1. In the layers palette, right-click on the photo name, and choose Duplicate Layer from the popup menu.
2. Now target the new layer.
3. Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (PSE: Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove color.

Adjusting Levels to Boost Contrast

1. Grab the eraser tool from the toolbar, choose a small, hard-edged brush.
2. Zoom in on your image to get a nice view of it.
3. Now simply erase all the bits that you would like to be in color, and the bottom layer will begin to show through.

1. Open 4 photos.
2. Do the editing you want to them.
3. Open a new 12x12 blank document, and drag all of your photos onto it.
4. Turn on the rulers. (View > Rulers)
5. Use the Edit > Scale command (or in PSE, just drag the handles) until each photo is no larger than 4 inches in width. (this just determines how much of the photo you’ll be able to see - you can go more or less here)

1. Select the Elliptical marquee tool.
2. In the Options bar at the top of the screen, select Fixed Size from the Style dropdown box. Type in 6 and 6 in the size boxes to get a perfect 6-inch circle.
3. Click once anywhere in your document to see a perfect 6-inch circle.
   
4. With the marquee tool selected, move the selection up into the top corner, right next to the rulers. This will make the cutting easier. Let’s turn on the Grid (View > Show > Grid), and also the Snap feature, which turns our ruler lines into little magnets. (Also, if you have CS or CS2, you can drag a guide line out to the 3-inch mark both horizontally and vertically, so you can line up your cutting marquee)

1. Select the Rectangle marquee tool (while the circle selection is still active).
2. Now hold down the Alt key. You should see a little minus sign appear next to the cursor. This means that whatever you select now will actually erase from your current selection.
3. Click and drag while you hold the Alt key - a rectangle covering over half of your circle. When you release the mouse, you’ll see that you’ve actually cut your selection in half.
4. Now let’s do the horizontal cut. Hold down the Alt key, and drag a rectangle across the bottom half of your selection, right at the 3-inch grid line. Just before you release your mouse, you should see something like this: (See the minus-sign cursor?)
   

Selection

1. With the marquee tool still selected, drag the selection over your photo, target it in the layers palette.
   
2. Now go to Select > Inverse, and hit Delete to delete the excess photo.

1. With the Move tool selected, hold down the shift key and click on each of your four layers one by one. You should see them all select in your layers palette, either by highlighting or by the appearance of a little chain-link icon next to the thumbnail.
2. Go to Layer > Merge Linked (In PSCS and above, Layer > Merge Layers). In your layers palette you should see a single layer with the four squares, and the background layer.

1. Using the rectangle marquee, draw a 1/4 inch selection horizontally across your 4-square paper (this is where the grid comes in handy). Position the selection exactly over the line where the patterns meet:

2. Hit delete.
3. If you are using PSCS or above, you can use the Select>Transform Selection to rotate your selection 90 degrees. If you are using PSE, simply redraw the selection vertically.
4. Position the selection exactly over the line where the papers meet.
5. Hit delete.

1. Select your Elliptical Marquee tool.
2. In the Options bar at the top of the screen, choose Fixed Size from the Mode drop-down box.
3. Type in 6in and 6in in the boxes. This will automatically draw you a perfect 6-inch circle.

Now for a cool trick:
4. Position your crosshair cursor in the exact center of your document (again, the grid comes in handy).
5. While holding the Alt key, click once. You should see a 6-inch circle with its centerpoint at the place you clicked.

Another note: the Alt key works for Normal selections, too, if you like drawing out from the center rather than dragging diagonally.

Now let’s Save this selection (even though we can re-draw it in an instant with our constrained marquee tool, saving and loading is a good thing to know for more complex selections).


6. Choose Select > Save Selection. Type an identifiable name in the box, such as CircleMarquee.
7. Hit OK.

1. With your 4-square paper active, hit Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V to cut the circle selection and paste it into a new layer. (You may have to nudge your circle back into place with the Move tool selected using the arrow keys).
FOR PSE:

2. With the circle layer active, choose Image> Transform> Free transform.
3. In the options bar at the top of your screen, the third box from the left has a little angle next to it. This is the rotation. Type 90.

1. Go to Select > Load Selection and choose CircleMarquee from the dropdown list. You’ll see your saved selection activate.
2. Go to Select > Modify > Expand. Type 50 into the box to expand the selection by 50 pixels in every direction.
3. In the layers palette, make sure the 4-square paper layer (NOT the circle layer) is active. Hit Delete.

1. Open your photo.
2. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map
If you’re in Elements, your whole image might turn white at this point. Don’t panic.
3. Click in the gradient itself to edit. (That’s the big white or gradient bar inside the popup, like this).
The gradient dialog appears.Choose the black-to-white gradient, which is third from the left on the top row. Like this:


Your image turns black and white. (Yay!)But we still have a problem. The image, because it started out dark, is very flat and washed out. Let’s fix it by boosting the white.
4. Drag the bottom right slider (the white one) over to the left. You can see the white in your image brightening, bringing out detail and adding contrast. Slide this slider until you get a result you’re happy with. It’ll differ for every image, but it might look something like this:



5. (If your image started out too bright or you’d like to add some more dark hues, slide the black slider (bottom left) toward the right until you get enough shadow.
6. Click OK in the gradient editor.
7. Click OK in the gradient map dialog.

1. Open the photo you’d like to add the sepia to. (You don’t have to convert it to black and white first, but I recommend following the gradient map adjustment layer above to get really nice contrast in the tones.)
If you are working in the photo you just converted, make sure you have the top layer selected in your layers palette before moving on, so you can ensure that the next layer you create goes on top of the stack.

2. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation
3. Click the Colorize checkbox in the popup.
4. Set the top value to 25, the middle value to 15, and leave the bottom value where it is. You can adjust the middle value to anywhere between 4-17 and get a very nice sepia tone.

1. Open the photo you’d like to add the text to. Please note that hair and fur make this a little more difficult, so I recommend starting on something that has fairly solid edges. Up to you, though, if you’re a glutton for punishment. :)
2. Add your text. Because part of the text is going to be invisible, people looking are going to have to decipher what your text says based on the visible parts. Because of this, I recommend a big fat font. I used Impact.

For Elements and PS 5.5 and 6:
a. Add a Brightness adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast)
b. In the layers palette, drag the adjustment layer below the text layer.
c. Click on the text layer in the layers palette and hit Ctrl-G.
Your layers palette should look like this (minus the black in the mask rectangle. we’ll be adding that):


For Photoshop 7, CS and CS2:
a. Click on the text layer.
b. Click on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette.
Your layers palette should look like this (minus the black in the mask rectangle. we’ll be adding that):



3. Select your layer mask thumbnail (the white rectangle) in the layers palette.
4. Choose a small round Brush tool, with the color black.
5. Zoom on in to your photo so you get some nice detail. This is the painstaking part. (tip: you might also want to reduce the opacity of your text layer, so you can see what’s going on beneath it)
   
6. Paint over the text that you would like to mask out. You’ll watch the text disappear. This is because in a layer mask, the color black works just like an eraser.
   

1. Pick the Dodge tool. It’s over in the toolbar, hiding in the same menu as Burn and Sponge.
2. Set it to a small round brush. Depending on your image resolution, this might be 3-9 pixels.
3. Set it to Highlights and 100%. (If you want to start out with a subtler effect and build on it, you can set this to 50%)
4. Zoom in on the image (you can use the navigator palette or hit Z and click on the eyes a couple times).
5. (hit o to return to the Dodge tool if you used Zoom). Tap a few times on the very lightest parts of the catchlights. You should see them brighten. *Don’t overdo this. Keep it subtle*

1. While you’re zoomed in on the eyes, choose the circular marquee tool (hit M).
2. Select the iris portion of the eye. Use the Shift key while you select to add portions to your selection, and also to select the second eye, like so (hint: the Shift key adds to any selection, and the Alt key subtracts from any selection):




3. When you’re happy with your selection, hit Ctrl-J to copy the selection onto its own layer.
4. Run an Unsharp Mask on the eyes layer. I use Scott Kelby’s default settings to start with: 85%, Radius 1, Threshold 4. *Don’t overdo this. Keep it subtle.*
5. When you’re happy with the sharpness of the eyes, merge the eye layer back onto the photo layer, run an unsharp mask on the whole image, and you’re ready to go!

1. Open your photo.
2. Duplicate your photo onto a new layer and hide the original.
3. Click on the layer with the duplicated photo, and change the blending mode to Soft Light (this is located in a dropdown at the very top of the layers palette).
4. Duplicate the photo again.
5. Click on the lower of the two photo copies. Desaturate this layer (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate OR in Elements - Enhance > Color > Remove Color).
6. Copy the desaturated layer two more times.

Your layer stack should now look like this:




From top to bottom, the layers are:


Color photo, soft light blend


Desaturated copy, soft light blend


Desaturated copy, soft light blend


Desaturated copy, soft light blend





Okay, a couple more steps to really dream-i-fy the photo.


7. Change the second layer to Screen blend
8. Now, choose layer 2 and do a Gaussian blur (start out with 10 px and see where that takes you � go more or less depending on whether you�re working with a 300 dpi photo)
9. Choose layer 3 and do a Gaussian blur of slightly more than you did in layer 2. (Just play with the slider until you get an effect you like)
10. If you want to create a layout from here, simply link all your layers together and drag them onto your layout.
    OR
11. If you want to add the grunge mask, flatten all the visible layers (Layer > Merge Visible).

Now you can open up my grunge mask from Photoshop Friday #3 and apply it to the photo. I also filled in a bottom layer with black before saving.
Here’s another example:

Okay, little birdies! Fly free! Make dreaminess! Link me up when you create something! I can’t wait to see. :)

Oh, and let’s seeee…. freebie freebie freebie..

Here’s a great one, from the Dover 1500 Decorative Ornaments book/CD again.

Remember, when you have your brush tool selected you can choose the [ and ] keys to make your brush larger or smaller before you stamp it down.

Have fun!

1. Make sure you have saved your final .psd. You’ll have to go through all these steps again every time you save for the web. Oh, and make SURE you have this original saved in a safe place. :)
   
2. Change the image size from 300 to 72 dpi (Image>Image Size). Be sure to uncheck the resample image box. Your layout dimensions will change to something like 50 x 50 inches, but we’ll take care of that in a second.
   
3. Flatten the image. (Layer>Flatten Image)
4. Hit Ctrl-A to select all.
5. Go to Edit > Transform > Scale. Choose 25% for height and width. Always use the scale rather than just changing the image size using Image Size. The algorithm Adobe uses for scaling is just a lot better. A lot clearer. A lot more accurate.
   
6. Run an unsharp mask to sharpen. I usually use 85%, radius 1, threshold 4 (this is the “All-purpose sharpening” recommended by Scott Kelby). You can run this twice if you need a little extra sharpening boost.
   
7. Save for Web. (File > Save for Web) There is a slider that allows you to determine the compression level, and thus affect your file size. I can usually get a 12x12 layout in the 150-250K range at about 60% quality. If you have a file size requirement that is smaller than this, go back and scale your layout down a bit and try it again.
8. Hit OK. Now back at your layout, go back in the History palette and click on the step just BEFORE the Image Size step to keep working. Or if you’re all done with this layout, close it without saving (assuming you remembered to save right before the web-prep steps). DO NOT save your flattened layout, or you will be very sad later on. Trust me on that one.