Datasheet

Tools for Building Your Masterpiece
Right-brainers are typically artistic in
some fashion, and this book is for people who, like me, enjoy the journey.
Although right-brainers are constantly chiding left-brained people to
think outside the proverbial box, a right-brainer who works with a piece
of software such as Adobe Photoshop CS4 needs to spend some time in
the box, getting to know the tools and techniques that will lead to
masterpieces at some future date.
This chapter discusses a few of the most important techniques and
tools that are used throughout the book, as well as some that are just
plain good to know: blending modes, extractions, layer masks, those
all-powerful adjustment layers (made even more powerful in CS4 than
in earlier releases), displacement maps, and the Blend If feature. I can’t
teach you to be an artist, but I certainly can show you some of the tools
I use that you might find helpful in your own work. Let’s take a look at
some of these key techniques.
The images referenced as source files for these techniques can be
found in the Chapter 1 Source Files folder on this book’s CD.
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