Posts Tagged ‘Photoshop’

Clean up your photos with the Clone Stamp Tool

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While I always advocate getting as much right in-camera as possible, most photos can still look better with a little touch-up in post production. It might be something in an otherwise great shot that you had no way of changing. Or it might be something you just didn't notice at the time you took the shot. But there's no foul in retouching your photos to make them look better (unless it's a strictly documentary photo).

In this article we'll look at some tips on using the clone stamp tool. This is a very useful tool for quickly and easily removing an unwanted item from an image.

Clean up your photos with the Clone Stamp Tool

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Written by Discover Digital Photography

May 22nd, 2016 at 4:42 pm

Daylight Long Exposure Photography Tips

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Long exposure photography allows you to capture movement in a still photo, rather than just freezing a moment in time. You can capture silky smooth moving water, or clouds blurring as they move across the sky. Even blurred trails left by people as they move about.

In low light conditions, long exposure photography is quite easy. There's not much light, so exposure times will necessarily be long. But in daytime there is lots of light, and getting a shutter speed slow enough to blur anything but very fast movement can be almost impossible.

Daylight Long Exposure Photography Tips

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Product photography on the cheap with only one light pt. 2 – Compositing the images

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In the previous article Product photography on the cheap with only one light pt. 1 - Taking the photo, we looked at taking multiple photos of a product using only one light, and lighting each shot differently. The next step is to combine those images into a single image, which will look like it has been shot with multiple lights.

The final photo will look like this:

Final product photo

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Written by Discover Digital Photography

September 30th, 2013 at 1:50 pm

A faster way to create slit scan style photos of rotating objects

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Slit scan photography is a technique where a slowly moving shutter is used. When combined with subject movement, this can result in quite abstract images where the subject becomes stretched out over the photo.

Slit-scan style photo of a Vase of daffodil flowers rotating on a turntable

I covered how to create a slit scan style photo of an object rotating on a turntable in my post Slit Scan Object Photography How To. At the time I wrote that article, I didn't have a camera that could record video. I now do, and have found that using video greatly speeds up the process of recording the needed images.

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Written by Discover Digital Photography

March 18th, 2013 at 4:07 pm

How to get people or traffic free photos

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Famous locations (such as the Eiffel Tower in France and Mesa Arch in Utah, for example) can make great photographic subjects. But the problem is, there are likely to be plenty of other people there as well, getting in your shot. Even relatively unknown tourist destinations can get pretty busy.

So, how do you stop all the other tourists (who have as much right to be there as you) getting in the way and ruining your photo? Sometimes getting to the location really early in the morning, before anyone else is up, can be good enough to secure you a tourist-free photo.

But other times, this is not enough, or the location is not open early in the morning. In this case, we have to rely on the wonders of Photoshop (or similar image editing software).

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Written by Discover Digital Photography

December 2nd, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Photoshop tutorial: How to apply a texture to a face by using a displacement map

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In this post we'll look at how to apply a realistic looking texture to a person's face using a displacement map in Adobe Photoshop.

Photo of a woman's face with texture applied in Photoshop using a displacement map
The end result we will be working towards in this tutorial

The process is exactly the same in the full version of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, they both feature the displace filter and work in the same way. GIMP also features the displace filter, as does Paint Shop Pro. This tutorial focuses on Photoshop, but the process is similar in GIMP and PSP.

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How to create a selective color photo

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A selective color photo is one where part of the image is in color, while the rest of the image is black & white (or heavily desaturated). Selective color photos work very well to draw the viewer's attention to the part of the image that is in color.

Light trails along the highway selective color photo
Highway Insomnia by Nrbelex on flickr (licensed CC-BY-SA)

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Tips for taking levitating or floating photos

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Levitating a person or object is an old magic trick that still wows audiences to this day. But you don't have to be a magician to create magical photos where your subject appears to be floating.

Couple floating in an empty room
Never is an awfully long time. by Casey David on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

There are two ways of taking floating photos. You can have your subject rest on an object, and then remove the object in Photoshop. Or you can just take a photo of the subject jumping.

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Written by Discover Digital Photography

March 25th, 2012 at 11:44 am

Easy Photoshop Portrait Effects

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Post processing can be used to improve your portrait photos, and really give them that professional look. The following three techniques are relatively simple and easy to implement, but can make a big difference.

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Written by Discover Digital Photography

March 1st, 2012 at 4:57 pm

How to use Photoshop Layer Masks

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Learning how to use layer masks is very important for performing more advanced, localized edits on photos. Thankfully they are very simple to use once you understand how they work. Masks are available in most image editing software, including Photoshop Elements, Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, and GIMP.

Layer masks can be used for creative composites of photos, blending photos together for exposure, blending images for panoramas, and applying effects selectively. For the purpose of this tutorial we'll look at using masks to blend exposure bracketed photos in a landscape photography context.

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