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Photoshop Mechanic

Creating Far Out Backgrounds by Bill Guy

For those of us who remember the days of film, there was a neat (and somewhat expensive) tool called the Scene Machine. This add-on to the camera allowed you to use slides of different cities and textures to be projected behind our subjects. With Photoshop and selection tools, we no longer need this as all of this can be done in layers. Some of us even go so far as to create our own backgrounds using the cloud filters and colors for a mottled background, but there is another way to create even more strange backgrounds using a tool in Photoshop that most people have never used before.

To do this, take any image that has a lot of colors, or even the original image you can add a different background to, and click on the Marquee selection tool. Under this tool is the square and circle selection tool, but also two other tools which have always seemed worthless. These are the single Row and single Column tools which selects just one row of pixels. These tools do just this, select only a single line of pixels. However they can create some new and strange backgrounds.

Let's take any image and just take a row of pixels.

Take a column of pixels anywhere you like the blend of colors. Copy this to a new layer then Ctrl click on this layer to select it again and change to transform (Ctrl T). Grab the middle handle and pull it to the end. Do the same to the other side.

Kind of cool, you can do this for a portrait or just any image that is colorful. You can even tilt (Ctrl T then grab the corner) and add more effects like Blur, Artistic filters, Lighting effects and the like.

So, something new to play with when looking at your old master canvas and wanting the latest new cool look.

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