Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2023 i Practical Photoshop

“Welcome to issue 149 of Practical Photoshop! This will be our final issue – thanks for all your support over 12 amazing years!” After 12 years and 149 issues, this will be our very last Practical Photoshop. We’ve seen lots of changes to our favorite photo editor during that time, and hopefully informed and inspired plenty of you wonderful readers. A huge thank you for all of your support. It’s been a privilege. james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue’s files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac: https://bit.ly/pho_149 FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface Also available on: http://bit.ly/pp_pocketmags http://bit.ly/pp_app_store http://bit.ly/zinio_pp HIGHLIGHTS: WHAT’S INSIDE… CREATE ABSTRACT ART ■ Discover all sorts of surreal effects for your photos MASTER THE RAW CURVES TOOLS…

This is a wonderful technique for simplifying an image down to a series of colorful bands. Simply open an image into Photoshop (uncluttered landscapes tend to work well), then go to the toolbar and grab either the Single Column or the Single Row Tool (they’re grouped with the Marquee Selection Tool). These tools let you select a single row of horizontal or vertical pixels. Choose a row from the image, then press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy it to a new layer. Press Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform, then Shift-drag the two sides out to create a band of colors.…

The Style Transfer Filter is one of the more interesting Neural filters on offer in Photoshop. It uses AI to add a painting style to your photos. The results can vary wildly, but if you hit upon an interesting look, you can create vibrant abstracts. Open an image and go to Filter > Neural Filters, then turn on Style Transfer. Choose a painting or upload another image to replicate the style on your photo, then use the sliders to fine-tune things. We tried running the filter twice on our scene here, using one style on top of another.…

01 CAMERA MOVEMENTS There’s beauty everywhere if you look for it, even outside a pound shop. Look for bold colors and the vertical lines of shop windows or lamp posts, then try an up/down camera movement over a 1/15 sec exposure to create streaks of blur. A side-to-side movement or a swivel can also make interesting results. 02 ZOOM BURST A zoom burst is similar to intentional camera movement, but with a twist. Over the course of a long exposure on a zoom lens (try 1/10 sec to begin with), we quickly zoom in or out during the exposure. The edges of the frame will be transformed into streaks of blur. 03 DOUBLE FLIPS For in-camera double exposures, simply enable the mode in your camera’s menu, then set Blending to…

Curves has long been one of the best tonal tools in Photoshop and Lightroom. Whether you want to boost contrast, tweak brightness, experiment with creative color shifts, or make any number of other adjustments, Curves is the tool for the job. It isn’t the easiest of tools to master, but avoiding Curves would be a mistake: with a little practice, it becomes the most intuitive and versatile of tonal tools. Nowadays you’ll find a Curves command in lots of different image editing apps. As well as Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom, Curves features in Premiere, InDesign and more, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to master the basics. What’s more, for Camera Raw and Lightroom users, Curves can now be used in tandem with masking tools, so you can…

1 TRIPOD With a static scene like an interior, we are free to light it in segments over several frames. Lock the camera on a tripod and move around the scene, popping the flash. An easy way to fire it is to set up a self-timer to take five shots, with a couple of seconds between each exposure. 2 CAMERA SETTINGS Our camera is set to manual exposure with aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/100 sec and ISO 200. This gives us a good base exposure for the outdoor scene, but leaves the interior looking dim. From here, we can use our flash to lift different parts of the interior so it all balances out. 3 FLASH HEAD Our flash is a single Godox AD300 head with a large parabolic umbrella,…

The star of our interior scene here is the ornate fireplace. We weren’t able to light a fire during the shoot – but we can add a few flames later on in Photoshop… Find a suitable photo of flames (we found a free image on Pixabay.com; search for image 1241199), then copy and paste it into your image. Go to the Layers Panel and change the Blend Mode of the layer to Lighten, then press Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform it and resize and position it in the fireplace. Next, add a layer mask and paint in black to hide any parts of the layer you don’t want to include. Finally, add a new layer below the flames layer and set its Blend Mode to Overlay. Grab the Brush Tool, Alt-click to…

01 POSTERIZE THE PORTRAIT Open the image into Photoshop. Go to the Layers Panel, click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Black and White. Click the icon again and choose Posterize. Set Levels to 4: this divides the image into four levels of brightness. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E to merge a copy of all the layers. 02 SELECT THE WHITES Go to Select > Color Range. Click to sample the whites, adjust Fuzziness to around 70, and click OK. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the selected area to a new layer. Next, highlight the merged layer below and go to Select > Color Range again. This time, sample the highlights (the next range of levels). 03 LAYERS FOR EACH LEVEL Repeat the process to make separate layers for the highlights, midtones and…

Urban environments can be a frenetic mass of contrasts: vibrant or mundane, lively or eerie, beautiful or drab. For a photographer, it’s easy enough to capture how places like this look, but it’s more of a challenge to convey how they feel. To create a sense of a place without the distractions of detail, we can turn to abstract techniques. Intentional blur, multiple exposures, unusual camera angles and digital mash-ups can all help us emphasize the emotion of the place, and create wall-worthy art that feels more in touch with the work of Impressionist painters than it does with conventional photographic techniques. In this project we’ll look at a range of techniques you can try out while shooting on the streets. Camera skills are usually about eliminating shake, keeping scenes…

01 BLEND EXPOSURES As well as in-camera multiple exposures, we can also craft our own in Photoshop simply by copying one image on top of another, then changing the layer Blend Mode to Screen. We can also experiment with the 26 other layer Blend Modes, and come up with all sorts of creative combinations with them. 02 EXPERIMENT WITH TILT City scenes are often dominated by straight vertical lines and strong geometric shapes. But diagonal lines can be aesthetically pleasing, so why not get creative with tilt? Grab the Crop Tool and rotate the crop to set the horizon off-kilter. You can do this at the time of shooting too. 03 GO BLACK-AND-WHITE Creative techniques like multiple exposures can often end up looking very busy, so convert them to black…

01 FIND A FOCAL POINT It can be tricky to determine what to include and leave out. Take a moment to identify the key points of interest. It might be a sweeping staircase or an ornate piece of furniture. Here it’s the fireplace with the painting above. We put logs in the fireplace and added flames in Photoshop. 02 DON’T GO TOO WIDE There’s a temptation to use your widest focal length and try to fit everything in, but this can lead to distortion. You’re often better off zooming in slightly and picking out key features. You don’t need to show everything. It is fine to crop into objects – a corner of a bed or the edge of a table is often all you need. 03 TAKE TEST SHOTS…

The Posterize technique described in the previous tip can be used for all sorts of effects. By separating an image into different levels of brightness, we can get creative with brushes. Follow the steps to posterize and make separate layers, then clip new layers to each level and use brushes to paint splashes and splatters on each layer. You can find an array of brilliant brushes on the Adobe site. To access them, simply go to the Brush Picker (where you choose your brush tip) and click the cog icon, then choose Get More Brushes in the menu.…

1 CAMERA MOTION Intentional camera movement can transform scenes into streaks of blur while still retaining an impression of the place. Move the camera up, down, left or right, or swivel it during the exposure. It helps to press the camera against your forehead or use a tripod. 2 SLOW SHUTTER SPEED We need to slow our shutter speed down so that the camera movements register in the exposure. Try setting Shutter Priority to 1/15 sec and ISO 100, then see what kind of blur you get. For a stronger effect, experiment with a longer shutter speed or make quicker motions. 3 BOLD COLORS One of the reasons why this scene works well with this technique is the colorful umbrellas hanging over the street. Backlit by sunlight, they offer bold…

Here’s a fun compositing technique that lets you mash up buildings or landmarks, layering them one on top of another to craft a montage. Open an image of a building, grab the Object Selection Tool and drag a box over it. Photoshop will employ AI to select the object within. You can hold Shift and drag to add more areas, or Alt to subtract unwanted areas. Once done, simply copy the selection (Cmd/Ctrl+C), open an image of a plain sky and paste in the building (Cmd/Ctrl+V). Use the Move Tool to position it, and resize if necessary with Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T). Repeat to add buildings. To make the buildings look like they’re in front of one another, paint subtle shadows on layers between the building layers. Finish by adding a tonal…

Whether you want to capture your home, make images for a holiday rental site, help out with a house sale, or simply create lovely architectural photos, interior photography is a great project to take on. There are three key skills to master. First, there’s the composition. This isn’t just about picking the best camera angle and lens: it’s also about creating a clean, simple frame that shows the interior at its best. It might mean shifting the furniture around, placing items in certain spots, or posing objects to create the most attractive whole. Next is the lighting. If the ambient light is good enough, you got lucky. Often, the ambient light will be too dull to balance with window light, or it won’t show the place at its best. To…

01 OPEN AS LAYERS Go through your images and select the ones that you’d like to use, then make any initial tonal changes in Camera Raw. Once done, highlight the images in Bridge and go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. Once they’ve opened, go to the Layers Panel and click the eye icons to hide all but the bottom layer. 02 BLEND WITH MASKS Reveal the layer above and assess which parts you want to use, then hold Alt and click the Add Layer Mask icon to add a full mask to the layer. Grab the Brush Tool and set the color to white, then paint to reveal the parts you want. Next, do the same to the layer above, then keep at it until…

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 left hand 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…