포토샵 참사를 피하는 방법 / How to Avoid a Photoshop Disaster
How to Avoid a Photoshop Disaster
I’ve seen a lot of bad Photoshop work in my day. And while it’s good for a laugh, it’s no fun if you’re the one whose work is being laughed at. Whether you are a graphic designer making website, or just a lay-person using Photoshop for the first time, the tips below will help you avoid the most common disasters.
When it comes to Photoshop disasters, we may have seen it all, or have we. From missing fingers to extra legs, elongated necks to misplaced shoulders, no belly buttons to a plethora of vanishing fixtures, there are more Photoshop disasters than masterpieces. It is not easy to go horribly wrong while editing a picture. How can someone possibly erase parts of a subject or an object in an image? How can an editor knowingly or unknowingly tweak the laws of nature? How can anyone not see what is obviously wrong in an edited picture before publishing it?
According to The Blog Starter, the answer is simple. The editor is too engrossed in the touchups and fixes to be focused on anything else. When you work hours on one image and edit hundreds of elements, many of which may have to be done manually and one subtle layer after another or one tiny pixel after another, you would almost certainly have fatigued eyes and an exhausted mind. Photoshop disasters are at times unpardonable but it is necessary to think from the perspective of the editor. Many companies and individuals come up with pictures that are a world apart from the images they eventually want to publish or share. It is often a daunting task to meet every requirement and even professional editors know how demanding the objectives can be.
Preventing a Photoshop Disaster
It is easy to say that an editor must conduct a final assessment and if the last minute check does throw up something odd then the image should be discarded or redone. This can prevent a Photoshop disaster but it effectively means all the hours spent on the image have been wasted. Hence, you ought to be proactive. You must take the right steps to prevent a Photoshop disaster. The objective is prevention and not damage control. Many editors, including professionals, get into a damage control mode, which is a natural self defense mechanism whenever there is something horribly wrong with an edited picture. As a result, they come up with fixes that either ruin the picture or simply saves the day but eliminates all possibility of the picture having the intended impact.
Save Frequently, Have Many Saved Versions
Rarely does an editor get a picture that can be deemed publishable without any edit or barely enough edit. How many steps of edits do you undertake on an average for a typical photograph? The answer could be dozens, scores and in some cases hundreds. Professional editors routinely undertake thousands of steps of edits. This may be surprising for many but you have to understand that every layer to be edited is one step, every enhancement of the color saturation is a step and every tiny stroke of brushing or smudging is also one step. When you have so many steps, it is humanly impossible to remember all the steps you have already undertaken. Even if you have a video of yourself editing the picture, it is not practical to review what you have done to find the exact point where you may want to go back to and alter the edit.
The solution is in frequent saves. You must save every time you make substantial progress. The immediate phase of progress does not have to be perfect. It may be lacking in a myriad of ways but you should still save it so you can go back to it if needed. To simplify things, you should have many versions of the image. Do not keep saving the changes to the same photo you have been editing for an hour. Every time you make a worthwhile change, make it a new version of the image. This will allow you to have multiple distinct versions of the same image and you can choose the best edit of them all. Saving frequently will also protect you from losing the progress.
If it isn’t Right, it isn’t Right
There will be many stages during an edit when you would not like something. It could be an organic element in the picture, depending on how it was taken, when, with what and by whom. It could be one of your edit effects. No matter what it is, if it doesn’t look right and if you don’t feel right about it, then don’t let it be. Change it, undo it or get rid of it unless the element is integral to your subjects and objects. Do not get rid of an arm or a leg, an eyebrow or a part of someone’s head, the crown of a skyscraper or one of the three pyramids because you don’t like how they have been captured. Try to salvage the scenario without giving in to a recipe for Photoshop disaster.
Master Photoshop, for instance History States
Nothing will empower you as much as practice. You can read as much as you want, you may be fascinatingly creative or imaginative and you may be an excellent photographer. None of these attributes will help if you don’t know every facet of Photoshop. For instance, there is a feature in Photoshop under the Edit section wherein you can set your Preferences pertaining to how many steps back you can undo your progress. Under Preferences, there is an option called Performance and therein you would find History States. This feature is set at a default twenty steps. This means you can undo your progress to twenty steps back, no further. Choose how many steps you want to retrace and which exact state you want the image to be reverted to. This will not happen retroactively. You would need the feature to be set according to your need before you start editing a picture.
Allowing yourself to undo as many steps as you want will give you the freedom to resume from wherever you want without losing the progress up to that point. It is painful to repeat the same edits that you know were fine but you had to lose due to undoing to a point preceding such progress. There are many such truly helpful, cool and smart features that you can know about as you master the software. Editing anything, a picture or video, an article or a book, is as much about creativity as it is about technicality. Both need to be honed. More often than not, honing one improves the other.
Edit with Élan
You must master a plethora of skills to edit with élan. There are many practical and smarter ways to circumvent when the going gets tough. The more you know of such strategies or tricks, the easier it would be for you to edit a perfect piece and to avoid a Photoshop disaster. Here are a few tips that will help you to edit with élan.
• You can use a bokeh to hide anomalies and to enhance the picture without paving the way for a disaster. Professional photographers can achieve the bokeh effect with the right lens, focal length and lighting without any edit effect. If you don’t have a natural bokeh, you can achieve it within Photoshop. This will enhance the aesthetics of your image without making it a disaster. When you opt for a bokeh, you don’t have to worry about the background or surrounding negative space. There may have been a building that is now hazy, there may be a part of a bridge that is now a blur and there could have been many things that are not lucid any more. The bokeh would take care of it all, unless you have actually removed any object or subject during your edit.
• There are some photos that simply don’t have the right light, the subjects may not be captured at their best or most flattering and there can be a number of issues with the picture, from the angle to the resolution to the shutter speed among others. If you absolutely must use such photos, then go for pop art elements. You can save a photo from horrible lighting. You can save an otherwise great photo but taken from a bad angle or a scene that looks amazing but with not the finest subjects. There is no definitive rule to create impressive pop art. Practice, conduct trial & error and assess the progress and the impacts in every scenario. Like Photoshop as a whole, you will master pop art edit effects in time.
• Bad light, conflicting colors, wildly varying saturation and plenty of other realities can ruin an otherwise perfect image. The minor but consequential issues in a picture don’t have to be completely wiped off or redrawn. You don’t need artificial measures every time when you have something as simple as black and white conversion. You can turn a colored photo to black and white, a step that can conceal many unsightly or jerky elements in the original. Be sure to check if those elements are really taken care of but if a simple black and white conversion is acceptable, given the ulterior objective, then there is no need to take the risk of vanishing buses or smudging the wrinkles.
How much you know about Photoshop, how much time you spend using the software and on every image, how smart and imaginative you are along with your perceptivity and objective reasoning will save you from a disaster.
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포토샵 참사를 피하는 방법
저는 그동안 많은 포토샵 작업을 보아왔습니다. 그중 일부는 웃음을 주기도 하지만, 그 대상이 본인의 작업이라면 이야기가 달라집니다. 웹사이트를 제작하는 그래픽 디자이너든, 포토샵을 처음 사용하는 일반인이든 아래의 팁을 통해 흔히 발생하는 포토샵 참사를 피할 수 있습니다.
포토샵 참사의 유형
포토샵 참사에는 끝이 없습니다. 사라진 손가락, 추가된 다리, 길어진 목, 잘못된 어깨, 사라진 배꼽, 없어져야 할 것이 사라진 상황까지. 누군가 어떻게 이미지를 편집하면서 중요한 요소를 지워버릴 수 있을까요? 또는 어떻게 자연의 법칙을 인위적으로 조작할 수 있을까요? 더 중요한 건, 출판되기 전 명백히 잘못된 이미지를 왜 발견하지 못했을까요?
The Blog Starter에 따르면 그 답은 간단합니다. 편집자는 작업에 지나치게 몰두한 나머지 다른 것은 신경 쓰지 못합니다. 한 이미지를 몇 시간 동안 편집하고, 수백 가지 요소를 조정하며, 세밀한 레이어와 작은 픽셀 하나하나를 편집하다 보면 눈은 피로하고 머리는 지칩니다. 포토샵 참사는 용서받지 못하는 경우도 있지만, 편집자의 입장에서 이해할 필요도 있습니다. 많은 회사와 개인이 자신들이 원하는 완벽한 이미지를 얻기 위해 무리한 요구를 하는 경우가 많습니다. 이는 전문가에게도 부담스러운 작업이 될 수 있습니다.
포토샵 참사를 예방하는 방법
마지막 검토를 통해 이상한 부분을 발견하고 이미지를 폐기하거나 다시 작업하는 것은 간단한 해결책입니다. 하지만 이는 수 시간의 노력을 허비하게 된다는 의미이기도 합니다. 따라서 예방이 중요합니다. 참사 이후 복구하려 하지 말고 처음부터 참사를 예방하는 것이 목표가 되어야 합니다. 다음은 포토샵 참사를 방지하기 위한 몇 가지 필수적인 방법입니다.
1. 자주 저장하고 버전을 여러 개 관리하라
대부분의 사진은 무수히 많은 편집 단계를 거칩니다. 기본적인 색상 조정부터 브러시 터치나 효과 추가까지 수십에서 수백 가지 작업이 이루어집니다. 이렇게 많은 단계를 거치는 동안 과거의 편집 단계를 기억하거나 추적하기는 어렵습니다.
해결책:
작업을 진행할 때마다 자주 저장하세요.
같은 파일에 계속 덮어쓰지 말고, 주요 변경 사항이 있을 때마다 별도의 버전으로 저장하세요.
여러 버전을 저장하면 최종적으로 가장 잘 된 편집을 선택할 수 있습니다.
또한, 작업이 예상치 못하게 중단되거나 문제가 발생했을 때도 손실을 최소화할 수 있습니다.
2. "잘못됐다"고 느낀다면, 그대로 두지 말라
작업 중 특정 요소가 마음에 들지 않는 순간이 올 것입니다. 그것이 사진의 원본 요소든, 편집 중 추가된 효과든 상관없습니다. 잘못되었다고 느껴지면 바로 수정하거나 제거하세요.
하지만 중요한 부분(예: 사람의 팔, 다리, 건물의 꼭대기)을 단순히 마음에 들지 않는다는 이유로 삭제하는 것은 위험합니다.
상황을 해결하려고 하되, 무리한 수정으로 참사를 초래하지 않도록 주의하세요.
3. 포토샵의 도구를 숙지하라 – 예: History States
포토샵에서 제공하는 다양한 도구를 마스터하면 작업의 효율성이 극대화됩니다.
History States:
포토샵에서 "Undo"를 얼마나 많은 단계까지 되돌릴 수 있는지 설정할 수 있는 기능입니다.
기본값은 20단계로 설정되어 있지만, 필요에 따라 이 값을 늘릴 수 있습니다.
설정 방법:
Edit > Preferences > Performance > History States에서 원하는 값으로 변경.
예: 50단계, 100단계 등으로 설정하면 작업 중 언제든 원하는 지점으로 되돌아갈 수 있습니다.
4. 효율적으로 작업하라 – 편집에 품격을 더하는 팁
다양한 방법으로 효율적으로 작업하면서 품질을 높이고 참사를 방지할 수 있습니다.
보케 효과:
배경의 흐림 효과를 통해 이미지의 부족한 부분을 감출 수 있습니다.
자연스러운 보케는 촬영 시 렌즈와 조명 설정을 통해 얻을 수 있지만, 포토샵에서도 이를 구현할 수 있습니다.
보케 효과를 사용하면 건물이나 다리 등 배경의 일부를 흐릿하게 만들어 초점이 주요 피사체에 집중되도록 할 수 있습니다.
팝아트 효과:
빛이 부족하거나 각도가 나쁜 사진, 또는 피사체가 최상의 상태로 촬영되지 않은 경우 팝아트 효과를 활용하세요.
다양한 실험과 연습을 통해 이러한 효과를 마스터하면 이미지를 새롭게 탈바꿈할 수 있습니다.
흑백 변환:
사진의 색상, 채도가 서로 충돌하거나, 빛의 조건이 좋지 않아 이미지가 어색해 보일 때 흑백으로 변환하면 해결될 수 있습니다.
흑백 변환은 이미지의 문제점을 감추고 예술적 감각을 더하는 데 유용합니다.
결론
포토샵을 얼마나 잘 알고, 소프트웨어를 얼마나 자주 사용하며, 작업에 얼마나 많은 시간을 투자하는지가 참사를 피하는 핵심입니다. 또한 창의력, 상상력, 객관적인 판단력 모두가 중요합니다. 이를 잘 조합하여 활용하면 참사를 피하고 원하는 결과를 얻을 수 있습니다.
역 : 김철수
