It can be hard to measure long-term progress in photography, as we grow in slow, small steps. But it's important to know how far you've come and where you still need work, and this helpful video will give you five ways to check just how much progress you've made.
We all know what it is like to shoot in difficult lighting situations and to end up with shots where the skin tones of your subjects just look off. If you don't want to spend hours playing with a bunch of controls or spend a bunch of money on fancy actions and presets, then check out out this quick tutorial, which walks us through color grading for skin tones simply by using Curves in Photoshop.
Having a perfect background is one of the most overrated factors in photography. Here are several tips for getting amazing shots when your session restricts you to shooting in a boring area.
If you know anything about SEO (search engine optimization), then you know that finding good keywords is, well, key. Here are a few ways to find new keyword ideas and how to implement them on your website.
Rather, the rule of thirds needs to die a fast and painful death for all the damage it has done to the art and photography world.
Not just any old space can or should become a photography studio. Make sure you have taken the following 12 things into account before making such an important decision.
With social media being such a critical part of a photographer's online presence, developing simple strategies for Instagram is a key part of presenting your work to the world. These simple tips will help you to grow your following and make the process enjoyable as well.
If your portrait or product shot has a wrinkled, creased background, how can you easily clean it up and remove them in Photoshop? Learn how with these simple steps.
Diving deep into Photoshop can seem daunting, but to suit both beginners and more experienced Photoshop users alike, Colin Smith from Photoshop Cafe has created a video covering useful tips and tricks on using layer masks to strengthen your Photoshop knowledge.
Professional photography is a business, and like any business there are patterns and traits that exist when looking at what works and what doesn’t work. Here are a few traits every successful photography business shares that you can incorporate into your business.
Have you continually skipped over the HSL panel in Adobe Lightroom? As your editing technique develops, the ability to control color in your image becomes increasingly important. This tutorial will teach you how to use the panel to manipulate individual colors in Lightroom.
In this article I'll share five tips on how I actually improved my photography. Here I'm not talking technicalities such as sharper images, shallow depth of field, using a tripod, or removing your lens cap.
It's always frustrating as a photographer to spend time shooting, editing, and printing an image only to see different results throughout various steps of your workflow.
This great tutorial video will show you how to better sharpen your portrait images in Photoshop.
When it comes to taking images of couples, one of the biggest struggles photographers deal with is posing. Since posing can make or break and good image, these five tips can take your posing to next level.
The most significant hurdle when running a photography business is booking more clients. If you feel like you’re in a “booking rut,” here are a few ways to help spread your brand awareness and book more photo clients.
Light makes or breaks a photo, and when you're shooting natural light, being able to find the right kind is crucial to getting the shots you want. This great video talks about what to look for and how to shape natural light for a great portrait.
In a saturated market of incoming photographers each holiday or tax season, it is easy to get discouraged when you are trying to get paid clients in the door. When we think of photography sessions we generally tend to lean on the idea of photographing only people in portraits. Families, boudoir, fashion, and even underwater sessions. With so many other creative ways out there to get paid why not tap into another resource for marketing?
If you’re getting started with portrait photography, I recommend checking out this video to get up to speed on the most important things you need to know.
A lot of people are fans of the portrait look in which the subject really seems to "pop" off the image, as it's a striking and attention-grabbing style. This helpful video will show you three quick steps to recreate that look in your own portraiture work.
All the talent in the world doesn't mean a thing if you undercut yourself with bad habits that can damage your career. This great video explores six bad habits that can cut a career short and how to turn them around to increase your chances of success.
One of the most frustrating things a photographer has to deal with in today's market is having their work stolen or used for free. If you post images online, the chances of your work being used without your permission isn't just likely, but inevitable. How then can you as a photographer protect your images while at the same time publishing your work so you can promote your brand? In this free excerpt from our Making Real Money tutorial, Monte Isom shares the exact steps you need to take to both protect your work and recover damages caused by illegal infringements.
Being an artist isn't easy, especially when the world is against our way of life and creation. The artist life is discouraging for sure, and every once in a while I still have days where I just want to lay in bed. I have learned that you can't let yourself have many of these days if you want to be great, there's always someone else who's pushing through it. Whether you're a professional or just a hobbyist, being uninspired sucks. Luckily there are so many things you can do to beat the gloom and keep on creating.
The beauty of being a photographer and using a tool like Photoshop is that you can learn new ways of editing that can speed up your workflow or make it easier to do. I can even take it as far as saying I don't think the creators of Photoshop know every single way of editing a photo, as it depends on the style of you, the photographer, and what you want to portray in your image. Nathaniel Dodson from Tutvid recently released a video showcasing 10 tricks that I didn't know, and I think will be very useful to add to my workflow and skill set when it comes to producing work for a client.
Composition is a complicated topic. It's easy to throw out the Rule of Thirds because talking about things like balance, rhythm, and focus can get overwhelming but, if you stop at the Rule of Thirds, you could be robbing your images of complexity
Understanding the internal light meter of my camera is one of the best skills I've ever learned. It helps me to shoot in fully manual mode, so that I rarely look at the back of my camera. Let me tell you how to get a correctly exposed picture from the first click just by using your camera's internal light meter.
Inspired by a recent photo book I purchased, "Creative Flash Photography" by Tilo Gockel, I set out to create a series of food photos this week as part of a Thai dinner theme my wife and I decided on. The principle here was simple: create a great image using a single speedlight and a bounce card. That’s it.
Color grading is amongst the most important step of retouching. Along with lighting, it sets the mood of your image and can also help tie together the different elements of your composition. Learning all the different ways of altering colors in a picture is probably as important if not more important than knowing how to retouch skin or remove objects. In this 20-minute long tutorial, Michael Woloszynowicz explains everything there is to know about the color balance layer adjustment and how to use it to color balance your images in the best way possible.
This is not your typical list of must have photography apps — no Snapchat, Instagram, or Photoshop here. Although you might not have heard of many of the names I'm about to recommend to you, each one has earned its place on my phone because it plays a part in making my life as a photographer much easier.
When it comes to shooting implied nudes, it is not as easy as simply stripping down as one might think. Soft posing, flattering light, and the trust from client to photographer is essential to capture that perfect look. Having a solid portfolio of this genre is essential to bring in new potential clients who can form a bond with your work. So how does one start out shooting implied looks if you do not already have a portfolio to show potential clients?
If you're working as a photographer or retoucher, there are certain Photoshop techniques you just have to know. This amazing set of tutorials walks you through 30 such skills and explains why they're important and how to use them.
One of the most obvious telltale signs of an unprofessional commercial or product image is color. The most famous and readily cited issue is color grading, but it's not the only problem and the uniformity of color is often neglected. That is, the even color of the object or two objects' colors truly matching. As always, I will couch my method in the sentiment that it may not be the optimal technique, but it works very well for me.
If photography is an art, so is retouching. While there are school teaching photography classes, fewer offer retouching programs. Many photographers starting out seem to be looking at the same tutorials over and over again, without ever actually getting anything out of it. Frequency separation, dodging and burning, or curves will only get you so far before you hit a wall. In past the two years, I’ve been looking at other crafts to step up my retouching work. Here are five things I have spent time on that you should look into and why.
When taking portraits with natural light, often times, there is one key aspect that is overlooked. This facet of naturally lit photos is far more important than things like shooting at a specific time of day. Before diving into what makes a naturally lit photo a spectacular one, it is important to know and understand the difference between artificial lighting and using natural light.
This is the second part of The Ultimate Guide to the Dodge & Burn Technique. Check out Part 1, where I covered the fundamentals of light and shadow rendering in painting.
So, now that we understand that the shadows and highlights are what makes our 2-dimensional pictures appear to have more volume and dimensions, let's move on to the technical side of the Dodge & Burn implementation in retouching.
This is the second part of the article on how to learn to "read" lighting in photography. If you haven't read the first part yet, please start here: How To "Read" Light In Photography - Part 1.
And for those of you who have been waiting for the second part, let's jump right back in and see what other cues we can use to breakdown lighting in other photographers' work.
If you want to lift your retouching skills to the next level, you should familiarize yourself with frequency separation and how it can aid you in various photo editing tasks. One of those can come up in cityscape and architecture photography. Especially during blue hour and nighttime, you can get unwanted shadows in your photos. In this article, I explain how to remove those with frequency separation.
Lens filters are useful for achieving a variety of photographic effects in camera, such as long exposures of moving subjects. But did you know you can achieve the same great results with Photoshop CC?
When we capture a 3D environment in 2D, the perceived depth can be lost due to the colors in the scene. In this short tutorial, I'll show you one way of bringing back the depth in your image.
There’s so much more to black and white than the simple removal of color. We must understand both color and tone, plus their relationship with the world of monochrome. Here are 10 tips to help you become a better black and white photographer.
Printing professional-quality images can be an intimidating task if you are new to it. However, it doesn't need to be overly complicated. By following a few simple steps you can easily create high-end prints ready for your walls or print sales.
Online sales are based on trust. With that in mind, what kind of customer are you expecting to show up at your website, probably for their first time ever, likely for the first time hearing of you ever, and give up their financial information to buy a pretty picture off it and pray it actually comes? That’s a really tough sell.
A double chin is one of the most common cosmetic issues a client is likely to want you to correct, but once you understand how to retouch it, it is not particularly difficult to do. This great video tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop to retouch a double chin.
Editing pictures of the Milky Way is difficult to get right. Which white balance do you use? How bright should the scene be? How do you remove excessive noise without stars disappearing? Well, follow these eight steps for image editing success on the galactic scale with Lightroom Classic.
Finding commercial clients is a minefield. Working out which agencies to contact, who to contact within the agency, and as importantly, how to do so and what on earth you should say can all be a nightmare. In this video, I cover all of this and more.
Spending your Covid-19 isolation time working on your business now could mean art sales later. Seattle-based Fine Art Photographer Jason Matias, who runs a program that helps artists sell their art, has a few tips for how to go about snagging those sales.
If you're like me, you just had a couple of months’ worth of work canceled and are now looking for alternative income streams. If you want to know how to start selling prints online — with no setup costs and no ongoing fees — read on.
Panorama photos are huge, sharp, and fascinating. In this article, I will show an easy way to automatically stitch a panorama in CameraRaw and finish them off in Photoshop.
If you're ready to check out a few more fantasy portrait photographers, then you're in the right place. This time around, the goal is to find and highlight a few folks that you're probably not already following but are definitely worth a look.
Softboxes are some of the most fundamental and versatile lighting modifiers out there, and they are a great tool for anyone looking to learn how to use artificial lighting and build their skills. This educational video will show you five different ways to use softboxes and give you some helpful tips for using them.
