If you do much work in Photoshop, you've no doubt used a Hue/Saturation/Lightness (HSL) layer before, but within that adjustment is a powerful tool for refining how the effect is applied. Check out this helpful tutorial that will show you how to get the most out of HSL adjustments.
Traditionally, more involved edits such as dodging and burning are done in Photoshop, but it's often desirable to stay in Lightroom if you can. This helpful tutorial shows you how to dodge and burn a portrait all in Lightroom.
Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve is widely known for its color grading tools. It’s what many would call an industry standard thanks to its powerful features. With the Beta 4 of Resolve 14 that was released a little while ago, the software saw its editing and audio capabilities improving quite a bit as well. However, many forget or don't know about them and stick to working with Premiere or Final Cut Pro. Discover in this video how Resolve editing and audio features work. Perhaps you’ll see they are exactly what you needed.
Lindsay Adler is best known for creative fashion and beauty work, but aside from her stunning and unique photography, she’s a great speaker and educator. She recently gave a two-hour master class at B&H on how to create a portrait that is a work of art. Listen to her and learn how to elevate your imagery and improve your workflow from pre- to post-production if you wish to build a portfolio that stands out.
Photographers often treat color grading as a trivialized aspect of their workflow. Something that they only worry about once the image is complete and with no greater attention than flipping through a series of filter presets in whichever their flavor of the month plugin happens to be at any given time. Instead, obsessive time and attention is paid to aspects such as cloning, dodging, burning, sharpening, liquefying, etc. Colorists in the film industry have known for years powerful color grading is critical to great filmmaking. Directors know this as well, which is why colorists often enjoy a massive, expensive, personal theater filled with an impressive array of tools to grade the latest mega blockbuster.
The box-set revolution of the last fifteen years has pressed huge demands of screenwriters to flesh out narratives into 10-20 hours of television. Over the last few years, there has been a go-to technique that has helped writers add meat to the bones of complex narratives, whilst filling up the content needed to air modern TV shows. We’re talking about the flashback.
With the rising prices of additional baggage when flying. Traveling with all the gear photographers need for the average location shoot is getting out of hand. There are lots of articles and tricks for saving some money but most of us have stripped down our travel kits to the essentials. This of course means for bigger jobs renting extra gear once on location. Manufactures seem to get this and there has been a boom in options, from battery powered strobes to wireless flashes and all sorts in between. Back from his online blogging hiatus, Zack Arias shares how he has solved this issue with an all in one ready to go lighting bag.
We all know the pictures on the packaging of food you buy usually is a lie. It's not how it's going to look when you open it, and it's not going to taste as good as your imagination was telling you it would based on the photo of the package. But it surely works to get people interested and buying one product over the other. How do they do it? This video shares 10 tricks food advertisers use when shooting the images to be used in advertising and packaging. A picture of a piece of bread being broken open, hot and steaming out of the oven, sure looks delicious. Did you know wet cotton wool will steam longer than bread would? Yes, me neither.
We've recently covered the knots a photographer and videographer must know. The same guy, Mark Vargo, shows us how to correctly wrap cables, rope, and cords on location. It's something I thought I didn't need to know, but the skills will be very useful when your team has one more look to shoot and the wireless trigger's last battery is done and you need to use a syncing cable.
The dramatic looks that can be achieved with strobes can very well be accomplished with natural light if utilized correctly. Understanding how to use the sources and the environment will increase the overall image every time. Using pull backs of each shot is a valuable tool in order to truly appreciate and understand how each image was shot. One photographer shows just how to light dramatically with minimal set ups.
Today I want to share a quick tip on cleaning up lint, dust, cat hair, and things like that from clothing or other areas of your photo. I'm super picky, and even if the image is a 5x7 and the dust may not even show up on the print, I like to fix things like that on my large files anyway. You never know when the customer may come back later and order a wall portrait from that file they only previously purchased a 5x7 from, and I don't want to have to go back in and re-retouch the image.
Not every photographer needs lavish resources and an army of helpers to create dramatic images that belie their basic production. Lia Konrad is a 23-year-old fine art photographer based in a small town in Germany, but she hasn’t let modest resources stop her from following her passion to create epic images inspired by her love of fairytales, myths, and fictional stories for her website Liancary.
Masking plays a crucial role in the quality of your retouching. There are so many tools available to create and refine masks, that’s often times we forget the most basics and useful ones. One of them is a bit hidden and it seems like many don’t even know it exists! However, it’s probably amongst the most useful options to refine a mask and make your adjustment shine through in a more natural and convincing way. It’s the feather option and I’m going to show you how you can use it with a real-world example.
There are a lot of variables to consider when discussing the income we generate from our photography. Aspiring professionals often site a lack of work when defending their status as either hobbyist or part time photographers, but the truth is often a little more complicated than that. When times get tough, many creative photographers use the skills they’ve collected to generate income in other ways.
While working on putting together great video work, you will come across breaks in scenes where they need to come back together. In most cases, a transition effect is used to merge the scenes together instead of having one stop completely and the next one begin. A great transition can improve your video, but they can also be used incorrectly and ruin your film.
A lot of people came to visit when I shared why most of us are not exactly the best at Instagram due to lack of hustle and effort. When someone takes the time to comment or like a few photos I will usually take the few seconds to go see their profile and immediately judge it. We all do it. Sometimes it is a good impression, but often since the majority of us don't plan the posts much, it is not. There are people out there doing it much better than us though. Let me show you some profiles that have a stunning first impression.
Being busy doesn't mean being profitable. Working on all kinds of projects doesn't lead to a successful photography career. This article is not the usual "Five quick steps to become a wealthy photographer." To be honest, it's a slow process, but if you understand its principles it will guide you on the journey to success.
There is an innumerable amount of articles and tutorials teaching parts and pieces of retouching portraits. However, finding the ones with quality techniques and information can take days. Furthermore, there is no singular tutorial that teaches a complete set of methods to retouch portraits free of charge. Finding the right tutorials for each aspect of editing can become very time consuming. This article contains 5 years of research for achieving the greatest methods to retouch a portrait.
Getting perfect skin tones can be quite time consuming and difficult. Because everyone's skin complexion is different, the corrections needed will be different every time. Even so, there are some recurring problems such as over-saturated reds in darker tones. A great makeup goes a long way in helping with redness, but sometimes it is not enough. The best example is the red seen in the ears when the model is backlit. Because of the nature of skin and the human body, the ears are going to turn red and no makeup will totally solve that. So let’s see how we can correct that very effectively and quickly using Photoshop.
Readers have enjoyed my past blogs on editing from home, making a better demo reel, and other video-editing articles, so now I’m sharing with you my favorite editing tricks that I find make for better cuts and ultimately make videos easier to watch.
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