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For formats that aren t handled automatically e. After Effects converts footage and image colors to the project working space for compositing. If your footage does not have an embedded profile, After Effects uses a text file interpretation rules.

You can edit this file to better define rules used to determine how imported files are handled. The interpretation rules.

By interpreting footage using the same color profile as the one selected as the project working space see step 1 of this workflow , color values will not be adjusted. Figure 3 – Interpret Footage QuickTime HD footage For 8-bpc and bpc raster files: If the file has an embedded profile, After Effects uses it to define the color appearance of that file.

After you have imported video, raster image, and vector graphic files into your project, After Effects converts color values to your project s working color space for compositing. Step 3: Optional Edit imported footage or graphics in Photoshop In some cases, imported image files may require editing in Photoshop.

Using color management allows you to maintain color appearance as you switch between Photoshop and After Effects. Note: Photoshop color settings may not be in the default state on your computer.

While the color appearance using this profile will match the color appearance produced by the srgb profile, the embedded HDTV Rec. See the sidebar for information on gamma-encoded bpc files. If you are using formats that do not support embedding of ICC profiles, it may be difficult to create an appearance match with After Effects for those files.

Some applications that produce and process bpc files do not encode 1. Files using non Step 4: Output files After you have made compositions in After Effects, it s time to output files using the render queue. Before output, compositions use the color space defined in the Working Space menu in the Project Settings dialog box.

You can convert colors to a different color space using an output module. After Effects will not alter color values in your project when you choose this profile, because the profile matches the project working space.

This choice will maintain color values even if you change your project working space before output. In some cases, a luma level adjustment to the range from the full range of is required to prepare files for final output for display on HD TV systems.

If luma levels need to be adjusted, but are not adjusted by your codec or other software or hardware in your workflow, you may want to choose the HDTV Rec. In some cases, a luma level adjustment to the range from the full range of is required to prepare files for final output for display on SD TV systems. This workflow is commonly used during production of content for motion picture distribution and.

Though the term digital cinema often refers to the display of digital content using digital projection systems, this workflow describes control of digital content in After Effects CS4 for output to formats appropriate for film-based distribution and projection as well as output to formats appropriate for digital distribution and projection.

This workflow uses the Universal Camera Film Printing Density color space, converted to a linear gamma 1. On a calibrated and profiled monitor, you can view the linear-encoded color space accurately and preview the appearance of images after they have been filmed-out and printed to commonly used print stocks for theatrical distribution. The 32 bits per channel float option allows for over-range values to be used for compositing. This allows for preservation of highlight and shadow details in composited images.

A color depth of 32 bpc also reduces quantization errors during calculations in your compositions, reducing the possibility of unwanted artifacts in the final rendered file. Choosing a working space allows you to composite footage and graphics using a common color space that is different from the color characteristics of your monitor.

Select Linearize Working Space. The Linearize Working Space option allows the project working space to have a tone response of 1. This option is only recommended for bpc or bpc projects, as specified in the Depth menu.

The Blend Colors Using 1. Check Compensate For Scene-referred Profiles. You are now ready to import footage and create compositions using a color-managed project in After Effects. Step 2: Import footage, including graphics After you have created your After Effects project, you are ready to import and work with footage from other sources.

In some cases, footage that you import will have embedded ICC color profiles. Examples of this case may be film sequences encoded in the TIFF format. In other cases, footage will not have an embedded ICC profile. In these cases, you can assign an ICC profile in the Interpret Footage dialog box to define the color and tone characteristics of the footage, and then bring that footage into the After Effects project for accurate color viewing and compositing.

Click the Color Management tab. The Interpret Footage dialog box allows you to select an ICC profile to define the color and tone of your footage. You may choose one of the film stock-specific profiles available in the Assign Profile menu.

These profiles may provide a more accurate re of colors captured on specific film stocks. However, color conversions from film stock specific profiles may produce color-channel crosstalk and negative values. For non-cineon raster and vector files: If the file has an embedded profile, that profile is the default profile used by After Effects when the file is imported into the After Effects project. If the file does not have an embedded profile, choose a profile that is appropriate for the image.

A common choice for 8-bit images without embedded profiles is srgb IEC For more information on color spaces, see Appendix A: Color spaces and color management. Figure 3 – Interpret Footage Cineon files scanned from negative film stock Step 3: Simulate output for theater projection As mentioned above, After Effects uses color management to compensate for the unique color characteristics of your monitor, displaying the color values in your compositions accurately.

Color management also allows you to preview how colors will appear when they reach their final device. This kind of output simulation of final color can be executed using Simulate Output commands in the View menu. Once you have selected Universal Camera Film to Kodak from the Simulate Output menu, After Effects uses this setting to adjust display colors to approximate colors as they will look when filmed out and projected. The Custom Output Simulation dialog box allows you to select a wider range of commonly-used film stocks to use for simulation.

Choose the negative film stock from the Output Profile menu that represents the film stock used to capture scenes. This film stock will be used as a basis for colors sent to the film recorder during film-out. Choose the print stock you will be using for final theatrical distribution from the Simulation Profile menu. Note that the Preserve RGB option is selected. Colors are not converted from the output profile to the simulation profile; output colors are reinterpreted using the simulation profile.

After choosing these film and print stocks, type a name appropriate for this setup in the Name box. The name of this custom output simulation setup appears above the Custom command in the Simulate Output menu. Figure 6 – Custom Output Simulation dialog box settings for film-out workflow Step 4: Optional Edit imported footage and graphics in Photoshop In some cases, imported graphics may require editing in Photoshop.

Select North America General Purpose 2 from the Settings menu this setting is the default, so it should be selected already. This Color Setting recognizes ICC profiles already embedded in images and embeds profiles when saving to file formats that support embedding ICC profiles. Select the footage you would like to edit in the After Effects Project panel. This should be the same profile you selected in the After Effects Interpret Footage dialog box see step 2 of this workflow, above.

This allows you to use the Universal Camera Film Printing Density profile without the time-consuming step of assigning the profile to each file in your image sequence. This is expected. The maximum luminance in your Cineon image is being scaled to the maximum luminance value of your monitor, as defined by your monitor s ICC profile.

This luminance scaling preserves highlight tones but makes non-overbright values relatively dark. Use the Photoshop proofing controls to enable a more realistic and usable rendering of the image to screen. Choose Absolute Colorimetric from the Rendering Intent menu. The absolute colorimetric rendering to the ProPhoto RGB color space will render mid-tone values more accurately. However, highlight values may be clipped to your monitor color space and may not appear as they will when printed back to negative film stock.

If you wish to save this proofing condition for later use, you can do so by clicking Save, naming the proof condition, and saving it to disk. If the file you open in Photoshop does not have an embedded profile, Photoshop will use its working space srgb IEC for the North America General Purpose 2 color setting to define the color appearance of the RGB values. Make sure that the Embed Color Profile option is selected in the Save dialog box.

Note: If you are using formats that do not support embedded ICC profiles, it may be difficult to create an appearance match with After Effects for those files. See the sidebar for more details. Step 5: Output files After you have made compositions in After Effects, it s time to output files using the render queue. The compositions are now in the linear-encoded working color space defined in the Project Settings dialog box.

However, you probably don t want to output files with this linear encoding. You likely want to output to the log-encoded Cineon format for film-out or to highdefinition TV colors for video dailies or video distribution. This will be the default. This will leave color values unchanged on output. For HD video dailies, use the Color Profile Converter effect to bake in film looks and convert colors for accurate playback of those film looks on HD monitors.

See Step 6: Use the Color Profile Converter effect for color transforms for a description of this workflow. This format and color space have been specified by the DCI Digital Cinema Initiative for the distribution of digital content for digital projection.

An example of this kind of transform is adjusting Cineon files to colors that approximate the appearance of final filmed-out files that are printed and shown in the theater. It would be helpful to bake this type of look into files being used for high-definition HD digital dailies or the distribution of digital content for digital projection. These types of color transforms can be achieved using the Color Profile Converter effect in After Effects.

Apply the Color Profile Converter effect to the new adjustment layer. The second effect interprets these values as they would appear printed on theatrical distribution film stock Kodak and converted back to your project working space.

The appearance of the projected film in the theater is now baked into your footage. Figure 1 – Animation color workflow using Flash output formats This workflow uses the srgb IEC color space as the common color space for compositing animated layers. On a calibrated and profiled monitor, you can accurately view srgb IEC colors to ensure that colors are correctly rendered using the srgb IEC color space.

Workflow overview This workflow takes you through the following steps: 1 Setting up the After Effects project. McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that the func- tions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages result- ing therefrom.

McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work. This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise. As always, to Heefee and the kids. Chad has authored multiple books on Photoshop and After Effects.

Chad and his brother, Todd, broadcast the All Things Adobe podcast, which offers free tips in Adobe software: www. He is a Photoshop and Photoshop Elements beta tester and has worked with Photoshop since version 3. Wayne also teaches digital imaging and Photoshop classes at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. Contents at a Glance 1 Welcome to Photoshop. Thank you to Roger Stewart and Carly Stapleton, as well as to all of the editors who caught my mistakes.

It was a really great experience to work with Wayne Palmer as my tech editor again. His expert eyes always saw concepts that I missed. Thanks to Matt Wagner for being such a great support and advocate. Thanks also to my Seminary kids, who dealt patiently with the fact that I was a zombie every morning for two months.

An extra special thanks also to my family, who frequently must endure my tendency to overbook my schedule. And yet, through all of this, they see the light at the end of the tunnel more easily than I do. Introduction Welcome to this book! Before we jump right in and start learning, I want to give you a heads up as to what you can expect going forward. Photoshop is not just for editing photographs anymore.

If you have some prior experience with Photoshop, or if you are looking to use Photoshop for a specific purpose, feel free to jump around the book as you please. This book also takes a different focus than most Photoshop books do.

Other Photoshop books tend to focus on photo editing, which is obviously a core part of what Photoshop does hence the name. And we will cover a lot of information about image editing, of course. Note that Photoshop is available for both Mac and PC, and it functions almost identically on both. The keys usually used for this purpose are called modifier keys.

These keys are different on Macs and PCs. The world of Photoshop is exciting, and you might decide to change your entire career based on what you read here. What Is Photoshop? People use Photoshop in everything from designing posters to designing fashions. They use Photoshop in blockbuster Hollywood movies and in video games.

Anything you can do with a photo, you can do in Photoshop. Photoshop has developed and progressed into something much more. Photoshop 6 introduced cleaner text for printing. Photoshop 7 introduced some very robust painting tools. Figure shows an example of what can be done in Photoshop. I was playing around with this photo of my wife.

I love being able to take a photo and create a piece of art with it. I can go back and remove the green flowers next to her eyes, or change the background colors, or whatever else I want to do. This was just like painting on a canvas. If you messed up, your only choice was to paint over the mistake or start over. But with the introduction of layers, you could start putting pieces of your work onto separate parts of your image.

These separate parts layers can be moved, resized, colored, and otherwise adjusted independently of all other pieces of your work in Photoshop. Figure shows a faux side view of the layers that comprise this project.

Notice that most of the layers do not take up the entire document as the background does. Because these elements are all on separate layers, I can adjust each one without affecting the others. You probably will want to use other creative programs in harmony with Photoshop.

Adobe Bridge is a file browsing application that allows you to sort, organize, and rank images. You can also download images from your digital camera to your computer by using Bridge.

Bridge can open images, group them, perform some Photoshop automation commands, and much more. It was specifically created for making content for cell phones and mobile devices. It contains profiles—with photos—of a huge library of cell phones.

It can also instantly create Photoshop documents that match the exact specs of a particular phone. Many higher-end digital cameras allow you to save photos in a raw file format. This is like a digital negative—completely unprocessed and pristine. Camera Raw is a plug-in application that works with these files to color correct and adjust them. If software programs like Photoshop intimidate you, have no fear. Why work when Photoshop can do it for you better and faster?

It may sound farfetched to you now, but a few hundred pages down the road, you might be more convinced. So what are we waiting for? What better way to get acquainted with Photoshop than to know its interface? Most books and training about software programs begin with a tour of the interface, and that tour is typically skipped by most learners. Granted, learning about panels and menus is not the most exciting thing, but understanding the interface is a critical step in becoming a power user.

Many self-taught users have a great deal of artistic skill, but find it difficult to become true professionals because they are inept at following workflow basics. Each tidbit of interface knowledge may seem small and insignificant on its own, but compounded they will allow you to produce your best work in the shortest time. About Panels The work area in Photoshop is largely made up of several task-centric, mini work areas called panels. Most workflows use the Layers panel most frequently.

Panels can be contracted and expanded to allow you more room to work. Approach Learning the Interface In many classes that I have taught on creative software applications, I often run into students so overwhelmed by the sight of the interface with all of its tools, panels, customization options, menus, and buttons that they just freeze in panic when the program launches. One student interrupted class every few minutes to ask what a particular button did.

Yes, learning the role of every single button and panel is a daunting challenge. You may not know what the pancreas does, or where stomach acid comes from, or how water is absorbed. But you know enough about the process to put food in your mouth. Think of the Photoshop interface in that way. You can add to your knowledge as you practice. When the panels are collapsed in either the icon-and-name view or in the icon-only view, you can see the full-size panel as a pop-out by simply clicking the icon.

Click the icon again to return the panel to its collapsed state. Get Panels to Close Automatically By default, panels opened from the icon view will stay open popped out even when you go back to your document and start working. However, you might find yourself wanting panels, like unwanted houseguests, to just disappear so you can get back to work. On Windows, go to the Edit menu at the top of the screen, and choose Preferences Interface.

After you open collapse the panel. Even though it is called a panel, as tabs when expanded right. The Tools panel is where you go to get surprise! For a certain task, how do you know whether you need to look for a tool or for a particular panel? Tools typically require you to manually adjust something in your document. So you would go to the Tools panel for tasks typically performed with your mouse such as drawing, selecting specific areas for editing, and painting.

For example, if you wanted to paint a self- portrait, you would search for a tool the Brush tool in the Tools panel, not in one of the other panels. Other panels usually tweak the entire document at once when they make adjustments.

Screen Real Estate The area of the screen that you work in is often called your screen real estate. By collapsing panels and using the interface efficiently, you will create more usable screen real estate. That will leave you a much larger portion of the screen to work on your documents. In the olden days of Photoshop, the Tools panel was shorter and was two columns wide as Note opposed to the current default single-column view.

These programs all share a customizable, docked, panel- based workspace, which is remarkably similar to what you see in Photoshop. The Menu Bar At the very top of the interface, we have the Menu bar. As we go through this book, when I instruct you to go to a particular menu for example, the Filter menu , this bar is where you would find the menu. For example, as you are working with layers, you may get stumped when trying to perform a certain function. The icon is on Note the upper right of every panel and looks like four horizontal lines with a down arrow on the left side of them.

Thus, the Layer menu is at the top of the interface, while the Layers panel menu is in the Layers panel. This is new to the CS4 version of Photoshop.

This area is a convenient place to access commonly used features and tools. You can also select the Hand tool to view a different area of an image, or the Zoom tool to zoom into or out of an image. On Windows computers, the Note Application bar may be in a different location. The differences are only cosmetic. This area is context sensitive, meaning that it gives you options for the tool that is currently selected. I find it very helpful. The Options bar is the headquarters for such adjusting.

If you select the Brush tool, the text options will disappear, and the Options bar will change to allow you to select different brushes. The Application frame is essentially just the gray background in Photoshop. This mostly affects Mac users. Previous versions of Photoshop on the Mac had no application background, allowing you to see through to your desktop.

If you are a Mac user and you want your Photoshop to look like it did in previous versions, simply go to the Window menu and deselect Application Frame. On Windows, or now on a Mac with the Application frame visible, you can simply double-click anywhere in the blank gray background to open a file see Figure This is a great shortcut to the other methods of opening a file.

Note that this only works for the first image you open. Customizing One of the best aspects of the Photoshop interface is that you can customize it. But its psychic abilities can go only so far; it really pays to be able to move panels around so that the interface can help you work as efficiently as possible. If the Styles panel is not open, any other panel will make a fine substitute. First, click the tab for the Styles panel, and then drag it to another group of panels.

Closing Unwanted Panels Most of the panels that you see when you first open Photoshop are panels that you will hardly ever use. Why have them cluttering up your precious work area? Get rid of them! To close panels, simply click the panel fly-out menu see Figure or right-click the name of the panel that is, the tab.

In both instances, a menu will pop up. Choose Close from that menu to hide that panel. Fly-out menus are used to give you additional options for that panel. To restore the panel to the way it was, just double-click it again. They just kind of floated around in space. It was a mess. The panel will now hover over everything else see Figure To hide all open panels, press TAB on your keyboard. Press TAB again to get the panels back.

Tip While I prefer the new system of docked panels, I often still find myself floating panels for certain tasks. What happens when you want the floating panel to return to its default behavior as a docked panel? Simply drag it where you want it to go, just like the way you moved panels earlier in this section. Tip For example, if the tabs in your group are, from left to right, Layers, Channels, Paths, and you want the order to be Channels, Layers, Paths, then drag the tab for the Channels panel to the left so that it comes before the Layers panel.

From this menu, you will see a list of all of the panels available to you in Photoshop. As you can see in Figure , the menu has even more panels than the default workspace would lead you to believe. In the Window menu, when the name of a panel has a checkmark next to it, it indicates that panel is currently open in the interface.

Most other Adobe applications have a Window menu that Tip allows you to retrieve panels in the same way. Working with Workspaces If you work in an environment with many other people, perhaps you have experienced the unfortunate occasion of coming back from a vacation, only to find that fellow employees have worked on your machine and messed up your workspace.

Maybe panels have been moved or rearranged, or keyboard shortcuts have been reassigned. Thankfully, Photoshop has the capability to save and access different interface configurations, called workspaces.

These are two completely different tasks that use two completely different sets of panels. So, you could create one workspace that has what you need for text editing, and create another workspace that has what you need for painting.

Taking advantage of workspaces in Photoshop may seem inconvenient at first, but it can make you much more efficient. These can be accessed from the drop-down list on the far right end of the Application bar. The default workspace, shown here, is called Essentials.

Typically, these workspaces are used for specific workflows. For example, if you select the Painting workspace, the only panels that appear onscreen are panels that you would want for painting, such as the Brushes panel, the Color panel, the Swatches panel, and so on. But these workspaces can also be helpful in other ways. The Secret Powers of Workspaces Not only can workspaces store information about how you like your panels laid out and which ones you want visible or hidden, but also panels can store customized menu settings and keyboard shortcuts.

If you go to the Edit menu, you can choose either Keyboard Shortcuts or Menus. If you select Keyboard Shortcuts, a dialog box will pop up allowing you to customize keyboard shortcuts. If you find yourself constantly using a particular function in Photoshop, in most cases you can create a keyboard shortcut for it. You can also change the keyboard shortcut if one already exists for it.

If you select Edit Menus, you will have two main choices to customize menus. You can click the eye icon next to a menu item in a given menu to hide that option. Few if any users of Photoshop use every function and command. You can also customize menu items by making them a different color so that they stand out. That way, when you open a menu, your eye will instantly be drawn to the functions that you use most. Or, if you wear several hats perhaps you create paintings, edit photos, and then post them to a web site , you can color menu items based on different workflows.

The menu items you use for painting might be yellow, menu items you use for editing photos might be red, and so on. Workspaces let you save panel locations, keyboard shortcuts, and menus. You can pick and choose which are saved in your workspace.

You will get a simple dialog box asking both the name of your new workspace and which components of the workspace for example, panel locations, menus, keyboard shortcuts you wish to save as part of the workspace. Once you click OK, your custom workspace will show up in the Workspace drop-down list with all of the others. This is even more critical to your workflow than getting acquainted with interface elements. Even if you already know a thing or two about Photoshop, the next few sections will cover impressive new features and some lifesaving shortcuts.

Opening Documents First, we need to bring an image into Photoshop. In Photoshop, the terms are essentially synonymous. As with several commands in Photoshop, you have many ways to do the same thing. This can Note be intimidating at first because it seems overwhelming to learn everything.

You only need to learn and use the way that you like best. To open a file, choose File Open. For this chapter, you can open one of your own images, or just follow along. Similar to what you might find in your web browser when you have multiple web pages open in the same window, Photoshop groups documents into tabs when more than one file is open at a time: To cycle through open documents, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-TAB for both platforms.

Then, while still holding those keys, simply click anywhere on the image to zoom into that area. As before, click with those keys held down to zoom out.

Another way to think of this is that it moves the camera, not the actor. But the current version of Photoshop has actually added a little improvement. This will cause your image to zoom in until you release the mouse button. The Magic of Navigating with Keyboard Shortcuts The really cool thing about navigating documents with the keyboard shortcuts just mentioned is that they toggle only navigational tools.

Using any other navigation method, you would need to move your cursor to change the view of the document, and perhaps go back and select the Brush tool again after that. Who has the time and patience to do that? The Navigator Panel The Navigator panel is another way that you can navigate documents see Figure As you drag the slider at the bottom of the Navigator panel to the right, you zoom into the image.

Dragging to the left zooms back out. Once you zoom in, a little red rectangle on the image preview in the Navigator panel appears, representing the portion of the image you are now seeing in the main document window. You can drag that rectangle around to see different portions of your image, which is similar to what you saw previously with the Hand tool.

As with all other panels in Photoshop, if the Navigator panel is not visible, you can select it Tip from the Window menu at the top of the interface to reveal it in all of its navigational glory. Tools Instead of using keyboard shortcuts to toggle navigational tools, you can select them from the Tools panel on the left side of the interface. You can select the Zoom tool which looks like a magnifying glass, shown next to zoom in and out.

To change the view of your image, you can select the Hand tool in the Tools panel, right above the Zoom tool. Once you select the tool, simply drag your image around to change your view. The Application Bar Mentioned briefly earlier in this chapter, the Application bar is a new feature that provides quick access to commonly used tools. This is used for temporarily rotating your image.

As with the Hand tool, this only changes your view, not the image itself. In previous versions of Photoshop, you might find enclosed in the package a sheet listing all shortcuts. But this list is absent from recent versions. A few versions ago, Photoshop introduced the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts. Instructions on how to do that were provided earlier in this chapter. However, by going to Edit Keyboard Shortcuts, you can get a list of all keyboard shortcuts in addition to customizing them.

Be aware that not all keyboard shortcuts will be on this list. The bulk of our study in this chapter will be about layers. Layers are perhaps the most critical element of Photoshop and can greatly increase your efficiency and the quality of your final product. Your ability to use Photoshop well will largely depend upon your ability to use layers well. I usually like to start my projects, especially artistic projects, with a brand-new document.

This way I can ensure that my document is set up to the correct specs for output. If you start with an existing project that is too small, it might be impossible later to make it large enough to print. At first this dialog box can be intimidating as you glance around at all the empty fields. And Photoshop also has your back. Photoshop understands that this is a little overwhelming to new users. It also knows that even if you are a total pro and know exactly what you should put in every field, it gets tedious filling out all this technical info.

These presets are nicely arranged into a variety of categories based on different workflows. Figure shows the drop- down list of presets. People in the video world, web graphic designers, print graphic designers, those who create content for mobile phones and portable devices, those in the film industry, photographers, and many more use Photoshop on a daily basis.

And for each of them, Photoshop has document presets ready to get them started. Each preset also has a variety of sizes to choose from that are common to that medium or industry. For example, if you were to select the Web preset and then click the Size drop-down list, you would be presented with most common computer screen resolutions, as well as some sizes useful for web graphics. You can change the unit of measurement to a variety of units.

The default unit of measurement in Tip the United States is inches. For web and video documents, inches are irrelevant. The Truth about Resolution The term resolution is tossed around a lot these days. It is quite possible to have an image that is high resolution, but is still low quality.

What Are Pixels? When Photoshop refers to resolution, it refers to how many pixels are in a given area. So, before we understand resolution, we need to learn a little about pixels. Name Your Stuff! Better to accept the fact that naming files and layers is just a part of life, and name your Photoshop documents. The fewer pixels in a given area like images. When there are more pixels in an image, they will be smaller and less conspicuous, and the resolution will be higher.

Resolution on a computer screen is expressed in pixels per inch ppi. This is because computer monitors have pixels. Printers and scanners often print and scan using dots or lines. When we refer to the resolution of these and other such devices, we use the terms dpi dots per inch and lpi lines per inch. People often mistakenly use the terms dpi and lpi when referring to computer files, even though computer screens have neither dots nor inches.

However, most monitor specs read in terms of pixel dimensions, not dot dimensions. The Bottom Line per Inch You must keep in mind resolution when you are creating your documents in Photoshop. Just because you tell Photoshop that you want to create a document that is 8.

How many pixels are in those inches? For onscreen graphics and images, or for images intended for video or 3D programs, 72 ppi is the standard, because that is the resolution of computer monitors and TV screens. Printed documents require smaller pixels to look clean, so the standard is usually about ppi. Even though ppi is a fairly common standard, you should never assume anything. I once designed a CD cover for an independent punk band, and I assumed that ppi would be fine.

However, their CD production house recommended I create the art at ppi— twice the resolution that I was planning on. When asking your printing agency about resolution, be sure that you get the resolution for your Tip computer document, not the resolution of their printer. The first person you ask about this may not know the correct answer. What they might be tempted to tell you is the resolution of their printer, which may be something like lpi.

In most cases, this does not translate to document resolution. Document Color The rest of the fields used to create a basic document pertain to color. Lots of programs and plug-ins create cool photo montages easily and quickly—handy for such things as photo DVDs and slideshows.

A few tricks and techniques in After Effects will have you up and running in no time at all. Our camera will pan with the actor as he runs, jumps, disappears, and reappears. The actual disappearance also includes a dynamic dissolve and warp effect. And the best part is, no third party plug-ins are required. When working on VFX, you can often measure your success by how invisible you are.

In this tutorial artist will show you all how to make turn a plain dolly shot into a dynamic room with light rays and a sky replacement. In this tutorial artist will show some Time Remapping, Distortion, and Color Correction tips that could even save you from running into yourself in an old building…. In John Dickinson did a series of roadshows for Adobe where he presented a neat little animation of a dancing can. In this series of tutorials he will walk you step-by-step through various After Effects techniques for creating this spot.

This section deals with Puppet Pin tool basics and how to use the cool motion sketch feature to animate to music. In this tutorial Adam uses CC Smear as the basis to create text that appears in as if a spirit whisped into it. In this video tutorial, CreativeCOW leader, Eran Stern demonstrates how to create flower trails using Trapcode Particular in this special holiday episode. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a growing 3D vines and animate it using After Effects.

Problems with overerexposed footage? Need to work in 32bpc for nice depth of field and motion blur? Now you can! Convert your footage from 8bpc to 32bpc with new free plugin. UV mapping finally available in After Effects. Check out this amazing tutorial to learn how to integrate your 3D artwork with After Effects to improve your workflow, save time and money.

In this first part James will teach how to create 2 scenes. First how to take a shot of a mansion and give it an intense and scary look through sky replacement and colour correction. Second we will take a shot of a stone gargoyle face and create a subtle yet creepy effect in which it frowns evilly at an oncoming victim. Be afraid…be very afraid. In this video tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to use shape layers to easily create that Old-School look where a red dashed line animates over a map to indicate travel destinations.

In this tutorial artist is going to show you how to create a spray paint effect using After Effects. Animating your After Effects design in 3D space is fun and, for the most part, easy to achieve. However, the camera and objects can have their own agendas in some instances, but a few tricks can change a seemingly uncontrollable camera animation into pure, cool cinematography….

Learn how to use light streaks with live action footage and enhanced coloring method and 3D layer control. In this video tutorial, Eran Stern creates a watery liquid push effect and color corrects the shot using the bundled Color Finesse plug-in.

Using a layer of smoke, blurs, colour correction and some masking techniques, Nick shows you how to create the energy ball, give it a burning hot spot, animate it to fly towards the camera and reflect off the nearby fence. In this tutorial artist is going to explain how easy it is for any photoshop users out there that create a lot of effects-added branding to transform their work into a great and simple animation using After Effects, presumably to spice up your client presentation or intro to your website.

This was made in After Effects CS4 and demonstrat…. Now you can easily call it quits within After Effects! Rob uses the example of creating a paper crumple transition to show off the Digieffects plugin Freeform AE. Who knows… this tutorial might just save your job. The more you get into After Effects, the more you realize how cool it is to bring in stuff from outside the program.

This tutorial shows how take a scene from Cinema 4D and bring it over into AE. Using basic AE tools and some expressions you will learn how to create this 3D wall made of custom shapes and a nice laser beam to reveal your text. Adobe Photoshop CS5 manual pages. Adobe Photoshop CS4 manual pages. Adobe Illustrator CS5 manual pages. Adobe Photoshop CC manual pages. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 manual pages. Adobe Illustrator CC manual pages.