The spot healing brush made its debut in Photoshop Elements 3, but now an enhanced version of it is available in Photoshop CS2. The spot healing tool is different from the existing patch and healing tools in that it does not require you to make a selection or define a source point before using it.

To begin, open your Photoshop program, then hold down Ctrl-Alt-Shift in Windows or Command-Option-Shift for Mac OS. This restores the default preferences. Click on “Yes,” which resets, and then close the screen. Open an image file inside Photoshop, then make a duplicate layer to work on. This is one of the best habits you can develop for working with Photoshop; once you’re used to editing only on a copy of the original, you will see that it’s easy and worth it.

Strike a balance The Gradient Editor automatically places a midpoint between each colour stop to create a smooth linear blend between colours. You can tweak the effect of this blend by moving the midpoint to offset the mix between the colours. Using this technique you can create tight, dramatic blends between colours instead of gradual ones. The opacity stops run along the top of the preview bar. A black opacity stop indicates 100% solid, a white opacity stop indicates that that part of the gradient is 100% transparent and grey stops indicate values in between.

Image Adjustments: No doubt you’ll need to tweak things such as levels and colour values on occasion. These shortcuts will take you to the heart of the Image > Adjustments menu - Adjust Levels…….[Ctrl]+[L] - Auto Levels………[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[L] - Auto Contrast…….[Alt]+[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[L] - Auto Color……….[Shift]+[ Ctrl]+[B] - Curves …………..[Ctrl]+[M] - Color Balance…….[Ctrl]+[B] - Hue/Saturation……[Ctrl]+[U] - Desaturate……….[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[U] - Invert…………..[Ctrl]+[I] File Management: Browse, open, close and save your files for a variety of formats, all at the touch of a key or three - New File………….[Ctrl]+[N] - Open File…………[Ctrl]+[O] - Open File Browser….[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[O] - Save……………..[Ctrl]+[S] - Close…………….[Ctrl]+[W] - Save As…………..[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[S] - Save for Web………[Alt]+[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[S] - Undo last action…..[Ctrl]+[Z] - Step Forward………[Shift]+[Control]+[Z] - Step Backward……..[Alt]+[Ctrl]+[Z] - Page Setup………..[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[P] - Print…………….[Alt]+[Ctrl]+[P] - Print with Preview…[Ctrl]+[P] - Print One Copy…….[Alt]+[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[P] - Jump to ImageReady…[Shift]+[Ctrl]+[M]

To experiment with advanced Photoshop layering, you’ll need something to work on. So first bring up a photo inside Photoshop, then create another layer with something on it. On the bottom of your Layer Style box, you will find the “Blend If” settings. Choose either gray, red, green or blue inside the drop-down Blend If menu, then use your slider bars to control the opacity of the layer you highlighted or the layer underneath. Dragging the “white” slider left will diminish the whites or highlights, and the layer underneath will show through. You will quickly see how blending each color affects the image. You can use this versatile feature, for example, to replace a washed-out sky with a nice blue sky, blending the transparency to a gnat’s eyebrow.

Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe’s more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising. “That is new (for Adobe). It’s something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises,” Chizen said. Chizen described the introduction of Adobe Remix and the forthcoming hosted Photoshop as part of a larger move toward integrating hosted services into the company’s product mix.

Inside bothe the Levels and the Curves dialog boxes, click “Options” and you will find another important dialog box called “Auto Color Correction Options.” This box allows you to not only correct the photo’s tone and set specific clipping percentages, but you can also set your color values for shadows, midtones and highlights. Experiment inside your Auto Color Correction Options dialog box to enhance monochromatic contrast, enhance per channel contrast, find dark and light colors and snap neutral midtones. Often an image comes out with an overall color cast, which is usually not desirable. To remove a color cast, use your Image > Adjustments > Auto Color functions. Inside the same Imagae menu, you’ll find the Hue/Saturation and Desaturate functions. Use these to enhance colors or fine-tune the saturation of an image by reducing color (desaturating).

In order to understand color management, it is important to get your hands around some of the workflow. It is also important to understand a little bit about the ICC itself. The ICC or “International Color Consortium” was created in 1993 by a number major corporations with the goal of assisting end users in creating consistent color throughout the entire reproduction process. ICC profiles are a means by which one device can translate the same color information to another. This process is applied in graphics programs like Adobe Photoshop, and created in color management systems like X-rite’s Pulse or ColorVision’s Spyder software.

In your CMS you should be given the option to save your printer target for printing within your chosen graphic app. If asked choose not to apply a profile when opening. In Photoshop choose File>Print with Preview. Change the Output dropdown to Color Management. Under Source Space choose Document. Under Print Space choose Profile: Same as Source. You are now set up in Photoshop to print your profile target. You aren’t done yet! Now go into your printer driver software and set any color options to none, or zero, or whatever shuts off any color changes by the driver. Now print your target.

Profiles are only as accurate as the CMS that generates them and the size of the targets that are used to generate them. Packages in the $150-$500 price range generally have around 75-250 patches, while $2000 and up gets you 729 patches or more. Also, the more expensive packages rely on physical hardware devices to generate printer profiles, while the less expensive packages use your scanner as the print colorimeter. In addition, the more expensive packages have numerous options for the edition of the profiles you create.

For those who do not know, Adobe Photoshop is a program designed to let people edit various images on their computers. Its primary purpose is to let people perform touch ups on pictures before printing them. Of course, each succeeding version of Adobe Photoshop included more and more tools which let people add effects and do various other things to their photographs. The Adobe Photoshop of today actually allows people to add sound and animation to their photographs for sharing on the internet. In the past, people who took bad pictures were stuck with them. A lot of things can go wrong in a picture. There’s the usual red-eye, skewed angles, shaky focus and others. Adobe Photoshop was the tool that made all of these things disappear. With Adobe Photoshop, people can take pictures like amateurs and still produce images like pros!

If the convenience is hard to find, there are other ways on how you could get a tutorial for using the Photoshop CS. You could decide to have your own pacing, meaning, you could speed up the process or take it slowly. There are many self-help books published and distributed through the bookstores that would tutor you on how to use the Photoshop CS on procedural narrative formats. All you have to do is to absorb and understand by heart the content and instructions contained in such reading materials. If the printed books are not convenient, there are online and downloadable versions. Such e-books, as they are called nowadays, can be accessed online within minutes. They are actually like the book versions, only that they are soft copies and are faster to retrieve and access.

Perform non-destructive scaling with Smart Objects. You know how it is: You try to make an imported object larger, and it goes all blurry and pixelated. With Smart Objects, that’s a thing of the past, because you can scale, warp and rotate vector graphics in a non-destructive way. Do neat things in perspective with the new Vanishing Point feature. With Vanishing point you can cut and paste in perspective. Now you’re able to turn a photograph of a wall into a “virtual art gallery” with all the pictures correctly skewed, or move a window from one side of a building to another and, because the perspective is correct, have it look like it’s always been there. You can also draw lines that taper off into the distance - wide nearest the camera, narrow further away - just like in “real life”. Get more accurate printing. With Photoshop CS2, the people at Adobe have improved the printing workflow. Now it’s even easier to configure your inkjet printer to get more accurate colour printing.

PhotoshopSecrets Special FX: This tutorial video contains 19 lessons packed in approximately 2 hours of fast-loading CD-ROM. If ‘cool!’ is the one word that you want to hear to feel validated for your Photoshop efforts, this video tutorial will teach you exactly how to use special effects like the pros. Learn about 3D lathing, liquid splashes, CS branding, pixel stretching, thermal vision, toxic waste and lots more. These are cutting-edge effects, the kind you find in more advanced Photoshop users’ works so you might want to try it out for yourself. Photoshopsupport.com. This site features some of the best and latest Photoshop tutorials, including those in video. Use Photoshop confidently in no time with the free video tutorials. You can even click on the links provided to find out about Photoshop products for more detailed tutorials. If you’re using Photoshop to come up with a cooler, meaner website, you’ll like the short tutorials on SiteGrinder 2, an Adobe Photoshop Plugin.