Photopea

Simple Color Correction

Adjusting Levels Click The Half Circle in the bottom of the layer menu

Click Levels

You are displayed a histogram, which shows you a graph of all the shadows, midtones, and highlights. You are able to move the triangles to adjust each of these points.

By moving the shadows you will be changing what value and below will be black.

By moving the midtone slider you can change what values will be considered midtones.

By moving the highlights slider you can change what values will be highlights.

This is good for increasing contrast in your image.

To start place the shadow and the highlight slider where your histogram starts and ends. Usually you'll set the shadows and the highlights, then play with the midtones until it looks good.

Adjusting Sharpening Sharpening is drawing very thin white lines around areas of high contrast. Radius controls how thick the line is, the amount is the tolerance for where it draws lines, and the threshold is another control for where it draws the lines.

Click the layer Filter > Sharpening > Unsharp Mask

Simple Retouching

Using Stamp Tool Create a new layer You do this because you want your changes to not be destructive.

Make sure your stamp tool is sampling all layers.

Option click to select the area you want to clone

Click the area you want to remove.

Using Healing Brush Tool (J) Make sure you have a new layer and you are sampling all current layers.

Click on the portions of the image you want to remove.

For both Healing Brush Tool and Stamp tool you'll want to make your brush size as small as possible. Do this by right clicking, then changing your brush size.

Removing Backgrounds

Rectangle Select and Ellipse Select These will only make perfect rectangles and Ellipses, but its very rare that something is perfectly that shape. These are seldom used.

Lasso Select Selects wherever you click and drag. Its basically freehand selecting, the issue with this is that its freehand, so you can easily make mistakes. Also very slow.

Polygonal Lasso Very good for geometric objects. Draws straight lines with points where there are corners.

Magnetic Lasso Best on an edge with high contrast. You can click on the edge, then drag around it to have the selection start to "stick" to the edge. Connect back to the original point and click.

Magic Wand Good for complicated edges with high contrast. This will select everything within a certain tolerance. You can adjust the tolerance in the top menu bar. Lower the tolerance, the less it will select. You can also increase your feather if you want a soft selection for some reason.

Can also use a combination of these methods to make a selection.

To select everything on a layer Command Click on the Layer

To add to a selection Click and hold shift to add to an existing selection.

To remove from a selection Click and hold option to remove from an existing selection.

Good hot keys Command D removes the current selection. Shift Control + I - This will inverse the current selection. Command Plus to Zoom in on your picture.

Using Masks

If you remove any backgrounds, you will want to use a mask. The reason why these are helpful is because it allows you to undelete areas if you go too far.

Click the Layer you are working on

Click the Mask Icon

Press D This will make your default colors be black/white. You can see this change in the left toolbar.

Press X to move colors to the Background. Should have black as your background.

Make your Selections

Make sure you are on the Mask Layer

Press Delete Instead of actually deleting the image, this will paint the mask black here.

Repeat as many times as necessary. You can also use the paintbrush and paint either white to see items again or black to no longer see them.

Processing Images for Cart Instructions

You should not need to convert files from HEIC to JPEG. If you are ending up with HEIC files, send them to yourself in slack to convert them to JPEG.

• Crop Image so that the object is centered in the frame.

• Add Hue/Saturation Layer

• Bring Saturation to -100 (Negative 100)

• Add Levels Filter

Click the Half Moon Icon at the bottom of the layers window.

• Perform simple color correction using above directions

Don't be afraid to go further into the highlights with the white slider as the only detail there is the white seamless, which has no detail.

• Save as PSD.

This will go into the Step folder that you are currently working on.

• Export cart promo photos as high RES JPG

Image > Image Size

Set PPI to 300

Set Width to 4000

Save and export as JPG

Processing Images for Individual Piece Thumbnails

These images are used in the instructions to indicate what pieces are provided in the contents section as well as on each instructional page to tell you what pieces are needed for that step.

• Convert HEIC to Jpeg using https://heictojpg.com/

• Once converted, delete the HEIC file.

• Add a Levels Filter and use the Simple Color Correction Instructions above

• Add a Hue/Saturation Filter and reduce saturation to -100.

• Add an additional layer and follow the instructions for simple retouching.

• Crop the image as tightly as possible and rotate as necessary to make it level

• Image > Image Size > Set Height to 275.

• File > Save As PSD > Use the naming template (Piece Name) - Thumbnail

Assembling Step Instructions

• Open the Template

Bolt Film Solutions > Carts > Assembly Instructions > Template

• Make sure you can view the light blue guides. Press Control + H or press View > Extras

These will show you where things will go.

• Drag the Individual Piece Thumbnails in.

These are all of the pieces that are needed for this step.

• Update text for Pieces

Type in what each of those individual piece thumbnails is and how many are used in this step.

• Drag in the Step Image

This is the image that shows what will be completed in this step and how far along you should be with your cart.

• Place the left side of the image against the guide that is in the middle

If the image is no longer centered once you line it up with this, move the image until it is centered within the guides, then delete the edges that fall outside of the guides.

• Update the overall instructions for the image. Keep this as short and simple as possible.

• If the step is confusing, use arrows or circles to make specific pieces more clear.

• File > Save As PSD > Use the naming template - Step number / action