Windows 7: Graphics Software Talk ...

Yeah thats big, Im not good with photos but do edit a bit

Family photo I made a bit lighter .. Im on the right

The trick with any sort of photographic editing is to avoid JPEG totally, if possible, the fact that a lot of the data that is stripped out is tonal data means that you're starting at a disadvantage and of course more data is lost every time you save a file.

All my cameras except the compacts and phones shoot raw which means there is more data in highlights and shadows that is normally visible on screen, which means you can push things.

Of course there will always be a problem in getting an image to match what you see with your eye as the dynamic range available in digital media is a fraction of what we see, that's why HDR is such a useful tool :)

Mmmm Max's photo album is all Jpeg (insert is only a small part of it) would I do better to convert to say PNG for keeping ?

It wouldn't hurt, but to be honest if your camera only takes JPEG then the best thing is to set the camera to use the best quality available, (least compression ), at the largest size possible, cards and hard drives are fairly cheap these days, (it's actually a good idea to set all your original JPEGs to read only once you upload to PC)

Most importantly if you do any edits on an image, always use a save as not save, Saving as a PNG at this stage would be a useful thing in case you need to re-edit, or save in PSD/TIFF if you have layers or masks.

Leaving the original filename the same and only changing the file extension helps keep all related files together

If you ever need to try a different edit you can re-open the original untouched image

OK thank you for the advice Nigel

One thought about uninstalling the older versions of Photoshop CC after installing Photoshop CC 2014 for Lightroom Users

the way that the installer works may cause issues

If you use lightroom and you install Photoshop CC 2014 then uninstall the earlier PS CC version(s) you may find that Lightroom loses some or all it's links to Photoshop CC2014, (Edit in .. Edit as Layers Merge to HDR pro Etc)

If you know that you do not need the older versions it's best to remove these Before you install CC 2014 .

If you do install PS CC 2014 and later decide to remove Photoshop CC and lose the LR links Uninstall both Lightroom 5 CC & Photoshop CC 2014 and then Re-install PS 2014 then LR 5 CC to reset the links 

I never saw that coming,
All the updater said was a new version of photoshop was ready like it has done several times in the passed,
3d engine was rendered useless every little 3d attempt said 3-4-5 hours
Had enough of that update craziness,
Glad someone sees cc as a good thing

P.S.
Great idea creating this thread Nigel

I did find out recently Windows Movie Marker has gotten pretty easy to use :shocked:
Not sure if there's any tricks to it though,
First step in was pretty
The only real mess is all of the different and specific mobile device options ?
Not sure what that's all about but I'm pretty sure it's to load to the device and not for actually viewing on youtube and stuff like that,
The youtube share bit never worked not sure why name and password were correct but I did end up with three freaking I'm not sure what they are sort of different accounts via the same gmail address lol

Free PS Nebula Brushes by ~FUZZJP~



Zip is to big to upload so here's the link > High Res Nebula Galaxies & Star Brushes (Free) | Free Brush Archive :)

Now this is a nice thread

One Photoshop extension that made my life considerably easier is PaintersWheel.

Sadly it's not yet supported in CC, but it's great for everyone using CS4, 5 or 6

Another great tool like that, which is IMHO even better, plus integrated in for as far as I know every version of Ps, is Kuler.


Related to Kuler, there is this online variant which also works great!

Now for advice I really only have three things; Groups, Layer Masks and Backups!
Groups are a great way to organize your layers and stop your project from becomming a mess.

Layer Masks are basically editable erasers:) Instead of cropping the background off of a layer, making it unable to use in the future, simply apply a layer mask, that way you can always access it later on.
And while you're working with layer masks anyway, take a look at the Refine Edge tool! It's virtually impossible to make a precise selection of hair or stuff like that, but with the Refine Edge tool you can get pretty darn close.

As for backups, I have hit myself in the face more than once late in projects when I wanted to edit that one rasterized text layer or that one shape, but didn't have a copy of it anywhere. I am sure that everyone who uses Photoshop, GIMP, CD, Cinema4D or any other (layer based) graphic program has had this. That's why it's essential to have a backup of all important layers.

A snip from the GFX Team subforum, courtecy of Julian;


And that's about it for now


Nommy