Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2020 i Practical Photoshop

Over the following pages we’ll take an in-depth look at the creation of this playful image. Along the way we’ll explore some of the key compositing tools in Photoshop, from powerful selection controls to blending skills and layer masking. But before we delve into the Photoshop side we’ll begin by looking at how to shoot for a composite like this, with careful lighting and positioning of the different elements that make up our playful block face image. The technique here is surprisingly simple. After photographing the portrait and a pile of toy blocks separately, the images are merged into a seamless whole using a quick and easy Photoshop technique. The blocks are simply desaturated and overlaid on top of the face, then blended using the Multiply layer blend mode. Once…

01 ARRANGE THE BLOCKS When shooting for a composite it’s often best to take more than you need, as you never know which images - or parts of images - will be most useful later on. Here we took a series of shots of the blocks in different positions to give us plenty of options. 02 BALANCE THE LIGHTING A simple lighting setup makes for consistent shadows, which helps to bring it all together later. In our two-light setup, the main key light is positioned on the left, and a second fill is angled up and bounced off the ceiling, producing a weaker light that lifts the shadows. 03 SET THE EXPOSURE The exposure needs to stay consistent throughout for this project, so Manual mode is your best bet. We…

A shoot rarely goes exactly to plan, especially when working with children or animals. While photographing the dog here, my idea was to create a shot with water drops flying out from the dog’s head at all angles. But it proved tricky to get the dog to play ball, and even when I managed to get a usable shot, it didn’t have the scattering of water drops I wanted. However, I did have other frames from the shoot were the dog wasn’t right, but the water drops were plentiful. As such, I could piece together the drops and the dog to craft the shot I wanted. It’s about augmenting the in-camera results to improve the image in such a way that it looks natural. When we have several similar shots…

The image-editing process begins as soon as you’ve transferred your photos from your memory card to your computer. 1 The first stage is to begin sifting through your pictures to discover which are the keepers. The image organizer that comes with Photoshop is ideal for this task. Adobe Bridge has controls for keywording, rating and filtering your images, and there are handy tools for batch renaming files, creating panoramic stitches, making contact sheets and more. Launch Adobe Bridge and navigate to a folder containing new images. Use the cursor keys to quickly flick through the images and click below a thumbnail to add a star rating, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+1-5. You can then filter your photos by the star rating to group the ones you want to work…

Over the following pages we’ll look at the camera and lighting skills that went into photographing our composite here. The best composites are often those that are photographed specifically with the final result in mind. This means that rather than attempting to merge a disparate array of unconnected images, we can instead combine a set of carefully composed, consistent frames that look like they actually belong together. What’s more, the work done in-camera makes the Photoshop technique much easier and simpler than you might initially think. WATCH THE VIDEO http://bit.ly/2sa5eul…

When it comes to combining the images for a composite, there are key Photoshop skills and techniques that will help you along the way. Over the next few pages we’ll use our block composite as a case study, and show you step-by-step how it was made. Along the way we’ll pause at key moments for a closer look at some of the key Photoshop features that make up the technique. From making selections to blending layers, masking and transforming, we’ll explore the most powerful tools on offer for combining photos in all kinds of amazing ways. 01 PREPARE THE BLOCKS Open the portrait and the block images into Photoshop. Go to the first block image. Here we need to remove the letters. Select the letters with the Magic Wand then…

HDR and Panorama Merge features have been available in Camera Raw/Lightroom for a while, but a third merge option has been introduced that does both at once. The HDR Panorama feature allows you to merge a set of exposures into a detail-rich panorama in a few steps. It does this by combining a set of bracketed exposures into an HDR, one for each bit of the panorama, then stitches these segments together. You’ll need a carefully captured set of images to feed into it. We’ve supplied a set to experiment with on the disc, but if you intend to shoot your own, use your camera’s bracketing feature. We took three frames for each segment of the panorama at one-stop intervals – enough to capture detail in the brightest and darkest…

1 PLAIN BACKDROP A plain backdrop is helpful. Not only does it give our image a clean, uncluttered feel, it also makes it easier to combine pieces from different images into a seamless composite once we begin working on our images in post. We used a plain piece of white board. 2 TRIPOD We set up a tripod above the white board, with the camera angled downwards on the blocks. The tripod helps to keep a consistent angle and height. This means the direction of light stays the same throughout, ensuring the frames fit together naturally. 3 SUBJECT Our cheeky young chap makes for a playful subject and his lack of hair handily means it’s easier to blend the head with the toy blocks later. We captured a range of…

With a few Photoshop layer skills you can create all kinds of fantastical images, like our fairy scene. This is done using a range of effects and compositing. To begin, we’ll isolate our subject with a selection (kick-started by the useful ‘select subject’ command) and then make a cut-out. This way, we can bring in a pair of wings – copied from a bird – and move them behind the body, so it looks like they’re attached to her back. This compositing is best done with a combo of selection tools and layer masking. We’ll utilize the powerful Select and Mask command to do both at once. After adding our wings, we’ll create a pattern of spirals using a clever, little-known Photoshop command called ‘step and repeat’. This works by…

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…