Photoshop Tricks,

Volume 3

Even MORE tricks you can use in Photoshop (or other

image editing software) to create awesome, new products

from Public Domain Artwork, Photos and Illustrations

By Tony Laidig

www.publicdomainblog.com

www.thepublicdomainexpert.com

www.publicdomainmagazinesecrets.com

www.tonysyardsale.com

LEGAL NOTICE © 2008 – Tony Laidig. All rights reserved.

The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the

creation of this report, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or

represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly

changing nature of the Internet.

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this

publication, the Publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or

contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of

specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional.

In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of

income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their

individual circumstances to act accordingly.

This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or

financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent

professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.

You are encouraged to print this book for easy reading.

This is NOT a free e-book. It is for personal use only. It cannot be given away in

any form and cannot be sold or offered as a bonus.

Photoshop Tricks, Part 3

Using Public Domain image resources for creating new, hybrid designs is one of

the smartest and easiest ways to expand your product creation skills. Think

about it, rather than having to start your illustration, painting, clip art, etc. from

scratch, you can begin your creative journey with already proven works that were

created by others. It’s like working as an artist’s apprentice and having full

permission to use any of the master’s works for free…which, of course, you CAN

because they are in the Public Domain.

In the past Photoshop tricks installments, we looked at tricks to enhance your

Themed Collections, tricks to convert photographs into line art, and tricks to

convert photographs into illustrations using the Expressions software. In this

installment, I want to expand upon the photo to line art trick with some killer, new

examples. I’m also going to share a trick I use to take an ordinary illustration and

give it a unique cultural flair using language characters. Let’s get started…

Case Study One: The Lighthouses

Back in the early 1980’s, I moved from Pennsylvania to southern New Jersey and

lived there for 10 years. I met and married my wife there. Because I was a

“mountains” kind of guy, living at the shore took some getting use to, but there

were a few fascinations unique to that environment that I really grew to love. One

of those shore-related fascinations for me was the lighthouse. I just love the

amazing variety of designs of these structures. So for this first case study, I

decided to use various photographs of lighthouses to create a new work of art.

One of the best places to obtain photos and information on historic lighthouses is

the U.S. Coastguard Site (http://www.uscg.mil/history/USCGLightList.html). Of

course, the images are all in the Public Domain and are categorized by state.

I spent a little time searching for some images that would suit my needs and

picked about a dozen, and then reduced that number down to five different

lighthouses. Many of the photos were low-resolution, but I’m going to show you

how to get around that issue in just a minute. Here is one of the photos I chose:

I imported all five photos into Photoshop and proceeded to scale and silhouette

each one so that only the lighthouse building itself remained. I also scaled each

image to a higher resolution from the small 75dpi images I downloaded. Anytime

you scale up images in image processing software, you will get blocky artifacts.

However, with the trick I’m using for this image, the artifacts will not really be an

issue, as you’ll soon see.

As I mentioned, the various lighthouse images had varying degrees of artifacts

from enlarging, from blurriness to fuzzy blocks of typical compression-related

“jaggies.” To get rid of this issue completely, I used a simple Photoshop filter

called “Poster Edges” (Filter => Artistic => Poster Edges…). This filter basically

enhances all the primary edges in an image by turning them to black. After

experimenting with the settings, I was pleased with the “look” the preview window

showed. So I applied the filter. The next step I needed to take was to remove the

gray areas that still remained from applying the filter. I removed those by

adjusting the Levels (Image => Adjustments => Levels…).

You’ll notice in my Levels settings that I have the shadow, midtone and highlight

settings all at the same point. Adjusting the settings in this way causes

everything in the image to be either black or white. Using this setting in Levels

works very similar to the Threshold function, but gives you a little more flexibility.

The next step for my Lighthouse Project was to add five different color bands,

one band for each lighthouse. I had set guides to two inches apart and centered

each lighthouse within the guides, and then proceeded to add the colors. I

wanted to use bright colors for this project so I went with basics, red, blue,

purple, green and yellow. Once I filled the five bands with the colors, I set the

color layers to “Multiply” so that the lighthouse illustrations would show through

the colors.

You can see the end result above. Next, I wanted to give the impression of the

lighthouse light shining, so I created a starburst using one Path tool and then

used it to delete a section from each color band that corresponded to the location

of each beacon. Here is the finished result.

The next thing I did was to center the images in the white space and added thin

white divider lines between each panel.

Next, I decided that the white looked a bit weak for what I wanted to accomplish

with the image, so I made all the white border areas black.

As a finishing touch, I added the word, “Lighthouses” to the bottom and added

my signature and copyright notice (since it is now a new creation). Here is the

end result. Please also not that the final size is large enough to print posters…not

bad considering the original images were only 75 dpi!

I hope you realize that you can use this process for nearly any photograph…

especially those from the Public Domain. Let me give you one more example.

Case Study Two: Sitting Bull

As I’ve shared in other writings, both my wife and I come from a Native American

heritage. My wife’s heritage is Lakota, and one of the most prominent, well-

known leaders from Lakota history is Sitting Bull, so I decided to put this

Photoshop trick to use using a popular image of Sitting Bull from the Library of

Congress. Here is a copy of the original image I used:

As with the lighthouse images, my first step in creating this new works of art was

to convert the image of Sitting Bull into a high-contrast black and white image.

Rather than begin with “Poster Edges” this time, however, I started with Levels.

You can see, once again that I have adjusted the sliders for shadows, midtones

and hightlights to the same spot. You may need to experiment with your

photograph to achieve the best balance of white and black. Once I was pleased

with the balance of black and white, I applied the Level. Next, I went around the

image and removed all the unwanted black areas so that only Sitting Bull’s face,

hair and feather remained.

Next, I added another Layer and filled the entire layer with the color “red,” then

set the color layer to multiply so that the Sitting Bull image would show through. I

also added a black band at the bottom that would eventually be used for Sitting

Bull’s name. Below is the result:

I decided that it might look cool to add a touch of white to the image (like I did

with the lighthouse illumination), so I outlined the bottom area of the eagle

feather on Sitting Bull’s head and deleted the area from the red layer so that the

white background would show through. Lastly, I added Sitting Bull’s name to the

back area and also added my signature and copyright information to the image.

The final result is on the next page.

I also tried a variation of this piece that was similar to what I did with the

Lighthouse color bands, but instead used the four colors of the Lakota Medicine

Wheel. The result of that experiment is on the next page.

I designed both the Lighthouses image and the Sitting Bull image as posters, but

I could also easily use the same images for greeting cards, t-shirts and other

garments, tote bags, rugs, tapestries and much more!

In reading through these two case studies, I hope you recognize two important

points:

1) This is NOT a difficult process. I used Photoshop for these

examples, but you can use nearly any image editing software

(GimShop, PhotoPaint, etc.) to accomplish the same results.

2) The sky is the limit with this ONE idea as far as what is possible to

create. Plus, because of the creative nature of this process, the end

result is fully copyrightable as an original work created by you.

Of course, there are MANY variations possible on this design approach, so use

your imagination…and most of all…HAVE FUN!

Case Study Three: Using Language Characters

You probably never thought about it before, but, did you realize that alphabets

are in the Public Domain? Now, the first thought that may have come into your

mind was, “So what!” or “Big deal!” but you can actually do some really cool

things with type and alphabet characters when used together with Public Domain

images. In this case study, I’m going to show you two examples of how some

simple steps with alphabet characters can make an ordinary image extraordinary.

The Hawk

I love hawks! For whatever reason, I seem to have this keen sense to be drawn

to them and where they are perched, even when others never see them. In my

Public Domain image research, I came across a fantastic set of old prints,

several of which featured hawks native to Japan. I was thrilled with the discovery

and have used many of these images for products of different types. I would like

to use one of these images to illustrate a

clever trick you can use to take a plain old

image and give it a little more

zip…combining special alphabet

characters with the image. As you’ll soon

discover, I’m not doing anything fancy with

these characters either…just presenting

them as part of the design.

I chose the image on the left as the subject

for this study. I found it at the following site:

http://www.biolib.de/ It’s a pretty cool

image but still shows the uneven edges

that resulted from the scan. So the first

thing I needed to do was clean up those edges, which I did easily in Photoshop

by using the Eraser tool with a soft, 300px brush.

Next, I needed to find and add the special character I planned to use for the

image. I simply chose the kanji character for “hawk.” Seems simple enough,

right? Of course, I had no idea what that character was, or what it looked liked.

The process for finding it, however, was very simple. I found an online dictionary

where I could convert English into Japanese. You can find it here:

English => Japanese Dictionary

http://www.online-dictionary.biz/english/japanese/

I simply typed in “hawk” and the result returned was the following kanji character:

I selected the character and pasted it right into Photoshop…it was that simple,

well almost that simple! I had already prepared my computer to work with Middle

and Far Eastern fonts, and for this cut-and-paste process to work this smoothly,

you’ll need to make sure your computer can handle these languages. It’s a

simple process. I’ll explain it here.

To enable world language support on your Windows computer, click on “Control

Panel” and then click on “Regional and Language Options.” Once this window

comes up, you’ll want to click on the “Languages” tab. Under this tab, you’ll want

to make sure that both check boxes under “Supplemental Language Support” are

checked. If they already are, you’re set and need to do nothing more. If they are

not checked, you’ll want to check both and click “Okay,” This may require your

need for the Windows install discs, depending on how your computer is

configured. Once the install process is complete, your computer will be ready to

display the Middle and Far Eastern fonts.

Okay, now that step is completed, we’re ready to move on. I’ve pasted the kanji

character that represents the word “hawk” into Photoshop. I’ve found that, once

you select the “Type” tool in Photoshop and click on the area where you want the

type to past, it’s best to select the font you want to use BEFORE you paste the

character into place. For this illustration, I used the font, “SimSun,” but there are

several other similar fonts you can use. For a complete collection of all types of

foreign language fonts, you may want to visit the Yamada Language Center

website (http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts.html). They have a great

selection of fonts to pick from when working with foreign languages.

You can see in the illustration above that I have chosen SimSun and scaled the

font to 112 pt. I also added an “Outer Glow” to the font under the layer “blending

Options.” And that’s it! That’s all I did to this image, yet adding such a simple

thing as a single character somehow seems to enhance the look and appearance

of the final piece, which you can see on the next page. For our next example,

however, we’ll take this process just a little further.

The Bear

Several years ago, I was very blessed and honored to participate in a Cherokee

Naming Ceremony, where a Cherokee Elder and Grandmother gave me a name,

which in English means, “Bear Walks in the Light.” The name fits me well (if you

know me) and it’s always been an honor for me to hold that name because, in

our culture, they represent strength and healing—qualities I want to define my

life. So because of that (and much before then, actually) I’ve had an affinity

toward bears…hence my choice for this next image.

In Cherokee, the word for “bear” is “yona.” You can find this and other Cherokee

translations using the English => Cherokee Dictionary at:

http://www.wehali.com/tsalagi/. Because the Cherokee alphabet is actually a

syllabary (meaning, it’s characters represent syllables rather than individual

letters) the two syllables “yo-na” are represented by the characters:

So these are the characters I’ll be using with the bear image I found for this case

study.

I found the above image at one of my favorite Public Domain image sites, Visipix

(http://www.visipix.com/). While the images shows two bears and the deer, I

am only interested in the bear on the rock. So I open the image in Photoshop and

silhouette the bear and the rock, removing everything else from the image. The

end result looks like this:

Next I flip the image

horizontally so that the

bear is facing to the

right, and then copy and

paste my Cherokee

characters into a new

layer in my document. I

add the English name

“BEAR” and the

Cherokee transliteration

“YONA” to the bottom of

the design and include a

bear paw print as a final

touch. Below is the final

outcome.

Now, when I went

looking for a bear paw

image, I found a perfect

image at a free clipart

site. There was just one

problem. The resolution

was way too low, and

when I enlarged the

image to the size I

needed it to be, it didn’t

look good at all. I’m sure

you’ve encountered this

issue. Well there just

happens to be another

cool, little Photoshop

trick I know that completely solves this problem…so I’m going to outline it for you

here. You can see in the image below that the illustration on the left shows the

paw print in all it’s jagged glory, and the “jaggies” are what I’m out to get rid of.

You’ll notice that, for the illustration on the right, I have opened the Gaussian Blur

filter dialog box (Filter => Blur => Gaussian Blur…) and have begun to blur the

image slightly. What you want to achieve here is to blur the image just enough to

cause the jagged edges to appear smooth (although blurry). Be very careful to

not go overboard with the settings—just move the slider to the point where the

illustration smoothes out, and then click apply. For this instance, a setting of 3.8

did the trick!

Once we’ve blurred the image, we want to open up the Levels dialog box (Image

=> Adjustments => Levels…).

We are actually going to use the levels to Sharpen the image by forcing the gray

areas to be either black or white. You can see in the image above how I have the

shadow, midtone and highlight levels set. Unlike the earlier examples, you DO

NOT want to have all three levels set on top of one another. This will cause the

image to look rigid. Keeping the three levels close together, as above, will cause

the image to sharpen smoothly and evenly. I’ve used this trick many times over

the years and you can use it in all sorts of graphic situations, but especially when

working with black and white illustrations.

In Conclusion

It always amazes me how a few simple actions can sometimes produce amazing

results. I was always reminded of this fact when a Nigerian artist friend of mine

would come to visit. When I first met this friend, he was literally living out of his

car…the true picture of the starving artist. Now, years later, his artwork is world-

renowned and owned by celebrities, political figures, museums and more. In

more recent times, he would share with me how he creates his stunning works,

and every time he told me how he created a certain effect, it always blew me

away at how simple it was. Of course, you have to know the trick. Now you know

a few more for your own art creations. Until the next batch…

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