One technique I’ve seen used a lot lately on blogs, websites and even email newsletters is a hand drawn frame effect. In this post, I’ll show you how to create an effect like this and save and use it for your images. Step 1 Start with a new image in Photoshop. A good size frame is imp

If you’ve ever tried to crop an image to a fixed ratio in Photoshop you may have run up against an issue. There is, it appears, no option for cropping to a fixed ratio such as 4 x 6, 5 x 7 or even 1 x 1. You can crop to fixed sizes like 4in x 6in and you can set a resolution for the image but

What I learned very quick in my starting activity as a freelance-photographer is that, all work be damned, you have exceedingly little control over your assignment-flow. Sure, you can make a great website/jolly facebookpage/stellar portfolio. But making people to call you now, now now! is rather har

If you envy your friends their iPhone Instagram app and their iPad grunge photo editing apps then PSKiss has the solution. PSKiss recently released its PSKiss Photogram which is the first ever (at least as far as I’m aware) app like extension for Photoshop. It has all the coolness of an iPad

A Post by George Maciver from the Highlands of Scotland Photography ‘That’s a Photoshop!’ she cried, and left the group. The photograph in question had been popped, but that was all. Well, I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, every photographer on the planet uses photo

When you’re using layers in Photoshop for photo editing and composting you can speed up the process of working with them if you know these cool layer tricks. 1. Unlock the Background You will already know the Background of any photo is locked and you can’t do anything much with it until

When you install a new version of Photoshop the first thing you’ll need to do is to set things up so that they work properly for you. Here are settings I make in the Preferences panel every time I upgrade. 1. Set your History States Choose Edit > Preferences > Performance or Photoshop P

I like Photoshop to open and “look the way I want to see it”. But sometimes ‘the way I want to see it’ is different than others. I’m fickle – but thankfully Photoshop plays nice with me – the secret is its Workspaces. These Workspaces let me preconfigure my

Brushes are used a lot in photo editing from removing blemishes and smoothing skin to dodging and burning and painting on masks. Here are five important features of the brush tool in Photoshop. 1. Adjust Size, Opacity and Hardness from the Keyboard When a brush is selected you can adjust its size w

When it comes to fixing images in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements the ability to use masks to do your edits is invaluable. By using a mask instead of, for example, the Eraser you get an edit which can be changed or even removed any time in the future. However masks aren’t easy to use or even

Sometimes you’ll capture an image that should be rectangular but is anything but. In this example I shot an image of a 6 x 6 inch sheet of paper for a project. The aim at the time was to have a reference image before the project was shipped. Later I found I need to do more with the image an

Most people who have experimented in Photoshop, especially those who shoot in raw, will have some experience of trying to sharpen an image.  Sharpening increases the contrast between neighbouring pixels resulting in the visual effect of a crisper image.  It is typically the last processing

Often times when looking at an image, people will ask “Was that Photoshopped?” or “Did that scene REALLY look that way?”  They say this as if the camera, left to its own devices, is going to display an unedited, “truthful” image.  The truth is, that any

Actions are a feature of Photoshop that allow you to automate tasks. So you can record your steps as you work as an action and then play them back to make repetitive tasks more simple to perform. You can also find actions on the web that others have created and download them to use yourself. In this

In a previous post I showed how to fix this image by creating duplicates of the background layer, fixing one copy focusing on the shadows and fixing the other focusing on the highlights and then blending the two layers using masks. If you find masks tricky to use or if you have never used masks bef

In this post, I’ll show you how to create a simple composite by placing one image in another. Along the way, I’ll not only bend one image to fit its new position but I’ll also show you a layer style trick that overcomes the problem that you’ll see if you scroll down to step 6

A Guest post by Phil Steele 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. I know I struggled with it, until I found this handy shortcut. Most of us start out using the Clone Stamp tool as our a

When you’ve been using a program like Photoshop for a length of time, you begin to develop a wish list of things you’d like to see in future versions. Sometimes these are addressed by new releases and sometimes they’re not. Now I know Photoshop CS5 has just been released but there

If you’ve ever wondered what the small icons in the Layer palette do, you might be surprised at how useful they can be. Here’s what the Lock Transparent Pixels icon does and how you can use it. There are times when you are working with content on layers in Photoshop that the layers ca

You may already know that it is possible to sharpen an image using the High Pass Filter. But did you know it’s possible to use the filter to soften an image? To see this at work, start with an image open on the screen. Duplicate the image background layer or if you have an image that has ad