Teach Me How To PSD

Five Biggest Myths About Photography

2011-11-05T21:54:00.000+08:00

In my experience, there are some beginners who still believe on certain myths about photography. Not only that these misconceptions aren't true, they actually provide ready made excuses for taking bad pictures. So let's discuss the five biggest myths about photography.

Artwork courtesy of deedeeking.deviantart.com

1) You need lots of expensive gear to get great results.

That's completely false.

Many professional photographers shoot with one camera and one lens, and sometimes they aren't even the top-of-the-line models! These days, there aren't big differences with the photo quality between the most expensive camera to the least expensive one.

2) Only Professionals can get professional results.

That's also completely false.

You can get professional results even if you only shoot for fun! A Professional is defined as the one who makes money out of his gear but that doesn't necessarily mean that he takes better photos than those amateur photographers who don't make money out of it. Sometimes, it's the other way around! Some of the best photographers I know aren't even professionals!

3) The camera knows best.

DEFINITELY WRONG.

Don't be tempted to rely on the automatic settings of your camera. In many situations the camera is not smarter than you. And in the long run you'll get better results by learning how and when to override your camera's automatic settings in order to take better photos.

4) Photography is too complex to understand.

No, it's really not.

There are so many technical stuff in photography that doesn't seem important in the real world. For example, to become an excellent driver, do you really need to know how the engine gets power from the gasoline? Of course not! You just need to know how to drive. Likewise to become a good photographer, you don't need to know how the images are being captured and processed by the processor or how the images are being saved in the memory card. Who cares about these technical stuff? I just want to capture great photos.

5) There are no rules in photography.

Uh-oh! Yes, there are.

Like most things in life, there's always a right way and a wrong way to do things. Although sometimes you have the tendency to break the rules, you should stay within the boundaries for people to admire and respect your work.

Now that you know these myths, you are hereby prohibited to use any of them as an excuse if you don't like the way your photos turn out. Remember, the success of your photography is 100% in your own hands.

How to Whiten Your Teeth in Photoshop

2011-11-05T15:34:00.003+08:00

Admitedly, dental whitening products are so expensive; it costs more or less a thousand dollars per session! In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, I will teach you how to make your teeth whiter and brighter using a Hue/Saturation adjustment later, a brush and a layer mask.

We are going to use this photo of a man. Everything seemed perfect, except for his teeth which appear a bit dull and yellow and could use a little whitening via Photoshop.

Alright, so let's get started, shall we?

Tutorial details:

Program: Adobe Photoshop 7 or higher
Difficulty: Beginner
Estimate Completion Time: 20 minutes

Step 1: Select The Area Around The Teeth With The Lasso Tool

First, click the Lasso tool from the Tools palette in Photoshop, or press the letter L on your keyboard to quickly select it:

We just need to draw a selection around the guy's teeth. No need to be precise with the selection because it's only temporary. The important thing is, his teeth are inside the selected area:

Step 2: Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

With the area around his teeth selected, we're going to go to the bottom of the Layers palette and click on the New Adjustment Layer icon:

This brings up the Hue/Saturation dialog box, and we're going to use it to remove the yellow from his teeth and brighten them at the same time.

Step 3: Select Yellows From The Hue/Saturation Edit List

We need to remove the yellow tint of his teeth to make his teeth whiter. In order to do that, with the Hue/Saturation dialog box open, click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the word "Master" at the top of the dialog box and select Yellows from the list. This will allow us to make changes only to the yellow in the image:

We can see in the image now that not only have I brightened his teeth, I've also brightened the area around them, since that was the area I initially selected with my Lasso tool:

Don't worry. We're going to fix that next.

Step 5: Fill The Hue/Saturation Layer Mask With Black

One of the great things about using adjustment layers in Photoshop is that each one comes with its own layer mask. If we look in the Layers palette, we can see that we have two layers. The original image is on the Background layer, and directly above it is our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. The black rectangle with the small area of white in it on the right of the adjustment layer is the layer mask thumbnail, which is showing us a preview of our mask. That small area of white is the area we've selected around the man's teeth.

Make sure the layer mask is selected. The way you can tell if a mask is selected or not is by looking for a white highlight border around the mask preview thumbnail in the Layers palette. If you see a white highlight border around the thumbnail, it means the mask is currently selected. If you don't see the border, click on the thumbnail to select it:

We're going to remove that initial selection around his teeth by filling the layer mask with black. This will temporarily hide all the work we did from view. With the layer mask selected, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and select Fill, which brings up the Fill dialog box. For "Contents", click on the down-pointing arrow and choose Black from the list:

With black selected, click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Photoshop fills the layer mask with black:

Don't worry, all the work we did is still there, we just can't see it at the moment. We're going to fix that though by using a brush to paint the whitening and brightening back in, and we'll do that next.

Step 6: Brush Tool and White Foreground

Select Photoshop's Brush tool from the Tools palette, or press B on your keyboard to quickly select it. Make sure you have white selected as your foreground color, since we're going to be painting on the layer mask with white in order to reveal the effects of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer over the guy's teeth. To quickly set it to white, first make sure you have the Hue/Saturation layer mask selected in the layers palette, and then press the letter D on your keyboard, which will set your foreground color to white and your background color to black:

Step 7: Paint With White Over The Teeth To Restore The Whitening And Brightening

With our brush selected, the layer mask selected in the Layers palette, and white as our foreground color, all we need to do now is paint over the teeth with our brush to bring back the whitening and brightening. You'll probably need to change the size of your brush as you're painting. To change the brush size, press the right bracket key on your keyboard to make the brush larger and the left bracket key to make it smaller. You'll find the bracket keys to the right of the letter "P" on your keyboard. If you want to adjust the edge hardness of the brush, hold down your Shift key and press the right or left bracket keys. Shift+right bracket makes the brush edges harder, and Shift+left bracket makes the edges softer.

Simply paint over the teeth with the brush to reveal the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer over those areas, making the teeth whiter and brighter.

Continue painting over the teeth until you've whitened and brightened them all.

Step 9: Lower The Opacity Of The Adjustment Layer

Remember that teeth should be off white and not the 'strong' white color, making unnaturally white. You can easily fine-tune the effect by lowering the opacity of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. You'll find the Opacity option near the top of the Layers palette. I'm going to lower my opacity down to about 80%:

And for the final result:

Hurray!

Post-Processing Technique: The Vintage Look

2011-09-30T02:15:00.000+08:00

Vintage photos are just gorgeous most especially if they are of high quality. But, such great quality has dwindled over the past years. Film cameras have already continually evolved into digital cameras. In this tutorial, I will teach you on how to transform an ordinary photo into a stunning, vintage one.

Tutorial details:

Program: Adobe Photoshop 7 or higher
Difficulty: Beginner
Estimate Completion Time: 10 minutes

Step 1. Duplicate the Layer

We choose this cute photo of my dog (he's a 7-year old Terrier). We begin this tutorial by duplicating the layer. All you have to do is to right-click on the layer and select “Duplicate Layer.”

Step 2. High Pass Filter

After duplicating the layer, click Filter > Other > High Pass to add details to our photo. We set our High Pass filter to 3.0 pixels. After doing it, we now set the blending mode to "Overlay". By this time, you will now see the photo in greater and better details.

Step 3. Curve Layer Adjustments

Next, we shall adjust the curve value of our photo. Select the layer that contains the original photo and click the small circular icon as shown below.

Step 4. Nice curve!

The first adjustment we will perform is Curves. Select the red channel first from the RGB dropdown menu and try mimicking the lines. Perform the same procedure for the green and blue channels. Basically, this step doesn't really require you to follow my Curves values, as long as you know how to mix and match those colors. And if you feel that the photo exudes a vintage feeling, then go with it. You can always undo if you are not satisfied with the final product.

Step 5. Brightness and Contrast

Select the original image layer again and add another layer adjustment, but this time select Brightness/Contrast instead of Curves. In this step, I set the contrast to -30. After this, close the adjustment window.

Step 6. Level Up

For the third time, select the layer where the original photo is located, add another layer adjustment and select Levels. What I did was, I moved the black slider to 25 and the gray slider to 1.27. After that, close the adjustment window.

Step 7. Magenta Layer

And for the final step, we add a plain magenta color. Just add a new layer on top of all layers, click the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and add a magenta color (#d31678). Next, change the layer's blending mode to "Lighten" and set the opacity to 35%.

Optional: You can add vignette to the photo to have a more vintage feel. Click Filter > Lens Correction. Click the custom tab and set the vignette to -29 as shown below.

Finish product

The final image should now look something like this:

Tilt-Shift Photography Tutorial

2011-09-29T04:21:00.001+08:00

"Tilt-shift photography" is a camera trick often used to simulate a miniature scene. Sometimes the term is used when the shallow depth of field is simulated with digital postprocessing; the name may derive from the tilt-shift lens normally required when the effect is produced optically. In this tutorial, I shall teach you on how to achieve this technique through Adobe Photoshop.

Tutorial details:

Program: Adobe Photoshop 7 or higher
Difficulty: Beginner
Estimate Completion Time: 10-20 minutes

This is the final product of the tutorial.

Step 1: Choosing the Right Photo

It doesn't mean that if you have Adobe Photoshop in your laptop or PC, you can already achieve this particular technique. It can be tricky though since miniature models are often viewed from above. Hence, the photo must be taken from an elevated area or viewpoint.

In this tutorial, we are going to use this photo taken by Renz Bulseco from the rooftop of the control tower of Davao International Airport.

Step 2. Quick Mask Mode

Press Q on the keyboard to enter the Quick Mask Mode or simply click the Quick Mask icon as shown below.

Step 3. Gradient Tool

Press G on the keyboard to choose Gradient Tool or simply select the Gradient Tool icon as shown below. After that, select the Reflected Gradient option, the fourth icon before the Mode drop-down.

Step 4. Draw A Line

After setting up the gradient tool under quick mask tool, draw a line. Make sure the line runs over the photo where you'll be focusing at. In this step, you will need a fair degree of trial and error. After releasing the mouse, the area of focus will appear as a red mask as shown in the photo below:

Step 5. Exit Quick Mask Tool

Press Q to exit Quick Mask Tool and return to the Standard Mode. As you can see, the area of focus is surrounded by the "marching ants" selection lines as shown below:

Step 6. Lens Blur

From the menu bar, choose Filter > Blur > Lens Blur:

Step 7. Tweak the Blur

After clicking the Lens Blur filter, you can now view the focus effect. The default settings of the program can already suffice every designer's taste but it would be better if you'll experiment it! Remember that if you're not satisfied with the blur effect, you can always go back to Step 4 and try drawing a line on a different center of focus.

Step 8. Hue/Saturation Adjustment

After removing the "marching ants" selection boundary (CTRL D), Press CTRL U on the keyboard to open the Hue/Saturation adjustment or simply on the menu bar, select Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Model scenery is often brightly colored so enhancing the color helps on tricking the eyes of the viewers.

Step 8. Curve Adjustment

To increase our photo's contrast, press CTRL M on the keyboard or on the menu bar, select Image > Adjustments > Curves. In this example, we use a very small S-shaped curve to increase contrast. Although you can opt to skip this step if you're already satisfied of tweaking the photo's hue/saturation.

Step 9. Finished Product

Here's the final image of the tutorial.

Review: Adobe Photoshop CS5

2011-09-27T23:50:00.000+08:00

As the industry-standard, Photoshop skills are a necessity if you want to be employable in the graphic design field. Priced in the hundreds and with a learning curve to match, it's not for everyone, but the investment can pay off in increased productivity and the ultimate in flexibility. Since Creative Suite 3, Photoshop comes in a Standard version as well as an Extended version with specialized tools and features for the video, engineering, architecture, manufacturing, science, and medical fields.

Pros

The industry standard for professional photo editing, graphic design, and digital imaging.
Offers ultimate flexibility and more non-destructive editing features with every version.
Photoshop CS5 includes many new innovative features and dozens of user-inspired enhancements.
Since CS4, Photoshop takes advantage of the graphics card's GPU for improved performance.
Supports unlimited RAM and 64-bit processing under Windows and Mac 64-bit systems.

Cons

Steep learning curve.
Price may be prohibitive for some.
Buyers must choose between giving up features or paying more for the costly Extended version.
Some legacy plug-ins and features have been removed, or require manual installation.
GPU and OpenGL features increase the hardware graphics card requirements.

Product Description

The industry standard for professional photo editing, graphic design, and digital imaging.
Preview, organize, search, and manage image files with the Adobe Bridge File Browser.
Combines tools for painting, drawing, retouching, adding notes, and working with type.
Edit images non-destructively with layer styles, adjustment layers, masks, smart objects, smart filters, and history.
Automate tasks and speed up production with actions, batch processing, history tracking, and scripts.
Adobe Camera Raw offers non-destructive pre-processing of Raw files from most digital cameras, plus JPEG and TIFF files.
Includes tools for graphic design, Web design, video production, and photography.
Extended version offers tools for film & TV, medical, science, engineering, architecture, and manufacturing fields.
Photoshop CS5 adds innovative features and dozens of small improvements which will benefit many types of users.
Requires at least Mac OS X 10.5.7, Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, or Windows 7 and DVD-ROM drive. Note: Windows Vista Home Basic Edition is not supported.

Guide Review - Adobe Photoshop CS5

For the ultimate in graphics power and flexibility, Photoshop can't be beat. Photoshop offers more non-destructive ways of working than any other photo editor, and Adobe is always adding enhancements to help get the job done faster and with less frustration.

Photoshop CS5 bring s a lot of exciting and innovative new features which will appeal to a wide range of users. I wrote about many of the new features in my Photoshop CS5 Sneak Peek, and after having worked with them a few months now, I can say that they are all winners.

New tools like content-aware fill, puppet warp, and selection refinements don't always function as "magically" as Adobe would want you to believe, but they will save you loads of time and demonstrate Photoshop's edge over competing products.

The new painting features broaden Photoshop's appeal for artistic work, and can also bring a new dimension to the ways photographers can showcase their work. The mini-Bridge integration ratchets up the convenience factor for anyone who uses Photoshop, and the new 3D features in Photoshop CS5 Extended are quite impressive.

For Photoshop CS5, Adobe also worked on dozens of user-requested enhancements which might not jump out at you, but will certainly improve your Photoshop workflow in ways you may not realize until you have to do without them. And this version of Photoshop supports 64-bit on both Windows and Macintosh, allowing users to take advantage of unlimited RAM. However, be aware that you may have to give up some legacy plugins and features, particularly when running the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS5. The 32-bit version is also installed on 64-bit systems, which you can use as a workaround, or you may be able to download and manually install some of the excluded plugins.

I wrote that the changes from CS3 to CS4 were more evolutionary than revolutionary, but Photoshop CS5 brings much more dramatic benefits. I believe this is a worthwhile upgrade for all Photoshop users. Although the cost of Photoshop may be prohibitive for some, the investment can pay off in increased productivity and maximum flexibility. Students and educators can take advantage of academic pricing to bring the cost down.

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DISCLAIMER: This review was written by Sue Chastain of About.com Guide. Originally published from this site.

About Us

2011-09-27T22:54:00.000+08:00

Hello, my name is Renz and I own and manage this site.

Adobe Photoshop has been an important tool to every people in the world. I started learning the basics of Photoshop back in 2008 and I must say that learning Adobe Photoshop is an endless journey.

There are a few features in this program that seemed useless to some. And with that, I created this site to help people to understand Photoshop and its uses. I believe that one can unleash creativity through this program.

I hope you'll have a great time with my tutorials!