Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Textures and masks in Photoshop

I've been doing some textures work that I might talk about in a future post. I could do a tutorial, but instead, I'll point you in the direction of a really great tutorial written by Joshua Johnson found on Design Shack. Check it out.


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Youtube video on creating "Early Bird" Instagram effect

I always like watching how other people use Photoshop because there are so many different ways to achieve the same effect. In this tutorial, for example, I might have used curves more, not that it matters. If you decide to replicate the results, I highly recommend creating an action so you don't have to go through all those steps the next time you want to create the effect.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Friday, October 12, 2012

Triangular Desire: A Portrait Posing Tip

In 2009, I did a "Composition 101" post that used album covers to demonstrate how strong diagonal lines impact photos. Today, I want to show how every hipster's favorite shape—the triangle—can create stunning portraits.  Look for the triangles in the gorgeous portraits below for inspiration on your next shoot:

Rodney Smith




Maria Callas (c) Cecil Beaton, 1957


Reese Witherspoon. Photography by Michael Thompson


Jeanloup Sieff


Ida Wyman, Girl with Curlers, 1949


“Butterfly Boy” (1949) by Jerome Liebling.


(I'm not sure who did this portrait of Bowie)


August Sander


Loretta Lux
Source: google.com via Marc on Pinterest


Alberto Giacometti (by Irving Penn)Source: google.com via Marc on Pinterest

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

5 useful photo tutorials

I haven't felt too inspired to post since I've been busy working on other projects, so I'm going to share 5 of my favorite tutorials from Pinterest, in no particular order (NOTE: Clicking once gets you to the pin on my pinboard, from there, click again to see the actual tutorial):

1. Improve focus in photography by enabling Autofocus Point Display. Get instant feedback on where your camera focused. Sometimes it can be annoying to have a little red dot on screen indicating where you focused, but it can also be extremely helpful. Check out the tutorial by clicking through the link.





2. Back button focus. I actually have three of these tutorials pinned on my tutorials board, but this one is a great place to start.








3. Straighten and crop in Photoshop CS5. Did you know you that you can straighten and crop in a single click? This tutorial shows you the more traditional way (the way I've always done it) and then a little trick to speed things up.




4. Selective sharpening in Photoshop. This Youtube video shows you how to use the selective sharpening tool. Sometimes when a tool sucks in an earlier version of Photoshop (like dodge and burn once did), we just never use it. Here is a case where in CS5 things got better.


Source: youtube.com via Marc on Pinterest


5. This is actually five in one, but I was particularly interested in the fifth of the "non-destructive photoshop techniques" in this tutorial. Check it out and see.