Teresa Schultz asked:

It is fun and rewarding to take creative photographs that look a little different to your average snapshot. Using filters in Photoshop, or directly on your camera is one way to have a little fun with your camera. Another method is to use homemade filters placed directly in front of your camera when taking photos.

Homemade filters can often be found around the house, and don’t cost you anything. Have a look around the house, gather together anything you think you might use, and store them all together in one place, or put them in a bag. Get your camera, and go outdoors to have some fun.

Spread a little petroleum jelly on a piece of glass. Hold it in front of your camera and the result will be a photo that has a blurry arty look to it. Clean a round or square area in the middle of the smeared glass, and you’ll get a picture that has hazy edges, but a sharp middle through which the main part of your subject is visible, but remember that the main point of interest should not usually be in the middle of your frame, so shift the piece of glass around so that the clear part of it is not in the middle – or clear a part of the glass so that the clear part is not in the middle.

For different colour effects, hold up a piece of cellophane paper, coloured glass, or even your sunglasses.

For a dreamy effect, hold up some lace or net curtaining, a piece of stocking, or any other see-through material.

To give your photo an instant frame, draw or find an interesting design, cut a hole in it, and take your photo through the hole, focussing either closely, or in the distance, for a further two effects for each frame you have designed or found.

Use naturally found filters and frames too, such as leaves or flower petals with holes in them, or, for larger subjects, focus through some branches in the foreground.

Learn to always look around you, and be aware of the amazing amount of potentially creative photos you can take.

© Teresa Schultz

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Andy Penbram asked:

Many amateur photographers have recently switched over from using traditional film to the digital realm, especially with the advent of the cheaper digital SLR or DSLR cameras.

Now you can use your digital camera in exactly the same way that you could a traditional 35mm SLR. In fact the digital models are even better as you can set the film speed and make previews etc etc.

Having made the change to digital there are far too few photographers who realize the power of Photoshop.

Digital enhancement of your images is something that can turn some of the most amateur photos into professional looking shots.

The possibilities are endless but include;

Creating better composition.

This is the first and most important step in creating the perfect image. Get this right and your photo could be stunning.

There are certain rules to the composition of the perfect image which we will not go into in detail here but you can adjust your image in Photoshop so that it adheres to some of these rules. For example, with a little creative use of the crop tool you can resize your image and adjust the position of the subject to fall into one of the key positions making it more pleasing to the eye. For example, in most cases, a central subject is not as effective as one that is offset to the side (adhering to the rule of thirds). Using crop can effectively move the subject over, up or down to position it perfectly.

Create depth of field.

You can quite easily add depth of field to the images that you have taken “snaps” of. If you have an image that is completely in focus and the background too is in focus (a common effect of non SLR digital point and shoot cameras) the you can solve this using Photoshop. You simply draw a mask or make a selection around the subject, invert that mask so that it selects all but the subject and apply a blur effect to the part of the image that is selected. In the later versions of Photoshop there is actually a filter that emulates the natural lens blur. The end result is a sharp, in focus subject with an out of focus background. This can be very effective and can draw attention to the subject.

Color Correction

You can change the color of your image and balance the overall exposure of your images in a number of ways. The most common is by using the levels function or the curves. Here you can gently touch up your photo making the dark areas darker and the lighter areas lighter to achieve greater or lesser contrast.

There are countless other methods and techniques you can use with Photoshop to better your images without having them look like they have been altered. Selective blurring can give the impression of movement, you can change certain areas of a photo such as the color of a specific object, red eye effects can be removed, skin blemishes and spots can be hidden and even with a little more skill and knowledge, complete makeovers can be achieved.

We have an ever increasing collection of video tutorials on our Photography Book web site which show you step by step how to achieve some of these process.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Photoshop is a tool for designers and fantasy artists alone. It is fast becoming the chosen tool of the trade for most professional photographers and is used on a daily basis.

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Kurt Hansen asked:

Photo filters are transparent or translucent glass or gelatin elements that fit onto the front of a lens. They alter the characteristics of light passing through the lens or add special effects and colors to a photo.

Filters come in two different types, screw-in filters and slot-in filters. Screw-in filters screw into the lens barrel threads called the adaptor ring. Each filter is designed for a specific focal length. They’re fixed to the lens until you manually unscrew them. For slot-in filters, a filter holder is placed on the lens adapter ring and the filters are dropped into the holder. The holder usually has interchangeable adaptor rings, so it can fit on several different size lenses. The holder has three or four slots in it, so you can put more than one filter in the holder. The big advantage with the slot-in filter system is being able to add or subtract filters relatively quickly and larger filters can be used with shorter, smaller lenses.

There is a wide array of filters that you can use, but the most commonly used ones are the Ultraviolet (UV) filter, the polarizer, color balancing filters, Neutral Density (ND) and the soft focus filter. In addition, B&W photography has specific filters that affect specific wavelengths of light.

The first thing you have to recognize when using filters is that they change the dynamics of light and they affect the intensity of light hitting the sensor, so you’ll have to adjust your exposure. This is called The Filter Factor. With digital cameras, you can immediately see the effects on the light quality and intensity and adjust your setting accordingly.

UV and Polarizing filters reduce the haze created by ultraviolet sunlight and reflected light. Polarizer filters remove reflections in water and glass, so that when angled properly you can shoot directly into those substances and see right through them. UV filters reduce haze caused by sunlight.

Color balancing filters aren’t totally necessary with digital cameras because you can change the white balance at will. Color balancing is necessary when your light source doesn’t match the White Balance that the camera is set to recognize. Daylight records as “blue” when the camera is set to tungsten or incandescent light, and tungsten light records as “orange” when the camera is set to daylight. In addition, fluorescent light sometimes photographs “green.” You may be familiar with these color casts.

A color balancing filter either completely corrects the light source differential, or provides partial correction. Partial correction is where and how you can be creative, as these filters can either just slightly or dramatically cool down or warm up a photograph. Many higher end dSLRs allow you to be extremely precise with setting the color balance, so you can set your “white point” to perfectly match the specific lighting conditions you are facing. With a dSLR you would use color balance filters to enhance an effect, not actually correct the color balance.

Neutral Density (ND) filters don’t affect the dynamics so much as they affect the light’s intensity uniformly across all spectrums. NDs allow for longer shutter speeds or larger apertures where the setting would normally overexpose the image sensor. For example, if you want to shoot outside on a bright day, your meter will tell you to set the aperture to f/11, which will give you a deep depth of field. However, you may want a shallow depth of field, and to do that you need to have a wider aperture. By putting on an ND 9 filter, which deducts 3-stops of light, you can shoot at f/4 and achieve the shallower DOF. Or if you’re shooting inside, and the light coming in from the window overpowers the inside lights, using the ND filter would allow for a more uniform exposure.

With a digital camera, you might not want to use specific B&W filters because you can achieve similar effects during post processing in Photoshop. However, if you’re not terribly Photoshop savvy and want to use the B&W setting on your dSLR to its most optimal effect you can use color B&W filters. B&W filters will block certain wavelengths of visible light thereby enhancing the monochromatic look. For instance, the Red 25 blocks red spectrum that enhances visible blue, and your skies will be much deeper in their tonality. It’s a good idea to experiment with these filters, as you can get exactly what you want in-camera without having to go to Photoshop.

The Soft Focus filter does exactly that, it reduces the sharpness of an image but only to the point that it’s barely noticeable. These are used for portraits to soften and/or reduce lines and wrinkles.

Filters are a means to control the nature of light, so you can get the most from every image in the camera. Change your image by experimenting with filters.

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TJ Tierney asked:

Photoshop software is ideal if you want to retouch digital images, apply special effects to your images and will also help you prepare photographs for the web. If you need to resize images, add filters and styles, Adobe Photoshop is the software for you.

Adobe has created many different forms of Photoshop, but the for the amateur photographer or the professional who is new to digital photography Elements 2 is very easy to understand and comes with a low price tag and a host of creative tools that help with image manipulation.

The brushes available in Photoshop give a massive choice for retouching images. Images are adjusted by painting with the brushes over the area you want to change. Red eye in a image can be removed in less that two minutes. Items can be removed from an image. For poor quality images there is a sharp tool to sharpen certain areas of an image.

There are 15 types of file format that you can save your images to, giving you the possibility of creating images for a large amount of different projects. This includes images for the web, for slideshows, and for many different forms of printing.

Photoshop elements also help you create images for the web easily. Most photographers at some time during their career will want to create a website, and with Photoshop, preparing images is simple. It also helps you to resize images that are being attached to an e-mail.

Creating a web gallery can be a lot of work but Photoshop can open a group of images, resize them, create a thumbnail gallery and create all the navigation HTML buttons for your site. It will create a folder for your web files and save it on your computer.

Elements 2 also contains a slide show, which is a convenient way of presenting images. Slideshow presentations are saved in PDF format making them easy to e-mail or download. To view a slideshow you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer.

Also included in Photoshop is a video frame capture tool. This allows you to capture any frame from a video and save it as a stand-alone image. Images created for frame capture can be edited the same as any standard image.

Where the need to edit colour is great, Photoshop has a wide range of tools that will help. Colour images can be turned into black and white shots in less than five minutes. You can also add filters to images to warm them up or create different tones.

The most important part of Photoshop is the Toolbox. This contains all the editing tools that allow you to burn, dodge, clone, blur, sharpen or smudge an image. This box also contains handy tools to crop and zoom in on an image.

There are many artists world wide who make a living by retouching images with advanced image software. Learning how to use Photoshop correctly will be a massive boast to your digital photography, and if you are a keen photographer it should become part of your digital darkroom.

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Maricon Williams asked:

You and I both know that Photoshop is the tool that most of the photographers around the globe use. There is no doubt that it is the hands-down best to photographers when it comes to photo editing, enhancing and other adjustments. It has become and remains the industry’s standard in photography. In a matter of fact, photographers have found a perfect complement in Photoshop.

Anybody – both amateur and professional can take advantage of the powerful features of the Photoshop. In the post production process, it is the most ideal tool for scanning in or digital photographs. Some of the prominent adjustments in the Photoshop are the following: contrast, brightness, levels, color balance, curves, hue, saturation, selective color, channel mixer, de-saturation, variations and in the new version which is the Photoshop CS, you have the powerful Shadow/Highlight tool and Photo Filter adjustment which allows you to try out different ‘camera filters’ on your image.

Not all the time that you take pictures, you get your desired results. It is sometimes frustrating to know, especially during a momentous event that the pictures you have taken are blurred, imperfect and does not suffice your expectations. However, when you have problems in connection to your photos, you can bank on Photoshop. It can show you many ways to fix picture imperfections. You can adjust the brightness values and color values of your images, you can erase flaws and so on. If you took a photo at the wrong exposure you can adjust it in Photoshop. You can touchup your photos and add effects. Quality image enhancements and adjustments are just mouse click away from you.

Ever since Photoshop arrived in the photography industry, it has been considered as good news to both photographers and photo lovers. Gone are the days when you can easily be dismayed by the results of the supposed to be unforgettable occasion. With Photoshop, you can have excellent photos all the time.

Photoshop presents a wide variety of choices and remedies to make your photographs accurate, striking and memorable. Numerous options are available this is the reason why renowned photographers are relying in Photoshop to enhance their pictures. They do not rely on lesser programs because they can hardly compare it to Photoshop benefits. Photoshop rules the photography world. That is a fact for a quite a long time now. There are many competitors out there but nothing equals the power of a Photoshop!

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Tom Ray asked:

Like many people who’ve made the switch from film cameras to digital, I’ve discovered that the lens tools I once used so effectively on my cameras to soften, diffuse and vignette my images for quality “finished” professional results won’t do for digital what they did for film.

I’m sure it’s arguable by some that their diffusers still work fine, and I too have discovered that some tools still work okay under some circumstances; my Ziess Softar #1 seemed to offer decent results when photographing a single subject in the studio but I knew that the black netting diffuser that I used with my Lindahl Bell-o-shade no longer worked on the Nikon D70 zoom lens at the wider angles without showing lines in the image. Not a risk I was willing to take professionally so I just stopped using the Lindahl shade and drop-down filters for a while.

Then it happened. A savvy carriage trade-minded customer brought in a wall portrait that she had purchased several years ago by a photographer obviously using medium format lens tools like I was used to using in the past with my film camera. She wanted her new wall portraits to have that same “softened” look. So I arrived at the portrait session armed with my digital camera equipped with the very mild Softar Filter that works at any aperture on any lens thinking that this was good insurance at getting the kind of “softness” she could live with.

Understand that I knew any diffusion used on an entire family group portrait would be more exaggerated by their relative head sizes but I had explained that to her and she assured me she liked her portrait images “very soft”.

While the images looked good on the small camera monitor, once I opened them up in Photoshop and printed them out as proofs I knew they were too soft. I called a colleague who is a digital expert and explained to him what I had done. He told me that you simply cannot use on-lens filters anymore for professional softening and diffusion without creating mush on 35mm type digital camera images. This leaves the special effects job now to the computer and not the camera. “But I’ve tried using Photoshop CS for their diffusion tools and what I get doesn’t look like real photography,” I complained, “The results are terrible.” He agreed that Photoshop’s filters weren’t the right tools either to mimic the professional photography filters of the past but told me that there is a company that has a software program that is a plug-in for my Photoshop and has filter tools to recreate believable results for various levels of softening and diffusion.

The software is called “PhotoKit” and is available from Pixel Genius for only $49.95. I bought the Mac version and it is wonderful. I have played around with it now and have found that you can get varying degrees of whatever you want that looks similar to what you used to be able to do with your old lens filters and drop-down tools. Even more possibilities are now available to you. One of my favorites is the ability to lasso areas and “clear” the results of diffusion keeping eyes and teeth sparkly and sharp.

If there is a downside to doing your diffusion this way it’s that the customer can’t really see the results on the proof, so they have to “trust” your artistic license. But it was like this with retouching too so there will be a short new education curve for your clientele to learn, or to save yourself from disaster you might offer a second proof appointment to show the customer a proof of their selected images with the added softening or diffusion. It’s going to take more time and you’ll end up with having to rework some things more than you want so I’d only recommend this for customers like mine who’s initial concern was the diffusion issue.

In summary, softening and diffusion can be done effectively and professionally but it’s not as easy as it used to be when you’d just pick the filter you wanted and pop it over the lens. Your old on-camera lens filters will often turn your digital images to “mush” or images of weak contrast that may or may not be salvageable.

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Adobe Photoshop is a very useful tool of the trade nowadays. Knowledge of basic Adobe Photoshop is sometimes required from applicants even if it is not really necessary in the job description. This is because employers would like to gauge the computer literacy of applicants through their knowledge of such skills. Hence it is now a necessity to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop. In publication and journalism, for example, it is not really important for you to take Photoshop layout tutorials if you are merely applying for a writing position. But most employers would take that as your edge.

Nonetheless, the booming industries during the advent of the Information Age require ample knowledge of Photoshop. This is because Photo shop can perform numerous tasks even in simple office presentation works. In this day and age, multimedia is the name of the game. A simple proposal can be worth nothing if you can’t present it with flair. Getting yourself acquainted with Photoshop techniques will already go a long way.

Jobs in the information technology industry requires more than Photoshop basic understanding even if you are not on the creative department. Most of these jobs even require you to get a benchmark certification to qualify you for the position. Here comes the importance of getting Photoshop training from a reputable school or online training. Most of these training courses equip you with the right knowledge to pass the Adobe benchmark exams.

More or less, free Photoshop layout tutorials found on the internet are more than enough for you to become well-versed in Photoshop. It all depends on how you want to use your knowledge of the program. So what are you waiting for to start learning how to use photoshop like a Pro yourself? It’s easier than you might be thinking right now!

By: Fredrick Ituma

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Those who are into digital photography are almost certainly experts when it comes to Photoshop. This software is essential in editing normal photos in order to achieve perfect and artistic photographs using different kinds of effects such as the appropriate color saturation.

However, not all individuals have the knowledge when it comes to Photoshop and a lot of people want to know how to transform a simple photograph into an artistic piece. If you want to learn the tricks of Photoshop, you just have to use certain books and Photoshop tutorials. Most people rely in Photoshop tutorials especially in learning new things because with Photoshop tutorials, they do not need to go through different books and seek advice from their friends.

Photoshop tutorials are designed to help everyone be familiar with the software. You can find these free tutorials on the internet, which are usually divided into numerous categories for you to be able to use them faster and easier. Categories include photography tutorials, the basics category, special effects, texturing category and web design tutorials. There are other websites providing different versions of the program where you can learn the entire set of lessons made for the type of Photoshop you use. With Photoshop tutorials, you can easily learn tricks and techniques in video, graphics, films and special effects.

There are countless websites that offer Photoshop tutorials. If you are just starting to learn the basics, there are tutorials that are developed for those needs. You can easily learn how to make simple changes such as how to remove red eyes, change hair color, know the importance of layers, retouching pictures and knowing information about different tools necessary for photograph modifications.

If you are in need of comprehensive instructions on how to use Photoshop, the internet can provide you countless websites such as www.tutorialsite.org, which can help you learn how to manipulate and improve your digital photographs. Most tutorial sites offer downloadable files and instructions where you can get useful information.

The first thing you need to learn before starting to create a new file is to know how to navigate the software. With Photoshop tutorials, you will easily learn the different actions and icons found in the menu bar, palette, toolbox and status bar. Another important section of the tutorial is the part where you can learn how to work with your photos and existing documents. In this part, you will be able to learn how to enhance or improve your document and pictures in your personal computer. You can open, crop, resize, view and save documents with ease. In addition, you can learn different ways on how to edit photographs.

One of the most interesting elements in Photoshop tutorials is the part about the different tools essential in enhancing, creating and retouching photographs. In this section, you will be able to learn how to have fun with colors as well as know more complex tools including the lasso section tools, the wand, layering tools and eyedropper.

In addition, website owners can also benefit from Photoshop tutorials especially in advanced tutorials where they can learn ways on how on create a hosting server using Photoshop, make introduction pages and navigation bars easily. You can choose from a wide range of tutorials that are not restricted to Photoshop enthusiasts only but also for everyone who are in need of useful Photoshop information.

Though there are hundreds of tutorials on the internet, it is recommended to focus on a the basic tutorial sites if you are really interested in learning something in particular and eventually search for more advanced tutorials. This way, you will be able to learn everything slowly. With free Photoshop tutorials, it won’t be difficult for you to learn new things everyday. Learning about Photoshop is essential especially with the technological advancement. You may not dream of becoming a world-class graphic artist but having enough knowledge on Photoshop can give you the edge in your career.