Step One: Open Choice Image

Open choice image from the File > Open menu command. Note the Blur Filter effects do not operate as Smart Filters so to ensure the integrity of the original image Layer use precaution and apply the filters on a file copy or duplicate the target image layer.

Step Two: Select Choice of Blur Filter

With your image Layer active, go to the Filter > Blur menu command and choose any one of the three available options: Field, Iris, Tilt-Shift.

Since all three appear in the same User Interface (UI) Panel, it doesn’t matter which one you select if you intend to experiment. You will have the option to toggle or mix between the three once at the Blur UI.

I opted for the Tilt-Shift Blur filter as captured below.

Tilt-Shift

On-screen Controls and Property/Effects Panels

This will take you immediately to the Blur Gallery UI with the chosen filter (in my case Tilt-shift) active. As captured below you have a number of on-screen controls, Options Bar features and Property/Effects Panels items to choose from.

Simple Process:

• simply drag the initial Pin into your preferred location within the image preview;
• adjust (drag up or down) the Focus (Solid) Lines to ‘square-off’ the focus zone. This will be the zone of unchanged focus unless the Options Bar Focus value is decreased from its initial value of 100%;
• adjust (drag up or down) the Feather (Dotted) Lines to determine the amount of feather or transition from the Focus Zone; this space between the focus and feathered lines represent the transition zone.
• then adjust the Blur Ring slider or the Blur property panel control slider to determine the amount of blur you want;

Some other on-screen controls to be aware are depicted in the following graphic.

• A single blur filter is defined by a ‘pin’; click and drag the pin to adjust its position.
• Adjust the Feather/Focus Lines (drag up or down) will be dictated by a double-headed arrow cursor when you mouse-over them;
• Mouse-over any area away from the other on-screen controls you get a ‘thumbtack’ or ‘Add Pin’ cursor. Click once at its current position and a new blur filter will be applied.
• Blur is controlled by an on-screen ‘Blur Ring’ slider: drag left or right to increment or decrement the value.
• Both Focus Lines have an Angle control; when clicked a double-headed curved arrow will appear as well as a tooltip depicting the angle value applied.
• To remove/delete a Pin: select it then hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

Toggle the H key to hide the on-screen blur controls.

Additionally configure the Options Bar ‘Focus’ value from the default of 100% to a lower value and enable the Save Mask to Channels option to preserve the ‘focus’ selection as an alpha channel. Also when working with the Blur Filters toggle the M key for a Mask Preview as captured below, bottom.

Field Blur

The Field Blur option only has a single property control: Blur and when set will influence the entire image bounds, as captured below.

To isolate a focus area to simulate a gradient or transition using this filter alone, set the initial Pin Blur value to 0 px.

Then add additional Pins anywhere else with a value greater than 0 px. As captured below I used a Blur value of 8 px on pins #2 and #3. These create transition zones toward the focus zone (the pin that has a blur value of 0).

Iris Blur

This filter option simulates a camera lens blur, with on-screen shape and size controls.

As captured below:

• adjust the Ellipse Handle(s) to control the size (drag up or down) and rotation (drag left or right) of the focus.
• click and drag a Feather Handle to increase or reduce the feather transition. Click and drag one also moves the other three. To adjust anyone of them independent of the other, press Alt/Option + Click + Drag.
• Click and drag the Roundness Handler to control the corner radius of the ellipse shape.

As a final note the Blur Filters will not work with Smart Objects, Video Layers, Adjustment Layers, Layer Masks, Multi-Channel Mode nor Single-Channel Images. So as noted from the start of this walk-through be sure to work on a copy of the image file or a duplicate of the image layer.

Until next week
Happy trails

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Open Photoshop CS6 beta preview and go to the File > New menu command and create a preset document size of your choice. Preferably a large enough document (say 600x600) so that the pattern fill will be more visible.

Locating the Scripted Patterns

Simply go directly to the Edit > Fill (or Shift + F5) and from the Fill dialog choose:
1. Use: Pattern and choose a Pattern Preset/Swatch
2. Tick Scripted Patterns
3. And choose from the five available scripted presets from the Script dropdown: Brick Fill, Cross Weave, Random Fill, Spiral, and Symmetry Fill.

Then click OK to commit the pattern to the user-defined selection or the entire bounds of the active Layer.

Using the default ‘Bubbles’ Pattern Preset Swatch, captured below, samples what the five scripted pattern options will look like on separate Layers in the current document.

Create Patterns from Photo Source

The default pattern preset collection may not prove useful when used with the scripted pattern procedures, but creating a pattern from a selected area from an existing photograph will.

As captured below, select an area of the image you want to create a Pattern preset from. Then go to the Edit > Define Pattern menu command and save it into the collection. Create a new Layer and go back to the Edit > Fill process again, except choose your new custom pattern, followed by your choice of scripted pattern procedure.

Here is the result of the custom pattern procedures.

Of course you are not confined to the default preset collection you can also create your own using native workflow methods.
The following download and capture demonstrates a simple base vector shape Layer with Blending Styles and Smart Filters.

Download .psd here ; open the file in Photoshop CS6 and ‘select and define as pattern’ each of the brick layer as a Pattern swatch and explore the Edit Fill > Scripted Pattern procedural options noted above.

Another option is to combine the native Vector shape Tools with various Path Operations (New, Combine, Subtract etc) to create the base deco pattern. Once created, turn off all other Layers so that there is transparency; draw a selection around the shape then go to the Edit > Define Pattern menu command.

As captured below, I started with a base Ellipse Shape vector Layer (its default path operation is New Layer), followed by a subtract operation with the Ellipse at the top of the shape; followed by a ‘combine’ using the Ellipse Tool to add a small oval; followed by a ‘combine’ path operation using the Custom Shape Tool preset.

Until next week
Happy trails
http://www.heathrowe.com

What up everyone!

This week we have very exciting stuff happening! Monday was the official launch day of the Adobe Creative Suite 6 and all of us here at the NAPP and PlanetPhotoshop.com are presenting live webcasts all this week on all the new features in Photoshop CS6. We have a range of topics such as photography, design, video, 3D to name a few. Join us for 6 Days of Adobe Photoshop CS6, a special series of webcasts that will take you from soup to nuts in CS6, complete with Q&A.

Whether you’re a designer, photographer, or videographer, you’ll learn everything you need to know about CS6.

Here’s the schedule:

Visit Adobe Labs to download your own copy of Photoshop CS6 Beta.

Vector Layers replace Shape Layers

Notably the biggest improvement into CS6 is the replacement of the standard shape Layers with the new Vector Layer workflow. The tools are the same, its just the mode of operation has been rewired akin to the way Illustrator creates and handles vector objects.

Select any of the vector shape tools (or the Pen Tool) from the main toolbar then go to the Options Bar and from the Mode Selector dropdown list choose Shape.

Once a Shape Tool and Mode Selector is in place click and drag directly onto your document to create a simple shape. As captured below I created a shape using the Rectangle Tool with a default Fill of Black. Notice the new Layers Panel vector layer thumbnail badge compared to earlier versions.

Another method of creating a vector shape is to simply click once, anywhere in your document. A shape options dialog will appear with the geometry options for the corresponding shape tool. Click OK to commit shape creation and it will appear at the crosshair cursor position.

If you enable From Center then click, the cursor location will map to the center reference origin of the shape.

Note: If you opt for the From Center option in the Shape Options dialog just remember that the property is sticky. Meaning if you later attempt to click and drag (manual method) to draw a shape it will continue to draw From Center. To turn it off simply select the Options Bar geometry settings icon and deselect the From Center option.

Shape, Path and Pixels Dialogs

Except for the Line Tool all other shape tools, regardless of mode selector choice (Shape, Path, Pixels) share similar geometry dialogs when you click directly onto the document. You can see the respective tool Create dialog options captured below. Each of these reflects the same geometry options found on the Options Bar for the respective vector shape tool.

Toggle Shape Path Outlines

To toggle the visibility of the vector shape path outlines, select the Path Selection Tool click away from the vector shape; click directly onto the vector shape to re-activate the shape path outlines. Or to conserve on clicks you can resort to the Enter/Return keyboard shortcut to toggle the visibility of the active vector shape path outlines.

Command/Ctrl + H is another method of toggling the vector path outlines. However it also toggles the visibility of other onscreen visual aids like Guides, Slices, and Color Samplers etc.

Vector Fill and Stroke

Brand new to CS6 is the Fill and Stroke options workflow with vector shape layers. Simply draw a vector shape layer using your tool of choice. Then configure the Options Bar Fill and Stroke appearance property.

Both the Fill and Stoke appearance panel share a similar configuration with options to set the active vector object appearance to None (No Fill/Transparent), Solid Color, Gradient or Pattern.

The Stroke Options panel is similar to the one in Illustrator with configurations to set the Align, Caps and Corners as well as a choice of stroke preset and to save a preset to the collection (from the More Options button command).

Copy/Paste Fills and Strokes

To reuse a current vector shape appearance (Stroke/Fill) properties onto another vector shape you can resort to the following workflow procedures.

1. From the respective Appearance Panel (Fill or Stroke) choose the Options icon command and from the context list choose Copy/Paste Fill/Stroke.
2. When a vector layer is active with the Path (or Direct) Selection Tool(s), Right Click/Option Click and from the context menu list choose the respective attributes operation: Copy/Paste Fill or Copy/Past Complete Stroke.
3. When a vector Layer is active from the Layers panel Right Click/Option Click and from the context menu list choose Copy/Paste Shape Attributes.

Option three above (Copy/Paste Shape Attributes) has the added advantage that you can copy and paste BOTH the Fill and Stroke attributes from one vector Layer to another, while the first two options isolates the copy/paste of the Fill attribute from the copy/paste Stroke attribute.

Note: You can still create the old Solid Color, Gradient and Pattern Adjustment Layers by going to the Layer > New Fill Layer and choose the respective menu command option. They are also available via the New Fill or Adjustment icon command located at the bottom of the Layers Panel.

Snap to Pixel Grid and Align Edges

These two new options offer pixel precision when working with vector shapes and paths.

Snap to Pixel Grid (enabled by default via the Preferences) will align a vector shape path and anchor points to the pixel grid. As captured below (top) you can see a slight offset of the path outline away from the pixel grid; compared to alignment of the path outlines to the pixel grid when the option is enabled.

Align Edges (also enabled by default via Options Bar for Vector Tools) will remove anti-aliasing along a shapes vertical and horizontal edges and adjusts them to the pixel grid. As captured below (bottom) when disabled you will see anti-aliasing along the outer edges compared to the crisp/sharp edges snapped to the pixel grid when the option is enabled.

Vector Masks

Vector Masking can now be applied via the Window > Properties Panel. Click the Vector Mask icon (encircled in red) and adjust the Density and Feather properties for the active vector shape layer.

Until next week
Happy trails
http://www.heathrowe.com

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