Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i Practical Photoshop

Collections are like Lightroom’s answer to traditional folders, but they have extra benefits. You can set up your collections just like a normal folder structure, using Collection Sets to house them. But the structure remains independent of your file locations on your hard drive. So you can use it like a secondary structure to sort your photos, without having to copy and paste them into different locations on your drive. This also means an image can be present in several collections at once, without making storage-hogging duplicates of the file. To make a collection, click the plus next to the Collections Panel. The panel is present throughout Lightroom’s Modules, which makes it easy to take a set of photos through the Develop Module then on to the Print or Slideshow…

The Crop Tool’s main job is to remove parts of a photo by cropping in tighter, but you can also use it to expand a canvas by dragging outside of the original image window to enlarge it. There’s also a handy Content-Aware feature in the Crop Tool options at the top. Toggle this on and, when cropping outside the original canvas, Photoshop will attempt to fill in the extra areas by generating new pixels. The results will depend on the complexity and size of the fill. If the backdrop is fairly simple, then the fill can be very successful – and even if it’s not perfect, it may take just a few moments spent cloning to finish off.…

1 SETTING SUN The best angle for our sunset portrait will usually be shooting towards the sun. The most vibrant colors will often form in this part of the sky as the sun reaches the horizon. Even if the sun disappears behind low clouds, you’re still likely to see dramatic cloud formations and hints of orange or pink. 2 LOCATION Think of a location near you that will work for your sunset portrait, and consider the direction of the setting sun in advance. The rapeseed field here offers vibrant colors that match those in the sky. The beach or a lake can be great choices too, as the sun will reflect off of the water. 3 OUTDOOR FLASH A standalone flash unit, like the Godox AD300Pro here, is ideal, as…

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…

Keywording is vital for an organized image library: it allows you to quickly find any photo you might need, whether it was taken yesterday or a decade ago. As well as adding keywords when you import into Lightroom, you have lots of keywording options in the Library Module. Here you can add keywords to the field (press Cmd/Ctrl+K to quickly make the box active), or use the Keyword Sets Panel to add common tags (hold Alt and you’ll see numbers appear against each; tap a number to add). Under the Metadata menu you can also set up your own custom keyword shortcut, which you can then add to highlighted images by tapping Shift+K (think K for keyword). The spray can found at the bottom of the panel (when in Grid…

This handy command saves lots of time whenever you need to open several versions of an image into one document, such as when you’re focus-stacking or making a triptych. Simply highlight the set of images in Bridge then go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. You can also run a similar command from within Photoshop – go to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack. If you prefer to open images through Lightroom, on the other hand, highlight several photos, then go to Edit In > Open As Layers In Photoshop.…

Actions let you record a sequence of edits, commands and changes to an image, then replay them on other images. They’re a huge time-saver, especially when it comes to making everyday, monotonous edits like cropping to a specific print size or sharpening the image. To set up an Action, go to Window > Actions. The panel can be set to Button Mode (click the flyout menu at the top of the panel), which gives you a neat set of buttons, but you’ll need to turn this mode off while making Actions. To make a new Action, click the icon at the bottom. Give the Action a name and click Record. From this moment, anything you do will be recorded within the Action, so think carefully about the sequence of edits…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3wMYDZ3 The Texture control is one of the best tools in Camera Raw and Lightroom for controlling details in your images. On the face of it, the slider is very simple – drag one way to increase detail, drag the other way to decrease it. But in combination with other Camera Raw or Lightroom tools like the Adjustment Brush and Range Masking, the Texture command becomes really powerful. While the name may imply that this tool is best at enhancing textures, it’s often at its best when doing precisely the opposite. A negative value can result in a wonderful softening effect – useful for de-emphasizing overly busy parts of your frame, or for speedy skin softening in portraits. In this project we’ll look at how to get…

01 POSITION THE FLASH The great thing about using off-camera flash is that we get to place it wherever we like. So we can put it to one side of the subject for dramatic directional light that complements the backlighting of the sun. Try feathering the flash so it’s angled across the front of the subject. This gives more even light. 02 EXPOSE FOR THE AMBIENT LIGHT Before turning on the flash, we work out an exposure that best captures the sky. Set your camera to Manual mode with shutter speed at 1/200 sec and an ISO of 100. Start off with an aperture around f/8, then take a test shot and vary it, if needed, until the sky looks right. Initially our aperture was f/5.6. 03 TURN ON THE…

Tons of tools in Photoshop are based around a brush interface, so we inevitably spend a lot of time brushing. As such, any time-saving brush tricks we can learn will save a heap of time in the long run. One of the biggest time-savers is a graphics tablet. It takes a little getting used to, but it has huge advantages over using a mouse. You can make use of pressure and tilt capabilities in the pen to control your brushing to a far greater degree than a mouse. It’s also much easier to draw curved lines and paint precisely. Many tablets offer shortcut keys you can use alongside your keyboard to make common keystrokes or actions. On top of all this, it just looks cooler to be using a pen…

After making a Smart Object, we can link it to other Smart Objects so any changes we make to that image are replicated in all of the duplicate Smart Objects within our document. This means you could, for example, alter several similar icons in a document at once, which would be a huge timesaver when making designs or mocking up web pages. Simply highlight the layers that make up the image or design, right-click and select Convert To Smart Object to house them all within the same bubble. Then duplicate and reuse the smart object in other places or artboards. To make changes later, double-click any of the Smart Object layers to open it up in a new window, then make your changes and save. All the other Smart Objects…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/2UZQfZ1 The golden hour has long been known as the best time of day to capture gorgeous landscape photos, but it’s being increasingly used by portrait photographers too. As the sun goes down the vibrant colors can create a stunning backdrop for portraits. And even if the sky doesn’t erupt into color, it’s still a great time to head out for the chance of dramatic clouds. The key challenge to overcome is the strong backlighting we get when shooting towards the setting sun. This makes it tricky to get a balanced exposure, because the subject’s front will be in deep shade. If we were using natural light alone we could expose for the shade, but this would blow out the sky; or we could expose for the…

01 TARGET COLORS The Color Mixer Panel in Camera Raw and Lightroom is very useful for targeting and enhancing different color ranges. Go to the panel and click the Saturation tab, then drag left or right over colors in the image to change the saturation of the colors within. Here, it’s useful for boosting oranges and yellows in sunsets. 02 SELECT THE SKY You can also boost the colors selectively in the sky using an Adjustment Layer. First go to Select > Sky. Then click the Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers Panel and choose your adjustment from the resulting pop-up menu – try Hue/Saturation to boost the color intensity, or choose Curves to add some contrast to the sky. 03 USE THE CHANNEL MIXER Here’s another quick technique for…