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Arrows missing | Custom Shape tool | Photoshop Elements | 8, 9

William Shakespeare - To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..

Here's the link to the Adobe Bulletin

Arrows Missing

Here's the article

 

Issue

When you use the Custom Shape tool in Photoshop Elements Editor and load the Arrow shapes, only one arrow appears.

Solution

Replace the Arrow shapes preset file.

Note: Make sure that you are logged in with Administrator privileges to do these steps.

1. Close Photoshop Elements Editor.
2. Right-click the following link and choose the option to save a linked file: Arrows.csh. (Depending on the web browser, this option can be called Save Link As, Download Linked File As, Save Target As, or something similar.)
3. Save Arrows.csh to the following folder and overwrite the existing file: 
   • Windows: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements [Version]\Presets\Custom Shapes
   • Mac: Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements [Version]/Presets/custom shapes

Additional information

The Arrows.csh presets file installed with Photoshop Elements 9 and 8 is missing many of the arrow shapes. The copy of the file attached restores all of the arrows.

Photoshop Lightroom 3 on sale! Save $100

B&H Photo Video and Pro Audio has Photoshop Lightroom on sale for$179.95 (Save $100)
Offer is good until June 4th.
B&H Offer

Review Class 3 --And your Homework!

"Photoshop is a great plugin for Camera Raw," Photographer and Camera Raw Guru, Jeff Schewe.

As you have seen in class, It is by far easier and quicker to enhance your photos in Camera Raw than using Photoshop Elements or Photoshop.

Photoshop is good for complex composites, merging photos, removing or adding objects in a photo... where you need to use layers, masks and selections.

Here's the page I put together, with notes from Class 2 --Using Camera Raw, you'll also find keyboard shortcuts, and other resources for Camera Raw, Including where to get Adobe's Lens profiler, How to 

calibrate your camera, and get presets for Camera Raw 

Here are the other photo enhancing tips for Photoshop/PSE some of them I covered in class 3.

Gradients

Layer Masks and Wrinkles

The Healing Brush

Skin Tones and the Clone Tool

Over or under exposed images in Photoshop/PSE

In class 4 I will show you how to use Smart Objects to edit your photos in Photoshop.

Camera Raw and Smart Objects

I will also discuss in class 4

Cropping your photos for composition

1. Crop to simplify the photo by eliminating distractions at the edge of the photo.

2. Crop Rules

There is a reason why a photograph looks good, or looks compelling...

Hidden in the photo is a mathematical progression that occurs naturally in nature.  We call it the Golden Mean.   It is based on the progression of numbers known as the Fibonacci sequence:

For Photoshop there is a free "open Source" Javascript that you can run, that will aid you in deciding how to crop your photos

The Script is in the CD I gave you in class, it's in the folder called Actions.  Golden Crop.jsx

For those of you that are Using Adobe's Lightroom you can toggle the grids on and off only when the crop tool is running in the develop module! It's the O key, that's the "letter" o

You can double click the script and it will launch and run in Photoshop.  Or you can load the script from the Menu: File > Scripts

If you don't have the disk, you can find the script here...

http://goldencrop.sourceforge.net/

SHARE YOUR PHOTOS

Share your "before" and "after" photos!

Now that you are an expert at Camera Raw, I'd like to see your work! And, I'm sure other is the class would too!

E-mail me your photos Labeled with your name and with before and after... 

Re-size your photos for the web

Landscape orientation at  1024 pixels x 768 px 

Portrait orientation at 768 px x 512 px

I will post'em side by side here...

Bring your problem photos to class, we'll work on them there!

Of course there is always more!

Adobe Releases Camera Raw 6.4 and Light Room 3.4

Howdy
If you have a new Camera, you have been waiting for this Upgrade for Photoshop CS5

April 27, 2011

Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 are now available as final releases on Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms available in Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3.  These updates include bug fixes, new camera support and new lens profiles.

For details on the Upgrade you can read about it here from the "Lightroom Journal"

Review Class 3

Here's some "step-by-step" tutorials that go over some of what we did in class.


Fixing Wrinkles
Here's the technique for removing wrinkles using Gaussian Blur


Fixing Skin tones and Wrinkles
Using Hue and Saturation and the clone tool


Using the Healing Brush
There are also instructions for Photoshop Elements ... The Healing Brush
Do Watch the Russell Brown Video


4 Video from Martin Evenings -Photoshop for Photographers 
A really good reference to add to your library

Got a question? 'holler

(The car started after 4 hours of charging, will it start tomorrow with out charge??


More soon

Week 2 Review -- Setting Mid-Gray

The Art of Photography Part 4

So what's the difference between Exposure and Brightness?

The Exposure settings either brightens or darkens the entire image with the largest affect on the highlights. We used Exposure to reduce highlight clipping.
Recovery, by the way, attempts to pull data out of the clipped highlights.
Black
The Black slider does the same thing for the blacks that are clipped (It gives the overall effect of increasing contrast in the shadows and mid-tones.)
Brightness
The Brightness setting brightens or darkens the image around the mid-gray values without forcing clipping in the blacks and highlights (however, large changes might re-introduce Clipping...) If you move the slider to the right highlights will compress and shadows will expand. The opposite occurs when you move the slider to the left.

Contrast
Contrast increases or decreases image contrast, mainly affecting midtones. When you increase contrast, the middle-to-dark image areas become darker, and the middle-to-light image areas become lighter. Generally, you use the Contrast property to adjust the contrast of the midtones after setting the Exposure, Blacks, and Brightness values.

Tone Curves
The Parametric and Point Tone Curves fine tune the Brightness/Contrast settings...
This is the Parametric Tone Curve Panel...







This is the "Point" Tone Curve


Getting closer

Next, using the target select tool to fine tune Hue, Saturation and Luminence of specific regions