How to whiten teeth in Photoshop CS4

Many artists will photoshop models and actors these days for magazines, shows, or advertisements. One of the most prevalent changes has to do with teeth whitening, which is not that difficult to do. Even if you're not working on professional photos, you still might have some pictures you want to clean up. So in this tutorial, we're going to look at how to whiten a model's teeth using Photoshop CS4.

First, open the picture you want to use in Photoshop. I'm using a stock photo of teeth from MorgueFile. Once you've loaded the document, press Q on your keyboard to enter quick mask mode; this will allow us to paint a selection. Click on the brush tool on the Tools panel (on the left hand side of the workspace), then click on the color swatch at the bottom of the Tools panel and change the color to black. You'll use black to make a selection and white to erase a part of a selection. Make sure you have a relatively small brush size to start with by clicking the arrow next to the brush tip preview along the top bar (mine's set to 24 px).



Using the brush tool, paint a selection around the edges of the teeth first. Carefully outline them; a pink-red color should appear as you paint. If you make a mistake or slip, you can always change the color to white and paint over it to erase it. Keep working until you've outlined all the teeth neatly.



Now change the brush size to something larger (like 66 px) and brush over the middle of each tooth, taking care to stay inside the outlines. Again, if you make a mistake, you can brush over it using white.



Once you've made sure you've painted over every bit that you want included in the selection, press Q to exit quick mask mode. You'll see the marching ants marquee appear around the area and the rest of the picture; this means that everything except the teeth are selected. So we need to click Select (along the top bar) and Inverse in order to select the teeth.



Now it's time to whiten the teeth. To do this, we need to add an adjustment layer. Click on Layer, then New Adjustment Layer, then Hue/Saturation. Navigate to the right hand side of the workspace and find the adjustments panel above the layer panel, then move the saturation slider to the left to desaturate it and get rid of the yellow. I've moved mine down to about -40. Then you can move the Lightness slider up a little bit (I've moved mine to about +15) so add more whiteness. If you find any places where the white overlaps the gums, then you can grab a black brush to fix it.





It's that simple! You can play around with it to get the amount of whiteness you want; just be sure that it looks somewhat natural and that you don't have too much gray by desaturating too much.

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How to create snow in Photoshop CS4

It's officially winter, and though the holiday season is behind us, you may still want to add spice to your seasonal pictures. Here in the South, snow isn't as frequent and when it does happen, you might not have your camera to capture that magical moment. However, you'll still be able to dress up your photograph and add snow in later. In this tutorial, we're going to look at how to create falling snow in Photoshop CS4.

First, open the picture you want to use in Photoshop. I'm using a stock photo of snow on the ground from MorgueFile. Once you've opened the picture, find the color swatches at the bottom left of the workspace in the Tools panel. Click on the first one and use the color picker to change the color to white. Then select the brush tool from the Tools panel and navigate to the top bar along the workspace. Change the brush tip size to 5 px and the hardness to 0%. Also find the opacity dropdown next to the brush mode dropdown and change it to 55%.



We need to customize the brush a little more, so go to the top bar and click on Window. From the list, choose Brushes so the Brushes window will show.



Click on Brush Tip Shape in the Brushes window and look at the options. Go to the bottom of the window where it says Spacing. Change the spacing to a higher number, such as 386%, to break up the continuous line into individual dots.



Now click on Scattering to select the checkbox and scatter the dots. Make sure the checkbox for both axes is selected and move the scatter slider to 1000%. Make sure the count is set to 1 and the count jitter to 100%.



It's time to create a new layer so we won't mess up the background if we don't like the outcome. Go to the top bar and click on Layer then New then Layer.



Now take the brush tool and start making diagonal strokes in the direction you want the wind to be blowing. Just give it a very slight angle to make it realistic. Brush over the whole picture and then go back over it with curly-cue motions to give it more body. If you need to, you can duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl + J and then use the move tool to make more snowflakes.



At this point, we're almost done but we need to make the snow more realistic and make it look like it's in motion. Go to the top bar and click on Filter, then Blur, then Motion Blur.



When the Motion Blur dialogue box comes up, set the angle of the blur to whatever you'd like; I've set mine to 45 degrees. You should also set the distance relatively low (I've chosen 8 px). Don't go lower than 7 px or it won't look realistic.



At this point, we're done! Creating a snowy effect isn't hard to do - and it can make your seasonal photographs or cards look all the nicer.



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How to design a coming soon page in Photoshop CS4

Even if you don't know how to code using HTML and CSS, you don't have to be left out of the design process. By taking a few stock photos, icons, and using the tools available to you (such as Photoshop), you can come up with a design concept in a relatively short period of time. Coming soon pages can be especially tricky to come up with, which means the planning and designing stages are all the more crucial. You want to make an engaging page that gives visitors a couple of options of what to do next, and you want to give more intrigue and information than a simple, white “Under Construction” page. In this tutorial, we're going to look at how to create a design concept for a coming soon page using Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Before we get started, here are a few basic pointers for coming soon pages that you should keep in mind:

• Use a theme that has the colors of your website or is close to the subject matter of your website


• Have the site's logo and name


• Use the term “Coming Soon” somewhere on the page


• Have a few lines of information about what the site is going to be about


• Have a form for signing up to be notified when the site officially launches (with text boxes for name and email address)


• Have links to social media (Twitter, FB, your blog, etc)


• Have copyright and year in the footer

You don't have to have all of these options stuffed in your page, but at the very least, you should have the site's logo and name, a few lines of information, and a form for your newsletter or site launch notification. Sometimes keeping it simpler is better.

To start your project, open Photoshop and create a new document by clicking File then New. You want to make your document size as close to a screen size as possible, while leaving a bit of room. In this case, I've made mine 1100 px by 900 px and left the background transparent.

You can fill the background layer with color, or you can create a new layer (like I did) just in case. To create a new layer, go up to the top bar of the workspace and click Layer then New then Layer. When the new layer dialogue box pops up, you can type in the name you want to give it (and I've named mine Site Background Color).



Now click on the color swatch on the Tools panel on the left hand side of the workspace. For this project, I've chosen to make my coming soon page for a fictitious campground site, so it has a 'woodsy' theme. To go along with my theme, I've chosen a forest green (hexadecimal value 355739) for the background. You can use the color picker to choose this color or any other color you want.

To fill the background, click on the paint bucket tool on the Tools panel on the left hand side of the workspace. If you don't see it, click on the little black arrow at the corner of the gradient tool.



It looks nice, albeit flat. So I want to add some interest to it by adding a pattern overlay. To do this, navigate to the bottom of the Layers panel on the right hand side of the workspace and click on the fx. Then choose Blending Options to bring up the dialogue box.



Click on Pattern Overlay and choose Overlay from the Blend Mode drop down. This will ensure that you retain the color you've chosen in the previous steps. Once you've done that, click on the black arrow next to the pattern preview and look through the options. I've chosen to use the Slate pattern; you may not see any you want in the ones available, so if you want to browse more options, click on the little black arrow next to the list of patterns.



At this point, we can move on from the background to the top banner (if you want to have one; you don't technically have to have one on a coming soon page). You can use a picture you already have or find a stock picture. I've chosen to use a picture I edited in another tutorial. In order to use it for the banner, I need to resize it. To do this, go to the top bar and click on Image then Image Size. Once the dialogue box pops up, make sure that the Constrain Proportions and Scale Sizes checkboxes are marked, then change the value of the width to 1100 px.



The width is the right size, but the height is too big, so we need to do some cropping. Choose the crop tool from the Tools panel and drag it around the area you want to keep. Once you're satisfied, press Enter. You may need to do this a few times to get the size you want; just keep checking the image size by clicking on Image and then Image Size to see if you get the size you want. It's best to have the image around 150 to 200 px high.



Once you finish cropping it, you can select the picture by pressing Ctrl + A, then copy it by pressing Ctrl + C. Switch back over to the website design tab and paste the image; a new layer will be automatically created for it. I thought the contrast between the picture and the background was a little much, so I went to find a little something to add to the banner to soften it. I opened another file I'd used in a tutorial and used the rectangular marquee tool (found in the Tools panel) to select a thin strip of the water to use in my website design. If you do something like this, make sure that you Feather your selection (by entering a value in the Feather text area near the top bar; I made mine 10 px). This gives it a nice, soft edge and a gradual fading out along the edges to help it blend in more.



You can use the Move tool on the Tools panel to drag or nudge the images and arrange them where you want them. Here's what my design looks like so far:



Now that our banner is done, we want to start working on the content for the rest of the page. You can make your own logo, use your company's logo, or find an icon to use as a logo on a site such as iconfinder.com. Generally speaking, the logo and the site's name would go on the banner, but for a coming soon page, it's put in the middle of the screen. So once you've found the icon you're going to use, you can paste it and move it beneath the banner. I've used an icon I found on iconfinder; it's just a little small. If you want to resize your logo, you can do so by clicking Edit then Transform then Scale.



Use the bounding box handles to change the size of the icon; be sure to hold down the Shift key while doing so to ensure that the proportions remain. When you're finished resizing it, click the green arrow at the top of the workspace.



The icon I used was black, and it doesn't blend in with the colors or the theme that well. My text is going to be light, so I want to make my icon match. To do this, I went down to the bottom of the Layers panel and clicked the fx, then clicked Blending Options. I chose to use a Color Overlay and click on the color swatch to change it to white.



It's time to add some text, so click on the text tool in the Tools panel. Once you select it, you get a number of options along the top bar, including font family, font weight, font size, alignment, color, etc. I chose to use a heavy serif since the name of the site is important and I want it to draw the most attention; the font I used was Casablanca Heavy SF with a crisp anti-alias method. I also clicked on the color swatch and chose a color from the thin water banner, then moved the color picker up so it was just a slightest tint of yellow.



We need to choose the color of the text areas for our form. I want mine to blend in with the colors to give it a more sophisticated feel, so I've used the color picker and the eyedropper tool to select the background color. Then I dragged the color picker down so it was a darker shade of that color (I used hexadecimal 223b29).



Once you've done that, find the shape tool on the Tools panel and click the black arrow at the corner for more shape options. I've chosen to use a rounded rectangle shape.



Drag a box out as wide and high as you want it to be. Once you've done that, you can use the path selection tool (that looks like an arrow) from the Tools panel to select the box, then press Ctrl + C to copy it and Ctrl + V to paste it. Drag the second box out to the side. Copying the first box will ensure that both boxes are identical.



Use the move tool to move the boxes down, then select the text tool and choose a sans-serif font such as Arial for the second heading and the body text. I chose to use Arial in white. Make the second heading smaller than the logo text and the body text smaller than the second heading. Once you've typed 'Coming Soon' and a brief introduction to the site, then you can adjust the size of your form boxes to make sure they fit. You can do this by clicking on Edit then Transform then Scale.



Now we need to put some text inside the form boxes to prompt users. To do this, click on the Text tool and choose a font from the drop-down. I decided to use a serif font (going with the classic Times New Roman) and italicize it. I also changed the anti-alias type to Strong. Then, to make it blend in more with the text boxes, I went to the top of the Layers panel and clicked on the arrow next to the opacity drop down so I could turn the opacity down to 70%.



Next, we need a submit button. Generally, it's a good idea to have the word Submit somewhere near the button. We're running out of room, though, and users know what an arrow means, so we're just going to create an arrow button. To do this, go back to the Tools panel and click on the shape tool and choose the rounded rectangle tool. Drag a small rounded rectangle next to the E-mail address text box. You can use the move tool to drag or nudge elements as needed to fit in the space; remember, you want your margins to look nice and you want to line your elements up as much as you can on either side.

As soon as you've done this, it's time to pick an arrow shape from the shapes library. Again navigate to the shape tool and click on the little black arrow for more shape options. Choose the Custom Shape Tool and then go to the top bar. Click on the little arrow next to the shape that displays for more options; you can always click the secondary black arrow next to the list for even more options. Once you find an arrow you like, select it. I've chosen to use an arrow that sort of looks like a compass arrow since the site's theme is camping.



Drag the arrow out to fit in the button. If the shape disappears, make sure your shape layer doesn't have a color overlay over it. If it does, just drag the style down to the trash can icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.

Next, we want to create the footer. To do this, go to the shape tool and click on the rounded rectangle shape. Drag the shape tool to make a thin rectangle at the bottom of the page. Once you do that, you can navigate to the top of the Layers panel to turn the opacity down to make it blend in more with the design (in this case, I've turned mine down to 50%).

Use the text tool to add some small copyright text to the bottom left of your footer. You can also include icons of the social networks your company is on, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger. You can use iconfinder.com to find small icons (I've used ones that are 32 x 32 px) and copy and paste them into your document, using the move tool to arrange them at the bottom.



And that's about it! If you want to, you can merge some of your layers, but you want to preserve most of them so that the web designer or developer you're working with can take the images you've created and use them when building the code for the website. Make sure you save the document as a PSD file to retain the layers.

About CODANK Web Design

CODANK is a top rated Web Design and Internet Marketing firm located in Charlotte, NC. We are dedicated to providing the highest quality, cost effective custom software development services, delivering a broad range of business consulting and outsourcing services.

For more information, visit us at www.codank.com

Creating a black and white photograph with an accent color in Photoshop

Although Photoshop can be used for many different projects, its original function of editing and retouching photos is what it is best used for. One of the photo adjustments that has become popular is to turn a photograph black and white and have an accent color pop. It might seem like the only way to do this is to select the object and cut it out of the picture, changing the rest black and white, but there is an even easier - and less destructive - way to do this. In this tutorial, we're going to look at how to create a black and white photo adjustment with an accent color in Photoshop CS4.

First open the file you've chosen to work with in Photoshop. I've chosen to use a stock photo of red tulips from MorgueFile. Next, save it under a different name by clicking File then Save As, so that the original file is unaffected. You want to always get in the habit of saving edited files under a different name so if you want to start over again, you can. This is especially important if the pictures are your own and you have only one copy.

Now right click on the background layer on the right hand side of the workspace in the Layers panel. From the list of options, choose Layer from Background. This unlocks the layer and allows you to make more changes to it, if needed.



We want to make the picture black and white, so to do that non-destructively, we need to add a new adjustment layer. That way, if you don't like the changes, you can easily revert to what you had before by deleting the layer. To create an adjustment layer, go to the top bar and click on Layer, then New Adjustment Layer, then Black and White.



Making sure the Black and White layer is selected, navigate to the Tools panel on the left hand side of the screen and choose the brush tool. Click on the color swatch at the bottom of the Tools panel to bring up the color picker, then choose black. Using a black brush with the adjustment layer and layer mask will "erase" the areas you brush over; however, you can get those areas back by brushing over them with a white brush. Use a bigger brush (like 66px) to get the larger areas; use a smaller brush to get edges and hard-to-reach places.



Brush over every part of the picture that you want to be colorized; once you are finished use the zoom tool to check for places you missed or places that need to be touched up with white to make it as neat as possible.



Touching up photos is easy using adjustment layers and layer masks. Once you have spent some time working with them, you'll soon find you can make almost any photo look professional by using Photoshop and working with adjustment layers.

About CODANK Web Design

CODANK is a top rated Web Design and Internet Marketing firm located in Charlotte, NC. We are dedicated to providing the highest quality, cost effective custom software development services, delivering a broad range of business consulting and outsourcing services.

For more information, visit us at www.codank.com

How to create a kitchen composition in Photoshop CS4

There are some skills that you may want to learn in Photoshop, and though these skills can be taught individually, you can learn so much more by working through a project and experimenting. Because of this, we're going to look at how to create a kitchen composition in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and learn how to work with different transform commands, how to select objects, defringe, and create shadows.

Open the first object (a picture of a mug) and a background texture in Photoshop. You can use the resources provided or find free stock photos and textures by doing a Google search; just try to look for an object that's on a white or black background. Look at the sizes of the documents by pressing Ctrl + Alt + I. You'll have to change the size of the bigger document to match the height or width of the smaller one. In my case, my background is smaller, so I made the height of my object document the same size as the height for the background document.



The first thing we want to do is select the texture background by pressing Ctrl + A. Copy it and then paste it in the object document. Then, double click the object background layer to create a layer from the background; this way we can edit it. Move the texture layer beneath the object layer.

Next, we need to get rid of the background. Since my background is plain white, it's relatively easy to do. Select the magic wand tool in the Tools panel on the left hand side of the workspace. Change the Tolerance (along the top bar) to 32 and select the anti-alias check box so the selection will be nice and smooth without jagged edges. Click anywhere on the white background to select it all; there may be an area (such as inside the handle) that doesn't get selected. To add this area to the current selection, hold down the Shift key while clicking on it. Then, press Delete to get rid of the white selection.



Making sure the object layer is selected, click on Layer then go down to the bottom of the list and choose Matting, then Defringe. This will get rid of any extra white halo around the mug, leaving us with a nice, crisp edge. You can leave the default value of 1 px.



In this case, the mug is too large for what we want to do, so we need to resize it. To do this, press Ctrl + T to transform it. Holding down the Shift key, drag one of the corners in to make it smaller. When you are satisfied with the size, be sure to click the checkmark along the top bar.



Now we want to add a counter to the composition. Open the picture of the counter top. We're not going to use the whole thing, so we need to make a selection. To do this, click on the polygonal lasso tool. If you don't see it, click on the little black button at the corner of the lasso tool and select it from the list.



Select the middle portion of the counter top (or any portion that has the lighting you want) by clicking points to create corners and drawing the lines out. I've drawn around the edges of the middle portion because that's where the lighting is the clearest and you can tell what angles the shadows are at. Copy the selection and paste it into the kitchen composition document.



Press Ctrl + T to transform the counter top and scale it down to size. Once you're satisfied with the size, you need to change the angle a bit to make it fit in better. To do this, click on Edit, then Transform, then Distort. Drag the corners until it comes close to the angles of the mug.



You might find that the mug isn't positioned at the right place on our table/counter top. You can always use the move tool to reposition it. Once you're satisfied with that, it's time to create the shadow for the mug. Create a new layer for some shadowing by clicking Layer, New, then Layer.



Click on the brush tool in the Tools panel and then click on the color picker at the bottom of the panel; choose a very dark gray. Next, click on the drop down next to the brush tip preview and change the size to 100 px and the hardness to 0%. Also be sure to change the opacity to 50% so the texture of the counter top will show through and make it look more like a real shadow.



Brush lightly along the bottom of the cup, tracing the contour. Be sure not to make the shadow line too thick in the front since the shadows on the counter are angled away from the mug. Then select the mug layer and duplicate it by right clicking on it in the Layers panel and clicking Duplicate Layer.



Drag the layer copy beneath the original layer. Then press Ctrl + T to scale it and make it slightly larger than the original copy. Use the move tool to align it at the right side/right corner.



Press Ctrl + T again to rotate the larger mug. Put the pointer at the bottom left corner and move it counterclockwise to rotate it backwards.



We need to make the larger mug into a shadow, so we have to make it one solid color. Click on the fx at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Blending options.



Click on color overlay and choose a very dark gray color from the color picker. Then click OK.



Now we need to fix the shadow so the angle matches the mug and the light source more closely. To do this, we need to skew it, so click on Edit, Transform, then Skew. When the bounding box appears around the object, pull the corners until it looks something like the second picture below.





Once you have your shadow's angle right, then you need to do some erasing to make it better fit the counter space. Click on the eraser tool in the Tools panel and set the size to 70 px and the hardness to 0%.



Erase the shadow where it goes over the back edge of the counter top. Since the brush hardness has been turned down to 0%, it gives us a nice, soft, feathered edge.



Now we need to make the other edges look softer and more feathered. Click on the brush tool and set the size to 40 px and the hardness to 0%. Then brush along the edges before going over the rest of the shadow. This will keep the entire shadow one opacity when we make it transparent later. Then, once you make sure both shadow layers are next to each other, right click on the top shadow layer and click Merge Down.



Click on the opacity dropdown in the Layers panel for the shadow layer and turn it down to 50%. This will let the counter top show through, making it seem more like a real shadow.



At this point, we're almost done; we just need to do some cleaning up. One of the shadows from the counter top photo is cutting through our mug's shadow. In order to get rid of it, we need to use the clone stamp to select pixels near it and cover it up. Select the zoom tool from the Tools panel, then zoom in to the area where the shadows overlap. Click the eye next to the mug shadow layer to turn it off so we can see what we're doing, then select the clone stamp tool in the tools panel. You can select adjacent areas by holding down Alt while clicking, then brush over the shadow.



Zoom out and turn the mug shadow layer back on. If you see a bit of a line where you've painted over the shadow, select the healing brush tool (it looks like a band-aid). Brush over the area to make it blend better.



At this point, we're done. Now you know how to use a variety of tools and commands in Photoshop. With practice, you'll be able to do more and more with them and create beautiful compositions.

About CODANK Web Design

CODANK is a top rated Web Design and Internet Marketing firm located in Charlotte, NC. We are dedicated to providing the highest quality, cost effective custom software development services, delivering a broad range of business consulting and outsourcing services.

For more information, visit us at www.codank.com