Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [4]
This chapter explores the Photoshop filters that are particularly relevant for photographic retouching work, such as Liquify and the Lens Correction filter.
Chapter 11: Image management
These days, photographers can end up having to process several hundred images from a single shoot. Good image management is all about helping you to keep track of your photos and find them when you need them. There is also a section in this chapter on working with the new Mini Bridge extension panel.
Chapter 12: Color management
We all need to be concerned about color management. It should be a simple matter of calibrating the monitor and selecting the correct color settings in Photoshop, but somehow life is never that easy. This chapter provides an intermediate level guide on how to manage your colors successfully.
Chapter 13: Print output
This chapter follows on from the previous one and shows you how to get your prints to match what you see on the display. I also discuss the importance of tailored output sharpening, demonstrating a sample print sharpening technique.
Chapter 14: Output for the Web
Alternatively, you may be interested in outputting your images for on-screen publication. This chapter covers preparing images for the Web and multimedia presentations.
Chapter 15: Automating Photoshop
This final chapter describes some of the ways you can work more efficiently in Photoshop and how to avoid repetitive tasks through the use of actions and other automation techniques.
How to use this book
In writing this book I have tried not to assume too much prior Photoshop knowledge on the part of the reader. I have also structured the chapters in the book so that they follow a typical Photoshop workflow, starting with an introduction to the Photoshop interface through to the tasks of image management and print output. This is in many ways a personal guide and one that highlights the areas of Photoshop that I find most interesting, or at least those which I feel should be of most interest. It is not a complete comprehensive guide about everything that's in Photoshop, but it is one of the most thorough and established books out there; one that's especially designed for photographers.
Task-based workflow
In all the talk about what's new in Photoshop, you will most probably hear the term ‘task-based workflow’ being used. This partly refers to the way the Photoshop interface can be customized to suit the different ways individual users work with the program, as well as offering easier and more direct access to the image adjustments and adjustment preset settings. For example, if you are mainly interested in video editing work, you can select the ‘Motion’ workspace setting. This provides access to the Photoshop panels that are most important for video editing work. For general photographic retouching work you are better off selecting either the ‘Essentials’ or ‘Photography’ workspaces, as these workspace layouts allow you to access the more commonly used panels for Photoshop image editing. The other interesting feature is the way both the Mac and PC layouts can be contained in an application window, giving the added benefit of making the workspace layout choices more robust. This is because as you resize the application window, the panel, positions adjust to suit. Adjustment layers are applied via an Adjustments panel, which makes the adjustment editing process more direct. You can select an image adjustment to work with and quickly switch back and forth between editing the adjustment settings and working on the image. You also have direct access to all the different image adjustment presets that ship with Photoshop and can quickly experiment to see what happens when you choose different adjustment effects.
As always, the guiding philosophy throughout this book is to provide you with the most up-to-date advice. Photoshop has changed quite a lot over the years, as has digital camera technology. As a result of this, as each new version of Photoshop comes out I have often found it necessary to revise many of the techniques