Photo How To

Lightroom is loaded with sophisticated tools that enable anyone to adjust colors to perfection. Unfortunately, many inexperienced users shy away from these transformational techniques because of a misconception that "advanced" means "too complicated for me."

Are you someone who appreciates the richtones, colors and textures of 19th and 20th century alternative photo processes? With onOne Software’s Perfect B&W (www.ononesoftware.com), you can imbue your own images with these classic looks, and you won’t have to spend days in the darkroom to do it. Options include Platinum and Palladium, the warm beige tones and mottled surface of Calotype, the blue hues of Cyanotype, the buff tones of an Albumen print, the velvety reds of a warm Carbon print, even the look of a Tintype and many more.

I got the idea for this how-to story from something the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly said to me: “Believe me, the challenge of photography is not going to France for the first time and photographing the Eiffel Tower. The challenge is really seeing and then photographing the stuff that’s familiar and ordinary, stuff we see all the time but never really observe or give much attention.”

Are you dissatisfied with your portrait photos because they tend to look like snapshots? Do you wish you had a studio and a bunch of costly lighting equipment (and knew how to use it)? Well, keep reading because this is your lucky day.

There’s an amazing new image-editing feature that many photographers have been awaiting for years; namely the ability to integrate Lightroom and Photoshop. The quick tutorial below from the Photoshop Café YouTube channel explains how it works.

Long exposure motion-blur effects can really enhance landscape images, creating soft, flowing water and fluffy cotton-like clouds. Some photographers use expensive neutral density filter to achieve the necessary slow shutter speeds, but there’s a simple way to mimic this effect during the editing process.

Have you every shot a portrait that looked really great, except for a bunch of flyaway hair? Removing these distractions can be a difficult task—unless you know the quick Photoshop trick in the video below.