Photoshop How To

We’ve posted numerous tutorials in the past explaining why so many accomplished photographers prefer to shoot in Raw, or set their cameras to capture both a Raw file and a JPEG every time they press the shutter button.

Last month we posted a popular tutorial explaining a simple fix for what one pro calls “a huge problem when using any of Lightroom’s Healing tools in tandem with masking. Todays lesson, designed primarily for beginners, is an overview of how these tools work to eliminate unwanted artifacts and other distractions in your photos.

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.