Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Practical Photoshop

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/eq7c9x The Library Module is the place to sort and organise your photos. But first of all, you need to import them. This can seem a little confusing at first: why would you need to ‘import’ your photos – can’t you just open them? The explanation goes to the heart of the way Lightroom works. The program doesn’t actually alter the pixels in your images. Instead, Lightroom simply changes the way the images are displayed within the interface. So all you’re really doing when you ‘import’ images is telling Lightroom where those images are. TASK 1 IMPORT A SET OF IMAGES FROM A FOLDER OR MEMORY CARD TASK 2 LOOK THROUGH A BATCH OF IMAGES AND TAG YOUR FAVORITES WITH A 5-STAR RATING TASK 3 FILTER YOUR…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/qh9c9x If you want to see your photos published, why not make your own book? Lightroom’s Book Module makes the process easy, and there are plenty of ways to get creative with the layout. You can choose to print direct through Lightroom’s partner printer, Blurb Books, or instead save the pages as PDFs or JPEGs for printing by other means. As well as becoming a publisher, you get to be a designer too. You can make a front and back cover for the book and choose from a variety of templates that allow you to arrange images on the page. There are also basic text options. You can add titles, choose fonts and colors, adjust the positioning and much more. Building a book needn’t take a lot…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/tfbd9x A beautiful sunset is such a thing of wonder that anyone with a camera feels almost duty-bound to capture it. However, if you want to include foreground detail as well, this presents an exposure problem. The most impressive part of the sky is where the sun drops, and shooting into that lovely light means the land will usually come out dark. If you try exposing for the shadows, on the other hand, the sky becomes overexposed, and all the vibrancy is lost. One approach would be to look for interesting shapes in shadows that make for bold silhouettes against the colorful sky – or perhaps shoot for an HDR image. But here we’re going to explore a third option. We’ll explain how to light the foreground…

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…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/qh8c9x Develop is the most creative of Lightroom’s modules. Here you can make enhancements, fix problems and bring your images to life. You’ll find indispensable commands like color controls, lens corrections and sharpening sliders, alongside powerful tools for retouching, cropping and selective adjustments. Every change you make in the Develop Module is completely reversible. Not only can you undo or tweak anything, you also have the freedom to try out different effects and treatments. So Develop isn’t just for basic enhancements: it also lets you take your images in unexpected directions. TASK 1 GET COMFORTABLE WITH THE INTERFACE, LEARN HOW TO ZOOM, AND ENABLE ‘SOLO MODE’ TASK 2 USE THE BASIC PANEL SLIDERS TO SET A WHITE BALANCE, BOOST CONTRAST AND ADJUST COLOR SATURATION TASK 3 MAKE…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/sj9c9x With an array of simple tools and controls, the Slideshow Module will have you making professionallooking slideshows in no time. As well as choosing a presentation template, you can control the tempo of the frames, set a pan and zoom movement, and add text or graphics. Then there’s the Music panel, where not only can you load in your favorite tunes, but also time your slideshow to fit the length of the song, or even have it match the beat of the music. Once you’re happy, you can either play it within Lightroom, or export a video. TASK 1 CHOOSE YOUR IMAGES, THEN WORK OUT THE RUNNING ORDER TASK 2 SELECT A TEMPLATE FOR YOUR SLIDESHOW, THEN ADD A COLORED BACKGROUND TASK 3 LIVEN UP YOUR…

Sunsets are ideal for a high-dynamic range treatment, as there is such high contrast between the bright sky and dark land that it’s difficult to record detail in both in a single frame. One solution is to shoot a set of bracketed exposures. Mount your SLR on a tripod and set up Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) to shoot a series of frames at either 1- or 2-stop intervals. Use Aperture Priority to keep depth of field constant. Once done, use HDR software to merge your exposures. Dedicated programs like Photomatix Pro (pictured) that do a grand job, but Photoshop and Lightroom can merge the shots too.…

If you’re looking to get yourself a color calibration kit for your monitor, then X-Rite has an interesting offer: purchase the i1Display Pro and ColorChecker Passport Photo bundle, and receive a one-year Adobe Creative Cloud Photography subscription. The gift, worth £102, is valid for customers who purchase the bundle between 1st February and 1st May 2016. The offer brings together X-Rite’s popular calibration tools with Adobe’s Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC and mobile apps package. The i1Display Pro scores highly in tests undertaken by our sister magazine Digital Camera. A calibrated and profiled display is a critical element in a photographer’s digital workflow, and the i1Display Pro ensures that your screen display is accurate and matches the image you captured. The ColorChecker Passport Photo is another useful tool for those who…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/1g9c9x The Map Module allows you to tag and group images by location. Its easy to get to grips with, and there are plenty of benefits to keeping track of where your images were taken. Say you come across an amazing scene, but only have your cameraphone to hand. Take a quick snap and – as long as your phone’s location settings are enabled – the co-ordinates will be embedded in the image metadata. When you import that image into Lightroom, the location will automatically show up in the Map Module, so you’ll have a record of where the shot was taken, and a phone snap to remind you to go back! TASK 1 IMPORT IMAGES TAKEN WITH YOUR PHONE AND CHART THEM ON THE MAP TASK…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/ou5c9x There are lots of software options out there for video editing, and we don’t doubt that some are more suited to the task than Photoshop. But the thing is, we know how to use Photoshop already – so why bother learning an entirely new program? Many of the fundamental skills we apply to our still images can also be used on video clips, like layers masks, adjustment layers and filters. So once you know a few basics, you can start editing your video clips in much the same way as your stills. Central to video editing in Photoshop is the Timeline panel. We’ll show you how it works here. DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://tiny.cc/g6bd9x ON YOUR PC OR MAC PROJECT INFO You’ll learn Create a…