1. Download zip file CLICK HERE. Unzip this file “2010.zip” to get “2010.psd”.

2. Then, open “2010.psd” with Adobe Photoshop.

3. Let’s look at the layer pallet and you will see each layer containing date of each month in 2010.

4. I will demonstrate you how to use this file (so easy) to create the calendar of January 2010. Let’s open a photo.

5. Duplicate layer by right click and select duplicate layer.

6. Select the destination file which you would like the layer to be on and the click OK.

7. After clicking OK, you will see at the layer named “January” in the layer pallet over the background layer.

8. You may see that layer named “January” is so small because my photo is very large. I am not worried about this problem because my layer “January” is text which I can expand as big as I want.

9. Use free transform command (Edit>Free Transform) to expand size of text until you are satisfied with overall size. What’s more, you can add effect into the text such as dropping shadow, blending layer, etc.

10. Add some additional text if you like.

11. You will get nice and unique 2010 calendar which is ready to print and /or send to someone for this New Year.

12. You can try another style like this as well.

I wish this tutorial will help you create nice your own style 2010 calendars : )

Thanks for Mr water boy from Thaid who distributed Potable Canon DPP 3.7.2 for us.

I have been using this portable version of Canon Digital Professional Photography (Canon DPP) and I find that it’s very easy to use this portable version to process .CR2 files with any computers. You don’t need to go through all process for installation this program. What’s more, this version eliminates the problem about computer permission.

Please select one of the following links to download (every link has the same file). The file size is about 80 MB.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LY0WP4KE

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?kyzmujt5hmx

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ku1jjl320vz

1. After downloading the zip file, you will see “CanonDPP372_Portable.zip”

2. Unzip this file into a computer, a thumb drive, etc.

3. You will get “CanonDPP372_Portable.exe” after unzip the file.

4. Double click the icon and you will see the program shown as below.

5. The program will be shown and you can display Canon Raw file, .CR2, and process raw photos.

Have a nice and lovely day.

This is my sample photo.

1. Adjust color balance:  Lomo images are weird color tone so I will change an original color tone to yellow tone. At this step, you can play with other adjust techniques as levels, curve, etc and you also can adjust color tone. This example I use color balance and adjust images to yellow tone.

2) Create a vignette: This step I will show you how to create a vignette.

2.1) Create new layer

2.2) Select rectangular marquee tool with 100 px feature and normal style and draw the rectangular as show in picture below

2.3) Select Inverse

2.4) Fill with Black Color

2.5) Deselect after filling black color in selection

2.6) Change “Layer1” property to overlay with 80% Opacity. After completion on this step you can see the vignette.

3) Create Gradient Tone as per steps below;

3.1) Create new layer, “layer2”, between layer1 and Background

3.2) Select Gradient tool: I normally use radial gradient tool.

3.3) Select Foreground (White) to Transparent

3.4) Draw the gradient

3.5) Adjust layer property to Overlay with 80% Opacity

4) Adjust background image contrast: Normally I adjust image Curves to S-Curve shape. Anyway, you can adjust until you see the color tone you like.

5) Create darkness to a lomo image: You may not do this step if you like your color tone but I like the image looks dark a little bit. Therefore, I adjust brightness and contrast of the image.

WOW!!! you get the lomo image by using Photoshop.

Ps, this is the guideline so you can try and adjust this technique for your images.

See the “Before and After”. You will see an awesome result of this effect.

1) See my photograph and you will see that the saturation is not that good. Firstly , I normally duplicate a background layer by dragging the background layer over a create new layer icon as below because you can go back to see the original photo or if you do something wrong with it you still have the original image.

2) Change the color mode to LAB (Image>Mode>Lab Color)

3) Then the program will ask you to flatten all layers into one layer. You must answer “Don’t Flatten”.

4) Then you can see in the channel pallet that there are 4 layers (Lab, Lightness, a and b).

5) Select “Lightness” channel and select the curve command (Image>Adjustment>Curves) to add contrast into the photo.

6) Adjust the curve to S-Curve shape to add saturation.

7) Select “a” channel and drag the bottom point to the right. So you will see that green tone is added into the photo.

If you drag the top point to the left, you will see that magenta tone is added into the photo.

9) Drag equally between the top and the bottom point to balance color tone added into the photo as shown below. You can see that the color saturation looks better now.

10) Select “b” channel and drag the bottom point to the right. So you will see that blue tone is added into the photo.

11) If you drag the top point to the left, you will see that yellow tone is added into the photo.

12) Drag equally between the top and the bottom point to balance color tone added into the photo as shown below. You can see that the color saturation looks PERFECT now.

13) You may add sharpness into this photo (Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask)

14) Adjust some parameters until you feel happy about a result. In this case, I use Amount = 50%, Radius = 1 pixel and Threshold = 0.

With Lab color mode, you can add the realistic saturation into you photos. It’s nice and easy method.

Any suggestions or recommendations are very welcome.

1. Select “Gradient Map” from layer pallet

2. Select gradient from black to white

3. Add layer mask into the adjustment layer, “Gradient Map” layer.

4. Hide the “Gradient Map” layer and select “Background” layer. Then select “Magnetic Lasso Tool” for the tool pallet in order to make selection. I set tool parameters as follows: Feather 0 px, Width 10 px, Edge Contrast 5% and frequency 57.

5. Draw selection around a selected object. This tool will help you create the selection because it will create the selection based on contrast along the edge of the object. Let’s try play with that.

6. Go back and open “Gradient Map” layer. Select layer mask in the “Gradient Map” layer.

7. Press Alt+Del to fill black into the layer mask.

8. Zoom into your photo so you may see some details on the edge of object are not smooth enough. Select brush, adjust size and hardness that match with area you need to correct. Paint back onto areas where you want to show color and paint white onto areas where you want to show back/white.

This step is take time and effort because you need to zoom and look around your object in order to make detail correction. From this example, you will see that I have details on the edge and details on the head of the robot to correct

9. After finishing correction, you will see the result like this.

10. Moreover, you may try to change color of “Gradient Map” layer in order to change background color.

1. Copy background layer. You drag your “Background” layer over the new layer icon in order to duplicate “Background” Layer. You will get “Background copy” layer over the “Background” layer.

2. Change the mode of “Background copy” layer from normal to overlay in order to increase contrast of overall photo.

3. Flatten image.

4. Create new layer by just simply click a creating new layer from the layer pallet (see the photo below). You will get “Layer1” over “Background” layer.

5. Select foreground from the tool pallet. For this step, you can pick any color as foreground because it will used as a guideline for painting so I pick yellow.

6. Press Alt+Del in order to fill foreground into the Layer1 and change its opacity to 50%.

7. This step is very important. Select “Art History Brush” from the tool pallet. Then go to History Pallet and select the step called Flatten Image. The reason why we need to assign our “Art History Brush” to “Flatten Image” because the history brush will use the photo from the history, “Flatten Image” in this case, to create texture.

8. Adjust brush parameters as follows: Size 30 px, Opacity 100%, Style: Tight Short, Area 20 px, Tolerance 0%. Then paint into “Layer1” painted with yellow. I paint only the face area because I select small brush size.

Note: The brush size is adjustable and the parameter in this step is just only guide line.

9. Adjust brush parameters as follows: Size 100 px, Opacity 100%, Style: Tight Curl, Area 20 px, Tolerance 5%. Then paint into “Layer1”. I paint only the body area because I select bigger brush size than step 8.

10. Adjust brush parameters as follows: Size 200 px, Opacity 100%, Style: Tight Curl, Area 20 px, Tolerance 5%. I select bigger brush size than step#9. I paint only the background area because I select bigger brush size than step 9.

11. This step is optional. After applying big brush size (step#10), you can see that some details on the singer face and hair are lost due to bigger painting over them. You can fix this problem easily. The basic idea is to use small brush size to paint over the damaged areas. Adjust brush parameters as follows: Size 20 px, Opacity 100%, Style: Tight Curl, Area 20 px, Tolerance 5% then paint over the areas where the details are destroyed such as hair, face and microphone area.

12. Duplicate “Background” layer by just simply dragging “Background” layer over the new layer icon.

13. Apply “Find Edge” filter: Filter>Stylize>Find Edge

14. Desaturate this layer: Image>Adjustments>Desaturate

15. Move this layer to the top. Change mode from Normal to Multiply and reduce opacity to 60%. After completion of this step, you will see that your photo has pencil line created around.

16. Select “Eraser Tool” from the tool pallet in order to delete some rough edge areas.

17. Change the eraser style. I select the style that looks like sand painting.

18. Delete some rough edge areas. For this case, I use the eraser tool to delete some areas of her hair, nose, hand, etc.

19. Moreover, you can increase facial detail of this singer. Select Layer1, select eraser for this case I still use the eraser style as same as step#16 but I reduce size of eraser to 20 px and opacity to 20%. More opacity you select, you facial detail will show.

20. Apply eraser tool over her face so that some facial details are recovered.

You may see that there are a lot of steps but some steps can be skipped depending on you. Let’s try and have fun with it.

1. Copy background layer. You drag your “Background” layer over the new layer icon in order to duplicate “Background” Layer.

2. Select Gaussian Blur filter from Adobe Photoshop Filter. Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur

3. Adjust Radius to 70. You can try to change this parameter until you are satisfied with it.

4. Change mode to Screen Mode.

5. Adjust brightness with Curve Adjustment. You can select the curve adjust from layer pallet. Please see the image below.

6. Adjust the curve until you like how brightness of your photo is.

That is !!!. It’s so simple, isn’t it?

Please feel free to give me comments so I can improve my post again next time.

Ps, according to this post, I used Adobe Photoshop CS2; therefore, the interface may be different from new version of Adobe Photoshop such as Adobe Photoshop CS3 or CS4 but the concept is the same.

1. Open a photo and create a new layer.

2. Fill 50% grey into the new layer. You will see all 50% grey over your photo.

3. Change a mode of the new layer from Normal to Overlay.

4. Add noise into a photo (Filter>Noise>Add Noise).

5. Amount of noise depending on how much noise you like (I use 40% for this case.) and ensure that you check the Monochromatic box.

6. Go back to “Background” layer. Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation or press Ctrl+U in order to adjust saturation of “Background” layer. Reduce saturation to -35

7. Double click on “Background” layer to change “Background” layer to a normal layer. Then you will see pop up and just simply click OK. Your “Background” layer is changed to “Layer0”.

8. Drag “Layer0” over a new layer icon for a couple times therefore you will see “layer 0 copy” and “layer 0 copy2″ on top.

9. Desaturate both “layer 0 copy” and “layer 0 copy2″ (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate or press Shift + Ctrl + U).

10. Invert the top layer by pressing Ctrl + I

11. Change a layer mode from Normal to Color Dodge. After changing mode, you will see white.

12. Apply Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur> Gaussian Blur) and adjust radius until you are satisfied with it (I use radius of 6 for this case). After finishing this step, your photos will look like pencil drawing.

13. Select layer “Layer 0 copy” and “Layer 0 copy2”, right click and select “Merge Layers” so you will have only one layer, “Layer 0 copy2”, on the topmost.

14. Move “Layer 0 copy2” to the bottommost.

15. Select “Layer 0” and change a layer mode from Normal to Hard Light. Also reduce opacity to 70% (you can change opacity value until you feel comfortable with an overall result).

16.Create a layer mask by pressing “Layer Mask” icon on a layer pallet.

17. Select gradient tool (no.2), select gradient mode (no.1) and select black as foreground and white as background (no.3).

18. Ensure that you are in layer mask and drag gradient tool up. You may do trial and error until you are OK with the gradient effect.

19.This step is optional. Duplicate “Layer1” and adjust layer opacity until you love how grainy of your photo is.

Hope you will enjoy reading and practicing this Photoshop tutorial.