I didn’t know what to call this, but think of the interlocking Olympic rings

This tutorial is aimed more at the beginner to photoshop. I’ve done a quick couple of examples to show you before we start on the tutorial. It’s easily achieved by selecting the transparency of one image and using a mask on a second image. I’ll quickly describe before each image what I did.

I created a circle with the elliptical marquee tool, stroked the circle and then made a duplicate layer. On one layer I copied the circle another 2 times and on the other layer I duplicated it once, positioned the circles where I wanted them, interlocked them, used bevel and emboss, pattern overlay, merged the two layers, distorted the circles duplicated the layer, locked the transparency of one layer and filled with black, used gaussian blur and lowered the layer opacity – moved it down to form the drop shadow.

On the image below I used the elliptical marquee again and drew out one circle and filled it with red, duplicated that circle twice, putting on its own layer. Changed the size of 2 of the circles, used a pattern overlay and inner glow set to black and the blend mode to multiply (you get to play with the size if you use inner glow instead of inner shadow – it creates a type of vignette effect/3D effect). On a new layer, and with the freeform pen tool set to path I drew a line, chose a hard edged brush and fiddled with it in the brush engine, then stroked the path with the brush. Used a gradient overlay in the FX palette and with both layers duplicated them to create their drop shadows.

In the next image I simply used a brush to create the vertical lines on one layer and the horizontal lines on another layer, gave them both a bevel and emboss

On the image below I used some type and on a new layer used the rectangular marquee filled with red to create a ribbon effect

So with all that done, and just to give you the idea that it isn’t limited to what I’ll demostrate here, lets get on with it.

Create a new file whatever size you would like to practise on, mine is 600 X 400 72dpi. Grab your type tool and select a font and use one letter from it – I used Myriad Pro – Regular – 100pt – Sharp letter H. I also selected the transform tool by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T and holding down the Shift + Alt keys dragged the top middle point upwards.

Create a new blank layer above your type layer by clicking on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, select your rectangular marquee tool and create a rectangle in about the same place I have, and then go ahead and fill it with whatever colour you want – I chose red.

Still working on the marquee layer, press Ctrl + T on the keyboard the bring up the Transform Tool, right click inside and choose Warp, head to the top toolbar and choose Flag from the drop down menu and in the *Bend* dialogue box choose -100. See image below.

It’s worth pausing here for a moment and looking at the 2 little dialogue boxes next to the *Bend* box. H = Horizontal and V = Vertical, while you’re in the Warp Transform mode just put a couple of numbers in those boxes and see what happens. You must put a + or – in front of the numbers. When you’ve finished playing you can carry on with this tutorial In a few minutes when we get to the good bits, you might be able to see how those 2 dialogue boxes can give you some interesting effects. I’ll detour and give you a quick example below.

Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on the text layer thumbnail, this will load the transparency of the text, you can release the Ctrl key. Click on the rectangular marquee layer and hold down the Alt key before clicking on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. If you hadn’t have held down the Alt key when you hit the Add Layer Mask icon you would have ended up with the image I posted above. Unlock the little link between the thumbnail and the mask to reposition the rectangle if you so desire, and you can leave it unlinked if you like or link it back again. So, you should have something like this.

Select a hard edged brush, select the default f/ground, b/ground colours, choose white as the foreground colour by pressing X on the keyboard (assuming black is the f/ground), click on the mask to make sure you are working on it and then paint where you want the rectangle to be in front of the type. If you make an error you will have to load the selection from the type layer, click on the mask and then paint with black. And from there you can go ahead and add some effects to both of the layers. I then hid the b/ground layer and merged the visible layers, duplicated the layer, locked the transparency and filled it with black, took the opacity of the layer down and then gave it a Gaussian Blur and moved it to create a shadow. I then duplicated the effect layer again and flipped vertical. I then gave this layer a motion blur and added a layer mask and with the the default f/ground – b/ground colours set, chose a black to transparent linear gradient to make it look like a reflection. Just remember that you can do this in different ways and get different effects. Have fun

For more instruction or comments go to the forum…

There are many methods of simulating an infrared effect in Photoshop, I think this is one of easiest.

You can always rush out and buy an IR filter if you want as well

You’re going to be using a B&W adjustment layer in CS3 and turning a layer into a smart object. So lets get straight into it, you can click through on the image below for the larger version if you want to practise on it. All the settings will be relevant to this particular image 800 x 600 @72dpi you will need to adjust them for larger images.

Using a B&W adjustment layer – click on the adjustment layer in the layers palette and choose B&W – you can punch in the same numbers that I have in the image below. You are looking to boost the greens, and depending on the image, may also have to boost the yellows as well.

Click on the background layer to make it active, then right click on the layer and choose ‘Convert to Smart Object’ from the menu. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. On this particular image, choose a radius of 5 pixels. See image below.

Referencing the image below, double click on the small upward facing arrows next to where it says Gaussian Blur in the Layers Palette. This will bring up a small dialogue box, adjust the opacity to 50% and click OK to accept the change.

Click on the b/ground layer to make it active, then hold down the Alt key on the keyboard and click on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. The New Layer dialogue box will appear – you can name the layer if you want – change the blend mode to Overlay and check the ‘Fill with Overlay Neutral color (50% gray) box.

Making sure you are working on the new layer you created (should be gray) go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and on this particular image choose about 5% – Gaussian – Monochromatic. Then lower the opacity of the layer to about 35%

Finally, click on the top most layer (B&W adjustment layer) and click on the create new fill or adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then choose curves from the menu. Create an S curve until you get something that you are happy with. You can punch in the same numbers I have in the image below if you like.

And here is the final image. You can change any of the settings to suit your own taste. There is probably a little too much greenery in this image as well

This is a cool effect and it is really easy to do. I suspect that it could also be done in Elements and perhaps Gimp etc.,

My file is 700 x 500 @72 dpi, you will have to adjust some of the sizes to use this effect on a larger file. You can nick my image below to practise on if you like … copyright is mine yada, yada.

With the/your image open choose the shape tool from the tools palette and make sure that the Rectangle Tool is selected. Make your foreground colour black. Draw out a rectangle on your image similar to the one below.

In the layers palette, and making sure that you are working on the ‘vector mask’ thumbnail by clicking on it, take the *Fill* of the shape layer down to zero – this will leave you with a 1 pixel border. See image below.

Still on the same layer, go to the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette and click on Blending Option to bring up the palette. Go to Stroke and change the colour to white, change the size to 10 px and choose ‘Inside’ from the position drop down menu. At this point you can also go and give your rectangle a drop shadow if you want. See images below for settings.

Go to the tools palette and select the polygonal Lasso tool, and keeping just inside the white area, select that area.

Then choose the ‘create new fill or adjustment layer’ from the bottom of the layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation. Take the Saturation all the way down to zero, you could also choose to adjust the lightness slider if you wanted.

Obviously we don’t want this to happen, so making sure you are still on the Hue/Sat adjustment layer press Ctrl + i on your keyboard or go to Image>Adjustments>Invert.

You should still be on the Hue/Sat layer, so shift + click on the shape layer to highlight both of them, then right click and choose ‘Link Layers’ or you can go to Layer>Link Layers in the top toolbar. Bring up the Transform Tool by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T and move the selected pieces around till you have something that suits you or the image. Your highly unlikely to choose the transformation I did though LOL

Because the Shape and Hue Sat layers are linked you can move them around independantly of the background layer to highlight the portion of the image that you want to be in colour. I’ve put another finished image here that might be a litte more appealing

Or why not a heart shape ….

Or some other random shape that you like.

Have fun

You can make this an etched glass effect, or, by inverting the filter, make it appear as though the shape/type/whatever is moulded in the glass.

Because my glass is light, I will be using a black filled shape. If your bottle or glass is dark, the type/shape/whatever, would need to be white.

So lets get straight on with it. You can click through on my glass image below to get the larger start image, or you can use one of your own. Just remember that any settings I use are relevant to this file 720 X 1000 @72dpi.

Your first step will be to create a new layer above the b/ground layer and then fill it with white … turn off the visibility of the layer by clicking on the little eyeball icon next to the layer. I’ve chosen the ‘Flower Oranment 2′ which is a Photoshop default shape, and I’ve drawn it on the glass …. see image below.

Make sure that you are working on the Shape Layer (or type – making sure the spelling is correct) and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, a small dialogue box will appear asking you to rasterize the shape or type, click OK to make that happen and then choose a small amount of blur. I have used 2 pixels on this particular image … which might be a tad too much …. we’ll see.

Next you are going to create a flattened copy of the image and save it to your desktop…or somewhere that you will remember, because we are going to be using it shortly. Go to Save As and when the dialogue box appears, make sure that your uncheck ‘layers’ and check ‘copy’ See image below.

Now, duplicate the original b/ground layer and turn off the visibility of the shape layer and the layer you filled with white. Working on the duplicate b/ground layer go to Filter>Distort>Glass and the Filter Gallery dialogue box will appear. Look at the right hand side of this box and notice where it says Texture, click on the small arrow and a small box will appear that says load texture, click on this and load the file that you previously saved. As you can see, I called mine Flowerdistort. You can fiddle with the Distortion and Smoothing, but you will have to leave the Scaling as is. You can also check and uncheck the Invert box to see which variation you prefer. Once you have the settings as you like click OK to make it happen.

And here is the image with Inverted checked.

And that’s it. Fiddle around with the settings a bit till you get what you want, and remember that if the bottle, glass etc., is dark you will need to reverse the colours i.e. the layer will be filled with black and the shape or type would be white.

What a great effect this one is, I first saw it done by Corey Barker.

Just a couple of points that may come in handy before we get on with the tutorial. I’ve created a car shape for you to practise on, if you would like to make your own shape there are a couple of things you need to know – after you have created your shape, you are going to have to be able to lock the transparency of that layer at some point – here’s how you can make that happen. Right click on the shape layer and choose Rasterize from the menu. Making sure the shape layer is active, hold down your Ctrl (Cmmd) key on the keyboard and click on the New Layer Icon at the bottom of the layers palette (this will force the new layer below the shape layer). Click back on the shape layer to make it active, right click on the layer and from the menu choose Merge Down. You will now be able to Lock the Transparency of that layer later on.

When you get to do the type part of the tutorial, you can add your own text – I’ve been lazy and gone to the Lorem Ipsum site and used the text generator to randomly generate some copy. You can find the site http://www.lipsum.com/ The last thing you will need to know is this – If you want to add some additional type after you have done the type effect you will find that every time you click on the image with theType Tool selected it will put the Type on the Type Layer you already have there, which you may want to happen, but if you want to do some FX’s on the additional Type it will affect all of the Type. Two ways you can get around this – in CS3 you can right click on the Type Layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. If you have earlier editions of Photoshop hold down the Shift click before clicking on the file and it will force the Type onto a new Type Layer.

With all that said, let us get on with the tutorial. Create a new file 800 x 600@72dpi with a white background. Save the image below, then open it in Photoshop. The first thing you will have to do with the car image is go to Image>Mode and change the file from ‘indexed’ to ‘RGB’ now grab your move tool and holding down your shift key, drag the car image onto the other file you have there. Holding down the shift key will centre the image for you. Click through for the larger image

You should have something like this.

Go to the Lorem Ipsum site and generate some copy then copy it to the clipboard. Go back to Photoshop and with your Type Tool selected draw a selection around the image.

Then go and ahead and paste the text. You may have to adjust the text a little bit – Double click on the thumbnail, then go ahead and pick the font and size from the top menu bar. You can also click inside and get rid of the paragraphs if you like. You may end up with something similar to the image below. I’ve left the type a little bit bigger in my version so you can see what is going on – and I’ve used the transform tool to spread the type toward the edges a little bit more.

That’s not anything special …. wouldn’t it be really nice if we could get the text to be white when it goes over the car instead of black ……. lets go and do that now. Drag the type layer below the car layer – or drag the car layer above the type layer … whichever suits Click on the car layer to make it active and then lock the transparency of that layer by clicking on the ‘Lock Transparent Pixels’ icon at the top of the layers palette … see image below.

Make sure the car layer is active, and the transparency is locked, then go ahead and fill the car with white – you should end up with something that looks terrible Go ahead now and change the blend mode of the car layer to Difference …. and boom! you’re type is now white where the car is ….. what a simple and cool effect.

You can go ahead and fade the type if you like by taking the opacity of that layer down. Fill the car with some different colours to see what effects you can come up with. Try the type and car in the same colour (not black). In the image below, both the type and car have been changed to the same colour R 13 G 105 B 143, I’ve also added a layer above the background layer and given it a gradient. I added another type layer (remember what I said about that at the beginning of the tutorial) and then I used the transform tool on the original type layer.

This is one of the easiest ways to create a different type effect in Photoshop. This may well work with other software programs as well.

I’ve created a new file 500 x 300 @72dpi with a white b/ground. Go ahead a grab your type tool and type something – My font was Impact – Regular – 88pt – Sharp

You are going to use the filter gallery to add an effect to the type, but if you click on the type thumbnail and then go to the filter gallery Photoshop will ask you to rasterize the type ….. and that isn’t what you want to be happening, you still need the type to be editable in case you want to change the text. If you were to change the text, you would have to delete the layer mask and select the transparency again … but you’ll get the idea of how that would work as you read through the tutorial. So here’s one of the easiest ways to have the best of both worlds. Keep in mind that this isn’t limited to type.

Holding down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, click on the type thumbnail- your cursor should change to have a small rectangle over the top of it and the marching ants will appear around the type – you have successfully loaded the transparency. You can now add a layer mask to the type layer by clicking on the ‘Add Layer Mask’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. You should have a similar file to the one below.

Now the fun can begin – you can go ahead and try out various things inside the Filter Gallery, I’m just going to run you through what I did to give you an idea of what you can achieve.

You have the transparency selected, marching ants showing and you have clicked on the layer mask to make it active – now go to Filter>Filter Gallery to bring up the (rather large) dialogue box. You can copy along with the same settings that I punched in, or go check out all the effects that you can come up by using some of the other effects inside the Filter Gallery.

Below is what your image will look like once you click OK to accept the settings you chose in the filter gallery.

Go and ahead and add a drop shadow or bevel emboss to the type by using the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

Now how simple was that

If you have any questions, just ask.

ust what are Displacement Maps ?

Displacement maps allow you to warp and distort images by moving pixels
according to the guidelines set out by a predefined “map.” It’s a bit like creating a 3D effect (for want of a better word).

How do they work ?

A Displacement Map is always a B&W image. Black moves pixels to the right and/or down. White moves pixels left and/or up. Think of them in terms of valleys and peaks – the valleys are black and the peaks are white.

Need to know stuff

Displacement maps MUST be grayscale.

Displacement maps MUST be saved in the native photoshop format – .PSD – or if your software has displacement maps available in _their_ native format.

Displacement maps MUST have some kind of blur applied to them. Blurring smooths out the pixels as they wrap around or displace the object. Be warned though, too much blurring will lose the effect you are trying to create.

The settings I have used here are for a 800 x 521@72dpi image, they will be different if you are working on a higher res image.

Most tutorials are done on flags …. and this one will be no different So you can either borrow my flag below, or be patriotic and grab your own. Click through for the larger image.

You’re going to be do a very simple displacement map here, using the Render>Clouds filter. So lets get started.

Open the flag image, in the layers palette double click on it, when the dialogue box appears either accept the default Layer 0 or give it a deep and meaningful name like ….. flag Hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, then click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, this will force the new layer below the flag layer. Making sure that the new layer is active (by clicking on it) go ahead and fill it with white. What we need to do is expand the canvas a little bit. Click on the white layer and go to Image>Canvas Size and you can punch in the same settings that I have in the image below.

With the same layer selected go to Edit>Fill and fill with white. You should now have something that looks similar to the image below.

You can set that image aside for the moment while we create the Displacement map.

Create a new file the same size as the flag image i.e. 800 x 521@72dpi white b/ground. Make sure that your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to B&W, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. What you need to do at this point is make the blacks black and the whites white. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels to bring up the Level dialogue box and you can punch in the same numbers as I have below.

Next you are going to make sure that the Move Tool is selected and holding down the shift key, drag the render clouds layer over to the flag image. Place the clouds layer on the top of the layers stack and change the blend mode to multiply and take the opacity down to about 35% (you can adjust this later to suit) You will notice that I have ‘clipped’ the clouds layer with the flag layer. You can do this by making sure the clouds layer is active, right click, then choose ‘Create Clipping Mask’

Go back to the Clouds file and you are going to apply a Gaussian Blur to it. If you are following along, just punch in the numbers that I have below.

You might want to try the blur at a lower amount as well on this file. On a larger file you would probably have to crank up the blur to 4 or 5, perhaps more.

Now you can go to Image>Mode and click on grayscale, when the little dialogue box comes up click Discard. You are going to save the file now, so go to File>Save As and choose .PSD from the drop down menu. Save the displacement map to a location that you are going to remember I usually just drop mine on the desktop.

Return to the flag file and click on the layer with the flag on it. Go to Filter>Distort>Displace and you can use the same settings that I have. Don’t forget to experiment with these settings on different res images. As soon as you click OK in the dialogue box below, you will be presented with another dialogue box to pick the displacement map …. find it and click OK.

What you’ll notice right away, is that the edges have pulled in a bit. One way to keep this from happening, is make the displacement map a little smaller than the image you are displacing. You should have something similar to the image below.

Lets go and give this some FX. Click on the flag layer to make it active and then click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then click on Blending Options. Click on Bevel and Emboss and you can punch in the settings I have.

Then click on texture and choose Satin … last on the top row, and choose the settings I have below.

Lets give it a bit of a drop shadow. You can punch in the same settings as I have below.

Now you could use a levels adjustment layer if you like.

And here is the final image.

It would probably have been useful to start with a better image than this one, but don’t just think flags when you think of Displacement Maps. How about making crumpled paper ? Make your own displacement map using diagonal stripes B&W to make a waving flag. Use one image to displace another image, all you have to remember are these points :-

Need to know stuff

Displacement maps MUST be grayscale.

Displacement maps MUST be saved in the native photoshop format – .PSD – or if your software has displacement maps available in _their_ native format.

Displacement maps MUST have some kind of blur applied to them. Blurring smooths out the pixels as they wrap around or displace the object. Be warned though, too much blurring will lose the effect you are trying to create.

If there are any questions just ask me.

So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not!

The image below is the only image we are going to be using today, but you will need the larger file, so click on the image to get that.

Copyright is mine – yada, yada.

Open Photoshop and create a new file 800px X 600px, background set to white. Open the larger image (which you will have saved to your computer) and with your move tool selected and the shift key held down, drag the tree image over to your new file. Holding down the shift key will centre the image for you.

Working on the trees layer Go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and I want you to take the slider to the left until it reaches 80 (see image below). We’re aiming to get a lot of white in the image.

Next we’re going to add the type. Select a foreground colour, I used Red. Grab your type tool and select Horizontal type – then go ahead and type something, I used RedBubble. (Arial Black > Regular>100pt>Sharp – for those who may be interested) Move your text to where you would like it to be, you can place it similar to where I placed, but it will need to be over some of the black. Once you’ve played around with this a couple times you’ll get a general idea of where the text should go.

Before we go any further, we have to rasterize the text. You can either right click on the text layer and choose rasterize type or go to Layer>Rasterize>Type.

Now the fun begins click on the trees layer, the one you did the threshold adjustment on and select your magic wand tool, check that the contiguous box on the top menu bar is unchecked and select some of the black. Because you have the contiguous box unchecked, the magic wand tool will select all of the black areas. Now, hide the trees layer by clicking the little eye icon and click on the type layer, then press the delete key. Go to Select>deselect or press ctrl D on the keyboard.

And there you have it, some grungey type text. Use your move tool to position the text wherever you want and you can drag the trees layer to the little garbage bin icon … cos you don’t need it anymore.

I’ve cropped my final image, just click through for the larger image.

Enjoy playing, and if I haven’t made anything clear just ask me.

You can come up with some really cool effects using brushes to mask with, and it’s really easy.

I can’t remember where I first saw this effect done

My image probably isn’t the best one to show this off to its full capacity. I have a folder with old images that I use for these tuts and I randomly stick a pin in and use what I come out with. Try a portrait image, or if you are doing a composite this can give the image an interesting effect. Try taking the opacity of the brush down on occasion and change its size particualrly to the outside of an image. Your job to fiddle remember

We will be using the noisy otter image below to try this out on, just click on the image to go to a larger version. The larger image is 800 x 600 @72dpi, so the settings I use in the brush engine etc., will be different on a higher res image.

With your image open, double click on it and either accept the default Layer 0 or name it something. Then I want you to hold down the Ctrl Key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This will place the new layer below the original layer. You can go ahead and fill the new layer with a colour of your choice, I’ve chosen white but you change the colour later if you want anyway.

You are now going to put a layer mask on the original otter layer. Make sure that the layer is active by clicking on it, and then hold down your Alt/Option Key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. You should now have an image similar to the one below …… depending on what colour you choose for the new layer you created earlier. Holding down the Alt (PC) Option (Mac) makes the mask Hide All ….. White Reveals – Black Conceals, is a good way to remember how masks work.

I won’t put a screenshot of my white layer here

Now you need to get a brush to do the effect with. Remember that none of this is restricted to the brush that I am going to choose. In fact, it isn’t restricted to using brushes either.

Go ahead and toggle your Brushes Palette – if you don’t how to do that, go to Window>Brushes .. or press F5 on the keyboard. Click on the downward facing arrow at the top right hand side of the dialogue box and choose Square Brushes from the fly out menu

You will be presented with a small dialogue box that gives you some options, I usually choose append.

You are going to change some of the settings for the brush, so you need to bring the brush engine/palette back up again. Make sure you have the brush tool selected in the toolbar before you go into the brush engine. If you appended the brushes, the square brushes will be at the bottom, so scroll down and pick the largest one …. probably about 24. You can change the size later when you are working on the image by using the square bracket keys on your keyboard. These are the settings that I used to test the brush – feel free to go back in at any time and change them for a different effect.

With the brush engine open, select brush tip shape and adjust the spacing slider to 150%

With Shape Dynamics selected – set all the boxes to off or 0% except the Angle Jitter – that should be at 100%

Choose Scattering and select – Scatter 400% – Count 2 and Count Jitter 75%

You should end up with something similar to the engine below. Remember that you can go back in the brush engine at anytime and change the settings to suit yourself.

You can close the brush engine now. Next, before you do anything with your newly made brush, I want you to double click on the image itself to bring up the Layer Styles palette, choose drop shadow and accept the default settings. You can always go back in and change this later if you want.

Make sure that the brush tool is selected and your square brush is selected (which it still should be), make sure that your f/ground colour is white (to reveal), click on the layer mask to make sure you are painting on it and go ahead and reveal the otter’s face with your brush. You can reduce the size of your brush as you move out from the face if you want. Simply press the left square bracket key(located near the P key on your keyboard) to reduce the brush tip size. If you want to enlarge it again press the right bracket key. You might end up with an image similar to the one below.

The beauty of using masks of course, is that by simply switching your f/ground colour (to black in this case) you can take away some of the squares that you revealed in the image. Essentially breaking them up a bit.

What you can do now is duplicate the layer you were just working on and then go to Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. I chose 75% – Zoom. Because the Radial Blur doesn’t have a preview window, you will have to manually place where the centre of the blur will be coming from.

Working on the layer mask of the newly blurred image, and making sure the f/ground colour is set to black, go ahead and paint back in the otter’s face – reduce the size of your brush on occasion and go to the outer edges of the image as well. You can go back to the previous layer mask as well if you feel something has to be added back in to the image.

What I’ve done on the final image below is repeat the radial blur effect on Layer 0 copy layer – Filled the b/ground with the Aqua Pattern by going to Edit>Fill and choosing pattern from the drop down menu. As I said at the beginning, this wasn’t really the best image to show this effect ……. also, don’t feel that you are stuck with using a square brush either, go and experiment with a few different things and see what you come up with.

The High Pass Filter in Photoshop seems to have been around forever, and you can find it located under Filter>Other>High Pass. Think of it as one of The Others and listen to the Twlight Zone music start playing ……

First of all lets take a few seconds to see how the sharpening process works in image editing software. All sharpening methods are edge detection processes, wherever an edge is found it is exaggerated by making the darks, darker and the lights, lighter. The trick is to get this just right so as not to produce haloing effects which are the result of over sharpening.

Another thing to consider when sharpening, is not just sharpening but perhaps throwing what you don’t want sharp out of focus. Say for instance that you want to use a radius of 10 on an image, why not use a radius of 5 to sharpen and gaussian blur/lens blur with a radius of 5 to throw the rest of the image out of focus. sharpening isn’t always about sharpening.

Then we can simply selectively sharpen something in our image, a person, an animal, eyes etc., to draw more attention to that particular part of an image and add more impact.

What we’re going to look at today is sharpening with the High Pass Filter. There are a couple of other sharpening processes available in PS, the USM (Unsharp Mask) has been around for quite a while now, and the new Smart Sharpen Filter appeared in CS2 and is terrific. I used to have an old technique for adjusting motion blur with the Emboss Filter, which is yet another way to sharpen in PS. But lets concentrate on one filter at a time.

Sharpening is usually the very last thing that you do to an image, so go ahead an do what needs to be done with your chosen image, flatten your image, and then duplicate the layer by dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or press ctrl J on the keyboard, cmd J for the mac. If you are working with CS3 you can turn the duplicate layer into a smart filter, which will then make the high pass filter editable.

This is my start image, a horrible bird shot

So you’ve got your duplicate layer, make sure that it is selected by clicking on it then I want you to change the blend mode to overlay (ignore the fact that the image will look awful at this stage), I also want you to make sure that the image is at 100% and go to Filter>Other>High Pass. An easy way to figure out the radius you will need to use to sharpen is the actual size of your image. My bird shot is less than 1m, but the first image will show that I used a radius of 1. If you have a 10m image, set the radius to 10. You can adjust this with the opacity slider later if you feel that it is a little too much. 5m file use 5, 20m file use 20 etc.,

What you are looking for is to have a similar look in your preview window as I have in the above image. The next image shows you what you don’t want the preview window to look like. You’ll notice I’ve used a radius of 5.

That is the basis of High Pass sharpening really. You can adjust the effect by taking the opacity slider down in the layer palette or if you feel that it isn’t enough you can trash the layer and start again, or you can go to Filter and at the very top of that box will be the name of your last filter, in this case High Pass, just click on that or press ctrl + F to repeat and then use the opacity slider to take the effect down. What you don’t want to see appearing on the image, is haloing. This is where the image starts to get a glow going on … which is a result of over sharpening as seen in the image below.

If you want some selective sharpening rather than the entire image to be sharp – go ahead and do the sharpening with High Pass then add a layer mask to that layer by clicking on the mask icon in the layers palette. Make the mask active by clicking on it, then press ctrl i on your keyboard to invert it (should be black). Grab your brush and make sure the f/ground colour is to white, then simply paint back in the area/s that you want to be sharp. In the image below I’ve sharpened the birds head, although I’m not sure that it will be very noticeable with this size image.

You can also try the blend mode at soft light or leave it at normal, just play around a little bit because different blend modes will produce different effects and they might just be useful for the image you are working on.

If you want to know what your image will look like on the web (computer monitors) view your image at 100%, if you want to get an idea of what it will look like printed, view it at 50%.

Have fun