Software How To

I have always had mixed feelings about so-called “film simulation” software, programs that offer one-click presets that add effects and options for manipulating digital images. On one side, I am unsure why the designers use visual references to types of film for their preset IDs. It strikes me that an increasingly small proportion of folks relate to them. On the other side, I admire their offering programs that open up a raft of image expressions in easy to attain fashion. I will not revisit that discussion here, although the near concomitant release of two such programs, Alien Skin’s Exposure 5 and DxO’s FilmPack 4, makes it tempting to do so.

You don’t need three magic wishes to make your Mac or PC more digital photography-friendly. Here are five ways anyone can upgrade their computer to improve the speed and efficiency of Photoshop, expand storage space for all those Raw image files, add room for unlimited back-ups of your photo archive and make the whole shebang more secure—without touching a screwdriver.

Instagram is becoming more and more popular among photographers as a vehicle for showcasing their work. Amateur shooters use the site as a means of sharing images with friends and family, while many pros consider their Instagram page a convenient online portfolio.

If you’ve ever marveled at a spectacular landscape photograph and wondered how it was made, there’s a good chance the photographer employed a luminosity masking technique in Photoshop that provides extremely precise control over post-processing adjustments.

Q. Re: your answer to the question about solving noise problems in the writer’s wedding shots in the February 2017 issue. You mentioned Photoshop, Lightroom, and Nik for noise reduction, but left out the best noise reduction software I’ve ever used—DxO’s OpticsPro 11. I had great night shots of lava flowing into the sea off Hawaii that were unusable because of noise, but OpticsPro 11 Prime worked wonders.

Halloween is all about ghosts, goblins and ghouls, and in the fun video below you’ll learn how to give Halloween portraits a spooky ghost effect with a few simple steps in Photoshop.

You don't, necessarily, need a fancy and pricey lens with a fast aperture to shoot an image with attractive background blur, aka bokeh, for portraits. In the below tutorial from Unmesh Dinda of PIXimperfect, he shows you the "key" to simulating shallow depth of field in Photoshop.