One of the most powerful ways to take your landscape photography to the next level is to blend — or “composite” — exposures of the same landscape from different times of the day.
While we are inundated with beautiful images of the northern lights online and on social media, I think it's safe to say you've never seen aurora art like this before.
The spookiest day of the year is upon us and it might have you in the mood to create something frightful. Photoshop, of course, offers nearly limitless creative opportunities to scare your social media followers, but what if you'd rather create something horrifying using practical effects rather than digital?
Here is the why and how I recommend you photograph the sky.
When shooting the night sky, we are looking at points of light that don’t always resolve well with the lenses we have in our bag. Whether the lens is a top-of-the-line “L” from Canon or a third-party lens that cost 1/10th the price, they may both have issues with coma and astigmatism. Here's what you can do to fix these issues and not be stuck with an underperforming piece of glass.
One of the more common areas to apply a bit of photo composite work is of course in the sky. Often, Mother Nature will opt to ignore our photographic needs. The good news is you can overcome this with a little help from Photoshop.
For those of you who don't know Hasselblad, it may be a word you begin to hear. That being said, this video goes to show that over the course of time, Hasselblad has lived up to their motto, "Create to Inspire."
What should a photographer do when surrounded by thousands of dead fish, some of the fastest ocean tides in the world, and wild bears that want to eat anything in sight? You take a deep breath and attempt to capture the beautiful scenery. Welcome to Valdez!
This week's Lighting Breakdown will focus on composite images, breaking down this specific fantasy image as an example for what you need to do to create believable composite lighting.
How does one — and, indeed why would one — combine fried chicken and a Space Shuttle in Photoshop? Find the delicious answers in Tutvid's latest tutorial.
When photographing commercial interior images, a common issue is an unsightly glare on reflective surfaces. Removing these reflections by compositing image layers significantly improves your images, separating you from the pack of "run-and-gun" real estate and interior photographers.
When you're working on composites, there are many variables that you need to attend to to make the final result convincing, matching colors being one of the most important. It turns out that Photoshop has a built-in tool to help you do this automatically.
Composites are one of the best ways to give your image a whole new look and feel. It can take something from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Understanding how to create these images to stack in a realistic way is all about understanding how to blend your subject seamlessly.
When photographing interiors, flash is your friend, but a friend who needs some management. While flash brightens rooms, reduces glare, and brings out true colors, it can also produce the frustrating issue of ugly shadows.
After the traumatic loss of her son in a terror attack in Barcelona last year, an Australian mother found solace in composite superhero artwork created by a total stranger.
You may hate heavily post-processed images and videos, but do you hate them the right way? Here's how to properly do it.
Compositing frames in your interior photographs can be extremely time-consuming. With this simple technique developed by Mike Kelley, you can quickly and easily lighten doorways in post-processing while freeing up your editing time.
Combining multiple images is something that every photography will try at some point, but it is more difficult than merely cutting out one part of a photo and replacing it with another. This video teaches several important skills for matching the various images of a composite.
What do you do when you get bored with photography? How do you funnel your creative energy when photography leaves your creative soul empty? Do you move on to something new or do you combine photography with something else?
Circulating daily on social media we see turtles caught in plastic, beaches bathed in piles of garbage, or decaying wildlife that make hearts heavy because we can easily relate to those species. However, there is another ocean issue that does not get enough coverage but it is dissolving many of the unseen organisms every day.
Every four years during the summer, the sports world pauses to draw its attention to the top echelon of professional football. I decided to put together a World Cup inspired shoot, shoot some concepts I haven't done before, and give you a behind-the-scenes, education glimpse.
If you think this is a sci-fi horror thriller film with Transformers-style VFX you'll be disappointed. In fact, the action takes place in the 50s as a young man turns unfortunate obstacles into a romantic outcome.
Real estate and architectural photographers are familiar with the challenges of shooting an indoor location during broad daylight. The sunshine pours in through windows, and, without a truckload of studio lights to brighten the space, it's impossible to capture everything your eye sees in a single image. That's where this intro to HDR comes in handy.
Photographing toys can be a lot of fun, but they don’t always look like the most realistic subjects. Here are a couple of quick and dirty ways to add an aged, eroded look to your composited playthings to up the realism of your toy photographs.
Creating realistic composites in Photoshop can sometimes be tricky. It is imperative that your selection process is spot on, and that your subject so perfectly matches the new background that you’ve placed it in, that not even the trained eye will be able to tell that it’s a composite.
There's a lot more to compositing than just getting a perfect cutout. Here are some golden tips by Unmesh Dinda of Piximperfect on how to get a seamless blend.
Time-lapses are an easy way to add spice to your video productions, but sometimes parts of your scene look awful when displayed over long periods of time. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can use real-time video to improve objects with oscillating movements.
Regular photos can often be too true to reality. And when you take something out of proportion or play with what is naturally possible, it can be much more evocative. This video gives some ideas and ways of doing it.
I live in a small city far from popular landscape photography locations and seemingly devoid of fellow photographers. I oftentimes find myself feeling a bit alone in the creative process. To remedy this, I went online to find peers and look for resources to get constructive feedback on my work. I ended up meeting someone who helped me improve my work and whose generosity took me completely by surprise.
Composite photography can seem overwhelming, particularly when trying to tell a story and using photographic elements from different locations. Let me break down how I created this narrative piece to provide some helpful insight.
When creating imagery of any night landscape, you are taking your camera and the other equipment you own and pushing them to their limits. With that in mind, should photographers be upset when their favorite imagery is put together in post?
Creating a realistic composite goes far beyond just combining and masking parts of an image. This tutorial provides an in-depth look at how seeing and blending colors can give an image a realistic final result.
Have you ever photographed a scene with a monitor, smartphone, or television in it and needed to swap in a better looking display image? Commercial photographers run into this all the time. Here’s how to make your composites look realistic.
"Underwater Beauty" was an image commissioned by a local company as a part of their campaign supporting various independent artists. The image was created as a composite for obvious reasons. In this article, I'd like to walk you through the process of creating it from the initial idea to the final result.
Photographer and digital artist Renee Robyn is known for creating magical composites complete with gorgeous costumes and dreamy scenery. But what happens when there is no designer to provide styling, no makeup artist, and a budget of only $50 to spend?
We recently filmed a video on the validity of Peter Lik's newest "photograph" of the moon, and it got us thinking: how far is too far when it comes to Photoshop?
Turns out you don't always need to be an amazing photographer to create photographic art. I came across graphic designer Bashar Hjooj's work on Instagram, where he combines two to three photographs shot by complete strangers to create art full of imagination with his own take.
Our latest series of behind the scenes episodes with Elia Locardi are almost over. In today's episode we continue to explore the rooftops of Dubai in search of the perfect cityscape photograph of the city. We then head out to a remote desert to photograph the stars only to find out our guide had other plans. This is “Photographing the World III” behind the scenes episode 12!
Over the past 10 days the internet has blown up over famed photographer Peter Lik's latest image "Moonlit Dreams," and whether or not it is a fake. Fstoppers has published a couple articles debating this very topic, but until now there has only been speculation, albeit very convincing speculation.
Peter Lik, whom many believe is the world's most successful photographer, recently released an image that is pretty unbelievable.
As a commercial photographer and digital artist, I spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop. One thing that I love to do is find creative solutions to solve visual problems using Photoshop. I know we all get stuck in our ways from time to time, but If you do any retouching or compositing work for living, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to experiment and find new ways of doing things. Photoshop is always evolving and it’s important that we use these new digital imaging technologies to our advantage. In this article, I go over a technique I discovered to add steam from scratch in Photoshop.
This week I wrote an article pointing out that Canon Italy (among other Canon EU pages and Instagram accounts) had posted a composite landscape that had a large amount of the image stolen from Elia Locardi. There was an enormous response to this and so I decided to dig for more information and between my research, the community, and Locardi himself, there's rather a lot more to unpack.
In my early days with Photoshop, there were many timex when I tediously removed background from text by "magic-wanding" it out. If you've ever been inexperienced enough to do this, then you know that you then have to isolate the background that remained within the closed off section of each letter, like the inside of an "o." I've come a long way since then, but apparently, not long enough. Because when I saw LA-based digital artist, best-selling author, and founder of PhotoshopCAFE, Colin Smith, blend out the white background to isolate the black text and vice versa using only a few clicks, my $^@%*! jaw dropped and my face met palm.
The Christmas Wish, which has become an annual viral sensation put out over the last few years by The Heart Project is back and even bigger for 2017. In 2016, the project created holiday magic for 30 sick children from one hospital. This year Karen Alsop, the lead photographer behind the project, took it countrywide in Australia reaching even more people in need and this is just the beginning.
Don't get me wrong, natural light and golden hour are gorgeous and a huge part of what we do. But, in addition to these types of photographs, we have built our name on imagery that differs from the typical wedding or couples photograph. Our studio (Lin and Jirsa Photography) has become known for unique and epic environmental portraits. While almost every client wants golden hour imagery, these stand-out epics help draw clients to our brand in the first place.
Let's chat about stock photography. I've used stock sites for nearly a decade while working as a designer and commercial photographer with great success. Most of the options I used in the past left a lot to be desired, which is why last year, I switched over to Adobe Stock. I made the change for many reasons, but the most important was their integration into Adobe Creative Cloud.
Mark Duffy is an Irish photographer, graphic designer, and drummer with a shaved head and a glorious beard. He has a pretty slick new YouTube channel where he intends to teach people how he goes about editing his photos using Photoshop and Lightroom. In this video Duffy teaches us how to create double exposures in Photoshop.
NO SPOILERS HERE! Just in case you were worried. They say inspiration can come from anywhere, and I have to say that definitely couldn't be more true. For one photographer, it came in the form of one his favorite TV Shows. Commercial automotive photographer Pepper Yandell took his work with automotive photography and digital retouching, and combined it with imagery and concepts from the Netflix Series "Stranger Things" to make a truly unique photograph featuring one Lamborghini, and a monster from the show.
Thomas Heaton created a new set of videos last week about one of my favorite topics and shooting styles: landscape panoramas. I love photographing night skies and landscapes this way and the technique overall is very simple yet can give fantastic results. The best time to start learning how to shoot panoramas is during the day and Heaton takes us through his photography of a great autumn scene and explains what, why, and how he is capturing the images before he goes into his post processing.
Making composites look seamless and realistic is the ultimate goal of a digital artist. In this tutorial, you will learn a simple and very effective technique for matching the degree of saturation of your background and subject.
