Have you ever found your photos flat? The colors are muted and it just looks dull? That’s because it lacks contrast. Sometimes regardless of your best exposure skills, the conditions are not suited to get a wide range of tones. Not to worry though, it can be fixed in post-processing. I’l

This is an article for beginners in Photoshop. You will learn how to simply add an element to your photo and transform a daylight image into a nighttime one. Open your selected images in Photoshop First thing you want to do is select a photo of a mountain (in raw format). For that, open Photoshop th

Shooting buildings can be tricky. The main reason is that they are tall, and you need to get far away from them if you want to fit them into the frame. If you are shooting in the city, you don’t have the luxury of getting really far away, the best you may be able to do is get farther down the

Whether you are a Photoshop newbie or a guru, there is always something new to learn or discover in this extensive image editing software. One of the joys of using it,  is that there are many ways to do the same thing in Photoshop. Here are a few tips that are useful to improve your workflow, e

What is dodging and burning? The techniques of dodging and burning are hand-me-downs from the days of the darkroom. The idea was to manipulate parts of an image while the paper was being exposed to light from the enlarger, where the negative was fitted. In order to decrease the exposure (lighte

Black and white photography is as popular as ever. If you’re one of the many photographers who adore it, you know why that is the case. On one hand, black and white conversion removes the distraction of color from an image. It can help you to create evocative and dramatic images, that concentr

You’ve rolled out your white background for your shoot; whether it’s vinyl or paper. It’s a bit dirty from shoes, but you’re under pressure to get the shoot done, so you carry on regardless. When the shoot is over and the photos are back on the computer, that’s whe

There are many reasons why you would like to select the sky in your image using Photoshop. Maybe you would like to replace it, to add details, change the contrast, etc. Selections give you a precise contour of your subject and facilitate local adjustments, without altering the other elements in your

Most of us have experienced photographing an incredible sunrise or sunset only to get home and realize that the colors in your images are not nearly as good as the colors you witnessed with your own eyes. There can be many reasons to this, such as camera limitations or mistakes you made in the field

For most photographers before they even press that shutter button, they have already pictured the type of shot in their heads. What exactly do I mean by that? Well for example, a sports photographer may use a panning technique to shoot a moving sports car so that the background is out of focus to co

Picture this, you are about halfway through editing a beautiful urban landscape in Photoshop. You’ve already put hours into the image when suddenly you notice that a particular area of the image doesn’t add up. A wall you were working on has accidentally bee

If you read my previous article where I give you some tips for doing more spectacular sunset photography, you’ll understand that I love taking photos during the magic hour. For my portraits, I also book my sessions during that time because the light is very soft and flattering. There is one th

When making any adjustments to an image in Photoshop, non-destructive editing is key. Using adjustment layers is one step in a non-destructive editing workflow. In Photoshop (CS 6), there are 16 Adjustment Layers. For the purpose of this article, I will focus on three of my favorite. Levels Selecti

Color swapping in Photoshop is both a fun thing to do and a very handy tool for product photographers with clients in need of options. It’s not a hard technique and it only takes a try or two to get it right. This article outlines two methods for how to swap colors in Photoshop.   The fi

Buried deep in my parents’ basement are boxes of slides with pictures of my siblings and I, when we were kids, all taken with my dad’s Minolta DSLR that has long since been lost to the ages. I have a few scans of those early photos but most of them won’t see the light of day a

Lighting is a huge integral part of a movie’s success. The same applies to photography. It’s all about the light or lack of it to create the drama in an image. Rim lighting, as the term suggests, is also called edge or back lighting. In this article I will show you how to create this dra

When it comes to post-processing, photographers definitely have opinions about Photoshop Action sets. Some photographers love them, others consider them cheating. For me personally, Actions are most valuable when they either (a) make the editing that I would do by hand more efficient and/or (b

If you’ve used Photoshop, you are likely aware by now that there are many ways to accomplish the same tasks. One of the more important ones that should be done to almost every digital image is sharpening. This is necessary because most digital camera sensors make use of an anti-aliasing f

In the days before digital imaging, if you truly wanted to elevate your photography to the level of art, you learned how to process your images in the darkroom. You learned dodging, burning, masking, sandwiching negatives, flashing and fogging – all designed to get the most out of your images,

Creating a vintage look for an image is now easy, without having to shoot with an old film camera. Although I would recommend any photo enthusiastic to try! I have a an Agfa camera ISOLA that I use every now and then. I love the contrasty, grainy black and white pictures it allows me to shoot. I usu