New on the Web

May 1, 2021

May 2021 – Sky + Reflection Replacement, Moon Photography, Textures, Curves

Last year, Luminar came out with a one click sky replacement that worked really well. Photoshop followed up by adding a sky replacement feature of their own. Luminar decided to up the anti by adding sky reflection replacement into their plug in. I love competition, we get so many good features with everyone trying to out to do everyone else. The downside of Luminar is that you’ve got to keep buying it every year or so and we’re already paying for Photoshop. Blake Rudis of f64 Academy did this tutorial on how to do a sky and sky reflection in

Photoshop with much more control than you could ever have with Luminar. Plus, he built the whole thing into an action where the only real decision you have to make is to pick the sky that you want to use in your image. You can watch the video and download the action and a few of his favorite sky’s here. For full disclosure, I have Luminar and that’s what I used until I saw Blake’s video.

Sky + Reflection Replacement – f64 Academy

In case you’re the type of person that really wants to understand what’s going on under the hood, here’s a tutorial from Colin Smith of photoshop Café where he goes over every slider in Photoshops sky replacement feature and explains what they do and how to use them. He also gives you the opportunity to download a few of his favorite sky’s.

Sky Replacement in Photoshop, ultimate tutorial – free sky images included. – PhotoshopCAFE

As long as were working on sky’s, how many times do you wish you had a beautiful big moon in your image. Unfortunately, the moon isn’t usually there when we need it. That’s why we go out and shoot when the moon is large and dramatic so we have lots of images we can add to our otherwise perfect pictures. Here’s an article posted on Picture Correct by Chris Thornton titled How to Photograph the Moon.

How to Photograph the Moon (picturecorrect.com)

As we’ve been cooped up in the house and not been able to travel as much as we would have liked for photography, a lot of us have been playing with textures. Doing it is fairly easy, doing it and having it come out looking good is a whole different story. Here’s a tutorial from Aaron Nace of Phlearn with his video on How to Turn Photos into Textures in Photoshop.

(174) How to Turn Photos into Textures in Photoshop – YouTube

One of the most powerful tools in Photoshop is Curves. If you don’t use it or don’t understand it, you need to. Here’s a tutorial from PiXimperfect titled Master Curves from Start to Finish in Photoshop.

(174) Master Curves from Start to Finish in Photoshop – YouTube

April 1, 2021

April 2021 – Adobe Camera Raw Tips, Smoke, HSL Color Grading

Adobe did an update to Photoshop earlier this month and one of the new abilities they’ve added is called Super Resolution. Let’s say you have an old image back when you didn’t know any better and were shooting jpeg’s or you have a cell phone image, and you need to print this image really big. You’re out of luck because the file is so small it will just fall apart once you enlarge it. Here’s where Super Resolution comes to the rescue to increase your file size while maintaining the edges and preserving details. Here you go, direct from the Photoshop Training Channel

(38) Super Resolution! Amazing New Feature in ACR – YouTube

Another cool feature they added to Adobe Camera Raw was the ability to put the various editing activities in the order you choose. We’ve had this in Lightroom for years, but Adobe is finally upgrading ACR in bridge and

March 1, 2021

March 2021 – TIFF vs PSD, Focus Stacking, Depth Aware Haze,

I’ll finally admit it, I’m Bored with a capital B. Here’s what I have been reduced to.

I found a tutorial that will allow you to customize the UI (user interface) colors on photoshop. You can go wild. Here’s an example of some of the things you can do. You can spend days playing with this.

Here’s the link. It was on the Photoshop Training Channel. You don’t have to use the same colors shown here, you

can use different colors or even separate colors for all of those various UI’s.

(757) How To CUSTOMIZE The Photoshop Interface Color [2 Quick Hacks] – YouTube

As long as we’re “improving” photoshop, how about we teach it to respond to voice commands? Imagine having a power like Alexa to have Photoshop do your bidding. Well, it’s possible. Here’s a tutorial from our friend Unmesh Dinda of Piximperfect. The software to do this is actually free. It’s called VoiceAttack. The free version has a limit of 20 voice commands and will work on one program. If you want to use it on more than one program or have more than 20 commands you want to use, there’s a paid version.

(774) Voice Commands in Photoshop? Hell Yeah! – YouTube

Now that we’re done with creating the Photoshop of the future, let’s get down to some photography related stuff. Here’s a tutorial from Blake Rudis of f64 Elite on file types. What should you save your files as TIFF or PSD? Which is better & Why! Blake covers all the major file types in this tutorial.

(774) TIFF vs PSD? Which is better & WHY! – YouTube

One of the tools we have in photography is Focus Stacking. It’s a technique that combines several images taken using different focus points to ensure an image is in perfect focus from front to back. Nick Page presents this tutorial that shows us Focus Stacking doesn’t have to be hard, in fact in Photoshop, it’s almost idiot proof.

(774) How to Focus Stack in Photoshop // Tutorial – YouTube

One of the new things in the last release of Photoshop are Neural Filters. These are filters that use a lot of AI and you have to be connected to the internet to take advantage. If your Wi-Fi is turned off, they won’t work. One of the neatest ones is called Depth-Aware Haze. The filter identifies your subject and makes everything else hazy. Pretty cool. Here Arron Nace from Phlearn.com takes us through the steps to use this new filter with several different examples.

(774) Testing the NEW Depth-Aware Haze in Photoshop | PHLEARN – YouTube

February 1, 2021

February 2021 – Bracketing, Selection Tools, Lightroom, Gradient, Optimize Colors

Do you bracket your exposure when you shoot? Do you always bracket or just sometimes? Here’s a tutorial from Nick page that will explain when you should bracket and when it just doesn’t make any sense.

(673) Exposed // Bracketing vs ETTR – YouTube

There will some a time in every photographers’ life when it becomes necessary to remove the background from a

photograph. Here’s a tutorial from Aaron Nace, the photographer behind Plearn, on quick ways to get that job done.

(673) Photoshop’s 5 Most Powerful Selection Tools – YouTube

Blake Rudis of f64 Academy used to call his web channel Everyday HDR. HDR as it was done 10 years ago has gone out of favor, but the need for expanding the dynamic range of our photographs is still there. Our eyes can see a much greater dynamic range than our cameras can capture. Fortunately, we’ve learned much subtler ways to accomplish. In this tutorial, Blake is teaching us a way to do it in the develop module of Lightroom or in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop.

HDR Processing in 2020 – f64 Academy

Here’s a 1-minute tutorial from Colin Smith of Photoshop Cafe on Color grading with gradient maps.

(673) Instant High-end color grade in Photoshop with gradient Maps #Shorts – YouTube

If you watched the presentation from Tim Grey at our January virtual meeting you saw how he moved back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop. Here is a tutorial from Colin Smith showing in detail how to move back and forth with both a video and written instructions that should clear up any questions you may have had since Tim’s not around to answer questions anymore.

How to Open Photos from Lightroom in Photoshop – PhotoshopCAFE

Well get a little technical for this one, Greg Benz goes through the Photoshop color settings explaining what each of them does and which one’s are the best to use.

How to Optimize Color Settings in Photoshop (gregbenzphotography.com)

And were never complete without our friend Unmesh Dinda of Piximperfect. Here we have an absolute fun one. Those of you who have set up a smart house using the Amazon Echo or Google can appreciate this one. Personally, I turn on my office lights, set timers, set alarms and tell my TV what show I want it to play. (A long way from having to get up from the couch and walking over to the TV and changing the channel.) Unmesh is demonstrating a free program called Voice Attack that will let you give voice commands to Photoshop. Imagine saying Duplicate (duplicate a layer), Mask (add a mask), Black Mask (add a black mask), Save (save your image). Unmesh even gives us some free actions that will soften skin of remove a background that you can get the program to execute by voice command.

(673) Voice Commands in Photoshop? Hell Yeah! – YouTube

January 1, 2021

January 2021 – Gear, Embossed Text, Logos, Realistic Page Turn Effect, Selective Color, Convert Landscape into Sunset

Well by the time you read this we’ve survived 2020 and moved on to 2021. The vaccine has been out for a few weeks and most of our club members should be higher on the list to receive it. The sad part of that is to get higher on the list we have to be old. Oh well.

We’ll start off this month’s group of tutorials with a guy I haven’t featured here before, Nick Page. I met Nick in Chicago a couple of years ago, he’s an intelligent and passionate photographer. He seems to spend a lot of time in

December 1, 2020

December 2020 – Dodge and Burn, Sky Replacement

Last month, the big news was the release of Photoshop 2021 and Lightroom Classic 10. Well, this month those two items are still dominating cyberspace. The tutorials are going into more depth as the pros really get into the meat of these two programs. I’ll cover some other topics hear but the excitement over the new releases still dominates.

Our buddy Arron Nace over at Phlearn starts off with “How to Match Color in Lightroom and Photoshop.

How to Match Color in Lightroom & Photoshop – PHLEARN

Blake Rudis takes the old Dodge and Burn technique to a whole new level telling us

November 1, 2020

November 2020 – Photoshop Features, Lightroom Features, Adding Moon to Landscape

The Big news for Photographers in October was the release of new versions of Photoshop and Lightroom. We’ve been blessed with more amazing capabilities from Adobe. This month’s article for the most part will be focused on the new capabilities in those programs.

First up will be Colin Smith from Photoshop Café with his video on “How to Use The Top New Features In Photoshop 2021”.

https://photoshopcafe.com/photoshop-2021-new-features-use-top-new-features-photoshop-2021/

This next on is from PiXimperfect, to me, this guy is one of the best Photoshop instructors on the planet. Here’s

October 1, 2020

October 2020 – Textures, HDR, Painting, Photoshop Tools

You see a lot of photographs these days that have been enhance by adding textures to the image. Here’s a quick tutorial from Aaron Nace of Phlearn titled “How to Ad Textures & Overlays to a Photo in Photoshop”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9J0UM1EM3I

One of the “things” in photography that’s been around for lots of years is HDR. People love it or hate it and you can find loads of articles and posts that argue both sides. Cameras have been evolving so you can actually take

September 1, 2020

September 2020 – Color Tips, Dodging, Burning, Content Aware

Blake Rudis will start us off this month with a tutorial on how to adjust color in Lightroom’s develop module or if you do not use Lightroom, in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop. Blake is a former painter turned photographer and is a master of color adjustments. Here is his tutorial titled “4 Things You Should Be Doing with Color in ACR”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ6HAIfT_ec

Continuing on with Blake, He has just released a 4-part series on Color Theory. He’ll take you from and intro to color theory to how to color grade a photo to change the whole mood of the image.

August 1, 2020

August 2020 – Landscape, Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop Presets, Content Aware Fill, Memory Card Formatting

Here’s an interesting tutorial by someone I haven’t covered before, Thomas Heaton. Thomas is a Landscape Photographer and here is his video on “5 Ways I Approach Focusing for Landscape Photography.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEzB2hzs2v8

Back in June, Adobe released a major update to Adobe Camera Raw. It was probably the most significant update to the interface that I’ve seen in 12 years.