ULTIMATE CC TOOL GUIDE TECHNIQUES

ULTIMATE

CC TOOL
GUIDE

PHOTOSHOP PROS SHARE WITH US THE

TOOLS THAT ARE INDISPENSABLE TO THEIR
WORK, AS WELL AS THEIR TOP TIPS ON
HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THEM

hotoshop is essentially a
collection of tools. Those tools,
in the hands of the right
people, can be used to create
masterpieces, and yet they are the
same tools that are available to all of
us. Many of them are pretty basic and
easy to use, but it is the way that they
are applied or the subtle tweaks made
to their settings that make the world of
difference to an image.
Each tool has been created in
Photoshop for a specific purpose be
it creating selections, healing

blemishes, adding effects and more,

and knowing the best tool for each job
is a learning process, especially as new
features and functions are being added
all the time.
Here, we take a look at some of
Photoshops most popular tools and
speak to the professionals about how
they use them. We focus on the
common tools that we all see in
Photoshop and probably use everyday,
but these experts will open your eyes
as to just how powerful they can be
when you really know how to use them.

MEET THE EXPERTS

AMAR KAKAD

EDVIN PUZINKEVICH

WWW.AMARKAKAD.INFO
Kakad is a creative
retoucher and visual
communicator with four
years industry experience.
He has a passion for
image and moving image
production and fusing
them with creative and
technical skills.

FERNANDO MATOS

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/FJARTDESIGNS @FJARTDESIGN
Matos is a graphic
designer and
marketing specialist
from Puerto Rico.
He gets inspiration
from anywhere,
making it easy for
him to create good
work fast.

CAROLINE BLANCHET

WWW.BEHANCE.NET/EDVIN

LYLIAN DURAN

WWW.LYLIANDURAN.COM @LYLIANDURAN
Duran has been in
the industry for 11
years as a graphic/
web designer and
illustrator, and is
currently working
freelance in Brazil
and the United
States.

WWW.PTITECAO.COM @PTITECAO

Puzinkevich is
currently working as
senior retoucher at
Vault49, New York,
and he has been in
the industry for more
than five years in
creative retouching/
visualising.

TOMASZ MAJEWSKI AKA THATT.

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/THATT.STUDIO

Majewski is a
graphic designer
and illustrator
based in Warsaw,
Poland. His
favourite field of
art is illustration
both digital and
traditional.

Blanchet is a graphic
designer and
illustrator with over
six years experience
in the industry. She
has a love for
creativity and enjoys
experimenting with
various techniques.

ANTON EGOROV

WWW.BEHANCE.NET/EGOROV
Egorov is a self-taught
CG artist living in Saint
Petersburg, who mixes
Photoshop with 3D
applications to create
stunning infographics
and illustrations.
He is currently working
worldwide as a freelancer.

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TECHNIQUES ULTIMATE CC TOOL GUIDE

ADJUSTMENTS FOR
PHOTO EDITING

When the brightness of the fabric was fixed with

a Curves adjustment layer, Puzinkevich used a
Gradient Map to bring an orangey-red tone to the
snowboarders outfit

PRO ADJUSTMENTS

CREATIVE RETOUCHER AND VISUAL COMMUNICATOR AMAR KAKAD TALKS US THROUGH

THE KEY TOOLS HE USED IN THIS IMAGE

USE ADJUSTMENT LAYERS LIKE

COLOR BALANCE, CURVES AND
GRADIENT MAP TO TRANSFORM
YOUR IMAGES
Makarand Baokar

I intensively use adjustment layers: Curves for contrast balancing,

Gradient Map and Color Balance to add main tone and make
colours consistent, and Selective Color for fine colour tuning
Edvin Puzinkevich, www.behance.net/edvin

Photo Filter, which helps set the overall tonality of

the image. Through the careful balancing of
these tonal controls, Kakads edits look dynamic
and clean, which is perfect for advertising
imagery in particular. Take a look at some of the
before and after shots on his website to see just
how much of a difference the Photoshop
treatment makes.

Creative retoucher Edvin Puzinkevich has a

different style to Kakad in his photo editing, with
his images carrying an almost painterly style.
However, despite the visual differences, the tools
that he uses to achieve it are very similar,
showing the scope that the tools carry when in
the hands of a professional. I intensively use
adjustment layers: Curves for contrast balancing,
In this picture, Puzinkevich used a Gradient Map with
colours #6f5903 in the shadows and #fcefb1 in the
highlights, with Opacity at 18% to bring a slight
yellow tone to the water and sky

EDVIN PUZINKEVICH SHARES HIS TOP TIPS FOR

USING ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE PHOTOSHOP TOOLS,
THE GRADIENT MAP ADJUSTMENT LAYER

ALIGN THE IMAGE

[Here I] used Lens

Correction to remove lens
distortions and correct the
Horizontal and Vertical
perspective. The most
important tool is your eye.
Scale, align and use the
Perspective tool .You can [only]
push it so far, so dont distort it
too much.

Composed against a single light backdrop, this portrays

the cars Masculine, Armour Guard and Power House look

Gradient Map and Color Balance to add main tone

and make colours consistent, and Selective Color
for fine colour tuning.
It is gradients that are key to Puzinkevichs
style, applied as an adjustment layer and then
edited to fit in with the look that he is going for.
He tells us how he makes the most of this
seemingly simple function: One of my favourite
adjustment layers is Gradient Map. In the
adjustment layers gradient settings, I often
choose a cool tone for the shadows in my image
and warmer tone for the highlights. I then change
the adjustment layers blending mode to Color
and reduce its Opacity to a value where the image
looks natural, but with a pleasant tone to it.
The joy of photo editing in Photoshop is that
everyone has access to the same toolset, but
there are so many different ways of achieving
effects that rarely do you find two retouchers who
use the same processes and workflows to get
results. What is important, though, is that these
tools are used with a subtle and gentle touch, as
over-editing is something that marks out an
amateur from a practised pro. Knowing how to
use key tools like Curves, Levels and indeed the
popular Color Balance, and practising these on
lots of different base photos, is important to
achieve the quality results of the professionals
that we feature here.

02

RETOUCHING AND
GRADING

I cleaned the background,

removed the window, the
reflection on the side panel of
the car and the fire extinguisher.
I used the Clone Stamp tool to
achieve this. Also, to set the
mood, I had incorporated the
Color Balance, Selective Color
and Photo Filter adjustments.

03

FLARES AND
VOLUMETRIC LIGHT

I added the flares and

volumetric light to create a
warm and subtle mood to the
image. This again was a
combination of Color Balance
and painting with warm
colours. I also added some
shape to the car using Selective
Color. Finally, I used the Photo
Filter adjustment.
Makarand Baokar

HOW TO USE
GRADIENTS

Edvin Puzinkevich

At its very core, Photoshop is a photo-editing

suite, which is favoured by retouchers the world
over. It has some very powerful features built into
the program, with new additions and
enhancements being squeezed into every version
of Photoshop.
The ability to control the tone and colour of an
image, isolate individual Channels and edit them
independently, and retouch flaws and blemishes
are just some of the popular ways in which the
tools are used to get great results.
For many photo editors, it is the simplest of
tools that they rely on to get a professional finish,
but used correctly. Amar Kakad, for example,
creates his striking edits using some of
Photoshops core tools, ones that have been
around since the earliest incarnations. I am a big
fan of the Color Balance function, as this allows
me to set a mood and style for the shot. Color
Balance enables me to adjust colour values in the
highlights, midtones and shadows, hence this is
my preferred tool of choice.
Of course, no one tool is used in isolation in a
professional workflow, and it is the subtle
combination of many tools that makes a photo
edit look both high quality and realistic, as well as
visually striking. Kakad utilises a couple of other
key tools on top of his love for Color Balance: I
follow this up with Selective Color, as this enables
me to add different stylised hues. And, of course,

01

Set under a sunrise backdrop, the

aim was to portray the cars
vintage and cosy nature

Black and white

Choosing the Black to White gradient in the
Gradient Editor with a Color blending mode is
one of the ways to convert an image to black
and white.

032

Makarand Baokar

Experiment
Try to experiment with colours in the Gradient
Editor by picking different colours for shadows,
highlights and midtones its the key to creating
mood in your images.

Edvin Puzinkevich

Try Overlay
Sometimes the Overlay blending mode on an
adjustment layer can give an unexpected result
try it!

033

TECHNIQUES ULTIMATE CC TOOL GUIDE

Ptitecao Studio

A more abstract composition

combining photo and texture. In this
picture, many layer masks were used

TOP TIPS FOR MASKING

CAROLINE BLANCHET SHARES HER TOP
THREE TIPS FOR USING MASKS WHEN
CREATING COMPLEX COMPOSITES
Multiple masks
Add masks to groups; you can use more than one
mask on an image.
Incorporate other tools
Use a mask with the Gradient tool or Brush tool.
When youre working on a composite, you can
use the Gradient tool on the large images and the
Brush tool for the details.
View the mask
Holding Opt/Alt and clicking on the layer mask
will reveal the mask.

BUILDING COMPLEX COMPOSITES

KEY TOOLS FOR

PHOTOMANIPULATION

MASTER SELECTIONS WITH THE PEN TOOL AND USE LAYER MASKS
AND COMPS FOR SEAMLESS BLENDING
Another key set of tools in Photoshop is designed for
creating composite images. This is something that
even a beginner in Photoshop will play around with,
adding new backgrounds, for example. But
composites can get infinitely complex, bringing in
lots of different objects from photography and
hand-drawn sketches, to homemade textures and
3D renders often meaning that an image can run
into hundreds of layers. Quite apart from needing a
computer that can cope with large file sizes and still
manage to run Photoshop at a reasonable speed,
compositors also need the ability to have exacting
attention to detail in order to manage all of those
individual elements and make them work together.
Composites start with selections and masks,
cutting out what you need and discarding what you
dont. There are plentiful selection tools to choose
from and lots of different methods, some that you
may be less familiar with. For example, have you
ever tried using Calculations or the Channels palette
to create a selection? Yet there are some tools that
the professionals will always use day to day, and one
of those in the Pen tool, which both Caroline
Blanchet and Fernando Matos find indispensable.
You can create so much with it that Im still learning
new tricks after years of using it, says Matos. Its
perfect for removing backgrounds, creating brush
strokes, making custom shapes, adding hair, etc.
Once objects have been cut out and imported into
your working canvas, then masks come into play,
helping you to blend items together. Masks can be
incredibly complex, especially when you are isolating
individual hair strands for example, and Blanchet
finds them essential in her work: Masks [are my
favourite Photoshop tool]. I use them for everything.

FERNANDO MATOS TALKS US THROUGH HIS

PHOTOSHOP ESSENTIALS

Using masks ensures you work non-destructively,

so its an essential tool for me in my work. It is the
fact that they are non-destructive, like adjustment
layers, that makes them especially useful for
professionals, as clients are prone to make minute
changes at the last minute, so keeping your work
editable is important. Be very careful with details
and take your time finishing the image, says Matos.
Every element that is placed on the page needs to
have a purpose.
Photo composites can incorporate literally
anything that you want to include, which is why its a
big term that covers a whole range of different styles.
Mixed-media illustrations often bring in pencil work
to complement the digital work, which are scanned
and enhanced using Photoshops photo-editing tools
before being isolated, selected and pasted into a
working canvas. Matos suggests using threedimensional assets in your composites: Try to
incorporate 3D elements into the composition; that
way, at the end you wont have a plain, flat image for
your viewers to look at.
Layers are very important to manage when
working on large compositions. Good practice
dictates clear labelling of each layer, using the colour
coding and grouping options, and discarding anything
that isnt needed. Layer Comps is a useful tool when
youre making decisions about placement of certain
elements, allowing you to snapshot a certain layer
setup, then make a new composition of the same
elements and compare the two through the Layer
Comps palette. The ability to search layers directly in
the Layers palette is a relatively new addition and its
very useful for large files, but it works best if you
have been organised from the outset.

PATCH TOOL

I always use this tool first, for

retouching image imperfections

DODGE AND BURN TOOLS

When it comes to creating highlights

and shadows, the Dodge and Burn
tools are perfect. Keep the brush at a
low Exposure so you dont overdo it

PEN TOOL

Use this tool to create custom

shapes, brushstrokes for lights
and removing background
objects. It is a very powerful tool

A really dark composition on the lions roar. Blanchet has

deliberately chosen not to include too many colours to only
focus on textures and lights

TRANSFORM TOOL

034

My favourite tool is the Pen.

You can create so much with it
that Im still learning new tricks after
years of using it

Fernando Matos, www.facebook.com/FJArtDesigns

FJ Art Designs

Matos wanted to practise the highlights and shadows

with the Dodge and Burn tools to see how these affect
an image with multiple elements

FJ Art Designs

Ptitecao Studio

Whether you want an object in a

certain position, vertical,
horizontal, or even to rotate it by
any angle, this tool will give you
that option

While Photoshop is known for its retouching,

manipulation and compositing abilities, it also has an
improved brush engine in recent versions of the
program, meaning that it is the weapon of choice for
many digital painters and illustrators. Where once
software packages like Adobe Illustrator for
illustration and Corel Painter for painting were famed
for their range of graphics and natural media tools
respectively, Photoshop has proved that it is no
one-trick pony when it comes to image creation.
For digital painters, the last few versions of
Photoshop have brought the Mixer Brush tool for
blending paint strokes like its real-world alternative;
the Airbrushes for a sprayed-on paint effect; Bristle

tips and Erodible tips for realistic natural media

effects; and overall enhancements to speed that
make it a pleasure to paint with. The brush tools are
also incredibly easy to customise, which is what
makes them so usable. Every one of the basic
brushes built into the program can be tweaked and
changed using the Brush panel, creating hundreds of
variations. It is also possible to create custom
brushes from photos, selections or vector shapes.
Digital painter Lylian Duran uses a combination of
different brush tools in her artworks: I use the
Photoshop basic brushes for my main characters in
my paintings, and then I use custom brushes to
create the special effects in the background. When
asked about whether she has a particular favourite
of Photoshops built-in brushes, Duran has a very
definite answer: My favourite brushes in Photoshop
are the Chalk and the basic round brushes. I can
create everything I need and want with these
brushes; they are my base for everything I do.
The brush tools are not just there to create a
painterly style in Photoshop, though the word brush
usually does come with connotations of paint. They

PRO TIPS

OUR EXPERTS SHARE THEIR TOP TIPS

FOR USING PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES
Lylian Duran: My top tip for using brushes in
Photoshop would be to have a nice drawing
tablet with good pressure levels. Also, changing
the size and hardness of the brush is very
important; options like Shape Dynamics,
Airbrush and some effects in the Brush panel
will help to create great paintings.

BUILDING UP WITH
BRUSHES

LYLIAN DURAN SHOWS US WHICH BRUSHES

WERE KEY AT WHICH POINTS IN THE
CREATION OF THIS STRIKING IMAGE

This is a personal illustration by Majewski that shows how he

can use Photoshop brushes to create handmade-like effects

A personal illustration
by Majewski, part of The
Golden Age series.
Created using a
combination of pencil
and Photoshop brushes

Tomasz Majewski/THATT

Lylian Duran

Tomasz Majewski: Combine brush pressure

control with mixing layers [with different
blending modes]. Those two Photoshop tricks
go perfectly with traditional drawings on paper.
Properly adjusted pressure, along with mixing
layers, make the colours richer. Such a
technique gives the impression of natural
processes that some years ago were only
possible to achieve in a workshop.

In this artwork, Duran wanted to show how the cloudy

brush can make a great background for fantasy art

036

Lylian Duran

WHETHER YOURE USING PHOTOSHOP PRESETS OR YOUR OWN

CUSTOM BRUSHES, THE BRUSH TOOL ALLOWS FOR A WEALTH
OF CREATIVE OPPORTUNITY

Here, the soft round brush with pressure sensitivity turned on

was the main tool used to create the delicate feel of the
painting, especially for some of the rounded and smooth edges
in the warriors armour

Lylian Duran

MASTER THE BRUSH CONTROLS

Tomasz Majewski/THATT

TECHNIQUES ULTIMATE CC TOOL GUIDE

My favourite brushes in
Photoshop are the Chalk
and the basic round brushes.
I can create everything I need
and want with these

Lylian Duran, www.lylianduran.com

can also be used for a much cleaner, more

illustrated look. They can create solid, clean lines and
vibrant, crisp colours, perfect for packaging design,
graphic design or posters, for example. Tomasz
Majewski is a fan of Photoshops brushes when
creating his illustrations. Like Duran, he finds that
the basic brushes built into Photoshop are very
useful, but he modifies them to suit his needs:
Generally, I use two different brushes when working
on a new project. One is a standard soft round brush
(at 5-10% Opacity), and the other is a hard brush. I
modify the latter myself to make it look like an
imitation of a pencil or a fine-liner.
Majewskis artwork often starts out as a pencil
sketch, which is brought into Photoshop as a base
for his illustrations, and he also likes to incorporate a
mixed-media feel into some of his pieces both
tasks that can be accomplished through his
masterful use of the brush tools. I have two
favourite brushes and these are exactly the two
I use most often, says Majewski. With a soft
round brush I gradually wipe out the colour to
get the notion of depth (see my Hope image
left). This is handy especially in the
illustrations based on a pencil sketch. The
other useful tool is a modified hard brush.
By controlling the pressure of it, I am able to
create incredible handmade-like effects, as in
Night Of The Illuminati above.

01

SKETCH

This is the sketch in which I used the

Chalk brush at 2-5px, depending on the size of
the image. Colour doesnt matter, but needs to
be a grey-black, like real sketch paper, to lay a
nice base for the painting.

02

LIGHT AND SHADOWS

Here I used a soft round brush to make

soft shadows, along with the Chalk brush to
create light and more shadow effects. Set the
Pressure between 35% and 100%, depending on
the drawing tablet you are using.

03

FINAL TOUCHES

I set the right colours and made sure

every shade matched using the same two
brushes from earlier, along with a hard round
brush and a cloudy soft rounded brush for the
background. This last one is a custom brush
made specifically for backgrounds or fantasy art.

037

TECHNIQUES ULTIMATE CC TOOL GUIDE

WORKING WITH 3D
RENDERS

Anton Egorov created this illustration for a calendar

EXTRUDE A 2D PHOTO
HOW YOU CAN QUICKLY CREATE A 3D ASSET TO USE IN YOUR ARTWORKS USING PHOTOSHOPS 3D TOOLS

THE NEW 3D TOOLS IN CC MEAN

THAT EVEN NOVICES CAN USE
PHOTOSHOP FOR MODELLING
AND POST-PRODUCTION

038

CUT OUT AND EXTRUDE

02

MANAGE THE EXTRUSION

By default, the extrusion will be too large.

Click on your object and select Deform from the
Properties panel (or press V to cycle through the
tools until it comes up). Drag down on the image or
use the Extrusion Depth slider and set it close to 0.

03

INFLATION

Press V again, or select Cap in the

Properties panel, and begin to inflate your object
drag either up and down or side to side. You
can change the inflation angle too. Stop when
you have a realistic result.

Michal Zacharzewski (www.freeimages.com)

You will need to have the object that you

wish to make three-dimensional on a layer of its
own. When this is ready, open the 3D panel (from
the Window menu) and make sure that 3D
Extrusion is selected. Hit Create.

AGROcredit/TOK
Agricultural infographic for a magazine by Anton Egorov

Baltika Brewery/Leo Burnett Moscow

Photoshop has tried to step into the world of 3D,

by adding in workable 3D tools in a dedicated
menu. These tools enable even those of us with
little or no 3D experience to experiment with
creating simple renders, text extrusions and
three-dimensional packshots. Until recently, the
3D functions were optional, having to purchase
the Extended version of the program if you
wanted them, but in Photoshop CC, you get the
tools included as standard.
This means that more and more Photoshop
users are starting to experiment to see what they
can do. In order to use the 3D tools in Photoshop,
you either need to import a 3D model (which you
can do from another software package or you can
download from an asset site, of which there are
plenty) or you need to convert a 2D layer into a 3D
layer for example, if you have text you want to
make three dimensional. Photoshop then has
tools to control the mesh, the materials/texture
maps, the lighting setup and the scene, which are
accessed from the 3D panel.
One area in which Photoshop is forging ahead,
however, is in the world of 3D printing. It isnt
cheap to get your hands on a 3D printer, but if you
are lucky enough to have access to one, then
Photoshop now has the tools to print models
directly. The models can be created in another 3D
software, but as most 3D objects for printing are
pretty basic (due to the time and cost of actually
printing them), then Photoshop CCs tools are
actually well suited. You can create a simple
shape using the Pen tool or the Shape tools in
Photoshop, then select the new 3D Extrusion
option from the 3D menu, which extrudes your
shape backwards to give it a third dimension. You
can use the tools like Inflate, for example, to
begin adding in shape to your object.
As it stands, the 3D tools in Photoshop itself
are in no way comparable to those found in
dedicated 3D software, so most professional
artists will use a combination of programs to get
the look that they need.
However, where Photoshop plays a key part is
in the post-production of renders created in these
other packages. While it might not be able to
compete on the modelling side of things, very few
3D programs have Photoshops ability to edit,
texture and paint renders quite so effectively,
quickly or realistically.
Therefore, when we talk about the key tools in
Photoshop that you need when working with 3D
renders, it can be a surprise to find that they
actually overlap with the retouching, compositing,

01

painting and illustration tools that we have

already mentioned. As Anton Egorov says: If you
have some photomanipulation skills, you can use
the same techniques for 3D post-production.
Asked about the specific tools that Egorov uses
in his detailed 3D/Photoshop creations, he says:
Actually, there is nothing special. By which he
means that he uses the same tools as he would

on a 2D project when working with a 3D project.

But what are those tools? I can emphasise
several tools that are often used by me in
conjunction with 3D. These are the artistic
brushes; textures in Overlay blending mode;
different blending modes with additional render
passes like Specular, Shadows, Z-depth etc; and
adjustment layers, especially Levels and Curves.

USING THE BRUSH TOOL ON RENDERS

ANTON EGOROV EXPLAINS HOW THIS SIMPLE TOOL IS KEY TO CREATING SEAMLESS 3D IMAGES
When it comes to 3D renders in Photoshop, it is the same tools that you would use for any other
composite or photomanipulation project that come in useful, so your skills are transferable. Egorov says:
My favourite tool is the Brush tool. I know the answer seems too simple, but to be more precise its the
different artistic brushes. Egorov uses the brushes in a number of different ways on his renders: The
main flaw of the most part of renders is their ideality, so using artistic brushes brings them to life.
Besides additional shadows, highlights and just spots, I use it for layer masks. The masks can hide
textures in Overlay blending mode, adding some dirt to my pictures, adjustment layers and versions of
my render with different materials. In most cases, a ragged edge is more natural.

If you have some photomanipulation skills, you can

use the same techniques for 3D post-production

Anton Egorov, www.behance.net/egorov