Software How To

How many times have you cropped an image, say to straighten a crooked horizon, only to discovered that in doing so you've sacrificed a vital part of the shot? Well that's unavoidable when using Photoshop's basic crop tool.

If you're a Lightroom novice and think using Lightroom's powerful Curves tool is beyond your skills, the quick tutorial below will quickly change your mind. That’s because you'll learn a handful of techniques in just three minutes to make your outdoor images stand out from the crowd.

Most experienced landscape photographers understand why blending bracketed exposures is often the only way to make great images of high-contrast scenes like sunsets, sunrises, or when the sun is high in the sky. That’s because no matter how good your camera is, it can be impossible to capture the wide range of tones from bright highlights to deep shadow with a single image in the camera.

So you captured a gorgeous landscape scene and nailed focus, exposure, and composition. Then you reviewed your images on the computer, expecting stunning results, only to discover that the horizons are curved and distorted.

Every so often we all take things too far when making adjustments in Photoshop, and some photographers cancel the enhancement and begin again. But what if we told you there are "hidden undo sliders" that enable you to backtrack your steps incrementally rather than starting over?

Many photographers avoid high ISO settings because of the realistic fear that ugly noise artifacts will pollute their images. But there are consequences to be paid for taking that approach, including the necessity of carrying a tripod to avoid blurry photos.

Photoshop's straightforward Clone Stamp tool is extremely useful for accomplishing  a variety of tasks when processing all sorts of images captured indoors or out, be they portraits, landscapes or just about anything else. If you're not taking advantage of the simple technique involved, it's long past time to get started.