Photoshop Actions

This is a simple example of Photoshop Actions. Here I made an action to create the ©HyperSprite in the photo. I normally use javascript and do a little color editing by hand to make sure it fits the photo but for this assignment I did it with an action instead. This is the first time I have used actions to perform anything in Photoshop, it seems for real fun, check out the default Actions like Cast Shadow (text) and Wood Frame, they give better examples of the power of this feature.

First I wrote down what I wanted it to do:

Create Text ©HyperSprite in black
Add an Outer Glow layer effect in white
Save for web devices with a max of 1000 wide
Close the original image without saving

I opened one photo, set record from the  Action panel and walked through the steps and pressed stop.

Then I used Batch to run the Action on the rest of the photos in my lightroom output folder and it worked flawlessly.

 

The photos below are from Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains this weekend.

Why I can’t recommend GoDaddy for hosting or other web services

If you go look, you will find this domain is hosted by GoDaddy. It has been for a long time and in the past, I have recommended GoDaddy to others, something I now regret.

Understand the fact that I am taking time to write this instead of getting things done on my never ending list says a lot about my frustration level with GoDaddy.

While they have great up time and services, kudos to the engineering and operations teams, their service management portal (really just a sales platform) is designed with only one easy result, to purchase more and renew forever and it is frustrating to no end.

For instance:

  • GoDaddy obscures auto-renew with a link, and any time you refresh the page, the auto-renew column vanishes.
  • It is not easy to tell what services are attached to what domains, do you need to renew that storage or calendar? Who knows?
  • There is no “I don’t want to renew that domain/service check box”, so warning emails and alerts on the management page abound. If you click on the warnings, they have “Renew Now” but don’t explain what you will renew. It is frustrating to say the least.
  • You might have “Billing Failures” but when you click on the invoices it says “paid”.
So my recommendation is this; if you have one domain you want up all the time, host it on GoDaddy and order your services very carefully. If you want to manage multiple domains and plan to let them expire when you no loner need them, go elsewhere or you will be doomed to frustration and annoyance.

Graffiti on the Street

The inspiration for this image was the bicycle shop. Fabber cyclery on First St. near downtown San Jose was someplace I passed on the way home from work many times. It has a large Schwinn sign panted on the side and I always thought it would be neat to get a picture with my car in front of it.

This assignment came up and I decided now is as good a time as any.

This was shot on First Street near downtown San Jose at Sunset. One of the first things to do was clean up the side of the car through the doors. For this I used the pen tool and drew in the contoured reflection based on what I remember it looking like.

Next the sign and wires were removed using the Content Aware fill.

Then the back wall was whitewashed to make the canvas.

The HyperSprite lettering was done in Impact font and then converted to a path and stylized using the anchor points and direct selection tool. They were then seprated out to their own layers so the drop shadow effect would work properly.

The Mini in the lower corner is the same image that resides on this site at the top of the classic mini section. I used threshold to reduce black and white. Created a selection based on that painted it in.

The Yosemite Valley and Cat were drawn by hand with the aid of images while the guitar and names on the left were freehand.

Lastly, I copy merged and pasted to a new layer, flipped it vertically and transformed it to fit the contour of the window. I then made a mask to exclude the rest and that’s about it.

 

A Hack for when Lightroom can’t find Photoshop

I made the foolish mistake of uninstalling Photoshop 5 after installing Photoshop 5.1. After the uninstall, Lightroom 3.5 could no longer find Photoshop. “Edit in Adobe Photoshop” was grayed out as well as “Merge to Panorama…” and “Merge to HDR Pro…” when multiple photos were selected was also grayed  out. Meanwhile there is no setting I could find that would let me change it.

To make matters worse, Bridge was somehow pointing to PS CS4 which it may have been doing for a while now, I have not used it since I started using Lightroom.

I have stuff to get done and after trying to re-install the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop with no luck, I decided to do a little Windows 7 64bit hacking (this should also work in Vista). What I did was create a Symlink, (described in more detail here here ).

WARNING: I am presenting a fix that worked for me.  You could mess things up here if something goes wrong. Chances are it wont but if it does, you are responsible for your actions. Also, this is longer than my normal stuff so hang in there, go step by step.

This assumes you have already uninstalled older versions of Photoshop and both Photoshop and Lighroom are closed.

  • First find all your Photoshops, I had folders for

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1

  • Remove any presets, scripts etc that you might want to save from the older versions.
  • Copy the folder names down in notepad, (press Windows + R, type “notepad“, press Enter).

Hint: If you click in the address bar, it will change the “friendly” name to the real name that looks like those above.

  •  Delete the folders from the uninstalled versions. DO NOT DELETE THE CURRENT VERSION(S)
  • Open the command line as the administrator by going to: Windows Ball (start) > All Programs > Accessories
  • Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator
  • You should see a box with a command prompt of C:\Windows\system32>
  • Then type the following command at the prompt and press enter

mklink /D “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)” “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)”

Hint: You can copy and paste this if your paths are the same

Hint: This line above says MakeLink /Directory FromHere ToHere

When you press enter, it will show a verification:

“symbolic link created for C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit) << ===>> C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)”

  • Do the same for the other folders

mklink /D “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)” “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64 Bit)”

mklink /D “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4″ “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5.1″

Now everything looking for Photoshop.exe will find the one you want to use.

What if blurry pictures could be fixed in Photoshop?

Take a look at this video, it is an Adobe Sneak Peak at Image Deblurring.

What it does is analyze a picture to determine how the camera moved during the exposure and reverse engineers the photo. It’s astounding!  Just imagine the shots you have wasting away in your archives. This is why I don’t delete anything.

This might just be the blockbuster feature Adobe and computer manufactures need to sell some product.

Graffiti Mark

Bathroom wall with Chris in garffiti

How about a little graffiti?

 

How to – Copy Layer Fx in Photoshop

To copy layer fx in Photoshop.

Go to the Layers panel

Alt + click “Effects” or a sub effect like “Drop Shadow” and drag the effects to the new layer, now both layers have the same effects

Fix for Wacom tablet with sticky stylus trouble

I am only posting this because this has happened a few times and it always takes me a moment to remember how to fix it. The moment is usually right after I download and install the latest drivers, reboot and realize it is still broken.

If you notice any of the following odd behavior:

  • Mouse wont click buttons or let go of a move or handles
  • Keyboard or tablet buttons are unresponsive until the stylus is pulled far away
  • Drawing before you touch down

You can check to see if your stylus is in calibration. To do this open the Wacom Tablet Properties > About > Diagnostics page
Look at “Pressure”, it should read 0% until the stylus touches the tablet and go back to 0% as soon as you pull away. If it is reading 7~8% with no contact it is enough to keep other buttons from working correctly and drive you crazy.

Try pulling the tip out of your stylus and putting it back in.

Now check your pressure again, you should be good to go.

The Painterly Picture

 

One thing I like about class is assignments to do things that I normally would not do. I have considered painting one of my photographs before but never taken the time to sit down with the brush tools and try it.

In this lesson I learned how cool the “rotate workspace” feature can be. Using the rotate control from the circle pad on the Intous4, the move tool from the space bar and remembering Esc snaps the image back to normal makes moving around very fluid and the brush direction comfortable.
I also found that by turning down the opacity of the background layer, it was easier to tell where I was laying down paint while still picking up the colors.
Below are the steps to the result above.