Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Practical Photoshop

“Welcome to issue 126 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” This issue is dedicated to helping you get the most out of your landscape photos, from essential raw editing to creative effects and advanced shooting skills. We’ll also take a look at the impressive new Depth Blur Neural Filter and get creative with symmetrical mandala paintings. James Paterson, Editor • james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com…

A useful benefit of shooting in raw format is the control it gives you over white balance. You can choose a White Balance Preset or set a color temperature in Lightroom’s Basic Panel, with the same results as if you’d done it in-camera while taking the shot. By contrast, when editing JPEGs, the white balance controls offer more rudimentary color-shifting options, with a Temperature slider that goes from -100 to +100. With raws, you have access to the Kelvin scale of color temperature from 2,000 to 50,000. To quickly correct a color cast, grab the White Balance Eyedropper Tool and click over a point that should be neutral, like a gray rock or a road. When it comes to editing your landscapes, not only does this raw control over white…

After editing a photo in Lightroom, you can make further changes in Photoshop. Simply right-click the image and choose Edit In > Edit In Adobe Photoshop. You can choose to edit the original file or a copy. By default, the image will open in Photoshop as a TIFF file, but if you’d prefer to work with PSD files, change this in the Lightroom Preferences under External Editing (you can also choose a color space here). Once you’ve finished working on the image in Photoshop, press Cmd/Ctrl+S to save and send the edited version back to Lightroom. If you chose to edit a copy, the new version will be stacked in Lightroom with the original file.…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3CU3mwd We often hear portrait shooters talk about underexposing the ambient light, then using a flash to pick out the subject. It can result in atmospheric portraits with bold skies. So why not use the same method to create a bold landscape? This way, we can underexpose the scene for a dramatic evening sky, then pick out parts of our scene with the flash. The problem is – like the neolithic burial chamber here – that subjects in landscape photos tend to be larger than people, so a single flash may not be big enough or strong enough to light the entire thing. Thankfully, there’s no need to bring along an arsenal of flashes. One of the advantages to landscape photography is that – apart from the…

01 COMBINE AND ALIGN In Bridge, highlight the images that you want to blend together, then go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. Next, go to the Layers Panel and shift-click between the top and bottom layers to highlight them. Go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers, choose Reposition and click OK to line up the frames. 02 MASK AND REVEAL Hide all but the bottom layer, then reveal and highlight the layer above it. Hold Alt and click the Add Mask icon in the Layers Panel to add a full black mask, then grab the Brush Tool. Choose a soft-edged brush tip and paint with white to reveal the part of the hidden layer that you want to use in your finished composite. 03 BLEND THE…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3m5Rpxv Photoshop’s Brush Tool is full of hidden delights. In this project we’ll explore one of our favorites to create an eye-catching effect. Symmetry Painting lets you paint in several places at once. There are several types of Symmetrical Painting options to experiment with, but the most enjoyable is Mandala. Often found in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, mandalas are geometric patterns organized around a single central point (‘mandala’ is Sanskrit for ‘circle’). The Mandala setting in Photoshop lets you create these sorts of designs in seconds. You can also choose the number of segments for your mandala design, which essentially determines how many places you can paint at once. It’s simple to set up, creative, and easy to lose yourself painting circular mandala patterns. We don’t need…

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We’ll begin here by exploring essential landscape edits in Lightroom. These are the sorts of enhancements that you’ll want to make to most, if not all, landscapes you choose to work on. We’ll show how this is done in Lightroom Classic’s Develop Module, but if you prefer to use Camera Raw, you’ll find the tools there are almost identical. Lightroom’s tools are ideal for the kind of edits landscape photographers need to make, but if you want to go a step further with your outdoor photos, Photoshop gives you greater creative scope. So in the second part of this feature, we’ll progress to explore a few creative landscape effects. Finally, we’ll take an in-depth look at shooting landscapes while painting the scene with a flash, and show you how to…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3k1sqsv 01 MAKE A GRAD Drag down from sky to land with the Graduated Filter to make two lines; the wider apart they are, the greater the transition. It often helps to make two separate grads in a landscape photo: one that covers the entire sky, and a second to darken the top of the frame slightly more. Hold Shift while dragging to make the lines perfectly horizontal. 02 USE THE SLIDERS After defining an area with the tool, you can use the sliders to change it. With skies, we usually want to lower Exposure slightly to darken the area. We can also try dropping Highlights. If we want to boost cloud details, we can try increasing Contrast, Clarity or Dehaze. To enhance colors, try increasing Saturation;…

A long exposure is a great way to show lovely motion blur in water and clouds. But one of the trickiest things about long exposures is getting the sky right. If the clouds are moving slowly then, with say a 30-second exposure, they may have a touch of motion blur. But this can sometimes look a little messy. If so, you can use the Select Sky command to automatically select the area, then use the Motion Blur or Path Blur filters to increase the blur. Alternatively, you could use the Sky Replacement Tool to add a different sky, then blur this instead. WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3CO4fXb…

1 TRIPOD In order to paint a scene with our flash, we need to take a series of photographs that are in perfect alignment – so a tripod is essential, to keep the camera fixed throughout. We positioned ours so that we could create a frame-within-a-frame, and see the sky through the gap in the stones. 2 FLASH We need to light our outdoor subject in segments with a flash. A flashgun or outdoor flash like the Godox AD300 Pro is ideal. The flash is triggered wirelessly from the on-camera transmitter. You can use a wireless trigger, or set it to optical remote and trigger with your camera’s pop-up flash. 3 CAMERA SETTINGS We need a consistent exposure throughout our series of shots, so use Manual mode. Set the shutter…

As well as sunset images, flash painting also works well for bold black-and-whites. By removing the color we don’t need to worry about any color temperature mismatches between our flash and the ambient light. One of the simplest ways to create a bold black-and-white landscape is with the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop. After combining your set of flash-lit shots, make a merged copy of all the layers with the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E, then go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. Go to the Profile Browser and hover over the different black-and-white presets to see which works for you.…

As always, your favourite brands and a raft of exciting newcomers will be on the show floor. For the first time in months, you’ll be able to test the kit you’ve been dreaming of trying, buy the gear you’ve wanted (at unbeatable prices) and get that all-important face-to-face advice. Online just isn’t the same! Brand-new to the show is our Shutter Street Stage, which will feature a range of talks dedicated to urban photography, and the Analogue Spotlight, where sessions will explore the realm of film and processing. These programmes will run alongside Behind the Lens, The Studio, Photo Live Stage, Video Live Stage and the Editing & Post-Production Suite. In addition, the Pro Masterclass will cover business and creative skills as always, but with a focus on navigating the…

BEHIND THE LENS 11:00-11:40 Finding your story: Creating fine-art imagery EJ Lazenby 12:00-12:40 Exhibition-quality photographic printing Nat Coalson 13:00-13:40 The art of composition Karl Holtby 14:00-14:40 Wild and untamed: A journey to Mongolia’s Altai Julian Elliot 15:00-15:40 Wayward wildlife Tesni Ward 16:00-16:40 Landscape photography from start to finish Laurence Norah THE STUDIO 13:00-13:40 Creating feature films with heart Daniel Peters 16:00-16:40 Professional audio for absolute beginners Tom Lewis SHUTTER STREET 10:30-11:00 Down the garden path: Back-garden wildlife and nature photography Victoria Hillman 11:30-12:00 365 Day Photo Projects: Grow your photography and love where you live Jo Bradford 12:30-13:00 Hunting for photo stories during the pandemic Peter Dench 14:30-15:00 Looking for less Tim Booth 15:30-16:00 Social photography toolkit Rebecca Spencer STAY UP TO DATE For the latest news and details of…

RAW LANDSCAPES Why raw is best for outdoor scenes – and what to do first to your raw file If you want the maximum amount of detail and quality in your photos, shooting in raw format is a must. Raw files are much larger than JPEGs – not in terms of resolution, but in the number of colors they hold. This information can prove vital when you edit a landscape photo, as it translates to extra dynamic range, which means more detail in the shadows and highlights. Areas of a bright sky that may clip to pure white in a JPEG can often be rescued in a raw file. As such, the extra dynamic range is hugely beneficial while editing landscapes, as it means you can pull detail out of…

Many near-perfect landscape photos are let down by a slightly wonky horizon – and it’s such an easy problem to fix, either at the time of shooting or afterwards in Photoshop or Lightroom. The Transform/Geometry Panel (confusingly named differently in Camera Raw/Lightroom Classic/Lightroom CC) offers several handy auto fixes for levelling out horizons (try the Level button) and fixing converging verticals (try Auto or Full). If these don’t do the trick, there’s also the Guided Uptight command, which lets you plot lines through the scene to snap parts of the image to the horizontal or vertical axes.…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3meisqn Reflections on the surface of water are one of the most pleasing landscape sights, but sometimes a reflection doesn’t come out as clearly as you might like. Wind and currents can disrupt the surface and mess with the mirror-like effect. If this happens, you can enhance the reflection afterwards by copying and flipping parts of the scene. Here’s how… 01 COPY AND FLIP Open the image, then grab the Lasso Tool and make a selection of the area of land and sky above the reflection. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy it to a new layer. Next, press Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform, then right-click and choose Flip Vertical. Lower the layer opacity and position the area over the water, aligning it with the original reflection. 02 SELECT THE WATER…

01 UNDEREXPOSE AMBIENT LIGHT Before turning on the flash, we first work out an ambient exposure that will result in a dramatic sky. As we are shooting into the setting sun, this leaves most of our scene in deep shade. But this is fine, because we can use our flash to lift the areas of our choosing, and leave out what isn’t important. 02 SET THE FLASH POWER Turn on the flash and set it to manual, then take a few test shots to find the right output setting. To overpower the daylight, we usually need the flash to be at or near to full power, especially if you’re using a modifier like an umbrella. The closer we bring the flash, the stronger the light will be. 03 PAINT THE…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3iRDf0M Neural Filters are part of a new wave of image-editing tools for Photoshop CC that make use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. These tools analyze the content of the image and are able to recognize people, animals and other objects. Such tools now allow for automated processes that we could only dream of a few years back. Photoshop CC now includes several Neural Filters you can try (some are in beta, so are not fully completed yet). One of the most interesting Neural Filters to photographers is Depth Blur. It allows you to alter the depth of field in your photos and create both background and foreground blur, with realistic fall-off in-between. Previously, this could be done by carefully isolating the subject, then applying blur…

Photoshop has many types of layers and adjustment layers available, but there are six that you’ll find you need to use again and again. Learning how they should be used may seem a little daunting for beginners, but once you’ve got to grips with them, you’ll find they play a part in the creative process of almost every image you make. 01 LEVELS This should be the first layer you add to an image, because it fundamentally alters the tonal range of the entire image. Create a Levels Adjustment Layer, drag the Black point slider inwards until it touches the lefthand edge of the histogram, and drag the White point slider inwards to the right-hand edge. This remaps the tones of the image to make more of the available tonal…

BEGINNERS’ PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS Saturday 18 September or Sunday 19 September (repeated), Toute Suite (outside Hall 1); £10 Start your photography journey by learning some essential lessons from the experts. There’s a charge of £10 for this four-part programme, in addition to the show entry fee – choose either Saturday or Sunday morning. 10:30-11:05 Understanding the exposure triangle Exploring the fundamentals of camera settings and theory. Laurence Norah 11:05-11:40 Equipment to get you started A jargon-busting session covering the essential kit for beginners, and showing the advantages in choosing the right gear. Angela Nicholson 11:50-12:25 Zero to flash An introduction to flash, plus budget-friendly kit ideas and techniques to start using straight away. Chris Ord 12:25-13:00 Fundamentals of editing Editing techniques for beginners to help you get the most out of…