I’ve always been attracted to the tones of Lara’s pictures so I tried to talk her into sharing with us her retouching techniques and here goes her first tutorial.

1. Crop to your liking
I started with a well exposed & bright pictured and did a a square crop

2. Changed the color balance
Using Image – Adjustment – Color Balance I used the below values

3. De-saturated the picture
The next thing I did was de-saturating the image using Image – Adjustment – Hue Saturation

4. Apply : Image – Apply (Multiply 10% to 30% depending on image)

5. Variations (toward Red) – Image -> Variations

6. Add new layer and fill it with this color : #133e9f

7. Then Apply the picture again (10% to 30% – Multiply)

8. Add new layer and fill it with this color : # 0b0871

9. Play with curves and saturation to get a nice faded tone:

10. Apply image OR fix contrast to get the final picture:

I hope this was helpful! You can try it and show me your pictures

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This Photoshop tutorial is brought to you by Pascal Khattar and the picture is by Toni Abi el Hessen

Today we are going to use Adobe Photoshop to fix a bad exposed shot and make it look much better in all ways.

First of all open the picture in Photoshop

Tip: double click in the empty area of Photoshop it will brings the open dialogue

Straighten the picture

Now that we have our document opened, first we will start by leveling the photo, as you see the scene is rotated slightly counter-clock wise (CCW) will fix that with the help of the river line as a guide to our horizontal level.

• Select the “Ruler” tool or press “Shift + I” to cycle through available tools
• With the ruler selected draw a line on the edge of the river from side to side
• Now go to Image -> rotate canvas -> arbitrary you will see that in the dialogue box that appear will display the angle at which the photo is rotated just leave CCW (counter clock wise) selected & click OK
• Now we have our image rotated and leveled based on the ruler line we’ve drawn

As you see now a white areas are showing at the corners due to the background color selected and rotated image, this can be cropped quickly.

• Select the “Marquee” tool by pressing “M”
• Press Ctrl+A to select all
• Right click in the middle of the scene and select transform selection, on the top toolbar input W:96% H:96% and ensure that the white areas are outside our selection
• Select Image -> Crop
• Press Ctrl+D to deselect.

Fixing the sky

We notice from the photo that the sky is overexposed and it has no details. Since we cannot treat all the image based on the bad exposed sky, we will isolate it and make it separate layer and will post process it to give much more realistic look sky and maybe add some artificially clouds.

• Press “L” to select the “Lasso” tool
• Draw a selection over the sky don’t worry if it’s not accurate
  
• On the toolbar click select -> color range click on the eye drop tools (it will be selected by default) and click on the scene inside the sky, hold Shift then add another point (click) on the sky or while holding the shift draw an imaginary line across all colors of the sky.
• On the fuzziness input “100” and click OK, now you will see how the selection is more accurate over the edge of the tree
• Now go to layer->new-> layer via copy or simply press “ctrl+J” now we have a new layer based on our selection in the layer palette
  Tip: Press F7 to show the layer palette
• Now select the new layer and double click it’s name and change the name to “SKY”
• Click the “D” to reset the colors
• Ctrl+click the small thumbnail to the left of the name sky to bring the selection of the sky
• Now from the toolbar select render->clouds
• Press “Ctrl+U” to bring the Hue Saturation dialogue box, select colorize input Hue:220 Saturation:85 Lightness:50 and press OK
• Optionally step: you can add an artificial sun with the selection still active choose Filter->Render->lens flare select 35mm prime and brightness around 150% and click inside the dialogue box image to position the sun, I choose top left corner
• Press Ctrl+D to deselect.
• Now select the Erase tool or simply press “E” with the layer “SKY” selected a soft edge large brush (around 70) & erase the borders of rugged edges where the sky meets the trees.

Note how now the sky has more details in it.

Adjusting the main image

• Select the background in layer palette
• Press “Ctr+L” to bring the level dialogue and input the values as shown and press OK, we are increasing the contrast of the picture
  
• Select the “Marquee” tool by pressing “M”
• Press Ctrl+A to select all
• Hold down “Alt” and draw a window around the river to remove it from the selection, now we have all the scene selected without the river
• Select filter->sharpen->smart sharpen input amount : 100% radius 1.0pixel and select OK
• Press “Ctrl+Shift+I” to invert the selection, now we have the river selected
• Press “Ctrl+J” to make a layer from the selection
• Double click the newly created layer and name it “RIVER”

Fixing the River

Now we will work on the RIVER to give it more details and colors

• With the RIVER layer selected Press “Ctr+L” to bring the level dialogue and select the Blue channel and input the values as shown and press OK
  
• Now the river reflect a blue light due to our new created sky
• Press “Ctrl+U” to bring the Hue Saturation dialogue box, select Yellows instead of master color & input Hue:10 Saturation:-20 Lightness:40 and press OK
• Press “Ctr+L” to bring back the level dialogue now for the master colors and input the values as shown and press OK, now we have more realistic look on the river.
  

This was a basic process on how to manipulate a scene to add more details and give it a realistic look.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, have a good day.

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So here is a collection of 145 free Adobe Photoshop brushes that I was able to find. I made sure to diversify the sets to include different styles and elements. You will find egg, chicken, Easter woods, vintage Easter eggs, traditionally religious brushes, baskets, bunnies and even Easter grass.

Enjoy the collection, put it to creative use and most important if I missed some interesting barushes please share them with us and remember that the original websites contain a lot of other free brushes so make sure to visit them

A set of 13 high resolution easter eggs
Original website | Download (zip/5,4 MB)

Easter Scraps brushes made from scrapbook rub-ons and stamps.
Quantity: 30 brushes.
Themes: eggs, chicken, easter words.
Various sizes: from 23 to 304 px.
Set includes: imagepack & .abr files for your comfort.
Original website | Download (rar/299KB)

Vintage easter eggs by Diamara
Original website | Download

24 easter clip arts
Original website | Download (rar/2.2MB)

40+ Easter brushes by Lucy Chase
Original website | Download ( ABR/2.4 MB)

16 brushes for you to enjoy
Original website | Download ( zip/585.6 KB )

Some traditional Easter shapes.
Original website | Download

an easter set with unique brushes
Original website | Download ( CSH/121.8 KB )

Rick-rack, scalloped lines, fun bunnies, chicks, eggs, and some grass easter pack
Original website | Download ( abr )

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Usually vignettes are not desired however it is not uncommon to add them during post-processing for example to draw the attention of the user to a particular portion of the image or to give it an aged look.

I am going to show you how to add vignetting to your image using Adobe photoshop in just a few simple steps.

1. Open the image you want to add vignettes to in Adobe Photoshop
   
2. Select the Lasso Tool (L) or the Elliptical Marquee tool (M)
   
   
   I usually prefer the Lasso Tool since it is more flexible and allow to draw irregular shapes.
3. Select loosely the portion of the image you want to draw attention to
   
4. Feather generously the selection
   Right click inside the selection you’ve just made and click on Feather
   In the Feather Radius box input a big number and press enter.
   
   N.B.:Basically here you will have to experiment a bit to see which number fits your picture but the general rule is that the higher the resolution the bigger the number.
   For a high-resolution picture start with 100 pixels
5. Inverse selection by right clicking inside the selection and click on “Select Inverse”
   
6. Add a Levels layer (Click on image for higher resolution)
   
7. Darken by pulling the central point to right till you are satisfied with the results (Click on image for higher resolution)
   
   If the transition is not smooth enough to your liking go back to step 4 and pickup a higher number as Feather Radius

Final image

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In the last tutorial we discussed how to shoot star trails pictures and we agreed that, in digital photography, you’d better go for multiple shots of 30 seconds each rather than one long shot to keep the noise under control.

So you’re back home with a handful of pictures, let’s see how to turn this exposures into one star trails pictures using Adobe Photoshop CS3.

First open the pictures you want to stack in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and tweak the white balance and exposure as you’d do it for any other picture.

When you are satisfied click on “Select All” -> “Synchronize”. Make sure you have “Everything” selected and click “OK”

Now load your pictures in Adobe Photoshop

What you wanna do next is to copy all the pictures on the same one. To do that, for each of the opened pictures select the picture CTRL + A (windows)/Command + A (Mac), copy it to the clipboard CTRL + C (windows)/Command + A (Mac) and paste it on top of the same one CTRL + V (Windows)/Command + V (Mac).

Now, for each layer, apart from the “Background” one, change the blending mode to “Lighten”

And that’s it !

You can also flatten the image to save space and finish retouching at your taste.

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Even with a low noise cam like Canon EOS1DmkIII, “lifting” the shadows in an image will increase noise considerably. I often expose for the highlights to avoid clipping, and raise the shadows i post-processing.

When printing large I use this following method to get noise-free, saturated and detailed shadows.

The downside is; it will only work with static objects because it needs a +2 to +3EV bracketed shot.

I’m not talking about an awful HDR result here, but an natural looking image with shadows as clean as the highlights!!

The two original images that I used, one + 3EV

Part 1:
During raw conversion I adjust the 0EV image to my liking and the +3EV image is compensated to match the shadow appearance of the 0EV image. (reducing exposure) This is important!!

Here are the two images after raw treatment:

Part 2:

1. Open both images in Adobe Photoshop and make a duplicate layer of the +3EV image.
2. Make the duplicate layer grayscale with the “black and white” function.
3. From the Select menu use the “color range” function. Set the Fuzziness slider to zero and pick out the darkest part of the image. Then push the slider to 200.

Part 3:
You will now have a selection of the shadows of the +3EV image. Use the selection on the background layer only (colored) and copy!

Part 4:
Paste the copied selection into the 0EV image. Zoom in and make sure the two layers are properly aligned. Turn the layer off and on at 100% to see the difference in shadow noise and detail.

Images are shot with the Canon EOS 1DmkIII at iso100 with the 70-200 2,8 at f/16. No noise reduction was used on any of the images. (sliders to zero).
The result interpolated to 6144 x 4096 in ACR, 100% crops:

Lifting the shadows even further shows how well the noise is controlled in the finished image:

Hope this was helpful.

Kind Regards
Tage

Again I would like to thank Tage Solberg for sharing with us this great tutorial

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I love your work. I would love for you to write a tutorial on how to do your post editing in photoshop. especially the street pic with the brick, how do you get that depth and contrast? Have you used filters on any of these photos? thanks

Stina was kind enough to comply to Ivan’s request and shares with us her thoughts on HDR

The internet is full of tutorials. Many are both excellent and extensive. This one is not that kind. It is rather a quick guide, or a check list, of what I do to almost all of my pics to give them a little spark.

1. I try to avoid camera shake by shortening exposure time as much as I can. When it’s possible, I shoot with a tripod.
2. I make sure that my focus is on my selected focus point.
3. I use aperture to control background (big for blur or small for depth)
4. My camera is set to shoot RAW. That way, if necessary, I can correct exposure (to a certain degree) and white balance before I start working in Adobe Photoshop.
5. In Adobe Photoshop, I always enhance contrasts by adding adjustment layer “curves”. Most of the times I simply add a nice S-curve. That is, I drag the top right of the line upwards, and the bottom right downwards. The adjustment layer “brightness and contrast” works fine to for enhancing contrast, but I find I have more control with curves. I often exaggerate contrast, and use the opacity-slide to adjust the amount of contrast by lowering the percentage.
6. Some times I use the “levels”-tool for contrast, dragging the arrows on the left and right towards the middle, just a little.
7. If I have shot with high ISO, I use a plug in called Noise ninja from PictureCode (http://www.picturecode.com/) to reduce noise, or grain.
Once I’m happy with my changes, I flatten my photoshop-file, and save a version of it as a post processed original.
8. As I publish most of my pics on the web, I alway make a web version of them: I size down the original to a width of about 1200 pixels, and save as a new file.
9. The last thing I do is to to sharpen. For the web version, I use smart sharpen, amount set to about 150% and radius set to 0,3.
10. Most of the time I add a frame. I do this after sharpen, otherwise the frame to is sharpened, and I do not want that.

HDR
The picture of the rainy street in Stockholm is actually shot with a technique called HDR, High Dynamic Range. To know more about this and for an extensive guide, please have a look here

Again, a quick guide of mine:

1. Since HDR consist of blending exposures, it’s wise to use a tripod when shooting. Note that the photo mentioned above is a free hand HDR. As you can see, it’s quit possible to pull off hand held HDR shots.
2. When shooting for HDR, I go as low as I can on ISO, since the images tends to get very noisy even at low ISO.
3. I use the bracket mode on my camera, and I set it to expose three times -2, 0 and + 2. On my camera that’s the most you can go.
4. I have set the camera to shoot in a series, so I hold down the shutter button until I have three exposures.
5. To merge my exposures, I use HDR software Photomatix from HDR Soft (http://www.hdrsoft.com/). You can use Photoshop, but it does not tone map, and you want that, since that’s the way to really reveal highlight and shadow details in the image.
6. Once I’ve merged my exposures, and tone mapped them, I go through the steps above in Photoshop. I find that the photos come out rather dull directly from Photomatix, and Noise ninja is almost alway required.

Learning more

The book I’ve have had the most use of is Photoshop for The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers, also available for Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS3, by Scott Kelby. It’s well written, and pedagogical and simple to follow.

I read a lot of photo magazines with tutorials, most of them in Swedish, or French. When I see a tutorial that I like, I try it out on my own photos.

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This download is NOT yet an official Canon release and available only for Microsoft Windows OS (English).

So grab your DPP now on Rapidshare or BadOnGo and if you are looking for the instruction manual it can be found on Canon website!

By the way this is a full version, not an upgrade and doesn’t require any previous version installed.

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1. Download ADIDAP Calendar March 2011 now
2. Download ADIDAP Calendar April 2011 now

The obvious way to solve this problem is by disabling UAC. To do so

1. Run msconfig
2. Switch to the “Tools” tab
3. Scroll down and select “Disable UAC”
4. Click Launch and restart your computer

However yesterday I was faced with a client that needed to have UAC enabled, to comply with his company policies, and was suffering from the same problem. So I found out that the “real” problem was not UAC but the fact that the screen was turning off and back on. This can easily be solved by modifying the computer’s local policy ! Here is how to do it

1. Run gpedit.msc (doesn’t work on vista home edition)
2. Browse to Computer configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options
3. Find the policy called “User Account Control:Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation”
4. Double click on it and set it to “Disabled”

Changing this policy will disable the blank out that happens before the regular UAC prompt and Windows Vista will not reset to the default profile losing the custom ICC profile you configured.

What I wasn’t able to fix yet is how to fix that problem after restoring from hibernate or sleep so if you know how to do it drop me a line.

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I think we can all benefit from these, newbie and advanced users alike since there is always something we might have missed. I know I did miss the batch renaming part !

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The process uses three common techniques. First it targets “blown” highlights using the Threshold adjustment. Then it changes that target area to a light neutral gray using Levels and Hue/Sat. Finally it paints color over the target area.

1. First step is to find the blown highlights.
   • Add a New Adjustment Layer/Threshold and set the Threshold Level between 225 and 230. Start with 225.
   • Select/Color Range and from the top drop down menu choose “Highlights”
   • Delete the Threshold layer, no longer needed. The selection remains active and ready for the next step.
2. Next create a layer group to hold the following adjustments and apply the selection as a mask to the group level so it applies to all adjustments.
   • Layer/New/Group.
   • Add a Layer Mask to the Layer Group. The active selection from step 1 will automatically become the layer mask.
   • But that mask has a hard edge, so apply a Gaussian Blur to it. The radius of the Gaussian Blur will depend on your image and its resolution. Start with a radius between 15 and 20 and experiment.
   • You might need to modify the mask by hand if there are areas outside of the skin that are also over the 225 to 230 level. Watch out for the whites of the eyes. Just paint those areas on the mask with black.
3. Now we need to lower the level of the blown highlights. Later (in step 4) we will apply color to the area, but the color layer will not apply well to pure white, so we want to make the area a light gray.
   • With the Layer Group selected, add a Levels adjustment layer and set its opacity to 50%. In the Levels dialogue box, do not adjust the “Input Levels” sliders as you normally do. Instead, adjust the “Output Levels.” Change the high output level from 255 to the same level you used to create the Threshold Mask in Step 1, which was between 225 and 230.
   • Now add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the group, and set the Saturation to -100 to desaturate the area. Making the area neutral gray allows the color painting that follows to work a little better.
4. Now we are ready to fill the area with color.
   • Add a new blank layer to the Layer Group with Layer/New/Layer, and set the blending mode to “Color”.
   • Use the Eyedropper tool and click somewhere on the face to choose a color. Click on a point outside of the adjustment area but close to it.
   • Fill the layer with this color, using Edit/Fill or the Paint Bucket tool. If you don’t like what you see, choose a different color point and re-fill the layer. Experiment until you are satisfied.
   • As an alternative to a solid fill, you can paint by hand. Select a soft round brush. Alt-Click near, but outside the edge of the adjustment area to pick a color. Then brush over the area. Keep working around the edge, reselecting the color and painting until you have filled the entire area. You can even do both. First, fill the entire area as in step 4D, then paint by hand around the edges to touch up.
5. These steps will restore tone and color. But there may be no texture to the skin. No pores, no blemishes, probably a bit too smooth. You can add some noise with this optional step for more realistic looking skin.
   • Layer/New/Layer. Select Mode:Soft Light and check “Fill with soft-light-neutral color”
   • Filter/Noise/Add Noise. Use a low Amount, between 5 and 10. Uncheck the “monochrome” box, and play with “uniform” vs. “gaussian.” I think “uniform” works best.
6. In spite of the Gaussian Blur on the Threshold mask, the edges may still be a bit too distinct for you. If so, you can clean them up with the Clone or Healing Brush tools.

N.B.: Note, this process was developed primarily for skin tones and was tested on high resolution images (4000 by 2700 pixels). If might work well for other types of blown highlights. For lower resolution images you may want to reduce the amount of Gaussian Blur and Noise levels.

Here are three images showing before, during, and after. The “during” image shows the light gray target area ready for painting. (make sure to click on image for high resolution)

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This post is a guest post by Rami Fayoumi from ZeroHourSleep

Like everyone who reads ADIDAP I am into photography and I use Adobe Lightroom to edit my pictures. I was so excited when I first started working with Adobe Lightoom until I started experiencing regular crashes while using it. And when it crashes, it crashes really hard ! My CPU usage goes up to 50% even after I kill Lightroom’s process, so I end up forced to either logoff or restart my computer.
BUT, I have discovered lately what has been causing these crashes.

nView Desktop Manager! YES, that was it!

Apparently, Adobe Lightroom has compatibility issues with nVidia, causing it to crash on launch or while switching between modules whenever nView Desktop Manager is installed.

Solution to the problem is to simply disable your nView Desktop Manager by going through the following steps:

1. Right-click on your desktop and click “Properties”.
2. Go to the “Settings” tab and click “Advanced” at the bottom.
3. Go to your nVidia’s tab.
4. A menu will be displayed on the left, click on “Desktop Management” then click on “Disable” as shown below.

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N.B.:If you want to follow this tutorial make sure to click on the picture to download a higher resolution version
Ok today I might be a bit long, but I think I have to finish with this series specially that from now on it becomes the same idea repeated over different objects, now launch Adobe Photoshop and let’s get started

The next thing Ray did was to find a good full moon picture and paste it into his frame and he used a dodging technique to create the moonlight

Let us see now in details how did Ray manage the snow in his picture since I think it is very interesting…
First find a picture with some nice snow, and cut a portion of the ground that would fit your image size (or resize it)

Now the trick is to use that same snow picture to create snow in all other parts of the picture, what Ray did was to copy it to a new layer, moving it to its new location then playing around with opacity and finally masking all the unneeded parts, genius if you ask me!
For you to understand what I mean let us see how he added snow to the roof for example (I turned the mask off for now)
You can clearly show that it is the same as the ground snow but with an opacity of 67%

All what Ray did was to carefully draw the layer mask and he used that technique again for the snow around the clock

The same technique discussed yesterday for the Christmas tree was used to add people and the snowman. However Ray also took the time to draw shadows for each of these objects, do you notice it on this crop of the snowman in the second picture ?

And since it is Christmas let’s add some Christmas lights to this house

And finally, like the cherry on top of the cake, Ray Guselly ended his masterpiece with a light on the top of the antenna

So what do you think of this transformation ?

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N.B.:If you want to follow this tutorial make sure to click on the picture to download a higher resolution version.
Now launch Adobe Photoshop and let’s get started
So where were we? Last thing we did yesterday was to turn the day into night

The next thing Ray spent time on was to put light on those windows and street lamps, the basics on how to do that are covered in here, all lights layers are at 100% opacity. Please take the time to appreciate the different light colors Ray used !!!

From now on Ray started to have fun, and it is amazing to notice the level of details in his work ! Let’s take a closer look at the Christmas tree shall we ?
Find an adequate Christmas tree picture, resize it if needed and paste it on your project

Now carefully outline the tree and create a layer mask to hide everything else thus blending the tree in your picture

Bur Ray didn’t stop here he took the time to draw some colored lights on the tree and added a shiny light to the top star. For you to be able to understand what I am talking about I will hide the tree for a second so you can take a closer look

Here is how it looks when all layers are enabled

And now let’s put some clouds and starts in this sky. Since I don’t want to clutter this, already complex, tutorial I will dedicate another post on where to find clouds and stars.

Ok sorry guys that’s it for today we’ll continue tomorrow

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N.B.:If you want to follow this tutorial make sure to click on the picture to download a higher resolution version
So let’s get started

Open the image in Adobe Photoshop

Create a new layer and fill it with a dark blue color (Ray used a 21,66,133 RGB) and set it to 68% opacity

Now carefully outline the sky and apply it as a layer mask to the blue layer so it will affect one the sky of the original picture

Now create a simple Levels layer, make sure it is ABOVE all layers we just created and brighten up everything.

The next step Ray did is to use a Curves layer masked this time to affect everything but the sky and used to to brighten the foreground even more

Finally, for today at least, create a pitch black layer and set it to 60% opacity

Congratulations, you just turned a picture into a night scene once more stay tuned much more to be done yet

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