Software How To

Skin retouching is an essential task to master if you want to create alluring portrait photos, whether your model is a man or a woman. That’s because you can have beautiful light, nice composition, and an inviting pose, but all that’s for naught if the subject’s skin is unappealing.

Are you familiar with Photoshop’s powerful Blend If tool and how easily it enables you to create outdoor photos with maximum impact? If not, you’re in for a treat.

All outdoor photographers are at the mercy of Mother Nature, especially when shooting landscapes. That’s because sometimes you scout out a perfect scene in advance, prepare your gear, and arrive at the right time of day—only to confront disappointingly dull skies.

Here’s a simple but common problem with digital photography: oversaturated red faces. This can occur because of a lighting issue, a camera issue, or because your subject already has somewhat flushed skin.

Sharpening photos isn’t particularly difficult, nor is it always necessary. But as image-editing expert Blake Rudis says, “Unlike many things in photography, sharpening is one of those tasks where there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.”

In a perfect world we’d always arrive at a destination just before “Golden Hour,” in time to capture gorgeous landscape images with beautiful warm colors and an inviting soft glow. Since that’s not always possible we thought we’d bring you a quick post-processing tutorial for creating a similar effect in Photoshop.

If you’re a regular Shutterbug reader you know we frequently post tutorials from image-editing expert Anthony Morganti. Most of these tend to be detailed and somewhat lengthy, but the video below kicks off a new series with brief episodes on a single topic.