This is a guest blog post by Eli from PhotoshopStar

Everyone knows that nice images/photos can brighten up a boring old blog post, even if the content is great, a picture of some sort at the top or on the side can draw the visitor’s eye in! In this article we’ll be looking at a few simple Photoshop tips for regular bloggers.

Cropping your Images

If you’ve already been using images in your articles, then maybe you’re not doing it as well as you could be. You should always remember to adjust your images in any way necessary before putting them in, particularly cropping them so that the object inside of the image is more in focus.

Example:

For cropping you should either use the crop tool or the canvas resize option (image > canvas size).

Brighten it, Darken it

I’m not so sure about darkening images before putting them up, but it sure can be helpful brightening your images before putting them on your blog. The easiest way that people know of is using Brightness/Contrast settings (image > adjustments > brightness/contrast), which is all well and good, but sometimes you just need a little more control, so you can use the Levels (image > adjustments > levels) or Curves (image > adjustments > curves).

You can also lighten up or darken particular areas by using the Dodge and Burn tools.

Making Headlines (add text)

Adding interesting headlines to your images can be particularly helpful, especially if your blog post has a theme (see, Star Trek Blogging by Daily Blog Tips). If you want to use a heading in a blog post image, you’ll want to be careful about the fonts, colors and sizes that you choose, it’s most helpful to keep things as simple as possible in this case. For some great font resources, be sure to check out:

• DaFont
• Font Space
• Typographica

Here’s an example using Myriad Pro, and a simple Drop Shadow layer style to help it stand out:

Resize

Resizing your images is in fact very important, and it depends on where your image will be going. At the top, or aligned to the left or right? Another thing you need to know is if you align your image to the left or the right, will your text stick right to the edge of it? If this is the case, you can add padding, or you can add a white strip to the side of your image (if your content area background is white).

For images that go on the top or the bottom of the article text, you should use something like 400-500 x 160 pixels or so, and these images go well with interesting text headings!

For images that you will be aligning to the left or right, you’ll want to use a smaller size such as 140 x 165 or something similar, and maybe you could even link that to a larger version of the image, if you have something important to show.

As you can imagine, resizing your images is related to the cropping, so you should crop your images first, then resize them.

Sharpen, or Blur?

Now this one can be tricky.

The only reason you should ever want to blur a complete image would be because you want to add a text heading inside of it, or something of the sort. Sometimes though, you may want to blur the background of a photo to bring the main character/object into focus. For blurring things, you can either use a filter blur (filter > blur > x) or you can use the Blur tool.

After resizing an image to a very small size (400 x 300 for example) they may need to be sharpened slightly, so to do this you can go to filter > sharpen > sharpen (or Sharpen Edges), but if the sharpening seems too strong, go to edit > fade sharpen and input 50% or so!

Using Abstract Images

If your post has no particular subject, it may be a good idea to choose a random, abstract image to place into your blog post, if there’s space free and the post is a little dull without it.

To find some top-notch abstract images, you should check out the resources section at the end of the article.

Colorize, Desaturate

Another interesting thing you can do to your photos is change the color of them, saturate them more-so, or remove the color altogether. For simple color settings, you can go to image > adjustments > hue/saturation, or if you want a little more control, try one of the other color adjusting tools such as Selective Color, Channel Mixer, or Gradient Maps.

For desaturating your photos, I highly recommend using a gradient map with a black and white gradient, rather than desaturating using hue/saturation.

Additional Resources

Here is a short list of resources that you may find useful.

• Good-Tutorials (photoshop tutorials)
• iStockPhoto (stock photos and more)
• Bittbox (textures and freebies)

Thanks for reading everyone, I hope you enjoyed the article.

Visit Eli’s Photoshop tutorial blog, PhotoshopStar