Retouching and Post Production

When shooting the Milky Way and nightscapes, there are several ways to get cleaner images with less perceivable noise and other techniques to increase dynamic range. Ian Norman from Lonely Speck has been putting out tutorials for shooting at night for a few years now, and his newest video goes into addressing ISO noise by mixing two different techniques to create a better resolving and cleaner final composition.

A few years ago I was talking with a fellow photographer about the color correction of portraits. While on the topic of using white balance cards and color charts in order to get a perfect skin color, he interrupted me and said, “You can't have perfect skin color with these.” I immediately thought to myself, “Oh, yeah?” Oh, yeah. That was the truth, and I will explain why below.

If you are a user of one of the popular Nik Collection photo editing plugins, you have probably experienced errors in using the software recently. After Photoshop’s latest update, several users have reported that using the plugins will now force Photoshop to close when the plugin attempts to save its changes. This not only limits your use of Nik’s software, but it also will also cause you to lose all unsaved changes to your image prior to using the plugin. Luckily, there is a very simple workaround.

Serif have just announced a flash, two-day sale of their professional photo editing software, Affinity Photo for iPad. You can buy the software until 7 a.m. EST, Saturday, December 9 for $9.99, a saving of 50 percent on this powerful app.

As a budding YouTuber myself, every time Peter McKinnon uploads a new video, I'm taking notes. His growth on YouTube has been nothing short of spectacular and a lot of this comes down to his ability to create videos that are visually engaging with great storytelling.

Generations of musicians have expressed their sorrow and grief through their chosen medium, yet seeking inspiration in these dark places is somewhat niche in amateur photography. I caught up with emerging British talent Michelle Mackie to understand how she expresses these sullen tones in her conceptual photography.

When you’re in the market for buying a new monitor, you’re probably overwhelmed by a host of specifications. Size, resolution, color gamut, and panel technology can make all the difference when you look for a new screen to edit your photos on. As a photographer, not all specs are that important. Dynamic contrast for instance; a feature that adjusts brightness and contrast according to what's on the screen at a given moment. In this guide, we’re focusing on buying a monitor that is geared specifically towards post-processing.

Even with all the notes and advice, it’s typically a tough job to find a quality monitor in any price range. This is why I’ve decided to hand you my top recommendations as of November 2017. After sifting through literally hundreds of monitors, I’ve distilled five classes of monitors, among which are Fstoppers top recommendations in either class.

If you’re just getting into product photography, it may seem a bit intimidating. There are many techniques and a seemingly endless list of equipment that many photographers feel is required to get professional looking product photography. The list changes depending on who you speak with. In reality, product photography can be done quite easily, and with minimal equipment, if you have the know-how.

I don't have a vendetta with the color blue, or any colors for that matter; that would be odd. I do, however, remove the color blue either entirely or nearly entirely from the lion's share of my images, and for good reason.

The competition is really hotting up for Adobe these days. With Luminar, Capture One, and Exposure 3, all creating super fast, intuitive, and non-destructive raw photo editing software, it's no wonder that Adobe has just announced an update to their notoriously uncooperative selection tool, because today, Pixelmator have now thrown their hat into the ring by announcing that they have released Pixelmator Pro, a photo editing application with full raw support, available only to macOS users.

Today Phase One has announced the release of their updated image editing software, Capture One Pro 11. Alongside the expected performance improvements that comes with new versions, Capture One 11 brings exciting changes to the way layers are handled throughout the application and annotations for journaling or collaborations.

If you've been out shooting recently, there's a good chance that you're now sitting down to edit a pile of photographs that capture the incredible colors that autumn brings. This brief tutorial shows you a quick and dirty trick (jump to three minutes to skip the waffle!) for getting Lightroom to make the most of those gorgeous, orangey tones.

Alien Skin Software announced the beginning of their fall sale. Customers can enjoy savings of 20 percent or more on all products in its store today through November 27.

Instagram Stories have been around for quite a while now, and we have actually already shared a few articles regarding how you can make better use of them to build engagement on your account. In this new write-up, I wanted to share with you a couple of techniques that aren’t too tedious to use on a regular basis to help you build higher quality stories. The goal is to create stories that people will want to follow on a daily basis and thus start to engage more with you. Content may not be king on social networks anymore, but it’s still the only thing that retains followers.

With the holiday sales starting this week it's the perfect time to start calibrating your monitor or upgrade your old device to a new one. Datacolor is offering some great deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So pick up a new device and read through my walkthrough on how to use your new toy.

It’s the equivalent of a presidential Twitter feud, but for the photography world. Everyone’s favorite Anderson Cooper lookalike Tony Northrup released a video on November 4 about the benefits and downsides to shooting raw files versus JPG files, and in this video dispensed some advice on when to shoot raw files and when to shoot JPG files (and when to shoot both). Naturally, this elicited a strong response from everyone’s favorite (only?) Fro, Jared Polin of “Fro Knows Photo” fame, who is known for his shirts indicating to the world that he does indeed shoot raw. All the time.

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.

Import and culling have always been two of the most time consuming and, frankly, annoying parts of Adobe Lightroom. Despite all of its improvements over the years, the process of getting files into Lightroom has remained a huge bottleneck in an otherwise swift workflow application. With Lightroom Classic CC, Adobe finally made a full attempt to address this by allowing us to use the embedded previews from our raw files as previews for culling within the app and improved the overall speed of adding files to the catalog. So, what’s changed, and just how useful are those changes?

Adding color to a black and white photo is one of the most fun things you can do in Photoshop. Not only that but it is surprisingly straightforward, only taking a few repetitive steps to accomplish. In this tutorial, I’ll take you through the steps necessary to add color to any photo you like!

Utilizing layer masks within Photoshop isn't going to be anything new to some of you but if you are one who is somewhat unfamiliar with using masks in your work then this quick tutorial by Colin Smith, with photoshopCAFE, is just for you. Layer masks are best known for hiding or revealing sections of an image in a non-destructive manner. This could be compared to an eraser tool that can be reversed at any time without having to resort to your history panel. Even though the history panel in Photoshop CC now lets you set the controls to record up to 1000 history states, by using layer masks you don't have to undo all of your work in a sequential order in order to go back and modify the layer that you are masking.

So if for some reason you've still never tried a graphical tablet for your image retouching or digital illustrations, seriously stop waiting around. Worst case scenario is that you find that you really don't like it so you turn around and sell it. Best case, you revolutionize your retouching habits; pretty much a no-brainer. You can pick up used tablets online at huge discounts or you can buy new if that's your thing. For the sake of retouching, just try one out. Give it about a week if it's your first time with a tablet. Here is an awesome video with some tips and tricks you can apply to get you flowing right out of the gate.

There are several different ways to change scenes in your videos, cutscenes can work great but a well-placed transition can give off a more professional cinematic vibe in your work. I believe that there are certain transitions work well under very particular circumstances, and the Luma Fade transition is one of them. Within a few minutes, you can apply the Luma Fade transition pretty easily.

Isn’t Facebook time hop great?! Every day I get to see the last seven to eight years of my photography. Like almost every photographer, I sucked when I started out. My actual composition and use of the camera weren't too bad, but my post-production was horrendous. The best way to describe the post processing is “heavy-handed.”

When grading videos, it’s not rare that we have to transition grades between different sequences or within one single shot. Using DaVinci Resolve 14, it’s quite easy to achieve a perfect transition from one grade to another. In this three-minute long tutorial, Casey Faris shows us just how to do this.

Antti Karppinen is a digital artist, photographer, retoucher, and instructor from Finland with a unique eye for visual storytelling through photography. His work relies on traditional photography skills combined with an active imagination and complex Photoshop editing work to create fantastical images. He spoke with me about his work, process, and the inspiration behind a couple of his most popular composites.

Let’s face it, some people are just more creative than others. There’s no denying that we all think in radically different ways. Some of us are more "in the box" creatives, leaning towards more straightforward images - images that are technically perfect when viewed by a histogram or composition. Those artists create on the go, and in the end are able to make what others can only strive for, unique pieces of art.

Whether or not you are a purist, there are times when you have to change the color in post production of something you've photographed. This video will tell you how you can easily alter hair color of a portrait to whatever hue you want.

Modern digital cameras produce an almost impeccable representation of what is in front of the lens. Since the camera has been invented, the industry strives to recreate reality as accurately as possible. People oftentimes judge photo and video based on its technical accuracy. But who established that this would be the ultimate goal?

First announced back in September, Pixelmator Pro is an upcoming photo editing app for Mac that introduces an improved workflow and utilizes macOS High Sierra’s Core ML (machine learning) framework and Metal 2. Today in a new blog post, the release date and pricing has been revealed.

When you get in the video world, you soon realize that editing can go pretty far, but it’s not as easy as Photoshop. It tends to take more time to get to a decent result, and a tremendous patience to achieve perfection. In this short tutorial, Steve from MiesnerMedia shows us how to smooth out skin in our videos using DaVinci Resolve 14.

For many photographers, particularly hobbyists, making an image black and white is almost arbitrary. I remember in the early days of my photography, I was the same. I would mutter: "I wonder if this would look good in black and white," and then, I'd try it. Sometimes, it would look better, but usually, it would not. I presumed it was all just down to taste, but that's not true. After years of reading around the subject and experimenting, I began to understand why it worked when it did and conversely, why it often didn't. Here are some key elements that ought to be present in black and white images, and why.

In a previous article, we discovered how we could transition from Lightroom to ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 by importing old catalogs. We also discovered the different files management options and tools ACDSee Ultimate 2018 has to offer. With this second and last part, we are going to go through the main photo editing tools you’d use in Lightroom and see their counterpart in ACDSee. If you are making the switch from the Adobe solution to ACDSee Ultimate 2018, be sure to read this article.

Gradient maps are a powerful tool in Photoshop and when utilized correctly, make for a quick and easy way to effectively tone your images. Travel Photographer and Videographer Travis Transient has a quick tutorial on how to best utilize gradient maps to color grade your images.

Reproducible photography started with forms that would produce a monochromatic image. For a large portion of the history of the medium, this was all we had. Color photography brought about a choice as to which you would like to use, and over time it became the dominant choice of consumers and professionals alike. Even so, in the art world it persisted for much longer as the choice of the artist and right up to the overwhelming force of digital, dozens of different black and white films were still in production. As digital photographers, we have the choice, most of us after the fact, to make a black and white conversion of our files. Today, I’d like to talk about my thought process when it comes to making the decision to go black and white.

For the past few years, the popular Nik Collection has had an interesting journey starting back in 2012 when Google originally acquired the photo editing plugin. Over the course, the collection has gone through a price drop and ultimately landed as a free download which made several photographers happy. Who doesn't like free stuff, and for free it was a pretty solid collection of plugins.

You may have had the same reaction I did when I first started loading up the Develop module in Adobe's new Lightroom Classic CC update: oh no, why did Lightroom change all of my photos to an old process version!? First things first: don't worry. The process version did not change. Instead, Lightroom Classic CC introduces the fourth iteration of these so-called process versions, but this one (the first in half a decade) is different for a number of reasons.

Phase One has already released multiple Styles Pack since the beginning of the summer. Today, they announced their brand new Film Styles Pack and I had the chance to play around for a few days before it was officially announced. Rather than offering you a simple release article, I thought a review would be more useful. After four weddings and a couple of portrait sessions edited with it, here are my thoughts and why this might just be the perfect pack for VSCO lovers who rely on Capture One for their professional photo editing work.

Being that I’m primarily a wedding and documentary photographer, it’s not every day that I get the chance to take a portrait of a celebrity. Add to this that I live in Northwest Arkansas, which isn't really a hub for celebrities, makes it even less likely for me — especially one as well known as William H. Macy. So I thought it would be interesting to line out how I pulled it off and got the final image.

While the general public may be less focused on the technical details associated with an image used for an album cover on Pop Singer Ariana Grande’s “My Everything” album, the Internet’s Photoshop police are suddenly calling Photoshop fail. What do you think?

Landscape photographer Thomas Heaton has been releasing one hit after another on his Youtube channel lately and his newest video is one of my favorites. Focus stacking is a great and relatively simple trick any photographer can use to add a unique look to your images.

It’s obvious that color is important in our work; Hand selecting that perfect blend can take our images from decent to legendary. And it's not just photographers that notice the color mishaps. Everyone is influenced by colors. Our eyes are always naturally observing and comparing them. Color is so impactful on the masses that they are meticulously chosen for ads that reach millions of faces a day, there's no reason why you shouldn't start using the same tactics in your work.

Adding a rainbow to your images can be done in many different ways. However, not every technique is easily put into practice or can offer a remarkably consistent result. For example, the prism method is very efficient to get the effect on your files straight out of camera, but it can make focusing and composition a bit difficult. In this tutorial, Jessica Kobeissi will show you a couple of simple techniques using only Photoshop.

Photographers and digital artists alike have been using image editing software like Photoshop to enhance their work for years. There are several ways to add creative enhancements and filters to your work within Photoshop, but there are ways to add them without using the program or even in conjunction via other software and plugins. Auto FX Software has been around for more than 20 years with their customized creative photo software solutions which work as a stand-alone program or as a plugin for Photoshop or Lightroom. Right now you can get two of their modules for FREE along with support from Auto FX Software.

Capture One has recently published an article on The Image Quality Professor's Blog on how to create your own Styles and Presets written by Alexander Flemming. Styles are a great timesaver and can help accelerate your postproduction workflow with beautiful color corrections.

Do you know what keywords are and the best way to add them to your photos? What about what options to select when you are exporting your images? Have you ever heard of the painter tool? In this final part of my three-part series on Lightroom for beginners, I will cover the final steps to take after applying your final edits to your images.

Love them or hate them, Lightroom presets have become a staple in the world of editing. A lot of users use them to emulate their favorite photographers or in an effort to recreate certain film looks. The problem with these presets is that everyone that uses them ends up releasing work that looks the same as everyone else who has the same preset. This was apparent with the very popular VSCO presets. What DVLOP aims to do is give you the ability to not only emulate your favorite photographers, but also the tools to create your own style.

Time-lapse photography isn’t anything new, but it is a process that takes a lot of time to produce a cinematography effect showing subtle motion speed up to make it pronounced. Many motion films and television shows use it to show when a storm is forming, day shifts into night and vice versa, or even showing a busy street or freeway over time. Not only is it used there, many photographers produce their own clips for various projects. So how do you shoot and process a day to night time-lapse?

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed ACDSee's latest photo editing software release and even said it could replace Adobe products in many ways for Windows users. It was only wise to back that statement up with two complementary articles, this one being the first, showing to Adobe users how they could switch from Lightroom to ACDSee. In today’s write-up, I’ll concentrate on bringing files from previous Lightroom catalogs into ACDSee and also on how to manage your pictures in ACDSee Ultimate 2018.

The current trend for color grading videos is the orange and teal look. It’s not rocket science to understand why it works so well and why everyone uses it. Complementary colors are an easy choice when it comes to color grading and using orange for brighter tones allows keeping the skin tones look quite natural. In this nine-minute-long tutorial, Theo from MiesnerMedia shows us how we can achieve that trendy look using DaVinci Resolve 14.