When opening an image, always use SAVE AS to save a to a new image file name so that you are not working on your original.

In this tutorial we will start with this original photo.

To start with it isn’t a bad image but there is room for improvement. Making an image monochrome can really make a difference to it. Tinting it a color such as sepia can make it suit your layout perfectly. Sepia of course isn’t the only way to go, there are many different colors you can tone your images to help suit your layout.

Firstly to tint an image it must first be made black and white. The way I find the easiest is to desaturate the image. To do so select Image> Adjustments > Desaturate.

Usually when desaturating an image it is necessary to boost the contrast a little. An easy way to do this can be to use the Auto Contrast tool in Image> Adjustments > and then select Auto Contrast. (also shown in menu above)

As an example here is the desaturated image below.

The contrast on this image hasn’t turned out too badly but often there are no real blacks and the image can look a little too grey. Boosting the contrast will give it more punch.

If you wish to have a bit more control over the contrast it is sometimes more effective to use the brightness/contrast.

As you can see below, the second image has a bit more punch.

As is the image already is greatly improved on the original but it is only the beginning of what you can do.

Sepia toning is an age old photography technique. Photographers who did sepia toning would all have their own techniques and preferences in regard to the color of their sepia work. The digital age makes it much easier for us to experiment with sepia tones along with a myriad of other monochrome color effects.

Probably the easiest method is to use variations. Image> Adjustments> Variations

This gives you a selection of thumbnails where you can assess the color changes and easily choose the color change by clicking on the appropriate thumbnail.

You can choose the extent of color variation by adjusting the Fine – Course slider. Simply adjust the image by selecting the appropriate thumbnail and clicking until you have achieved the desired colour tone and then click on Ok.
For sepia toning you are mainly working with the red tones. I like to adjust the slider to the fine level as it gives you more control and you can make the changes more gradually. Each click of a thumbnail adjusts the tonal change further.

To achieve a sepia look, you would mostly use the ‘More Red’ thumbnail to achieve the desired look. You may also like to add some yellow to make it a more yellow sepia, or more magenta to make it a bit more pink. On the sample above the tonal changes are quite dramatic as the slider is set at halfway. The changes will be a lot more gradual when set at the fine end of the slider. On the example below, I set the slider to fine, and clicked on ‘More Red’ several times to get the desired effect.

You can achieve a variety of colors by experimenting with the variations. Sometimes it might be useful to make the image blue, green, purple or whatever color you wish. It really is up to you. Some images really benefit having a funky tone added to them and it can really boost your layout to have an image tone in with it.

In the layout below I used blue as the main tone for the image, and then also made use of sepia to make my son really stand out.

My favorite method of adjusting colors in images is using Hue and Saturation.

I find that this method gives you a great deal of control over the tonal range, shade and saturation of the color tinting.

To colorize an image you need to ensure the ‘Colorize’ box is checked. You can then adjust the sliders to achieve the desired result. The Hue slider allows you to select the hue or color you would like to adjust to. You can use the rainbow strip at the bottom to give a guide as to the color range and its position on the slider.

The saturation allows you to adjust how much of that color is added to the image. The lightness slider allows you to adjust the brightness of the image overall. It is good to experiment with the effects of Hue and Saturation to see what you can do. It is a very versatile tool, not only for your photos, but your layouts, backgrounds and elements as well.

Once you have achieved your desired result, simply click on ok and save your image.

© Robyn Gough 2005
All rights reserved.
Not to be reproduced without express written permission.

Anyone who joins the online digiscrapping communities will notice the popularity of blinking avatars and ‘blinkies’. This tutorial teaches you how to easily create you very own blinking avatars and blinkies in Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3.

There are a few more steps to create a blinkie in PS CS than in Photoshop Elements but once you know how you will be creating dozens of blinking avatars and blinkies! The blinkie size I have used in this instance is 125×60 pixels, another common blinkie size is 150×50 pixels. The avatar size limit on on most scrapping forums is 125x125pixels so this is a good size to create your avatar’s at.

Firstly you need to create your design, and this needs to be a layered image, as showing and hiding the layers enables you to create each frame of the blinkie.

For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using the top three layers as ‘blinking’ layers for the blinkie. You can use any combination of layers you wish to create a frame for your blinkie. In this instance I will keep it simple and only ‘blink’ the top three layers.

Once you have all your layers ready to go you then need to begin the animation process. To do this, go to the file menu and choose Edit in ImageReady.

Note: This step is unnecessary in Photoshop CS3 as animations are now done within Photoshop itself. Simply click on the window menu and click on Animation to open the Animation window while still in Photoshop.

Image Ready will open up (this can sometimes take some time to load) with your image in it, and no longer in Photoshop. If you need to go back and fix something you can just choose Edit in Photoshop from the file menu of Image Ready. Be warned however if you do this you should do so before you begin the animation process as it can play havoc with your frames. If you need to do it after you have started adding new frames, first delete the extra frames and then do your editing in Photoshop before coming back to Image Ready.

Next you need to open the Animation window.

Go to the Window menu and ensure that the Animation option is checked. This will ensure you have the animation window open.

To create each frame we need to turn on the layers we want visible and off the layers we don’t. You can do this by clicking on the eye next to each layer. If there is no eye next to the layer, it means the layer’s visibility has been turned off. In the above sample we have turned off the ‘Love’ and ‘CD’ Layers which will be for the first frame of our blinkie. For this blinkie the first layer only has the ‘I’ layer visible.

Here we have the Animation window visible. This is where we create each frame of the animation. Here we need to ensure it is set to forever. This allows the blinkie to continue blinking. If it is set to once, it will only go through the frames once and then stop.

The frame delay is the length of time in seconds the frame will appear. You can set different time values for each frame if you wish. For instance if something takes a little longer to read you can make it a longer frame delay. If it is just an outside border which flickers, you can set it to a short delay so that it blinks quickly. For the purpose of this tutorial we will set all the frame delay’s at 0.5 seconds.

Once the first frame is set, following new frames are defaulted at the same value, but can be changed if you wish.

We already had the first frame ready to go, and just had to adjust the frame delay. Now we are ready to create the second frame. First we need to click on the New Frame Icon circled above.

Next we need to make the layers visible that we want to appear in the second frame of the blinkie. Above shows the second layer we want visible.

Here is the third frame we wish to have for the blinkie, showing the layers which are visible for this frame. We have now finished creating the frames for the blinkie and it is now ready to be saved into gif format.

Note: In CS3 this step is now done through Save For Web & Devices. The settings are on the right hand side of the window. If you wish to view the quality settings, click on the two up tab. This allows you to view the Original file on the left, and your adjusted settings on the right. You can use the play button at the bottom right of the window to view your animation before saving. Once you are happy with your settings click on save and save to your computer.

Photoshop CS3 Save For Web & Devices

Back to prior photoshop versions…

Next we need to make sure that gif is selected in the optimize palette. If you need to compress the image a little further and reduce the file size you can try adjusting the number of colours, however this can reduce the viewing quality of the image. If file size is not an issue you will not need to adjust any of the other settings.

For the purpose of this tutorial I have left all the settings at their defaults.

Now it is time to save our image! Go to the file menu and choose Save Optimized As. Choose an easy to find spot on your hard drive to save your blinkie and you are done!