Photoshop

Let’s face it, many photographers these days utilize Lightroom presets to either expedite their workflow or to help spur creativity when they are in a rut. But have you ever wanted to use a Lightroom preset as a layer in Photoshop, or potentially layer two presets together? Well look no further, Preset Brewery by Adam Bardon makes life easy with a click of a button.

Of all the tools and features in Photoshop, perhaps none strike more fear into the heart of the unsuspecting photographer than the Pen Tool. If you're one of those people, this great tutorial will show you both how the Pen Tool behaves and how to put those rules to use in practice.

Would you take the liberty to Photoshop an image so drastically that it offends your clients? That’s exactly what one wedding photographer did when they gave their client a “chin tuck.”

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.

The trend in the portrait, fashion, and beauty industry is to come back to a more natural look while still removing the unwanted blemishes. But without the proper techniques and settings, it’s difficult to make an image flawless while avoiding the overly retouched look. Zoë Noble is a talented photographer and retoucher based in Europe, and she’s created a series of tutorial to teach the methods that will help you reach that high-end look. In this one, you’ll learn how to use dodge and burn to even out the skin.

Eyes really are the window to the soul, and the way they look in your images can be the difference between a picture being good and really great. If you have a portrait that you feel is lacking something, then adding depth and dimension to the eyes may be just what you need.

Seeing colors and luminosity correctly is not always easy. You could calibrate your screen and be stuck working at the same place every day, but some people just can’t have a fixed office or studio. And even with a calibrated monitor, adjusting luminosity to your creative vision can get tricky. This is where visual help layers come in, especially one called the five-tone heat map. Blake Rudis from f64 Academy shows you how to use and why it’s so useful.

Unless you've been completely off Internet for the past 24 hours, you'll have already seen the amazingly unique retouching skills of a portrait photographer in Missouri. While there is speculation on whether this is real or some kind of publicity stunt, one thing is clear: the photos are hilarious. Someone was bound to create a how-to at some stage, and thankfully, one of our favorite YouTube Photoshop wizards, Antti Karppinen, was quick on the draw. Pun intended.

Post-process sharpening is an often overlooked tool that can significantly improve an image. There are several techniques available to sharpen photos. Usually, an editing software will have a simple slider delegated to adjust a photo’s sharpness that may include a few options with it as well. Adobe Photoshop, however, can take the ability to control sharpening much farther.

When it comes to things like quickly learning new Photoshop techniques, I am a straight to the point type of guy. I don't necessarily want to (though I certainly do on occasion, depending on the topic) watch an hour long videos explaining the minutiae of every click of the mouse. While I appreciate production values and the personality that can be on display in a video, sometimes all you need to know can be learned from text overlay and elevator music. That's what we have on deck today, enjoy.

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.

Makeup is one way to create a superb artistic portrait, but it’s not the only method. You could rely on post-production as well to make something different than everyone else does. In this 15-minute long tutorial, Nate from Tutvid shows you how to inlay someone’s face with text.

As essential as layer masks in Photoshop, blending modes allow you to control the way the program combines and applies different layers, effect, images, and adjustments to your image. While it's not critical to memorize each blending mode's manner of operation, knowing how each category works is essential to getting the results you want. This great video will give you a quick course in just that.

If you shoot almost any genre involving portraits of people, one of the most fundamental retouching techniques you'll want to know is how to convincingly remove dark circles from under eyes. This video will show you a quick, easy, and effective method for doing just that using Photoshop.

As you all know, we are currently pushing ourselves here at Fstoppers HQ to produce 30 videos for the month of January. Patrick Hall didn't want me to miss out on the fun, so he challenged me to recolor an image. Not an old black and white one, but an image he took with our new Nikon D850. Want to give it a try too? You could win a free tutorial if you've got what it takes to colorize an image.

Luminosity mask is not anything new, a quick search on this site allow will yield several articles. Luminosity masks are helpful in many different ways in post-processing your images. What if I told you there’s a new way to create and control them?

Cleaning skin is one of the most tedious tasks there is when it comes to portrait retouching. It takes quite a bit of time, and when done improperly, the texture can quickly become mushy. To keep the final image as natural looking as possible, there are a couple of techniques that can be used to limit the number of pixels we alter. In this tutorial, Zoë Noble demonstrates how she uses the clone stamp tool to clean the skin.

Sharpening photos taken at higher ISOs is a tricky thing, as you run the risk of making the appearance of noise much worse very quickly. This helpful video will show you how to sharpen high-ISO photos to enhance detail while still reducing noise.

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.

Half of every portrait is in the edit. This awesome video will show you how to take a portrait and give it a dramatic edit in Photoshop that subtly draws the viewer's eye to the subject and showcases the emotion you're trying to convey.

In late November 2017, Pixelmator Pro was released to those eagerly awaiting a new photo editing solution on the Mac. Whether it was to finally escape the never-ending Adobe Creative Cloud subscription fee, or for those just getting started in photography and looking to get their toes wet, there was a good amount of hype and excitement leading up to its release. One month later, here’s my early impressions of Pixelmator Pro.

Most of us love photos with vibrant colors that seem to pop off the screen, but it's a subtle art creating such a look without making the final image gaudy and oversaturated. This helpful video will show you several methods for making colors burst using Photoshop.

Depending on your project or assignment, commercial photography can allow for some creativity to be added to the photo. Creating splashing in the background or even having the splashes hit the product or subject can be one way to add some interesting factors to the shot. How would you set up the shot?

When you're retouching a portrait, I'm willing to bet that you spend the majority of your time working on the subject's face, because, well, it's a portrait. Nonetheless, your subject's face isn't the only part of them, and with a little extra work on their hair, you can really make the entire image pop. This great video will show you how to do exactly that.

Recently Fstoppers reviewed ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018, the newest version of their all-in-one editing flagship. If you are not familiar with ACDSee’s platform, it is an editing suite similar to Capture One Pro or Photoshop, but also includes photo managing tools and quick editing capabilities similar to Lightroom. This gives ACDSee a unique combined platform that simplifies the average user’s workflow and eliminates the costly need for multiple programs.

How many pixels do you need in an image? Sounds a simple enough question and the inexorable megapixel race doesn't seem to have ended, in much the same way that the PC processor race marched on unabated for several decades.

Creating a precise selection in Photoshop is one of the essential tools that a photographer should understand. In this PiXimperfect tutorial, Unmesh Dinda takes us through the best way to select an object by explaining how each of the adjustment sliders affects a selection.

If you're new to Photoshop, Smart Objects can seem a bit foreign, but they're extremely helpful when you're doing certain kinds of work. This informative video will show you five reasons to consider using them when you're working in Photoshop.

When you're shooting portraiture, particularly outside without artificial lighting, you'll often need to brighten your subject a bit in post. This can create a few issues, but this helpful video will show you how to obviate those potential problems and create a higher-quality result.

Greg Benz, creator of the luminosity masking Photoshop script panel Lumenzia, is one of those experienced photographers who doesn't hesitate to share their technical knowledge with followers. In his latest video, he explains file formats in detail, both for Photoshop and Lightroom.