Photoshop How To

Bright and colorful photos are nice but sometimes you want your images to have added drama and a touch mystery. To do that, you can give them a dark and moody look during post-processing if you didn’t capture them that way in camera.

A couple week’s ago we featured a tutorial for experienced bird photographers, with a variety of tips and mistakes to avoid for achieving optimum results. Today’s episode is for those just getting started, with a complete beginner’s guide to joining in on the fun.

Have you ever captured what you thought were great images, only to be disappointed when reviewing them on computer? It’s a rather common occurrence that images don’t look as impressive on a monitor as they did through the viewfinder (or with your naked eye when viewing the scene).

Last week we featured what turned out to be a very popular tutorial for those new to Photoshop, explaining the first tools to learn. We don’t want Lightroom users to feel ignored, so today we’re doing something similar for you.

Photoshop is such a comprehensive package that it can be very intimidating—even to experienced users. And if you’re a novice, getting started may seem absolutely bewildering.

We’ve discussed the relative merits of shooting Raw vs. JPEGs numerous times, and the consensus is the former delivers superior image quality, far more leeway during post processing, and a number of other benefits. The primary advantage of JPEGs is the significantly smaller file sizes, which can be important for certain applications.

You’ve probably noticed there’s been a trend for editing portraits lately that favors a bright, high key look. While there is some visual appeal to processing portraits this way since it gives them an eye-catching, ethereal color palette there are some trade-offs to this method.