I’ve discovered what I think is a really neat way of producing richer, deeper colours by turning your picture into black and white… well, sort of. If you’ve got an image which needs more contrast, the usual method is to use curves adjustments. But contrast and saturation are linked, so you get more saturated colours […]
Tutorials
How to apply the Zone System in Silver Efex Pro
The Zone System was invented by legendary landscape photographer Ansel Adams. He hit upon the idea of splitting the full range of tones in a black and white image into eleven distinct brightness zones, which he then went on to define very carefully. I’m paraphrasing this from the Wikipedia entry: Ansel Adams’ approach was two-fold. […]
Export sharpening part 2: DxO Optics Pro 9 and Capture One Pro 7
Export sharpening is a setting that’s often overlooked when you generate images for online or on-screen viewing, but it makes a big difference to how sharp your pictures look. Every time you resample an image, you introduce a degree of blur because the software has to interpolate new pixel values – and this applies when […]
Do you sharpen on export? It makes more difference than you might think!
If you use Aperture or Lightroom, it’s so easy to export pictures at specific sizes for web use or emailing that you probably don’t give the settings a second thought. But in order to reduce your pictures to the required size, your software has to carry out a resampling process that can leave fine details […]
Top tips for creating and saving Analog Efex Pro custom presets
Analog Efex Pro is one of the plug-ins in the DxO Nik Collection. It comes with a selection of preset camera and film effects to reproduce the look of traditional analog photography, but I’ve been spending some time trying them out and using the Analog Efex Pro Camera Kit (see part 2 of this Analog […]
How to use the Nik Collection Analog Efex Pro Camera Kit
Analog Efex Pro is part of the DxO Nik Collection, the set of plug-ins for Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom Classic that DxO took over from Google. I rate this as the best set of plug-ins ever made, and practically a must-have for digital image-editing fans. It’s a tool for simulating the look of old films […]
How to stamp your photos with the Lightroom watermark tools
Many photographers are worried that the moment they post their photographs online they’ll be copied and passed off as someone else’s, or used by others without the photographer’s knowledge and permission. I’m sure that does happen, but I also see things from a slightly different perspective. I work on a magazine where we find lots […]
How to save photos at a fixed size with a Lightroom Export preset
Lightroom doesn’t directly edit your original photos, so even though your pictures look different in Lightroom when you edit them, these adjustments exist only within Lightroom. If you want to send an edited version to someone else or for use on a website, for example, you need to ‘Export’ a new version of the picture […]
How to ‘re-light’ your shots with the Color Efex Pro Darken/Lighten Center filter
Sometimes your shots don’t quite have the lighting you wanted, even when you had the time to set up the lighting carefully, such as when you’re shooting a still life, for example. The scene looked OK when you assembled it and pressed the shutter button, but later on you look at it more carefully on […]
Mastering Elements Levels adjustments
Levels are one of the most basic image adjustments in any image-editor. They’re your first chance to act on the information you get from the image histogram and use adjustments to maximise the tonal range of your picture. In fact, although the Levels dialog may not offer the advanced image control of curves or other […]