Photoshop How To

Last week we presented a quick solution for eliminating ugly color fringing from photographs captured outdoors in high-contrast situations. Today we're tackling another unsightly problem; namely, color banding and gradient banding that can also ruin an otherwise great shot.

One of the most exciting aspects of landscape photography is that we're never sure what to expect from Mother Nature. Sometimes calm, sunny days quickly transform into a dark and foreboding scenarios with threatening clouds and other eye-popping atmospherics that make for awesome imagery.

If you're under the impression that a high-end camera is required for fast and precise focus, well, think again, because we're going to dispel that common excuse in the next 10 minutes. The good news is that you can achieve super sharp photos with whatever camera you own by using the pro techniques demonstrated below.

One of the most common software questions we get is how do you change or remove a background in Photoshop. Well, there are multiple ways to do it but one of the best is explained in the below video from Phlearn.

Before getting started on a project do you carefully select the most appropriate Adobe Camera Profile for the specific image at hand? If not, that's a shame, as you'll see in the following quick primer from instructor Mitch Lally. In fact, watching his video could be the most productive five minutes you spend today.

Creating composites in Photoshop where you clip a subject from one background and place it in another is not hard but it's challenging to do right. We don't know how many composites we've seen where the person or object that's been moved to a new background looks unrealistic because of a poor clipping job or an uneven blend.

We're going to kick off this post-processing tutorial with a quote from one of our favorite landscape photographers: "White balance is one of the most important settings to adjust when editing your images, because getting it right is crucial if you want photos to appear natural and realistic."