Photoshop How To

It’s always important to refresh the basics of photography especially when it comes to a comprehensive and often confusing piece of imaging software such as Adobe Lightroom. In the below video from Nathaniel Dodson of Tutvid, Dotson presents an excellent primer on how to sharpen photos using Lightroom to get better image results. And who doesn’t want better image results?

Most photographers use their images in a variety of ways. We post them to the Internet, share them on social media sites, print them for friends and family, and deliver hi-res files to clients. The task of outputting images for various purposes is time-consuming—unless you create custom presets as explained in the video below.

Whether you shoot landscapes, street scenes, or seascapes, a crooked horizon is a sure way to mess up an otherwise great shot. You can avoid this problem by composing your scene properly in the camera, and most viewfinders have a grid option to make this pretty easy.

We’ve all had an otherwise beautiful landscape or cityscape scene ruined by a dull, blown-out, or boring sky without clouds. In the Photoshop tutorial below you’ll learn a simple sky replacement technique for turning those outtakes into money shots.

There are a number of interesting film-era camera effects that are popular among today’s digital photographers, one of which is the so-called “Lomo Effect” named after an old Russian film camera. The inexpensive Lomo LC-A was known for creating images with blurry edges, a sharp center, weirdly saturated colors, and plenty of vignetting.

Many photographers are unfamiliar with Photoshop’s powerful Sponge Tool, and that’s a shame because it’s a great way to punch up colors in an image while retaining a natural look. In the three-minute tutorial below you’ll learn how to make the Sponge Tool your friend.

Last week we explored the differences between Lightroom and Photoshop to help you choose the software package that best suits your needs. In the video below, image-editing expert Peter McKinnon explains why he says, “Every photographer should be using Lightroom.”