New Basic Panel Sliders (Lightroom) Do you know the difference between the Exposure vs. Highlights vs. Whites tone sliders in Photoshop and Lightroom? We use these tone sliders all the time, but few of us really understand the difference between them, as they  appear to do very similar things. In this article I will explain what each slider does and when to use them. To add to the confusion, the sliders in the ‘Basic’ panel changed in 2012 versions of…

Today an understanding of Photoshop is as important as being able to use a camera. Capturing a photograph in-camera is just the first stage of a process. Having downloaded it onto a computer, you have the choice, depending on your preferences, of doing no further work on it, or a small amount of editing, or changing it beyond recognition! If you shoot RAW files, then a certain amount of Photoshop work is necessary to make the most of your images….

Correcting lens distortion in Photoshop Elements One of the difficulties many photographers encounter when taking photos in towns and villages, is the effect of converging verticals on buildings. Converging verticals are caused by lens distortion. The angle of view, together with the fact that you’ll need a wide angle lens if you can’t get far enough away from the buildings, will result in an image where building edges lean rather drunkenly in or out of the frame, and if you’re…

A terrific article by Hanniel Evan Yucoco on how to make a clean and decent selection on tricky photographs that involve super fine hair, fur, leaves, and any fibre like elements. When using the standard selection tool or the masking process, you may able to accurately select smooth edges. We may use the colour range tool and the tweaking of levels and channels to select much difficult areas but that would also take too much time on manipulation and very…

Understanding Levels     When I start to work on a photo on my computer, one of the first things I look at is the Levels histogram. I use Photoshop Elements, but all photo editing software programmes will have a way of doing this adjustment in one of their menus. A properly exposed photograph should normally contain a full range of tones from white through to black. Of course, this won’t apply in every situation – you wouldn’t expect a…

Multiple Exposure Photography. The vast majority of the photos we take consist of a single exposure.  If you’re feeling in the mood for trying something a little different, though, it can be fun to have a go at a multiple exposure photograph. A multiple exposure is a combination of two or more individual exposures to create a single image.  There are various ways in which you can do this, and also various reasons for doing it!  Sometimes you might want…