Adobe Photoshop CS Tips and Tricks

Short Description
In this technique, I’d like to show you how I use scanned images or paint with artistic brushes to creatively crop photographs. Warning: This technique is addictive. After using this technique a few times, you might get bored with rectangular photographs.

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Content
1.Scan a high contrast image.
You can use any image that contains primarily black and white (and not many shades in between). One way of making such an image is to spill ink onto watercolor paper and then scan it. But for my example, I used a large brush, dipped it in black ink and then painted on watercolor paper to create the image. Once the ink was completely dry, I scanned it as a grayscale image. As an alternative, you can paint with one of the creative brushes that appears at the bottom of the brushes palette in a grayscale document instead of scanning an image (although I think it turns out much better with scanned images).
2.Add a layer mask.
Now we need to prepare the image we’d like to crop. So, open any photograph you’d like to use, double-click on the Background Layer to change its name and then choose Layer > Add Layer Mask > Reveal All. The layer should now have two preview thumbnails in the Layers palette. The one on the right is the Layer Mask you just created.
3.Paste the image into mask.
Now let’s get our scanned image into that Layer Mask. Open the scanned or painted image, choose Select > All and then Edit > Copy. Switch to the image you’d like to crop, Option-click (Mac), or Alt-click (Windows) the Layer Mask preview image in the Layers palette to make it fill the main screen and then choose Edit > Paste. If the pasted image is overly large or small compared to the document you pasted it into, then you’ll want to choose Edit > Free Transform and pull on the corners to scale the image.
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