Photoshop How To

Have you every shot a portrait that looked really great, except for a bunch of flyaway hair? Removing these distractions can be a difficult task—unless you know the quick Photoshop trick in the video below.

Light is the key component of all forms of photography. That’s because perfect focus and composition, and a great subject, are all for naught if the light is flat or dull.

Dull, lifeless photos are the bane of landscape photographers, and flat light is often the culprit. Sometimes our camera settings deserve some blame too, but in either case there's a simple Lightroom "relighting" trick that will come to the rescue.

Let’s face it. We all do our best to capture compelling photographs, and sometimes it’s difficult to be objective about the results. In fact, one of the challenging aspects of our craft is determining whether a photograph is worth editing or if it should be trashed.

Some photographers think all that’s involved is a decision to frame a scene in either a vertical or horizontal orientation. But as you’ll see in the tutorial below, there’s much more that factors into the equation. One is creative cropping, and another is whether to modify the native aspect ratio of the camera you use—which varies from one model to another.

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