We’ve all been there. You’ve got a shot that’s fundamentally sound but lacks rich, strong colours or any kind of atmosphere. They can be tricky to fix and you can spend hours experimenting with settings that don’t seem to get you any closer – and you don’t want to resort to flashy and obvious effects […]
Tutorials
Add some sunlight with Color Efex Pro!
I’ve got to be honest. I’m compiling a list of my top ten worst Color Efex Pro filters (yes, there are some duds in amongst the great ones), and the Sunlight filter was on it. But in a spirit of fair play I thought I’d better find out for sure what it actually does and […]
Are you missing your best shots? Capture One’s Auto Adjust tool could tell you with a single click
You can’t keep every picture you shoot – but how do you know you’re keeping the right ones? We all shoot more than we keep, and the obvious thing to do is make a first pass of your images and delete the ones that look wrongly exposed, flat or lacking in colour. Obvious, yes, but […]
Get more natural results with this Lightroom HDR effect
HDR (high dynamic range techniques) are sometimes necessary to cope with scenes that have a higher dynamic range than the camera’s sensor can cope with. But that’s happening less and less as sensor technology improves. The latest D-SLR sensors don’t just have increased dynamic range, they’re able to capture shadow detail with less noise than […]
How Photoshop Smart Objects and plug-ins can work together
Just in case anyone thinks I have something against Photoshop… I don’t! Photoshop is really good at what it does, it just doesn’t do everything I want from a digital imaging application. But it is really good ‘host’ application for plug-ins. One reason is that I’m having a few problems with Aperture and Google Nik […]
Capture One presets vs styles: what’s the difference?
Capture One lets you save adjustments for re-use in the future, but it can be confusing because it offers user ‘presets’ and user ‘styles’ without being terribly clear about the difference. In other programs, ‘presets’ usually refer to sets of adjustments applied all at once, but Capture One presets are subtly different. So to make […]
Lightroom portrait tips to put power into your people shots
You’ll probably want to take a softly softly approach with female portraits, but male subjects usually demand a different style. Here are some Lightroom Classic portrait tips for giving your pictures a more powerful, grittier feel. I want to give this outdoor shot (above) a grungy, contrasty look, and I’ve got a favourite set of […]
Discover the details with Topaz B&W Effects
I’m a huge fan of Silver Efex Pro, the black and white plug-in in the Google Nik Collection. But in a spirit of fair play I want to take a proper look at a rival product, Topaz B&W Effects 2. This comes from plug-in maker Topaz Labs, which sells a suite of plug-in tools that […]
Who needs HDR when you’ve got Viveza 2 control points?
Viveza 2 is part of the DxO Nik Collection, and I think it’s in danger of being overlooked in favour of the newer, flashier or more versatile plug-ins in the collection. Viveza 2 is designed to offer localised adjustments for your digital image using the ‘control point’ technology now found throughout the Nik Collection. Viveza […]
How to use the Capture One adjustment tools
Capture One Pro has some very good localised adjustment tools. You can create gradient filter effects and paint on manual adjustments, just as you can in Lightroom, but I think Capture One Pro’s system of adjustment layers and masks works a lot better. I’m going to show how simple and effective they can be with […]