Paying a monthly fee to use Adobe products is still a hard pill for some photographers to swallow. For those that want to sweeten the deal and get your money's worth, these free bundles are for you.
Ever wanted to correct a mistake with your exposure or try a cool post-processing technique, only to find that the results weren’t all that you’d hoped? Image data may have inadvertently been lost in your workflow. These five steps can help ensure you have the best chance for technical greatness!
It seems like over the last 10 years, more and more photographers, retouchers, and influencers have been accused of promoting distorted and unrealistic body image expectations to children and the general public. As a photographer, I was curious if retouching with Photoshop was more or less deceptive than using face-altering makeup. Today, I put my social experiment to the test.
All of your Lightroom development settings might be in your exported images. That's right, all of your adjustments, spot healings, tone curve adjustments, sharpening, etc. might all be in your exported files for all the world to see.
With this 30-second check, you can ensure your images have the exact right contrast and levels, with it being particularly effective for black and white imagery.
Sell the fake or add to the surrealism. As a creative retoucher and composite photographer, these are two aspects that in my opinion are very important: you either learn techniques to help blend realism into the piece or to make it stand out and add surrealism.
For photographers of a certain age, the decision of whether to work in 8-bit or 16-bit is as easy as the decision between playing Nintendo and Super Nintendo in 1991. More colors led to more realistic graphics and better gameplay. The 16-bit Super Nintendo was king. The same principle holds true when working on your images in Photoshop.
Dodging and burning and frequency separation are two of the most commonly used techniques for retouching skin, but they both have their own sets of pros and cons that may make one or the other the better choice for your own work. This excellent video will show you the results you can achieve with both methods and will detail what it is like working with them.
Ever take a picture that seems to tick all the boxes and yet still feels like it's missing something? Maybe a filter or two could be just what your photography needs.
It’s always interesting to see how gelled lighting can shape the aesthetic of a portrait, especially when we can match that colored gel with a small amount of post production to create an interesting background to a scene. Here’s a quick photography breakdown and post processing tutorial that will help you create a neon sign inspired portrait with just a few complementary colored gels and Photoshop.
There is a multitude of advanced retouching tools and techniques out there for working on portraits, but believe it or not, many of the world's top retouchers prefer a much simpler technique: dodging and burning. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to use dodging and burning for retouching skin in Photoshop.
Believe it or not, it has been 30 years since the release of Photoshop version 1.0, and the application has come quite a long way in those three decades. This fascinating video takes a look at what it was like using version 1.0 of the program all those years ago.
Super wide-angle lenses can expand the field of vision in your images, but they often come with an unwanted side effect — lens distortion. The good news is distortion can easily be fixed in Photoshop with this tool.
Creating dynamic and interesting images in a time crunch situation sometimes means you’ll have to finish your images in post to develop the most iconic and exciting imagery for yourself or a client. This has usually meant a good amount of time spent in Photoshop to extract and then blend your foreground and subject with your sky. In this video you will get to see how Luminar 4 can save you time and help you create an epic back-lit environmental portrait.
Some species of birds have feathers that shimmer with vivid color in the sunlight, but they can look almost black in the shade. Here’s how I work to recover these colors when photographed in shade or overcast lighting.
Have you ever seen an incredible and compelling black and white image and wondered how you can create the same impact in your photos? In this quick Photoshop tutorial, learn how you can take your black and white photos to the next level by following this simple series of steps.
Dodging and burning is one of the most fundamental and useful techniques in photography, and it is applicable in quite a wide range of genres. This great video will show you four different ways to dodge and burn your images using Photoshop.
If someone indignantly snorts that your image has been Photoshopped, it's a rather unsubtle way of them telling you they think your image is fake. But really, aren't all our images to a certain degree?
I'd love to shoot the new Tesla Roadster, but being that it's going to cost a quarter-million and it's not even for sale yet, that wasn't a possibility. I got the next best thing, the official Tesla Roadster diecast model.
Automations can make life a little easier. Learn how to create a unique Instagram gallery by using a simple action in Photoshop.
A new sky can take an otherwise drab photo and turn it into something much more compelling. Still, it takes a careful eye and some specific Photoshop skills. This great video will show you how to create convincing sky replacements using Photoshop.
Creating composite image can be a fun blend of imagination and a range of practical post-processing techniques. Two of the most important skills for creating convincing results are matching light and color. This helpful video will show you a range of tools to check your work and to achieve the best results.
Cutting out hair has always been problematic in Adobe Photoshop. There are several methods for selecting and masking hair, but finding the right technique depends on the complexity of your photo.
Double exposures, when they’re done well, are incredibly impressive. The literature on how to do them is fairly limited, but here, I'll explain how they work and how they're done.
As time goes on, the tools and technology keep getting better and more powerful. Today, learn how you can take a boring seamless paper backdrop and give it life with added texture and easy to follow steps using Photoshop.
Photoshop has many powerful features for retouching photos, with one of the most impressive being frequency separation. However, this technique requires a very careful touch to achieve proper results. This great video will show you everything need to know to use it for retouching photos.
Recently I was thinking about the year so far and noticed that my output for the year was down compared to other years. Why was this?
Photoshop is a tremendously capable program full of tons of capabilities, but one of the most fundamental and useful of them is Camera Raw. If you are new to Photoshop, this helpful video will show you just how much you can accomplish using Camera Raw to edit your images.
Color grading is a pivotal step in putting the finishing polishes on an image and developing your own personal style. If you are new to the technique, this great video will show you how you can quickly and effectively color grade an image using the Levels tool in Photoshop.
Do you understand the differences in color spaces? Have you ever exported a photo out of Adobe Photoshop after some editing, and once you upload it online, the colors appear to be completely different? Perhaps the colors now look muted and dull?
One of the most fundamental and useful capabilities of Photoshop is the ability to remove distracting elements convincingly and efficiently, something that can improve or even save a wide range of photos. If you are new to Photoshop, this helpful video will show you how to use a combination of the Spot Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools to remove distractions from your images.
There are countless ways to combine images in Photoshop. So many, in fact, it can be easy to fall into a routine using the same techniques, while ignoring or avoiding exploration of new and creative ways to combine them. If you want to try something different, Colin Smith at PhotoshopCAFE explains three techniques that can help you create compelling composites in this tutorial.
As a company, Facebook has quite a prudish mentality when it comes to art and creative works in general. This is why we have campaigns like "Free The Nipple," because Instagram doesn't really seem to appreciate art. What's worse is Instagram is now targeting images they consider "fake," which includes composites and works of a surreal nature.
Growing up on comic books and graphic novels I have always been a fan of anything illustrated. When I started taking photos and creating art, I wanted my images to have a similar feel.
If you are new to Photoshop, you might have heard of Smart Objects, but might be a bit unsure of what they do or why they are so useful. Smart Objects can be tremendously helpful, and this great video tutorial will show you how they work and what you can do with them.
Do you have an image that should work, but doesn't? Perhaps some color alterations could transform it into something great.
Photoshop is full of lots of powerful features, and one of the most useful is the Liquify tool. If you are not quite proficient with it yet, this great video will show you everything you need to know about how to use the Liquify tool.
With Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill tool, remarkable things are possible. Join Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect as he runs you through a simple means of removing this chain link fence and throws in a plethora of other incredibly useful tips along the way.
Photoshop has lots of powerful tools to improve your images and help you develop a personal style. Two of the most fundamental of those are the HSL and Color Balance tools. This helpful video tutorial will show you how to use these tools to change the color of anything in Photoshop.
Levels and Curves adjustments layers in Photoshop are a staple tool for any photographer who uses the software, but they aren't particularly intuitive to beginners. Here, PHLEARN give a beginner's guide to using both levels and curves.
If you are new to Photoshop, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the functionality and wondering what you should focus on learning first. Adjustment layers are one of the most fundamental and flexible tools you will find in the program, and they are tremendously useful for almost any photographer. This helpful video will help you become proficient with them.
Creating an accurate selection of a subject's limbs is deceptively difficult. The edges often look sharp and easy to cut out, but that often isn't the case when you put the selection in the hands of Photoshop's AI. However, using this technique, you can accurately smooth out the ragged edges of the selection to create perfect edges and a crisp cut-out.
What do you think of when you hear the term "composite"? Lots of hours with the Pen tool cutting out elements or fiddling around with the Refine Edge tool?
Everyone loves a good hack; something that makes life a little easier.
One of the things Photoshop sells itself on is automated tools, the tools where it uses AI or an algorithm to do the work for you.
Mario Olvera is a photographer, digital artist, and friend from Mexico. He creates surreal conceptual composite images and commercial works.
The tone curve in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is a powerful tool. Subtle changes to the tone curve can make a big difference in the look and feel of your image. Here are a few tips and tricks that will make your tone curve adjustments easier and more precise.
Adobe's Camera Raw sliders make global tonal adjustments easy. But when working in-depth on a single image in Photoshop, we have even more tools at our disposal to customize and maximize our tonal ranges.
One of the greatest merits of YouTube for photographers is being able to watch people edit their images from start to finish. This walkthrough is a superb example of that.
When creating composites using various images from multiple photos, each part has its unique color balance. This is where most beginners tend to fail when creating a composite.