In this video Lee Morris explains how to use an iphone as a replacement for a lav or boom mic to get high quality audio for a video.

All you need is one of the cheap eye-fi cards to make it work

In this episode Mark shows us how to use the stroboscopic feature on a speedlight. Mark will demonstrate how to create unique images that capture motion. Watch as Mark walks you through the steps to get captivating shots.

Achieve ad-campaign worthy beauty images with this simple one-light setup.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11562219[/vimeo]

Handheld camera shots can be an important aspect and choice in telling a story. Where would film making be today if it weren’t for Saving Private Ryan or The Blair Witch Project? These are both projects that would have been tremendously difficult to shoot with DSLR cameras, because a major limitation of the cameras is their sensitivity to quick or jittery movement. Rolling shutter is also known as the jello cam, and the effect is exactly as it is described, it make the image look like jello. Objects in the frame become skewed and ripple.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11361814[/vimeo]

Razor thin focus is “cool” and “sexy”, but it is far from a cornerstone of modern cinema. A lot of DSLR shooters shoot in natural light, and this causes us to shoot wide open on our lenses. But mainstream films are never shot in their entirety with a wide open aperture which is becoming far to common practice with a lot of film shot on DSLR’s.

Custom White Balance is the process of setting the neutral gray reference point manually, rather than relying on your camera’s Auto White balance (which typically only approximates neutral grey.) Custom WB is an important step for anyone who is serious about achieving accurate colours in their images. If you are shooting RAW single images, then you can just take a picture of a spectrally neutral grey card and set the WB in post-processing. However, if you are shooting JPEG or Video, it is important that you set the custom WB in your camera before shooting.

I discuss ISO and other related topics (aperture, shutter speed, histogram, and so on) in my recently completed an introductory photography book: “A Concise Introduction to Photography.”

Some basics about your camera dial, including the Tv, Av, and M modes

The basics about Aperture (the size of opening of your lens that lets light in).

DIY Beauty Dish

Scott shows us how to make a very low cost modifier for our dedicated flash units. The beauty dish, so called because of the flattering soft rap around light that it creates on a subject, is a great addition to your light kit. This low cost DIY option allows you to build one quickly using off the shelf components many of which can be found at your local Home Depot or Lowes store.

Black and White conversion using LAB and RGB modes.

In this episode I will introduce you to a cheap method for doing macro photography, the practice of taking close-up photographs of small objects, like insects, coins, flower petals, or any number of things.

The standard practice is to use something called a “macro lens”, which allows you to focus at close distances, and achieves a magnification of at least 1:1 or greater (i.e., the object photographed is projected as life-size on the sensor). Such lenses, however, are very expensive.

I just walk around Home Depot trying to find random brackets with holes already drilled into it. I use the ‘Shoe’ or ‘Foot’ that comes with my flashes or Radio Poppers and run a bolt into the thread of the shoe. To tighten things up, I tighten up the wingnut. Using random brackets, it’s pretty easy to mount a ton of flashes to one single Light Stand

Here are 5 video tutorials covering fashion and beauty photography retouching

Tony Corbell demonstrates 1-light portraiture techniques using the Profoto D1

In this week’s episode Mark Wallace explains the Inverse Square law and how it applies to photography and helps you calculate light fall off.

Today we’re going to cover the very basics of composting in Photoshop, while not covering all the details this video will give a great introduction to the world of compositing.

In this tutorial we will learn about panoramas and the very basics in levels adjustments to make our images pop in ways they maybe never have! We will use Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw to do some post work on our image and stitch multiple images together to make a cool panorama.

The gear we use to shoot reception detail shots at weddings!

One thing that can make a huge difference in your shooting is learning to shoot in the manual mode on your camera and in this episode Mark will show us just how easy it is to do

Rachel provides wedding photography to clients seeking storytelling images that lay the foundation for their family legacy.They talked about photography, business, and putting it all together.

There are ways that we can modify the on-camera flash to control our lighting. We can bounce our flash from ceilings, walls, or off of reflectors and Mark will show us how.

I’ll go through the standard RGB curves adjustments in both Photoshop and Lightroom.

How to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. We’ll not only explain exactly what an HDR is, but how to merge and edit one using adobe CS5′s full line up of fantastic photographic tools.

In this episode I will introduce you to a cheap method for doing macro photography, the practice of taking close-up photographs of small objects, like insects, coins, flower petals, or any number of things.

This week Mark Wallace shows us how to use a slow shutter speed to get some really fun photos. By shooting at night with slow shutter speeds you can create interesting shapes with light.

An instructional video on how to make the best DIY beauty dish.

In this episode I show you how to remove those nasty brown horizontal band lines from your footage. These lines can sometimes show up when shooting under florescent lights and create a really bad effect.

In this episode Mark has some simple lighting tips that can help to improve your photos in different natural light situations.

In this episode we look at how to turn any lens into a macro lens using affordable Diopters.

How to wirelessly send pictures from any camera to an iPad or iPhone using the Eye-Fi Pro X2 SD card, My Wi, and Shutter Snitch. By Lee Morris

Digital Photography 1 on 1: Episode 40: Stop Action: Adorama Photography TV

How to take your stills taken with a DSLR and turn them into great time lapse video

Beginners guide to getting landscape based photos of the stars.

I made this video to give a visual reference to the various tips, techniques, and lessons that you will want to know if you want to go out and try shooting stars.

This Photoshop tutorial by SweetBeat will show you how to design and use your own background brush

Making the brush

-Make a new document 60x37cm and make sure that the foreground and background colours are set to black and white.

- Create three new layers by clicking  3 times on the new layer icon underneath the layers palette.

-Select layer2 and go to FILTER –> RENDER –> CLOUDS and click it.

-Select layer3 and do the same thing.

-When layer3 is selected we change the blending options to color burn.

-The same thing with layer2 but here we choose overlay.

-Select the brush tool en choose the soft edge brush of 300pixels.

-Now select layer1 and put your brush in the middle of the ‘image’ and  click 1 time. You can also adjust your opacity or brush to your wishes.

-Select layer3 and go to FILTER-SHARPEN-UNSHARP MASK and set the amount to 176, the radius to 31,7 and the threshold to 0 and click ok

-Lower the opacity of layer1 to 75%

-Now duplicate layer1 and go to filter-distort-wave and put in the next settings: number of generators 43, wavelength min48 max120, amplitude min1 max 24, scale horiz100 vert100, type=sine and click ok.(foto5)

-By pressing ctrl+f we are repeating this step. do this 2more times.

-Now lower the Opacity of layer1 copy from 75% to 60%

-Select the crop tool and draw a rectangular around the spot and double click.

-Go to EDIT-DEFINE BRUSH PRESET and call it “sweetbeat” of your name of choice.

We are almost there. Now you have a simple ‘grunge’ brush but with some effects added, like in my rainbow tutorial, we will get a cool brush.

-Now open a new document big enough for your brush.

-Select the brush tool and choose the sweetbeat ( or how-you-named-it ) brush. Then go to the brush panel.(foto8)

-Put the settings like you see in the following images. (foto9-10-11)

-When you have done that click in the bottom right corner on the create new brush icon.

-Now you will have 2 brushes one with the effect en one without the effect.

By changing some of the settings in this tutorial you will get other effects. Just play with it and you will find out.

Using the brush

Here you can see what my endresult is by playing around with one brush. (fotobackground)

I used 2 colours of green 54c442 for the background and 49c334 for my brush. You almost can’t see the difference but when you change the blending mode it gives a cool effect.
Some of the layers I’ve sharpen with unsharp mask or I’ve put a wave effect to it and erased some of it to make it look clean.

Here are the layers

-Layer background

I used 54c442 as a backgound color.

-Layer 4

I used my brush to paint a bit and used the same brush with the eraser tool to clean it up a little. I used 49c334 for the color.

- layer5

I did the same thing like layer4 but set the blending mode to overlay.

- layer6

the same like layer 4.

- layer7

Here i have drawn  a little and I’ve put an unsharp mask filter  to it.

- Layer7copy

I’ve dulpicated layer 7 and put a wave effect to it. then I erased some of it with the eraser tool but with the same brush to make it look clean.

© SweetBeat

More tutorials

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

Color – Black and white – sepia mixing photoshop tutorial.

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

In Photoshop CS5 New Features, author Jan Kabili introduces new features and productivity enhancements that include reshaping images with Puppet Warp, turning photographs into paintings, and content-aware fill options.

Blend three differently exposed images using Photomatix, and then demonstrate how to use some basic Photoshop techniques to touch-up the resulting image. [Note: the Flash overlay in this video doesn't sync completely with the audio; I've found that pausing for a second and then resuming it fixes the problem.]

Most digital SLR sensors don’t have sufficient dynamic range to properly expose the shadows and highlights in scenes where the contrast between the brightest and darkest areas of the scene differ by more than 4 stops of light. HDR imaging helps to remedy this situation (among other things) by blending several images that have been exposed for different light values in the scene.

Straight from the camera to the timeline. No transcoding; no proxies. Full frame-size, mixed frame rates, all living together, harmoniously, in the Premiere Pro CS5 timeline. And what makes it all possible? The incredible new 64-bit Mercury Playback Engine.

Oh, and Premiere Pro CS5 is a native 64-bit app as well now.

Master photographer Tony Sweet demonstrates how to use a tilt shift lens while photographing a river bed.

Russell Brown, senior creative director, delivers a new take on warping images and image elements in this early glimpse into Photoshops Labs. What would you transform with a tool like this?

The Liquify filter lets you paint in distortions so you can perform digital nips and tucks. You can slim people down, edit their posture, and make them look exactly how you want them to. See how in this video.

One of the oldest, most abstruse, downright incomprehensible commands in Photoshop, Calculations lets you merge two channels to create a new alpha channel. Learn it: It’s the backbone of masking.

Between grayscale and color is split toning. Add this slight change for a dramatic effect. This Photoshop technique can also be used to create retro or abstract results.

Using Camera Raw and Alpha channels for masking in photoshop.Much can be said of masking: Masking is the art of using the image to select itself. Masking lets you apply the entire weight of Photoshop to the task of editing a selection. And masking, thy name is alpha channel.

Setting sking color and tones with photoshop

Using the Replace Color command with photoshop video tutorial

Creative ways to create a multi toned image using custom gradient maps, masking and blending modes in Photoshop

If you are frustrated with images that look bright on screen but dull when printed, watch this video to understand a bit about Color Profiles and Color Numbers. The basics are that when using a Convert command you are preserving the appearance and in order to do that you must convert the Color Numbers.

When you use the Assign command you are preserving the original color numbers but the Appearance will change in the assigned profile. ALL CONVERTS AND ASSIGNS should only be done on a flattened file. The instructions in this video will show you why your images may come back from the printer looking dull and how to correct this.

Intense tutorial on more extraction methods, replacing background, refining masks, and creating density shadows.

Using Photoshop to make hair patches video tutorial.

Chris Burfoot Demonstrates Elinchrom’s Skyport radio trigger system.

Chris Burfoot explains flash duration and camera sync speeds

Chris Burfoot teaches how to mix Flash with ambient sunlight outdoors

Chris Burfoot demonstrates the Elinchrom Octa, a giant softbox, used as a white background.

+  demonstrates the Elinchrom Octa, a giant softbox, used as a huge ringflash for fashion and lifestyle portraits.

The difference between Vibrance and Saturation in Photoshop CS4!

Using the Shadows/Highlights adjustment in Photoshop CS4. This adjustment is available in earlier versions as well.

Smart Objects are just that, but how, when and why would you want to use them?

Using manual flash with your DSLR. Part one Hardware. Radio triggers, flashes, optical triggers, sync voltage, hot shoe adapters, and more.

Adding Fireworks to a Digital Photo with PhotoShop

One of the great new improvements of Auto-Blend Layers in Photoshop CS4 is that you can now take a range of shots with different points of focus and Photoshop will composite them together with amazingly precise layer masks to give you a single image where everything is in focus.

In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at this ultra-cool capability, as well as check out some simple batch-processing steps for working with RAW images.

This technique is for those times when you need extended depth of field in a scene, but for some reason you can’t quite get what you need in a single shot.

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Open the image that you want to work with and also open any image of a sunset.

Choose Image>Adjustments>Match Color

The Match Color dialog box will open.  We will only need to use 2 settings for the task at hand.

Under Source, click the drop down menu and select the image of the sunset. There will be a thumbnail for you to check that you have selected the correct image.

Turn on the preview option if it isn’t already. The working image will now take on the color attributes of the sunset image. Most probably the effect will be a bit too much.

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How to use and understand the warp tool morphing and tweaking parts of an image.

” Each of the ads featured a surreal representation of a different region of Colombia and was created by compositing various stock images and photos Richard shot for the job. The challenge with this one was to wrap an accordion around the palm tree like a giant snake.

It was while adding the diamond pattern that the Warp Tool really started to make sense to me and so transitions us into the tutorial. What we’re going to do is pick the image up from the part where we have the accordion sections in place with the red coloring applied to the sides.

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The Photoshop curves tool is perhaps the most powerful and flexible image transformation, yet it may also be one of the most intimidating.  Since photographers effectively paint with light, curves is central to their practice because it affects light’s two primary influences: tones and contrast.  Tonal curves are also what give different film types their unique character, so understanding how they work allows one to mimic any film– without ever having to retake the photograph.

If you follow two spaced input tones, note that their separation becomes stretched as the slope of the curve increases, whereas tones get compressed when the slope decreases (compared to the original diagonal line).

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The trick with local contrast enhancement is that it increases “local” contrast in smaller regions, while at the same time preventing an increase in “global” contrast– thereby protecting large-scale shadow/highlight detail.  It achieves this feat by making some pixels in the histogram cross over each other, which is not possible when enhancing contrast using levels or curves.

Local contrast enhancement works similarly to sharpening with an unsharp mask, however the mask is instead created using an image with a greater blur distance.  This creates a local contrast mask which maps larger-scale transitions than the small-scale edges which are mapped when sharpening an image.

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Kerry Garrison from CameraDojo.com demonstrates how to use a light meter to get good exposures during a quick product shoot.

Kerry from CameraDojo.com shows how he uses Live View mode when doing macro photography

This tutorial will walk you through the steps of making stunning raindrop reflection images. Lindsay Adler (of Adler Photo Workshops) will cover equipment and techniques, and give you advice to make the most of your time.

In this tutorial Lindsay Adler will show you how to add an extra dimension to your images in Photoshop– texture. Adding texture to images can help create the appearance of an image being old, tattered or worn. Texture can also add an emotional dimension to a photograph, making it moody and more expressive. Watch this tutorial to see how easy it is to add textures to your images.

Advanced Photoshop Starburst Filter Effect in Photoshop Video tutorial

Remove Glasses Digitally with Photoshop

Change the colors of eyes with photoshop video tutorial

Water Droplet and Splash Photography Tips

In this tutorial, we’re going to create a fantasy photo manipulation mixing different images and learning to use and modify the stock images in a creative way. The idea is to get a compact image that looks absolutely real, and at the same time, absolutely impossible!

Start with an empty document (mine is 40cm by 50cm at 240 dpi) and one beautiful sky pic for the background.

Apply Color Balance (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance) to add blue and cyan using the settings shown below.

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You like Ring Flashes but you can’t pay the price? I have a solution for you, and it doesn’t involve stealing one from a store!

Make your own for a very very cheap price, about 20 euros. The only thing is that you need to already have a cobra flash. Ok, so let’s get started.

What you need.

* A plastic bowl (not too thick) whose base is about 8 cm of diameter. Your lenses need to be able to go through.
* Another plastic bowl, but slightly smaller, but not under 8 cm. It needs to get inside the big bowl, but your lenses will also have to go through it.
* A piece of pipe (PVC gives the best results in term of weight and toughness) about 5 cm long and 8 cm of diameter.
* Some aluminum foil
* A pen
* A ton of big tape
* A cutter
* And you’ll need some hard glue.

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DIY DSLR Ring-Flash Videos

Stitching Photos for Panoramas in Photoshop Video

In this tutorial I’ll retouch this girls portraits by enhancing the skin, eyes and lips.

For the start i type Ctrl+j to make a copy of the layer ..to see at the end what we`ve done..
We see she has some imperfection..so we use the Healing brush tool ..to make the skin smooth ..

I  select the nose,i copy layer, type Ctrl+T,and then Warp to make it smaller,after that we took the eraser tool (hardness=0) to erase the parts that don`t belong there.

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Here is a video showing how to slow down or speed up your video footage quickly in Adobe Premiere.

Creating a surreal scene in photoshop.

In this tutorial, I will show the steps I took to design this absolutely magical, floating Eiffel Tower scene in Photoshop. The inspiration of this tutorial came from this wonderful design done by matu02 in PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Along the way, we will be using a lot of layer masking techniques, blending options, selection technques, pen tool and dynamic brushes. Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational!

We can see the overall image become darker a little bit and the colour contrast increases comparing with the original image

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Using the refine edge option in photoshop cs3 and cs4

How to Use The Histogram in Digital Photography

Photoshop Clipping Mask – Putting an image into text tutorial

Split Toning with Gradient Maps

Combining body parts with Photoshop

How to create reflections in sunglasses with photoshop tutorial

How to remove flaws and retouch skin with portraits in photoshop.

Learn how to retouch skin tones and hair for a glamour portrait; includes airbrushing techniques

In this tutorial we’re going to make custom 3d artwork in photoshop that we can implement in our logo’s, banners, flyers … any custom design

- Open new document 20×20cm

- Change foreground color to black. select the paint bucket tool and paint the background in black.

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In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a crazy explosion, like a mix of Magneto’s ability with Peter Petrelli’s power. We will use images and filters to produce this wave explosion effect. Even though it may look like a difficult tutorial, it’s really not that hard.

Now we need a photo of a person.Once you have your photo, it’s time to extract the guy from the background. Using the Pen Tool(P) create a path like in the image below. After that go to the Paths Palette and create a selection from that path. Then go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. Lastly, I named this layer “dude.”

Go to Edit>Transform>Scale and reduce the size of the guy. Then go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. We do that to match the light direction.

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In this masterclass, Craig Shields shows you how to turn these little outbursts of creativity into artworks. You’ll learn how to spirit your doodles off the Post-It note and into a digital illustration, using them to add a very personal touch to an image.

We’re going to insert some layers behind the figure later on, so we need to create a layer mask. First, select the Pen tool, and create a path around the edge of her face, hair and arms. Then right-click (Ctrl + click) your path, and pick Make Selection.

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Lighting effects are a versatile set of techniques that have recently come back into vogue in advertising and the fashion press. Lights and tracing motion effects can become part of the composition, adding brightness and motion to an image.

They’re an excellent trick to have up your sleeve because of the flexibility they offer and if you’ve got a few different methods in your toolbox, you can easily create a dense, detailed effect to use as a focal point, or simply add some subtle highlight touches to an existing traditional or digital illustration.

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In this tutorial I will complete a professional photographic retouching from start to finish. Before watching please note that there is a lot of information in this video to absorb, so watch and re-watch areas that you find more advanced.

This is a 40 minute video, I’d recommend pausing it at regular intervals before continuing so that you fully understand all the processes. Some of the areas covered in this video are:

– Colour Correction
– Reshaping Features (Figure, Eyes, Lips, Cheeks, etc)
– Adjusting tonal values
– Grading the image
– Simulating a Realistic Depth of Field Simulation
– Selective Enhancement of areas

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The Lucisart plugin has been quite popular and still emerges daily on photos pushing the hdr-effect look beyond its boundaries.It’s a very handy plugin in order to recover detail from your images.

When applying this filter to selections or separate layers, the white-background-syndrome appears, leaving you with a mess to clean, so here is a way around it allowing you to work with this filter on selections with more comfort.Tip came in from SweetBeat

Ok so let’s say we only want to apply the lucisart plugin/filter to the water below this ship, leaving the sky etc out of the manipulation.

So, select the water with the selection tools and feather ( Edit —> feather ) that selection in order to have smooth edge transition.

Now we make a new layer from this selection ( layer –> new –> layer via copy or simply control+J )

If we apply the filter now to this selection/layer we encounter this problem, the white-snowman-syndrome :

As you can see the water has gotten richer details, but an avalanche has set in.Here’s a way around it.

BEFORE applying the Lucisart filter, add a LAYER MASK to your selection ( Layer —> layer mask —> reveal all – or go to the ‘add layer mask icon in the layers palette below )

After adding such Layer Mask it remains selected ( check the white border on the mask ).You don’t want that, so, select the layer again now it has a mask.

NOW it is time to load the selection/layer and apply the filter !

As you can see the problem is gone.Now you can apply this filter at ease on parts of the image / separate layers.

Here is the photo without and with the filter applied to the water :

In this Photoshop tutorial I’ll show you how to create realistic reflections on water already present in your favorite photographs.

Secondly, if you plan to show or print photos using this technique, make sure you go the distance to make the photo completely convincing. Any small inconsistencies will immediately give you away as an imposter, and lets face it, none of us want that.

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Chroma Keying : Color Range in Photoshop

Portrait Retouching in photoshop video tutorial

• Document Business card size:
  • 3.43″ x 1.93″
  • 87mm x 49mm
  • 1028 x 579 pixels
• Create rounded rectangle using Rounded Rectangle Tool.

• Fill it with light color. In order to create volume effect I used Gradient Overlay Layer style effect in this image.

• Make a new small rounded rectangle and apply Distort transformation to the right bottom corner.

• Draw small rounded shapes just like in the previous example using distort transformation.
• Load selections for these shapes (ctrl+click)
• Cat out selected areas from grey shape. You may remove layers with selected shapes after this.

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Explosions are cool. Seriously cool. So when I received some e-mails asking about how to create a break-apart, explosion effect, I knew it’d be worth making a tutorial on. Read on to find out how to break apart a body, then add some awesome lighting and glow, and nopattern style, to finish the image off.

Create a new document, any size. I used 800x600px. Fill the background layer with black. After that, place your photo in the center of the document.

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In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to learn how to take a single photograph and turn it into a collage of polaroids, with each polaroid containing a small section of the overall image. You can use this effect with lots of different types of images, whether it’s a photo of one person or several people. It’s great for photos of family or friends, vacation photos, or even as a creative effect for wedding photography.

This is a very easy photo collage effect to create, and as we’ll see later in the tutorial, much of the work is simply repeating the same few steps over and over again until you’re happy with the results.

The first thing we need to do for this effect is duplicate our Background layer. With our image open in Photoshop, we can see in the Layers palette that we currently have just one layer, the Background layer, which contains our original image

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Fantasy art scenes are usually handled with a liberal sprinkling of Photoshop plug-in fairy dust – but you don’t have to slavishly follow that route. By creating your own brushes in Adobe Illustrator, and using scanned elements with Photoshop, it’s a simple process to create otherworldly scenes that are alive with glow effects and shafts of virtual light.

Obviously, the final result is down to you, but you should also experiment with colours and blends once you’ve mastered this technique to create your own look. The best thing is you can create images like this without using a single plug-in.

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How to Extend the Height of a Building with Vanishing Point

Curves for advanced lighting control photoshop video tutorial

How to set up a business card in photoshop tutorial

Here’s a video tutorial about retouching lips techniques in Photoshop

For most folks, curves is the weapon of choice, and for good reason. Curves is one of the easiest way to dial in just the right amount of contrast to make photograph “pop”. Today though I’m going to share 5 simple ways to make your photos pop without curves. Each provides a slightly different look to your photograph, and I present them only as potential tools in your arsenal of tricks. In general I use some combination of all them in almost all my work, in addition to curves to take my photographs to higher levels.

I know I said no curves, but this is curves in Lab mode, and it’s a very different beast than RGB curves. Everything about it works differently, and it’s a topic worthy of it’s own post or posts even. I’m not going to get into the hows and whys now, but Lab provides some beautiful color transitions, and a distinctly unique look. For now though, as before convert your image to lab color.

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How to remove objects from a photo photoshop tutorial

How to Reduce the Age of people and de-age in Photoshop

Making a logo using photoshop

Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Color Space

Photo Restoration of Black and White Scans

Photoshop Video Tutorial: Advanced Selecting Hair

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The artificial lighting learning curve for most photographers starts with a built-in flash or external flash mounted above the viewfinder. The photographs they take with a single flash look flat and boring because they lack shadows to create the illusion of depth or look unflattering due to the position of the shadows to the side of the head and nose.

The first step a flash user can take to improve the the lighting is to change the direction of the light. Not by moving the light a few feet to one side – which only creates dark distracting shadow – but by simply raising it a foot or more above the lens. Raising the flash above the lens was a trick discoved by wedding photographers about 40 years ago. When the flash is raised straight up the head shadow disappears behind the shoulder the one created by the nose is hidden out of sight directly below it in a full face view or out of camera view in an oblique pose.

continue at Nova.org

Alpha channels are basically specialized selection processes. Alpha channels are used to make, store or edit selections made using tools such as Lasso, Magic wand or Pen tool.

Alpha channel is another type of image masking. When we say mask, it is an 8-bit channel using 256 levels of Gray, ranging from 0(black) to 255(white). With that being said, alpha channel is a masking technique which defines a selection in black, white, and varying shades of Gray pixels. White acts as the selected pixels; black acts as the unselected area and the levels of Gray define what is partially unselected or selected depending on your view point.

Here you will learn how to mask out hairs or in this case fur using the Alpha channel technique. Let’s begin:

Open the image of your choice, select the pen tool and make a clipping path on the part of the image you want to edit. If you’ve noticed, I have two images with the labels “1” and “2”. This represents the two clipping paths I’ve made for this image. For the image with the label “1”, I did a clipping path on the inner part of the hood. (Notice the faint clipping path line).

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This Photoshop tutorial is written for experienced Photoshop users and will show you unique techniques for retouching photos. You’ll learn how to enhance backgrounds, dodge and burn, brighten eyes, and add hair shine while keeping a low count of layers. The techniques you learn from this tutorial can be used for other portrait photos.

The first step is to isolate the model from the background. I used the extract and color range tool to create this. First I used the extract tool (Filter > Extract) but it didn’t work very well for the hair.

With the mask created, I can add a gradient to the background. Adding a gradient to the background is a simple and effective way to enhance a boring background. Here is a preview of what the layers will look like in the end.

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Ideally, 14-bit RAW files contain 4 times more information than 12-bit RAW files in the shadows. Realistically the gain may be limited somewhat by noise, but the noise levels also improved, leaving us with more bits to use. This much dynamic range just begs being made visible.

The picture above was taken in Central Park. The picture on the left side was processed via this HDR method.

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“First, open an image that needs some work. Now make a copy of your background layer by dragging its layer thumbnail from the Layers palette to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Since Shadow/Highlight doesn’t work as an adjustment layer, having a copy will let you put some of the original back later if you find you prefer it. All your adjustments will be done to the copied layer. You can ignore the original background layer for now.”

“Photoshop Shadows/Highlights settings windowNow go to Image >> Adjustments >> Shadow/Highlight. The basic dialog has only two sliders, one for Shadows and one for Highlights. If that seems too simple, it is. Click on “Show More Options” to access to the real power of Shadow/Highlight. This will give you three sliders each for Shadows and Highlights plus several bonus sliders and controls in a section labeled “Adjustments.” More sliders means more control.”

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Digital photography requires a solid workflow, allowing for professional preparing of digital photo files for the web and print. For the Digital Photography Workflow series, we consulted with a number of experienced professional photographers who are also stellar photo.net members and frequent contributors to the Photo.net Digital Darkroom forum, to walk us through their specific photography techniques and tips on post-processing images.

In this article, Jean-Sébastien offers advice on how to achieve skin softening using low and high pass filtering. The article is enhanced with illustrative figures and screen shots, and includes example images from Jean’s portfolio. Whether you are just entering the world of digital photography and need some tips and advice on how best to post-process your images, or are a seasoned pro, the insights shared here should be helpful with your own digital post-processing techniques.

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Photoshop Video Tutorial : Learn the Basics of Curves

When I think of the perfect sunset photo, my mind immediately fills with lots of warm reds, oranges and yellows as the sun gently sets across the water or beyond the hills. Sunsets are one of the most commonly photographed aspects of nature, and yet photos rarely manage to capture their intense beauty. What was once a sky filled with rich, golden hues often ends up looking cooler, less vivid, and ultimately less interesting.

In this case though, we’re going to be using one of Photoshop‘s adjustment layers, and one of the great things about adjustment layers is that they allow us to work non-destructively

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Content Aware Scaling with Photoshop CS4 video

from Yanik Chauvin

One of my favorite techniques for removing (i.e. make transparent) dark or light areas of an image is to use the blending sliders available inside the Layer Style dialog box within Photoshop. These blending sliders are easily overlooked in pursuit of the more commonly-used Layer Styles available in this dialog box.

To demonstrate this technique, I am going to combine the water image on the left with the shell image on the right. I want the end result showing the splash and runoff of the water over the shells – giving it more of a ‘being on the beach’ feel and almost hearing the waves going in and out.

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The Drag And Drop Method To Importing To Adobe Lightroom 2.0.

from Yanik Chauvin

Open your photo in Photoshop and press CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-B to enter the Black and White conversion window. You can also select Image from the main menu and go into Adjustments. Once the window opens, you are given 6 colors that will affect how your photo is converted. There is no fixed rule on what amounts you place in the different colors since it depends on your picture. For the photo that I used as an example, I selected 103% for Red to lighten the man’s face. I lessened the Yellows and Greens to darken the background to make the subject more prominent in the photo.

Next, we will apply Curves to the photo to increase contrast. This is a very important step for me since I find low contrast mono photos soupy. If you want your photo to have that dreamy effect then you can skip this step but for the most part, good black and white photos should have all the gradations from almost white to almost black. Press CTRL-M to bring out the Curves dialog box. For this photo I used the setting in the photo below.

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from Yanik Chauvin

Peachpit TV: Photoshop CS4 Camera Raw Vignette Tip – The top video clips of the week are here

from Yanik Chauvin

Soften skin with Lightroom 2

Here’s a tutorial in order to be in control of a lens flare and be able to make adjustments at will after the implementation of it :

Get an image you wish to add a lens flare to, click on ‘new layer’ or go to Layer –> New —> Layer

Fill that layer with a solid black color.Go to EDIT –> FILL or press Shift + F5 and choose BLACK

Now it’s time to add our Lens Flare

Go to FILTER —> RENDER —> LENS FLARE ( Kai Power ToolsPlugin Series have  a nice lens flare collection as well )

Now we’re going to change the blending mode of this layer, set it to SCREEN

This will hide all the blacks and keep the lighter values , your flare.Now you can move the flare at will, adjust the opacity , transform/distort or erase some areas with a layer mask.This gives you better control of your lens flare.

Photoshop Tutorial: Face shaping

from Yanik Chauvin

from Yanik Chauvin

In this tutorial you will learn how to use a variety of filters and techniques to produce an image in an experimental style. It’s a flowing work technique, and things will always change and blend into the image in different ways, so don’t expect to recreate the exact image I have created here.

Finally, you will look at Layer Masking as an effective means of separating areas of each layer, creating different ways to combine colours. This tutorial will teach you techniques that can then be applied to other images and help you realise some of your ideas in other ways. It is good to experiment and think of new ways to blend, using different Displacement Maps and Layer Styles, for example. Most importantly of all, be creative and have fun.

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Cosmetic Eye Adjustments With Adobe Lightroom 2

from Yanik Chauvin

Fixing over exposure in photoshop video tutorial.

In this tutorial I will show you how to remove hair in front of someone’s face, retouch skin and apply makeup using Photoshop (any version).

To remove blemishes, acne, scares etc. I suggest you to be moderate when doing this as we don’t want to make an alien face, just to improve the look of the skin.

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How to develop your black and white film video tutorial.

In photography, timing is everything. Light changes often throughout the day, with the early morning or late afternoon lighting giving landscape photographs a soft appearance, without the harsh light of midday but with the edge definition that makes photos “come alive”. However, when traveling, you cannot always view landmarks when the light is best, and you often have to settle for hazy view that never appears as well in a photo as you remember it.

With Photoshop, however, you can clean up your landscape images and remove the blue tint from the atmosphere seen most during over long distances at mid day.

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We all love Photoshop and its effects, but sometimes it’s great to get your hands dirty when creating elements for your graphics. Ink drops can add a creative and energetic element to your designs. This tutorial demonstrates techniques to creatively work ink drops into your compositions.

Tips: Constantly take pictures while the ink drops, as the shapes will change considerably over time. Photograph the ink drops in front of a white background to produce clearer pictures. Experiment with dripping the ink using pipettes and any other device you can get your hands on.

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There are many ways to soften skin inside Photoshop; some methods are more effective than others, but each method typically gives you different results, however slight they may be. It can be confusing and frustrating to try out each of these techniques to find out which works best with your particular photo or photographic style.

This tutorial will walk you through an easy way to setup and compare three of the most popular skin softening techniques inside one Photoshop document while maintaining realism and skin texture. This not only gives you insight into what each softening technique has to offer, but also gives you more flexibility with your images.

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In this tutorial we will apply the same effect as dodging and burning but with more control and options and in my opinion better effects on the highlights.This works for isolating a subject, bring out more detail in certain zones, apply slight vignettes, etc …

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to transform a fairly typical road-trip image – with a big blue sky and wide-open spaces – into an apocalyptic battle scene, complete with tanks, guns,parachutists and a hail of incoming missiles.

In Photoshop, open your landscape image. Search for images of guns and tanks similar to those I’ve used here, and place them onto new layers. Duplicate the tank layer and make the new one smaller, as though they’re in formation.

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This tutorial will show you how to take an image and split it into two personalities. One side will be dark and evil, the other light and sparkly.

This is a very trendy form of artwork and the tutorial should take about 20 to 45 minutes to complete.

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Add Eyelashes in photoshop video tutorial.

Classic Three Light Portrait Video

In this tutorial we’re going to recover detail from the skin area and have it on a separate layer for full control

The brush engine of Photoshop is a powerful tool and can be the key to simulate real paint. But in the wrong hands it can create awful things, making your pictures not look like painted, but just like they were done in Photoshop really bad. Especially when using prefabbed brushes, where you don’t understand how they are working. So it’s always better to build your own brushes that suit your needs as best as possible.

The Photoshop brush engine allows you to create your own brushes, starting from a brush tip shape that can be just a circle or a sampled image. This shape is repeated along the stroke. To avoid this looking boring, Photoshop gives you some tools to vary these shapes along the line to get a more complex look.

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Giving photos and old and sepia look photoshop video tutorial.

Learn the Basics of Curves Photoshop Video Tutorial.

Enhance your photos with Highlights, midtones and shadows photoshop video

One heavenly body, let at be the moon – is too stereotyped. We will make our collage more interesting, and we will add on the sky one more “body”, but smaller.

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An other approach to PS from the you-suck-at-photoshop guys :

I’ve been receiving more and more emails asking for information about the softbox I use with the speedlites.

Several brands offer this package, I opted for the Chimera set as it was complete and had a larger box than the other brand at the time of purchase.

So, here are some details about what I’m using.

As you can see it is the Chimera PRO II XS softbox that I’m using.

Nice adapter ring is within the package I bought.FIrst time you might need to get the hang of it but after a few shoots you’ll be used to it and able to set the box up in less than 5 minutes.

It has an extra reflective screen for the inside, you can attach it via velcro :

At first, I have been using many applications for image editing like Adobe Photoshop, Lightzone, and Apple Aperture, but I really love the ease of use and file handling in Adobe Lightroom. The handled methods in Lightroom can be used for any given photographs in Lightroom. Not only RAW files, but also jpegs (though with some restrictions because less bits per channel).

I have a total B&W working procedure from the photograph making to the post processing. I set up my camera in RAW mode and select the B&W setting. In my case, the Ricoh GX100 will save a B&W jpeg and an unprocessed RAW file. I import the RAW files in Adobe Lightroom with a B&W preset.

continue at Seriouscompacts

A different approach compared to your average PS video :

Distort, Warp, Layer Effects Photoshop Video Tutorial.

In this tutorial, we’re going to take this image :

And make it look like the following one thanks to a texture, blending modes and layer masks :

This process works best for images with a grayish neutral background, so I took one shot during a cloudy day.

I’m going to use the following texture :

This image was created shooting old canons, the rusty, green/brownish structure / texture is just what I wanted.

Take the texture ( you can find them on stock sites, shoot your own, license an image, etc … ) and place it above your original image.Hold your SHIFT button while dragging one layer into an other for a smooth centered drop.

With the new layer in place, go to the blending modes menu on top left of the layers palette, and choose OVERLAY.

This will give you this result :

Now we’re going to ease on down the opacity of this layer on specific areas of the face with a layer mask, so we can always go back and forth :

Go to LAYER —> LAYER MASK and choose REVEAL ALL , a new icon will appear next to your layer now.

Now select a standard brush, not too ‘hard’ ( right click your button to choose the hardness when the brush is selected ), and make sure your FOREGROUND COLOR is set to BLACK and your BACKGROUND COLOR is set to WHITE.The BLACK color is now chosen, when painting now with the layer mask selected ( click the icon, though the layer mask is selected automatically right after creation ) you will erase part of the texture layer, if you switch the color to WHITE you will bring back the layer.Play with the opacity of your brush to get the result you are looking for.

I cleaned most parts of the face and tux for this image :

The part of the image you erase will show black on the layer mask icon, as showed above.

You can now make the image more dramatic with more contrast layers and curves :

More tutorials :

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Color – Black and white – sepia mixing photoshop tutorial.

This photoshop tutorial will show you a fast technique to enhance eyes and make them stand out.

Let’s start with a typical flat image.This technique works best for light-colored eyes.

first off go to the DODGE tool and choose MIDTONES, Let’s set the exposure not too high, I choose 26 percent with this image.

Hover your dodge tool over the iris for a few times up and down and let the eye lighten up a bit.

After dodge tool application on midtones :

Now discard the setting ‘midtones’ and choose the HIGHLIGHTS at the dodge tool panel, and apply the same process to the iris.

Dodge tool applied at higlights setting after midtones :

If you go too far you can always go to EDIT —> FADE and have a smoother transition to choose from, I tend to put a lot and then ease on down via a FADE after the application.

Now select the burn tool, choose midtones, and go over the black border of the iris for more contrast.I set the exposure not too high, choosing for a 21 percent value. :

After the burn tool is applied on the borders of the iris :

Now make use of the selection tools available and select the iris / eye color, after your selection is made, right click the mouse and choose ‘feather’ of roundabout 5 pixels for a smoother transition of the selection you just made.

Go to LAYER —> LAYER VIA COPY in your navigation menu.Now your selection is a new layer and stands alone above the rest.

Get to the blending options menu and choose the blend mode SCREEN

If the result is overdone you can always change the opacity of the layer in the layer palette and adjust the transition with the layers below.

Here’s the original compared to the process above.You can always choose to what extent you apply this modification.

More

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

e tutorials : Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

“The selection tools are used to facilitate the process of making selections of shapes, colors, and objects inside of Photoshop, and positioning them in the working image area. With tools like the magnetic lasso and magic wand, Photoshop packs a powerful array of selection gadgets!”

“In Photoshop, selections are used to work in a specified area, while not altering any of the area around it. In many regards, a selection is a lot like a stencil.You basically are enabling yourself to only paint in one area while the rest of your canvas is left unaffected.”

“There are a variety of tools to help you draw out specific sizes and shapes of selections in Photoshop.”

continue at Tutorial9

Change eye color in photoshop tutorial.

“Photographing and processing smoke can be a frustrating experience. The guide covers everything from properly setting up a mini studio to processing your images in Photoshop. Both web and PDF versions of the guide are available.

“For first timers, photographing smoke can be an extremely frustrating experience! Capturing delicate wisps of smoke is as challenging as it is rewarding. The key to success is having a basic understanding of the overall setup; that is, the camera in relationship to the lighting and background. Fortunately, you don’t need a lot of expensive photography gear to capture exceptional shots. In this guide I walk you through the process of setting up a mini studio to maximize your time while getting great shots.”

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Change face structure photoshop video.

“Unlike Healing brush, Patch Tool gives you the ability to replace a large amount of skin in one operation.

To use Patch tool you must be sure that you have a good skin area on your photo. This skin area will be your replacement pattern.

If you don’t have any “good skin” areas on photo, please follow the skin patterns tutorial, to learn how to prepare a skin pattern.”

continue at Roge.ru

“This tutorial shows you a quick and effective way to change eye color. This technique can be used to change other aspects of an image as well as the eyes”

“This tutorial will show you one of many ways to change eye color.”

continue at MetaCafe

“If you have a nice photo of a model, but she or he wasn’t smiling and you want the photo to feature a smiling face, or vice versa, you can use Photoshop to slightly tweak the facial expressions.

The key is to be subtle in your approach, unless you are creating a caricature or cartoon. With the Liquify tool, we can create some subtle changes to model photos that can affect the overall mood of the face and therefore affect the mood of the photo.”

continue at PhotoShopTutorials

Bram from SweetBeat shows you how he drew the arrows on this image :

- Open a new document at for example 20×20 cm

- Create a ‘new layer’ by going to LAYER —> NEW LAYER or clicking the ‘new layer’ icon in the layers palette

- Select the pen tool

- Make sure that PATHS is selected,on the top left-end corner of the screen, and draw an arrow like you see on the picture.

- When you are finished click your right button, choose FILL PATH (the color used doesn’t matter) and click OK.

- Once again click your right button an choose DELETE PATH. Now you must have something like in this image :

- Copy the layer pressing CONTROL + J or going to LATER —> DUPLICATE LAYER in the menu on top and select the first one.
- Now set the foreground color to BLACK and the background color to GREY. I used 9b9b9b for grey.

- Double click on the first layer or right click the layer in the layers palette and choose the second option to open the blending options. select gradient overlay and use the foreground to background gradient.select reverse and click ok.

- Now select the other layer and place him like you can see in the next image :

- Again, change the background color. this time I used cdcdcd as color.

- Open the blending options of the last layer. choose gradient oerlay and again select the foreground to background color gradient select reverse and click ok.
- Now select the pen tool again . to make it look 3d we need to conect the ‘open corners’.

- The best way to do this is to zoom in and start from point 1 to point 2 like you can see on the picture :

Make sure that you cover the complete ‘open corner’.
- When finished with every corner like on the picture

Make sure that the last layer is selected.

- Now right click, choose FILL PATH and click ok

- again, click your right mouse button and choose DELETE PATH

There you have your custom arrow

Photoshop tutorial by SweetBeat

More :

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

Ever compose a great landscape shot only to realize that when you expose for the land, the shy becomes a pure white? This is a a common limitation photographers have to deal with when shooting landscapes in sunny conditions. You can either expose for the sky or the land?

There are ways to tackle the problem: shoot in RAW or shoot multiple exposures and combine them later. But sometimes you just can’t plan for these things.

continue at NYfalls

” In this tutorial I will show you how to repair some image noise from a low quality shot and I will show you an extremely quick and easy way to smooth out a person’s face.”

“The technique can be applied to a beauty shot as well, you would just have to adjust the settings on some of the steps to get a more extreme smoothing effect.”

Facial skin smoothing and retouching photoshop tutorial at PsdTuts

PhotoShop Camera Raw video tutorial.

“It’s almost a magician’s art: giving form to an object that’s essentially invisible. Lighting and photographing clear glass objects and giving them real visual appeal is one of the hardest tasks you’ll ever face in a studio.”

“How’s it done? By concentrating only on the outer edges of your subject, you imply its full shape.

Step One: Forget frontlight. This tool, so essential for nearly all studio subjects, is useless with clear glass. Instead, go with side- or backlighting.”

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• Advanced glass photograpy techniques

“Taking good quality pictures of glass objects can seem intimidating. However, there are some simple techniques which even amateur photographers can use to obtain dramatic results with minimal effort. The following examples show several basic setups that should allow anyone to achieve results they can be proud of. The first technique is a favorite of many hired professionals who need to get instant, fast, clean shots of clear glass photography. ”

continue at TabletopStudio

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop tutorial by SweetBeat : -open a new document 5cmx10cm 72dpi -select the rectangular marquee tool and draw a rectangular of 4cm width and 5cm height. -go to paint bucket tool and fill in the selected rectangular with black.

” Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe TV, a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products, including the company’s Creative Suite 3 family of world-class creative tools.”

“With multiple channels, original series programming, and content from Adobe, leading training organizations and the world’s leading subject matter experts, Adobe TV delivers a virtual library of entertaining and instructional videos. Designers, photographers, video professionals, and developers will find product deep-dives, innovative tips, techniques from luminaries, and behind-the-scenes tours of the hottest creative shops and Adobe product teams. “

continue at AdobeTV

This tutorial will show you how to transform a standard color photo into a mix of colors, black and white and sepia in a fast and easy process.

Start with your original and add an adjustment layer of channel mixer.

Layer —> New adjustment layer —> Channel mixer.

Choose ‘monochrome’ and play with the sliders until you are happy with the black and white version.This gives you more options than a plain desaturation with CRTL+SHIFT+U .For portraits I personally like the blue channel most quite often.I let the total set to 100.

Change the ‘opacity’ of this layer to 50 %.You can re-adjust to personal taste later.

Now come the sepia tones.

go to Layer —> New adjustment layer —> Hue/Saturation.

check ‘Colorize’ and add your wished sepia values.I tend to use 30 Hue and 20 Saturation as values.

Adjust the opacity of this layer to 50 percent as well or adjust to personal state later when you have the final overview.

Now duplicate this sepia layer ( CTRL + J or Layer —> Duplicate Layer ) and set the blending mode to Soft Light to add more tone and get more contrast.Set the layer’s opacity and fill both to 50 % or adjust to personal taste.

For the final contrast, add a ‘curves’ layer, it will give more control than a ‘contrast’ layer.

go to Layer –> New adjustment layer —> curves

I add a little s-curve with three points.

Which gives a final result of :

compared to the original :

[ --> Download the small .psd with layers version here <-- ]

Other example :

More Tutorials

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

“This tutorial will show you step by step on how to create a “Badass Bling Effect” using layer styles in Photoshop. Once you create the layer style, you can easily  ” blingify” any layer.

click here for this golden and bling effect in photoshop tutorial in step-by-step text page

“In this Photoshop tutorial we will explore how to use the pen tool.

First, we will look at the pen tool’s basic controls. We will examine creating paths, curvature modification and anchor point adjustments.”

“Next, we will use our new pen tool skills to cut out an image. This skill is so essential to know when using Adobe Photoshop, and it really illustrates the power behind the pen tool.

Finally we will see how a path created with the pen tool can be used to create custom shapes. Custom shapes are vectors so they will never pixelate or lose quality. Again this is such a handy skill, you’ll end up using it all the time! ”

continue at MelissaClifton

• How to Use the Pen Tool in Photoshop: A Tutorial on Outlining Objects

“Using the pen tool can be kind of weird the first time (even downright confusing) but it’s a great tool for artists to know how to use.

For instance, if you’re a sculptor, jewelry maker, or any type of 3D artist and you want to have clean, professional images of your work, it’s often best to remove everything BUT your artwork from the picture.”

continue at EmptyEasel

• Photoshop Tutorials: Making Selections With The Pen Tool

“Most people put off learning how to use the Pen Tool for as long as possible, while others never get around to learning it, believing it’s just too confusing, too complicated, and just plain unnatural. Ultimately, their work in Photoshop suffers for it, since they’re stuck relying on the Lasso Tool for just about everything they can’t select with the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tools. In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to put an end to the suffering. We’re going to learn just how easy it really is to make selections with the Pen Tool.”

continue at PhotoshopEssentials

“In this article I will guide you through a series of steps to improve skin tones, modify shadow and light patterns to increase the impact, and enhance the eyes and hair to create a striking portrait.”

“Our first step will be to improve the skin tones – make the skin look better or even give it some tan. Women know that before actually putting on a makeup you would put the base – even the tones, and openly after that you can apply the makeup. And here we will do the same – do the base first.”

continue at RomanZolin

Give skin a cracked or peeling look with this tutorial.

Digital Foundation – skin retouching and make up in photoshop video tutorial.

Firstly, we need to adjust the levels; So Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels.
Rather than manipulating the layers together as RGB, we’ll do them one at a time to create the desired effect.
Here are the settings I’ve used for each and a small picture of the result at that stage.

In the layers window – Right click on the original picture layer and select Duplicate. Then move this above the levels adjustment layer

Now – with the duplicate layer selected, Ctrl + U to open the Hue/Saturation controls. Increase saturation to around 55-65 to accentuate the colours.

Cross Processing Photoshop tutorial.

Setting Up a Pocket Wizard System video tutorial

Choosing a lens for portrait photos video tutorial.

Buying Lighting Equipment : Basic Three Light Setup video tutorial.

Bram from Sweetbeat.be tells you how he got the rainbow in the photo above using photoshop :
- Open new document 20x20cm.
- Make a new layer and select it.
- Select the pen tool en draw a bowed line.Make sure when you have the pen tool selected to have the paths icon selected and not shape layers or fill pixels

- I select the brush tool and on the top right-end corner of the window I open the brush menu (brushes).

- Select a hard basic brush of 28px and at the lower part of the window you put spacing on 1%.

- On the top left-end corner in same the window I choose ” Shape dynamics “.

- I ensure that the size jitter, angle jitter, roundness jitter stands on 0%.

- At size jitter I put the control on fade, give in the number 400 and choose 10% minimum diameter (dependent of the size of the document you must play with this).

- Now I select the pen tool.
- Click rightbutton and choose stroke path.

- As tool I take the brush and click on ” ok “.
- Click your right button again and choose ” delete path ” and voila.

Now you can change the colour with the blending options and for a rainbow duplicate the layer, rotate them a bit but make sure that they start all from 1point if you put them under each other

Repeat the process with a colorful approach, cut the layers borders.

© SweetBeat

More tutorials :
Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

How to draw an ‘Asian Sun’ with photoshop.

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

Get the color – black and white – sepia mixing look

Photoshop video tutorial on using layers for effects.

Buying Lighting Equipment video tutorial : Grip, Modifiers and Sources.

This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to beautify a face. The corrections that we’re going to do will make the face look different, but at the same time we avoid to make the results look unnatural like we tend to see in other Photoshop tutorials.

Of course, the face we’re going to work on is not going to look the same when we’re done, but we will only make necessary and subtle changes. We will use Photoshop to fix skin, remove blemishes and wrinkles, whiten and fix teeth, fix hair, fix eyebrows, increase definition in the eyes and crop and sharpen the image in the final steps.

“Beautify a face” tutorial at Lunacore.Eyes,eyebrows,wrinkles,teeth,skin,tones, etc …

Buying Lighting Equipment : Basic Principles.

Welcome to the official, Russell Brown tips & techniques page. This is your one-stop shopping location for the latest in hot new tips from the one, and only, Dr. Brown. Beware, these QuickTime movies are large and will take time to download with a slow connection.

Also, if you are viewing them using Internet Explorer, the movies may take several minutes to appear. For best results, Dr. Brown recommends that you use the Safari, or Firefox browser. These tutorials have been provided to you as a free service from Adobe Systems and Russell Brown.

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Lunacore Smooth Skin tutorial

PhotoShop Skin at TutorialBlog

Quick Skin Tone retouching

Texturing Skin

Click here for speedlite flashes in softbox and umbrella set-ups with sample photos.

Studio lighting can be broken down into two categories, continuous and flash. While continuous lighting has two main advantages there are many disadvantages.
The good points of continuous light:

* It’s inexpensive, and makes a good starting point for anyone on a small budget.

* You can see what the light is doing and where the shadows and highlights are.

The main disadvantages of continuous light:

* It generally produces more heat than light, very uncomfortable!

* The light that it produces is not balanced to daylight.

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If you are a photographer and using flash (either for studio pictures or for outdoor shooting), you are probably aware of the problems that a hot-shoe flash introduces: the shadows of an object are crisp-sharp, creating an artificial look to the object. When dealing with studio lighting, you can use a softbox to diffuse your shadows and this is an acceptable solution, but for the amateur photographer it does have some disadvantages:

1. A softbox is very expensive. A simple softbox like this softbox from Arri, can cost several hundreds of dollars. (See our big DIY softbox version)
2. A softbox is big, and can not be carried around.

The amateur photographer can compromise and us a flash mounted softbox like this softbox from Lumiquest, or a stoffen box. The problem with this one (although a minor one compared to the “big” Softboxes), is the cost, nearing 30 dollars. Well, I guess that for some 30 bucks is no big deal (and especially no big deal for photography equipment), but I am going to try and do even better.

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Night photography has the ability to take a scene and cast it in an unusual light– much like the golden hour surrounding sunrise and sunset can add an element of mood and uniqueness to a sunlit scene. Just as how sports and landscape photography push the camera’s limits for shutter speed and aperture, respectively, night photography often demands technical extremes in both.

Night photography is subject to the same set of constraints as daylight photography– namely aperture, shutter speed and light sensitivity– although these are all often pushed to their extremes.  For this reason, the abundance and diversity of night photography has been closely tied to the advance of photographic technology.  Early film photographers shied away from capturing night scenes because these require prohibitively long exposures to maintain adequate depth of field, or produced unacceptable amounts of image noise.

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Learn how to sharpen an image on the edges only with this Photoshop tutorial. Ordinary sharpening methods sharpen the entire image including the areas that you don’t want sharpened such as the skin, clouds, etc. But with this tutorial, you’ll learn how to sharpen only on the edges so that artifacts don’t appear.

We begin by duplicating the layer. The top layer will have the sharpened version of the image and the bottom (Background) layer will have the original untouched image with its default sharpness. To duplciate the layer, press Ctrl+J or go to Layer> Duplicate Layer.

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An important concept to understand when dealing with studio lighting for portrait photography is contrast. Contrast is the difference in the amount of light that falls on the dark areas of a scene and the amount of light that falls on the highlight areas of a scene. Humans can see a wide range of contrast while film and digital capture devices are much more limited in the light level ranges that they can record. For this reason, we must use caution when lighting a scene, and consider the ratio of the amount of light between light and dark areas or the Lighting Ratio.

Due to the latitude of film and digital sensors, it is the photographer’s goal to find the exposure that strikes the appropriate balance between the highlights and shadows. You must begin by deciding the desired “feel” of the final image. If you wish to obscure shadow detail and draw attention to the subject, high contrast lighting may be most appropriate. On the other hand, you may wish to show detail in both the highlight and shadow areas which would require lower contrast lighting. Once you know the effect you wish to obtain, you can begin to identify the proper lighting ratio for the shoot.

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Post Processing HDR images – Tone mapped HDR images are rarely perfect when the HDR program finishes with them. They can look flat, lack overall contrast, and can suffer from artifacts, ghosting and halos. Ferrell McCollough of www.beforethecoffee.com explains how to correct such problems.

Many problems can be corrected in post processing using:

* Levels/Curves
* Simple cloning
* Blending of the tone mapped image with another image to restore realism.

1. Blend the RAW single image with the HDR image. You can blend the 0EV, -2EV or +2EV.
2. Tone map the RAW image and then blend with the HDR. A pseudo-HDR with the HDR image.
3. Blend two HDR’s each processed with a different tone map setting.
4. Blend an HDR image created with a local operator such as Details Enhancer (Photomatix) with an HDR image created with a global operator such as Tone Compressor (Photomatix).
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Exposure bracketing

Fill flash

Area focus

Understanding white balance

Night Photography

Exposure compensation

Digital Photography One On One Episode 2 – Using a Light Meter.

Devoted to the exchange of Photoshop actions among users as a service to the image editing community.

check : AtnCentral.com

In this episode of Digital Photography One on One, Mark Wallace [SnapFactory.com] explains Key Shifting and how your shutter speed affects exposure when using an external flash.

Questions Answered:
1) To get the best results when using a Canon 580 flash unit on a 20D, should I stick to ISO100? Would you ever change the ISO for some reason? -Nigel

2) Can you please explain Key Shifting to me in regards to outdoor portraiture? Once I establish a meter reading on my subject of say f/8, what do I have to do to lighten and darken the background?

click here for the video

Fashion White Skin (video tutorial)

Hide Cover Title (video tutorial)

Correcting Yellow Photos Quickly (video tutorial)

Possibly the most useful tool available in digital photography is the histogram. It could also well be the least understood. In this article we will look at what a camera histogram tells the photographer and how best to utilize that information.

Virtually every digital camera, from the simplest point-and-shoot to the most sophisticated digital SLR has the ability to display a histogram directly, or more usually superimposed upon the image just taken. (The Hasselblad H1, the latest generation of film & digital capable cameras, can display a histogram on the camera grips LCD while the image is separately displayed on the digital back’s LCD.) On most cameras though the histogram display takes place on the rear LCD screen, and most cameras can be programmed to do this both on the image that is displayed immediately after a shot is taken, or later when frames are being reviewed.

read more :
Luminous Landscape

DIY $10 Macro Studio

DIY:Macro Strip Lights

DIY:Digital EOS/Holga

DIY Heaven:The “Make” Photo Blog

How-To: One Synch Cord Fires Two Flashes

Get Your “Tinker Tubes” Plans!

Learn how to use the amazing black and white conversion tools in Photoshop CS3. This new tool makes turning a color photo into a stunning black and white photo easy. Learn how to make the right adjustments so that your pictures look perfect @ PhotoShopSupport

In this Photoshop CS3 video tutorial you will learn the following:
How to call up the black and white adjustment conversion tool.
How to control the black and white conversion sliders.
How to create various effects using the sliders.
How to add a tint to your photo.

PhotoShopSupport

Welcome to On Assignment, where you can build on your Lighting 101 skills by learning exactly how real-world assignments were lit.

The object will be to explain the process of making the photos as clearly as possible. But if you have worked your way through the Lighting 101 section, you should be able to reverse engineer the light on most photos just by looking at them. – Strobist

On Assignment: Light Like a Pro

Worth1000 is the top creative competition and photoshop contest site on the web. Don’t take our word for it. Let our 8,074 galleries of 298,598 original images speak for themselves.

Explore the world of off-camera lighting thanks to Strobist

Links to Strobist articles out of the Lighting 101 ( © Strobist ) :

Two Things Your Flash Needs to Have
Traveling Light
Light Stands
Super Clamps
Ball Bungees
Umbrella Stand Adapters

Synching: PC Cords and Pocket Wizards
Building a Pro PC Cord, Pt. 1
Building a Pro PC Cord, Pt. 2
Soft Light: Umbrellas
Soft Light – Wall/Ceiling Bouncing
Bare-Tube Style Lighting
Hard Light – It’s Better Than You Think
Balancing Flash Intensity With Ambient, Pt 1
Balancing Flash Intensity With Ambient, Pt 2
Using Gels to Balance Light Color
Cereal Box Snoots and GoBo’s
Textural Lighting for Detail Shots
Cross Lighting
Back Light as Main Light
Headshot in a Corner
Lighting for Glasses
Know The Flash
See The Flash
Be The Flash
Don’t Let Good Light Ruin a Photo
Keep a Lighting File

check the links below for introductions and techniques on flash photography :

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

http://strobist.blogspot.com/