How to Create PS Brushes from a Photo

There are many ways to create Photoshop brushes. For example from scanned images, drawings or photos. In this tutorial I will show you how to create a brushes from a photo. This is a medium level of difficulty because you don't need to cut out the object, a cloud in this case, featured by a high contrast level.
Once learned the technique you can apply it to about every photo you have.
The object needs to be sharp, neat and not overlapped with other things. Using a white or plain background for your photo is obviously better and easier than using a patterned background one.
Moreover, in order to have a high quality brushes you need to create it with the higher resolution you can. That's why when you use that brushes the resizing makes it blur. In Photoshop CS4 you can create brushes up to 2500x2500 px.

Open the photo which contains the object that you want brushezy. I've chose a sky photo to create a cloud brushes.

Photoshop uses gray scale info while defining brushes. Converting your document to Grayscale will give you a better control on of what you are doing.
Turn the photo in a grayscale method.
Open the Image > Adjustments > Levels panel. Play with Levels to reach the best contrast result by dragging the sliders in the Input Level panel.


IMPORTANT! Please note that because of, as we said, Photoshop brushes are defined on a gray scale, than everything that is 100% white disappears. White=Transparent
Black=Opaque
In this case to completely remove the background I go under Image > Adjustment > Invert


With my white brushes I still clean the background making it completely white.

Select the Crop Tool an set width to 2500px. Crop your image.

In order to avoid white areas in my cloud that will be transparent I've also adjusted Curves (Image > Adjustments > Curves panel)



Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset...

You will find now your new brush in the Brushes Palette

You can also save your set going to Edit > Preset Manager, choose Brushes as the Preset Type and select your new brushes holding the Shift key. Pressing the Save Set button you save the whole pack as an .abr file.

Creating a Photoshop Action

Well, I don’t know about you but I shot several hundreds of photos during my pause and more of them, due to the strong light coming from the Sun at the Zenit, need to be post-produced.
While I’m working on them I realized that some corrections should be the same for more than one picture and that I can save my time creating a Photoshop action.
If you want to record your own action here you find a quick tutorial about saving an actions in Photoshop.
But what exactly is an action? It is the recording of several Photoshop operation and command to automate repeating tasks. Photoshop Actions only apply to automated commands but excludes all actions performed through the tools menu. This means that you can adjust shadows, lights, apply filters, modify size, rotate etcetera but not record lines drawing, selections, erasures, and so on.
For example, if you have shot several photos under-exposed, or if the light temperature has turned the original color, by recording a corrective action you can apply the adjustment to all affected images at one time.
Photoshop itself includes a set of default actions that you can access once you have the palette open.

1. Open you image and be sure that you are going to work on a separate layer from the background so that you will be able to return to your original image.
2. Open the Actions palette.
 
If it's not visible on your screen, go to Window > Actions

3. Click on Create a New Set to create a folder that is going to contain your own action and name it appropriately. i.e. Blue enhancing

The Action set appears in the list.
4. Now click the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the palette. Name the Action i.e. Light Correction.

5. Push the Rec button.

Photoshop starts from now to record every single step, resizing, adjustment, effect etc. you are going to apply to the image. You can always delete useless steps once finished.
When you're done click the Stop button.

The Action is now stored in the palette in the Set that you have previously named.
You can now apply this action to many other pictures just clicking the play button.

Using the Rectangular Grid Tool to Create a Fancy Cover

Today we are going to use some nice tools available in Illustrator that can be useful in several occasions. I’ll create a Folder but the important thing is the technique more than the final result. I say this because the use of different options of the same tool can bring different results. After you have learned the technique it’s all up to your creativity.

Create a New Artboard A3 size and fill it with black.
Create a rectangle that takes all the artboard and fill it with blue.
Double click on the Rectangular grid tool. The option tool window opens and you can mange some options.

Use the following parameters:

Create the grid holding and releasing the left mouse button.
Set up the color and thickness of the stroke. I chose a light blue as color and 8 as thickness.

This is what you get
Select the object than go to Object>Ungroup.

Every single line is now independent from the others.
Select again and go to Object>Transform>Transform each.

Check the Reset Box and the Preview box and play with the options till you reach a good-looking result. This are the setting that I've used and the result.
Than you can make some adjustment to suite your needs. For example I added some company information and selected the logo place.

Automatic Page Numbering with Indesign

Automatic Page Numbering comes from a proper use of the Master Page.
In this article we will see how to manage:

1. simple numbering using the Master Page
2. number page of different kind
3. define sections in a document
4. page X of Y effect

Master pages are really useful because you can set there all those elements that you are going to repeat for all of the pages of your document.
You can create more than one Master Page. This is useful when, for example, you have a cover with fixed elements and different fixed layouts for the other pages.
Even during the creation of the document you are able to change anytime the master layouts just dragging and dropping the new master page onto the current one, as you can see in the screenshot below.


To change the contents of a master page just double-click its icon on the Pages palette.

Setup the Master Page

Let’s set up the master pages in order to set automatic page numbering.
Double-click the A-Master icon to open up it.

Create a Text box

Create a Text box clicking and dragging with the Text tool selected. Place the Text box where you want, again, just dragging and dropping it. In the example I put it on the corner.

Setup the Current Page Number

Go to Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number


The number initially appears as a letter but don't worry about that. Once you will be back to the document pages view all pages appear numbered properly.

Style your page number adjusting color and size, choose the appropriate font and, if suits, add words or symbols before/after the number.

Duplicate

Select the Selection tool. Hold down the ALT button and click-and-drag the text box that has the automatic page number in it in order to duplicate the text box. Move the duplicate to the right page to create another instance of the page number.

Done!

If you go back to the document view (just double-click one of the pages to do that) you'll see all pages properly numbered.

Page Numbers of different kind

What about using different numbering for different section (i.e. the author biography)?
You simply have to assign different options for different sections.
Using Numbering & Section Options, you can restart page numbering at a specified page, add prefixes to page numbers, and change the numbering style of both pages and chapters.

Define sections in a document

• In the Pages panel, select the first page in the section you want to define, i.e. page 1.

• Choose Numbering & Section Options in the Pages panel.

• The option Start Section marks the selected page as the beginning of a new section.

• To end the section, repeat the section numbering steps on the first page of the new section and select the page number which from you want to start.

Page X of Y effect

Creating a “Page x of y” effect in which x is the current page and y is the total number of pages is easy and is a very common use of the page numbering.
Repeat all steps you done for automatic numbering a document.
Once you have created a Current Page Number marker for x, than insert the Last Page Number text variable for y choosing Type > Text Variables > Insert Variable > Last Page Number.



This is the final result.

Easier than managing the numbering manually, isn't it?
I hope that my tips could help!