Most of the ideas for using Photoshop, though good ideas, have become ‘normal’. Making yourself skinnier, deleting the background of your picture, all of these are great ways to utilize the tools in the program but if you’re looking for something that maybe you haven’t thought about doing, here are some ideas to help you on your photo-editing journey.

Add Clothing: With the economy in such a bad shape, everyone wants to look good without paying designer prices. With Photoshop you can wear any clothing you’d like for free. Free standing Clothes– If the clothing you want is in a picture by itself, take a picture of yourself either naked or scantily clad (depending on where the clothing would cover up. Ex: A tank top would look a little strange on top of a t-shirt…) If you’re female be sure to pay special attention to how the shirt bends around the breast area, if it’s something like a tank top and you should be able to see the top curve of the breasts, an ace bandage will work in place of a bra to eliminate the strap problem. Save the picture of the clothing you want and open it alongside the picture of yourself. (File- >Open->”Your Picture”->Windows->Arrange Vertically/Horizontally.) Open up a new layer named clothing on the picture of yourself, and decide on a place in the clothing that you can easily match up to a part of your body, usually where the neck meets the shoulder, the underarm crease, or the center point of your cleavage. Then, using the cloning tool, hold down Alt and click that place on the clothing. Now you can click the same place on you and drag the mouse across the area to fill in the clothing on your body. Slight inconsistencies can be fixed using affects or liquify. For pictures where the clothing is on someone: Pretty much the same deal but be sure to be in the exact same position as the person wearing the clothing for your picture. Any skin that gets cloned in can be safely erased using the background eraser tool if the clothing has a sharp contrast to the skin. If not, just the eraser is an easy fix, if a little slow and detailed.

Decorating Your Room: You can always add a completely different background to your picture, but then again why not make the space you have to look better? Look up some items you wish you could have such as lamps, pictures, bedspreads, shelving etc.. Again using the clone tool, open both of the pictures up [see above for directions.] and decide where you want your objects. Open a new layer on the picture that the objects are going in, for ease of placement and deletion of unwanted objects. Once you’ve decided where you want your object to go Alt+click it and then start filling it in on your picture. (Click the area you want it to go and follow the lines of the object.) Make sure that the picture of the object matches the size you want it to be in your room, you can adjust the size by selecting the window it’s in and going to Image+size and filling in your size specification. Make sure that it’s locked so your width will always match your height. Once you’ve cloned your object in the room play
around with the lighting affect to make sure it looks right. If it’s a lamp or other light source make the bulb the center of the light source and use shadows to adjust your room. Voila!

Upgrade Your Stuff: You’ve got an outdated t.v., iPod, or phone. Why not have the newest? Find a picture of the object you want and use the tricks above to clone in the new stuff.

Adding makeup: Time is precious, and sometimes you’re just not ready for that camera to be shoved in your face. Or maybe you don’t have the makeup that you’d like. By enlarging the picture dramatically and using the paintbrush tool on your desired color of mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, or cover up you can be totally made over in any picture. Make sure to open a new layer when you do this because you will want to lower the opacity to about 15-20% to make it look realistic.

More Ideas Using the Techniques Above:

1. Add fake nails!
2. Fill in that bald spot.
3. Change what you were eating to your favorite meal.
4. Add jewelry.
5. Change generic labels to name brands.
6. Make your shirt say something witty.
7. If you’re a drummer: Make your kit look more impressive by adding more drums, high hats, and cymbals.

Actions and Batching

 Creating an Action

 Name the action 1 px outline or whatever you please. Click the  to start recording your action.

 Press Ctrl+A (Mac: Command+A) to select all and then go to Edit>Stroke. Select 1 px and Inside for location. Press Ctrl+D(Command+D) to deselect your selection. You might notice a faint one pixel border around your image. It's pretty hard to see. As a final step to your action, press Ctrl+S (Command+S) and save your file as any name. (Often you will not want to have a save funtion in your action, but for the batch process we will be doing, this is a good idea). Then press  in the Actions Palette to end your action. Your action is now complete. You are now able to apply your action to any open file you want by selecing the action in the Actions Palette and clicking the button. We don't want to use it quite yet though, we'll use it in a Batch Process.

 Running a Batch Process

In order to run a Batch Process you will need some pre-made files to apply your action to. I chose 4 borderless thumbnail images that were going to be used for the Spoono Skillet.

 Back in Photoshop, go to File>Automate>Batch. In the menu that pops up, locate your action in the Action drop-down. Choose Folder in the Source drop-down and browse to find your folder with the four images. Make sure Destination is set to None (which it should be) and press OK.

 Four images will flurry about the screen and in a few seconds the Batch will be complete. The images will remain open and if you zoom in on them you will notice nothing less than a one pixel black border around all of them. You don't have to worry about saving them because they have already been saved during the Batch.

So that's about it. Now you can consider yourself a regular batching fool.