useful to you or your workgroup. In addition, you can highlight menu commands with a color. This feature can be useful for emphasizing preferred workflows, or if you want to associate certain commands with each other.

The controls to customize the menus are in a different tab in the same dialog box as the one to customize keyboard shortcuts. To customize menus:

• Choose Edit > Menus.


• In the Menus tab of the Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus dialog box, choose a menu set from the Menu For popup menu.


• Scroll to locate the menu command you want to edit.


• For the command you're editing, click the Visibility column to hide or show the command, or click the Color column to apply a color to the command.


• Click the Save icon (the first one to the right of the Set popup menu) to save your changes to the current set.


• Click the Save New Set icon (second from the left) to create a new set based on the current settings. After you create a new set, you can choose it from the Window > Workspace submenu. Photoshop comes with several custom menu workspaces already installed; to try them, choose one from the Window > Workspace submenu.

Windows and Palettes

When you group palettes, they occupy the same space, so only one of the palettes in a group can be in front at a time. You can group or ungroup palettes by dragging palette tabs to or from other palette tabs.

When you dock palettes, they're attached to each other vertically, so they're all visible at once. You can combine grouping and docking. To dock a palette, drag its palette tab to the bottom of another paletteyou can let go when you see the dark black line appear at the bottom of the palette. Grouped palettes always appear and disappear at the same time. For example, David always docks his Character and Paragraph palettes together.

You can hide or show all palettes at once by pressing the Tab key (as long as the Text tool isn't typing, of course). You can control all palettes from the Window menu, but if you want a palette to be clickable yet still take up no screen space, drag its tab to the palette well, the dark area at the right side of the Options bar.
Clicking the Brushes palette tab in the palette well reveals the entire palette.



Individual palettes have their own tricks. The minimize/zoom button in a palette's title bar alternates between collapsing a palette into its title bar, and showing all of its options. If a palette is touching the bottom of the screen when you collapse it, the palette conveniently collapses at the bottom of the screen.

To save different palette arrangements, choose Window > Workspace > Save Workspace, name it, make sure Palette Locations is checked, and click OK. Workspaces are great for saving different palette arrangements for specific tasks or situations. For example, when Conrad plugs his calibrated monitor into his laptop, he chooses a workspace that fills the laptop monitor with palettes.

Customize the Status Bar

What you're seeing is the status bar. By default, it displays the document size, or rather, sizes. The first number is the size of the document if you flatten it, and the second number is the size of the document as saved (uncompressed) on disk with all of its layers. If the document doesn't have any layers, the first and second numbers are probably the same.
The status bar at the bottom of a document window can display different kinds of document information, such as the disk usage information shown at right.



If you click-and-hold on that information, you can see how the image will print on the current page size. If you Option/Alt-click, you get info about the image size and dimensions.

How can you tell that they're document sizes? Because it says so: Click the black triangle to the right of the status bar to see a popup menu of the different kinds of information you can display in the status bar. You can choose a different status bar display from the popup menu, such as the document dimensions or the document's color profile.

Preserve Windows when Zooming

Don't worry, there is a way out of this. By default, Photoshop resizes the image window when you zoom a window using the keyboard shortcuts, such as Command-+ (plus sign) (Mac OS) or Ctrl-+ (Windows). This can sometimes be inconvenient, such as when you have a carefully tiled window arrangement that you want to preserve.
Original (left), zoomed in without window resizing (middle), and zoomed in with window resizing (right).



You can prevent Photoshop from resizing windows when keyboard zooming, and you can set which behavior is the default. Choose Preferences > General (Mac OS) or Edit > Preferences > General (Windows), deselect Zoom Resizes Windows, and click OK.

The Big Screen Experience

Photoshop provides two full screen modeswith or without the menu bar. Either way, you'll hide all of the window trimmings and have an unobstructed view of the current document. To change the screen mode, click one of the three screen mode icons on the toolbox. To cycle through the three screen modes when the toolbox is hidden, press F repeatedly.

Of course, you do lose some features in full screen view. For example, you don't have scroll bars, the title bar, or the status bar, or even the menu bar if you hid that. However, there are plenty of ways to be productive and flexible in full screen mode:

• To hide and show the menu bar, press Shift-F.


• To hide and show all palettes, use the Tab key.


• If you're addicted to the status bar, you can display the same information in the Info palette (choose Palette Options from the palette's menu) and leave the palette open.


• If you're addicted to the status bar, you can display the same information in the Info palette (choose Palette Options from the palette's menu) and leave the palette open.


• You can still switch tools and open palettes using keyboard shortcuts. Remember, you can customize Photoshop's keyboard shortcuts!


• To zoom and scroll, use the Navigator palette. If you prefer to hide the Navigator palette, use keyboard shortcuts or a mouse wheel to zoom and scroll. See the topic "Navigating the Seas of Photoshop," earlier in this chapter.


• If you move the document window to another monitor before entering full screen mode, the document displays in full screen mode on that monitor without affecting other monitors.

Change the Window Background Color

Yes, there is a way. First, set the foreground color using the toolbox, the Swatches palette, or the Color palette. In your case, set the foreground color to black. In a document window, zoom out until you can see the background area outside of an image. Then select the Paint Bucket tool, and Shift-click the window background. Voil�, now black is the new gray!

One Document, Two Views

We've got the perfect solution: the New Window command. With your document open, choose Window > Arrange > New Window For . You can certainly set one window to a different zoom level than the other window. But you can also use the New Window command for other useful purposes, such as having one window show the normal view, and another window that previews the same document as a CMYK or sRGB soft-proof.
Two windows on the same document. In each window's title bar and status bar, you can see that each window is set to a different zoom percentage.

Synchronize Multiple Windows

You're in luckthere's an easy answer. First, activate the window that you want the other windows to match. Then choose one of the following commands from the Window > Arrange submenu: Match Zoom, Match Location, or Match Zoom and Location.

The commands are pretty self-explanatory. Match Zoom sets all other windows to the same zoom level, and Match Location sets them all to the same scroll position (of course, Match Location is most predictable if the windows are the same size).

Match Zoom and Match Location commands affect all open windows, whether they're views of the same document or different documents. When you use these commands, you might want to make sure that the only windows you have open are windows that you want to be affected by these commands.

Fun with Multiple Monitors

In an application like Photoshop, you're usually not just looking at an image. You also need space for palettes and dialog boxes. Multiple monitors are useful whenever more screen real estate would come in handy. Here are some ways to use multiple monitors:

• Keep your palettes on a less expensive monitor, so you can dedicate your best calibrated and profiled monitor to image display. A monitor used only for palettes doesn't have to be of high quality.


• Spread out palettes that you want to have visible all the time. For example, if you often use the History and Actions palettes, drag them apart. It'll take a lot of space, but that's what the second monitor is for.


• Keep Photoshop on one monitor and other applications on another monitor. For example, on your second monitor you can keep Adobe Bridge nearby for easy image access, or watch for incoming messages in your e-mail application.


• When a dialog box opens, drag it to the monitor that doesn't contain the image, so you can see the entire image.


• Take advantage of multiple-window views. If you choose Window > Arrange > New Window, you get a second window on the same image. For example, one window can show the entire image while another window shows a zoomed-in detail of the same image.

Match Color Across Monitors

To match image tone and color across multiple monitors, you pretty much have to use a hardware monitor calibrator (such as the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One device) to create a monitor profile for each monitor. However, even calibrated monitors may not match completely if their basic characteristics are different, such as comparing the same image on a CRT monitor and an LCD monitor.

Note that doing this is usually easier to do on the Macintosh than on Windows. On Windows, you may need to do a little research before attempting to calibrated multiple monitors connected to the same video card. Many video cards that have multiple video ports are unable to assign specific profiles to each connected monitor under Windows. If you have a video card with this limitation, you'll have to use one monitor for accurate color and another just for palettes. Just calibrate the monitor that you're using for good color, and don't worry about accurate color on your palette monitor. Just be aware that you don't want to preview image colors on the palette monitor.

Reveal the Multiple Personalities of a Tool

The key to achieving your goal is the Shift key. First, make sure you're familiar with the single-letter keyboard shortcuts for your favorite tools, such as M for the Marquee tool or V for the Move tool.

Next, open the Preferences dialog box, switch to the General pane, and enable the Use Shift Key for Tool Switch checkbox. After you click OK, you'll be able to use the Shift key to cycle through the tools in each of the popup tool menus. For example, press J to switch to the Spot Healing Brush tool, and press Shift-J to cycle through the other tools in the same popup menu (the Healing Brush, Patch, and Red Eye tools).

If you don't select the Shift key preference mentioned above, you can cycle through tools without adding the Shift key. For example, to cycle through the marquee tools, you would simply press M repeatedly. However, we prefer to use the Shift key to cycle, because it's a safer way to work, especially if you like to hide the toolbox. If the Shift key preference is on, you always know that pressing a tool's shortcut selects the last-used variation of that tool. If Shift-switching is off and you can't see the toolbox, you might not realize that pressing the tool shortcut key switched you to a tool you weren't expecting.

Keep Your Options Open

An often overlooked area of available options is the Options bar. In your example, select the Hand tool and you'll see that this is where the Scroll All Windows option appears. (The Options bar for the Zoom tool contains a similar Zoom All Windows option.)
Even though the Options bar is usually at the top of the screen, most people don't look closely at the cool tool options and buttons it contains.



Even more experienced users can miss the Options bar, because it only appears when a tool is actually selected in the toolbar. For example, if you're in the habit of pressing the spacebar to use the Hand tool, as many advanced users do, you might not select the Hand tool in the toolbox very often. As a result, you might not see the other options that are available for the Hand tool.

Give Tools a Memory

If you haven't yet clicked the button at the left end of the Options bar, now would be a good time. That button manages tool presets, which are saved settings for the current tool. When you have tool settings that you want to save, click the tool presets button and then click the Create New Tool Preset button. Name the preset and click OK, and from now on you can use that preset by clicking the Tool Preset button and selecting your preset from the list.

Adobe must really want you to use tool presets, because the Options bar isn't the only way to use them. You can more easily manage tool presets by using the Tool Presets palette, especially when the Options bar isn't visible. If you disable the Current Tool Only checkbox, tool presets for all tools are listed. Then, clicking a preset in the Tool Presets palette both switches tools and selects a preset in one step.

A More Precise Cursor

You've got lots of options here. Open the Preferences dialog box, and then open the Display & Cursors pane. In the middle of the dialog box, you'll see a number of cursor options.

Photoshop ships with the cursors set to the Standard option you see in the Display & Cursors pane. You can set any cursor to Precise, which displays a little crosshair so that you can tell exactly where you're clicking.

For painting cursors, which have a brush size, you can choose the Normal Brush Tip or Full Size Brush Tip. The Full Size Brush Tip is a little more intuitive; it's the outer edge of the brush size you're using. Normal Brush Tip is a little trickierthe circle it draws is where the brush opacity is at 50%, based on how much feathering you've applied. Knowing where 50% falls can be handy because it is a common threshold value for things like magic wand selections.

You can see both the precise click point and the brush size if you enable the Show Crosshair in Brush Tip option.

Editing Objects

Adjust Numbers Easily

There are several handy shortcuts you can use when you just want to tweak a number up or down a little. These shortcuts work in number fields in both palettes and dialog boxes.

• Press the up arrow or down arrow key to increase or decrease a value by 1 increment. The increment varies depending on the option.


• Press Shift-Up Arrow key or Shift-Down Arrow key to increase an increment by ten times the normal arrow key increment.


• Position the cursor over a numeric field and Command/Ctrl-drag left to increase a value, or right to increase a value. You can add the Shift key here too, if you want to change the numbers more quickly.

Adjusting font size by Command/Ctrl-dragging horizontally in the font size field.

Take the Fast Lane through Dialog Boxes

You can do more than you possibly imagined. In Photoshop, there are several cool shortcuts that can make dialog boxes much more pleasant to use:

• As in palettes and many other applications, you can press Tab and Shift-Tab to highlight the next and previous text or number fields.


• In many dialog boxes, such as Curves, Levels, and filter dialog boxes, you can actually zoom and pan the window with keyboard shortcuts while the dialog box is still open. For example, you can press the spacebar to use the Hand tool, and you can press the Zoom tool shortcuts to zoom in and out.


• Instead of clicking OK to close the dialog box and apply changes, you can press Return or Enter. Instead of clicking Cancel, you can press Esc. Instead of clicking Don't Save, you can press the D key.

Context Menus

The beauty of context menus is that you don't have to remember where a command is on a menu, and you don't have to remember the command's keyboard shortcut either. As the feature's name suggests, context menus show you commands that relate directly to whatever you clicked, automatically excluding a whole lot of commands that don't apply to what you're trying to do.

Context menus can be so useful that many Mac power users like them too. You don't need a two-button mouse to enjoy context menus. On the Mac, Control-click to see an object's context menu. If you use a graphics stylus or other non-mouse pointing device on Mac OS X or Windows, you can usually program one of its buttons to bring up context menus.

Scanning

Scanning Essentials

There are a few basic steps to getting a good scan. Like car dashboards, scanning controls may seem to vary across different scanning programs, but they usually work the same way. Whichever scanning software you use, the most important steps in relation to Photoshop are these:

• Don't scan without first using the Preview button in the scanning software to help determine what scan settings to use.


• Crop unneeded areas to scan faster and use less disk space. You can rotate and flip if you want, but you can do that in Photoshop too.


• Set the resolution and dimensions based on your final output.


• Set the black point and white point. The black point and white point define the darkest and lightest tones, respectively, that you'll scan from the original. Too narrow a range wipes out detail in the shadows and highlights. Too wide a range will lack contrast. If you're a pro scanning at 16 bits per channel, it's possible to skip this step and fine-tune the black and white points later in Photoshop.


Main scanning window of a typical scanning utility (Canon ScanGear shown as an example). Here, the color and tone controls are visible, along with the main toolbar that includes cropping and scaling tools.




• Adjust the color balance. If you aren't comfortable with the color balancing controls in the scanning software, you can skip this step and fix the color in Photoshop.


• When everything looks good, you can finally click the Scan button in the scanning software.

Turn a Negative into a Positive

Color negative film can be a challenge to scan. On negative film, the image is both inverted and has an orange-colored mask, so arriving at a final image requires some interpretation. Fortunately, there are a couple of quick ways to handle scans of color negatives.

If your scanning software provides a selection of presets for color negative film types, select your film type if available. If your scanning software doesn't have any color negative conversion options, try this manual and somewhat more involved Photoshop method.

• Scan at 16 bits per channel, and apply no tone or color corrections in the scanning software. Don't even invert the image.


• Open the color negative scan in Photoshop and choose Image > Adjustments > Invert. Don't expect it to look good yet






• Open the scan in Photoshop, choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels, and click the Options button

The Levels dialog box (top), the Auto Color Corrections Options dialog box (center) opened by the Options button, and the resulting image.






• In the Auto Color Correction Options dialog box, click Find Dark & Light Colors and Snap Neutral Midtones. If the color balance is unrealistic, disable Snap Neutral Midtones and try different options in the Algorithms section.


• If you want, adjust the Clip values for Shadows and Highlights (we tend to use smaller values than the defaults). When you're done, click the OK button.


• If the image is still too dark or light, drag the Input midtone slider left or right in the Levels dialog box. If you realize the black or white point needs adjustment, click Options and change the clip values instead of dragging the black point or white point sliders in the Levels dialog boxyou'll get more balanced results.


• When you're satisfied with the overall tonal range and color balance, click OK until both the Auto Color Correction Options dialog box and the Levels dialog box are closed. The image should now be at a stage where you only need to fine-tune it.

The image after adjusting the Input midtone slider in Levels.

Descreening a Scan

Before printing an photograph on a typical printing press, an image must be converted to halftone dots. If you scan an image that's already been printed on a press, the halftone dots can appear as a distracting moir� pattern due to the interference pattern between the halftone dots and the scanner's pixel grid.

The rosette pattern visible in a halftone image, which can cause a moir� pattern when scanned.



The best way to remove the halftone dot pattern is to use a descreening feature on your scanner, if it has one. The most important setting in a descreening feature is lines per inch (lpi); entering a value that matches the actual lpi of the print is most likely to produce a clean result. If your scanning software doesn't have a descreening option or you were given an image that was scanned by someone else, you can try these tips:

• If you have access to the printed original, scan it at an odd angle (try between 6 and 10 degrees) and set the scanner to a higher resolution than normally needed (try an additional five to ten percent more resolution). The purpose of this step is to avoid aligning the halftone screen with the scanner's pixel grid. After trying some of the techniques below, straighten the scan again.


• In Photoshop, experiment with the Median filter (Filter > Noise > Median) or Gaussian Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) with different settings.

The Median filter can sometimes help smooth out distracting scanned halftone screens.




• For color scans, experiment with Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise, and try increasing the Reduce Color Noise value without obliterating the details.


• If you scanned the image at a higher resolution and at an odd angle as we suggested in the first item on this list, your last step should be to downsample and straighten the image. Choose Image > Image Size, check the Resample Image box, and set the image to the desired dimensions and resolution. Then straighten the image.

There isn't one solution for all descreening problems, because screened images are printed to many different specifications, which can create varying patterns. You'll typically need to experiment with different combinations of the ideas above, until something works.

Mystery of the Awful Black-and-White Scans

Try turning off any dust or scratch-removal features in the scanning software. Dust and scratch removal is a useful feature in newer scanners, and it really does work... on most originals. Defect removal may not work on silver-based black-and-white filmcompared to the flat dye layers in color film, the non-flat silver grains are perceived as dust by the defect-removal software. Dye-based (chromogenic) black-and-white films, such as Kodak BW400CN, work fine with scanner-based defect removal.

Image Editing basics

All About Resolution

Don't Forget Your Resolutions

In the strict sense, resolution is a measure of how fine the image dots are, by dividing the number of pixels by the physical size (as in "300 dots per inch"). But the exact meaning of that number does change depending on where and how an image is used, and where it is in the capture-to-output workflow. Knowing your resolutions is important when you're communicating with someone else. Here's how we've boiled it down.

• Sampling resolution. If you're using a scanner, this is the resolution at which a scanner samples the original. This number describes, in samples per inch (spi), how precisely an image was scanned. You control sampling resolution using your scanning software. For digital cameras, sampling resolution doesn't really apply: You could be taking a photo of a landscape 3 miles wide or a close-up of a 3-inch-wide flower, making "dots per inch" quite arbitrary.


• File resolution. When you save an image from Photoshop or other software, the software writes an image resolution into the file. File resolution doesn't mean much unless you print the image, because it doesn't refer to the number of pixels in the file. Some digital cameras write 72 ppi into a file just to put a number in that field.


• Effective resolution. This is the resolution of an image at its final output dimensions. For example, a 1600x1200-pixel digital camera photo scaled to 2.5 inches wide on a layout, creates an effective resolution of 1,600 pixels � 2.5 inches or 640 ppi. If you scale up an image too far, its effective resolution drops below the value required for good quality.


• Device resolution. This number isn't part of the image at all, but is the resolution of the output device. For example, a monitor might be 96 dpi, and a platemaker might be 2,400 dpi. For print, an image doesn't need to match the device resolution. For example, you don't need to send a 5,760 ppi image to a 5,760 dpi inkjet! A 360 ppi image prints very well.

How the meaning of resolution changes as you move an image from capture to output.



If you aren't printing an image, don't worry about dpi at all. Just pay attention to the image dimensions in pixels (e.g., 1600x1200 pixels). That's how image sizes are measured on monitors.

To Resample or Not to Resample

That little Resample Image checkbox at the bottom of the Image Size dialog box is a frequent source of confusion.

When Resample Image is on, pixels are added or subtracted during resizing. Resampling is usually a good idea when you make an image smaller, and occasionally a good idea when you enlarge an image. Resampling during reduction can remove unnecessary image data so that the file size doesn't take up too much disk space. Resampling during enlargement can help avoid jaggies in the image, but only to a point. Even with the best resampling methods, you can enlarge an image only so fartypically less than 200 percentbefore it no longer looks sharp. Resampling carefully can help keep an image within that happy medium between too little detail and an unnecessarily dense image file.
When the original image (top) is enlarged with resampling on (top right), Photoshop creates more pixels to keep the resolution constant. When enlarged with resampling off (bottom right), the number of pixels must stay constant, causing the resolution to dropthe pixels get bigger.





You can experiment with resampling if you have an image open in Photoshop. First choose Image > Image Size. When you enter new values for Width and Height under Pixel Dimensions and Resample Image is turned on, the file size changes but Document Size stays constant.

Going Bicubic

There isn't one best method for all situations, so Adobe provides five ways to resample

• Nearest Neighbor duplicates a sample by simply copying a pixel next to it. This doesn't make photographic images look good, but is often better for some 1-bit-perchannel or indexed-color images.


• Bilinear duplicates a sample by averaging the pixels on either side of it. It's faster than the Bicubic options, but doesn't look as good.


• Bicubic looks at the samples on all four sides, averages them, and applies that value to the new sample point. Bicubic is slower than Bilinear or Nearest Neighbor, but yields the best quality with continuous tone images.


• Bicubic Smoother is a version of Bicubic that often works better when enlarging an image.


• Bicubic Sharper is a version of Bicubic that often works better when reducing an image.

The bottom line? When working with photos, use one of the Bicubic options. Because actual results depend on the image content, you might want to try each option when you're working with critical images.

Image Size vs. Canvas Size

The simplest explanation is that the Image Size command (Image > Image Size) affects the image, and Canvas Size (Image > Canvas Size) affects the document. If you enlarge the Canvas Size, you end up with more space around the image. If you reduce the Canvas Size, part of the image is chopped off.

A common use for Canvas Size is adding more area to a document while preserving the existing image size. A great example of this is when you're assembling several photos into one big document. You can start with one photo and enlarge the Canvas Size to make room for adding and arranging other photos.

Original image (top), Canvas Size dialog box with new document dimensions entered (center), and the resized document (bottom).

Resizing a Batch of Variously Sized Images

Use Fit Image (File > Automate > Fit Image) instead of the Image Size command. You can set a width and height within which each image is resized to fit. And it works great as part of a Photoshop action.

Cropping

Keeping What You Cropped

By default, the crop tool permanently deletes the cropped area, and you can't recover that area after saving. However, if you check out the Options bar for the Crop tool, you'll find two Cropping Area options: Delete, and Hide (you only see these after drawing the cropping rectangle). The Hide option is unavailable if you're cropping an image with a Background in the Layers palette, so the first step is to convert Background to a layer.

• In the Layers palette, Option/Alt-double-click the Background layer to convert it to Layer 0.


• Select the Crop tool, and drag a crop rectangle.


• In the Options bar, click the Hide button


Clicking the Hide button on the Options bar for the Crop tool while a crop area is active. The Layers palette shows that the default Background was converted to a layer so that the Hide button would be available.




• Press Enter or Return.

Because you clicked the Hide option, there are two things you can now do that you couldn't before. First, you can reposition the cropped image using the Move tool (wow!). And second, at any time you can restore the cropped area by choosing Image > Reveal All.

You can also recover any part of the hidden area by dragging the Crop tool beyond the edge of the image.

The area cropped out by the Hide option stays around even after you save and reopen the document, as long as you don't flatten the image. Because documents cropped with the Hide option look the same as documents cropped with the Delete option, you might want to add a note to the document using the Notes tool, to remind you that there is extra image area that needs to be preserved.

Removing Perspective With the Crop Tool

There's a Crop tool option called Perspective, which is yet another crop tool option that's only visible when a crop area is active:

• Using the Crop tool, drag a crop rectangle. Don't worry about precision at the point.


• In the Options bar, check the Perspective option


Dragging crop area handles (bottom left) to match perspective lines in the image, made possible by the Perspective checkbox in the Options bar for the Crop tool (top) while a crop area is active. When you commit the crop, the Crop tool removes the perspective distortion (bottom right).




• Drag corner handles to line up the edges of the crop area with perspective lines in the image.


• Press Enter or Return to commit the crop area. The Crop tool uses your modified crop area to remove the perspective distortion.

Living on the Edge

Yes. If you're viewing a document in the default window view (Standard Screen Mode), you may find it difficult to start or stop dragging precisely at the edge of an image. It's much easier if there's space around the image. Either zoom out or enlarge the window slightly to reveal the area outside the image, and you'll now be able to snap exactly to the image edge when you start or stop dragging. If you're viewing the document in Full Screen mode or Full Screen with Menu Bar mode, either choose View > Fit on Screen or zoom in and use the Hand tool to scroll past the edge; either method allows tools to snap to the edge.

In Standard Screen Mode (top), it's possible to drag a crop area handle past the window edge. To reach that handle after you release the mouse, you'd have to zoom out. If you work in one of the Full Screen modes (bottom), you can reach handles outside the crop area without having to zoom out.

Cropping in Camera Raw

We think you should crop in Adobe Camera Raw whenever possible. If you crop in Camera Raw, you'll reduce the amount of data that's passed to Photoshop in the first place. Also, the Crop tool in Adobe Camera Raw is nondestructive, so if you screw up a crop, just go back to Camera Raw, edit the crop, and re-convert the raw image to Photoshop. Nondestructive cropping in Camera Raw is much easier than using the Hide feature in the Options bar for the Crop tool.

One big advantage to cropping in Camera Raw is that Camera Raw remembers the crop. If you ever need to convert the raw image again, your previous crop is already there. If you crop a converted raw in Photoshop and you need to convert the raw file again, you have to somehow re-create the same crop.

Camera Raw records your crop area along with your other raw adjustments, saving it all to the Camera Raw database or in the image's XMP file, depending on how you've set your preferences. That's how it remembers the crop.

Changing the Frame Aspect Ratio

If you know the pixel dimensions of the new aspect ratio, such as 1280x720 pixels, simply choose the Crop tool and enter the new dimensions in the Crop tool's Options bar before you start dragging the crop rectangle.

However, the Crop tool doesn't provide a way to enter an aspect ratio, such as 16:9, without also changing the dimensions of the image. If you want to crop to a specific aspect ratio (outside of Camera Raw), you can use the Marquee tool.

• Select the Rectangular Marquee tool.


• On the Options bar, choose Fixed Aspect Ratio from the Style popup menu, and enter the aspect ratio you want. For example, to set a 16:9 aspect ratio, enter 16 into the Width box and 9 into the Height box.


• Drag the Marquee tool to position the selection rectangle. If you want to reposition or resize the selection rectangle after you release the mouse, choose Select > Transform Selection and Shift-drag a corner handle to resize it proportionally (and then press Enter).

To crop an image to a new aspect ratio without altering its resolution, use the Marquee tool in Fixed Aspect Ratio mode.




• Choose Image > Crop.

Changing the Pixel Aspect Ratio

If you import an image from a video capture (such as a frame from iMovie) and the contents appear distorted in Photoshop, you may need to assign a different pixel aspect ratio to the image. Simply choose the pixel aspect ratio of the source video from the Image > Pixel Aspect Ratio submenu.

Assigning a pixel aspect ratio doesn't alter the image data at all. It only corrects the display to account for the pixel aspect ratio under which the image was created. If you want to see what the image looks like without the pixel aspect ratio correction and without losing the assigned pixel aspect ratio, you can turn the command View > Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction on and off. You can assign a pixel aspect ratio to a new document, too.

In the New dialog box (File > New), click the triangle next to Advanced and enter a Pixel Aspect Ratio.

Enhancing Creativity

Brushes

Harden or Soften a Brush Edge

The Hardness option determines the fuzziness of a brush tip. The Hardness option may not be visible when you open the Brushes palette, because it isn't in the default Brush Presets panel. In the Brushes palette, click Brush Tip Shape to reveal the Hardness option. Or simply Ctrl-click/Right-click a brush on the document and adjust Hardness in the context menu that appears. If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, you can press Shift-] to increase the hardness 25-percent or Shift-[ to decrease it. (If you leave off the Shift key, those keys increase or decrease the size of the brush.)
A mini version of the Brushes palette appears when you Ctrl-click or Right-click while a brush tool is selected.

Design Your Own Brush

Exploring the Brush tool is like going on a treasure hunt. Useful features are hidden all over the placeon the keyboard, in palettes, and in menus. Here are our favorite brush tips:

• Before you go to the trouble of creating your own brush, make sure that what you want isn't hiding inside the program already. For example, once you open the Brushes palette, you can choose from among a dozen brush sets in the palette's flyout menusets such as Dry Media or Wet Media brushes.


• To customize the current brush, use the Brushes palette, which you can usually find in the palette well in the Options bar.


Use the Brushes palette to customize every attribute of a brush.




• If you're looking for a specific brush feature, try looking in every panel in the Brushes palette. Clicking any heading along the left side of the Brushes palette reveals a different options panel.


• You can quickly specify a different diameter, hardness, and preset by Ctrl-clicking/right-clicking on the document with the brush tool and making your changes in the handy context menu that pops up.


• The Options bar contains options specific to the Brush tool, including the blending mode and opacity settings.


• The Airbrush button in the Options bar allows the Brush tool to continue laying down paint as long as the mouse button is pressed, whether or not you're dragging the mouse.

Opacity, Layers, and Brushes

Layers aren't the only place where you can apply an opacity value. You can also apply an opacity value to the Brush tool and other painting tools. If you're painting or retouching, keep an eye on both the opacity value in the Layers palette and the opacity value in the Options bar, because the two types of opacity are cumulative.

By the way, you can change the opacity setting by typing the value on the keyboardtype 3 for 30 percent, 4 for 40 percent, 55 for 55 percent, and so on. However, if you have any of the painting tools selected, this shortcut changes the value in the Options bar. If you have a selection or the Move tool chosen in the Tools palette, it alters the Opacity in the Layers palette.

If all you do at work is open files, change them to CMYK, and resave them... well, we send our sympathies, but a graphic tablet won't really help you much. But for virtually everything elsefrom cropping to retouchingyou have far more control over Photoshop with a stylus than if you were using a mere mouse. You'll be able to control your brushstrokes using pressure, just like an actual brush or pencil. Some high-end tablets have a stylus that senses other stylus movements, such as its tilt angle or the rotation of a scroll wheel or of the pen itself.

You control all Photoshop tablet support in the Brushes palette. If some options are visible but dimmed, it means your input device doesn't support that option. For example, the Tilt Scale option is only available if you're using a graphics tablet and stylus that senses tilt angle.

To change how a tablet controls a tool, click on the pane on the left side of the Brushes palette. On the right side of the Brushes palette, look for the Control popup menu. The Control popup menu contains properties that a tablet can control, such as the Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, Stylus Wheel, and Rotation options.

Filter Fun

Although the Filter menu contains all sorts of goodies, drop shadows are an entirely different kind of thing. Drop shadows are considered a layer effect, so they live with the other layer controls. The easiest way to add a drop shadow is to click the Add a Layer Style button in the Layers palette and choose Drop Shadow from the popup menu. The Layer Style dialog box opens with the Drop Shadow effect selected, and you can adjust the settings from there. After you apply a drop shadow, you can see it attached to the layer in the Layers palette, and you can edit the drop shadow by double-clicking it in the Layers palette.
Choosing the Drop Shadow layer style in the Layers palette



Because a drop shadow is a layer effect, it applies to an entire layer. If you can't see a drop shadow that you applied, make sure you applied it to a layer that's smaller than the size of the document.

Apply a Filter Again

There's a shortcut for just about everything! To apply the most recently used filter and settings again, choose Filter > Last Filter (or, much faster, press Command/Ctrl-F). When you use Last Filter, you won't see the Filter dialog box at all; Photoshop simply applies the last settings you used for that filter.

You can also open the dialog box of the last-used filter so that you can adjust its settings. Just press Command-Option-F/Ctrl-Alt-F. For instance, if you didn't get the filter settings exactly right, just Undo it and then use this shortcut to reapply the same filter but with different settings.

Create a Halftone Screen Effect

Images are normally converted to halftone dots to make them printable on a press, and they aren't supposed to be large enough to be visible. However, radically enlarged halftones do make a pretty cool graphic effect, and with Photoshop you don't have to paint every dot individually like Roy Lichtenstein did.

To create a halftone dot effect, choose Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. In the Color Halftone dialog box, Max. Radius refers to the size of the halftone dot in pixels. The default screen angles correspond to the traditional angles for color separations, but if you're using Color Halftone as a purely graphic effect you don't need to stick to those angles.

The Color Halftone dialog box (left) and the resulting effect (above).



If the image is hard to recognize after applying the Color Halftone filter, select Undo, and use the Image > Image Size command to upsample the image (increase the pixel dimensions with the Resample Image option on). Then apply the filter again.

Here's one more way to create this effect. It's more time consuming, but you get more options:

• Start with a CMYK image (choose Image > Mode > CMYK).


• In the Channels palette flyout menu, choose Split Channels. You'll end up with four separate grayscale images.


• In the first of these images, choose Image > Mode > Bitmap.


• From the Method popup menu of the Bitmap dialog box, choose Halftone Screen and click OK.


• Specify the halftone settings you want (line screen, angle, spot shape) and click OK.


• Next, choose Image > Mode > Grayscale.


• Now repeat steps 3 to 6 for the other three files.


• In the Channels palette menu, choose Merge Channels. Make sure the correct grayscale image is assigned to the proper color (it should be obvious by the file's name).

Create an Adjustable Texture

Textures can add character and interest to a document, but once you apply a texture to an image, it permanently alters the image pixels, making it difficult or impossible to adjust or redo the texture at a later time. Instead, create your texture as a separate layer, so you can manipulate it independently of the image layer.

This solution is based on how the Overlay blending mode works. On a layer with Overlay applied, 50-percent gray is a neutral color that doesn't change underlying layers, colors lighter then 50-percent gray lighten underlying colors as if the Screen mode was applied, and colors darker than 50 percent darken underlying colors as if the Multiply blending mode was applied. Here's how to do it:

• In the Layers palette, Option/Alt-click the Create a New Layer button.


• In the Layer Options dialog box, choose Overlay from the Mode popup menu, and turn on the Fill with Overlay-Neutral Color (50% Gray) checkbox. Click OK.


• Click the eye icon for the image layer to hide it, so that you see only the gray layer.


• Select the new, gray layer in the Layers palette, and apply a texture from the Filter menu such as Filter > Artistic > Sponge. If you apply a filter to the gray layer and it appears solid black, gray, or white, try another filter. Some filters act on the edges present in a layer, and the solid gray layer has no edges. Other filters generate their own textures; those filters do produce visible results on a solid-color layer.


• Click the eye icon for the image layer to make it visible. The texture should now be visible over the image layer

From left to right above: The original ellipse layer with the Bevel and Emboss effect; the texture layer with the Overlay blending mode applied, all layers combined, and the texture partially removed by painting on the "texture" layer with a brush set to 50-percent gray. The ellipse and texture layers are also set up as a clipping mask, so that the texture stays inside the ellipse. The "texture adjuster" layer is a Curves adjustment layer that refines the contrast of the texture.



As needed, edit the texture layer by manipulating the gray levels or painting on it. For example:

• To reduce the overall intensity of the texture, make an adjustment to the layer's opacity.


• To control the contrast of the texture, Option/Alt-click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer button in the Layers palette, choose Levels or Curves, enable the Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask button, and click OK to edit the contrast of the layer. Using the image layer as a clipping mask ensures that the adjustment layer affects only the texture layer.


• To erase the texture from parts of the image, use the Erase tool or paint an area with 50-percent gray. Don't paint the gray layer with black or white.


• To remove the texture from parts of the image in a way that's reversible, use a layer mask filled with white, and paint black in areas where you want to suppress the texture.

Setting up Color

Your Monitor, Your Profile

Calibrating your monitor (making it display colors a certain way) is nowhere near as important as profiling it (making a profile that describes how it does display color). The best option is to use a hardware device such as the GretagMacbeth Eye-One. Let us be clear: There is virtually no point in even pretending to trust the color on your screen if you don't create a custom monitor profile. If you have two different screens on which you look at color, each one needs its own profile. Once you have custom profiles and set up Color Settings consistently (see the next solution), you'll see virtually identical color on all your computers.

Color Settings sure is an intimidating dialog box. The good news is that Adobe worked very hard to concoct combinations of color settings that result in good color for most print and online workflows. With just a little work, you can get much better color. All you have to do is choose the most appropriate preset from the Settings popup menu at the top of the Color Settings dialog box. Once you do that, Photoshop automatically fills in all of the other options for you.

In the Color Settings dialog box, choose a preset from the Settings popup menu. The rest of the dialog box updates for you.

• If you prepare any images for a printing press, choose North American Prepress 2 (or Europe Prepress 2 or Japan Prepress 2). This uses Adobe RGB for the default RGB space, which is a far better space for print output than sRGB (which is the default setting for some silly reason).


• If virtually all your images are destined for the Web, choose North American Web/Internet. But avoid this preset if you ever edit images for high-quality printing because it does standardize on sRGB and even automatically converts non-sRGB images when you open them. (This has ruined many a Photoshop users' day.)


• If you're making images for digital video, choose Monitor Color. But don't use this preset if you ever use CMYK or produce color-managed output!

There is one problem with the Prepress 2 setting: You'll probably see the Profile Mismatch and Profile Missing dialog boxes a lot when opening files. We don't think that's so bad, because it keeps us on our toes, reminding us that we need to think about where color is coming from and where it's going. But if it's annoying to you, you might want to turn off the Ask When Opening checkboxes in the Color Settings dialog box. Note that while choosing a preset like North American Prepress 2 will help achieve better color; it's just a start, and it's just setting up the default ("in case nothing else is specified") settings. Your images may use different RGB or CMYK spaces than these defaults. For example, if you're working with a camera raw file, you may want to open it into the ProPhoto RGB working space for editing in Photoshop. But you can do that for one image (in the Camera Raw dialog box) without changing the Color Settings dialog box!

Similarly, when you convert to CMYK using Image > Mode > CMYK Color, you'll get the default CMYK settings you chose in Color Settings (in this case, SWOP, which we consider "middle of the road" CMYK). But if you have a custom CMYK profile for your printer or output device, then you can use that instead by using Edit > Convert to Profile.

Synchronize Color Across the CS2 Suite

If you own the entire Adobe Creative Suite (CS2), Adobe makes it easy to set all your Creative Suite applications to the same Color Settings values. It helps maintain consistent color and it's usually worth your while to do so. You can do this in one step from Adobe Bridge by choosing Edit > Creative Suite Color Settings. Just select a Color Settings preset, and click Apply. However, if you later open Color Settings in Photoshop and change it, you'll see that "Applications Aren't Synchronized" message. We just ignore it.

Previewing Color Output

Simulate Printed Color On Screen

Previewing a color conversion on screen is called soft-proofing. Soft-proofing lets you adjust an image for the best quality final output while you still have access to all the colors in the larger original color space.

To soft-proof an image, choose a color space from the View > Proof Setup submenu. If the color space you want to preview isn't listed on that submenu, choose View > Proof Setup > Custom, and choose your device's profile from the Device to Simulate popup menu.

The Customize Proof Condition dialog box

Check for Out of Gamut Colors

Clipping happens when colors in your image exist outside of the color space you're converting to, and it's usually only a problem when the destination color space is smaller (such as when converting from ProPhoto RGB to SWOP CMYK). While Proof Setup should give you a pretty good indication of how colors will change, if you want to see exactly which image colors are clipped (lose detail) when converted to the color space of your output device, you can use the Gamut Warning feature.

Choose View > Gamut Warning to view out-of-gamut colors. Out-of-gamut colors are marked in gray by default, but you can change the gamut warning color in the Transparency & Gamut panel of the Preferences dialog box. We prefer to use a color not found in naturelike a day-glo green or magenta.
Original image (left) and the Gamut Warning command turned on (right). Using a bright green color we chose in Preferences, Gamut Warning indicates that the printer we're soft-proofing can't reproduce all of the blues in the image.

Before and After, Side by Side

No problem! Choose Window > Arrange > New Window to get another view of the same document. You can turn on the Proof Colors command in one window and off in the other, so that you can compare the original and soft-proofed versions side-by-side. You can see exactly how colors are constrained in the destination color space.

The same document shown in two windows simultaneously: Normal view (top), and Proof Colors view to preview the image on the more limited printer gamut (bottom).

Color Space Conversions

Convert from RGB to CMYK

The best way to convert to CMYK is: Consciously. We're serious; most people just choose Image > Mode > CMYK Color without even thinking. The problem is that you probably don't know which CMYK. Is it SWOP or Fogra or the CMYK inks your desktop inkjet uses? There are lots of CMYKs, and you can't get great color unless you tell Photoshop which to use. The most accurate method relies on your obtaining specific printing information in the form of either an ICC profile or custom CMYK specifications.

If you choose Image > Mode > CMYK Color, you're telling Photoshop to use the default CMYK space as defined in the Color Settings dialog box. Instead, consider choosing Edit > Convert to Profile, which lets you specify a custom CMYK profile as well as control other aspects of the CMYK conversion. For example, while you probably want to leave the Use Black Point Compensation and Use Dither options turned on, you might want to compare the results you get with the Perceptual rendering intent (from the Intent popup menu) versus using the Relative Colorimetric intent (or the Saturation intent). Turn on the Preview checkbox to see how the results differ before clicking OK.

In the Convert to Profile dialog box, you can see and change the settings that determine how colors convert between color spaces.



If your printer didn't provide a profile of the final output device, they might be able to give you CMYK specifications instead. If they did, you can enter them manually. Choose Edit > Convert to Profile, then choose Custom CMYK from the Destination Space popup menu, and enter values as directed by your printer.

Boost Shadows for Print

Assuming you're using accurate profiles for your printer and your monitor, Proof Colors may simply be telling you the truth. Your camera and monitor can typically reproduce a wider range of tones and colors than your printer or a press, so when you use Proof Colors to preview a printer, it's very likely that you'll see a reduction in contrast, and details in the shadows may mush togetherwhich is exactly what's going to happen on the printer.

How can you adjust an image for output? You don't want to alter the original image data, because you want to preserve all the tones in colors in case you print to a nicer output device someday. If you want to attack the problem using Levels or Curves, we suggest applying these edits with a Levels or Curves adjustment layer named for the printer you're adjusting for. That way, you can turn off the adjustment layer when you aren't printing to that printer, or you can create different adjustment layers that you turn on only for specific output devices.

However, our favorite way of instantly enhancing shadow detail is a feature added in Photoshop: the Shadow/Highlight command (Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight). In the Shadow/Highlight command, increasing the Amount slider for Shadows pulls shadow detail up into a range that narrower color spaces can show more clearly. You may want to leave the Highlights Amount at 0 unless you also want to darken the highlights. Because Shadow/Highlight isn't currently available as an adjustment layer, we apply it to a copy of the image.

Original image (left), loss of shadow detail observed when soft-proofing output on the final medium (center), and shadow detail boosted by applying Shadow/Highlight (right).

Convert Colors for the Web

We tend to think that the wild, untamed days of the Web are largely behind us, but that's not true in the case of color. When you publish images on the Web, you have no control over how people might see the image colors. There are three main problems with color on the Web:

• Only profiled monitors show colors accurately, but a very low percentage of monitors are properly calibrated or profiled.


• With the emergence of color management, images now exist in all kinds of color spaces. But few Web browsers and systems are set up to properly display images with embedded profiles. If you spend all day scanning images in Adobe RGB for later output on a press, and you make Web versions without converting the color space, their colors will look washed out on the Web.


• Images will often look lighter on a Mac than on Windows computers. It has to do with the assumed gamma of the operating system.

Therefore, you can only expect that your images will appear with some variation on the monitors of the world, and take some comfort in the idea that this problem affects everyone else's images, too. However, here are a few tricks you can try to create more consistent color.

• Make sure your images are in the sRGB color space before you upload them for viewing in Web browsers. We generally work in Adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB, so when we want a Web version, we duplicate the image, use Edit > Convert to Profile to shift it into sRGB space, and then use Save for Web to export the GIF, PNG, or JPEG file.


• You can preview your images using both the View > Proof Setup > Macintosh RGB and View > Proof Setup > Windows RGB commands. These commands simulate how an image looks on Mac OS X and Windows, respectively, if you use the image on the Web without converting its color space.


• If you're on a Mac, consider using your calibration software to profile your monitor at gamma 2.2. This isn't necessary for your work inside Photoshop, which automatically compensates for any monitor gamma you use. However, at gamma 2.2 you'll see Web pages approximately the same way Windows users do. And we actually like the increased contrast from using gamma 2.2 on our Macs.


• For the Web, don't bother embedding an ICC profile when you save or export the file. Almost no Web browsers know what to do with an embedded profile, so all the profile does is add to the file size and transmission time of the file.

Assign Versus Convert to a Profile

This is one of the perennial areas of confusion in Photoshop... so it's not just you. When you assign a profile, you're telling Photoshop what the numbers behind the colors mean. For example, you're saying "fully saturated red looks like this." Therefore, when you assign a different profile to an image, the colors changesometimes dramatically. Open an image from a digital camera, choose Edit > Assign Profile, turn on the Preview checkbox, and choose different RGB profiles. You'll quickly see that changing the profile changes the meaning behind the image's RGB numbers.

On the other hand, converting attempts to maintain the look of the colors by changing the numbers. Don't be puzzled if image colors look the same after converting between profiles. This is exactly how it's supposed to workthe more the converted version looks like the original, the more successful the conversion. However, color shifts can be hard to avoid when converting to a color space of a smaller size or different shape (for example, when you convert from an RGB space to a CMYK space). If the gamut you convert to is smaller than the original gamut, you permanently limit the image to the smaller gamut.

Embedding Profiles

In general, the only good way to ensure color consistency when moving a file from one computer to the next or from Photoshop to some other application is to turn on Embed Color Profile in the Save As dialog box. However, CMYK profiles are large (they often add between 700 K and 3 MB to your file size), so if you're saving a CMYK image that you know will not need any more editing or repurposing, you might consider turning off this checkbox. RGB profiles are pretty tiny, so we always embed thosewell, except for Web images, as we just pointed out.

Locate and Install Profiles

There aren't any profiles stored inside Photoshop. Profiles installed by Adobe or other installers generally ends up in the right place, but if you download or create custom profiles, you need to drop them in the right folder yourself.

In Mac OS X, Photoshop sees profiles in several places:

• Computer/Hard Drive/Library/ColorSync/Profiles (This Profiles folder is at the root level of the computer, so profiles stored here are seen by all users. This is where we tend to put profiles.)


• Computer/Hard Drive/Users/<your username>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles (This Profiles folder is inside your account's home folder, so you're the only user who has access to the profiles stored here. If other people use your Mac when logged into other user accounts, they won't be able to use these profiles.)


• Computer/Hard Drive/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles (This Profiles folder is in a special Adobe folder in the Mac's main Library folder. Profiles stored here are seen by all users. You should leave this folder alone.)

In Windows XP, Photoshop sees profiles in two places:

• C:\Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color (This folder is at the root level of the computer, so profiles stored here are seen by all users.)


• C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Color\Profiles (This Profiles folder is in a special Adobe folder in the shared Program Files folder. Profiles stored here are seen by all users. You should leave this folder alone.)