Video tutorial – post-processing a magic cloth image
This tutorial video takes you though the post-processing of a Magic cloth image from Lightroom 3 to Photoshop CS3 Video Text: Kirkjufellsfoss, Snæfellsness, Iceland Step one: choose presets to match the lens… Canon 24mm f/1.4 mark II Step Two: Use white balance eye dropper to select a neutral colour – grey is best, but white will also work with a bit of tweaking Next step: even out the exposure; darken the highlights, brighten the shadows… a little Next step: Adjust the tone curve, basically boosting the highlights with strong contrast and using the histogram Looking at...
Read MoreAdvanced Photoshop – Dramatic Mono Conversion
This tutorial looks at ways to convert your image to black and white using the tools available in Photoshop CS3. There may be work-arounds for other versions of photoshop or other image editors, but the work horse in this tutorial is the powerful ‘Black and White Tool’ in CS3 which has a great selection of filter pre-sets. To emulate this without the tool, you could try blending channel levels. The first step is to prepare your image. Black and white has a higher dynamic range than colour so it may be advisable to create a HDR from multiple exposures or even tonemap a single...
Read MorePhotoshop basics – simple colour correction
This is a quick and simple technique for correcting the colour of an image in photoshop. It is not always successful and will not give you the desired results 100% of the time. But as it is quick and easy it is definitely one to try first. My picture of Goðafoss has a dictinct blue cast. It was taken in low light and this is a common problem as my canon couldn’t really see well enough to decide on an appropriate white balance. I could have corrected this at the RAW stage, but for the benefit of this tutorial, I burned it as it came out of the camera. Duplicate the layer. Then apply an...
Read MoreCreate a photoshop action – Colour boost
This tutorial offers an alternative to the saturation option when you wish to dramatically boost the colours in an image. We will make a photoshop action for this colour boosting technique so that it can be applied easily to any image in the future. More information about creating an action can be found here. The first step is to create a folder for your action. You can call it what you want, I have called it ‘ColourBoost’. Give the first step a logical name and start recording. LAB Convert your image to LAB mode. LAB means there are three channels L=lightness and two colour...
Read MorePhotography techniques – focus stacking
This articles looks at a lengthy and complicated procedure to render every part of a scene with perfect focus. the aim is to achieve a high depth of field (DOF) whilst maintaining the high quality of your lens’ sweet-spot. The main challenge is, maybe, deciding what situations exactly would require this sort of treatment. This technique is popular for macro work, where the DOF is usually too shallow to capture all the sharp detail in a subject. Landscape could benefit as there is a requirement for sharpness throughout the scene. Usually an f/16 and careful hyper-focal calculations will...
Read MorePhotoshop Basics – noise reduction
No camera is perfect. If we push it to the limits of iso and low-light scenes, we are going to experience the number one weakness of a digital camera – NOISE. In camera noise control When you use the long exposure noise reduction setting on a D-SLR, it takes the same shot with the shutter closed and then takes the information away from the original exposure. This is why you will have to wait the same amount of time again after taking the shot this can be an inconvenience if you want to keep shooting. You can save this time and do this yourself with photoshop or similar photo editor. If...
Read More