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I did try the Photoshop help menus. They were confusing to me. Long lists of topics. But I have an eye problem and am not sure I searched for just the right wording.
If You have located and downloaded the pdf and the page-sequence should have been changed since I downloaded it, try searching for »Choose colors in the toolbox«.
Hope Your eye-problem is of the remediable kind and Your eyes will get better.
Thanks about my eyes: They are supposed to be awful and only get worse. A small macular hole in each eye (inherited, since my sister also has one). But they have both gotten steadily better and none of the horrors the surgeon threatened that I would suffer have happened. The surgery would have been awful, with a poor success rate and lotas of miseries along the way.
Homeopathic medicine and disciplines that I have mastered (www.pathofliberation.com) and had neglected at the time the holes happened, have helped immeasurably until now I see an enormously wide angle quite well and only miss a font or two in the very center, depending upon font size. And, with two eyes open, phenomena happen anyway, and I see rather well that way.
They are still getting even better (the eye doctor, not the surgeon, who I did not like, keeps a photo record). So I do not suffer from it any more. Just reading small script is a chore. But I have lots of magnifiers, visors, etc.
For spotting, you should investigate the Healing tools.
For cloning: you need to Option Click on part of the IMAGE (not part of a layer mask) toset a sampling point. The Clone tool then paints a copy of the image starting at the point that you previously selected and does it in the Mode that you have selected in your Options bar.
Yes, I really do think that you need to get a book!
🙂
Try Adobe Photoshop CS4 Classroom in a Book for starters.
There have been changes in the way that some tools work in CS4 and the Clone tool is one of them. Look closely at the choices in the Options Bar and be very sure from which layer you are actually cloning and that you are not inadvertently painting on a Layer Mask.
I recommend "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Classroom in a Book" for starters as mentioned previously.
I have those books for CS3. I will get the new ones right away.
Yes. Things have changed.
For me, I do my art in the taking of the photo. I am old school. My new photos need nothing more (my Canon EOS-1DS Mk II doesn’t even need unsharp masking if I use the auto-focus right, meaning with one single sensor on the most important image point). My scans of my historic pro work during the 60s in Berlin (www.anstendig.com) need some spotting and background fixing due to occasional damage. But otherwise, they also need nothing particular. No layers. No masking. etc.
Once upon a time, way back then, we knew what we wanted, planned it and shot it.
So my simple needs keep getting more complex as the tools improve.
My photos don’t need sharpening unless I made a mistake in the focusing.
I enlarge them up to 13 x 19 and they are super sharp….again unless I made a mistake.
With this topic I have done a lot of testing.
But focus is a little known subject. See www.anstendig.org, the papers on focusing and the Messraster focusing device.
I never use any kind of averaging or more than one single sensor at a time. That is, IMO, ridiculous. There is only one plane of optimum focus and that plane should be placed on the most important image point/plane. Averaging cannot do that. Depth of field is really tolerable unsharpness, and has little to do with real sharpness. It is a form of unsharpness, not sharpness. And, since most of the world of photography thinks in and works with depth of field, it is no wonder that most photos need sharpening. Mine do not.
When you have read the book, you will have learned a lot more on this subject!
Just to set the scene a little: i have been a professional photographer for the past half century using high-end cameras in all formats from 5×4 to 35mm all with top-quality lenses.
I currently drive a Nikon D3 mounted with Nikon Pro-quality glass, shoot FF and RAW and I use ACR 5.3 Capture Sharpening.
When you have read Jeff Schewe’s book, you will know why!
Another book which I highly recommend is Martin Evening’s "Photoshop CS4 for Photographers.
Study the sections in both books on using the "Detail" panel in ACR.
I will be interested to hear your reaction once you have followed their instructions!
I will buy all the books, not just for me, but because our (The Anstendig Institute’s) resident photographer, among others, could also use them, he and sees quite superbly.
Please don’t forget that I do have an eye problem which, while not affecting photo viewing (especially on my Gretag-Macbeth Calibrated 30 Apple monitor and 27 Dell monitor) does make reading small text a chore (and most books are printed smallish these days). That is why I sometimes, when I cannot readily find a solution in the ap menus, resort to forums like these, where, in most of them, the participants are more ready to actually take the trouble to explain and thresh out problems than here at the Adobe forums.
As far focusing and image sharpness, which is not our subject, the bulk of the photos at www.anstendig.com were state of the art for that time (1960s) and have not been surpassed for focus accuracy since. They were mostly made with the only focusing device that ever claimed focal-point-exact focus, the Messraster, whose inventor I assisted. All through the lens auto-focusing devices are rip offs of that original patent and, while some recent few are able to achieve equal results in most situations, when used with one single sensor, none can equal the Messraster for being able to focus in any light conditions, with any aperture, and on any subject.
So, for nearly a half century, I have been the most accurately focusing photographer around and an expert in the field.
I have had these discussions of sharpening or not sharpening with some of the finest minds around, including experts in highest-end scanning groups. I assure you, when I say most of my photos do not need sharpening I am being accurate. In fact, adding sharpening usually add a deleterious quality to the image that ruins some things about the image, especially affecting delicacy of the image.
And do not forget that digital sharpening does not sharpen anything in the sense of sharp focus. It creates an effect of sharpness on all areas of the photo (or all chosen areas). And that is not natural and absolutely not something out there in the way we see reality….or in the way a lens sees reality. It adds something unnatural to an image.
If images need sharpening in the processing of the image, there was something wrong with the image to begin with.
But in this wacky world of depth of field being believed to be depth of focus (which it is not), there is no arguing this with people. The truth is in the viewing. And the photos of mine that I say do not need sharpening really do not need it!
Much love and thanks for your kind concern.
I still have a lot to do to find out the real answer to my question, including buying a lot of books, and will probably just pay for a support session with adobe.
I certainly dont want to question Your authority on the matter of focusing, but I think the sharpening Ann refers to is necessitated on the one hand by the difference of the digital sensors output as compared to analog material and on the other hand by maintaining sharpness for various scaling/outputcondition-combinations.
That may be theoretically true. And, at The Anstendig Institute (www.anstendig.org), we certainly did a lot of printing and viewing/comparing, as well as on our 30 and 27 monitors, which can display quite large.
All we noticed when the focus was on the most important image point (usually but not absolutely always the nearest eye in a portrait) was that sharpening hardened the image and wrecked some felicities, especially if the image was subtle.
I have plenty of closely cropped images that are the equivalent of enlarging a 35mm photo way beyond the 13 x 19 of my printer. And nothing more than my original is needed. No sharpening. Nothing. There have been whole boards of evaluators viewing and comparing. Not just me.
As I said. A complete understanding and threshing out of the effects of exact placement of the plane of best/absolute focus in a photo is necessary before one can have a real opinion and really evaluate results.
Such a basic threshing out was done during the 60s, when I worked with the inventor, Joseph Dahl, of the Messraster. And much of the explanations and results is posted at both www.anstendig.org and www.anstendig.com. Even US Camera Mag did a whole article on this, using my photos.
However, I have to say that I have never used anything except a manual focusing Messraster until the first Canon EOS-1Ds came out, around 6 or 7 years ago and then the EOS-1Ds Mk II since then. And I have never used anything other then one single sensor placed exactly on the most important image point, and, after achieving focus, the angle of the camera was never ever changed in order to further frame my subject.
Those cameras are a cut above most others out there….or at least they were until possibly very recently, when Nikon brought out their 52 sensor camera (I think that is the number), which I have not yet tried.
Anyway. Don’t worry. I will absolutely not do any sharpening anywhere in the basic processing. But, please remember that, if I find some day I need some somewhere, I can still add it. All my original negs and digital files are safe.
In the meantime, if you want to really learn something new and important, I would suggest checking the writings on focusing and sharpness at www.anstendig.org and the examples at www.anstendig.com.
I went to Europe on a German Government Grant given to Juilliard as an orchestra conductor. I became a photographer. And after I mastered all aspects of photography, I stopped and moved on. And Joseph Dahl died. So I wasn’t around to champion these realities for well over 3 decades.
Now I have posted them and enough examples (many more are coming).
You all might learn something.
I will study my tool problem. And many thanks for whatever was said to solve it.
Christoph is correct: The "Capture and Output Sharpening" that I am talking about have nothing to do with original focussing in the camera but are entirely related to optimizing digitized images whether created by scanning from Film or originating from a capture in a digital camera.
The Photoshop for Pros book has arrived. The others are coming.
I have just this night spent 2 hours, not counting rest times, and haven’t yet gotten to the answer to my question about the tools doing white instead of Black and vice versa. I am sure it is there and I will find it.
But the type is too small for me to read without a fairly strong magnifier, and it is extremely tiring for me to do (I don’t mind. But I do have to stop regularly).
This thread was my second attempt at getting an answer to my question about my rather specific tool problem.
It seems to me, and please, this is only my view from my experience elsewhere, that first of all, it is not helpful to answer a question if one is not sure of the answer. This was done more on my first thread.
And second, in the time and effort it has taken on these threads to not answer the question, but to refer me to many books and argue other points like sharpening, someone who knows the answer to my original question (stated on my first thread and mentioned here) could simply have taken the trouble to give me the exact answer, or try to get more data from me if needed. Someone finally asked some of that sort of added question on the other thread, but only after being decidedly nasty about my asking in the first place. And he asked for info without telling me where to find it or how to get it.
If these boards are only for PS CS4 experts, then so be it. But that should be clearly stated. I noticed no such admonition when I found these forums. And I am not an expert. If I wanted or could readily use books or tutorials, I could have. And I might have been given the benefit of the doubt that I came here, because I could not easily do the other.
A little patience and effort would be called for. Maybe I rub people the wrong way. But I received little of that.
Other forums and user groups like to take the trouble to give their own explanations to questions, rather than just telling one to search large books or help menus, wherein exact wording of questions is necessary to find long lists of possible answers, often not pertaining.
My opinion is that no one here really knows the answer to my question. It is a questeion that bothers other photographers I have spoken with, who also do not know the answer, find the new tools in CS4 frustrating, and were anxious to know the solution, had I received it here. Yes. We prtobably have not sat down with the whole texts and tutorials that are available and just spent a wekk or two learning them.
Would You mind stating the question You refer to one more time, because I cant find the other thread and on superficially browsing this one again I couldnt find the mention immediately?
I would be happy to. Here it is, restated to eliminate an original possible misunderstanding:
I think I did not previously state my problem with the Photoshop brush tool correctly.
I do not need to use the brush tool to brush a new shade of white that is chosen from the color menu.
I Already have a photo with a white background. But that white background has some uneven sections in it from deterioration or just uneven lighting (the photos are scans of photos over 40 years old). They are also mostly B&W.
So what I want to do, and was always able to do until CS4, is to use the brush tool to sample a section of the present background in the photo that is the shade of white color that I want the whole background to be. In such a case, I sample the shade of white In the photo’s background area that I want the whole background to be (by placing the brush tool tip on that area and option clicking on it). Then I just use the brash tool to brush over the uneven areas of the background and get the whole background to be the one shade of white, without the darker areas.
But suddenly/sometime since CS4, when I option click on a white area, the brush tool brushes black. And when I option click on a black area the brush tool brushes white. In Cs3 that did not happen. In CS3, when I option clicked on a white area the brush tool always brushed that shade of white.
I would like to get the brush tool to brush with the color and shade on which I option click. And not to brush with the opposite color. No matter what I might use the brush for.
If anyone could explain exactly why I often get the opposite color when I option click with the brush tool tip, and what to do to correct it and why, I would be very grateful.
(BTW, The new Photoshop Book arrived/ I spent three hours, not including eye-resting time, getting some interesting/helpful info, but not yet finding the answer to this question).
Thanks for all possible help and for the trouble you have taken already.
So regarding my problem with the Brush tool, that post would mean that it is the eyedropper tool that sets up how the Brush tool, and probably also the Clone Stamp tool, etc., work.
Is there a pithy specific passage anywhere (in Adobe documentation etc.) that explains how and why it all works that way?
Or could you explain it?
I am very grateful for this reply and thank you again for it.
That thread may or may not not have anything to do with the eyedropper. But my problem and my question does seem to have to do with the eyedropper:
A knowledgeable AMUG member just wrote this afternoon: Option-clicking isn’t magic: it just temporarily switches the brush tool to the eyedropper tool. Therefore, you need to look at the eyedropper settings to see what’s happening.
he also suggested I read the books because This is why I say a grounding in the basics will go a long way.
That thread may or may not not have anything to do with the eyedropper. But my problem and my question does seem to have to do with the eyedropper:
A knowledgeable AMUG member just wrote this afternoon: Option-clicking isn’t magic: it just temporarily switches the brush tool to the eyedropper tool. Therefore, you need to look at the eyedropper settings to see what’s happening.
he also suggested I read the books because This is why I say a grounding in the basics will go a long way.
Thats also the only faintly possible source of the behavior I could imagine: the Eyedropper Tool being set to Sample Size: Point Sample on a (hard scan of a) grainy image, but that should account only for a grey, not an outright black. I could not recreate the behavior on my station, so Youre right in that I dont know the answer to Your problem either. (Youve trashed the Preferences already, I suppose.)
A respected Computer technician in the Arizona area asked for and told me how to get all pertinent information.
The final upshot was as follows:
(me, after supplying all aksed for info, which was plenty):
I hope this helps make what is happening clear.
(his reply): Everything except why the problem is happening.
The top left color of the two squares is your foreground color. How you can select the brush, option-click on black, and get white chosen as a foreground color is a total mystery. The fact that when the top left square color is white the brush paints white is normal. The fact that you have no layers in your photo is normal. What’s not normal is why your color selection is not working. (end of all quote)
I also suggested that maybe a trashing of the prefs might help. But since the possibility now exists that something could really be wrong technically, a support request by me has been sent to Adobe.
I would have to spend a long time trashing and then working on something at the time I trashed them to be sure.
I have also been busy with other things and students. I do other things than photography these days…and for decades now.
Doing the trashing and any other technical steps, I would rather be iun touch with Adobe, since I did contact them. I can wait.
I would rather wait and see if Adobe has any tech support experience with my problem. I know others have it.
There may also be other files that should also be trashed at the same time, so, as said, I prefer to do that with an Adobe expert, since I will probably be paying for one, anyway.
Mark you are making this much more difficult than it needs to be. Trash the damn prefs and save your self $39 or whatever they charge now for tech support.
And if you don’t know how to trash the prefs that is covered in the FAQs too.
I know full well how to trash prefs and even put them back. I have been working with Macs since the Mac II in 1982.
But since this is an intermittent thing, there is no quick way to know if the problem will be eliminated.
If Adobe has experience with the problem, that would save a lot of trouble and unsureness.
Also, as far as trouble, if I had gone to Adobe Support from, the beginning I would have saved myself an awful lot of very valuable time lost on forums and other places. That was a lot of time, especially replying to Ramon whatever his name is on the previous thread.
And don’t forget, it was not on an Adobe forum that someone was able to clearly find that there is something technically wrong that might be something wrong with my prefs. It could also be a bug in the application, as others have it, too.
Here it was simply recommended that I should read the books on the subject….on the whole subject of PS CS4, and while I am at it, sharpen everything, even though nothing I have needs it.
I can still trash the prefs. But I have to first write out my color settings etc. Also, as said, there may be more than one pref or file to trash. And I am tired of reading through Adobe forums after forumsnd Faqs to find the right ones. And, of course, since you suggest it, you might have told me which ones to trash, or given me the URL for that FAQ, rather than also referring me somewhere that is usually not easy to find.
I am tired of this and prefer having tech support. Paying doesn’t bother me, compared to what I have lost in doing this here (This post just took me 20 minutes including proofing).
Thanks, though. I appreciate the suggestion, even though it was worded as though I was making too much of something.
They told me to trash the prefs and said how (not all that many words. Anyone really knowledgeable here could have done the same in very few minutes.).
It seems to have fixed it.
They gave other steps to do if that doesn’t really fix it.
What a waste of precious, valuable time on these forums.
At least Apple has Apple support experts monitoring their forums, and those experts reply, if no one else is able to give the answer fairly quickly. Adobe should try that.
But I suppose I will return again.
Maybe someone will know the solution to my next problem and actually give it.
Without the benefit of having read any of Mark’s posts in this thread (I’d plonked him before he started it), I’ll dare to guess that maybe you understand why I stayed out of this discussion after he asked me to abstain from replying to his posts. 😐
I didn’t know that action was wonky. And no one here told me so.
Only elsewhere did they ask me specific questions and through those question found out that my problem may have been a glitch and not my doing something wrong.
Reading is hard for me.
Others elsewhere were helpful.
You people just told me where to go to it for myself, not giving me the benefit of the doubt that I had tried and needed other types of help. And you didn’t even tell me what to look for in the Faqs.
Anyway, I have nothing against anyone who posted here. But Ramon, whop was uncalled for nasty in the first thread, right at the beginning, he is another story.
