Innehållsförteckning för September 2020 från Practical Photoshop

“Welcome to issue 114 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” If there’s one thing Photoshop does best, it’s combining photos. We’ve dedicated this issue to the skills and techniques you’ll need to master the art of amazing composites, from swapping backdrops to replacing heads, stitching sequences and more. 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_114 FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface Also available on: http://tiny.cc/4dw9ky http://tiny.cc/rew9ky http://tiny.cc/8ew9ky…

1 MAKING A MASK To make a mask, we can either go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All/Hide All, or click the Add Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel. We can also Alt-click the icon to add a full black mask. If we first have an active ‘marching ants’ selection, that will be converted into a mask and any areas outside will be hidden. 2 THE MASK THUMBNAIL Once a mask is added, a Mask thumbnail appears on the layer next to the image thumbnail. To edit the layer mask, it’s crucial this thumbnail is highlighted - otherwise we might end up painting black over our image. We can Alt-click the thumbnail to toggle a mask view, and Shift-click to turn it off or on.…

We’re used to seeing Adobe roll out regular updates to Photoshop and Lightroom – and this summer they’ve come up with the goods again. The real showstopper here is Select Subject. First introduced in 2018, the command uses AI to isolate your subject with an auto selection. It’s always been impressive, but the latest updates take it to a new level: now it can cut out hair. The results are great, even on windswept hair like the above. With a single click, we can now make a complex cut-out and isolate a subject from the background. This will save time for those who know how to cut out hair using Select And Mask, but it’s perhaps more useful for those who don’t. Within seconds, even a novice can make a…

01 CLOSE THE VIEWFINDER Whenever you use an exposure that runs into several seconds or more, there’s a danger that light may seep in through the camera viewfinder and cloud the exposure. So be sure to close up the viewfinder or block it to stop light from entering from the rear. 02 USING BULB Most cameras max out at a 30-second exposure time. If you want to go beyond this, use Bulb mode so that the shutter stays open as long as the shutter button is engaged. The term references a time when shutters were opened and closed by squeezing a rubber bulb. 03 ND FILTERS A neutral-density filter slows the flow of light into the camera, extending our exposure length. The stronger the filter, the longer the exposure. The…

The amount of blur in the sky here depends on the speed of the clouds as well as the length of the exposure. In windy conditions, fast-moving clouds may blur nicely after a minute or so, whereas in calm conditions, like the evening we shot on, it’s only possible to achieve motion blur by pushing the shutter speed beyond several minutes. You can see the difference here between exposure times of eight, 20, 75 and 780 seconds. In the shorter exposure detail is retained in the clouds, while in the longer exposure it’s blurred to streaks. The other factor to consider in scenes like this is the balance of light on the building and the sky. By waiting until near-darkness, the windmill contrasts more boldly with the twilight sky.…

This is one of those image-editing tasks that photographers and designers are increasingly asked to carry out. Dropping an image into a screen or a picture frame is very easy, but there are a few key points to nailing the effect. If the frame or screen is at an angle, it’s important to get the perspective right. We can use the Transform Tool to skew the layer to match it’s intended frame – we drag the image to its new backdrop, press Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform it, then hold Cmd/Ctrl and drag the corners of the bounding box to match up with the corners of the screen or frame we want to drop the picture into. We can also use blending controls to combine the dropped-in image with text and details…

If you have several portraits taken against a plain, uniform backdrop like this, why not try stitching several together? Make a new document, then grab the Brush Tool, hold Alt and click on the backdrop of your portrait to sample the color. Go to the new image and press Cmd/Ctrl+backspace to fill the background with your sampled color Grab the Lasso Tool and set Feather to 10px in the tool options at the top. Make loose selections of each portrait before copying and pasting them into your new document. Use the Move Tool to position each person (check Show Transform Controls and Auto-Select Layer in the tool options to make it easier to select and resize each figure). If you’d like the figures to overlap one another, add a Layer…

Neutral-density filters are often used to block the flow of light and allow for blurring of water or clouds in landscapes. Less often do we see them employed at the very start or end of the day, when the light levels are low enough to allow for long exposures without the need for a filter. But what if we want a really, really long exposure? By stretching out our exposure to several minutes, the clouds slowly pass through the frame and any sense of shape is diminished. What we’re left with is a painterly landscape that is short on cloud detail, but big on atmosphere. The main challenge is that we only have one or two bites of the cherry… Our exposure times can run into tens of minutes, so…

01 NARROW APERTURE If your near-dark scene includes lights like those shining on the windmill here, then use a narrow aperture. As well as offering greater depth of field and longer shutter speeds, the high f-number also results in star-like streaks around specular highlights. 02 LIVE VIEW Your autofocus may struggle to lock on to the correct subject in low light – especially after you’ve attached an ND filter – so it’s often easier to focus manually using Live View. Switch the lens to manual focus, turn on Live View and zoom in to the scene, then adjust the focus ring until it’s sharp.…

Very long exposures can lead to increased image noise, due to the sensor heating up during the exposure. To combat this, you can take a dark frame to blend with your image later. After taking your photo, place the lens cap back on and hold your hand over the viewfinder, then take another long exposure with the same settings. It’s important that this is done at the time of shooting, as temperature plays a part with noise on your sensor during a long exposure. Later, we can use this frame to help subtract the noise in the image. In Photoshop, open both the main image and the dark frame, go to the dark frame and copy (Cmd/Ctrl+C), then go to the other image and paste in place (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V). Now the…

If you have a sequence of photos taken in alignment like this (using a tripod is best) then you can easily combine them into a single frame. This is great for a rapid-fire action sequence, but you can use the same technique to craft a multiplicity portrait – where the same person appears in multiple places throughout the scene – or perhaps to remove annoying bystanders from your landscape scene by taking different versions where people are standing in different places. Highlight the sequence of images in Bridge, then go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers (or in Photoshop, you can use File> Scripts > Load Files Into Stack). Hide all but the bottom two layers. Highlight the second-from-bottom layer, grab the Lasso Tool and make…

With group photos, it can be tricky to get perfect expressions from everyone in a single frame, especially if children or animals are involved in the shoot. The trick when shooting a group shot is to fire off several frames for each pose. This way, you might be able to piece together a perfect shot where everyone is smiling and looking at the camera. It helps if the background is uniform like this, but even if it’s cluttered you might be able to replace a person’s head as long as the camera stays fairly still throughout the sequence of shots (if you’ve used a tripod, even better!). The key point here is to plot a line that will be the join point of your two frames. Here our incision runs…

1 TRIPOD Our exposure will reach several minutes: we need the camera to stay still, so a tripod is crucial. Be careful not to nudge it during the exposure, remove the camera strap so it doesn’t flap around in the breeze, and weigh the tripod down if the wind is strong. 2 EXPOSURE SETTINGS Our camera is set to Manual exposure with the shutter speed set to Bulb, aperture at f/16 and ISO 100. With near-dark conditions approaching and a three-stop ND filter attached to the lens, the exposure length ran into around about 13 minutes. 3 CABLE RELEASE A cable release is essential for Bulb mode, as it means we don’t need to continually press the shutter throughout the exposure. Most cable releases have a slide lock that allows…

01 TAKE A TEST SHOT If you want to shoot with a very long exposure to blur clouds like this, then it can be helpful to begin with a test shot using a very high ISO. Here we used Aperture Priority at f/16, ISO 6,400 and 1.3 sec. We can use this as a base to work out an equivalent long exposure for our photograph and go from there. 02 USE A CALCULATOR An app like PhotoPills is helpful for calculating equivalent exposures. Here we lower the ISO to 100, which increases the shutter speed to 1 minute 23 seconds. Then, to increase the time even more, we factor in a three-stop ND filter, resulting in an exposure of 11 minutes 6 seconds. 03 TIME THE SHOT Now we lock…

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 tonal…