Blog.Photo.Net » photoshop tutorial

Figure & Face Retouching: Focal Press Book Excerpt

Hannah — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:09:37 +0000

Award-winning photography/design team Harold and Phyllis Davis are back with a brand new volume in their new Photoshop Darkroom series. Picking up where their best-selling first book left off, The Photoshop Darkroom 2: Advanced Digital Post-Processing will show you everything you need to know to take your digital imaging skills to the next level. Great photographers know that the best images begin well before the shutter clicks, and certainly well before Photoshop boots up. Harold takes a step back, and shares his helpful tips for capturing the most compelling images possible by keeping in mind what type of post-processing you’ll do before you start shooting.

The more I photograph beautiful women, the more I realize that everyone has some skin challenges. Perhaps the only perfect skin on the planet belongs to kids before hormones hit—and by definition, these kids are not glamour models. Also in my experience, glamour models don’t always lead the healthiest of lifestyles. This inevitably impacts skin condition. It may not show in publicity photos that have been retouched, but it certainly shows when you look at original captures in Photoshop. Having good make-up helps a great deal, but cosmetics can be overdone and look artificial. When make-up is used to cover poor skin, it can look like a cover-up is in process—as is indeed true. In any case, I always plan to spend some time “improving” skin on models I shoot.

Read the full excerpt: http://photo.net/learn/book-excerpts/focal-press/photoshop-darkroom-figure-face-retouching/.

Advanced Photoshop Tutorial: Using Image Apply Image

Hannah — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:06:47 +0000

Imagine a Photoshop world without the ability to select. Impossible. There would be no way to work on parts of an image. You would be forced to make changes on the entire image or not at all. Basically, selecting is comparable to creating a mask for a layer. You want the easiest way possible to isolate an area of an image. In some cases, making an edge drawing to create a selection or a layer mask takes a great deal of time. However, by isolating a channel of your image, you may simplify the selection process. In this article, Harold breaks down the important application in Photoshop that allows us to apply a channel as a layer mask–Image > Apply Image.

Read Using Image Apply Image.

HDR in Photoshop CS5 Tutorial

Hannah — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:38:47 +0000

“HDR–High Dynamic Range–imaging is a technology, concept and aesthetic that has developed in the digital era in answer to the problem of the limited range from light to dark that can be captured using a single exposure.” (Harold Davis) There are a number of different software options out there for applying HDR during post-processing. The latest and newest is actually a feature included in Adobe’s latest version of Photoshop: CS5. In this tutorial, Harold explains how to use Photoshop CS5′s new feature Merge to HDR Pro, and walks us through the steps in an easy-to-follow tutorial.

Learn how to do HDR in Photoshop CS5.

Advanced Photoshop Tutorial: Creating HDR Images by Hand by Harold Davis

Hannah — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:17:08 +0000

photo by Harold Davis

Harold Davis’ new column on Creativity in the Photoshop Darkroom, brings to light many of Harold’s techniques for how to post-process your images to the best effect. This month’s tutorial is a continuation of last month’s Creating HDR Images by Hand [Part I], in which we learned about the process. Part II covers a very detailed step-by-step process as to how Harold layers in the HDR magic by hand.

Take a look at Creating HDR Images by Hand [Part II] and try your hand at this powerful technique.