The zoom burst technique lends itself perfectly to brightly coloured subjects such as flowers. However, this can be a problem if you want to get close to your subject with a macro lens.

Macro lenses don’t typically zoom, and so the only way to create a zoom burst effect is to  physically move your camera away from the subject during an exposure.

Technically, this method is possible, but it’s likely to take a long time before you get anything worth using. So, we decided to make use of the digital darkroom, and added the effect using the Radial Blur filter in Photoshop.

This simple solution takes just a couple of minutes, and by doing it in processing (rather than via camera technique) you still have your original image should you change your mind at a later date.

Plus, adding the effect in Photoshop allows you to precisely control the intensity for ultimate creative effect.

01 Shoot the image
Use a plain coloured piece of cardboard as a simple background, select a colour that complements your subject. Set up near a north-facing window and use reflectors to create an even light.

02 Add a radial blur
To add the zoom burst effect, open your image in Photoshop and choose Filter>Blur> Radial Blur, check the Zoom option and enter an amount of 90%. Position the centre of the zoom using the preview pane.

03 Tweak colour
Positioning the exact centre of the zoom effect might take a couple of attempts. Once you’re happy, create a Color Balance adjustment layer and adjust the sliders to boost the vibrancy of the image.

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How many times has your travel photography been let down by tourists and other unwanted distractions spoiling your scenes?

No need to waste your pictures. Our simple 4-step tutorial below explains how you can remove people in Photoshop and rescue your images.

Our original image

How to remove people in Photoshop

01 Open images from Bridge
Open Adobe Bridge and select ‘FastFix01_Before.NEF’ on the DVD. Hold down Shift and click onto ‘FastFix02_Before.NEF’. Both images are now selected. From the File menu, select Tools>Photoshop>Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. Both Raw files will open directly into Photoshop, bypassing Adobe Camera Raw.

02 Align the layers
In Photoshop, take a look at the Layers Panel. You will see that both images are now stacked into one document. There’s a slight difference in composition between the two layers so to align them, go to Edit>Auto-Align Layers. In the Dialog Box that appears, leave the Auto option selected and click OK.

03 Remove tourists
Make sure that the sharper of the 
two images ‘FastFix01_Before.NEF’ is the top layer and click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel. Select a black brush, then paint over the tourists to remove them. Select the Crop tool (hit C) and draw a crop around the entire image.

04 Tidy messy shadows
Hold down Shift and resize the crop box, removing any overlap between the two image layers. Select the Clone Stamp tool (hit S), hold down Alt and click on the path to select a clone source. Use this to clean up the shadows in the foreground. Repeat the cloning to remove the tree in the top right corner to finish.

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Before image

Getting a perfectly straight landscape photo isn’t always easy to achieve in-camera. Thankfully, by following a few simple steps in Adobe Camera Raw you can correct this lens distortion and get the perfect vista you were hoping to achieve. Here’s how to do it.

Photoshop effects: how to correct lens distortion in 4 steps

Step 1: Open up in ACR

In Adobe Bridge, click on the image ‘lens_before.dng’ and go to File>Open in the Camera Raw option to ensure the image is opened in ACR. Click on the Lens Corrections tab on the right of the window to allow you to correct the distortion.

Step 2 Correct distortion
Cliick on the Profile tab then on the Enable Lens Profile Corrections box. This will automatically choose your lens by using the information in the EXIF Metadata, although you can also manually select the Make, Model and Profile from the drop-down menus.

Step 3 Zoom in
Using the automatic Profile has 
corrected the distortion in the image, but the horizon isn’t quite straight. To do this, zoom in to 100%, and make sure that the horizon is close to 
the top of the window by holding down the spacebar and dragging the image.

Step 4 Level the horizon
Now click on the Manual tab at the top of the screen and use the Rotate slider to move the image until the horizon lines up with the straight edge of the preview window. For our image, we needed a value of +1.2 degrees.

Final image

You may feel like you don’t know how to focus, but the reality is when you’re zoomed in tight on a subject, there might never be enough depth to get everything sharp, even at the lens’s minimum aperture.

The answer is to shoot a series of images with the focus set slightly further away each time, and then use a technique called ‘focus stacking’ to merge the separate photos into a finished picture that’s sharp from front to back.

This can be amazingly effective, and in this example you can’t see the joins! You can quite easily carry out focus stacking in Photoshop.

Step 1
In Photoshop CS4 or CS5, combine all your separate shots as layers in a single image (make sure you get them in the right order before you start).

Step 2
Now you can use the Edit menu to auto-align and then merge the layers. Note that Photoshop will automatically combine the sharpest areas from each image in the final result.

Focus stacking software
The alternative is to use a dedicated focus stacking program such as Helicon Focus 4.2 Lite. You shoot your sequence, load the images you’ve taken, hit the Render button and let the software do the rest. It costs £19 ($30) for a one-year licence.

When shooting a subject with the sun behind them, or stood against a bright, illuminated background, a little fill-in flash is essential to balance the exposure of your image. Without the powerful light produced by the flash you will risk plunging your subject into unflattering, gloomy shadow. This will not only result in under-exposure of the image’s main subject, but will also affect the reproduction of the colour, tone and detail in the whole portrait. By using the Lighting Effects feature you can pinpoint the centre of the added light to maximise the effect on the image, giving it the edge over a simple Levels adjustment. Watch the video to find out more…

All too often, a good shot would look great if it wasn’t for a distracting element in the background. When shooting spontaneous action, such as a toddler’s first steps, you can’t afford to fiddle around composing the shot to avoid background clutter – take your eye off the action and you’ll miss the decisive moment. Luckily, Photoshop offers all the tools you’ll need to clean up the scene long after the special event has been captured on camera.

In this walkthrough, we’ll show you how to select the child in our source image and remove the supporting parent in the background so that your subject is the main point of focus. You’ll need to replace the areas occupied by the adult with appropriate pixels from the rest of the shot, for which we’ll use the Clone Stamp tool. You’ll also learn how to protect fine details, like the child’s hair, from being cloned out with the rest of the adult.

On bright sunny days capturing landscapes may result in a washed-out sky – especially if you’ve exposed for the ground. Many photographers get around this problem by using a graduated filter, which are dark at the top and fade to clear at the bottom. Coloured ones add a tint to the sky, while neutral ones simply reduce the light entering the lens. Although you won’t be able to bring back any lost detail using a Photoshop graduated filter, a more interesting sky may be created.

Autumnal hues can add a completely different feel to a summer shot, watch our video to find out how to convert a summer shot into a glorious autumnal picture. Learn how to use the gradient tool to add an early morning mist to the scene.