Hey everyone! I’m back with the second half of this two part series about using Photoshop as a means of extracting a subject from its background, and am very sorry that it took this long to get it done. In Part 1, we undertook a basic review of what channels are, and how they work. If you haven’t read that article already, I suggest that you review it before proceeding here.

In my last (and first) article here on MyInkBlog, I dove into some of the key differences that exist between Clipping Masks and Layer Masks in Photoshop. We touched on several different areas, but near the beginning of the article I wrote:

Today, we are going to look at two of Photoshop’s primary masking techniques – layer masks and clipping masks. We’ll be comparing the two by looking at how they work on a practical level, the basic similarities, and the much more significant differences.

Blogging as we all know is much more than writing an article. In most posts, you need to take screen captures, edit, copy, paste, format, etc.. Basically, there is much more to it than meets the eye. Any decent article will take at least an hour to write and may take several.

You read the advice on virtually every design blog populating the cyberspace landscape, and if you haven’t, you don’t read enough design blogs. Kidding, but seriously, people say it all the time, ‘If you want to be taken seriously as a designer, you cannot use the Bevel or Drop Shadow tools in Photoshop’.

The definitions used here are from the Photoshop help files, with a few bits of added explanation where I saw fit to add them. The Blend Modes specified in the options bar control how pixels in two separate layers interact with and effect each other. It’s helpful to think in terms of the following colors when visualizing a blending mode’s effect:

A lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to create your own photoshop brushes. If you find yourself drawing the same elements over and over you can save a lot of time by creating a brush of that particular element.

The other day I was writing a roundup style post here on MIB that required a bunch of screenshots. I was capturing the shots, bringing them into Photoshop, then tediously editing each individual one. It didn’t take me long to realized I was wasting a lot of time. A commodity which us designers never seem to have enough of.

In web design, it can be tricky to decide how to present your layout to a client. There are some designers who believe you should skip Photoshop and go straight to coding. I disagree. At the very least you should sketch out your ideas with a pencil and pad before ever opening up a text editor. For me, my workflow is: sketch / Photoshop / code.

There are a ton of Photoshop brush freebies out there, but sometimes its nice to customize your own set. This tutorial shows you how to design a set of coffee stains and grunge splatter brushes.