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64 Articles

“The creation of a photograph rarely stops when you press the shutter. While a great photographer needs the skills to capture brilliant pictures with their camera, they often need to polish their in-camera creations during post-production. With film, it used to be that any necessary edits and enhancements were done in the darkroom. Now, with digital, it’s done on a computer, usually accompanied by an Adobe editing software. Regardless of the type of digital camera you use, once you have your images on your PC or Mac, Lightroom and Photoshop allow you to organise, enhance and manipulate to your heart’s content. Whether using Adobe’s beginner-focused Elements or its powerhouse software, Photoshop, there are countless ways to improve or transform your photographs. Add to these the intuitive workflow system of Lightroom,…

PHOTOSHOP. THE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS’ CHOICE!

PHOTOGRAPHY IS ABOUT creativity, always has been. Since its inception, photographers haven’t simply been content to document their surroundings but have sought to enhance, embellish, beautify and distort their imagery, be it via the darkroom or with in-camera techniques. Adobe Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom are just tools in the creative arsenal, though they happen to be damn good ones – the best possible. Everything that was done in the film darkroom can be recreated in these softwares, and far more besides. Images that are now appearing in this digital age are really pushing the boundaries of the imagination. So if you haven’t already jumped on the Adobe bandwagon, it’s really time to take that leap. You’re missing out on the chance to explore your creative self. Even if your ambitions…

PHOTOSHOP. THE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS’ CHOICE!

Which Adobe editing software is right for you?

LIGHTROOM, ELEMENTS OR Photoshop Creative Cloud (CC)? it’s a question many photographers ask themselves, especially now the full version of Photoshop is more affordable than ever thanks to a monthly subscription. many who once recoiled at the hefty price might be tempted to give it a go, but is it the right choice for you when compared to lightroom or the even more affordable Elements 14? that’s what we aim to help you decide here. Photoshop and digital photography are the perfect pair to the point that the noun ‘Photoshopped’ has become synonymous with most types of photo editing. however, while professional image quality is expected with Photoshop CC, the extensive tools in lightroom and even Photoshop Elements may be more than adequate depending on your budget and level of…

Which Adobe editing software is right for you?

Photoshop Elements 14

Buy for: £79.10 Upgrade for: £64.81 Bestfor:Newphotographersandthosewithlimited editingskillsorbasicambitionsfortheirediting “CAPTURE THE MOMENT now. perfect the photo later’: it’s adobe’s sell for the latest version of elements and it’s suitably fitting given it’s designed for photographers who prefer auto over manual mode, or find their skills in their infancy. In essence, elements is a stripped-down version of photoshop CC that’s much easier to use but is still loaded with easy-to-use features, such as one-click Quick editing options as well as Guided and expert platforms for when you progress in skill. the Guided interface is ideal for new amateur photographers, while the expert mode looks and functions similar to photoshop CC, making it perfect for budgetconscious Weekend photo Warriors. It’s the cheapest option by far – you can own elements for the same…

Photoshop Elements 14

Buyfor:£110(Lightroom6orearlier) Rentfor:£8.57permonth(aspartofCCpackage) Bestfor:Enthusiastandprophotographerswhowant advancededitingaswellascataloguing THINK OF LIGHTROOM as the ultimate digital darkroom where you can organise and edit your negatives. it’s a system for serious enthusiast and professional photographers alike; it’s the first stop and often the only stop for photographers due to its arsenal of editing and cataloguing features. many pro photographers use Lightroom to download their memory cards, filter their image selection and then do all – or 90% – of their editing using the Develop module. You can quickly organise your entire library of photos, efficiently make common global edits and even make selective tweaks using the Adjustment Brush – frankly, there’s very little you cannot do, so why do you even need Photoshop CC? if your shots need no significant changes, well, you don’t – Photoshop…

Buyfor:£799(PhotoshopCS6) Rentfor:£8.57permonth(aspartofCClpackage) Bestfor:Advancedphotographersandthosewho wantpreciseandunlimitedcontrolovertheirediting IF YOU’RE STILL UNSURE, or contemplating investing in a Creative Cloud subscription, you probably want to know what all the fuss is about for Photoshop CC. frankly, it’s probably a bit misdirected unless you’re an advanced photographer, designer or animator. the answer whether you need it or not depends on how intricate you want your editing to be. if you plan to create complex composites or simply want access to a wider selection of tools and better features, then it’s worth it. there are at least three or four ways to do any one thing in Photoshop, which is arguably two to three more ways than in elements, so you can choose and control your preferred method of working. if you want that creative flexibility, then…

MENUS, TOOLS & PALETTES

THE PHOTOSHOP workspace can be a daunting place at first, with its vast array of features. however, once you grasp a basic understanding of just a few key areas, you’ll be up and running in no time. here we’ll be looking at the expert workspace of Photoshop elements 14 and although there are differences between elements’ interface and Photoshop’s, Adobe does a great job with crossing over packages to encourage a progression as users become more experienced. some of the tools here also carry over into Adobe Lightroom. The four key areas to understand are the Toolbar (which runs vertically on the left side), the Tool options at the bottom of the interface, the Menu bar (which runs along the top) and the Panel Bin, which sits to the right-hand…

MENUS, TOOLS & PALETTES

First adjustments

The basics… ✓ REFORMAT The Crop Tool is more versatile than you might think and should be your first step for reformatting images. Select the Crop Tool from the toolbar (or press the C key), then click and drag over the area that you wish to include in the composition. You don’t have to get it right first time; the changes aren’t applied until you commit to them. You can use the anchor points around the bounding box to expand or contract the crop as needed. If you would like to maintain your image’s aspect ratio, hold down the shift key when making your initial selection or you can preset the size or ratio using the Width and Height input boxes in the top toolbar. You can also use the…

First adjustments

Using Levels and Curves

GETTING YOUR EXPOSURE right in-camera is always the preferred way to capture images, but while it’s a discipline we’d all like to master, sometimes it doesn’t work out. It may be that you dialled in the wrong settings or it could be that tricky lighting conditions fooled your camera’s metering system and you didn’t have time to adjust – nevertheless, it’s better to capture the moment and correct the exposure afterwards than to miss the picture altogether. Of course, overexposure isn’t always a mistake – by exposing your images to the right and pulling them back during processing, you'll retain far more detail than a standard ‘good’ exposure out of the camera – providing you haven’t clipped your highlights. If you’re using Elements 12 onwards, all steps are best made…

Using Levels and Curves

Extend dynamic range with precise control

PICK ANY ADJUSTMENT that you can make in Photoshop Elements and we guarantee that there will be at least three ways to carry out that alteration. We would always advocate using methods that are both nondestructive and easy to revisit and adjust as required. This is where the strengths of Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers really shine through. When you apply an Adjustment Layer to your image you aren’t affecting the image itself, so any changes that you make can be done without detrimental effect to image quality, or fear of making an irreversible mistake. When you then use a Layer Mask on that Adjustment Layer you can apply the changes selectively – what’s more, even the Layer Mask itself is reversible, so you can paint over it to change…

Extend dynamic range with precise control

Mastering masking

ThE worLd of multiple layers and masking can be a daunting one if you’ve never used them before. however, in reality, the concept of using Layer Masks is incredibly simple – they do exactly as their name implies – they act as a mask in front of a layer, which you can edit and manipulate to reveal as much or as little of the layer as you want. on the surface, masking might sound very similar to using the Eraser Tool – it is, but with one crucial difference: Layer Masks are nondestructive, so any changes you make can be undone without altering the original image. Layer Masks can be applied to Adjustment Layers to selectively edit your image or, depending on the version of Elements that you’re using, they…

Mastering masking

Add mist to your pictures

MIST IS MANY a landscape photographer’s favourite phenomenon. Forming when heat rising from the ground meets cold air on a clear night, mist is best captured at sunrise as the first rays of light cut through the air. The trouble is, it doesn’t always form when expected, and when it does it can dissipate before you’ve had time to compose your shot. Fear not – using this handy technique it’s easy to add a touch of cloudy atmosphere to your landscape images. As with any technique, when you’re adding to or changing the climatic conditions in your image, it’s important to choose the right type of scene to work with. It’s no use adding blankets of mist to a shot taken at midday in the height of summer, you’ll fool…

Add mist to your pictures

Using Gradient Maps

THEY SAY THERE’S more than one way to skin a cat. We’ve always found this idiom to be a bit on the gruesome side so from now on we’re going to use – there’s more than one way to convert an image to black & white in Photoshop. While not as catchy an utterance, it’s just as true. There are numerous ways that you can go about transforming your images into black & white masterpieces – while some methods offer more control, others are fast and easy one-click solutions. Some methods allow you to control each colour channel individually, while others let you tweak the tonality of your shadows, mid-tones and highlights to a greater degree. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, but knowing the different approaches…

Using Gradient Maps

Narrow down your focus

A SHALLOW DEPTH-OF-FIELD and a shifted plane of focus are telltale signs that an image has been shot on an expensive, specialist tilt-shift lens. In reality, these sort of optics are a pipe dream for most of us. However, there is a way that you can recreate the sort of effects created by tilt-shift lenses in Photoshop Elements. The finish isn’t exactly the same as the in-camera results you’d get from using expensive glass but, when applied with care and precision, can turn an everyday image into something that grabs people's attention. The type of image that you apply this effect to largely dictates the outcome. When applied to images shot from a raised vantage point, a tilt-shift effect can make photographs look like miniaturescale models. When used on images…

Narrow down your focus

Easy collages in Elements

ONE Of ThE mOsT effective ways to display a collection of images as one is a collage. They can be used to tell the story of a day out, event or family holiday. They can also be used to tie together several images with an underlying theme or topic. however, they can be tricky to put together manually. Not only do you have to upload all of your images at once and decide on a layout, but you then have to resize and crop each image to the right size and shape to fit! Elements offers a quick-and-easy solution. sure, it’s not as flexible as creating your own collage from scratch, and you are limited to a set number of sizes, layouts and borders, but it is much easier to…

Easy collages in Elements

Basic compositing

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS IS a fantastic tool for tweaking and perfecting your digital images. However, it’s also incredibly fun to use if you want to add extra elements into a scene that were not there when you captured the image – more commonly referred to as a composite image. Composites are commonplace in professional advertising photography, as it’s often the case that the campaign calls for either an impossible scenario to be shot, or when logistically it’s expensive or difficult to place the item or person that you want photographed in the location that you want them in. These types of composites are very complex and often take teams of retouchers tens of man hours to compile. While this tutorial doesn’t go to these lengths, it serves as a good introduction…

Basic compositing

Workflow Part 1

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY IS a curse and a blessing as, unless you’re ruthless with your picture taking, it’s easy to become shutter-happy and take hundreds of images, which then need sorting, organising and editing. Thankfully, Lightroom helps you do just that: offering an array of tools to make your workflow simple, logical and quick. In part one of our two-part feature on Lightroom workflow, find out how to efficiently import and organise your image collection. Over the page, we show you how to index, make quick edits and publish your pictures. 1 Import your image Upon connecting your camera or card reader to your computer, Lightroom will automatically open the Import interface. If you are importing from the hard drive, click on the Import button at the bottom of the Library…

Workflow Part 1

Workflow Part 2

WHAT SHOuLd YOu do with your images once you’ve imported and selected your collection? Here, we look at indexing your images for easy retrieval, quick developing and the publishing and export options offered within the Library module. All of these features revolve around saving you time and feature in Lightroom 5, 6 and CC – though the latter two also boast face recognition to help organise your portraits. It’s best to be methodical at this early stage as the better organised your photo collection, the easier you will find it to locate and sort your images in the future. 1 Collections Lightroom’s Collections feature allows you to collate images from different albums and import them into themed folders, such as landscapes, portraits, still-lifes etc. You can create a collection by…

Workflow Part 2

Make your editing more efficient with presets

Although not AlwAys the one-stop solution people hope for, presets are a key part of streamlining your lightroom workflow. some argue that the processing stage of creating their images is a carefully constructed process, unique to each image. In reality, if you shoot hundreds or thousands of images in a single shoot, then few people have the time to pore over each image individually. think of presets like a recipe – they are designed to save you time above all else. Even if you do enjoy taking time over each image and applying individual unique tweaks, if there is a core selection of adjustments that you frequently make, presets can speed up your workflow drastically and can give you a familiar base from which to start further processing. A preset…

Make your editing more efficient with presets

Take control over colour

Know the difference ■ VIBRANCE AND SATURATION There’s often confusion surrounding Vibrance and Saturation sliders in Lightroom. At first glance they can appear to do much the same thing, but there are clear differences in the results you get from each. The main difference is that the Vibrance slider is designed not to affect colours that are already highly saturated. In most cases, this makes it useful for applying a universal adjustment without over-saturating those colours which are already nice and bright. Furthermore, the Vibrance slider will also not affect hues similar to those found in skin tones. This makes it useful for increasing saturation in portrait shots without turning your subject’s skin a strange shade of orange. Take a look at the comparison below to see the difference an…

Take control over colour

Colour with Curves

THE TONE CURVE is probably one of the more powerful tools within Lightroom. Not only can it be used to adjust the exposure of specific areas of your image individually, but it can increase or decrease contrast, as well as fine-tune the colours and tones present in your shots. The version of Lightroom that you’re using will dictate exactly how far you can go using the Tone Curve. Users of Lightroom 3 are restricted to only being able to adjust the RGB channel as a whole, enabling them to tweak exposure and contrast but not colour. Users of Lightroom 4 onwards have the full capacity to adjust the individual Red, Green and Blue channels, as well as all three together. Understanding the Tone Curve takes time, but any changes are…

Colour with Curves

Maximise dynamic range in Lightroom

WHEN PRESENTED WITH a scene that exceeds your image sensor’s dynamic range, the ideal solution is to use graduated filters to balance the exposure. A set of ND grad filters is invaluable to any outdoor photographer, whether you shoot landscapes, cars, weddings or portraits – at some point or another you’ll find yourself reaching for your grads, or wishing you had them with you! However there are times when using an ND grad isn’t practical – scenes where objects stand above the horizon for example, or when you only have time for a quick snapshot and aren't able to fit your filters. Thankfully there are a couple of simple steps that you can take in Adobe Lightroom to expand the dynamic range of your landscape images subtly and naturally. 1…

Maximise dynamic range in Lightroom

Monochrome film effect

WHen looking at an image, it’s reasonably easy to tell whether that image originated from a digital file or was shot on film. Purists would tell you that film has a certain ‘feel’ about it, but the reality of it is that there are certain specific characteristics that ring true to film – they mainly comprise of contrast, tonality and grain. learn how to spot and manipulate these characteristics in your editing process and you can introduce a convincing film aesthetic into your digital files. the steps below are not a definitive solution and can be easily tweaked to emulate different types of film. it’s a good idea to find images shot on the specific film that you want to emulate, and use them side-by-side for reference. For the purposes…

Monochrome film effect

How to boost contrast

THeRe’s no sucH thing as a ‘perfect’ exposure, hopefully we’ve established that by now. In truth, the only correct exposure is the one that the photographer intends to capture – you can over- or underexpose a scene to your heart’s content and, no matter what the histogram, or anyone else for that matter, says, if that’s the intended result then that’s the correct exposure for that image. The histogram is a key part of both assessing exposure in-camera, and when editing your images, so knowing how to read it is crucial (see the panel opposite for more information). An issue to look out for when both shooting and editing is when the graph comes to an abrupt end at either the left or the right side. This indicates ‘clipping’, whereby…

How to boost contrast

Add flare to your images

FOr the mOst PArt, photographers try to do whatever they can to avoid flare. We spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds ensuring that we’ve got the best optics, with the fanciest, most advanced optical coatings, and we use lens hoods to stop unwanted flare from lowering contrast. But sometimes these ultra-efficient lenses hinder creativity making the fantastic qualities of sun flare that many photographers are now striving to achieve difficult to capture in-camera. Flare adds atmosphere, conveys warmth and can give your images a summery feel. however, it’s not always easy to capture in a controlled manner and too much flare can be destructive to an image, so knowing how to create or add to existing flare is a good technique to get to grips with. to start with,…

Add flare to your images

Present pictures with a classic frame

ADoBe Lightroom is a fantastic piece of software for any photographer, and if you shoot any more than a handful of images every time you pick up a camera then you’ll know that it’s also an invaluable cataloguing and workflow solution. in more recent editions it has also grown in strength as a standalone editing package, allowing you to carry out the majority of basic edits required. however, there are areas that it lacks in, such as not allowing you to use layers or to easily add text and borders to your images. For the first part, we can’t really help you, but there is a workaround for the latter issue and it’s tucked away in the Print module. the Print module is usually the place where you end up…

Present pictures with a classic frame

Boost black & whites

PRocessing bLAck & white images is a completely different ball game to working with colour. in fact, take the rule book and fling it out the window with vigour! Forget treading softly and making minute modifications – black & white images, by nature, don’t reflect reality so you can afford to take a little more artistic licence when processing them. Adding contrast in abundance, lifting colour luminance, amplified dodging and burning and increasing clarity all sounds like an eyewatering recipe for disaster if you were working in colour, but in monochrome it’s a sure way to add impact. Push the boundaries of a colour image too far and telltale signs of overprocessing appear. in this sense, monochrome is much more forgiving. here are a few easy-to-follow steps to give your…

Boost black & whites

Making manual selections

WHILE SMART TOOLS like the Quick Selection Tool, or Elements’ Smart Brush, can select areas of colour and strong contrast, what happens when you need to select something that isn’t a distinctive colour or is an awkward shape? That’s where manual selection tools come into play. They take more time to use as you’ll be tracing the area that you wish to select, but it’s a good way to make an accurate selection. For instance, we want to create a dramatic, high-contrast, desaturated final image of this scene. However, as some areas are already high contrast, we only want to boost contrast on specific areas, such as the boardwalk and sky. As the boardwalk has defined edges with sand in between, we’re going to need to use both the Lasso…

Making manual selections

Controlling colour

INCREASING IMAGE SATURATION is a delicate process. If your image is lacking vibrance it can end up looking dull and washed out. Perhaps worse, if you’re too heavy-handed when it comes to processing your colour images, then image quality is degraded and your shots can end up looking more eye-sore than eye-catching. When working with colour you’re constantly walking a fine line between not enough, just right and too much! A problem that you’ll often face when boosting an image’s saturation is that some colours look better for being made more vibrant, whereas others suffer from it. Blue skies decorated with white, fluffy clouds often benefit from a boost in saturation, as do green fields and trees, whereas skin tones are more delicate and need a slightly gentler approach. With…

Controlling colour

Add snow to your portraits

WHO DOESN’T LOVE a spot of snow? The joy of throwing back the curtains in the morning to be greeted by a winter wonderland is something that resonates with almost everybody, no matter their age. Shooting during a snow flurry presents fantastic opportunities for dream-like images. Unfortunately, chances for optimum conditions are seemingly few and far between and despite every winter being heralded as the coldest for 100 years, snow rarely materialises. Photographing a winter-themed portrait is simple, but adding a magical element in Photoshop with custom brushes can make it really special. 1 OPEN A BLANK DOCUMENT Open a new document by pressing cmd + N (Mac) or ctrl + N (PC). Set both the document Height and Width to 750px, ensure Background Contents is set to White and…

Add snow to your portraits

Create a dreamy Petzvallen seffect

DEVELOPED BACK IN 1840, the original Petzval lens was one of the greats: a fast portrait lens, loved by many for its ability to create stunning images featuring a sharp point of focus, shallow depth-of-field and a signature dreamy bokeh that seemed to swirl around the edges. We say original because so en vogue is this effect that Lomography, the global go-to marketplace for retro photography, released its own Petzval lens last year designed to be used with Canon and Nikon digital SLRs. Finding an original Petzval nowadays can be somewhat tricky and while we would suggest you look at Lomography’s stunning reinvention – if this is the sort of effect that you want to replicate on a regular basis – the results can be simulated quickly and with more…

Create a dreamy Petzvallen seffect

Create a cinematic effect

PRESS PAUSE DURING a blockbuster movie and take a moment to study the image in front of you – even as a still shot it instantly looks like a scene from a movie doesn’t it? Films have a certain aesthetic to them and this can usually be attributed to two main aspects handled during the ‘grading’ of the film – contrast and colour. We’re going to aim to replicate that movie look in a still image. Before you start, it’s a good idea to seek out frames from movies that you want to replicate. By studying the colours used you’ll gain a better understanding of what it is that makes the film look the way it does. A common theme is to make an image literally look cool by removing…

Create a cinematic effect

Backdrop colour shift

SEAMLESS PAPER BACKGROUNDS don’t come cheap, and are cumbersome too, so keeping a stock of different hues to change them mid-shoot isn’t practical. Thankfully, with a little Photoshop trickery you can conduct subtle colour shifts, allowing you to create shoots with more variety, by warming up or cooling down the ‘feel of a shoot, or to tweak the aesthetic of your backdrop to suit your subject. Often adding a hint of colour to a background can completely change the ‘feel’ of an image. The most pleasing shifts in hue often occur when you warm up or cool down a backdrop by subtly shifting it towards yellow or blue, respectively. That’s not to say more adventurous and exaggerated adjustments will not work – experiment with it; the changes are nondestructive and…

Backdrop colour shift

Retouching eyes

THE EYES ARE the windows into the soul, so we think they deserve some extra time and attention when editing your portraits. The eyes are the primary point of focus for anyone viewing a portrait – we are drawn to eyes first and foremost – this is why it’s so important to ensure that when you capture your portrait, your focusing is spot-on and the eyes are pin-sharp. Retouching eyes is not just a case of bumping up the exposure – tastes vary from person to person, but the general idea is for your subject's eyes to be bright and crisp, without them appearing to glow in the dark! Eyes are a lot more receptive to what we’ll call ‘exaggerated’ editing than the rest of the face. Significant increases in…

Retouching eyes

The smart way to sharpen

EVERY IMAGE NEEDS sharpening – even JPEGs that have already been sharpened in-camera – but how do you do it and, more importantly, what’s the best way to approach it? There are many, many ways, which is why it’s probably the most complex and avoided part of post-production, as it’s easier to get wrong than it is right. You have to think of your type of image: what level of sharpening has already been applied in-camera? Do some areas need sharpening more than others? And what’s your output going to be? You don’t need to sharpen half as much for a low-res web file as you will for a high-resolution print. With so much to consider, not to mention the many ways to execute the treatment, I’m going to make…

The smart way to sharpen

How to reduce noise

RECENT gENERaTiONs Of DsLRs handle noise a lot better than they used to. shooting at high isO ratings was previously avoided at all costs unless you wanted to make it look as if you were photographing in a snowstorm. Rarely did you push above isO 800 unless you absolutely had to. However, thanks to advances in both sensor and processing technology, cranking up the isO to shoot in low light no longer confines your images to the trash. Of course, using a high isO isn’t the only cause of noise – it can also be affected by long exposures or by over-zealous editing and exposure manipulation. Photoshop offers excellent controls that allow you to alter the grain in your images. The temptation, though, is to wind the sliders all the…

How to reduce noise

Breathe life into flat photos

WE ALL HAVE images that didn’t quite render the scene how you remember it. Maybe the sky’s not as moody, or the ground is too dark, or maybe the overall appearance of the image lacks contrast or is badly exposed. Well, Shadows & Highlights can resurrect these images. This nifty adjustment is a fantastic photographic tool, which is often overlooked by users since dedicated HDR software like Photomatix and Photoshop actions became available from third-party companies. In the simplest terms, the adjustments allow you to recover detail from overand underexposed areas by adjusting the Highlights or Shadows controls respectively, or you can improve the overall tonal range using the Midtone Contrast slider. It’s really very simple. The key to success with Shadows & Highlights is subtlety. As with any process…

Breathe life into flat photos

Advanced retouching skills

IT’S EASY TO cake a face in blur or paint over skin for a porcelain finish; the difficulty comes when you want to keep the natural texture but even out and improve the tone. Portrait professionals do it with ease and keep their methods close to their chest, but we have a few secret techniques that we’re more than willing to share. Some of you will probably already use quick-fix techniques to smooth skin and reduce imperfections, and it will be all you need for a while, but more seasoned Photoshoppers might be ready to move on to this more thorough and advanced technique. Yes, dedicated software helps you get flawless results, but why spend the money when you already have Photoshop? Layers, Adjustment Layers and Layer Masks are essential…

Advanced retouching skills

VSCO Film Lightroom plug-in

EVEr sincE thE advent of digital, photographers have longed to achieve that film look in their images. Presently, emulating film is more en vogue than ever. cue Visual supply co, or VscO – the experts in film emulation. By shooting, developing and studying a huge selection of films on different cameras, VscO has created presets that accurately emulate the classic films that we all love and miss so much. Available in five different packs, each costing $119, the VscO Film Lightroom plug-ins offer users ease and convenience – a one-click solution to style and grade images. this has made VscO incredibly popular with wedding and lifestyle photographers who want to process hundreds of images quickly and easily. Due to the large number of variables when it comes to film, there’s…

VSCO Film Lightroom plug-in

Google Nik Viveza

THere are counTless tools available for photographers within adobe elements, lightroom and Photoshop to help them process their digital files, though most assume a certain degree of knowledge in order to get the most out of them. Things can quickly get complicated when you start introducing masks and selections, alongside multiple layers, adjustment brushes and filters. Viveza, part of the Google nik collection of plug-ins, aims to remedy this by offering users a simple and straightforward way to make quick and professional adjustments with minimal technical know-how. Viveza is only available as part of the larger Google nik collection (it may sound pricey but, considering that you get seven plug-ins in one, it only works out at just under £13 per plug-in!). To put this into perspective, Viveza used to…

Google Nik Viveza

Add mood with Rays

CRepusCulaR Rays, God rays, shafts of light… Whichever term you use to refer to them, there’s no denying their allure to landscape photographers. you have to have just the right conditions for them to present themselves – a sunny, yet misty morning or evening in a forest or woods with just the right amount of canopy cover will do the trick – not too specific, right? If you’re struggling to make all of these elements align then fear not, the effect can be replicated to a reasonably realistic standard in photoshop. It’s a pretty tricky technique to master if you’re doing it manually, but thankfully you don’t have to! The clever folks at Digital Film Tools have created a plug-in called Rays to use with adobe photoshop, elements, lightroom and…

Add mood with Rays

EVEry so oftEn you’ll come across a plug-in, piece of software or extension and you’ll wonder why the functionality that it offers doesn’t come with Photoshop in the first place – tych Panel 2 is a perfect example of this. tych Panel 2 is a free extension for Adobe Photoshop Cs5, Cs6 and CC and was created by swedish wedding photographer reimund trost of Lumens Bröllopsfotografi as a solution for putting together quick and easy diptychs and triptychs to present on his wedding photography blog. first of all, to download tych Panel 2, visit: http://lumens.se/tychpanel/. once downloaded, tych Panel 2 needs to be installed using Adobe Extension Manager. If you don’t already have this, it can be installed for free from www.adobe.com/exchange/em_download/. once done, simply follow the installation procedure as…

IN THIS AGE of Instagram filters and off-the-shelf presets, it’s never been easier to style the colours in your images. Topaz Labs’ ReStyle plug-in is a preset manager with a difference. Boasting more than 1,000 presets, selective adjustments, blending modes and custom presets, it’s a powerhouse for colour-toning and offers near-endless options to stylise your images. While ReStyle’s one-click presets are both plentiful and effective, it’s the ability to create custom presets that we’re going to cover here – specifically, taking the tones from one image and applying them to another. If you’ve ever seen a colour palette that you like the look of and tried to replicate it, you’ll appreciate what a tricky a process it can be. First you’ve got to identify the colours used in the source…

Monochrome with Tonality

THere are a Huge number of plug-ins and software packages available that claim to be the ultimate way to convert your images to monochrome. One fairly new product to market is Tonality Pro, from Macphun. This apple-only black & white conversion software in available in two flavours: Tonality is aimed at amateur and enthusiast photographers and costs £14; while Tonality Pro is aimed at serious enthusiasts and professionals and costs £42. The standalone Tonality package contains the tools that most users will need, while the Pro version adds extra plug-in support for Photoshop, Lightroom, aperture and elements along with other more advanced features. One of Tonality’s key features, alongside the vast array of presets available, is layers. Much like Photoshop, effects and adjustments can be added in layers, and then…

Monochrome with Tonality

Create realistic rain

TOP TIP pickyourshot Foranauthenticfinish,only addraineffectstoscenesthat looklikethey’dsuitit–aclear blueskyorbone-dryground willinstantlydiscredit theeffect LIvIng In the UK, it’s fair to say we’re no strangers to prolonged and unexpected downpours. Landscape, portrait, macro and sports photographers alike will attest that many photographic opportunities have been lost to a surprise interruption of precipitation. however, there are those occasions when rainfall adds to a scene and it’s worth sticking it out rather than grabbing your gear and running for cover. typically, rainfall rarely happens when you want it, so here’s a handy way to add a shower to your shots using a nifty plug-in. this is just one of the many filters, effects, gradients and textures offered by OnOne's Perfect effects 9 so it’s well worth a look. Best of all, at the time of print, Perfect…

Create realistic rain

Fake bokeh with ease

THE PROBLEM WITH any software that automatically adds blur is that actual blur is dependent on depth, but images contain no readable depth data therefore the software doesn’t know which bits to blur and how much to blur them. Although not fully autonomous, Topaz Labs’ Lens Effects is the closest you can get to the real thing, thanks to its clever Depth map facility. by manually mapping what objects are closest and which are furthest away, Lens Effects allows you to pick focal points and apply blur post-capture. Lens Effects costs $79.99, or you can try it for a free for 30 days at www.topazlabs.com. 1 LOAD YOUR IMAGE Select Bokeh – SLR Lens or Bokeh – Selective. The latter allows for greater adjustment and the former contains lens emulations…

Fake bokeh with ease

Create a time stack

WE caME across this technique after seeing the fantastic work of 500px member Matt Molloy (500px.com/mattmolloy). the method for capturing the images are identical to if you were shooting a time-lapse video sequence, however rather than compiling the shots into a video, you overlay the exposures into a single image during processing using Photoshop’s ‘Lighten’ blend mode. By doing this, it has the effect of smearing clouds into unusual and eye-catching patterns. it’s actually the exact same processing technique used to compile star-trail images! a windy day will allow you to shoot more movement in a shorter period of time – we shot this tutorial on a relatively still day and, as such, it took around 20 minutes and 600 exposures to compile the final image. • EQUIPMENT: There are…

Create a time stack

Edit your time stack

THERE ARE TWO ways to compile your time-lapse images into a single file – the quick and easy way, or the hard, lengthy way. The hard way involves cutting and pasting each and every one of your exposures as a new layer onto the previous and setting that layer’s Blend Mode to Lighten. The easy way involves simply downloading a clever (and free) piece of software called StarStax (http://bit.do/DSLR_starstax) and letting it do all the hard work for you – we’re going to go with the latter. Once stacked, you can chose to leave it at that, however the resulting image usually ends up looking a bit flat, as the multiple exposures even out the lighting. However, a few select tweaks to contrast and to enhance the sky are all…

Edit your time stack

Daylight portraits

ASk ALMOST ANy top landscape photographer and they’ll tell you that exposing to the right, or ETTR, is the best way to get maximum detail out of your Raw files. This is actually true – the light side of the histogram records far more detail than the dark side, so slightly overexposing your files retains more detail. There is, however, a newer school of thought emerging that is becoming increasingly popular with natural-light portrait photographers – intentional underexposure. Why would you intentionally underexpose a portrait, you may ask? Think about it this way: when using flash you might underexpose the ambient light and then highlight your subject with the strobe to make them stand out against their surroundings. Natural light doesn’t often offer the same level of control, although the…

Daylight portraits

Fun triptych portrait

EVER FEEL LIKE you’re in bits and pieces? Here’s a quirky and creative portrait technique that uses the feeling figuratively! By shooting three individual images of someone's head, torso and feet, before stitching them back together in a triptych, you can create a zany stylised portrait that can't fail to raise a smile. The popularity of this technique can be credited, in part, to street photographer Adde Adesokan, whose series Triptychs of Strangers gained viral success online. Adde used this technique with fantastic and inspiring results and has put together a collection of triptych portraits on flickr. Check out his take on the idea for yourself, here: http://bit.do/DSlr-adde. The trick when shooting your own triptych portrait is not to aim for the three images to line up – quite the…

Fun triptych portrait

Create your triptych

1 SYNC IMAGE SETTINGS With your final images selected, make sure that there's consistent White Balance and exposure across all three. If not, make these changes to the Raw files first. Once done, open all three images in Photoshop. The next steps are to make sure that all of your images are the exact same resolution and aspect ratio. 2 MATCH IMAGE SIZES You can skip this step if all of your images are already the same size – we had to crop the Raw files slightly, so all three were different. Check the size of each image by going to Image>Image Size. Make a note of the shortest width from all three and use the same Image Size menu to make the other two images the same width. 3…

Create your triptych

Adobe Camera Raw: the basics

What would you do if you were given one million pounds? Buy a new house? Take a luxury holiday or two? Give up the day job to be a professional photographer? Whatever you decide, one thing you probably wouldn’t do is to throw away most of that money and try to make the same dreams come true on the small fraction that’s left – sounds silly, doesn’t it? So why would you do this with your camera’s pixels? You spend a lot of money on the latest technology with the view of getting the best image quality that your budget can buy, and then you, in effect, discard a generous proportion of this data and detail by shooting in JPEG and then wonder why your image quality is not as…

Adobe Camera Raw: the basics

Getting started in Adobe Camera Raw

IF YOU NORMALLY shoot JPEGs, you won’t have to know much to notice a dramatic difference to the quality of your edited images once you begin working with Raw. Just being able to navigate a few basic settings in your chosen software guarantees better results, simply because you not only have a lot more image information stored, and therefore scope for better improvement, but you call the shots based on each image’s needs rather than letting the camera apply the same blanket adjustments, like sharpening and colour saturation, to all your pictures. The best part of editing in Adobe Camera Raw is that it doesn’t matter how many errors you make, no amount of editing you do to your Raw file degrades the image quality – unlike a JPEG –…

Getting started in Adobe Camera Raw

Advance your skills with these top tools

HAving CoveRed tHe basics, you should at least be able to now dabble with processing your Raw files and start to notice the difference to your images. Some photographers, after making basic ACR exposure and contrast adjustments, prefer to open their image in the main Photoshop suite to apply any distortion correction and sharpening, rather than continuing to edit in ACR. it’s really a matter of choice. if you do choose to make some, or all, of your extra adjustments in Photoshop, we strongly advise not compressing your Raw file first, but to open your Raw image as a copy or object to ensure the best results – otherwise you’ll lose data and quality. depending on your preferred ACR workflow, some of the tools featured in this section, such as…

Advance your skills with these top tools

How to manage colour with Camera Calibration

It’s one aRea of adobe Camera Raw that often gets ignored, but it holds a few tricks and treats you might be interested to know about – especially if you like your in-camera presets or your shadows often have a colour cast. the eighth tab along the editing suite in aCR, Camera Calibration, offers a few practical and creative profiles for adjusting and improving the colour rendering of your pictures. each profile is calibrated to get the best from your camera or to correct its unwanted colour behaviour, so it can be a really useful tool if you know how to use it. Your default profile is adobe Camera standard, which is excellent and very rarely – if ever – will you need to change from it. But if you…

How to manage colour with Camera Calibration

How to ‘expose to the right’

IF YOU’RE NOT familiar with the term ‘exposing to the right’ (ETTR), despite sounding like something you could get arrested for doing, it is actually a Raw-only technique designed to help you maximise image quality. The principle is to push your image’s exposure as far towards overexposure as possible, without clipping highlight areas. You do this by increasing the exposure length until the majority of pixels are grouped to the right of the histogram’s mid-point – with the brightest pixels nuzzled to the far right. While ETTR images look awful initially – too bright and lacking in contrast, and require more time, thought and effort to process – the final result is an image boasting more tonal information and smoother tonal transitions. Most digital sensors have a usable dynamic range…

How to ‘expose to the right’

Raw challenge 1: Caroline Schmidt

SuCh A vIBRAnT portrait might call for some colour treatment, but strip the colour away and there is also a wide tonal range with strong separation between the subject and background. It’s a good candidate for a black & white conversion. You might think me crazy to strip such as strong image of its rainbow colour, but sometimes a busy, graphic image can look better black & white. When importing images into Lightroom for shortlisting, I’ll often use its B&W Presets to preview what an image might look like converted to monochrome at varying contrast levels – it gives a good indication of what I can do to them in Photoshop. While you can just as easily use Lightroom to develop your black & whites, I prefer Photoshop ACR when…

Raw challenge 1: Caroline Schmidt

Raw challenge 2: Paul Ward

EVEN THOUGH I always aim to capture a shot as close to perfect as I can in-camera, knowing that I can tweak the highlights or push up the shadows is a comforting fail-safe, especially when I’m shooting for clients, but the biggest benefit for me is the White Balance adjustment. White Balance is easy to misjudge in mixed lighting and shooting Raw means you can rely on the flexibility it offers when editing. It is possible to adjust the colours on a JPEG file but it doesn't look that accurate and can degrade the image slightly if used too heavily. When I first opened this Raw file, I was instantly struck by how blue the tones were, and not surprising as it was shot at a White Balance of 4700K.…

Raw challenge 2: Paul Ward

Raw challenge 3: Jordan Butters

I’D CONSIDER PORTRAITS to be some of the trickiest types of photographs to retouch and edit. Why? I think it may be because we’re so used to seeing people’s faces in photographs that any instance in which someone’s skin is a bit too smooth, or their eyes brightened just a smidgen too much, seems to stand out like a sore thumb. For this reason alone when retouching portraits, I'll often finish my edit before powering down the computer, but then revisit the picture the following day – a fresh set of eyes can often give you a new perspective on whether you’ve got it just right, or over-egged it. This is a really nice portrait with great lighting, but there’s a lot going on. The model’s dress is quite busy…

Raw challenge 3: Jordan Butters

Raw challenge 1:Caroline Schmidt

ABROODING LANDSCAPE with striking reflections and tonal detail is crying out for huge contrast adjustments. With a JPEG file, you have to be especially careful in how you go about edits so not to introduce quality-degrading noise and artefacts. This is why Raw is such a valuable file format: it provides much wider margins to expand exposure information. Thankfully Adam's exposure is spot-on, so I can concentrate on polishing the colour and contrast. Had the file been under or overexposed, I might not have been able to be so demanding on the data without a detriment to quality. While Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Lightroom are fine places to make all Raw edits, I prefer to use ACR for base adjustments then continue to edit the Raw files in Photoshop…

Raw challenge 1:Caroline Schmidt

Raw challenge 2: Adam Burton

WHENEVER I PROCESS a picture, my priority is to retain the authenticity of the original scene. It is important to me that I keep my picture true to the conditions that I witnessed, or as far as I can remember and for that reason I try to do minimal processing. When I say minimal, think subtle. All of my pictures are captured in Raw and, as such, there are certain small adjustments that I apply to every image to bring the file to life. For me, it is a case of polishing the picture through a series of subtle changes, rather than creating a very different image through heavy-handed processing. This image of Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland was captured at the end of a glorious day, when dark menacing clouds…

Raw challenge 2: Adam Burton

Raw challenge 3: Jordan Butters

BEING GRANTED THE privilege of working on someone else’s Raw file is a pretty rare occurrence, but an interesting experiment. Photographers are understandably precious about protecting their images – we take a lot of time, care and attention towards making sure our exposures are the best that they can be. With that in mind, I want to do justice to Adam’s Raw file, while at the same time explore a more creative approach outside of straightforward editing. I know Adam is an advocate of getting it right in camera, and his editing style reflects this, so I want to push the boat out (coastal pun fully intended) to create something a little bit different. This is the opposite of Adam’s purist approach, so it’ll be interesting to see how our…

Raw challenge 3: Jordan Butters

Spring-clean your photo workflow

THINK OF AN IMAGE you shot a few years ago. got it? now i dare you to try to find it on one of your backup discs in less than three minutes. if you can, stop reading now. Seriously, turn to page 158 or go pick up your camera: there’s nothing we can do for you here. for the other 99.9% of you, tear this feature out and stick it to your monitor as a reminder. most of us would like to think we could put our hands on an image, not overwrite any files and have everything safely secured in backup hard drives – but we don’t. in fact, for most of us we operate a system of organised chaos and that means we know the image is in…

Spring-clean your photo workflow

SCREEN BRIGHTNESS Yourmonitorshould be set to between 80 and 120 cd/m2 – but forthosewho don’t want to be bogged down bydata, setyourscreen’s Brightness to full-powerand pull it back by1/3 – then you’ll be in a similarballpark. Most people like the punch oftheirscreen on full brightness, butyou really want to beworking at 2/3 brightness foraccurate rendering.There's also the added bonus that you’re being greenerbysaving energy andyou’re also extending the life ofyourmonitor FORGET PRINTS FOR the moment, let’s cater to those photographers whose images live on-screen and never make it into a frame. While it’s sad but true, most of us now enjoy our images on monitors, be it computers, digital photo frames, smartphones or tablets. But what if I was to tell you that no two screens are ever the same,…

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