Digital Camera World » photo editing

The Photoshop Family: understanding the Adobe family tree

jmeyer — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:50:45 +0000

Let’s face it: there have been a lot of Adobe announcements in the past year introducing new products from Photoshop CC to Lightroom 5, Photoshop Touch, Photoshop CS6, and more. And it can get confusing!

So how do all these platforms sit in the Adobe range of photo editing software? To celebrate the official launch today of Photoshop CC, our friends at Practical Photoshop have put together this brilliant cheat sheet illustrating The Photoshop Family.

In the infographic below we’ve highlighted each of the platforms on the Adobe family tree and identified their pros and cons and the audience its best suited for. What’s more, we’ve also included the price for each platform.

To view the larger version of this cheat sheet, simply click on the infographic or drag and drop it to your desktop.

NEXT PAGE: Official Adobe Creative Cloud press announcement

Photo Retouching: how to give your portraits a professional makeover

jmeyer — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:01:11 +0000

Next in our popular Raw Tuesday series we turn our attention to photo retouching. Over the next several weeks, our ultimate guide to photo retouching will show you how to give your portraits a stylish and professional makeover.

We’ll show you a range of key photo retouching techniques you can use to make eyes sparkle, how to make perfect teeth and beautiful lips, as well as sculpt body shape and make amazing hair.

In our first post, however, we examine the different techniques for one of the most important elements of photo retouching: how to create flawless skin.

When it comes to retouching skin, there’s a fine line between flawless and fake. You want to tone down imperfections and get the perfect look, but you don’t want your subject to look too plastic or immaculate.

Professional retouchers spend hours painstakingly working over skin in minute detail to remove flaws in such a way that the subject will not look overly retouched.

For the rest of us, there are a few excellent shortcuts. The key is to smooth over the area you are working on with a touch of blur but still allow the skin’s texture to show through. Also, always work on a separate layer so that you have control over the strength of any alterations.

How to get blemish-free skin

01 Heal spots
Add a new empty layer then select the Spot Healing tool. Check Sample All Layers in the Options bar then start dabbing over any imperfections you find.

02 Lose bags
Add a second layer then select the Clone Stamp tool. In the Options bar, change the Effect Mode to Lighten, set Opacity to 33% and choose Sample: All Layers.

03 Bright eyes
Hold Alt and click on the cheek below the eyes to select a source, then paint over the dark areas beneath the eyes to lighten them and make them look fresh.

PAGE 1: How to get blemish-free skin
PAGE 2: Key Photoshop tools for smoothing out skin
PAGE 3: Smooth skin using the Photoshop High Pass filter

14 photo editing tips and tricks every landscape photographer must know

jmeyer — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:01:20 +0000

In-camera technique is, of course, important. But your prowess in the digital darkroom is increasingly crucial to the success of your images and crafting a look that defines you as an artist. This is especially true with landscape photography. In our latest photo editing guide we offer 14 photo editing tricks and tips that every landscape photographer must know.

Whether starkly beautiful, bursting with colour or magnificently minimal, no other type of photography offers more potential for stunning imagery than landscapes. Travel halfway around the world or look out of your back window, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a scene worth capturing.

In this tutorial we offer up a variety of tips, advice and Photoshop techniques to help you capture and enhance your own awe-inspiring landscapes.

We’ve gathered together some of the finest professional landscape photographers out there to showcase their best shots and quiz them on exactly how they approach their craft in the age of the digital darkroom.

Alongside these insights from the pros, we’ve got a fantastic variety of Photoshop techniques for you to try, from fundamental raw skills on tweaking exposure and revealing detail, to adding breathtaking light rays, making innovative ‘dotscapes’ and even building a landscape from scratch.

You’ll also find a selection of videos among this month’s project files that go into some of the techniques featured here in greater detail.

Although approaches to shooting landscapes have changed over the years, a few things remain constant. Besides an eye for photo composition, a sturdy tripod, quality lenses and a good deal of patience are still among the most important ingredients for success.

Essential photo editing tricks for landscapes: 01 Master HDR

Image by Jeff Morgan

Pro photographer Jeff Morgan says

I have been asked many times why I first build the HDR image in Photoshop and then Tone Map it in Photomatix, since it seems the logical thing is to do it all in one program.

I appreciate the image quality you can get from the full control of Camera Raw. You should always take a lot of care to set the white balance controls, the lens correction and the noise reduction to the optimum for the HDR image set.

You can then simply save all the images as Tiff files for processing in Photomatix Pro, but since the Remove Ghosts option in Photoshop is so good I find it better to build the HDR image directly in Photoshop CS6.

Turning off Align Images when building the HDR image in Photoshop is the best bet. It doesn’t appear quite pixel-accurate, because it will slightly blur my tripod shot images.

You can now save the HDR image as a 32-bit Tiff file in Photoshop CS6 for export to Photomatix.

I personally love the look you can get with Photomatix’s tone mapping. There are lots of adjustments to play with, allowing you to get just the look required for the subject.

The bottom line is that Photoshop offers a much better Raw converter – and it’s also really great at removing ghosting when required.

However, Photomatix offers a very specific look with its tone mapping adjustments that I find very attractive. I really do enjoy getting the best of both worlds.

See more of Jeff’s work

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Adobe Lightroom 5 price and new features confirmed: full software now available

jmeyer — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:26:25 +0000

The Adobe Lightroom 5 price tag and new features list has been officially revealed, as the beta period for the latest version of Adobe’s image management and photo editing software has come to an end.

Formally releasing the software today, the Adobe Lightroom 5 price tag will be £102.57 / $149.99 to download the standalone software from Adobe’s website. Alternatively, the price for upgrading to Lightroom 5 from your current software is £57.64 / $79.

Jump to our Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review

Among the new features in Adobe Lightroom 5 is an Advanced Healing Brush, which allows users to make precise adjustments to fix irregularly shaped imperfections like dust spots and splotches.

An Upright tool analyses each of your images and automatically straightens objects such as buildings and horizons.

New Radial Gradients in Lightroom 5 allow users to apply off-centre and multiple vignettes in a single images.

Also among the Adobe Lightroom 5 new features set are a range of extended sharing and publishing capabilities.

New video slideshow functionality lets users combine their still images with video clips and music, while updates to the Adobe Lightroom Book module allow photographers to personalise photo books of their images from a variety of templates – as well as create their own specific templates.

Finally, another of the most significant Adobe Lightroom 5 new features are Smart Previews, which enable photographers to make edits to their images offline without bringing their entire library of original image files with them.

Photographers can make changes to their image metadata using the Smart Preview function, and these changes are then automatically applied to the original files when they are reconnected.

Adobe Lightroom 5 was initially released as a free, public beta in April 2013, and is now available as an individual license or as part of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe adresses photographers’ Creative Cloud subscription, file legacy concerns

jmeyer — Wed, 29 May 2013 11:32:59 +0000

Adobe has issued a statement addressing photographers’ concerns about the Creative Cloud subscription-only model and the legacy of any work created in Photoshop CC, suggesting the company may soon offer a compromise.

Recognising the “unique needs” of the photographic community, Adobe has announced it is “looking at potential offerings that recognise the photography community – because it is so broad.”

Adobe’s statement comes in response to intense criticism the company has received following Adobe’s 6 May announcement of its next generation of ‘CC’ applications.

Chief among these updates was the launch of Photoshop CC, the latest version of its popular photo editing software, and the revelation that photographers could no longer buy Photoshop in a one-off purchase of a boxed disc or digital download.

Instead, photographers now pay a monthly Adobe Creative Cloud subscription for access to Photoshop CC each month.

Jump to our guide to the 10 most important features in Photoshop CC

Users can then download Photoshop CC to their desktop and use it as long as their Creative Cloud subscription remains active.

A full membership Creative Cloud subscription is £46.88 per month and gives you access to all applications and of course, all updates.

If you own the full Adobe Creative Suite 3 or later versions, this price is reduced to £27.34 per month. For photographers who only want to use Photoshop CC, you can choose the Single App option for £17.58 a month, which is reduced to £8.78 a month if you own Photoshop CS3 or later.

Photographers have raised concerns in the wake of the 6 May Adobe announcement that they will not only lose their software if their Creative Cloud subscription lapses, but they will also lose their work, as files saved in Photoshop CC are not compatible with other software.

“Through discussions with the community, we have heard some concerns around our move to Creative Cloud,” Adobe has responded in a statement sent to press. “Three main themes are coming through:

File access. Customers want to be sure that, if their membership to Creative Cloud lapses, they will still have access to their files.
Photographers, particularly photo-enthusiasts, are looking for a more tailored offering that focuses on their particular needs.
Some customers are not convinced that Creative Cloud is right for them and would rather continue to purchase desktop applications as before.

While Adobe does reinforce in its statement that it has “no plans to change our focus on Creative, we understand this is a big change and for customers who are not yet ready to move, we will continue to offer CS6 products through our reseller partners and Adobe.com.”

With regards to photographers’ concerns about the legacy of their files created in Photoshop CC, the company added: “Adobe completely agrees that customers should have access to their files if they choose to stop their Creative Cloud membership. Our job is to delight our customers with innovation, but there are a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly.”

Does this latest announcement from Adobe suggest the company could soon offer photographers a way to ensure the legacy of their Photoshop CC files – or perhaps an alternative to the Creative Cloud subscription model?

We will update this story as it develops.

Image sharpening: how to bring out more detail in your favourite photos

jmeyer — Fri, 24 May 2013 23:01:03 +0000

In this Photoshop Elements tutorial we show you clever ways of bringing out more detail through image sharpening, while keeping some of the side effects to a minimum.

When you view a photo on your camera’s relatively small rear screen, it may look crisp and sharp.

However, it’s only when you view the image at actual size on your home computer’s larger display that you realise it’s not quite in sharp focus. This means some key details may look slightly blurred and lack real definition.

The image could also look soft due to your camera’s built-in anti-moiré filter, which is designed to minimise unsightly blocky patterns and false colours caused by complex textures.

Fortunately, Photoshop Elements has a range of effective sharpening tools that enable you to reveal detail in soft-focus areas and create a print with more punch.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to sharpen up JPEGs in the standard Photoshop Elements editor and then move on to teasing out delicate details in a soft-looking raw file using the Adobe Camera Raw editor.

Photoshop Elements enables you to make a soft shot look sharper by increasing the contrast around the edge of objects in the scene. This gives delicate details more definition and impact.

However, by increasing the contrast you can also add unsightly artefacts such as harsh black or white halos around contrasting edges.

This gives the game away that the shot has been artificially sharpened, and you can also end up exaggerating picture noise caused by a high ISO setting when you sharpen your shot.

Here, we’ll show you how to recognise sharpening artefacts and keep them to a minimum.

Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 1-2

01 Open the start file
Open Photoshop Elements, click on the Quick editor tab to explore its sharpening options. Choose File>Open and browse to your start file. Click Open. The compressed JPEG image will open in Photoshop Elements’ Quick Editor.

02 Zoom in
To see how soft your shot actually looks, click on the Zoom tool. Click the 1:1 icon in the top options bar to see the shot’s pixels at 100%. Our image is quite soft, so the delicate details lack impact. Click the Sharpen icon on the right to access a range of sharpening preset thumbnails.

PAGE 1: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 1-2
PAGE 2: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 3-4
PAGE 3: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 5-6
PAGE 4: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 7-8
PAGE 5: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 9-10
PAGE 6: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 11-12

Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review

jmeyer — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:00:52 +0000

You may have forgotten amid all the attention Adobe has received in the wake of its Photoshop CC announcement, but the software giant also recently revealed an update to its popular Adobe Lightroom software. In our Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review we look at some of the key features of this ‘alternative Photoshop’ to see what they offer photographers.

It can’t match Photoshop’s layers, masks, Blend Modes and other high-end image-manipulation tools, but from the photographer’s point of view, Adobe Lightroom still has practically all the enhancement and adjustment tools you need to make a good photograph great, together with some unique advantages.

First, all your adjustments are non-destructive – you can go back at any time to reverse, remove or re-edit them.

Second, it treats Raw files the same way as any other, editing them directly and seamlessly with no conversion process required.

Third, Lightroom is a full-powered, professional image cataloguing tool that can organise and search tens of thousands of images using EXIF data, IPTC metadata, ‘smart collections’ and more.

With Adobe Lightroom 5, the crossover between Lightroom and Photoshop is larger still, because Adobe has made major enhancements to one editing tool and added two completely new ones.

PAGE 1: Why choose Adobe Lightroom 5
PAGE 2: Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review – Advanced Healing Brush
PAGE 3: Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review – Upright
PAGE 4: Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review – Radial Gradient
PAGE 5: Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review – Smart Previews
PAGE 6: Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review – Video slideshow sharing
PAGE 7: Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review – Improved photo book creation
PAGE 8: A look at the Adobe Lightroom 5 interface
PAGE 9: Our Verdict

Camera Raw sharpening tools: how to restore fine detail and keep noise at bay

jmeyer — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:00:40 +0000

In our latest Raw Tuesday series post on editing raw format images we explain a simple technique for using the Adobe Camera Raw sharpening tools. Find out how to preserve fine detail in your raw files while banishing noise.

By shooting in your camera’s raw quality format you have much more tonal and colour information to work with, which enables you to produce better-looking results in your final image.

In our raw start image there are some very delicate midtone details such as the incense sticks and ash that we’d like to subtly sharpen, but this runs the risk of adding more noise to the shot’s soft bokeh. Fortunately, Adobe Camera Raw has some handy additional sliders that will help you to reveal midtone texture and detail while masking out the unwanted noise.

Here, we’ll also show you ways to preview which areas are being sharpened, so that you can get a balance between revealing detail and losing noise.

How to use the Adobe Camera Raw sharpening tools

Zoom in
Go to File>Open and go to your start image. It will open in the Adobe Camera Raw editor. To sharpen, grab the Zoom tool and right click. Choose 100%. Much of the shot is deliberately soft due to a shallow depth of field. Use the Hand tool to view the foreground incense stick.

Adjust Amount
Click on the Detail tab. Drop the sliders to 0 and drag Amount to 91 to increase the contrast around the edges. Increase the spread of the edge contrast change by setting Radius to 2.0. Click the Preview box to compare the before-and-after versions.

Restore detail
The change is very subtle. To reveal more of the delicate texture on the ash and incense sticks, drag Detail to 45. If you Alt-click as you drag this slider you’ll see a greyscale preview. The darker areas will become sharper and the grey areas will remain unsharpened.

Mask out noise
To prevent the soft background bokeh (and its picture noise) from being sharpened, Alt-click as you drag the Masking slider. Now only the lighter areas in the preview will become sharpened, leading to less noise. A value of 65 produces a good compromise.

READ MORE

Photoshop CC: the 10 most important features in Adobe’s new software

jmeyer — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:01:11 +0000

The next version of Photoshop has been announced – dubbed Photoshop CC – and its pricing model is already causing some controversy. However you look at it, Creative Cloud and Photoshop CC is here to stay. So here are the 10 most important features this new Adobe software has to offer.

Words and images by Steve Caplin

A new version of Photoshop is always cause for celebration, as users look forward to new features and enhanced workflows. This time, the usual 18-month to 2-year cycle has been cut to just a year, as Adobe feels pressured to deliver more frequent updates to its Creative Cloud members – and it shows.

There are few major new tools in Photoshop CC, although there are some useful new ways of working.

The biggest fuss has been caused by Adobe’s branding of this version not as CS7, but as Photoshop CC, which is their way of moving all users away from outright purchase and onto a monthly subscription model.

The Photoshop community has been up in arms about the cost implications – although, as we see it, it can work out to be a very cost-effective way to get Photoshop. See the Subscriptions Info panel at the end of this feature for details on how the costs pan out.

Click below to watch our in-depth video discussing these 10 important features in Photoshop CC; alternatively, scroll through this post to read about each Photoshop CC feature individually.

Photoshop CC Key Features: 1. Shake Reduction

The “deblur” filter, which caused so much fuss when it was leaked, is now included in Photoshop CC – to an extent.

Given the right starting image, it can go a long way towards reducing a very particular kind of blur: but it doesn’t like noisy images, or motion blur.

It works by tracing ghosting and calculating the blur path.

You can set up multiple blur paths for different regions, and even draw your own; Photoshop will blend all the regions together smoothly.

Photoshop CC: 10 things every photographer should know

jmeyer — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:16:12 +0000

Adobe quietly announced some major changes to its Photoshop platform yesterday, chief among them re-branding the software as Photoshop CC to reinforce its commitment to its Creative Cloud service (which has also been updated with 15 new apps)

But what does this mean for you, the user? Along with new tools and technologies, as well as some key workflow enhancements, the shift to Photoshop CC also brings some long-term benefits like never having software that’s out of date. Below is our list of 10 things every photographer should know about Photoshop CC.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 01

Photoshop CC combines Photoshop Standard and Photoshop Extended. So all Photoshop Extended features, including 3D tools, are included in Photoshop CC.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 02

Photoshop CC introduces the sneak-peaked ‘deblur’ filter that’s been talked about since 2011, which is now revealed as: Camera Shake Reduction.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 03

Camera Raw 8 will include the new features being showcased in the Photohsop Lightroom 5 public beta, ie Advanced Healing brush, Radial Gradient tool and the Upright tool.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 04

Photoshop CC offers integration with Behance, the online portfolio sharing website for creative professional. This integration offers the ability to post directly into your Behance gallery from Photoshop.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 05

Along with the integration mentioned above, Photoshop CC subscribers get free access to the Behance Pro-site.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 06

Intelligent upsampling – in Photoshop CC you will be able to make big prints without compromising edge detail or introducing noise.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 07

Adobe is offering a special subscriber deal of $9.99 for Photoshop CS3 users and above – for the first year.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 08

It looks there’ll be no Photoshop CS7, and Photoshop CC will evolve with constant updates to subscribers. What this means is that there is no longer any need to wait 18 months to two years for an upgrade!

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 09

A perpetual license of Lightroom will still be available as will Photoshop CS6.

What you need to know about Photoshop CC: 10

You do not need to be connected to the internet to use Photoshop CC. This is a very common misconception. The Photoshop CC software is installed on your computer. However, Adobe will need to periodically check your subscription is current so you’ll need to log on once a month.

PAGE 1: 10 things you need to know about Photoshop CC
PAGE 2: Official Photoshop CC press release from Adobe

Don’t Miss!
Our guide to the 10 most important features in Photoshop CC