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July 2020 – Camera and Lens Cleaning, Range Mask, Landscape, Lightroom Adjustment Brush, Photoshop Fundementals

Well in these days where we are still mostly staying home, one of the photography related things we can do is to maintain our equipment.  Here is a tutorial, posted on Mirrorless Rumors, titled “The Best (and Worst) Ways To Clean Camera Lenses”

https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/the-best-and-worst-ways-to-clean-camera-lenses/

 

It seems like a lifetime ago when Richard Smith did his last Boot Camp on Lightroom where he went over how to use the powerful Range Mask Slider in Lightroom.

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June 2020 – Lightroom Sliders, Luminosity, Depth, Tips, Easy Background Remover, Easy Sky Replacement

While we are still locked down, I hope you are all using your free time to improve your post processing skills.  It is a perfect time to learn more about Photoshop and Lightroom.  Chris O’Donnel, from creativeRAW, has given us access to his Tone and Detail Masterclass which covers both Photoshop and Lightroom.  He goes int depth covering the Tonal Sliders: exposure, Whites and Blacks, and shadows and highlights and the Presence Sliders: contrast, texture, clarity, dehaze, vibrancy and saturation. The class is in 3 parts, each almost an hour in length.

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May 2020 – Lockdown Home Photography, Lightroom Tutorial, Still Life Tips, Harsh Camera Truths

As I write this it looks like we’ll be missing another Photography Club meeting and the lockdown will continue for at least a few more weeks.  Our worldwide photography community has been doing a great job of coming up with things for us to do while we sit and practice our introvert skills.  Here’s a few of those resources.

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April 2020 – Cure for Cabin Fever, Photoshop Tips

Well, at the time I write this, we’ve already canceled our March meeting, had travel restrictions imposed, schools closed, people told to work from home and most amazing to me, significant hording of toilet paper.  So, to try to help out while we’re all practicing “Social Distancing”, I hope this month’s links will provide you with some distraction from what’s going around.  Hopefully though, by the time the April newsletter comes out some of these restrictions will be alleviated. 

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March 2020 – 30 Days of Photoshop Tips

We’re going to do something a little different this month by sticking with one content provider.  You guys remember Aaron Nace of Phlearn, I’ve showcased tutorials by him before.  Earlier this year, Arron did a series he called “30 Days of Photoshop” where he released a different tutorial on Photoshop each day with the intention oftaking his students from Beginner to Advanced. 

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February 2020 – Waterfall, Winter Photos, Snow, Color Space, Photoshop Tips

Well, It’s February and it’s still cold outside.  For some unexplainable reason, photographers are still wanting to go outside and shoot in the snow and cold.  So, for this month, I’ll feed that desire with a few Cold Weather photographer articles. 

First up is Blake Rudis from f.64 Academy.  This month Blake does a video tutorial on Winter Waterfall Photography.  If you remember, Jim Pierson, Mickey Rountree and Rosemary Williams got some great shots of

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January 2020 – Selective Color, Better Color from RAW Files, Ice, Icey Streams, Snowflakes, Split Warp Tool, Depth and Form

By the time you read this Christmas will be over and we’ll be in a new year.   It was kind of amazing how fast last year went, Hopefully, this one will last a little longer.  I’m sure you noticed the fantastic increase in emails last month with everybody trying to sell you something.  The same thing happened with photography web sites also.  All my favorite instructors had bunches of stuff to sell and instruction seemed to fall by the wayside.  Fortunately, I was still able to dig a few gems out of the retail binging going on.

First up is Blake Rudis of f64 Academy.  If you remember from some of my previous articles, Blake is a former

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December 2019 – Photoshop Troubleshooting, Photoshop Tips, Lightroom Tips, Cityscape at Night

Last month we had a big new release of Photoshop, It’s now Photoshop 2020.  As usual with any new major photoshop release, it was filled with exciting new features and a few glitches.  First up we’ll go to Coin Smith at the Photoshop Café and see his video on Photoshop 2020 Update Trouble Shooting Guide.  Be sure to look around the site because he has some great videos on the new features.  You can find it here:

https://photoshopcafe.com/photoshop-2020-fix-problems-find-missing-things-update/

 

Next up we’ve got a new site I haven’t referenced before called PiXimperfect.  It’s the site of a guy named Unmesh Dinda.  I think this guy knows more about Photoshop than anybody I’ve ever come across and can explain things very clearly.  His tutorial today is called, Top 20 New Features & Updates EXPLAINED! – Photoshop 2020.  As an aside, this guy has the best hair on the internet, I’d watch him just to look at his hair.  You can access his video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIXM37H0mzs

 

Lightroom Classic was also updated so we can’t leave that out.  Here’s our favorite French photographer, Serge Ramelli with his tutorial titled, “New Lightroom Classic, My top 5 Best Features!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oOTYyny5VI

 

One of my favorite things to do is to take city scape’s, and for me, they’re always more interesting at night.  That coupled with the advantage that you don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to shoot them.  On Picture Correct this month is an article by Mark Jacobs titled “Photographing Cities at Night”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/photographing-cities-at-night/

November 2019 – Wacom, Pen and Tablet, Silky Water and Clouds, Long Exposure, Smoke, Oversaturated Photos

If you were at our October meeting, you’ll have noticed that our door prize table was filled with some great stuff.  Thanks to Karen Beisel for doing such a great job.  The most valuable things on the table were two Wacom tablets.  If you’re not familiar with these things their used for editing.  These two were valued at around $280 each.  Blake Rudis of f64 Academy, recently published an article and video about why we use tablets for post processing.  Now Blake is one of the most talented post processing educators around, he’s one of those guys that enjoys post processing more than shooting.  At the end of his video, he tells us which tablet he’s using and why he prefers it to all the others he’s had.  He got this one on Amazon for $29.  If you think you might want to try a tablet, this seems like a good way to start.  Blake’s article is titled “The Best Pen and Tablet for Photoshop” and you can find it here. 

https://f64academy.com/best-pen-tablet-photoshop/

 

Several of us were out in Maine recently and it was a rich shooting environment with lots of water and great clouds.  A great way to tame both of those elements is by taking long exposures.  Here’s an article and video by Greg Benz titled “How to get silky smooth water and clouds with long exposure photography”

https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-tips/how-to-get-silky-smooth-water-and-clouds-with-long-exposure-photography

 

One of the things I like to shoot is smoke.  I find it amazing the shapes that you can find when you capture a segment of the stuff just drifting up in the air.  I’ve covered it before in the newsletter, but this article covers some different aspects of shooting smoke and when it’s cold outside, you really need something to shoot inside where it’s warm.  This article is by Chelsea O’Neill and it’s on the Picture Correct web site.  The article is titled: “Smoke Photography Photoshop Tutorial”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/smoke-photography-photoshop-tutorial/

 

One of Lightroom and Photoshop’s most powerful tools is the adjustment brush. I find I use it on every single image I work on.  Here, Chris O’Donnell brings us two extensive tutorials That run almost an hour and a half.  It’s more of a class than a tutorial.  It’s found on Chris’ Creative Raw site and is titled “Steps for Smoother Brushwork in Lightroom and Photoshop.”

https://creativeraw.com/key-smoother-brushwork-lightroom-photoshop/

 

I love color.  I’ve made no secret about it.  I usually find B&W images boring with a lack of impact.  No offence intended to the B&W photographers, that’s just me.  I see in color; I think in color; sometimes I think is see in HDR which can be really colorful.  The danger of color is oversaturation. It can become very unrealistic. (Not as unrealistic as B&W which has no color.  When was the last time you’ve seen something like that?)  A couple of days ago, Blake Rudis published a tutorial titled “How to fix over saturated photos in Photoshop”.  Now Blake is formerly a painter and is extremely well versed in color theory.  Sometimes his explanations make your eyes glaze over.  But while he gives you the theory behind this technique, he also gives you an Action to download for use in photoshop.  This action makes the technique pretty idiot proof.  I said earlier that I had just got back from Maine.  I finally finished my edits and showed my wife.  She thinks every picture I make is over saturated. (personally, I think she sees in pastel colors).  I ran everything through this action that Blake created and only two of my images were slightly saturated on a couple of spots.  I felt vindicated, science has proved me right.  Anyway, if anyone’s interested you can see my Maine pictures at https://billmueller.smugmug.com/Maine-2019/.  Let me know if you think their over saturated.  You can find Blakes article here:

https://f64academy.com/fix-saturated-photos-photoshop/

October 2019 – Aperture and Shutter Priority, Bracket Exposures, Remove Tourists, Luminosity Masks

Well, this month we’re going to cover the gamut from basic to advanced.  We’ll start out with a couple of basic articles from Picture Correct.  This first one covers basic camera adjustments.  It’s Called Aperture and Shutter Priority Modes on Digital Cameras.  It’s by Andrew Goodall and you can find it here:

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/aperture-and-shutter-priority-modes-on-digital-cameras/

 

The second article is by Wayne Turner.  Do any of you remember back in the film days when we would bracket our exposures to be sure we got the picture correct before we left the scene?  Now it’s a heck of a lot easier than the film days and we have so much more we can do with the bracketed images.  You can have a composition where either the ground or the sky is exposed correctly but it’s impossible to do both in the same picture.  So, you shoot once for each and blend them together.  Here’s a basic discussion on” How to Bracket Exposures in Photography”.

https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-bracket-exposures-in-photography/

 

Here’s one that sounds a lot more difficult than it is.  It’s titled “How to Remove Tourists in Photoshop in 3 Clicks = Crowd Removal”.  If you’ve been to Europe recently, everything you want to take pictures of is awash with people.  I Have lots of beautiful buildings from the second floor up trying to get them out of my pictures.  I wish I knew this trick 5 years ago.  It’s from Photoshop Café by Colin Smith.

https://photoshopcafe.com/remove-tourists-photoshop-3-clicks-crowd-removal/?mc_cid=c6e5d3bc23&mc_eid=34dca0478d

 

Now we get to the Advanced part of this month’s list.  I’ve been playing with Luminosity Masks for a couple years now and it’s amazing how powerful they are and how much there is to learn.  Here’s an article by Greg Benz titled appropriately: “What the @*&$ are Luminosity Masks”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz0yHXy0s-U

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