Photoshop How To

As the great Ansel Adams once said, “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationship.” And that holds true whether you’re working with film in the darkroom or editing digital images on the computer.

Adobe is constantly at work updating Photoshop and Lightroom with effective new features. Some familiar tools may fall by the wayside, but as you'll see in today's tutorial from the Photoshop Café YouTube channel, these are usually replaced with more powerful options.

Most photographers would agree that our craft is all about striving for a perfect shot. And many times that involves capturing what the great Henri Cartier-Besson referred to as "the decisive moment." The ultimate goal is to get things right in the camera, but this Photoshop tutorial is all about what one pro describes as "cheating the perfect moment."

Back in the heyday of 35mm photography the task of developing film and making prints in the darkroom  required good craftsmanship and plenty of knowledge. In today's digital era, despite all of the sophisticated image-processing tools at our disposal, the same requisites apply.

It's a fact that some landscape scenes look far more compelling in b&w, and if you've ever made a dramatic monochrome conversion you know how true this. We've previously featured tutorials on this topic, but this one from a pro who says, "I've cracked the code," takes a very different approach.

There are few things worse than dull and flat monochrome images. After all, striking contrast and drama are two of the reasons many photographers forego color in favor of b&w. Fortunately, you can transform a photo from boring to dramatic with a few simple steps in Lightroom, Photoshop, or whatever editing application you use.

Shooting photos at sundown doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes you get the timing wrong and sometimes the sky and, more critically, the light doesn’t cooperate.