Photoshop How To

Yeah, we know. Supposedly all serious photographers shoot Raw, for very good reasons. But there are times when shooting and editing JPEGs make sense. Perhaps your camera is set to capture both a JPEG and a Raw file every time you snap the shutter, and somehow you lost the Raw file or it became corrupt.

We spend a lot of time here at Shutterbug explaining techniques for shooting great images and improving them further during the editing process. What we may not do often enough is discuss best practices for output.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is an important technique that enables you to shoot or edit photos that appear more like what one sees with the human eye. The concept involves balancing out light and dark areas of a scene to capture more detail in both highlights and shadows.

Improperly exposed photos are the bane of all kinds of photographers, especially those who shoot outdoors where a wide range of tones may exceed the density range of your camera. We posted a tutorial earlier today explaining a simple method to remedy this problem by using Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools to make dark areas lighter and light areas dark to arrive at a balanced result.

Adobe updates their software frequently, with powerful new headline-grabbing features and tools. That’s a good thing for all of us, with one exception: sometimes we get so excited about all the new stuff that we forget about tools we used with great success in the past.

There are times when photos of a beautiful outdoor scene appear flat and dull, and that could be due to bad light, incorrect camera settings, or a myriad of other problems. You can always return on a better day, with your camera configured properly, but why do that if you can transform an unimpressive image into something really special with a few quick adjustments in Photoshop?

Some photographers shy away from employing presets when editing their work because of a misconception that they’re difficult to use. Nothing could be further from the truth, and as you’ll see in the quick tutorial below, you can even create your own custom presets with ease.