Archive for the ‘Deke's Photoshop Top 40’ Category

Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #22 – the Healing Brush

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Be they pits, pock marks, or pimples, we all suffer blemishes that we wish we didn’t. Or so we would were it not for Photoshop’s Healing Brush. This amazing tool grafts good skin onto bad—and heals the seams in between. This week, Deke shares his techniques for using the Healing Brush to its full potential.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #23 – Color Range

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

If you use the Magic Wand tool, stop what you’re doing and switch to Color Range. This outrageously useful command lets you select an image as easily as the wand, but with more flexibility and much better results.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #24 – Curves

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Where luminance correction is concerned, no feature gives you greater control in Photoshop than Curves. This one command lets you rein in highlights, open up shadows, and reveal all points in between. Curves takes a bud of an image and makes it blossom.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #25 – Selection Calculations

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

You may know that you can add to a selection in Photoshop by pressing the Shift key. But you can also press keys to subtract and find an intersection. Better yet, these tricks apply to layers, channels, and paths. They’re a power user’s dream, and in this week’s episode of the Photoshop Top 40 Countdown, Deke shows us how to best use them.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #26 – Dodge and Burn

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Photoshop offers two tools that paint with luminance: The Dodge tool paints in brightness, the Burn tool paints in darkness. Crazy useful, and they’ve gotten so much better in Photoshop CS4. Deke breaks out his best Dodge and Burn tips in this episode of the Photoshop Top 40 Countdown.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #27 – The Crop Tool

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Since the first daguerreotype, photographers have cropped their images to hone in on the details that matter most. The crop tool does that, as well as straighten and more. Check it out in this week’s episode of Deke’s Photoshop Top 40 Countdown.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #28 – Hue/Saturation

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Hue/Saturation not only spins colors and intensity values, it lets you modify one color independently of all others. And it does so in such a credible way, you would never know it was there. This week, Deke reveals the power of Hue/Saturation in Photoshop Top 40 Countdown #28.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #29 – Liquify

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

The Liquify filter lets you paint in distortions, so you can perform digital nips and tucks. You can slim people down, edit their posture, and make them look exactly how you want them to. Deke shows how in this week’s episode of the Photoshop Top 40 Countdown.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #30 – Actions

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009


The Actions palette lets you record your work on effects in Photoshop so that you never have to do it again. Plus, you can build up complex visual effects and share them with others, as Deke demonstrates in this jaw-dropping video.

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Photoshop Top 40 Countdown with Deke McClelland: #31 – The Brush tool

Published by Crystal | Tuesday, September 15th, 2009


The modest brush tool is one of the deepest, most versatile tools in Photoshop. It’s not only a terrific painting tool, but it is also invaluable for masking, as Deke demonstrates in this week’s Photoshop Top 40 Countdown episode.

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