Friday, December 3, 2010

[PS] How to censor an image / a text

1 comment
This tutorial is really easy to learn, and should be one of the first things you learn doing in Photoshop.
(doesn't require any styling, layering,brushes, etc...)
The idea of making this tutorial came into my mind when, using the new Yahoo Mail Beta, I was told that I had "-1 unread emails"  ( I actually had 2, but maybe the monkeys counting the e-mails  died...) . Having this screenshot taken I had to censore my e-mails so I can show this bug to others :).


We'll break this tutorials into 2 parts:
   A. Censoring a photo (someone's face).
   B. Censoring the text (screenshot, ID, credit card, etc).


A. Censoring someone's face
1. Open your photo in a new Photoshop document. (I've chosen a picture with Adam Baldwin 'Casey', from the TV Show Chuck).
2. Grab the Lasso Tool (L) and make a loose selection around the face.
3. Go to Filter->Pixelate->Mosaic and move the slider until you are satisfied with the results.
4. Press Enter to close the Mosaic window, and then CTRL+D to deselect. You can now save your updated (censored) image.

B. Censoring the text
1. Let's assume that you have this bunch of e-mails and you want to censore every e-mail excepting the one frome ImageShack (marked with red).
2. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and select all the e-mails (click&drag from the top left corner to the bottom-right corner). Then, using the same tool, but this time holding ALT substract from the selection made previously the area containing the marked e-mail. Now, this time instead of the Mosaic, we'll use Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur.

3. Press Enter to exit the Gaussian Blur menu, and then CTRL+D to deselect. Save your file.

I advise you posting any questions or suggestions you might have in the comment section below.
Also, you can suggest any tutorial (Photoshop/Illustrator) you would like to see here in the future.

Have Fun! :)

1 comment: