Ok so who doesn’t like cool looking lasers? If you do then here is an easy step by step way on how to create as laser in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop CS4 and create a new project and set the canvass size to 400×400.
2. Step 2

   Unlock the initial background layer by double clicking on it and selecting ok on the window that pops up.

3. Step 3

   
   

   Fill in the canvass background with all black. You can choose any color but black really makes it stand out.

4. Step 4

   
   

   Select the rectangular marquee tool and draw a rectangle selection onto your background as shown in the picture associated with this step.

5. Step 5

   
   

   Select your fill tool again, change the fill color to white and the fill in the rectangular selection as shown in the picture associated with this step.

6. Step 6

   
   

   Duplicate the layer by pressing the CTRL+J keys at the sametime.

7. Step 7

   
   

   With the layer copy selected, click on “Filter” from the menu at the top, then click on “Blur” then finally “Gaussian Blur”.

8. Step 8

   
   

   When the Gaussian Blur window appears set the number of pixels to “8″ then click on “Ok”.

9. Step 9

   
   

   Select your original layer, follow the steps to bring the Gaussian Blur window back up and set the number of pixels to 3 this time. If you have been following along in this tutorial, your picture should look like the picture associated with this step.

10. Step 10

    
    

    Create a new layer by pressing the CTRL+SHIFT+N keys at the same time. And fill in the new layer with any color. I have chosen a red.

11. Step 11

    
    

    At the top of the layers panel directly underneath the tab named “Layers” you will see a drop down box. Right now it probably reads “normal”. Click the down arrow and select “Color” from the list.

12. Step 12

    
    

    You are now done. The object you just created is a laser beam with the color you just gave it. You can further enhance yoru new laser beam by adding things to it. Hopefully this gives you the start you were looking for.

If there were a rating difficulty on eHow for “super easy” this tutorial would fall into it. So many times we as “photoshopers” concentrate so hard on the difficult tasks that we overlook some of the basic ones. Flipping and rotating your image is about as easy as it gets, but sometimes can be overlooked. I have done it on occasion myself. Here is how you flip or rotate your image in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop CS4 and load in an existing image.
2. Step 2

   
   

   Unlock the layer by double clicking on the layer, when the “new layer” window appears, give your layer a name then click ok.

3. Step 3

   
   

   To flip or rotate an image click on the “Image” menu item located at the top and then click on “Image Rotation” on the submenu that appears. A third slide out menu will appear with the options, “180″, “90 CW”, “90 CCW”, “Arbitrary”, “Flip Canvas Horizontal”, and “Flip Canvas Veritcal”.

   180 means to rotate your image 180 degrees from its current location.
   90 CW means to rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise.
   90 CCW means to rotate the image 90 degrees counter clockwise.
   Aribitrary means you type in the number of degrees that you want to rotate the image and the direction (CW or CCW).
   Flip Canvas Horizontal means to flip the entire contents of the canvas horizontal.
   Flip Canvas Vertical means to flip the entire contents of the canvas vertical.

Masking is the most common advanced tool used in Adobe Photoshop, however you do not need to be an expert to learn its basics. Masking gives you the ability to take an object from one photo and use it another photo through layering. The are various other techniques that can accomplish this as well, but once you learn masking, you will always use it. Here is how you use layer masking in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

1. Open up a photo (any photo or graphic will do). This will be used as your initial layer for this tutorial.
2. Step 2

   In this use of masking layers example we are going to show how you can hide text behind the photo you just opened up in step 1. Go ahead and press the letter “T” on your keyboard. This will activate the text type tool. As seen in the picture associated with this step, select a text, font size and color that makes sense for your photo so that it is easier to read.

3. Step 3

   Now that you have your text properties set, type something in. This will create a new layer for your text and as you can see it sit on top of your photo.

4. Step 4

   The next step is to create a mask with your text type layer. You can do this by clicking the icon that looks like a small circle inside a square on the layers tab in your work area. I have circled it in the picture associated with this step.

5. Step 5

   For this specific tutorial I want to hide the text that sits in front of the lighthouse. To do that I am going to use the brush tool and brush over the text I want to hide. I first make sure I have the text layer selected and specifically the mask layer the I created in the previous step.

6. Step 6

   With the correct layer select I press the “B” key on my keyboard to activate the brush tool.

7. Step 7

   You will notice at the top that your brush options toolbar has appeared. For this example I will choose a softbrush stroke of 65 and leave everything else the same.

8. Step 8

   The final step is to make sure the brush color is black. Remember black conceals, white reveals, so when you brush in black you are hiding the text and when you are brushing in white you reveal the text. Now that you have everything properly set up, go ahead and start brushing over your text. You will notice letters will start disappearing.

So after 60 years of smoking two packs of camels a day, Aunt Matilda doesn’t have the “best” smile. Not to worry, with a few mouse clicks, your Aunt Matilda’s smile will look as good as new. Here is how to whiten teeth in a photo.

1. Launch Photoshop and open the photo that has “questionable” teeth. Make sure you unlock the layer by double clicking on it and selectin ok from the window that appears.
2. Step 2

   Zoom in by pressing the “CTRL” and the “+” key at the same time. You want to zoom in because in the next step you are going to select just the teeth and zooming in makes it easier to do this.

3. Step 3

   
   

   You can use any selection tool that you would like however I used the “quick selection tool” which is circled in red in the tools panel in the picture associated with this step. I then selected my layer to make sure it was actively selected and then I clicked my mouse button starting at the left side of the teeth and drug it to the right side.

4. Step 4

   
   

   Now you need to add an adjustment layer so we can whiten those soon to be pearly whites up. With your layer still selected, click the icon in your layers panel that looks like the circle that is half black and half white. It is circled in the picture associated with this step. When the pop up menu appears select “hue/saturation”.

5. Step 5

   You will now see a new layer created with your adjustments panel being displayed and in the new layer a “mask” showing just your teeth selection. In the adjustments panel you will see sliders for “saturation” and “lightness”. To whiten the teeth slowly slide the saturation slider to the left and the lightness slider to the right until you get the right color of white.

This tutorial is a fairly easy one to create a neat object that can be used as a web button on a website. Here is a step by step tutorial to create a really neat web button.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop CS4 and create a new project selecting “web” as a preset. You can choose any size just make sure you give yourself enough room to work with
2. Step 2

   Create a new layer. Rename it “bottom layer”.

3. Step 3

   Select the rounded rectangle tool and set the radius to 10 px and draw the object.

4. Step 4

   Rasterize the object you just drew by right clicking on the object and selecting “rasterize layer”.

5. Step 5

   Create a new layer. Rename it “smaller layer”.

6. Step 6

   Change the default color to white by pressing the letter “x” on your keyboard until the default color is white.

7. Step 7

   Using the rounded rectangle tool with the radius still set to 10px. Draw a smaller object on top of the existing object you drew earlier, and rasterize the new object layer. Your drawing should looke like what is shown in the picture associated with this step.

8. Step 8

   Select “smaller layer”, then click on the “Filter” menu item then select “Blur” then select “Gaussian Blur”.

9. Step 9

   When the gaussian blur window appears set the radius to 7.0 pixels.

10. Step 10

    Press “CTRL+T” keys on your keyboard to activate the transform tool. We will use this pull the smaller object to each of the edges of the biggler object. Once you are done click the checkmark to accept the changes.

11. Step 11

    Select the bottom layer. We are now going to add the effects necessary to make it look like our final button.

12. Step 12

    Click the “fx” icon located at the bottom of the layer window to bring up the “Layer Style” window.

13. Step 13

    Click the “Drop Shadow” checkbox and use the settings as shown in the picture associated with this step.

14. Step 14

    Click the “Inner Glow” checkbox and use the settings as shown in the picture associated with this step.

15. Step 15

    Click the “Gradient Overlay” checkbox and use the settings as shown in the picture associated with this step.

16. Step 16

    Click on the gradient drop down box to bring up the “gradient editor” window. Set the color of the left slider to “fa0707″ and the color of the right slider to “710202″ and the location of the left slider to 75%. Take a look at the picture associated with this step.

17. Step 17

    Click the “Stroke” checkbox and use the settings as shown in the picture associated with this step.

18. Step 18

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    You now have the object in its final stage. Just add some text to it with the text tool and you are done.

Adobe Photoshop is a great tool to make many alterations to your photographs and your images. Adobe Photoshop also reads all of the popular image formats, which makes it great to load images that you take with a camera or find on the internet. However when you load an initial image as your first layer, that layer is locked by default. Here is how you can unlock it so you can make alterations to it in Photoshop.

1. Select File from the main menu at the top and the select open from the submenu that appears.
2. Step 2

   
   

   On the Open dialogue box appears, select the photo you want to work with and then click the “open” button.

3. Step 3

   
   

   You will notice that when the image is loaded that it is labeled “background” and is locked, as is shown in the picture associated with this step.

   To unlock this image, double click the word “background”. The “New Layer” dialogue box will appear. Give your layer a name and then click the “Ok” button.

4. Step 4

   
   

   You will notice that the layer has been renamed to the name you gave it in step 3 and that the lock icon is gone. You can now use and alter this image just as you would with any other layer in photoshop.

If you have any type of object drawing, i.e., circle, square, rectangle etc., nothing gives it a nice affect than the drop shadow. It makes the object appear as if it was floating off your computer monitor. Here is how you add a dropshadow to an object in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop CS4 and open a new project. I selected “web” for my preset to give me enough room for this tutorial. However, you can choose whatever you wish as the steps are the same.
2. Step 2

   
   

   Select one of the object drawing tools from your tools panel. For this tutorial I selected the “rounded rectangle tool” as shown in the picture associated with this step.

3. Step 3

   
   

   Draw your object onto the stage. I selected a white fill color with a dark border to make my object standout when I go to add my dropshadow in the next step. You will also notice that Adobe Photoshop CS4 automatically creates a new layer for you and places you object on that layer.

4. Step 4

   
   

   In the layers panel you will notice an icon that says “fx”. Click that icon and on the menu that pops up, choose “Drop Shadow”.

5. Step 5

   
   

   The layer style window will appear. Make sure the checkbox next to Drop Shadow is checked on. You can alter the drop shadow with the properties located under the “Drop Shadow” -> “Structure” frames to the right of the checkbox.

Without going into technical detail a vector mask allows you to show through just a small piece of an image by masking out anything around what you choose. In this tutorial I will demonstrate a vector mask using a simple photo image and the elipse drawing shawp tool. Here is how you create a vector mask in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop CS4, open the photo you are going to work with to follow along in this tutorial and don’t forget to unlock the image layer by double clicking on its thumbnail in the layers panel then selecting ok when the layer window appears.
2. Step 2

   
   

   Select a shape tool from your tools panel…pressing the “SHIFT+U” keys at the same time will cycle through all of your shape options. In this example I am using the ellipse shape tool.

3. Step 3

   
   

   Draw the shape over top of the picture. The fill color is irrelevant as you will see shortly. You will notice the shape now covers the area that will eventually be the only thing displayed. Also notice that a new layer was created called a vector mask.

4. Step 4

   
   

   Drag the image layer above your shape layer as shown in the picture.

5. Step 5

   
   

   With the image layer selected, select “Layer” from the menu at the top, then select “Create Clipping Mask” from the submenu that appears.

6. Step 6

   
   

   You will notice now that the only thing being displayed is the area that you drew the shape on top of.

One of the great advantages of Adobe Photoshop CS4 is the power it gives you to manipulate photos. Here is a very popular topic in photography manipulation and that is the reflection. The ability to make it look like your picture is being reflected as if it were looking in a mirror or on a shiny desktop. Here is a simple tutorial to create a basic reflection of an image.

1. Launch photoship and open up the image you want to work with for this tutorial.
2. Step 2

   NOTE: Don’t forget to unlock the layer by double clicking on it and clicking ok on the layer window that appears.

3. Step 3

   
   

   Duplicate the layer by pressing the “CTRL” and “J” keys on your keyboard at the same time. You will notice you will have a new layer in your layers panel called {layer name}” Copy” where {layer name} is the layer name you gave it when you unlocked the original image. I renamed my new layer “reflection” and the original image “initial picture”.

4. Step 4

   
   

   We now need to add space to our canvas to give our new reflection layer a place to live. In order to increase the canvas size, select “Image” from the menu at the top and then select “canvas size” from the submenu.

5. Step 5

   
   

   When the canvass size window appears you will see a box labeled height in the “New Size” area. Take the current height and double it. That will give you plenty of room for your reflection.

6. Step 6

   
   

   You will notice that it has put both your initial image layer and your reflection layer in the center of the canvas. What we need is for both of them to be at the top, therefore with our move tool we drag the images one at a time to the top of the canvas. First get the move tool from the tools panel then select a layer, finally move the image to the top. Switch layers and repeat. Both layers should have their images at the top of the canvass.

7. Step 7

   
   

   Hide the initial image layer so we can work exclusively with the reflection layer. To do this, click the icon that looks like an eyeball next to the initial image layer on the layers panel.

8. Step 8

   
   

   Now we need to flip our reflection image. Press the “CTRL” and “T” keys on your keyboard to call the “free transform tool”. You will notice it puts a box with small sqaures around your image. Click on the top center square and drag the image down to the bottom of your canvas. Your reflection image should look like the picture with this step.

9. Step 9

   
   

   Add a layer mask to your reflection layer. To do this select “Layer” from the main menu, then select “Layer Mask” from the submenu, then select “Hide All” from the third menu that appears, as shown in the picture. NOTE: Your image may disappear. Do not panic, it is still there, and will appear after you apply the gradient in the following steps.

10. Step 10

    
    

    Add a gradient to our reflection layer with the layer mask. press “G” on your keyboard to select the gradient tool. Make sure you have black and white selected as the color and linear as the tool as shown in the picture associated with this step.

11. Step 11

    
    

    Your cursor should be a tiny cross. Starting at the bottom of your image, press and hold the shift key then click in the center-bottom and drag the line to the center top to create the gradient. When done, depending on how high up you drug the gradient, your picture should look similar to the one associated with this step.

12. Step 12

    Add a new layer and rename it “fill”. The drag it to the bottom of your layer list on your layers panel as shown in the picture.

13. Step 13

    Lets fill in our fill layer by select “Edit” from the main menu and then selecting “fill” from the submenu.

14. Step 14

    When the fill window appears, choose the color you wish to fill the background with. For my example I chose black. Now show all of your layers at once by making sure the eye ball icon is shown and your reflection picture is complete.

Adobe photoshop is a great tool for graphic designers. Part of what makes it great is you can layer different types of graphics on top of one another to make robust pictures. In Adobe Photoshop you have the ability to resize and rotate layers individually as opposed to the entire graphics as a whole. Here is how you can resize and rotate individual layers within Adobe Photoshop CS4.

1. Open any picture from your hard drive so we a have a default first layer. We are going to create an additional in the next couple of steps. It will be this additional layer that we will show how to rotate and resize.
2. Step 2

   Insert a new layer in your photoshop project. To do this select “Insert” from the main menu at the top and then in the submenu select “New” and in the third menu that appears select “Layer”. You can see how it looks in the picture associated with this step in our tutorial.

3. Step 3

   For our example we will simply draw an object in our new layer using the shape tool (circled in the picture). It does not matter which shape you draw, just go ahead and draw something on the screen.

4. Step 4

   Our next step is to activate the “Free Transform Tool”. This tool will give us the ability to rotate and resize our object that we just drew in the previous step. To activate the “Free Transform Tool”, press the CTRL+T keys on your keyboard (for PCs).

5. Step 5

   To resize your object click on one of the small boxes in the frame around your object and drag it to resize. To rotate your object click just outside one of the smalle boxes and you will notice that the cursor turns into a curved line. When that happens you can rotate it.