Delve into the process of editing and adjusting images for the bottom frame of a banner using Photoshop. Learn how to manipulate images, create new layers, adjust color and contrast, export images, and correctly position and size them within specific frames.
Key Insights
- The process involves opening the image file in Photoshop, creating new layers, and adjusting the color and contrast according to the desired outcome. In this case, the color was removed from the image to create a black and white image to fit into the PTC banner one space on the bottom.
- The image was then exported as a JPEG with 100 quality and a reduced size of 3000 to save space in the Photoshop file. It was saved as a Photoshop file with the word ‘adjusted’ added to the end.
- Inserting the adjusted image into the banner can be done in two different ways: adding it in the frame itself or placing it from a local disk embedded. The image can be moved, resized, and flipped within the frame for optimal positioning.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we'll be editing the bottom photo that will go into the bottom frame of our banner. So let's open up the file.
We'll go to File, Open, and for this photo we'll be using the apartment_building.jpeg, and we'll click Open. As we can see, this is an image of an apartment building, and we'll be utilizing this image to fill in our PTC Banner 1 space on the bottom. Let's go back to the apartment building file and consider how we're going to manipulate this image.
As always, we'll want to first take the background image and create a new layer out of it. We'll title this one apartment_adjusted and hit ENTER, and we'll retitle the background apartment_original and hit ENTER. Next, we'll lock the original and hide it from view.
For our apartment_adjusted layer, we're going to make some adjustments to this image. Thinking about how it will be portrayed on PTC Banner 1, we're going to have a high-color image of San Francisco on the top with some text and a title. However, on the bottom, we don't want to attract too much attention—we simply want to maintain building consistency with the image we have.
So let's remove the color from this image and create a black-and-white image that can fill in the bottom section. To do this, we'll go into our Adjustments and we'll select the Black and White adjustment. From here, we can make multiple adjustments or we can simply click Auto to see how Auto would adjust it. To reset from the original, we can click the Reset to Adjustment Defaults.
This image contains a lot of blue, so as we increase and decrease the blue, we'll see that the image is mostly changed. I'm going to increase the lightness of some of these colors. As we can see, the red doesn't do much to the image, nor does the yellow, so sticking within some of the blue will give us the most impact. Let's add a little contrast to this image. We'll select apartment_adjusted, go to Adjustments, and select Brightness/Contrast.
From here, we can decrease or increase the brightness. I'm going to leave it at zero by double-clicking and typing zero, and then I'm simply going to decrease some of the contrast so we have a flatter image. We'll leave it here, and as we can see, we have an image with a little more contrast and it's black and white.
We're going to export it by going to File, Export, Export As, and we're going to keep it as a JPEG with 100% quality. We'll decrease the image size a little bit since we don't need it to be 6,000 pixels wide, and we'll type 3,000 just to save space in our Photoshop file. Then we'll click Export All. We'll save it as apartment_building_adjusted and hit ENTER.
We've now exported our image, so we'll save this as a Photoshop file by clicking CTRL+S on the keyboard. We can simply add the word "adjusted" to the end. We'll make sure it's a Photoshop file, and we'll click Save and OK. We can now close this file since we've saved it, and now we're ready to add our images to our banner.
There are two different ways that we can add these images to the banner. The first is adding it in the frame itself. To do this, we'll go to our group of frames and select the Top Frame.
We can select the thumbnail where the frame is and go to Properties, where we'll see Inset Image. This refers to where the image will come from. We're going to place from a local disk embedded, meaning that the image will be embedded within the Photoshop file.
We'll click here, and we'll see a window pop up allowing us to choose the image we'd like to insert. We're going to be inserting the San_Francisco_adjusted.jpeg, and click Place, and we'll see that the photo is now in place in the top frame. If we'd like to move or adjust this, we can click on the photo itself and press CTRL+T to transform it.
With CTRL+T, we're able to move the image. However, it will maintain itself within the frame we've created. Let's make a quick adjustment, simply expanding the size of the photo, focusing more on the skyline.
We'll leave it right here and hit ENTER, and in the future we'll have to increase the sky up here with the Clone Stamp. For now, we'll simply leave it here. Next, let's add a photo to our bottom frame.
We could again do this with Inset Image within our Properties, or we can go to File, Place Embedded, and we can choose the image apartment_building_adjusted and click Place. We've now placed this image within our Photoshop file, and we can move it off to the side, outside of the artboard, and hit ENTER. We'll see this image now lives within our file. If we'd like to put it in the frame, we can simply click and drag it into Bottom Frame, and we'll see that it appears there in the frame.
Let's make a couple of adjustments here to this image. We'll click on it and press CTRL+T to adjust the size and transform it. Next, let's flip this so that the larger part of the building comes from the right side. We'll right-click the image, click Flip Horizontal, and we'll see that the building is now skewed on the right.
Next, let's increase the size of this building so it takes up the entire space. With CTRL+T, which we've already done, we'll simply click and drag the image to the left. We'll click and drag it a little bit larger, and we now have an image that fills the entire bottom area.
We'll press ENTER. We've now added the pictures to our banner. Let's save our work using CTRL+S on the keyboard.
In the next couple of lessons, we'll be adding to our skyline, adjusting some of the colors and branding, and ultimately finishing this banner. See you there!