Vintage fades and washes seem to have recently become quite popular. Perhaps since the modern DSLR has enabled everyone to shoot such high quality/high definition images, there is more of a desire to reach towards the past with these vintage effects. Regardless of the reason, in this tutorial, I am going to show you just how simple it is to create a vintage wash in your images by cross processing your image with Curves in Photoshop. The best part about it, this technique will literally take you less than 1 minute to do manually, and only seconds if you turn it into a Photoshop Action.
One Brief Moment
"A photograph is a stop in time for just one brief moment." – Charles Dobbs PhotographyArchive
Tag: photoshop
Photoshop is universally considered to be a killer digital image editor and for digital photographers it is an extremely powerful post-processing tool. But the professional post-processing is not restricted to Photoshop only, you can use the same adjustments to fine-tune the images in Lightroom, Capture NX or GIMP as well. With the proper information about the adjustments involved in color correction, image enhancement and fine-tuning the image for sharpness, contrast, etc. you can bring out the best in your photos. Here are 7 Photoshop tutorials that will help you get familiar with the tips and tricks involved in post production process using Photoshop (which you can of course try out in other photo-editors as well). These tutorials serve as the guide to get started with the Photoshop adjustments but the final result is largely influenced by your personal liking.
via Photoshop Post-Processing — 7 Photoshop Tutorials For Image Post Processing.
Lens distortion is a potential problem for any photographer without access to a tilt shift lens, and not all of us have the ability or desire to dump a couple grand on one. There’s a lot of things that two grand could go towards besides a niche lens like a tilt shift. If you’re an architectural photographer, that is certainly a different story, but most people aren’t.
There are quite a few types of lens distortion, but this article is going to focus on perspective distortion. I’ve found, for photographers, lens distortion only becomes a problem once you discover what it is, and if you haven’t discovered it yet then I apologize in advance because now it will drive you nuts when you don’t want it! When I first started out, I had no idea that my lens distorted reality and therefore I never noticed it in my images. I remember when I first started posting photos to flickr when I was brand new photographer, I put up an image I took at a really old Methodist church. I took the shot from the second floor balcony, which unknowingly to me at the time was probably the best place to shoot when trying to get straight lines all throughout your image. Unfortunately for me, I tilted the camera down a bit, which caused the vertical lines in the scene to lean in towards the center of the image.
When somebody tried to point this out to me, I was befuddled. I looked and looked at the image, but I couldn’t see what he was talking about. He just told me that the lines weren’t straight! I wasn’t looking at the lines in the scene in comparison to the edges of the frame, I was just looking at the lines themselves. They looked pretty dang straight to me, and I was getting pretty ticked off at this guy! Eventually, he told me to compare the lines in the scene to the outer edges of the framing itself and that’s when I had that first “aha” moment with lens distortion.
It’s important to note that lens distortion isn’t good or bad in and of itself. Like most things, it just depends on how and when you use it, and whether or not you meant to use it!
If you are unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, here are a few examples of intentional lens distortion…
Let me start off by saying that I don’t use textures all that often, but there are certainly times where I feel that an image could use just a little something extra. Textures are just another one of those things in digital photography that can be overused and overdone if you’re not careful, and there are certainly right and wrong ways of going about it.
So, for those that have never heard of this before or have yet to try it, you may be wondering what it means to add a texture to a photograph? Simply put, it means taking one image usually of some sort of texture like peeling paint, a scratched surface, a textured wall or fabric and applying it as an overlay to your actual image. The effect is achieved by changing the blend mode of the texture in photoshop so that the texture actually becomes translucent and part of the actual image. For this tutorial, I’ll take a simple image I took in California during a surf competition, and add a texture to bring it to life. Here’s the image straight out of the camera and the texture we will be using from my library…
Almost any portrait subject over the age of 25 can use some under-eye cleanup, but many photographers struggle to make this common retouch look natural.
via The Fast Way to Remove Dark Circles Under Eyes in Photoshop.
Here are a few tips for getting the most out of Lightroom instead of relying too heavily on PS for those everyday shots.
Most users don’t realize that you can create your own custom panels for Photoshop CS4 and for the new CS5. You do this using a free download called Adobe Configurator. In this post, I’ll show you how to get started making your first Photoshop CS4 panel using Configurator 1.0.
As rumored, Adobe has launched Photoshop CS5 and CS5 Extended – the latest versions of its image manipulation software. They will be available separately or as components of the Creative Suite 5 family of design and production software bundles. Both include revised interfaces and a host of new tools and refinements discussed in the accompanying story. Photoshop CS5 and CS5 Extended are expected to begin shipping next month for around US $699 and $999. Licensed users of the previous versions can upgrade for $149 and $349 respectively.
via Adobe unveils Photoshop CS5 & CS5 Extended: Digital Photography Review.
