Ankur Patar is a photographer and digital artist based in Brisbane with a very neat and unique talent. He's able to create remarkable replicas of famous works of art using nothing but stock photos and Photoshop. Check out this amazing video of him recreating a Rembrandt work.
Recently, Adobe dropped a major Photoshop update, introducing an array of new features that add new capabilities and make your work more efficient and easy. Some of the new features have a bit of a learning curve, however, but here's a great tutorial to get you up and running in no time.
I'm cursed with having thin facial hair. I'll never have the lush, full beard of a lumberjack. My face must brave the brutal Cleveland winter bare and exposed to the biting cold. Luckily, Phlearn is here with a tutorial to remedy that.
Adobe updated its Creative Cloud Suite today with new features for many of its apps. In addition to a number of new and refined features across several applications (including some not mentioned in the title), this update focuses on improving performance in Photoshop, while it also offers a return to an old favorite.
I've always heard that Adobe Photoshop will not allow you to import pictures of U.S. currency because you could potentially be using the software to "copy money." Today I ran across a video that also claims that all current copy machines will not copy currency due to a hidden pattern on the bills. I decided to put this to the test.
Adobe has launched their latest update to Lightroom and Photoshop in the 2015.1 update. In the Adobe Camera Raw module and Lightroom, they have developed a new feature that is something photographers in the travel, architecture, and cityscape photography industry will really find useful. It can actually change some of your old previously unusable images into great images.
The recent controversy surrounding Steve McCurry and his use of Photoshop has raised both questions relating to his past work and broader questions of representation in photography. Though an increasing number of images showing evidence of cloning and other manipulations have been uncovered, recently, two videos have surfaced that raise further questions.
Freckles are in. As more and more brands and publications start opting to hire models with realistic “imperfections,” we’re bound to see more and more ads with speckled skin. Score one for realistic expectations! However, lighting freckles isn't easy, as most broad light sources will flatten the tone in the skin. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to bring back and enhance freckles in Adobe Lightroom.
The next Photoshop CC update will bring a new feature called "Content Aware Crop Tool." At first sight, it works quite similar to the Content Aware Fill Tool, which was first introduced in Photoshop CS5. The new crop feature fills the corner gaps intelligently while cropping after straightening.
Photographer Mark Thorpe has made a major course change with his move to Japan, replacing wide open spaces, wildlife, and amazing scenes for the bright lights and sometimes claustrophobic life of mega cities. He's replaced his award-winning images of mass migrations and underwater beauty with his new challenge to document vibrant cityscapes through time-lapse photography and shares his knowledge with other photographers in this new video tutorial.
I’m sure most people have been in this situation: You are going through some old images of you when you were a child and come along an image that you absolutely adore. Maybe you want to share it across social media, or display it on your desk at work. The problem though is that after years of sitting in a box in the attic has taken its toll on the image. You are now left with a scratched up mess of a print. Watch as Aaron Nace from Phlearn walks through the key steps to repairing your tattered image to something you are proud to show off.
MacPhun is a popular à la carte Mac photo-editing software company that offers a variety of solutions for various editing needs. For the next week and a half, they're offering their entire suite of products for a price of $129, compared to the $2,000 that it would normally cost. Is $2,000 a little steep for all of this? Sure. But at $129, some will find it hard to pass up these standalone, subscription-free editing tools. Creative Kit customers can save even more.
Photoshopping models has been a hot button topic for as long as there has been Photoshop and models, but here we have a video that explores a less-visited side of the story. How do men feel about seeing their bodies manipulated outside reality?
Peter Stewart is an internationally published photographer that specialized in travel and fine art photography. To understand how to take awesome scenery photos, you must know the three basic qualities of light: intensity, direction, and color. Check out how a master does his work.
Are you a Photoshop expert? Fstoppers is starting a new weekly Photoshop contest for our community! We want you to submit your best photoshopped images in the groups where fellow photographers will vote for their top five favorite images. Of those top five, one lucky winner will be chosen and win their choice of an Fstoppers tutorial. This week we are focusing on your most creative photoshops within wedding photography!
This is a pet peeve of mine, so I am going to thank you in advance for indulging me. There seems to be a rampant misunderstanding in certain levels of the photo community as to what editing presets are, and what they actually accomplish. I (like many of you I would assume) am a member of various photo-centric groups on Facebook. In particular, I am a member of groups for people who have purchased Lightroom and ACR preset packs from a variety of creators. Almost daily I see posts in these groups that go something like this: "I thought my photos were beyond hope, but then I applied "WHIMSICAL PRESET NAME" and they were saved! These presets are amazing!!!1!111!!!" Sound familiar?
When the term "compositing" comes up, one often considers it a destructive, transformative process that involves frankensteining a myriad of images into a single, completely new, composition. This method can draw as much ire as it does praise. Personally, I love great composites, but many feel that they are too fake. Not all compositing has to be a metamorphosis creating a brand new image, however. By leveraging compositing technique to make slight alterations to your image you can, instead, create a shot that is much more true to reality but still creates a sense of fantasy or surrealism.
In this video, Guadalajara-based Photographer and Retoucher Sid Vasandani, shows us how to recreate that classic Steven Meisel vibe, used in his controversial campaigns for Vague Italia's, "Makeover Madness" and "Supermodel Enter Rehab". Watch as Sid walks us through a behind-the-scenes shoot, where he runs down the lighting set up, before going into an in-depth explanation of the retouching and color grading workflow in Photoshop.
Color management can be one of the most boring topics to learn as a photographer, right up there with topics like digital asset management and accounting. They all have one thing in common, however: they’re important parts of being a photographer. Learning how to manage color doesn’t have to be difficult, however. Consider this your crash course introduction in learning how.
It's been said that Prague-based Photographer and Retoucher Erik Johansson doesn't capture moments, he captures ideas. To him, photography is a way to actualize complex, surreal concepts that are in his head. So, when you think about it, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Johansson is kind of like our generation's Ansel Adams, as they both heavily employed previsualization techniques while pioneering unique solutions to achieve their visions. The end results are images that match the exact ideas they had in their minds' eyes.
Imagine yourself under a starry night sky. Wouldn’t it be great to capture the Milky Way to show it at home or on the web? Unfortunately, you are left with a black frame after you’ve pointed the camera upwards at settings you are used to. It's time to open up the aperture, lengthen the exposure, and bump up the ISO. You will introduce noise, but do you really care? Aren’t there tools out there to reduce noise but still keep the detail?
Nik software is one of the heavy hitters in the Lightroom and Photoshop plugin world. They are so big that in 2012, the company was bought up by Google. After Google's acquisition, they lowered the price for all the desktop plugins and made their mobile app (Snapseed) free of charge. Now, four years later, Google has decided to bring their desktop plugins into line with their mobile application by making all of them free.
I’m a big fan of getting images right in camera, and it's something that strive to do. I think there is something to be said for the skill that it takes, especially when shooting an event like a wedding. Getting the perfect light, the perfect composition, and the perfect moment while dealing with all the different variables of the day is quite a feat. The main image I’m going to be talking about today, though, does not fit into this category, but it still manages to be one of my favorite and most "liked” images.
Adding a colored background to your studio shots can vastly change the impact of a studio photo. The most obvious method to do this is by collecting an army of colored backdrops that take up space and are a headache to swap in and out from shoot to shoot. Instead, it is quite easy to build this coloring effect using Photoshop so that you can shoot each image using a standard white or grey background.
Whenever we've written an article mentioning Affinity Photo, people have commented and complained that it is not compatible with Windows. But this is about to change in the next couple of months. Affinity just announced that they are working on Windows versions of their different apps.
Don't get me wrong; I am not going to show you how to make up for bad lighting in post-production. However, Glen Dewis has created a very interesting video that shows us how to achieve a gobo-like effect using Photoshop, something that be very handy if you are looking for an easy way to add drama to your picture without spending too much time in front of your computer.
Have you ever had trouble with too much noise in one of your images? Maybe the shooting conditions forced you to shoot at an ISO that pushed the limits of your camera a little too much. One way to limit this problem is to shoot multiple exposures with the same settings, and then, use post-production to combine the images and reduce the noise. In this tutorial, Travel Photographer Jimmy Mclnyre shows you how to do just that.
Histograms in Photoshop and on your camera can look a bit confusing but the concept behind them is actually very simple and straight forward. In this short but informative video from Envato Tuts you get a 60 second crash course on what a histogram is and the purpose that it serves. If you've ever wondered about these mysterious charts, here is what you need to know.
There's this nifty piece of software called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and in my time as an educator in the craft of photography I have seen its use frequently abused and mishandled. The issues affect beginners and pros alike, and stem from multiple issues, everything from technical oversight, all the way to a fundamental misunderstanding of what Lightroom is meant for. Read on for an overview of common misconceptions and mistakes with regards to this immensely powerful photo editing system.
Just like ever camera owner is a photographer, every person who owns an abundance of MAC products is a makeup artist. At least that is how it seems on Instagram these days. There are now more makeup artists on social media than ever, and finding the right ones to follow can be tricky. Following the best makeup artists can make a portrait photographer better. If you follow them closely, you can step up your game.
Just like learning in any practice or aspect of life, the more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know or haven't learned. It's natural; it happens. There's so much for all of us to learn. Here are a few mistakes that I couldn't believe I was making during my photography career.
We've all been there at one point, watching an in-depth Photoshop tutorial to help hone and develop your skills. But if you're not fortunate enough to have multiple monitors, it can be a real pain in the ass going back and forth from the video and Photoshop to follow along. Isn't there an easier way to do this? Introducing the new Fluid Browser app.
Even though I am not a landscape photographer and I have never attempted any sort of astrophotography, I have always appreciated beautiful photographs of nightscapes. Recently, I borrowed the new Tamron SP 15-30mm f/2.8 Di VC USD lens and tried to photograph an interesting night scene here in Charleston. Truth be told, it was quite the learning experience. In this video, I will share my first ever approach to shooting the night sky and hopefully give you a few things to think about when tackling this interesting genre of photography.
In the retouching world, graphics tablets are pretty much a standard. I don’t know of many retouchers that only use their mouse to get the job done. Graphics tablets allow for a more precise, and thus refined, work. They also used to cost a fair amount of money, but that was until Huion came along.
This year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition has not only progressed in it’s presentation and it’s cover models like plus-sized model Ashley Graham, but on the back cover of the latest edition has a clever ad run by Snickers. The ad presents huge Photoshop fails, can you spot the mistakes?
In a quaint suburban neighborhood south of Sydney, Australia stands a three bedroom brick home that looks like any other at first glance. It is sharp and modern. The image is bright and vibrant and definitely eye catching. At a quick first look, it is a pretty standard image of the facade of a home. The detail that isn't featured in this image is what has the entire real estate industry buzzing. A simple Google search of the home brings up a much different representation of the property. Which begs the immediate question; how far is 'too far' when using photo editing software to edit real estate imagery?
Our second tutorial with Elia Locardi: Photographing the World: Cityscape, Astrophotography, and Advanced Post-Processing was all about different types of cities. We started in Cinque Terre, a region of Italy where cities are basically built into the side of a natural landscape. We then moved on to Rome to shoot ancient architecture. Next we moved on to Singapore and Hong Kong for something a little bit more modern.
Current cameras' sensors are getting better year after year. Unfortunately, they cannot create noise-free images at high ISO just yet. I am sure the day will come soon, but in the meantime, there is a very simple technique using Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo to create the illusion of a clean file.
A bug in a recent Adobe Creative Cloud update is currently deleting a folder on the root drive (Macintosh HD, by default) of Macs upon installation. This issue is affecting Backblaze users disproportionately due to the fact that the bug results in the deletion of the contents of the alphabetically first hidden folder on the root drive, which is often the folder ".bzbol" for Backblaze users.
When Pixellu came out with its too easy to believe drag and drop album creator that synced with every popular album company's layouts, those who were not Mac users were certainly bummed to hear they would be missing out. But today, after Pixellu released SmartAlbums 2 for Mac, the SmartAlbums version for Windows is here and it comes at a generous $50 discount for those who have waited so patiently.
I don't rate my photos nearly as much as I should. And part of it has been because I've been too lazy to look this exact tip up! Thankfully, Adobe has provided us with one of their now famous under-a-minute Lightroom Coffee Break videos to quickly explain how to auto-advance as you rate your photos. This trick also works for auto-advancing while flagging photos. The key to the trick? Caps lock.
Keeping a fair amount of texture seems to be an issue for a lot of photographers and retouchers. No matter what technique they use to clean the skin of a model, I often hear people trying to find a solution to get a more natural and visible texture. Here is one for you!
In this tutorial, Aaron Nace from Phlearn takes a beautiful nighttime cityscape and shows you how you can create a custom brush to add your own stars to an image in Photoshop. Nace begins the tutorial by showing you how to make a custom brush in a new document. He continues to show you how to save the brush as a preset, use it on your image, and make adjustments that will change the amount and size of the stars you paint in. He goes further, showing how to add a nice glow to the stars and create a slight motion blur to make them look more realistic.
Adobe launched a new YouTube series through their Lightroom channel to give Lightroom users some extra tips on features they may not have come across yet. While some highlighted features such as viewing masking for the sharpening tool are a little better known, others are more tucked away and might come as a surprise, like this feature that allows you to update the overall effect of a local adjustment with multiple sliders in effect.
When learning about retouching, selections and masks should be on top of the list along with curves and brushes. But each of these tools have so many options, and it is hard to know the in and out of each of them. In this article, I will guide you through different ways to create precise and refined luminosity masks to help you improve your retouching skills.
Abandon fake Photoshop lens flares and enhance your photographs with lens flares captured in an actual camera. Vibrantly colored and rich in detail, these flares are created using Nikon, Leica, Fuji, and Pentax cameras. Fairly simple to use, the Principle Light Hits Pack by Lens Distortions is definitely becoming one of my new favorite toys for creative post editing.
Color correction and grading are probably amongst the most difficult parts of a retouching workflow. What seems to make it difficult in Photoshop is usually the understanding of the different tools available, such as curves and levels. However, there are a couple of tricks that can make it much easier, color palettes and fill layers being some of them.
Fake contact lenses (also known as circle lenses) are becoming wildly popular. They seem to have first started to gain momentum in the cosplay world but have begun growing well beyond that. I've started to encounter models regularly wearing them, especially ones focusing on Asian fashion trends. Circle contacts look great at a glance, they make the pupil larger and often change its color to be more exciting. When walking around in real life or when in video the eye is constantly moving so the weakness of being obviously fake is much less apparent. However, when photographed the eye is frozen in perfect sharpness which instantly reveals how fake circle lenses can look, especially the cheaper ones.
Beginners ask all the time on Facebook groups or in forums how to diminish their retouching time. The truth is, there aren't any magical technique to cut time, only tricks to help accelerate your workflow. There is one, in particular, to make your dodging and burning process more flawless and thus a bit faster by utilizing a Wacom tablet.
Adobe’s last quarter results are out, and they’re better than ever. Adobe’s Creative Cloud and media business rose 35 percent thanks to a 23 percent beat on subscriber expectations, while the company’s overall net income more than doubled from $88.1 million to a staggering $222 million. Adobe’s fourth-quarter earnings report shot its stock to all-time highs. On one hand, that’s good business. But what does this mean for creatives who have felt an increasingly rocky relationship with the software giant?
