Anyone willing to help with Photoshop CS3?

Question

Hey guys/gals, I just recently got Photoshop CS3 and was wondering if anyone could help me out with it. I used to know a few people that would make me wallpapers, and I would give them around 4 or 5 pictures, and then have them write something in a cool font. And they would always turn out really amazing looking.

So I finally decided to get it and do it myself! I've messed around with it but I can never do some of the things they do, like one of my biggest things is how they got all the different pictures all on one picture, to make the wallpaper, and then how they sort of faded them into each other, so it doesn't look so weird. And the font they used and the color design I can't find anywhere. Not I'm not so much concerned on whee to find that specific font, but if they somehow downloaded that font, and if so where can I do that?

I know theres no way you could possibly explain to me in whole how to do it all the things, but I guess just what tools to use, I don't know. or maybe you're totally bored or just wanna help a guy out. Anything you give me will be greatly appreciated, since I'm pretty new to the Photoshop.

Thanks guys/gals!!!

Answer 1

I'll try to give you a brief answer, but you are really at square one and should hunt down some good tutorials or books.

Let's start with the easy stuff - fonts - you can find really great free fonts at  www.dafont.com. You will need to download and extract the zip file, then put the ttf files into the fonts folder (assuming you are on a PC). Go to My Computer/C Drive/Windows/Fonts or through the Start Menu/Control Panels/Fonts. When you put the ttf files into the folder - it should show that they are being installed.

Font effects - once you type the text in, the easiest thing for a beginner to do is to add a Layer Style in Photoshop. At the bottom of the layer palette, click on the little circle with an f in it. Select anything and a window will pop up. You can play with all the effect separately or go to the top of the list where it says Styles and select a pre-made style.

Starting the wallpaper - create a new document. If you are making a wallpaper, make it the size of your desktop (1024 x 768 for example) then open all the pictures you want to use. The easiest thing to do is to go to a picture, select all  (ctrl A), copy (ctrl C) and then go back to the new 1024 x 768 document and paste (ctrl V). This will paste each picture into a separate layer. Then you can move the pictures around on the layers, scale them, add effects, add text layers, etc.

Montaging pictures - this is the fun stuff. Based on the above, you have your photoshop file with different pictures layered in it. You've moved and scaled them to about where you want them, but they are just hard edged laying all over each other. This is where masks come in. Select one of the picture layers. At the bottom of the layer palette, click on the button that looks like a dark square with a white circle. This will add a little white box next to the thumbnail in the layer palette indicating that you have added a mask. It's WAY to complex to explain, but while the mask is selected paint in black with a brush or make a selection and fill it with black and you will see that it creates a transparency in the picture on that layer.

That's as far as I can take you - play around - and good luck.