“Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current and primary market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. It has been described as “an industry standard for graphics professionals”  says Wikipedia,

Adobe’s Photoshop is a powerful work tool. As the whole world is pretty much using digital cameras now Adobe Photoshop is becoming a household name when it comes to editing photos. But, using Photoshop to do simple contrast and white balance changes seems a bit overkill for me, most cameras these days come with tools just for those jobs. All the time I am asked what programs i use to edit, store and look after my photos; what is a photo’s digital life like;  how does a photo end up in a usable size and format.   I am going to do a set of blogs covering these mini topics and try and cover some of the time when Photoshop should be used and when it should not be used.

For the first instalment, I am going to use a wedding shot of a bride and take it though the steps to making an photo suitable for online display.

A Tilt/Shift Photoshop tutorial

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( I am using CS3 extended, with Camera Raw 4.0, on a Windows Vista machine, any questions, ask away if i can answer them I will.)

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1) After you have the photos backed up, stored safe on your drive, its time to think about how you are going to use them. I pick photos for a use, rather than find a nice photo and think what can i use it for. It’s better to have an end product in mind. Adobe Bridge is the first step,  so open Bridge and find your photo, click open.

2) If you are using a raw file, then Camera Raw should open as your RAW converter. Even if you are using JPEGS, you can still use Camera Raw to do a pre-edit on your photos and save them back into the folder. It’s a simple and useful way of editing on mass, but we want to take this photo into Photoshop and prep it for the web, giving it some sparkle along the way. So tweak your colours, your white balance and the rest of the normal changes, then open the photo into Photoshop using the OPEN button. I have increased the Saturation, Vibrancy, Fill light and introduced some slight vignetting to brighten up the corners.

3) You should now have a colour corrected photo open in Photoshop. For good practice I always create a duplicate copy of the layer and hide the background. Dunno why, it just makes me happier. If you need to use levels or curves to perfect the photo, now is a good time. Crop away to get the perfect look you’re after: cropping photos after you have started to put effects on the them is a not a good idea – its simpler to get it right in camera, then to perfect in the edit. Once happy with the photo, lets play with photoshop. I want to use a Tilt/Shift lens effect on the photo, its something that i think looks great on portraits.

4) Another layer is needed to create the blur, so duplicate the layer with your photo again, (you should have 3 layers the same), the background is hidden and 2 are visible. Using the top layer to work on, and making sure it’s highlighted, go up to your Filters menu (alt + t), select the Blurs menu then Lens Blur. ( If your not sure what all the sliders do, have a play and find out. Be creative, that’s what is all about.) Once you have your nicely blurred layer its time to mix it in to create our simple effect. We are going to use a layer mask, some funky gradients and the salt and pepper of the Photoshop world, the Dodge’n Burn tools. The Sponge tool will be used to highlight the bits we want to sparkle.

5)  Open a layer mask (on the bottom of the layers selection box), making sure it’s going to effect the correct layer.  Select the layer mask you just made, and ensure your colour selections are set to black and white. We are going to use the Gradient tool (G) with a Radial effect to mask the blur over the sections of the photo that we want in focus. When you have selected the black to transparent style in the gradient tool box, start the radial effect over the main feature of the photo moving away into the foreground. Once done, you get a good idea of how the effect can be used, it might take a few goes to get the perfect size and placement, I find a quick ctrl-alt-z (backstep) and redraw is the best way, but keeping the layer mask selected and using the levels (ctrl-L) can give fast control over the power and size of the effect.

6) The effect is pretty much complete – all that really needs doing now is dodge and burn to suit your creative style. Use the Sponge tool to create the contrasts that make the effect look more realistic. Its always a good idea to compare how real focus blur effects things and bring those into your digital work. Have a look at how the light would fall, how would it change after the effects that you have created?
7)  Time to save your photo for the web, remember to size the image at a good size for how you intend to display it, there is no point in uploading 5mb files to the web. Use the Ctrl + Alt + I  selection to size your work. Save as jpeg. If you want to use the SAVE FOR WEB tools, feel free to have a play, but i find unless you want a .gif or .png its not really needed.

8)Have a play, save the stuff you have just made and then have 5 minutes changing effects. Motion blurs, zig zag effects, ice effects, go crazy if you are going to edit in photoshop you might as well use 100% of the program.

E-mail me the results!  Dave@davepiper.org.uk