I decided to accept the challenge proposed by Brian Auer in “Edit my Photo” Project.
Here are the original image and the final image:

Step 1: Croping
By looking at the image you see that it is basically right composed, but, the subject needs to be closer to the viewer of the frame. Therefore, I need to crop the picture…. respecting the standard format…. or… and here comes my idea: a square crop keeping the rule of thirds in place. Not all pictures are fit for a square but this one is: the subject is little and placed over a clean background.
Step 2: Desaturating
The colors of the original photo are a bit washed-out but instead of increasing the saturation and contrast, I prefer in the case a picture like this (who doesn’t have many colors in it) to desaturate it. However, since the background is the see, I give it a teal tint. (Image -> Adjustments -> Black % White).
Step 3: Contrast
Now I want to bring some contrast to the frame, so i go to Image -> Adjustments -> Curves -> Medium Contrast. As you can see I only used preset functions since I feel like I don’t need anything more complicated for this picture: simplicity is a golden key to beauty.
Step 4: Highlighting the Shadows
I am almost pleased with the look of the result except one thing: the subject is more like a black silhouette, with not so visible details over it even if it’s in perfect focus. I went to Image -> Adjustments -> Shadow/Highlight and made the bird lighter… but wait a minute: this step distorted the entire background by making it too white. Lucky, the bird is easy to crop from the background and putting it into a different layer saves the background.
Step 5: Tri-Tone
After the Shadow/Highlight effect, I played a bit longer with the colors of the bird (only) because I seemed to me too green. Hahaha let me make it yellow! That was a joke, of course. I added more blue instead of green so that the result was converting the picture from duo-tone into tri-tone. Once I’m happy with the bird’s look, I merge the layers so I can go on with the final steps.

Step 6: Noise Reduction
I move myself farther from the monitor to see if everything is good enough: neah… I need to brighten the image. Done. Now it’s OK. I resize it to 900×900 and get into my NeatImage plug-in in the Filter Menu. Carefully not to oversharp the edges of the bird, I remove the noise that formed during the above processes.
Step 7: Border
I resized the Image Layer a few pixels less than the Background Layer and added an inner stroke of 3px from the Layer Style Menu. Once again, simplicity at the maximum.

Tags: photo editing, edit my photo project, photo manipulation, photoshop

If you just want to make your pictures better, prepare them to sell as stock or print them without reading tutorials or books, just look at this short video and you’ll get to know the most basic secrets of photo editing with Adobe Photoshop.

Tags: sharpening, color correction, saturating, adobe photoshop, photoshop, picture editing

Adobe Photoshop CS3 includes a black & white feature that transforms the colored picture into pretty realistic infrared black and white image.
From the Menu Image -> Adjustments -> Black & White (or Alt+Ctrl+Shift+B). In the Black & White Tab select Infrared. Now you can decrease the RED channel even more (and increase the GREEN channel) if you want the greens to be closer to white. The image after this step does not yet look like a perfect infrared, but by adding more contrast to it (until the green becomes white), you get it right. The result is grainy due to the high contrast. You can uniform the grain by adding Filter -> Texture -> Grain, and then desaturate the image. Or, you can choose to remove the grain with Neat Image plug-in.

Original and final images:

Please digg this and stumble it.

Tags: infrared photography, photoshop infrared, photoshop black and white, infrared pictures

The Tips: Use a tripod, use the higher resolution and pay attention at the lighting in order to make this trick as real as possible.
Even if this video is about cloning a person, the clone tool (combined with the healing tool) is very useful to photographers for more down-to-earth problems such as removing unwanted objects that interfere with the composition and subject of the photo. About this, some other time. Enjoy the movie.

Tags: photoshop tutorial, clone tool, photography tricks

PicMe service (created by Raizlabs Corporation) is another way of sharing up to 200 photos free or 5000 photos at a prize of 9.95/year or 15000 for 29.95USD/Year.
Besides of working with Flickr, Facebook and more, PicMe is the first of its kind to integrate photo sharing with a rich and interactive 3-D desktop experience.

Tags: picme, photo sharing, free photo sharing

There are many programs that stitch together more photos to obtain a panoramic picture, but from all those, I use Photostitch that came with my Canon digicam.
The Photostitch Launcher offers the possibility to merge the images or to view and print merged images. The Viewer program impressed me with the 360 panoramas: it goes round and round with no break between the beginning and the end.

Step 1: Selection and Arrangement
After opening the images with the merging software, the next thing to be done is to arrange: horizontal, vertical, matrix or 360 degrees. This is critical to the way the software will treat the images in the merging process. You can also switch the position of the images (normally the number given by the camera is considered), rotate and clear one or more images.

Step 2: The Merging Process
If you made the panorama with or without tripod, the merging program has 3 methods of binding from which you can choose: Panning (the most used one – landscape scenery), Parallel Camera Movement (use this if you arranged in matrix at the previous step) or Images Scanned in Sections (I use this with my scanner more than with the camera).
If none of the above satisfies you enough, press on “Display Seams” and then click on the merging are you want to change. Now you can manually put one image above the other and set the blending points.

Step 3: Adjusting final Image
Before actually saving the image, the software indicates you the right cropping that fit the resulting photo. You must have noticed by now that, in the process, the images have been distorted differently. However, it that cropping does not please you, you can easily change it by resizing the green frame. In the adjust image submenu, there is an option called wide. Try it if your original panorama looks distorted (for example if you shot a long building from a side – one end of it is close to you, the other is far).
Finally, save the image and you will be prompted for the viewer to see it fitting in the screen or at full size.

Tags: Photostitch, panoramic pictures, panorama, merging images, canon photostitch, panoramic view

Most of the photo editing Software have a function called “Invert” or “Invert Colors”. This function, sometimes combined with the chage of “Hue”, gives the image irrealistic colors. By inversion of colors, all dark colors become lighten and all light colors become darker; warm colors become cold colors and vice-versa. The green usualy becomes magenta. The so called “alien environment” is also based on the greens and blues.

Tags: psychedelic art, alien colors, invert colors

Sometimes it’s really amazing how a bad picture can turn into an “ok picture” by following the steps bellow. But don’t really expect miracles, because what really makes a picture outstanding is the subject and the creative idea it transmits. First let’s look at some examples and after that I will show you the steps.

For the first one I used all steps except 2, 7 and 10.

The second one uses all steps except 2 and 3.

The last one uses all of them except 3 and 10.

Step 1: Cropping and Rotating
This corrects the composition. Concentrate on the subject by “getting” it closer and take some rules under consideration. In my opinion rotating is rarely used if you keep the camera in the right position. However, sometimes my camera fails to rotate the vertical images after shooting so I have to do it manually.
Step 2: Eliminating Objects
Some undesired little objects that could not be avoided during shooting can be erased by using clone and healing tools in Photoshop. The classic situation is represented by electricity and phone wires.
Step 3: Lighten the shadows
This will reveal details. To do so, in Photoshop you will need a different layer, or, in newer Lightroom version, there is a function that will do so for you. Picasa comes with “Fill Light” feature. If you got a Nikon camera, then you probably also have the Capture NX software which also helps improve the already in-camera D-Lighting.
Step 4: Curves
This will mainly adjust the contrast and brightness. The “S” shape is good for improvements; details with example here.
Step 5: Levels
Levels and Curves most likely go hand-in-hand, sometimes just one of them is enough. However, levels also affect color tones and therefore very useful in many situations.
Step 6: Hue/Saturation
Most pictures won’t need this. Note that aesthetic pictures are those with natural colors, so don’t just pull the saturation over the limits. I rather recommend color control via Selective Color.
Step 7: Black and White Conversion
This is definitely optionally; some details here. Usually, the pictures that look good in BW are classic portraits, pictures of old stuff, pictures that concentrate more on a powerful concept and shapes rather than colorful nature, but I really think there are no rules for this.
Step 8: Sharpness
Sharper pictures usually look better than very smooth ones, revealing more details of the shapes forms. For this I usually use “unsharp mask” in Photoshop, and, if the picture is way too soft, overall sharpness.
Step 9: Noise Reduction
Not just after shooting at high ISO, but also after the sharpness adjustment, the picture will likely become noisy. NeatImage is the freeware software I recommend for this job. Some people just simply like grainy pictures, but then I recommend adding some uniform grain not the sharpness noise which is not uniform.
Step 10: Blurring the Background
Compact digital cameras, even if they do have manual settings or shutter priority, still don’t handle DOF very good. In this case you can pop up the main subject by blurring the background. You can just blur just a few areas with the brush, or, create a different layer to handle things more accurate around the subject. However, it’s not (and never will be) the same thing as real DOF from dSLR’s.
Step 11: Adding a Border
Usually a simple one (white or black) is the best choice, but for details about this check part1 and part2 of the borders tutorial.
Step 12: Adding a Signature
It’s not a must, but picture fraud over the internet is very high our days, so why not having your name on your work?
Step 13: Resizing
Unless you were preparing a picture for printing, smaller images are better for the web because they load faster. I recommend doing this as a last step, otherwise too many details (pixels) will be lost. More than that, try these settings at the resizing in Photoshop: to maintain original sharpness when scaling down, click on Resample Image and choose Bicubic and 70% JPEG quality.

Tags: tips, photo tricks, photo tutorial, photoshop

In Black & White Photography, the shapes, the structures and the contrast gain importance.
You can shoot directly in BW on most of the digital cameras, and some of them (Canon EOS) even come with some software filters to control the contrast (red, orange, yellow). The disadvantage of shooting BW is that you can not have that picture in colors if you change your mind and in most cases you can’t apply color filters before BW conversion.
By shooting in RAW mode you will obtain a lively BW Photography. Why? Because raw format offers more detailed grey tonalities. Some RAW converters have the BW option incorporated.

For TIFF and JPEG there are many possibilities to convert in BW. The chosen method depends on the desire to influence the grey tonalities during the conversion.

Method 1 – Desaturate !

The simplest solution is the “Desaturate” option in Photoshop, in the “Image”->”Adjustments” menu. This way, there is a high probability that some information of the image will be lost.

Method 2 – Saturate to -100 !

The second choice in Photoshop is to reduce the saturation to -100 (same Image -> Adjustments menu).

Method 3 – Change Image Mode !

The third method in Photoshop is to transform the RGB mode to Grayscale (or Duotone in case you want some color tint). By confirming “Discard Color Information”, the image is reduced to BW. Same thing would be this: the mode “Multichannel” with Grayscale activated contains all the BW information.

The “Secret Method” – Use this BW Conversion Plugin !

A more complicated but far more flexible and with better results, it’s the conversion using a Photoshop Plug-in. There are many out there on the internet, but I like B/W Conversion from Photo-Plugins because it provides all kind of filters in different tonalities. More than that, it offers full control over each color channel and gamma, as well as some preset configurations: Linear, Photoshop, Agfa, Kodak. It even provides a very good grain function (some photographers enjoy BW with some grain). After the conversion and before applying the changes, the plug-in offers a tone option. This will give sepia, bluish or whatever color tone you wish to the picture, more or less visible.
Note: All your Photoshop plug-ins are under the Filter Menu.

The following example shows how I first applied a red filter, and after the conversion, with some contrast/brightness adjustment, the initial red color will appear as white.

After the conversion, it’s a good idea to give the picture more contrast, but be careful not to burn the image. Keep a good balance between the details and the contrast: the bigger the contrast, the less details in the image; and if there is too little contrast, the less impressive the image.

Other photo editing software have similar solutions (another good example is Picasa where the BW conversion is extremely simple: just press a button that offers a BW preview).

Tags: black and white, black and white photography, B&W, B&W photography, BW, BW photography, black&white photography, BW conversion, B&W conversion, black and white conversion, photoshop tips

After the JPEG compression of the camera, some images have a leak of contrast. Adobe Photoshop comes with 2 useful possibilities to increase the contrast: “Brightness and Contrast” and “Curves”. Also, there is a very basic “Auto Contrast” function which works in very few cases. “Brightness and Contrast” should be avoided because if often alters too much the tonal range of the image.

In “Image” -> “Adjustments”, select “Curves” and will firs notice a strait diagonal line. You will modify this line into a curve by dragging it down and up as shown in the image. Keep in mind to let the middle point at the same place, otherwise the picture will be overall brighter or darker than it should be. You can even obtain more than 3 anchor points but it’s not recommended, so just click on the line in the place you want the points to be. Remember to keep the Preview checkbox on to notice the changes and control what are you doing. Using this tool will give plenty of flexibility compared to other adjustment tools. Now let’s see the results:

Tags: adobe photoshop, image manipulation, contrast, brightness and contrast, curves, adjustment of pictures