Software How To

Photo/Graphic Edges (PGE) from Auto FX Software has been with us for many years and the company recently released their latest version, 7.0, Platinum Edition ($249, stand-alone and plug-in; $129, upgrade for owners of Version 5 or 6). The interface is identical to that used by all Auto FX Photoshop plug-ins. If you already use another Auto FX plug-in, such as Mystical Lighting or Mystical Focus, learning to use PGE should be easy. Even if you’re not familiar with Auto FX products, you’ll likely find the interface to be very straightforward and uncluttered, with plenty of room to work on your images.

Whether you shoot people, products, or landscapes and nature, Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 offers a cornucopia of 60 filters to add subtle to striking effects to enliven and enrich your photos.

Most Shutterbug readers are familiar with a Photoshop feature that automatically detects and creates a mask for an object, thanks to the tutorials we’ve posted in the past. But that capability pales in comparison to a “hidden” masking tool that you’ll learn how to use below.

This tutorial is about a common image-killing editing error that you may be guilty of yourself, and demonstrates how easy it is to fix. It’s all about using the wrong Lightroom slider for certain simple tasks when there’s a better approach that’s just as easy to implement

One of the challenges facing landscape photographers is dealing with the wide range of tones from deep shadows to bright highlights that often exist in outdoor scenes. With this broad dynamic range, high-contrast edges are very common.

Photoshop Actions are extremely helpful when editing images, whether you’re a novice or an experienced user. As the folks at Adobe explain, “Actions are a user-based series of recorded tasks or commands that you can play back and record on single or multiple files.”

If you're unfamiliar with Lightroom's powerful masking filters, you've come to the right place. That's because these easy-to-use too will make a huge difference in the quality of your post-processing results.