The most basic tool in Photoshop is Selection tool; you will use this to position all your layers and objects.

1	To activate the Selection tool, click on the icon on your toolbar or use shortcut key by pressing the letter V on your keyboard
2	Auto Select allows you to select the layers just by clicking on the canvas.
3	While selecting layers you can also choose individual layers or grouped layers.
Alt/Option + Drag	You can duplicate while in the selection tool by Alt/Option and click+drag an item on the canvas. The entire layer will be duplicated.
Ctrl/Command + Click to select	You can select a layer by clicking within the canvas by holding Ctrl/Command.
Ctrl/Command + Click and Drag	You can select multiple layers by (with the selection tool activated) click+draging a mark within the canvas, every layer within the selection becomes selected.
Click and Drag	The simplest operation is dragging a layer around, do that by click+dragging your house with the desired layer selected.
Hold Shift	Hold shift while moving with the selection tool to lock horizontal or vertical direction
(arrow keys) on your keyboard	The arrow keys on your keyboard can be used to move the layer one pixel at a time.
Shift + (arrow keys)	Holding shift while pressing the arrow key can move the layer 10 pixels at a time.
4	Activate the Show Transform Controls to freely distort and rotate the layers. This is similar to using free transform.
Enter	After you are done rotating and scaling with the Transform Controls, press enter to reorient the Control.
5 & 6	You can align two or more layer by selecting all the layers you want to align and use the align button. You can align based on horizontal or vertical direction and by the edge and center.
7 & 8	You can distribute/space out three or more layers evenly by selecting all the layers you want to distribute and use the distribute button. You can choose the distribution based on horizontal or vertical direction and by the edge or center.
Rick click menu (Command Click)	Right click or Command Click to bring up a Layer selection menu.
(number) shortcut keys	Press a number on your keyboard to change the opacity. Pressing 2 on your keyboard changes the opacity to 20% and 7 changes it to 70% and so on.
9	If you have taken consecutive photos such as a panorama landscape, you can select all the photo and Auto-Align it.

If you were to photo an image from a magazine, books, photograph etc, you might not always get it at the exact angle where it is perfectly allign, and if you were at a slight angle than good luck trying to align the photo and get it to be in the right perspective. Luckily, Photoshop allows you to crop a photo based on it’s perspective. Here is an example

crop and align a photo in Photoshop

To start, activate the crop tool with short cut C or select crop on the tool bar, draw a crop mark around the photo, don’t worry about aligning it right now. (click here to learn more about crop tools)

On the tool bar, the very last item says Perspective, check that box.

Now if you drag the corner of the crop mark, you will notice you will be able to draw each corner freely without being restricted to a rectangle. Drag all the corner to the corner of the magazine.

When you are done dragging all the corners of the crop mark to the corner of the magazine, either hit the Entire key or double click inside the crop mark. Your image should now be perfectly aligned and in the right perspective.

Lastly, you might want to adjust the color since your camera might not translate the color accurately, I will use the LAB color technique to adjust it.  Go to menu and under Image – Mode – LAB to change the color space, click here to learn more about LAB mode Here are the setting I used.

and here is the final image, fairly close to a scanned image if you do not own a scanner wouldn’t you agree?

Similiarly if you want to rotate an image, you can change the crop mark by rotating it instead of the photo itself. Here is a vertical image, I want to make it in to a square image while rotating it 45 degree angle. I start by drawing a square crop, hold shift and drag.

Expand the crop mark beyond the file itself and rotate the crop mark 45 degrees.

The final image takes on the space that the crop made but right side up.

if you have questions about this tutorial please posted it in the comment section, and see more tutorial on Tools here

continue from Layer Blending Modes Part one

The following sets are combination of the last two set, where 50% gray area has no effect on the photo, darker pixels on the blending mode will behave like their Darkening counterpart and the lighter pixels on the blending mode will behave like their Lightening counterpart.

Overlay – This is a combination of both Multiply and Screen blending mode, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will have similar effect to Screen Mode and Black has similar effect to Multiply Mode.

Soft Light – This is a combination of both Darken & Lighten blending mode, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will brighten and increase contrast and Black will darken and increase contrast. Notice the 50% gray in the sample did not affect the image while the darker circles darken and increased the contrast and lighter circles does the opposite.

Hard Light – is a combination of Linear dodge and Linear burn, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will brighten the picture and Black will darken the picture. This is useful for adding shadows and highlights to an image as you can see in the sample below.

Vivid Light – This is a combination of both Burn and Dodge blending mode, it affect both light and dark pixel where 50% gray will show no effect, white will brighten and increase contrast and Black will darken and increase contrast.

Linear Light – Burns or dodges the colors by decreasing or increasing the brightness, depending on the blend color. If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the image is lightened by increasing the brightness. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the image is darkened by decreasing the brightness.

Pin Light – This mode will choose to keep either the color of the base or the blending layer using their light/shadow value. When the luminance value of the blending layer is lighter than 50% gray, any pixel darker than the blend color will be replaced. When the luminance value of the blending layer is darker than 50% gray, any pixel lighter than the blend color will be replaced.

Hard Mix – This mix will result in a definite color of Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, White and Black and nothing in between. This can be useful for special effect or evaluating shapes or analyzing the dominate colors of a photo.

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The next two modes are mainly for evaluation purpose, but with some creativity you can incorporate their effects into your design.

Difference – This mode is used to align two similar photos visually, if two exact duplicate photo were used, the result will be black because there will be no difference. In the example below, I duplicated the photo and made one the Difference blending and one as the base but I nudge the blending layer so that it is not 100% aligned on top of the base, notice the white spots in the final result, that is the difference from the nudging, now you can try to nudge it back so that there are no white spot.

Exclusion – Creates an effect similar to Difference mode except blending with light/white values result in inverted base color and blending with dark/black yields no change. In the sample the sun is the lightest and therefore the base color is inverted and the rocks are left alone because it is closer to a black value.

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The list sets of modes are for dealing with Hue, Saturation and Luminance.

Hue – It will apply only the hue of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the saturation or luminance of the base layer. Notice that the blue, red and green color spots in the example shows in the final result but only with the same amount of saturation and luminance of the base value.

Saturation – It will apply only the saturation of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the color or luminance of the base layer. Notice that the blue, red and green color spots in the example did not affect the color of the final result, the only information that the base is inheriting is the saturation level of the blending layer.

Color – It will apply only the color of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the light and shadow (luminance) of the base layer. It is perfect for coloring in a black and white photo or changing color of a part of a photo. In the sample below, the base layer takes on the color of the blending layer while retaining the grayscale of the original photo.

Luminosity – It will apply only the light and shadow (luminance) of the blending layer to the base layer without changing the color of the base layer. You will achieve the same result if you take the example I showed you above and switch the base to blending layer and blending layer to base.

You do not need to memorize every single mode but it would be helpful to know what Photoshop is capable of so that when you are creating your design you know what your limits are. I understand some of the modes are very complicated and difficult to understand so feel free to ask any questions or if you are able to write it in a way that is easier to understand please leave that in the comment.

I still haven’t found use for some of the modes such as Exclusion, Hard Mix and Pin Light. Have you used any of them for a project? if so let us know what you did with them.

This entry is continued from Layer Blending Modes Part one

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.

Think of Photoshop layers as stacking pieces of transparent papers one on top of another to create the final image. In addition to your “normal” layers there are also special layers that can interact with the layers below. This is useful to create photo montage, light adjustment, color corrections and anything else you can think of, but first you will need to understand how they work.

Blending modes are separated in 5 different categories,

Darkening (use to darken or fix overexposed photos)

Lighting (use to lighten or fix underexposed photos)

Contrasting (is a combination of both Darkening and Lighting sets)

Comparing (use to align and compare photos)

Coloring (use to fix hue and saturation)

The first two modes are not categorized - 

Normal blending is selected by default, it does not have any special feature and should work just as expected.

Dissolve mode will only work where there are semi transparent pixels, all semi transparent pixels are turn into solid pixel noise, the density of the noise is depending how the level of transparency. The following sample shows the word “Dissolve” with blurred applied(semi transparent edge) two different times. The sample on the top is on a Normal blending layer and the bottom sample is in Dissolve blending layer.

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The first set of the blending mode deals with “DARK” pixels. It is helpful to correct and darken any parts of your photos.

Darken – Compares the Darken layer to the base layer and keeps the darker pixels of the two. In the sample below, since the plants in the foreground are the only things that are darker than the Base layer, only the flowers are kept and the rest of the pixels become transparent. If you shoot your subject against a bright background, you can quickly lay it on top of a different background.

Multiply – Combine the blending layer with the base layer by “multiplying” the color information which gives you a darker final image. This is great for fixing overexposed photos and the most commonly used mode of this set. Duplicate the layer and set the top layer to Multiply and you will end up with a darker, better exposed photo assuming you used a photo that was overexposed such as the example below.

Color Burn – The blending layer uses the brightness information to increase the contrast of the base layer, the darker the pixel the higher the contrast. The sample shows three shades of gray, the darker the gray shade, the darker and higher contrast the final image becomes. White does not affect the image. You can use paint brush and paint over a small section with different shades of gray to achieve the feel you want.

Linear Burn – The blending layer uses the brightness information to increase the darkness of the base layer, the darker the blending layer the darker the result. The sample shows three shades of gray, the darker the gray the darker the final image becomes, the contrast remains the same. White does not affect the image. You can use paint brush and paint over a small section with different shades of gray to achieve the feel you want.

Darker Color –

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The following sets will help brighten and fix underexposed photos. It has the exact opposite function as the last set.

Lighten – This is opposite of Darken, it compares the Lighten layer to the bottom visible layers and keep the lighter pixel. Darker colors are omitted.

Screen – This is opposite of Multiply, it multiplies the inverse information to create a lighter final image. It is perfect fixing underexposed photos and the most used mode of the brighten sets. The sample below shows the blending layer and base layer is the exact same photo while blending layer is set to Screen, the final image is brighter and better exposed.

Color Dodge – The blending layer uses the brightness information to brighten and increase the contrast of the base layer, the brighter the pixel the higher the contrast . The sample shows three shades of gray, the lighter the gray the brighter and higher contrast the result becomes. Black do not affect the image.

Linear Dodge (Add) – The blending layer uses the brightness information to increase the brightness of the base layer, the lighter the blending layer, the brighter the result. The sample shows three shades of gray, the lighter the gray the lighter the final result, contrast appears to decrease. Black do not affect the image.

Lighter Color

Continue to part Two of this tutorial...

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.

Clone stamp is not just for cloning objects in photos, you can also “erase” them. Blemishes and wrinkles can be magically erased from your model’s faces as well as that annoying person who somehow made it in to your photo.

To start, select the clone stamp on your tool bar or press S on keyboard.

You will first need to pick a spot where you want Photoshop to copy/sample the information from than start painting over the area where you want the cloning to happen.

First hold Alt/Option to set a sampling point, this is the location you want to clone, than start painting as you would with a regular brush. Instead of solid paint coming out of the brush it is a identical spot where you first set your sampling point.

This is similar to using a lasso or any other selecting method and copy and pasting it to a different location.

The first 5 settings are the same as Brush tool, please read my post on brush settings

Brush – you can use any brush and brush dynamic for the Clone Stamp. Read my article on how to use Brush here.

Mode – the colors can be manipulated using any of the blending mode, although I do not advise using this. You will gain better control if you paint onto a blank layer than using the blending mode on the layer instead.

Opacity – Lets you choose the transparency of your stamp.

Flow – The value is how fast the paint will be applied, for best result use soft edged brush. You will see the paint builds up as the brush overlap previous paint.

Airbrush – this option will only work with brush with soft edge, it will gradually accumulate into a bigger blob if you hold your mouse in one area for too long similar to an airbrush.

Aligned – Once you start painting after you’ve set your reference point, the cloning will continue where you last left off every time you release your mouse until you set another anchor point. If aligned is off than once you release your mouse and tries to paint again, it will use the original reference point.

Example –

- Current layer, Clone tool will only be cloning whatever that is on the active layer.

- Current & Below, Clone tool will only clone whatever that is on the active layer plus whatever is visible under the active layer.

- All Layer, Clone tool will take all visible layer into account.

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Include Adjustment Layer, this icon become available when you have an active adjustment layer turned on and Sample is set to anything other than Current Layer. When it is on, it will ignore all adjustment layer, and when it is off than what you see is what you will get.

Use the key “[“ and “]” on your keyboard to increase or decrease the size of your brush.

Best way to use clone tool is to paint it on a blank layer with the Sample set to Current & Below or All layer, that way you are not destroying the original.

There are many ways to “erase” an object in a photo rather than Clone stamp, what else can you use to achieve the same result?

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.