The following photoshop tutorial was submitted by one of our Forum members - Floris who took an image that another of our forum members submitted and did some photoshopping on it (with permission of the other member). I hope you find it a useful tutorial.
We’ve all experienced it, maybe only once, maybe 10 or even 100 times:
Looking at a photograph you took, and think: “pity, wish I could change the colors a bit, or frame it a bit to the right.” Sometime you can go back an try another shot, but thats not always possible.
Fortunately, you actually can change these things. (although not always)
Here’s a tutorial on what can be changed in this photograph (shown below) with some post processing work. (note - this photo was submitted in the Critique My Shot section in the DPS forums by noamilee).
The photograph:
Things some people (like me) would like to change:
- Remove the date in the bottom right corner.
- Change the skin color. It’s a little blueish, it makes the blue eyes stand out less.
- Add some space left, maybe crop the right side a bit.
This all is quite easily to achieve, I made this tutorial as easy as possible, so I hope you can follow it.
Here’s where we’ll take this image in the post- post processing version:
Read the rest of this entry
This is the second part of 2 tutorials on making images have an antique feel with Photoshop. Part 1 is here. It’s been submitted by Elise Hennen from 28 Studios. Read more about Elise below.
All right, so you’ve got your picture looking a little older. Now, we’re going to give it some dimension and some abuse. You can do this with any picture. We’ll go from this to this:
First up, we’re going to give the picture scratches. Pick a brush that looks a little rough. Take it down to a size of two or so and make sure your foreground color is white. Create a new layer, and then go nuts. Draw little scratches all over it. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as it looks good and at least a little natural to you. Once your layer is relatively full, pull its opacity way down until the scratches are as subtle as you prefer. I wanted mine to be barely noticeable.
Put all of your existing layers into a new folder and call it something like “picture.” Then make your canvas a little larger than it is now - we want a white border around the picture. You can either go to Image > Canvas Size and resize it manually or use the crop tool. To use the crop tool (c), select the whole canvas using the tool. Then, holding down alt, resize the crop area to the size you want and hit enter.
Read the rest of this entry
This is the first part of 2 tutorials on making images have an antique feel with Photoshop. It’s been submitted by Elise Hennen from 28 Studios. Read more about Elise below.
I’m sure you’ve seen tutorials on fixing up old, damaged photos. Well, what about how to make them that way? I’ll be showing you how to antique a photo. Throughout my tutorial, I will put the keyboard shortcuts in parentheses after a command. Those shortcuts will be for Windows machines. For Mac shortcuts, alt=option and ctrl=command (apple key). So… on to the tutorial. First off, here’s the before (left) and after (right):
Once you’ve got your picture open in Photoshop, choose the crop tool (c). Old-timey pictures were often cropped to squares, so that’s our first step. Hold shift while you click and drag the crop tool to keep it square. Crop your picture a little bigger than you want it to be—we’ll need a little space around the edges for later.
Read the rest of this entry
Just a short apology to our weekly newsletter subscriber. Unfortunately due to a problem with our newsletter providing service a newsletter from a few weeks ago was resent earlier today. This was out of our control and we’re endeavoring to find out why this went out twice.
This week’s up to date newsletter will be sent as normal tomorrow. Sorry for any confusion over this.
Over at Neatorama there’s a great list of 13 Photographs That Changed the World.
It is an interesting collection of photographs from the last two centuries that beautifully illustrates just how powerful an image can be in spreading news, opening eyes, changing opinion and starting movements.
While many will argue over whether other images deserve a place in the list - I think it’s a wonderful start.
I would have included the picture of the Napalm Girl which is one of the most chilling images that has influenced many.
Another that comes to mind is the Tiananmen square image of the student standing in front of the tanks.
What others would you include?
Looking forward to reading your suggestions in comments below.
Sometimes the smallest things in a photo can impact the overall feel of the image.
I learned this important lesson the first time I photographed a wedding.
The grooms hands gave it all away.
On the day itself I thought the bride and groom were very relaxed an enjoying the day, but on getting the photos back I was immediately drawn to the hands of the groom. In virtually every shot they were clenched or grasping at the sleeves of his suit coat.
In showing the photos to others I found that quite a few of them noticed the same thing while others thought he looked stressed but couldn’t quite put their finger (no pun intended) on why.
I later found out that the groom was having second thoughts about what he was doing all day long. His hands told the story.
The hands and fingers are often giveaways to how the rest of the body is feeling.
How to Photograph Hands
1. When posing a subject pay particular attention to their hands and encourage your model to keep them relaxed and their fingers separated.
2. If your subject can’t seem to relax their hands - consider composing shots that don’t include the hands (head shots and upper body shots).
3. Sometimes the best thing to do with hands is to give them something to hold or do. Consider using a prop (as long as it adds to and is relevant the shot and isn’t distracting) or have them rest upon some other element in the shot (a leg, a chair etc).
4. Lastly - hands tend to look best when shot from the side. Front on shots of hands can often look quite blob like.
Do you pay attention to hands in your shots? How do you pose them? Share your tips.
