Photoshop How To

The video below from instructor Brendan Williams begins with a quote that will stop you in your tracks: "Throw everything you know about sharpening out the window because there's only one sharpening tool in Photoshop you need for pro results, but it's hidden in an unlikely place."

Today we're featuring a quick trick from the Rogala Photography YouTube channel that will help make it easier to adjust the exposure of photos in Lightroom. You'll learn why the histogram is "essential" for getting the light right, and what a long-time pro says is "the best simple Lightroom trick you don't know."

Creating soft, blurry backgrounds is a popular technique for making subjects stand out from their surroundings. It’s also useful for eliminating clutter, and directing a viewer’s eye to the most important element of a scene.

Today's video comes from Hamed Photography, a great source of quick lessons for editing images on any device, streamlining the gear you carry in the field, and in-camera techniques for capturing stunning photos with the equipment you already own. Hamed promises that "this video will help you create stunning monochrome images with ease—whether you're new to photography or looking to improve your skills."

Even so-called “purists” who avoid image editing like the plague have to occasionally crop a photo to fine-tune composition. And many photographers, particularly those specializing in landscapes, prefer to “shoot loose” for compositional flexibility when straightening skewed horizons.

If you use Lightroom to process outdoor photos you'll want to pay close attention to the eye-opening tutorial below. In just 12 minutes you'll learn a better way to give all sorts of outdoor images more contrast and texture, without damaging the files.

If you've ever spent hours searching for a photo that you know is somewhere in Lightroom or on your hard drive, you understand the pitfalls of sloppy organization. We're going to fix all that today with some great tips from British landscape pro Jethro Stebbings.