PSIG News: October 2003 e-News
October 23, 2003

October Meeting Information

The October Photoshop SIG meeting will be held on Thursday, October 23rd, from 6:30 to 8:30pm at Voorhees High School in room 245 We will look at some of the new features of Photoshop CS and help you determine if an upgrade is in your future. In addition there will be a question-and-answer session and Photoshop tutorials. Members who wish to bring images for discussion or troubleshooting during the meeting are encouraged to do so.

Photoshop CS

In addition to being a welcome back meeting, October’s meeting will focus on the newly announced Adobe Photoshop CS (the upgrade almost known as Photoshop 8.) We will look at some of the new features, the upgrade costs and options, and help you decide if this upgrade is for you.

It’s Resolutionary!

Need to make a scan and still puzzled about the best resolution to scan at? Work from the final size to determine how you should start. It helps to know some basic “minimum suggested resolutions” such as 250 dpi for most ink jet printers and 300 dpi for commercial press – each output medium and device will have it’s own suggested minimums.

Once you have your target, you’ll need to do a little math. For example, if you want to print an 8x10 image on an ink jet printer (recommended 250 dpi) the image would need to be 2,000 pixels (8” x 250) by 2,500 pixels (10” x 250). So if you are starting with a 2” x 3” source photo, divide the target by the original: 2,000/2=1,000 and 2,500/3=833 and choose a resolution in that range (it is not exact because the ratios are slightly different.) Therefore the 2” x 3” image would need to be scanned at around 1,000 dpi to yield a 8” x 10” print at 250 dpi. The total overall pixels captured are equal: 2” x 3” @ 1,000 dpi = 2,000 pixels x 2,500 pixels is the same as an 8” x 10 image at 250 dpi. Each gives us 5,000,000 total pixels, and 5 million pixels can’t be wrong!

Tips and Tricks

Quick Ruler Change
You can quickly change the units of measure on your ruler by right/control-clicking on the ruler and selecting the units from the menu.

Extract Layer Styles
To extract a Layer Style, you can make the components of a Layer Style to its own layer by going under Layer > Layer Styles > Create Layers. Each effect will then appear on its own Layer above or beneath the original layer.

Stroke
If you want to outline a selection quickly and easily, go under Edit > Stroke and choose from the menu options.