Step-by-step guide: Photoshop CS5

Photoshop CS5 includes some truly groundbreaking new tools, including the Repoussé 3D extrusion tool, Content-Aware Fill, an upgraded paint system and the Puppet Warp tool (filched from After Effects). Here's how you use them.

Repoussé

The new Repoussé feature makes it easy to create 3D shapes and text directly within Photoshop, without the need to separately set up and render a scene in an external program. This function allows extrusions from a vector masked or text-based layer. It’s only available in Photoshop CS5 Extended.

Step 1 Create a new layer and fill it with a colour by choosing Edit > Fill. Open the Masks panel and create a new vector mask by clicking on the pen icon. Draw a mask using the Pen tool to create a shape to extrude.

Step 2 Open the 3D panel (Window > 3D) and make sure you have the layer you created in step one active. Under the Create New 3D Object options, found within the 3D panel, choose 3D Repoussé Object and click Create. Photoshop warns you that it will rasterise the layer.

Step 3 Select the Object Rotate tool (or use the 3D axis) to rotate and move the newly extruded object around in space. You can alter the cap, extrusion depth, scale and twist, bevel, inflation and materials options.

Puppet Warp

After Effects users have been enjoying the Puppet Warp tool since CS4; now it’s in Photoshop too. Place pins to create a skeleton, describing the relationship between parts of an object or body. As you move a part, connected parts move in a realistic manner.

Step 1 Open an image of a person or animal that has been isolated from their background. Although this tool was created with humans and animals in mind, it works just as well with inanimate objects such as trees.

Step 2 Choose Edit > Puppet Warp and click to place pins at joints. So for a person you might place a pin at the elbows, the wrists, the shoulders, neck, hips, knees and ankles.

Step 3 Click on the pins you’ve placed and drag to move that point in space. Photoshop automatically warps the pixels controlled by this point to create a new composition for the body parts you’ve selected.

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