Photoshop Tips & Tricks for Photographers

[Dimy]

Hey there,

Seeing that quite some people are posting photo's on here that desperately need some simple photoshopping I decided to start this thread where people can post quick and handy photoshop tutorials to share their photoshop skills with people who don't know much about it yet (maybe good for a sticky?). I'm using Photoshop CS2 myself, so maybe not all of the tools of things I'm posting here are available for you if you use Photoshop Elements or CS, my apologies to them!

I'll start with a quick photoshop tutorial on a very common problem... it's something every photographer experiences, although some more than others But it's definitely one of my favourite and mostly used photoshop "fixes": How to Straighten Horizons. This post will be up within the next half an hour or so.

Feel free to add new tutorials to this thread and spread those skills!

Cheers,
Dimy

[melekalikimaka]

great idea, this forum is really taking off.

[Dimy]

Well here's my first tutorial, in this tutorial I will show how to fix a common problem, a tilted horizon or background. While I'm at it, I also show how to use the clone tool effectively.

Start Image


Ok here we have the starting photo, as you can clearly see the background is tilted cpunter clockwise by a few degrees.

Step 1: Select the Measure Tool


Step 2: Use the Measure Tool


With the Measure Tool Selected, click and drag a line. In this example I dragged a vertical line accross the wall in the background, for landscape photo's you can of course drag a horizontal line at the horizon in the background. Release the mouse button to finish the measurement line.

Step 3: Rotate


Go to the Image Menu --> Rotate Canvas --> Arbitrary...



Now don't change anything to the presented angle in the screen above, by using the Measure Tool it automatically calculated the amount of rotation degrees needed to straighten up the image... so simply click OK here



Step 4: Crop!

Now that we rotated the image, we need to crop the image. I prefer cropping at 2x3 ratio, but if you want a square crop or different dimensions feel free to do so.

Select the Crop Tool:


Make a crop selection by simply clicking and drag a box, when you're happy with the selection release the mouse button. If needed you can still change the size of the crop selection by moving any of the 4 borders upwards, downwards, left or right by just hovering over the side you want to change, click and hold the mouse button and drag.



Check the info box for the size of your selection and adjust either width or height of the selection until you have the desired ratio... in my case 3x2 or 557x371 pixels:



When you're happy, click on the Crop tool Icon once again to confirm the crop.



This is where the Straighten Photo tutorial ends, but as you can see the image above now has a new problem... the top right hand corner is blank, here's where the Cloning Tool comes in hand!

See my next post for a Cloning Tutorial

[Shrimp]

General tip: Always have the contrast* of a photo slightly stronger than you expect. Keep that in mind.





*not just the contrast slider, I'm talking about anyhting that effects the relation between light and dark.

[Dimy]

Cloning is another very useful tool in Photoshop... it can be used in many ways, but here's a useful example of how to use this tool effectively.

Here's the starting image:


This is the image we ended the last tutorial with, as I mentioned this photo still needs some editing as after cropping the rotated image the top right-hand corner became blank. We can fix this easily with the Cloning Tool.

Step 1: Select the Clone Stamp Tool


Step 2: Set desired Origin from which to Duplicate


Press and hold the ALT-key and click the desired Origin Point to duplicate from. Now this requires a little bit of practise and is difficult to explain... but in the image above you see what Origin Point I have selected for my example.

Step 3: Start Cloning


Now you have selected an Origin Point you can use the Clone Stamp Tool like any ordinary Brush, you can also change the size of your brush if you want a smaller or larger brush. I started "brushing" with the clone stamp tool at the point indicated in the image above, simply hold the mouse button and drag your mouse around over the area you want to clone.

Final Result:


And that's it... above you can see the final result. We straightened the tilted background of the original and used the clone tool to fill in the blank area!

I hope you found these tutorials useful... I might post some other tutorials later, also if you happen to know a useful trick yourself please feel free to add a tutorial yourself in this thread!

[Dimy]

Oh and special thanks goes to my nephew and niece, Youri and Anouk, who kindly posed for the picture

[Thirdfox]

Thanks for posting up those tutorials! I can finally start using some of the power of my Photoshop 5

[Placebo]

Cropping is fine, maybe some refinning but i dont agree with the fact of photoshoping photography, maybe if the image is being used for something else but it is very misleading when people pitch up the hue/saturation on flickr[for instance] and make it seem like the cameras amazing, before buying a camera - i personally, always go online to look for its results. But croppings, minor adjustments are fine etc, just my opinion, great tutorial anyway, didnt mean to over take.

while im on this, if anyone wants a flamour type shot, or dreamt effect.
DUPLICATE the layer, apply GAUSSIAN BLUR filter[around 4.0] effect. Change layer mode to overlay and flatten the image/combine the layers. Looks nice at times , if its a pic of youre baby.

[Fajitas!]

Originally Posted by Shrimp

General tip: Always have the contrast* of a photo slightly stronger than you expect. Keep that in mind.

Correct. Try to bring the contrast up to a level that suits, between 0 and 30 usually looks most natural. You might be better off to adjust the darkness slide before this though.

Other than that, if you're starting off in PS, the "Colour Variations" button can be of great help. Experiment with it.

[Dimy]

Originally Posted by Placebo

Cropping is fine, maybe some refinning but i dont agree with the fact of photoshoping photography, maybe if the image is being used for something else but it is very misleading when people pitch up the hue/saturation on flickr[for instance] and make it seem like the cameras amazing, before buying a camera - i personally, always go online to look for its results. But croppings, minor adjustments are fine etc, just my opinion, great tutorial anyway, didnt mean to over take.

Before any other people reply to this, please don't! This topic is not about whether YOU agree with using Photoshop or not! If you don't like it, don't use it. This topic is meant for the people who do want to use photoshop and need some help. Anyway, the above tutorials are both very minor tweaks imo, and that's the last I have to say about that topic! Please start a new thread if you want to discuss the use of photoshop.... Thanks.

-Dimitry

[CONMIKE12]

Brilliant idea,very informative and much appreciated.

[joolsveer]

Very useful idea. It's great to see you being helpful again. Keep it up Dimy.

[Dimy]

Originally Posted by joolsveer

Very useful idea. It's great to see you being helpful again. Keep it up Dimy.

Your photo's with tilted horizons were an inspiration jools... I have some other tutorial-ideas so will make a few more additions to this thread.

Also if anyone has a question about how to do something in Photoshop, feel free to post your original image here and describe what you would like to be done about it, I might give it a go and describe it step-by-step if it's possible to do.

[CrowdedHouse]

Excellent tutorial-many thanks Dimy

[Flipflip]

Excellent idea dimy, good stuff, your tutorials are good man, keep it up sher.