Recent Post Production Articles

How to Blur out the Backgrounds in Photoshop

Gear matters under specific circumstances in photography, and without any doubt, you might need specific lenses for certain effects. But, if you cannot afford fast, high-end glass, and want to achieve that creamy-blurred background, then your Photoshop skills matter.

How to Balance Reality and Creativity in Your Images Using ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1

Through editing photos, many people aim to produce work that remains grounded in truth while still adding a bit of themselves and their personal vision to it. Using ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1 software, a fully featured all-in-one image editor, here’s how to leverage a few of its most powerful tools to tell your story.

A New Quick and Easy Way to Make a LUT From Any Image

Transforming one image look into a LUT can be a daunting process for people who don’t know much about LUTs (Lookup Tables). According to this video, Picture Instruments came up with something easy to help you give any of your pictures or footage the look of another image.

Watch a Photographer's Photoshop and Lightroom Portrait Editing Workflow

Post production has been a significant part of photography ever since the beginning of the medium. Back before digital, it was all about how you handled the development of the film and then the enlargement of your print, now it's about how you handle your digital files.

KFC Gets Creative Using Chicken in Place of Explosions for New Ad Campaign

The age of social media has brought with it a new type of advertising campaign. Companies are more in touch with their customers than ever and are always looking at creative ways to engage with their audience and show a bit of personality. KFC’s latest adverts are doing exactly that, after their released images creatively using fried chicken to imitate explosions.

What Outsourcing to India Really Looks Like

If you are like me, you probably get numerous emails and Facebook messages from people in India wanting you to use their services for your image editing. While these individuals may give outsourcing to India a bad reputation, I’m here to show you what it’s really like at the reputable post-production service provider that is located in Mumbai, India: Pro Image Editors.

Gadget Myths: Can You Prevent Eye Strain?

We all know the tricks of the trade, but what actual evidence do we have to prove certain methods or gadgets are up to scratch when it comes to preventing eye strain?

How to Mimick the Technicolor Two-Strip Look in 3D LUT Creator

If you wonder how people who keep only two complementary colors in their images do it, then look no further. You may not know what the Technicolor Two-Strip technique or Process 2 is, but mimicking it in post-production is what you’ve been looking for to achieve this distinctive look.

One Click to Better Black and Whites

Black and white conversion can be a complicated ordeal, and you can find yourself down a deep rabbit hole of theory if you're not careful. There are times where that kind of in-depth analysis is critical to a perfect image, but sometimes you just need a quick fix. That's where this tip comes in.

Six Ways to Improve Timeline Playback in Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Adobe’s latest update to Adobe Premiere CC has made it more accessible than ever for beginners to start editing video, but if your processing power is limited, playback lag can make the editing process frustrating. Here are six ways to reduce playback lag when editing your timeline.

Frame Rates Explained: When and Why You Should Shoot in Different Ones

For the past few years, I have been getting more and more into video work. When I first started, I had an idea of what frame rate was and I knew how to use it to get the looks I wanted but by no means was I doing anything correctly until probably late last year. In this video, Matt goes over frame rates and a few reasons why you should shoot in different ones.

What’s the Difference Between Actions and Presets?

Actions and presets are incredibly useful ways of speeding up your workflow when processing photos. Instead of individually re-creating your settings for each photo in Photoshop or Lightroom, you can essentially copy and paste all your preferred adjustments. Let’s check out the differences between the two.

DVLOP Releases New Lightroom Feature: Leaks and Tweaks

In the latest version of Lightroom, Adobe has implemented a new profile browser inside the Develop module. The team over at DVLOP has already put this feature to work with some awesome new ways to edit your images.

Fstoppers Reviews Color Cone by Picture Instruments

Color Cone boldly positions itself as a powerful but easy to use tool to augment any color grading workflow. Is Color Cone the next great addition to your post-processing ritual or just another app that you will purchase and never use again?

How to Make Your Own Dust and Grain Filters

Looking to add some vintage dust and grain look to your freshly taken digital photos? You know, that look when you come across some old polaroids or 4x6 prints that you dug up from an old photo album that's been packed away in some box… or possibly scrounged from your parents? Yeah, that look of slight imperfections where the ink has been scratched along with some dust that's hard to remove.

Lighting Up a Product Photoshoot Using LEDs

Shooting clean product images may not be as hard as you think. With the help of what-you-see-is-what-you-get LED light panels, the process is made that much simpler for getting started.

Sharpen Images and Get Rid of Halos in Photoshop

Have you ever edited and sharpened a photograph you wanted to print or post online only to have halos around the edges? Have you ever wanted to know how not to make that happen? If you answered yes, then this helpful video is for you.

The Unknown Power of Photoshop Droplets

Droplets live on your desktop and you can drag and drop files or folders onto them to batch process the files based on the action you’ve set up for the specific droplet. This video shows you how to build your own.

How to Use Photoshop to Convert an Object From Color To Realistic Solid White

In the magical world of Photoshop, there are lots of different ways to change an object's color from one hue to another, but achieving a change from color to a realistic white is sometimes challenging. This video from Helen Bradley will show you one way to get quick, realistic results when changing an object from color to solid white.

How to Improve Your Images With Split Toning

Oftentimes the weather gods aren't kind to landscape photographers. It's part of the thrilling aspect of the genre. This handy video shows you how to use split toning in Lightroom to rescue your landscape images.

Give Your Images the Cinematic Look in Just Two Minutes

I find cinematic images to be particularly memorable. I'm sure there's some color theory and psychology behind that but ain't nobody got time for that. Here's PHLEARN's way of creating a cinematic look to your images in just two minutes.

Behind the Scenes for Selling Large Wall Art Using Samples

In the digital world it may almost seem as though selling albums or wall art would be a thing of the past. The majority of clients will want to post their session to social media and go about their day. As photographers, it is up to us to educate the client about the importance of having a physical piece of art as well as the right type of art for their home.

Remember to Zoom Out While Editing Your Images

Next time you sit down for an editing session, do your eyes and brain a favor and remember to zoom out more frequently. Don't forget that any given image is a whole piece, more than just details.

Transform Your Existing Images With the Help of Adobe Stock

The sky usually plays an important role in shaping the mood and tone of the pictures you make while photographing outdoors. If mother nature doesn't want to cooperate and give you a desirable sky while shooting, a stock image could help save the day.

Simplifying the Tone Curve

Lightroom’s tone curve is one of those tools that is often looked over, especially with beginners. This video will explain everything you need to know to get started using this powerful tool.

Stop Doing This to Your Photo's Highlights

In the first year or so of learning how to edit images, photographers are completely bombarded by information regarding the dos and don’ts for what makes a good photo. This is one area of post-processing that continues to be misinterpreted.

The Most Important Thing to Do Before Sharpening Your Images

The Internet is full of articles and videos telling you what technique will revolutionize the way you add sharpness to your images, but almost none of them tell you the most crucial step to take before sharpening, no matter the technique. In this article, I’ll show you this simple yet essential action to make your sharpening genuinely efficient.

We Pirated Our Own Video and This Is What Happened

Piracy is a major issue among all types of creatives. Regardless of if you make handbags, design websites, create beautiful paintings, produce movies, or craft amazing photographs, at some point or another, someone is going to steal and rip off your work. Recently, we decided to run a social experiment; we actually pirated one of our own tutorials and put it online for free before it was even released to the public. What happened next was pretty interesting.

Two Great Reasons Every Photographer Should Crop Their Photos

Have you ever wondered when, and why you should crop a photo? In this post I'll explain how using the crop tool effectively can hugely improve the storytelling abilities in your photography. I'll also show you how cropping a photo can take your shot from average to great by allowing you to follow some key rules of composition.

A Simple Explanation of Why CMYK Makes Sense for Printing

Have you ever wondered why magazine publishers and other printed material producers ask you to submit your images in CMYK color space instead of sRGB or Adobe RGB? If you haven’t thought much about the “why” before now, you might be interested in the tidbit of info in this video.

Photographer Creates Stunning Conceptual Image in Iceland

Conceptual photographer and retoucher Anya Anti traveled to Iceland in 2017 to create some extraordinary images. Check out this behind-the-scenes video she created that shows her choice of location and the process of creating her props.

Try Lighting Your Subject From Your 'Weak Side'

Most photographers have a tendency to light their subjects from the same side. I personally like to set up my key light on camera right and I also always have my subject look toward that light. Not today.

Two Tools to Improve Your Photo Editing Efficiency

Have you ever kept track of the amount of time that you spend editing each month? I was shocked the first time that I did. Realizing how much of my time that editing was consuming caused me to search out ways to be more efficient, and this is what I found.

How to Change White Into Any Color in Photoshop

Being able to change colors in post can give you a lot of creative control and save a headache when shooting. One difficulty, however, is changing anything that's white. In this video, you'll learn you how to do that quickly and easily.

How to Give Your Portraits Beautiful, Rich Skin Tones

How skin is processed in the editing phase of your portrait can make or break the image. One easy and effective tool is Gradient Maps, as shown by Prince Meyson in this useful video tutorial.

Three Common Misconceptions About Camera Raw Smart Objects in Photoshop

Smart Objects in Photoshop are a fantastic tool to avoid working in a destructive fashion when filters, such as Camera Raw, need to be used in the retouching process. In this video, Greg Benz clarifies three common misconceptions to save you useless worries or precious time.

Fstoppers Reviews Opal Opacity Plugin for Lightroom

Often when going through a set of images via Lightroom, we use a preset we like, export the images, and then tone back some of the color or "effect" from the preset, once in Photoshop. There has always been a need for a way to easily dial back a preset and now there is.

Alien Skin Software Winter Sale

Alien Skin Software are currently having a winter sale through to the 20th of this month, with savings of 20 percent or more on all their products.

How to Remove Large Objects in Photoshop

Have you ever tried to remove an object from a photo, but just couldn't get it to look right, whether it be because of the lighting, color, or actual selection? This tutorial provides a handful of tips for perfectly removing objects in Photoshop.

Using ACDSee Pro on iOS for Advanced Color Grading

In a mobile world filled with an endless selection of preset filters, there are surprisingly few options to employ more creative color grading that is driven by specific choice rather than by simply perusing a gallery of presets. ACDSee Pro for iOS is one of the few apps that look to bridge this gap with an array of powerful color grading tools that emulate the color grading freedom of desktop editing.