On-Line Study Group

PhotoShop 5, 6

Study Guide Number 8

Review of Tools and Skills
Text: PhotoShop Bible
Chapters 1-4

Review of Shortcut Keys:

K, G = Bucket
L = Lasso
M = Marquee

Using the Bucket Tool

The Bucket is another unloved tool. It is more common, and professional, to select an area and fill it. But if you must use it, here's how. It works a lot like the Magic Wand in that you can set its tolerance to fill a color area within a value of the pixel you click. We will fill some areas with it to see how it works.

Download this image to your computer and open in Photoshop.

Press Ctrl-0 (zero) to display the entire image in the window.

OK, call me a romantic, but these people just aren't dressed for the scene. Let's first choose the Smudge tool and fix that.

1. Choose R for Smudge. Check the Options palette. Set to 100% opacity.
2. Use the tool to create a dress for the lady and a long coat for the child.

Much better.

Now we'll put some blue into the sky.

1. Choose the Bucket (G, or K). Note the Options palette.
2. Set it to Normal mode, 100% opacity, Tolerance 50, anti-aliased, Contents: Foreground, Contiguous.

A tolerance of zero means only the color pixel clicked on, and the contiguous area of exactly the same color, will be filled.

3. Choose a good, sky blue from the color palette.

4. Click in the white area of the sky to fill with blue.

Two examples of sky-blue. You decide what looks best, but don't overwhelm the image.

That was an easy one. The sky was all one color, and the bucket filled it nicely. We had a hard edge all around it, with a lot of contrast, so nearly any tolerance setting would have worked.

Let's try a different shade of green for the grass.

1. We'll start by picking up the current shade with the eyedropper. You can toggle to the Eyedropper by holding down the Alt key.

Let's add a bit of yellow to the grass. Yellow is the opposite of Blue, so you can add yellow by subtracting blue. Move the blue slider to the left to subtract blue and add yellow.

2. These are the current color settings. The X marks where I clicked to pick up the color.

3. I moved the blue slider all the way to the left, taking out all the blue. Then I clicked in the same spot with the Bucket to fill the color area. My tolerance setting was 20. Notice the area of color that this affected.

This is not the best way to color a lawn, but it is a good demonstration of how the bucket tool works.

Let's change the way the fill affects the image by putting it into a different blending mode.

4. Choose Edit > Fade Paint Bucket (in earlier versions, you must choose Filter > Fade)

5. In the dialog box, change the blending mode to something other than Normal. Here I've chosen "color." You can experiment, and with the Preview option checked, you'll see how each affects your image.

The Fade feature works on just about anything you do to your image, but it only works on the last step you performed.

If the last thing you did was a single paint stroke, the Fade would work only on that stroke.

For this reason, the Fade feature is also not a very much used feature. It's more usual to put paint on a layer and change the blend mode and opacity of the layer.

See the puddle under the arch? Pick up the blue from the sky (alt-click). Click in the puddle and fade to 70%. Now the puddle might be reflecting the sky.

Using the Marquee tools to select.

We'll use the rectangular Marquee to create a vignette look to this image. First, let's practice adding and subtracting selected areas with the Marquee.

1. Press M, and use shift-M as needed to switch to the rectangular marquee.
2. Select a window.
3. Hold down Shift and select all the windows and doors.
4. Use Hue/Saturation (Ctrl-U) and move the saturation all the way to the right.

Here are my selections.

This is the result of increasing the Saturation.

Well, this looks a little too harsh, I think. Let's undo, and see how we might change that.

1. Ctrl-Z.
2. With the same selection still active, let's feather the selection. (Select > Feather, 2.)
3. Open Hue/Saturation again (Ctrl-U.)
4. Again put the saturation slider all the way to the right.

This might not be the best way to turn on the lights in the windows, but notice that feathering the selection before working with it gives the edges of the selected area a nice, soft look.

Creating a Vignette

1. Use the Elliptical Marquee to select as much of the image as you can.

2. Feather the edge of the marquee to 8 pixels.

3. Invert the selection (select > Inverse)

4. When you press the backspace key, the deleted area will be filled with your background color, so set the background color to whatever you think will look good.

5. Press Backspace.

The finished Vignette

A Weird Hole in the Walk:

1. Choose the Elliptical Marquee
2. Select an oval on the sidewalk.
3. We are going to subtract from this selection: Hold down the Alt key. You will see a small minus sign beside the pointer.
4. Click and drag a circle in the center of the first ellipse. This subtracts the center from the selection, leaving a ring.
5. Use Hue/Saturation to darken the ring.
6. Make another ring in the dirt. This time feather the edges of the selection and don't darken as much.

The first hole.

The ring in the dirt.

Make some clouds:
1. Use the elliptical marquee to select an oval cloud in the sky.
2. Press Shift (the plus sign appears) and add some more oval cloud shapes around the edge of the first oval.
3. Click Select > Feather, 4. This softens the edge of your selection by 4 pixels.
4. Use Hue/Saturation. Move the Lightness slider all the way to the right to make puffy white clouds.