Book Image

Mastering Adobe Photoshop 2024

By : Gary Bradley
Book Image

Mastering Adobe Photoshop 2024

By: Gary Bradley

Overview of this book

Unlock the full potential of Photoshop, the go-to app for content creators by mastering its complex tools and features. This book quickly builds on your existing Photoshop knowledge with proven industry techniques, serving as a launchpad to develop professional skills and transformative personal growth. You’ll start by fine-tuning color and tone in your images with non-destructive adjustment layers and conceal content like backdrops with precise masking techniques for fine details like hair. Working through a series of real-world editing projects, crafting realistic brand mockups and traditional marketing collateral, you’ll learn robust methods for building social media assets in Photoshop, from images to animated GIFs and videos. You’ll also be able to bring your typography to life with styles and effects that are simple to edit and store as preset effects. The final section of the book encapsulates all of your learning to create complex montages using advanced masking and compositing techniques. You’ll have fun elevating your designs with surreal art styles and conceptual imagery using retouching, blending, and liquify filters. By the end of this Adobe Photoshop book, you’ll soar to new heights with your designs, creating captivating visuals that leave a lasting impression on your audience.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1:Raising Your Photoshop Game
5
Part 2:Bringing Brands Front and Center
10
Part 3:Building Visual Components
14
Part 4:World Building

Summary

In this chapter, we have seen how masking plays a fundamental role in controlling the visibility of layers: firstly, to remove an unwanted background while keeping a subject visible and combining it with a new backdrop; and secondly, in conjunction with a black-and-white adjustment layer, excluding the subject from the effect to maintain its color. We then used the Brush tool to edit the mask, painting black in the mask to conceal the adjustment layer and white to reveal it.

We have seen how masks provide a unique method for extracting hair from a background using specialist masking tools that detect image colors to hide background details and preserve a subject’s hair.

In contrast to the previous techniques, we have also seen how disconnecting a mask from image content has advantages. It allows images to be scaled or rotated independently of a mask to juxtapose the photo better without affecting the mask itself.

Finally, we leveraged vector tools as the basis...