Software How To

If you’re just getting started in Lightroom and have no idea what you’re doing, you’ve come to the right place. Most photographers get lost in a hurry when first trying to decipher all tools in this comprehensive image-editing program.

One way to add impact to wildlife and nature photographs it to convey a sense of motion in the scene. In the video below you’ll learn how to accomplish that task with an easy Photoshop image-stacking technique.

If you’ve ever had the itch to paint—or to turn one of your digital images into a great looking painting without taking up a brush—then Corel Painter Essentials 5 may be just the ticket. 

It all began back in 1990 with a shareware program called Paint Shop. Debuting the same year as Adobe PhotoShop 1.0, comparison to that legendary product has been inescapable. Paint Shop, known as PaintShop Pro X6 Ultimate in its current incarnation, has always been associated with three characteristics: extreme affordability, sufficient power for most photo enthusiasts, and Windows-only compatibility. PaintShop Pro has continued to evolve and improve, and today offers many significant enhancements, including the ability to run smoothly on Macs using a Windows emulation program.

For portrait, wedding, landscape, and fine art photographers, Corel’s new Painter 11 excels when you want to emulate traditional art media from your images, including oil paint on canvas, pastels on textured art paper, woodcut, silkscreen, watercolor, and more.

We often discuss how to fix distracting backgrounds in outdoor scenes, and one way to do that is by using small apertures to minimize depth of field. Another approach involves blurring the background in post processing. But if you’re looking for a more creative approach, read on.

Sometimes a straight photograph isn’t the goal when we capture images. Thanks to a number of programs, you can take your photograph beyond the ordinary and turn it into a work of art with a few clicks of the mouse. One such program is Topaz Simplify (www.topazlabs.com, $39.99). Running standalone or as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture, Simplify has a number of presets ranging from cartoon look to wood carvings to help you get started. Additionally, if you create your own look, you can save it as a preset and share those presets with other users.