INTRODUCTION

We all love our media collection.

It’s easy to forget that not too long ago, we had to get up from our confy chairs and actually change the CD from the disc tray.

Nowadays, we can easily convert our albums to our favorite format, and enjoy an organized and aesthetically pleasing media library.

We do it primarily for ourselves, but it’s always nice to impress friends, who have absolutely no knowledge of media centers.

They’re eyes glow with amazement and you never felt so proud of your media library… until:

“Hey! There’s something wrong with the CD!”

As he was holding the CD, he compared it to the spinning cdart onscreen:

“The center isn’t black! It’s reflective!”

Immediately i tried to deflect the subject (pun intended).

He continued browsing my collection. Suddenly he asked:

“What’s that on the Metallica CD?”

Eventually i had to explain to him what is posterization, and why it is used to reduce file size.

On the black inner ring subject, i told him that, for some technical reasons, scanners interpret that highly reflective surface as black, or a very dark tone.

He paused. The inevitable question proceeded:

“Can you fix it?”

THE TUTORIAL

Now, the purpose of this fake story is to provide you with techniques in order to:

Turn this…

… into this.

The tutorial itself consists of printscreens containing steps. Each step may have 2 or more parts, totaling 70 images. Though the number of images may seem excessive, i wanted this tutorial to be easy to follow by beginners, so please be patient. Even though some explanations may seem redundant, there is always someone who will appreciate them. Made with Photoshop CS4 and pc shortcuts.

Needed Files:

Optional Files: (For offline viewing)

Advantages in using this tutorial include compressibility (smaller file sizes without the need to use posterization); smoothness (instead of looking like someone else’s scanned cd, it becomes a common graphical representation of the cd); general appearance (blends better with your favorite skins).

If you have any questions/suggestions, please use the comments section.

Cheers.