No matter your current size or shape you can have a healthy body image. After all, this is the body that gets you through your days. The wonderful side effect of a healthy body image is that it allows you to be realistic about your body and your health enabling you to choose the right path for you in terms of diet, exercise and even the right clothing choices.

Recognize Inner Beauty – You’re a good person, you love others and show it. You do things for people, you’re good at your job, and value your family. Anything you do that is a good thing, realize it, recognize it and celebrate it.

Accentuate Outer Beauty – Wear clothing that fits your body in colors that flatter your complexion. Well fitting clothing in the right colors will make you feel wonderful, and people will notice your glowing skin, eyes and smile.

Stop Comparing – Once you start comparing yourself to others you’re always going to be more critical of yourself and that is nothing but a downward spiral. Simply do not give yourself permission to do that anymore. It’s not fair to yourself, or others.

Accept Genetics – We all have a special genetic makeup. Some of us are shaped differently than others. We all want what the other person has whether it’s an hour-glass figure, or a sporty figure, or curly hair or green eyes. Accept your genetics and love them because they are yours. You wouldn’t be who you are without them.

Think Positive Thoughts – When a negative thought pops into your mind immediately turn it into a positive by changing the words. It will take practice to accomplish this, but eventually it’ll become second nature. It’s amazing what practicing positive thinking can do to your entire outlook on life.

Exercise & Eat Right – Having a healthy body image doesn’t give you permission to eat an entire big bag of chips or a box of cookies. No one, thin or not, should do that. The more healthy food you put into your body the more you’ll have a positive outlook on life because you’re giving your body the nutrients and minerals it needs for good health.

Show Gratitude – Being grateful and thankful for every good thing you have in your life is an important component of having a healthy body image. Start a journal, write at least three things each morning and evening that you’re thankful for to start and end your day in gratitude.

Smile – This may seem simplistic but smiling even when you’re not that happy will actually make you feel happy. Smile with your face and your eyes, and think of happy things while you’re doing it, and before you know it, you’ll feel as wonderful as you look.

Women really can develop a healthy self image if they focus on these steps.

Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program created to assist any user in editing with greater effects for the image. Similar to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator uses a vector-based program instead of using a bitmap-based program such as Photoshop. Many users do not understand the difference between bitmap and a vector-based program, so here it is. A bitmap image-processing program is ideally used for creating, modifying, and then outputting digital images of any type of photography/ graphic.

Though Adobe Photoshop contains many tools and various abilities to create, edit, and output wonderful images, the tools are nothing compared to that of Illustrator’s. Typically, users purchase Adobe Photoshop for digital photography editing while Illustrator is purchased for creating images and graphics. Both can be used for each other’s purposes and will do each other’s job; yet they are specified for their abilities. It is recommended to purchase both instead of using Photoshop for Illustrator’s purposes. Top new features for the CS4 version of Illustrator include the new transparency in gradients. This feature gives the user the ability to reveal underlying objects and create a richer color and texture when mixing multiple layers then covering them up with fades.

Following this there is a Blob Brush tool which will allow you to sketch with a brush then allow it to generate a clean vector shape which will even show the overlapping strokes. This will allow a smoother finish towards the end of your project. Refined Graphic styles will allow you to combine styles for unique looks, which will not disturb the object’s current experience. Through this you may use an In-Panel editing tool which will give you access to editing tools directly onto the appearance panel, eliminating the necessity of opening fill in/ stroking/ or other tools which require more RAM (Random Access Memory) for opening. Overall, that feature will give the user the ability to finish quicker and run Illustrator more efficiently.

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In animation and graphic production we have several tools available to us. Masking, blend modes, lighting all provide their own special way to be able to blend subjects from different sources but an alpha channel absolutely has a magic all it's own.

When you combine subjects you want your result to be seamless, to look as if these scenes occurred together naturally and using an alpha channel is a very powerful tool to this end. A great exercise for seeing how powerful and basically how easy this can be is to begin with an image in Photoshop, create an alpha channel, then import it into After Effects and view the results.

It is easy to create an alpha channel and there are several tools to assist you, to fine tune your selection, to help you improve your finesse but for me, just seeing the results even on a fairly primitive exercise will make you a believer. We are the 'instant gratification' generation, right?

So let's create an alpha and see how simply this can work.

Go into Photoshop. Open the image you want to use. Obviously, if there is a nice separation in color and light from the subject you want to extract, it will make the process a bit smoother. A perfect candidate for this exercise is an image of a person. You want to extract this person from their background and place them in your After Effects composition.

Use the selection tools to highlight the image that will become your 'alpha'. The quick selection tool is pretty friendly. Click on a representative area, holding down the shift key continuing to add more, clicking on the area you want to join your selection. You see this area outlined with the famous 'marching ants', what appears like a moving marquee of dashed lines outlining your selection. Once you are satisfied with your selection, under the channels window choose the 'save selection' icon, second from the left. This will create a new 'channel', an alpha channel. If you hold down the 'alt' key when you click the new channel icon, Photoshop will present a box with options to: name your channel, choose color and opacity for your masking, and option to bind your channel to masked or selected area.

Go with the default, the 'masked' area, give it a name of your choice. To review your work, under your channels menu, click the visibility box next to your channel, an eye icon appears when you do. You will see the outline of your masking highlighted in the color display in the new channel definition box. This outline is what will be opaque when you import this image into After Effects. The opacity setting you chose (default is 100%) determines 'how opaque' your defined area will be. Turning your channel off and on is an easy way to see exactly what you've chosen, let you refine it a bit if you choose.

Save this file as a targa, 'tga' file with the 'alpha channels' option selected, and you have your image file with new alpha channel defined. Now import this file into After Effects. After Effects will recognize the file type. The import window will state "the item has an unlabeled alpha channel '; stick with the default option of' straight-unmatted '.

Create a composition to test your new creation. Populate your composition with your new image and another and you will see right away that only the portion you outlined appears. The rectangular outline of the image itself is not visible. You only see the image defined by your alpha channel. This one single technique opens endless possibilities for creating your own blends of images and compositions borne from your imagination.

Photoshop offers a rich selection of tools and techniques that will assist you in refining this technique. There are, no doubt, designers out there with PHD's in feathering and 'anti-aliasing'. Becoming more acquainted with these tools will be your next stop but using the steps outlined here are all you next to take the first plunge … and see your results right away. Enjoy!

A lot of common issues that I see with photos are that the skin color always seems to be off a little. In the photos that I see, the reds seem to take over the skin color areas of the person that is being photographed. In this tutorial you are going to learn how to get the skin color back to normal without affecting the entire image.

To begin with, you are going to need some basic Photoshop knowledge to accomplish this fix. The only things that we are going to be dealing with to fix the skin color in a picture are the new adjustment layers and layer masks. That is all that is needed to do this simple, yet effective fix.

The first thing that you need to do is to choose a picture that you want to fix the skin color on and open in Photoshop. I do want to warn you that this will not totally fix photos that the skin color is off really bad. You only want to use the fix for photos that have a slight to moderate problem.

The next step is to make a new Hue / Saturation adjustment layer on top of your original picture. You can do this by clicking on the icon below the layers that looks like a half colored in circle, and clicking on Hue / Saturation. This will bring up the Hue / Saturation window and make it on its own new layer.

Next, with the Hue / Saturation window still open, you want to determine which color is overriding your skin color. Like I said previously, I seem to have the problem with the reds, so I am going to choose the reds for my picture. You can choose the color that you need to in order to fix the skin color in your picture. You can choose the color using the drop down menu in the Hue / Saturation window.

Next, take the Saturation slider and slide it to the left until the skin color looks pretty good, or the best that you can get it without looking fake. Don't worry about the other parts of the picture right now. Just concentrate on the skin color. We will fix the background colors next.

Once you are satisfied with your skin color, click OK to close out of the Hue / Saturation window, and you will see your new layer above your original picture. If you notice though, the adjustment that you made affected the entire image. To get that back restored to normal, click on the layer mask part of the new layer, and grab your brush tool. Make sure that your foreground color is set to black, and you have a large enough brush so that you are not brushing the background back a long time.

Now, using black, brush in the parts of the photo that you want to restore back to normal. I usually brush in the whole picture except the skin areas that I wanted to fix. This gives me the most realistic look. You are now done with the Photoshop tutorial on how to fix skin color in a picture.

Product websites, company brochures, marketing leaflets, builder’s project brochures, photographs of events, web development, print press, magazine company, all require photo-editing services of various kinds. A universal requirement of clients is having pleasing to the eye visuals, or elaborating a particular detail in an image, or the background removal. All this is done to make the image look contemporary or with the theme it needs. At times, the setting may not be consistent with the requirements of the client. This involves elimination of the backdrop of the image in which the object is placed. And background removal with Photoshop is quite convenient and affordable.

Consider the following example. Photos are required for passport issue. A passport photo requires a special white background. But, when the photo was taken, the background was not white, but of a dark color. In this case, there are two options for the person. One is to delete the photo altogether and click another new photo. The other option is to resort to the background removal as the most ideal solution. Ten years back, subjecting the image to a special solution in a dark room could have done the latter. But today, there is sophisticated software available in the market for this tedious work. Also there are photo-processing companies that can do this work online in a jiffy.

The typical methodology for such work can be explained in a nutshell thus: in the first step, the image of an object which is required to stand out by removing the background is found, then going to option filter and then to extract, the object which has to stand out is outlined in many places. For best results, the image is to be enlarged and the brush size is to be changed when working with small areas. After this the fill command is activated to apply inside the selected area. There is a distinct possibility that the image may not turn out as desired. The airbrush and eraser tools can now be used to touch up and remove the excess. The result would be an image with the object standing out as required with this beautiful technique of background removal.

The market for background removal and other photo editing services has evolved to such an extent that graphic artists are now offering latest solutions along with their basic offerings at no extra cost. The only tool, which can provide effective results with complex dense images, is the sharp pen tool. The skill of the graphic artist will help in optimally utilizing the versatile medium. There are many programs that help remove non-uniform backgrounds from images. However, in case of an additive non-uniformity, a polynomial is fitted to the various points of the digital image, which are then associated with the background. The resulting polynomial is then subtracted from the whole surface. In case of a multiplicative non-uniformity, it is necessary to generate an image corresponding to the polynomial surface and then this is used to scale the original image.

Photoshop Elements 6 can be used with Windows and Mac Systems and was published by Adobe in the Fall of 2007. The initial Mac OSX version was soon updated in order to improve some initial teething problems. With the introduction of some Hidden Power tools, especially adapted for Elements 6, everything has been so much clearer, especially if you have seen the training videos for Elements newbie users.

Elements 6 has improved the simplicity for using add-ons like the Hidden Power tools as well has many more major editing enhancements tools that really have turned this Adobe editing software an essential tool for newbie photography editors. Below you will find some the most significant introductions to the Adobe Elements 6 software package that will certainly show you just what this program really can do for improving digital photographers images.

1) Photomerge that will improve group shots. 2) Panorama creation capabilities have advanced enormously. 3) You can animate Photos and produce flip books. 4) A step by step guide for image enhancement and image creation. 6) Photo Albums are a lot more easier to create. 7) For simplified sorting and image location, Smart Albums make things a lot more faster.

If you need Elements 6 then have a look on eBay for cheaper versions or have a search around on Google, that is a great tool for finding the very best deal for Elements 6. Try a free 30 day version first and remember to chose either Elements 6 for Windows / Vista or Elements 6 for Macintosh, s it will make a difference.

As soon as your version of Photoshop Elements is installed, up and running then you will probably like to get going immediately. Going alone on a learning mission can be costly on the long run in both time and quality. You can either follow the boring manual or try some professionally made video tutorials that have been especially designers for getting newbies off on the right path explaining everything to detail, while watching the steps you need to take.

You will soon find out just how easy Elements 6 really is with the aid of instantly accessible, step-by-step, downloadable, video tutorials that will show even the complete newbie how to master Photoshop Elements in no time at all. The majority of the videos will work for any Elements version so don't worry if you have a different photoshop elements version as you will be able to benefit from these elements video tutorials.

If you have only just purchased the latest or any earlier edition of Photoshop Elements, then you’ll most likely just have installed it, perhaps having suffered some problems along the way, however eventually it is right there looking at you on the pc display. Many people will quickly experiment with the settings, and perhaps actually achieve some simple image edits, there is however a lot more to learn in Photoshop Elements.

Now with regards to learning people are simply okay on the subject of copying another person, so together with sound and visible effects the concept associated with learning will be tremendously simplified. Training videos are presently the leading learner aid, because of the new digital age, however discovering specialist created video lessons that meet the learning needs of complete beginners aren’t really easy to get, and you may get so disappointed in getting going with your new Photoshop Elements software program, that many people merely quit.

Merely perform a Yahoo and Google search and you should locate totally free as well as paid training video instruction for just about everything that you can imagine. Someone has now developed the concept that training video training instructing Adobe Photoshop Elements. Especially aimed at the latest variation 8 which has not too long ago been launched.

Adobe Elements 8, similar to its predecessor 7 and also prior to has constantly had one purpose, to allow the editing and correction of digital photos. That is its primary design and is among if not the best package deal of its sort currently available.

Adobe Elements not only allows simple correction for your photography such as eliminating red eye, correcting lighting and color mix but also includes a library that could reach over fifty various effects that can be employed on any digital photograph that you so wish.

Additionally, it includes a media selection ability where you can arrange your digital shots, date stamp series and make sub albums to make sure that the very next time you really need to find an important picture, it will be readily available.

The video tutorials you fin online to help learn Photoshop Elements will address all need to know subjects. From understanding the screen of Adobe Photoshop Elements, editing modes, layer as well as mix edits all the way up to object elimination and color curves.

Some excellent illustrations I have come across can show you the ability to actually get rid of items from your photographs. A great illustration would be any picture with unwanted pedestrians or something simpler such as a lamp pole or even entrance sign. Whatever is within the image, and you don’t want it, eliminate it.

I’ve got to point out though that after going through a lot of the video tutorials, my personal favorite one was the ability to produce an online digital photo album that can be seen from all over the world. I have relatives in just about all 4 corners of the world, so I am so thrilled.

Selecting Colors from an Image Quickly To turn any color into the foreground color Press I to activate the Eyedropper Tool and then click on any color in your image. To turn that color into the background color, press the ALT Key and click on any color in your image.

Change Brush Tip Sizes Quickly With a brush selected, simply Press the Right Bracket Key “]” to increase the size of your brush tip, or Press the Left Bracket Key “[” to decrease the size of your brush tip.

The Move Tool & the Arrow Keys Getting in the habit of activating the Move Tool through the keyboard is a timesaver; you can do this using the shortcut, “V”. Once you have the Move Tool activated you can use the keyboard arrow keys to push a layer or selection in 1 pixel increments. You can speed things up by pressing the Shift key along with the arrow key to nudge in 10 pixel increments.

Hide Your Palettes Press Tab once to hide all your palettes. Press Tab again to bring them back. Press Shift Tab to hide all your palettes except the toolbar.

Zooming In & Zooming Out You can zoom in on your image by pressing CTRL and the plus sign ” ” (Mac: Command and the ” ” sign). Conversely you can zoom out by pressing CTRL and the minus sign “-” (Mac: Command and the “-“sign).

Navigating In Magnified Images If you have lost your bearings when zooming in on a large image you can jump quickly to specific views using the following shortcuts: To set the view to the top left hand corner of your image press the Home Key. Press the End Key to set the view to the bottom right hand corner of your image. To move the view one full screen down press the Page Down Key. Press CTRL Page Down (Mac: Command Page Down) to move the screen view one full screen to the right. Press CTRL Page Up (Mac: Command Page Up) to move the screen view one full screen to the left.

Selecting Just The Pixels On A Layer An easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer is to Press the Command Key (PC: Control key) and click on the layer with the object in the Layers Palette. This makes sure that only the opaque pixels (the pixels that are visible) will be selected with the marching ants, instead of the entire layer.

Tile Images for Better Visibility When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window> Arrange> Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you’re ready to close the windows you don’t have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control Option W (Mac: Command Alt W).

Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen – And Bringing It Back When you first open Photoshop CS you will probably see a Welcome Screen that has links to Tutorials, Tips and Tricks, and a set of Color Management Help Files. At some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. You should see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. Later on, if you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu and choosing Welcome Screen.

Cycle Through All Of Your Open Documents Sometimes you’ll want to find one of your open documents that is hidden, but navigating using the Window menu won’t help because you can’t recall the name of the file. Instead press Control-Tab repeatedly (MAC and PC) to cycle through all of your open documents.

We have come across various advancements in the field of art and painting, and have seen different styles of painting and drawing, evolving out of necessity from the age of old primitive forms and techniques. With the development of computers and the latest software, it has been possible for us to take the art of painting and drawing to a completely new level and dimension. Various types of software like Photo shop, Illustrator and others have come up to make it easier for us to refine our talent in painting as well as drawing.

The general question that comes to ones mind is “how to take your drawing into Photo shop/Illustrator”, and keep working on it further. In truth it is quite simple and could be done by following certain steps as follows:

1. Primarily, it is required to scan the painting or drawing that we have already developed by our own hands; if the painting or drawing are too large, simply take a photograph and get it scanned instead. This would enable us to work on the picture in every way, we please. Do make sure the painting/drawing is scanned in a higher resolution i.e. 300 dot per inch so you don’t loose on the quality of your file once you start working on it.

2. Once the scanning is done, the file can be imported into a certain program we would like to use i.e. Illustrator, and we can continue working on it as an Illustrator file. From here on we would work on each color layer keeping the original picture intact, so that we may refer to it, whenever we are at a dilemma.

3. We can determine the pencil smoothness, along with the type of layers we want to add on from the various tools that are provided in the Illustrator. We must make sure that the black layer always remains on top and the remaining layers below it; this would keep up the prominence.

4. One needs to work on each layer individually, by hiding the other layers, to gain more depth and precision over the painting or drawing. Once all the layers have been worked upon, they can be viewed together to see the effect brought out by them.

People, who are excellent in sketching and drawing, often find it difficult to fill in colors to their drawings and thus, software like Photo shop or Illustrator helps them out to finish off the coloring in style. This does take a bit of our time, but can be done with absolute precision, because if one coloring stroke goes wrong, it can be simply undone by the Control+Z command on the keyboard and of course if you don’t like one of the applied effects you used you could also delete the layer where you worked. That is why it is also important to work in multiple layers, even applying every single effect, shade, color in a different layer so you could always change it, remove it or just move it to a different position.

As far as the conflict of ideas why to use Photo shop or Illustrator, there are differences between these two, but you should look at it this way, Illustrator is an advanced version of Photo shop since it works with vector graphics and is really good for creating larger press files which are in higher resolution. With the help of Illustrator a person could modify or improve paintings to such level, that would not be possible with Photo shop. Maybe after reading this, one can understand how to take a drawing to Photo shop/Illustrator and work on it by learning the basic features provided in them. To master this type of software the person needs to experiment with the combination of tools available, after gaining the basic knowledge on them.

It need not be a frustrating experience extracting hair from an image. The first thing is to abandon the thought of using any clipping path. While this technique works well for refining edges for cut outs, it can be a cropper when it comes to hair cutting. Just goes on to say that what works best for one image may prove to be a disaster for another one. Two things that can become a challenge even for the veteran editor is a lady with her long hair flying with a fur hat! So the editor has to work on the hair and the fur simultaneously. To make the job convenient it is best to depend on the ever-dependable Photoshop applications. A smart solution lies in using a similar background that can merge some stray strands in its color scheme.

An editor might ask why can the photographer not control the flyaway hair in the first place? Well, if it is windy outdoors or if inside a fan propeller comes in the way of a great shot, it cannot be helped. But since the photographer knows that he can fall back on the professional photo editing services, he is assured that the hair can be removed or extracted. This way no one has to compromise at any stage. But for an editor it need not be a harrowing experience. The grass is always greener on the other side! An editor who has a sharp eye for detail hair analysis can perform a better masking technique. The hair can be masked via selecting channels and also doing layer adjustments. Photoshop CS3 is great software that can help also color the hair and give the best hair cut like a stylist!

Some valuable tips for hair masking

Using the color blue that is used for chroma keying is a valuable asset. It provides clarity for the editing process. Duplicating layers and then working on it is the next step. A layer mask is then added to the picture. The feathered brush is used from the palette. This is used for those sections, which cannot be blended with the rest of the picture. An editor with a good eye may be able to see a halo around; if it is visible then it can be removed with the burn tool.

This tip may work for a specific need. But obviously it is likely to give ideas for customizing it for a client. Using it in exactly in the same way may not bring the right result. There are many other ways to cut the hair or mask it. It also depends on the hair type. For example curly hair, or ringed hair may pose an additional problem while masking. The different color of the hair in another picture will also have to be considered. To know more how Photoshop hair masking can be beneficial, discuss the technique or experiment till the right method is achieved. The paths may be many, but ultimately, the final result is what matters.