Greg Vander Houwen describes himself as "an artist by nature; illustrator by trade"--one who often incorporates photography into his digital art. As he puts it, "My primary business is commercial illustration and user interface design." Vander Houwen believes that photography is a limited term these days, and...
Yes, you know that the tools and filters in Adobe Photoshop and Elements can do many amazing things, but did you know that they can empower you to make your own planets? If you have yearned to create and rule your own worlds (and who hasn’t?), then pull up some of your images and fire up Elements or Photoshop. We are going to create a galaxy of new worlds.
A colorful dragonfly alighted on a tree branch adjacent to the patio, so I went inside to grab my Nikon D300 and attached a Tamron 70-300mm lens. With strong backlighting, flash fill was mandatory, so I added an SB-900 speedlight to the mix.
Software programs for imaging can be simple or complex. The complex ones offer a steep learning curve and allow you to refine images to your heart’s content. Simple programs, although complex under the hood, allow you to make quick choices to create a wide variety of looks. And while they can be used for “instant” art, they also allow for nuances that multiply your options a thousand fold, using sliders that modify each look from the menu. One such “simple” program is Alien Skin’s Snap Art 3 (www.alienskin.com, $199 or $99 for an upgrade from previous versions). This is a plug-in and a standalone program, which means it works within the architecture of Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom and Elements as well as other image processing programs so you can create Layers from the work that can be further refined (leading to many more options) or within Snap Art 3 alone.
Proving you can, in fact, change your tune; Paul Simon revised the lyrics to “Kodachrome” when performing the song in Central Park in 1991 to “everything looks better in black and white.” Picky photographers insist “monochrome” is more precise because it covers images made using sepia, blue, or other tones, while images using only shades of gray are black and white.
Photoshop hall-of-famer, author and noted digital imaging pro Martin Evening recently updated this popular guide to include detailed instructions for the recent updates to Photoshop CC (Adobe’s Creative Cloud). The book includes a variety of new features such as: Focus Area selections, enhanced Content-Aware filling, Spin and Path Blur gallery effects.
Digital images—whether shot with digital cameras or scanned from negatives, slides or prints—generally can stand some improving. Here are some tips that will improve many of your images noticeably. Keep in mind, though, that digital image-editing isn't magic: Just as with film, you can't add detail that isn't there, or make a sharp image out of one that'so...
Adobe just added several exciting new features to the beta version of Photoshop. The most significant is Firefly-powered Generative Fill, the ability to select any item in an image and replace it with a different object based on the prompt you type into a dialog box.
Lately we’ve been sharing basic image-editing primers designed to help you get up to speed with Photoshop and Lightroom. In this installment, you’ll learn how to work faster and more efficiently by customizing your workflow with tool and brush presets.
The first thing I thought when I saw this new update to PortraitPro was “What happened to Versions 13 and 14? I’m still on Version 12 and never saw anything about any other updates.” That’s because there aren’t any. Maybe Anthropics Software is superstitious about the number 13 and just decided to skip 14 as well. Who knows! We’re on to PortraitPro 15 now.
Many image editing applications claim to provide “one click optimization.” Most of the time, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. This software is different; it delivers. Radiant Photo from Radiant Imaging Labs analyzes your image and suggests a preset as a starting edit. Accept their judgement or change to the preset of your choice. From there, proceed using your own presets, perform a Quick Edit, or progress into a Detailed Edit and Color Grading. But the story is not what Radiant Photo does, it’s about how Radiant does it. Which is pretty cool.
Robert Herko is a professional photographer who's in great demand in New York (he's just settled into a larger shared studio in Manhattan), California, and Arizona, where he once lived. His clients include Hummer, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, VISA, Arizona's Department of Tourism, Arizona Highways magazine, Arizona Western College, and several casinos in the western...
Are you one of the many photographers who prefer spending more time behind the camera than behind the computer? If so, this Lightroom tutorial is for you.
There's a lot of noise about AI right now, and most of it AIn't good. That's understandable. Even so, don't let the naysayers detour you from experiencing the most powerful photo editing tools in the universe.
If you want to discover what you've been missing, or if you're just AI-curious, here's enough to get started enjoying Adobe Firefly, the future of graphics, in its various guises.