Life after Photoshop

Tutorials

How to use layers, blend modes and masking tools in Luminar 3/4

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This tutorial shows how to use the powerful layers, blend modes and masking tools in Luminar 2018, but actually the same principles can be used in other image-editing programs which support image layers. I’m going to start with a perfectly pleasant lakeside travel shot and give it a more dramatic Game of Thrones look by […]

How to use String Substitution in Adobe Bridge

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So here’s a thing I’ve been struggling with. My personal photo filing system (see part 1 and part 2 of this mini-series) has worked brilliantly for years, except for one tiresome niggle. I number my photos sequentially and yes, I can do that straight away with all my images straight from the camera. BUT there […]

How to batch-rename RAW+JPEG pairs in Adobe Bridge

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Here’s part 2 of my mini-series on creating a basic image filing and naming system. Part 1 explains the basic folder and file naming structure and how to batch rename photos in Adobe Bridge. This part looks at specific situation that lots of us face – what to do when you shoot RAW+JPEG pairs with […]

Here’s the simple photo filing system I use

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This is part 1 of a mini-series on how I organise my photo library. I’m posting this because keeping an ever-growing library of photos organised is a challenge for all of us, and I thought I’d explain a system that’s worked for me for fifteen years – so I’m guessing it must be half right. […]

How to relight a scene in Lightroom

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In photography, things don’t always come together as you’d want them to. Sometimes you get wonderful lighting but there’s no effective subject in front of the camera for bringing it out, and sometimes you’ve got a good subject but the lighting isn’t right. This is one of those situations. I thought the couple walking a […]

How to create a selective colour effect in Lightroom Classic

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There’s colour photography and there’s black and white, but sometimes there’s something in between which has its own very distinctive look. This tutorial is all about selective colour – making a black and white image but with one single colour preserved. In this case it’s red, which is usually the most popular choice for this […]

How to add a new sky to a landscape without selections

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Very often in landscape photography you get the landscape or the lighting you want, but not the sky. In the perfect world you’d keep going back again and again until everything was perfect. In our not-so-perfect-world, however, it’s sometimes useful to be able to add a new sky later, as the final touch to an […]