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The creative tutorial home of image wrangler, Lesa Snider.

Photoshop

Simply Statues

How to turn friends and loved ones to stone (or a zombie--you pick)

If I could have my pick of superpowers, turning someone to stone would be near the top of my wish list. Especially today. Oh come on, you know you've thought about it too. It's the perfect revenge when someone tries to steal your taxi, take the last seat on the subway, stubbornly debates the reason behind global warming (we're on the tail end of an ice age people) or COMPLAINS that you didn't ASK them if they were hungry BEFORE you made them a delicious ham, mushroom, and swiss omelette... sigh.

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Eyes of the Otherworld

The magic of iris enhancement

The idea for this week's tutorial came from an ad for the TV series named Lost (you may have heard of it). I came across a full-page ad in Entertainment Weekly featuring the main characters, and while I'll admit that all of them are reasonably attractive (except the evil Benjamin), there was something about this ad that made them particularly stunning and somewhat ethereal.

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Digital Beauty Shop

Changing the color of hair

Do you long for a change? Do you need to add some spice to your life? Feel the urge to throw caution to the wind and buy a sportbike? (LOL I actually did that!) Well, perhaps all you really need is to change you hair color. Really! if you're armed with Photoshop, you can try as many shades as you'd like with zero dollars spent on a fancy beauty salon computer to simulate your mane in alternate hues.

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Tough Selections, Part 1

The magic of the Background Eraser

Conquering tough selections means having many tricks up your sleeve. Chances are, no one tool is going to get you where you want to go, but the wisdom lies in starting out with the tool that'll get you the farthest.

In this new tutorial series, we''ll discuss several methods for getting at those really tough selections which aren't suited for selecting by shape or color. Let us start off by using an oft forgotten selection tool, the Background Eraser, on a beautiful photo of Old Glory snatched from iStockphoto.com.

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Finding Missing Handles

This is me and Garth Johnson, the business development guru at iStockphoto. We're trottin' down 6th Street in Austin, TX last week after finishing up at Flash Forward.

Ever tried to resize or crop an image that's larger than your document size? Certainly not an impossible task, but finding the missing handles can be an exercise in frustration.

The fix, my friends, is screamingly easy: Just press Command + 0 (PC: Ctrl + 0) for Fit on Screen and poof! The document resizes to a point where you can see the previously missing handles.

Lighten Up!

Using blend modes and masking to lighten shadows

Ever forget to use fill flash? Ever encounter an area where flash photography is prohibited? Ever taken a picture of people against a super bright background? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you've probably ended up with a photo like the one at left; a photo with serious lighting issues.

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Gettin' Grungy With It

Using another photo to create texture for your type

Here's a fun effect to create: grunge type. It's often used on movie posters (think slasher flicks). To create the effect, you need a very "busy" photo, something with lots of hard lines. By using the Threshold adjustment, we'll morph an ordinary photo into a properly distressed, grungy texture which we'll place on top of some type or whatever else you might want.

We won't just plop the texture *onto* the type, mind you, I'll show you how to copy it into a layer mask so you can do some fine-tuning and moving around, if you so desire. Read on!

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Super Silhouettes

Channel your way to a perfect silhouette

Get ready kids! Here comes possibly the most requested Photoshop tutorial ever: How to make yourself (or another) into a silhouette like Apple's iPod ads. I held off as long as I could, but we all know it was bound to happen (thanks to Tucker MacDonald for finally pushing me over the edge).

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From Photo to Pencil Sketch

Turning sub-par images into an emotional piece of art

Recently, a weekend trip to Atlanta, GA took my husband and I through Chattanooga, TN. After gleefully following the touristy signs leading to the actual Chattanooga Choo-Choo train, we found ourselves standing in front of the little engine that could. Unfortunately, it was encircled by row and after row of the type of cheese-ball souvenir shops becoming all too common in America these days. Ugh.

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Glare o' the Glasses

Removing lens glare with the Clone Stamp Tool

During a recent visit to Dallas, TX I had the opportunity to take my favorite college instructors from the Art Institute out to a nice dinner. I got a great picture of my information design instructor, Ester Kibby (whom I still affectionately call Ms. Kibby) and my very first HTML instructor (now a CSS wizard) and long-time friend, Wayne Batchelder.

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