Software How To

Let’s get this out of the way up front: The old adage that, “you’re not a real photographer unless you shoot in Manual mode” is sheer and utter nonsense. Plenty of pros use Aperture or Shutter Priority depending upon the situation at hand. Feel better?

PortraitPro and PortraitPro Body make dropping the subject into a new background quicker if you shoot them against a blue sky – or use a blue or green background in the studio. 

If you’re a regular visitor to our website you know we frequently post shooting and editing tutorials from German landscape photographer Christian Mohrle. In the quick-and-easy episode below you’ll see how Lightroom’s Masking tools play a big part in his beautiful imagery.

Photoshop's straightforward Clone Stamp tool is extremely useful for accomplishing  a variety of tasks when processing all sorts of images captured indoors or out, be they portraits, landscapes or just about anything else. If you're not taking advantage of the simple technique involved, it's long past time to get started.

Achieving accurate results during the editing process is sort of like rolling the dice if not you’re not working with a correctly calibrated display. In fact, you’re probably better off with a cheap monitor that’s properly calibrated than with a high-end display that’s not.

Digital black and white has probably never been more popular than it is today. All of the major editing programs like Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture support black-and-white conversions natively, and at a much higher quality than just a few years ago. While all of these programs can do black and white you can take your monochrome imagery to the next level with plug-ins, specific task programs that use the architecture of the main program to get the work done. These plug-ins (which may be available as “stand-alones” as well) produce some amazing work, letting you emulate various film types, grain patterns, and more, usually working with “presets” (image looks) that can be modified with ease to customize every image. Combined with the improved output from recent inkjet printers, there has never been a better time to explore digital black and white than today.

Are you familiar with Lightroom’s easy-to-use Camera Calibration capability? If not, after watching the video below it just may become your best friend.