Making great portraits isn't only for people, and with our pets being live-in models, we can get a little more practice perfecting our lighting and post-processing even at home.
Gradients in Photoshop are versatile tools with applications in everything from color grading through to special effects. In this video, see how to use gradients in five different ways.
On-location portraits can be a great way to add more visual interest to your images, but unfortunately, the sky does not always cooperate as you had hoped. You can't just cancel your shoots whenever you do not have great weather, though. This great video will show you how to retouch a portrait in Lightroom while replacing the sky using Luminar 4.
We have all done it. It doesn't matter how long you have been a photographer; at some point, you will take the perfect shot, but the flash will not fire, you will have slipped and moved the shutter speed, or any manner of blunders. Here is how I fix them.
As a commercial photographer who shoots predominantly for print, I need a very well-calibrated monitor and camera profile, but does anyone else need this?
A good studio photographer will know how to prevent glare from being captured in a subject’s spectacles, but it’s not always possible to avoid catching reflections during less controlled shoots. This detailed tutorial from Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect gives you a complete explanation of how to remove it.
The wonderful thing about creativity is that there are no real right or wrong answers. There are plenty of artists that regularly break the rules in order to produce something compelling or beautiful. Nonetheless, there are still certain practices that can be widely disliked and preferably avoided.
The first thing you should be doing when editing landscapes (or any kind of photo) in Lightroom is to apply a new profile. By adjusting this base render of your raw files, you’re providing a solid foundation on which to edit.
Presets these days come in at a dime a dozen, that is unless you are looking for something that is more than a simple set of slider movements and a curves adjustment. In that case, SLR Lounge and DVLOP have what you are looking for.
In my experience, it's been rare for me to watch a tutorial on YouTube and feel completely satisfied with the information being presented. In many instances, the information is either really basic, common knowledge or just a new way of saying something that's already been said. The video linked above is a very welcome change from that.
When it comes to storing data, photographers have it easy. What if you’re a filmmaker shooting on multiple cameras across multiple projects for multiple clients? Resolution is increasing by the year, and fortunately, hard drives are also growing in size, but what do you do if you have 200 terabytes of data to look after?
Light painting a car can be tricky to get right and difficult to know exactly what steps to take in camera. This video shows you the complete process, from garage space through to finished (and frankly brilliant) image.
While it's important to get things right at the source, if you've made that age-old mistake of not changing your camera settings before taking the shot, is it possible to recover the photo? Or is it destined for the recycling bin?
Plugins for both photography and video are plentiful nowadays, and the quality of them varies hugely. Here are one cinematographer's favorite video plugins that he is glad he invested in.
The blur tool was once a largely useless feature, only applicable in niche uses. That's no longer the case and it's now more powerful than ever before. In this video you will see five different effects you can utilize in your photography.
In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how I created this large composite matte painting scene in Photoshop.
Post-processing is, in many ways, deeper and more complex than taking the photograph itself. While that provides greater creative control and room to maneuver, it also creates more pitfalls. Here are some crucial tips for post processing your images.
How essential is sharpening to your editing workflow? Do you actually know how the sharpening sliders work?
There are a lot of "edit-my-photo" type challenges going around because of restrictions on movement, but this one takes it to another level. Not only are the creators considered leaders in their respective fields, but the Photoshop editing workflow in this video is quite illuminating for anyone looking to learn how to utilize luminosity masks.
Polarizing filters are one of the last camera filters that cannot be replicated by software. But is a polarizing filter better to reduce haze in landscapes than Adobe Lightroom's Dehaze tool?
For many years now, I have religiously bracketed all my landscape images and macro images of flowers. This is why you should give serious consideration to always doing the same.
Last year, Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect produced an excellent tutorial on how to remove harsh shadows from an image using Photoshop. In this new video, he reveals a much faster way to achieve equally good results.
Over the last decade, we've had lots of new wide aperture lenses hit the market. Lenses like the Nikon 58mm f/0.95 make producing images with super shallow depth of field relatively easy. Even significantly less expensive lenses like an 85mm f/1.8 can produce beautiful, shallow depth in an image, but what if you want more depth?
Shooting a great portrait is only half the puzzle, as your post-processing has to back that up to create a complete winning image. This fantastic video will show you the process of editing this portrait for show-stopping results.
In this video walkthrough, watch as I show you how I created this photo manipulation horror composite portrait image in Photoshop.
One of the great things about photography is that you can practice it anywhere. You don't need expensive equipment to get the shot or a massive studio to get the photos you need.
Editing large batches of photos (such as those from a wedding) can be an extremely time-consuming task. What if software could do it for you? Would you use it? This interesting video takes a look at editing a wedding entirely using automatic software and the kind of results you can expect.
Last week, I sat down to do four portrait retouching courses from Chris Orwig. This enormous bundle of informative and accessible tutorials is packed with easily digested information. My confidence when it comes to editing portraits is now significantly higher.
Have you ever seen your own plant grow in a time-lapse? You can, and it’s a great exercise to learn something new about your camera and post-processing.
Exposure bracketing is a common technique used to capture the full dynamic range of a scene. If you are new to photography, this excellent video will explain what it is, why photographers use it, and how it is done.
The newly announced Microsoft Surface Book 3 is reportedly their most powerful laptop ever. So could it be good enough to destroy the competition? Namely, the new Apple Macbook Pro 2020. Photographers and creatives alike love Apple products for editing workflows, but could this be the beginning of the end for Apple's domination of the creative market?
Creating a soft light layer and filling it with 50% gray has been a tried and tested Photoshop technique for as long as anyone can remember. However, why do we do this for dodging and burning, and is there a better way of working? This short video asks some surprising questions.
Luminar 4's AI features have made most of the headlines, but the application is also a fully featured editor that can handle all the most essential adjustments as well as more advanced and creative techniques. This excellent video will show you five ways to make your landscape photos pop using Luminar 4.
Watching how others work is one way to improve. Watching how extremely successful people work is an even faster, better way to improve. In this video, watch how a very popular photographer edits images sent to him.
Do you ever think that some approaches to creating landscape photographs go too far? At what point do we stop and say it's too much?
Replacing a sky used to be a tedious (though still often worthwhile) procedure, but in recent years, advancements in selection technology and even AI sky replacement tools have surfaced, making the job quite a bit easier. This great video will show you how to replace a sky using both Photoshop and Luminar 4.
We all know that lockdown is a great time to learn a new skill, so here's a half an hour guide to get your started with creating videos using Da Vinci Resolve 16.
Luminar 4 is a great alternative for editing landscape photos and particularly for exploring your creativity. This informative video will show you how you can use the program to enhance a landscape image.
Like most of you, I'm cooped up at home other than occasional forage for groceries. As a landscape photographer in Arizona, there's plenty of landscape, but I'm doing my best to abide by the stay at home rules. So basically, the landscapes are in one place, I'm looking at 4 walls.
Recent updates to Lightroom Classic have brought a new level of control over local adjustments: Range Masks. Within this, the Color Range Mask allows you to be clumsy with your adjustment brushes while targeting very specific parts of your image. Here’s a detailed look at how it works.
Mary Bel is a single mom of 2 teenage kids, works full time, and finds a small glimpse of love, through self-portraiture.
We are currently locked down in Puerto Rico, and it's literally illegal for us to go outside to take photos, but we found an old lesson we filmed in Alaska that was never released.
In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how I created this stylized female boxer composite portrait image in Photoshop.
In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how to use the Portrait Enhance features in Luminar 4.2.
ON1 has teased the launch of ON1 360°, a new software platform that blends in cloud functionality with its raw editing capabilities.
AI editing tools are one of the newest and most exciting features in post-processing. This fun video features a photographer challenging himself to a post-processing contest versus AI editing tools and retouchers from Fiverr.
In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how I created my "Neon God" cyberpunk image in Photoshop.
For boudoir photographers, getting skin to look perfect is incredibly important and there are various software options that offer automation and simplicity instead of spending endless hours in Photoshop. In this video, check out how Luminar 4 performs. (Models in the video are wearing lingerie — possibly NSFW!)
In this tutorial video watch how as I show you how to use the Luminar Sky Replacement tool in Photoshop.
Here is a simple tutorial on how to turn your outdoor photos into minimalist landscapes.
