TipSquirrel.com Photoshop Tutorials
Ever wonder how people create those cool “Infrared” Black & White images with ACR and Photoshop? Colortrails and TipSquirrel.com have teamed up to show you how easy and fun it can be to use this workflow. It’s next best thing to having an infrared sensor in your camera! -Dan
I think possibly my favorite feature / concept in all of Photoshop (and Lightroom / ACR) is the Targeted Adjustment concept, because it is both very accurate and FAST. Much faster than prior methods of working with contrast and color. The ability, whether working with HSL, Curves or Hue & Saturation (and hopefully more features in the future like Shadow and Highlight!) to directly target the tones and colors you want to work on, without any guesswork or re-dos, is extremely useful. Have a look and see what you think!
Remember: you can provide feedback or post tutorial requests by following me on Twitter @Colortrails. I’ll do my best to respond to both as often as I can. Thanks for stopping by! -Dan
Welcome to Colortrails new series of short-form tutorials called QuickHits! You can learn more about how QuickHits will be set up in the first minute of the video, but really it’s all about quick and easy techniques for improving our photos, video or other media. And of course, using everyone’s favorite suite of apps!
To kick things off I thought it would be a good idea to use a simple technique that I work with all the time to help straighten photos that are either slightly rotated or distorted, but not so much so that a full-on transform or Lens Correction workflow is required. Perspective cropping is quick and accurate and produces good results if you set things up correctly. Take a look.
Remember to send a tweet to @Colortrails if you have comments or would like to make a request. RT always appreciated if you enjoy the tutorial. 
Thanks for visiting! -Dan
It’s been a busy spring and summer! Since March, I’ve been working to produce a new series of Adobe tutorials for macProVideo.com; two have been released so far, with a third title right around the corner! If you haven’t worked with macProVideo before, I recommend you head over there and take a quick look. Every tutorial has free sample videos so you can experience their powerful streaming and subscription system, as well as the ability to view tutorials on any device, including iPhone and iPad! There are some seriously talented trainers there, including authors of Apple’s famous courseware, Emmy winning audio professionals and more. It’s a great group of people, who are dedicated to bringing you some excellent training titles at a very reasonable price.
A few words about my new Adobe video tutorials:
Photoshop CS5: Image Retouching & Adjustment provides 4 hours of detailed techniques for getting the most from Photoshop CS5′s image adjustments and new photo editing features. Content-Aware tools, key image adjustments, retouching tips, creative effects… if it’s a core part of the Photoshop photo editing workflow, it’s in there!
Just released, Core Lightroom 3 training provides nearly 3 hours of focused instruction on the latest advancements, including core raw editing techniques. Learn how to get organized quickly and start making precise raw edits with the Tone Curve, HSL, Lens Corrections and more. Even get some pointers on working with Slideshows, Contact Sheets, and more!
Finally, Mastering Adobe Camera Raw 6 is right around the corner, providing 2 hours of detailed tips for getting the most out of your raw edits with this popular Photoshop “plugin”. As the summer continues we’ll be bringing you more announcements for great Adobe tutorials as well as other titles, so I hope you’ll keep an eye out! -Dan (@Colortrails)
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Good news; Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is finally “in the house”, finished and ready to roll. Many people have already given Lightroom 3 a look in the public betas but there’s a lot going on in this update. Here are a few of the biggest plusses in my book:
• Incredible Luminance Noise Reduction – it still amazes me, even after testing the product for many months, how easy it is to breathe new life into old photos with this tool. You can clean up so much of the noise while leaving details intact (and which can be enhanced as well with improved capture sharpening) that it really changes the whole NR / sharpening workflow for me. Cuts out extra steps.
• Improved Import – the new import dialog is fantastic. Gets the pictures into my catalog quickly, the way I want them set up. The only missing thing here is a Favorites option for the Drive / Folders list but hopefully that will be available down the road in a future update.
• Lens Correction – like the Photoshop and ACR versions there are still some kinks to be worked out here but the idea that Lightroom can auto-detect which lens was used and if a profile exists, correct for geometric or CA problems on the fly, is great news. Especially for a lot of wide-angle architectural shots.
I will post more information on Lightroom as the week moves on, to tell you about my upcoming book and training video! Thanks for dropping in, as always. -Dan
You know good things are brewing for the weekend, when you start your Friday off with the news that Creative Suite 5 from Adobe has begun to ship to customers today. Now that we’ve got our Flash soap opera commentary out of the way, let’s focus on the fun stuff! (Round 2 can’t be far off; Microsoft came out today on the side of Apple (standards) but we all know MS’ track-record when it comes to early adoption of standards. Yikes!)
Below I’ve listed a few of the new features -as someone who works a lot in the realm of photography, video and motion graphics- that I will use most often, and why. Later today I hope to have a couple new tutorials up for you to check as well. Thanks for dropping by!
There are a couple features (as a photography lover) that really stand apart for me. First is the new HDR Pro function, and the second is the new Mixer Brush with Bristle Tips. Oh and that “little detail” of using as much RAM as I can throw at Photoshop because it’s now 64-bit on the Mac (though some filters and many plugins are still 32-bit for now).
HDR Pro: Prior versions of photoshop did allow for some tone-mapping and processing of high-bit images, but if you wanted to do real multi-shot HDR in Photoshop you had to use a 3rd party plugin to get results. HDR Pro in CS5 provides a large array of tone-mapping features that allow you to precisely control contrast regions, glow effects, and highlight / shadow details, as well as overall color balance. The de-ghosting feature is also extremely helpful. Every landscape shot I have that has water in it, uses this feature to good effect. Also helps with trees / leaves blowing.
Mixer Brush / Bristle Tips: Another fantastic feature for photographers is the new Mixer Brush with Bristle Tips. I am not a painter and I never will be a painter in the formal sense of the word. Some people just have that in them, and some don’t, but the Mixer Brush makes it so easy to convert a decent photograph into a really interesting photo-illustration that I will be using this tool all the time. You’ll be glad you kept a lot of your “almost” compositions — ones you perhaps would not be able to sell, but liked nonetheless. Photo-illustration is a great way to give those types of photos new life, and maybe even to the point where you can sell them at agencies like Shutterstock.
The Mixer Brush almost makes me feel like a painter, without having to pay for the college level courses (and years of dues to actually feel like I know what I’m doing). I can work with the colors and texture of my images in an way that allows for intuitive paths and creative experimentation, rather than following a rigid workflow or formula. That and the UI is about 10x more intuitive than anything I’ve seen from Corel. Digital Painting Gurus John Derry and Tim Shelbourne have recently provided some insights into just how cool this feature is for those more versed in formal painting (and Corel Painter) technique.
(Be warned: you’ll want some beefy hardware to get the most from CS5 apps, but that investment will be worth it too. If you’re in the market for a new Mac Pro and can wait a few weeks, I would. In fact, I am!)
64 Bit: Since most of my time in AE is spent styling up DVD menus, creating motion graphics effects for title sequences and other intro / outro media, probably the biggest improvements for my workflow is that fact that AE is now a true 64 bit app on Mac, and allows for true multi-core performance in many areas. If you’re a big fan of plugins like Trapcode Particular 2, don’t worry; Red Giant is on the case. All of their core plugins will be moving to 64-bit and an affordable upgrade path will be available.
Speed makes all the difference when test rendering and working in AE, especially since I have a 2008 generation Mac Pro. Now if Apple would release those new Mac Pros with 12 RAM slots, we’re on target.
DigiEffects Freeform: For those not aware, this plugin lets you take 2D shapes and warp them into 3D shapes, which can then be manipulated in ways that simulate true 3D. This is a pretty cool thing for FX and motion graphics pros because it used to be a pay-for-it plugin in the 3rd party space and we’re now getting it as part of AE.
RotoBrush: If you’re stuck with roto work, you will definitely appreciate the new RotoBrush. John Dickinson has a nice overview you can look at here.
Perspective Drawing: As a non-illustrator by trade who likes to occasionally set up bits and pieces of a scene in Illustrator and then move them to AE or other apps like C4D, the ability to draw structures in correct perspective with these automated guides and tools is really helpful. Not to mention it’s just fun and feels like it’s opening up a new area of illustration and drawing not previously accessible to me .
Bristle Tips: Yep… they’re in Illustrator too, not just Photoshop. Realistic brush strokes and styling FTW.
Draw Behind / Draw Inside: This was the kind of stuff that always used to drive me nuts when trying to use AI (as someone who didn’t have formal training as a drafter or illustrator. It’s these type of little details that make Illustrator more accessible for everyone IMO.
If you went to the Adobe booth at NAB, you already know the answers to this one. Improved AVC support, GPU-acclerated editing and rendering while you work, and I can attest first-hand, overall a FAR more stable and speedy product than the CS4 variant when it was originally released.
The Premiere Pro team made a decision to buckle down and really tackle the most common user comments and requests: reducing the buggyness, greatly increase overall speed and performance of common workflows, and new workflows like AVCHD.
Adobe nailed it. I think every app in the Adobe arsenal would benefit from having one cycle like this Premiere cycle, maybe every third or fourth release, to really hammer on performance and reliability across a variety of hardware configurations.
This CS5 announcements has been a long time coming, and as someone who fortunate enough to work with Adobe as an alpha and beta tester, it was a bit of a relief! There is so much cool stuff in CS5 that not being able to share the new capabilities with creative professionals and others like myself, was a test of willpower this cycle. Let me give you a few of the highlights from the new CS5 Production Suite.
Adobe CS5 Suites
Photoshop CS5 in particular is a really excellent upgrade. Probably the best single improvement I’ve seen in 15+ years of using the app. During that time I’ve enjoyed (along with the rest of the pixel-pushing community) the advent of History, the Brush Engine (Ps 7), and many other cool features like Vanishing Point. But CS5 takes the cake. Not only is it fully 64 bit for the Mac and PC now, but the new features are outstanding and applicable to several workflow types.
Photographers: for me the most impressive new capability is the HDR Pro function, which now provides Photoshop users with a truly professional solution for combining exposures to create high dynamic range images. There tone-mapping controls are much improved, there is a deghosting function to remove ghosts from overlaid exposures of moving subjects like trees, clouds or plants. There is also an excellent corner point feature in the Curves that allow for very precise control over image contrast region-by-region.
But that’s not all for photographers by a long-shot. We also have a more accurate an intelligent Refine Selection / Refine Edge command that uses Smart (Edge) Radius technology to quickly isolate your subject from background clutter or color bleed. And you’ve no doubt seen the retoucher’s dream by now, the Content Aware Fill command. Now there will be a lot more creating and a lot less clone, patch, heal… clone, patch, heal.
Still not done though. The new Luminance and Color Noise Reduction technology you’ve seen in Lightroom 3 Beta, is available in ACR 6 as well. Photoshop CS5 also has a brand new Lens Correction capability, that profiles individual cameras and lens combos and makes automatic corrections. This feature will become bread-and-butter for many photographers, as Nikon, Canon and others provide robust profiles for their pro zoom and wide angle glass. Last and certainly not least Adobe has created a new Mixer Brush and live Bristle Tips, which allow photographers to create beautiful digital paintings and photo-illlustrations from their pictures!
You can learn about all of these features and more in my upcoming title: Photoshop 105: Retouching & Image Adjustment!
Designers: if you’re a graphic designer or work with more creative workflows in Photoshop, there are three huge additions to CS5. First the Puppet Warp tool allows you to take a subject that is isolated on a transparent layer, and warp it in realistic ways (not dissimilar to AE’s Puppet tool), while filling the hole in the background layer with Content Aware Fill. There’s also Repousse, which addresses the long-standing request for a text and shape extrusion tool in Photoshop. Be warned though: you’ll want to use a computer with a pretty powerful GPU to get the most from Repousse or other Photoshop 3D features. And the same Mixer Brush and Bristle tips noted above, can allow Photoshop artists to create painterly creations from scratch, without the need for 3rd party apps. Or at least the need will be less frequent.
After Effects and Premiere Pro CS5 also have major improvements to offer for video editors and motion graphics artists, including both being optimized for 64 bit computing, GPU acceleration and in some features, multi-core CPU acceleration. For Production Suite users, you’re going to want to have at least 12GB of RAM available on your machine to get the most from Photoshop, AE, and Pr at the same time. Remember: RAM is still relatively cheap so it’s a great way to boost performance for not a lot of money.
Video / FX: For those who are given the unenviable task of Rotoscoping, the new RotoBrush in After Effects allows you to intuitively paint around a subject and as the frames advance, using various slider settings and brush tweaks to let AE “fill in the blanks” and follow your subject around. Maybe more important in my mind is the improved performance and stability across the range of functions for Premiere Pro, and the improved speed of Dynamic Link workflows for AE – Premiere and Encore.
In the weeks ahead I will be posting free demos over various CS5 functions and linking them up here at Colortrails, so check back often!
It’s almost here folks, and you’re going to love it. Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 will be launched at a media event (you can register for the Adobe TV feed) on April 12. You can read more about the new CS5 products and see some demo and promotional videos on their new CS5 Launch Site. Including the new Mercury playback engine (which is GPU accelerated) in Premiere Pro CS5. Additionally, keep your eyes peeled for brand new content from Colortrails.com the week of April 12. I’ve got some great stuff I’m cooking up, so I hope you’ll drop by!
Happy 20th, Photoshop! It’s amazing to think that roughly 17 years have past, since I tried Photoshop for the first time (and later tore the shrink-wrap off my first copy (version 3, left). I was introduced to Photoshop while working at the University of Iowa’s Mac computing lab. Weeg, the source of all digital goodness in the known universe. Well, it was for me, anyway.
Seventeen years is a long time in software terms, but I can still remember the excitement of installing Photoshop on my “bad-ass” PowerPC Mac, clocking in at a massive 66MHz and sporting a whopping 16MB of RAM (I think). Any faster and I’m pretty sure that computer would’ve warped the space-time continuum, making time travel possible. Truthfully, tech specs weren’t the rage back then as they are today. All that mattered was I needed to ace my magazine and newspaper layout class, and Photoshop (along with the venerable Aldus Pagemaker) were going to help me do that. No more long trecks to the lab.
Apple Quicktake by H.G. Wells?
It was around that time Apple had also introduced the very first digital camera. It was about the size of a ham sandwich and looked a bit like one of the alien ships from the original War of the Worlds. I think it clocked in under 1 megapixel and many images turned out noisy and a little blurry from the tiny lens. But that didn’t matter either.
What mattered was the sense of possibility that it brought. To that point I hadn’t been formally introduced to the art of taking pictures, and it would be another five or six years before I decided to take that career path in earnest, but the idea… that we could snap pictures without film, bring those into our fancy Power PC computers right away, and work with them in Photoshop. That… that was just the BOMB. Think about the buzz surrounding the iPad today, and multiply the initial euphoria by five. Today we expect to be amazed and given perfectly functional products from day 1. Back then it was all new, all an experiment.
I remember one of the first images I created with my “digital arsenal”, Photoshop at the tip of the proverbial spear. It was a logo for a product concept that we had to invent, and then create some basic packaging and collateral for. Our journalism professor was nothing if not pragmatic. She knew that having the ability to design and layout commercial concepts, as well as double-trucks for a newspaper or magazine, would be important for her students. So I came up with a futuristic software company, and I used Photoshop to create a simple graphic. It was actually a pretty cool looking, orange and yellow spiral galaxy, on a black background (to blend in with the brochure background). Used up a lot of ink! So with just a little bit of color, texture and pattern applied to the canvas and this thing called the Twirl filter, my journey had begun.
Save Ferris (from Windows Paint)
Thereafter, many a flat-looking scan and layout were bettered by the inclusion of Photoshop in my workflow. Without so much as a darkroom and cheap enlarger, I quickly learned how to improve color and contrast, crop away distractions, apply subtle (and sometimes no-so-subtle) effects. Remember that back in the early 90s, this was pioneering stuff. Prior there had been Windows Paint, and that’s about it. Remember Ferris Bueller’s masterpiece?
Fast-forward more than 15 years and I’ve photographed places as far flung as the Napali Coast and the Welsh Highlands, taught photography classes, and authored several training videos, with more on the way. Photoshop is just as big a part of what I do as my camera and keyboard, and helps to make every good shot I create, and every tutorial, that much better or more interesting.
Thank you, Adobe, for 17 (really 20!) years of amazing software advances and creative possibilities!
PhotoTuts author Andrew Gibson has posted a nice tutorial that demonstrates a simple means of “combining exposures”, by creating two different files from the same raw file and then bringing them together in Photoshop. While this technique typically won’t produce as dramatic a result as exposure-bracketing a scene from your DSLR, and then using HDR techniques to bring them all together, it’s also much quicker than most HDR techniques. So if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate but want to get more from a scene you captured that has a higher dynamic range, it’s worth a look.
| Unless otherwise noted all content ©Dan Moughamian | Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha |