Photoshop for Digital Photographers » Special Digital Darkroom Process

High Key Black and White in Adobe Photoshop

admin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:57:38 +0000

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Photoshop to create high key black and white. The process is very simple and you can apply to any photos.

Please follow the steps below:

1. Open your image

2. Go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate

3. Your photo will look like this.

4. Select Image>Adjustments>Curves

5. Adjust curve to increase brightness and press OK.

6. Your image look brighter.

7. Go to Layer Pallet and press Crtl + J for Window or Cmd + J for Mac to duplicate a layer

8. This is the duplicated layer.

9. Select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur

10. Adjust radius of Gaussian blur to 40 pixels. Then pressure OK.

11. Change a layer mode to Overlay

12. Your image looks brighter with more contrast.

13. Add layer mask from the layer pallet

14. Select brush from the tool pallet and select black as foreground

15. Mask the dark area by painting black.

16. At the layer pallet, you should see mask like this.

17. This is the final result from this tutorial.

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Create High Dynamic Range Photos in Photoshop

admin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:49:55 +0000

This tutorial will demonstrate you how to create high dynamic range (HDR) photos using Photoshop. High dynamic range photos are photos which has more tonal range than normal photos. Simply say that you will be able to see more color tones with this kind of photo.

Let’s learn about basic details.

1. Let’s take a look at this shot.

You can see that there is no detail in the shadow area but the highlight area has all detail. The typical photo looks like this.

2. Before going into details, I want to get you more detail how HDR is created. HDR can be done with several photography programs as Photoshop, Photomatrix, etc. The concept is to merge several exposure values into one photo; therefore, you need take photos with several exposures in order to get a lot of details from shadow to highlight.

- Set your camera firmly on a tripod.

- Take several photos with several exposures as -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 stop. You need at least three shots (under exposure, correct exposure, over exposure) in order to get good shadow and high light detail. For this example, I take a total of 5 shots.

Let’s go to Photoshop.

1. Go to File>Automate>Merge to HDR.

2. The pop up will be show and you need to select “Browse”.

3. Select photos and check the box “Attempt to Automatically Align Source Image”, then press OK.

4. Photoshop initially merge all photos for you. Your result will look like this.

5. On this example, you can see that there are two areas where color is not good due to merging.

6. I get rid of some exposure values (EV +3, EV0 and EV -1.32). This depends on your image. You may not need to do it or you may need to get rid of some like I do. You also can adjust brightness of this photo by sliding the bar located at the top right.

7. Change bit depth. There are 3 options which are 32 Bit/Channel, 16 Bit/Channel and 8 Bit/Channel. You need to select either 16 Bit/Channel or 8 Bit/Channel because they give you more options to adjust the final image. I select 16 Bit/Channel.

8. HDR conversion pop up will be shown. There are four methods for adjusting your image as Exposure and Gamma, Highlight Compression, Equalize Histogram and Local Adaption.

9. Exposure and Gamma is used to adjust brightness and contrast by sliding the Exposure and Gamma bar.

10. Highlight Compression- with this option, you are not able to change any parameters.

11. Equalize Histogram – with this option, you are not able to change any parameters as well.

12. Local Adaption – it is the best option and I recommend you to use it because it has a curve providing more flexibility to adjust brightness/contrast. Moreover, you can change Radius and Threshold as well. Try to play with this option until you feel satisfied with the result and then press OK.

13. This is the final result.

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Create Frosted Pixels in Photoshop

admin — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:38:04 +0000

This tutorial shows you how to use Photoshop to crate frosted pixels. You can see the example below.

Please follow some simple and easy-to-follow instructions.

1. Open your image.

2. Go to Layer Pallet and select “Background” Layer. Press Ctrl + J (Win) or Cmd + J (Mac) to duplicate the layer.

3. This is the duplicated layer.

4. Change mode to Overlay.

5. Go to Filter> Pixelate> Mosaic

6. Set Cell Size. For this example, I set at 95 then press OK.

7. Your image will look like this.

8. Go to Layer Pallet select “Layer 1”. Press Ctrl + J (Win) or Cmd + J (Mac) to duplicate the layer.

9. You will get the “Layer 1 Copy”. Change mode to Multiply and adjust Opacity to 75 %.

10. Go to Filter> Stylize> Find Edges. This step will create edges of tiles. In order to see the tile edges clearly, you may need to repeat this filter few times.

11. After applying the filter few times, your image should look like this.

12. Go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur

13. Adjust Radius and press OK. I adjust radius to 7 pixel.

This is final image after processing in Photoshop.

I wish you would enjoy reading this tutorial.

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Simply Create Duo Tone In Photoshop

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 18:51:53 +0000

This tutorial demonstrates how to simply create duo tone photos in Photoshop.

Please follow the step-by-step.

1. Open your image.

2. Go Layer Pallet, select adjustment layer and choose Hue/Saturation

3. You will see Hue/Saturation window.

4. Check the Colorize box.

5. Adjust Hue/Saturation/Brightness until you feel satisfied with the result, then press OK. For this example, I use the following parameters

Hue = 5, Saturation = 71, Lightness =0

6. This is the reddish tone.

7. This is blue tone.

8. This is bright yellow tone.

Let’s apply this tutorial to process your photos.

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Dramatic Blending Effect in Photoshop

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 03:14:01 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show you how to blend layer in Photoshop in order to add a dramatic and gritty effect. Let’s take a look at the images below and please following these step-by-step instructions.

1. Open your image.

2. Go to a layer pallet. Drag the Background layer over the new layer in order to duplicate the Background layer

3. You will get a duplicated layer called “Background copy”.

4. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

5. Adjust radius. For this tutorial, I use a radius of 6.

6. Go to the layer pallet and change mode to Overlay.

7. Go to the layer pallet. Drag the Background layer over the new layer in order to duplicate the Background layer. For this time, you will get another duplicate layer called “Background copy2”

8. Move “Background copy2” to the very top the layer list.

9. After moving it, you should see something like this at your layer pallet.

10. Go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate

11. Change mode to Hard Light.

12. Your image will look similar to this one.

13. Click at a small triangle icon and select “Flatten Image” in order to merge all layers.

14. Go to the layer pallet. Drag the Background layer over the new layer in order to duplicate the Background layer.

15. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

16. Adjust radius. For this tutorial, I use a radius of 6.

17. Go to the layer pallet and change mode to Overlay.

18. Click at a small triangle icon and select “Flatten Image” in order to merge all layers again.

19. Go to Filter>Distort>Lens Correction

20. Adjust amount of vignette. I use vignette of -65. You can adjust the value and see the result until you feel satisfied with it.

21. The effect looks like this image.

I wish this tutorial would help you create dramatic photos.

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Make Your Own 2010 Calendar in Photoshop

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:36:03 +0000

I just got a calendar file (.psd) from my friend, oh2004 from thaidphoto, and I already used it to create unique calendars. So I would like to share how to create your own 2010 calendars by using this calendar file. Not only for your own 2010 calendar, but you can also create nice and unique 2010 calendar for your friends, family, etc. Moreover, you can create the calendar for selling as well. Anyway, before I go over into details, I would like to show before/after images as shown below.

1. Download zip file CLICK HERE. Unzip this file “2010.zip” to get “2010.psd”.

2. Then, open “2010.psd” with Adobe Photoshop.

3. Let’s look at the layer pallet and you will see each layer containing date of each month in 2010.

4. I will demonstrate you how to use this file (so easy) to create the calendar of January 2010. Let’s open a photo.

5. Duplicate layer by right click and select duplicate layer.

6. Select the destination file which you would like the layer to be on and the click OK.

7. After clicking OK, you will see at the layer named “January” in the layer pallet over the background layer.

8. You may see that layer named “January” is so small because my photo is very large. I am not worried about this problem because my layer “January” is text which I can expand as big as I want.

9. Use free transform command (Edit>Free Transform) to expand size of text until you are satisfied with overall size. What’s more, you can add effect into the text such as dropping shadow, blending layer, etc.

10. Add some additional text if you like.

11. You will get nice and unique 2010 calendar which is ready to print and /or send to someone for this New Year.

12. You can try another style like this as well.

I wish this tutorial will help you create nice your own style 2010 calendars : )

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Canon DPP 3.7.2 Portable for Processing Canon RAW files

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:44:16 +0000

Thanks for Mr water boy from Thaid who distributed Potable Canon DPP 3.7.2 for us.

I have been using this portable version of Canon Digital Professional Photography (Canon DPP) and I find that it’s very easy to use this portable version to process .CR2 files with any computers. You don’t need to go through all process for installation this program. What’s more, this version eliminates the problem about computer permission.

Please select one of the following links to download (every link has the same file). The file size is about 80 MB.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LY0WP4KE

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?kyzmujt5hmx

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ku1jjl320vz

1. After downloading the zip file, you will see “CanonDPP372_Portable.zip”

2. Unzip this file into a computer, a thumb drive, etc.

3. You will get “CanonDPP372_Portable.exe” after unzip the file.

4. Double click the icon and you will see the program shown as below.

5. The program will be shown and you can display Canon Raw file, .CR2, and process raw photos.

Have a nice and lovely day.

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Lomo Photoshop

admin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:08:35 +0000

Learn how to use Photoshop to create lomo-like photos. First of all, you can see the before and after photo as the photo below:

This is my sample photo.

1. Adjust color balance: Lomo images are weird color tone so I will change an original color tone to yellow tone. At this step, you can play with other adjust techniques as levels, curve, etc and you also can adjust color tone. This example I use color balance and adjust images to yellow tone.

2) Create a vignette: This step I will show you how to create a vignette.

2.1) Create new layer

2.2) Select rectangular marquee tool with 100 px feature and normal style and draw the rectangular as show in picture below

2.3) Select Inverse

2.4) Fill with Black Color

2.5) Deselect after filling black color in selection

2.6) Change “Layer1” property to overlay with 80% Opacity. After completion on this step you can see the vignette.

3) Create Gradient Tone as per steps below;

3.1) Create new layer, “layer2”, between layer1 and Background

3.2) Select Gradient tool: I normally use radial gradient tool.

3.3) Select Foreground (White) to Transparent

3.4) Draw the gradient

3.5) Adjust layer property to Overlay with 80% Opacity

4) Adjust background image contrast: Normally I adjust image Curves to S-Curve shape. Anyway, you can adjust until you see the color tone you like.

5) Create darkness to a lomo image: You may not do this step if you like your color tone but I like the image looks dark a little bit. Therefore, I adjust brightness and contrast of the image.

WOW!!! you get the lomo image by using Photoshop.

Ps, this is the guideline so you can try and adjust this technique for your images.

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Increase Color Saturation with LAB Color Photoshop

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:42:03 +0000

Increase saturation of photograph by using LAB color mode in Adobe Photoshop. This technique is good especially for scanned old film photos that is old and its color is not good any more.

See the “Before and After”. You will see an awesome result of this effect.

1) See my photograph and you will see that the saturation is not that good. Firstly , I normally duplicate a background layer by dragging the background layer over a create new layer icon as below because you can go back to see the original photo or if you do something wrong with it you still have the original image.

2) Change the color mode to LAB (Image>Mode>Lab Color)

3) Then the program will ask you to flatten all layers into one layer. You must answer “Don’t Flatten”.

4) Then you can see in the channel pallet that there are 4 layers (Lab, Lightness, a and b).

5) Select “Lightness” channel and select the curve command (Image>Adjustment>Curves) to add contrast into the photo.

6) Adjust the curve to S-Curve shape to add saturation.

7) Select “a” channel and drag the bottom point to the right. So you will see that green tone is added into the photo.

If you drag the top point to the left, you will see that magenta tone is added into the photo.

9) Drag equally between the top and the bottom point to balance color tone added into the photo as shown below. You can see that the color saturation looks better now.

10) Select “b” channel and drag the bottom point to the right. So you will see that blue tone is added into the photo.

11) If you drag the top point to the left, you will see that yellow tone is added into the photo.

12) Drag equally between the top and the bottom point to balance color tone added into the photo as shown below. You can see that the color saturation looks PERFECT now.

13) You may add sharpness into this photo (Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask)

14) Adjust some parameters until you feel happy about a result. In this case, I use Amount = 50%, Radius = 1 pixel and Threshold = 0.

With Lab color mode, you can add the realistic saturation into you photos. It’s nice and easy method.

Any suggestions or recommendations are very welcome.

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Selective Color Technique In Adobe Photoshop

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:40:11 +0000

You may have seen some photos that the certain objects have color but the background is either black or another color tone. I would like to share this Photoshop Tip regarding how to process this kind of photo.

1. Select “Gradient Map” from layer pallet

2. Select gradient from black to white

3. Add layer mask into the adjustment layer, “Gradient Map” layer.

4. Hide the “Gradient Map” layer and select “Background” layer. Then select “Magnetic Lasso Tool” for the tool pallet in order to make selection. I set tool parameters as follows: Feather 0 px, Width 10 px, Edge Contrast 5% and frequency 57.

5. Draw selection around a selected object. This tool will help you create the selection because it will create the selection based on contrast along the edge of the object. Let’s try play with that.

6. Go back and open “Gradient Map” layer. Select layer mask in the “Gradient Map” layer.

7. Press Alt+Del to fill black into the layer mask.

8. Zoom into your photo so you may see some details on the edge of object are not smooth enough. Select brush, adjust size and hardness that match with area you need to correct. Paint back onto areas where you want to show color and paint white onto areas where you want to show back/white.

This step is take time and effort because you need to zoom and look around your object in order to make detail correction. From this example, you will see that I have details on the edge and details on the head of the robot to correct

9. After finishing correction, you will see the result like this.

10. Moreover, you may try to change color of “Gradient Map” layer in order to change background color.