Practical Photoshop January 2021

“Welcome to issue 118 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” This issue, we take a look at some of our favorite tools and techniques for edits that are effective on most, if not all, of the images you open. Elsewhere you’ll find top techniques for moody monochrome portraits and automatic sky replacement, and you’ll learn how to create our amazing cover image. james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com Editor James Paterson Art Editor Rosie Webber Production Editor Richard Hill Content Director Chris George Senior Art Editor Warren Brown DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue’s files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac: http://bit.ly/pho_118 FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface Also available on: http://tiny.cc/4dw9ky http://tiny.cc/rew9ky http://tiny.cc/8ew9ky…

1 KICK-START YOUR EDITING WITH PROFILES Profiles have been around for a couple of years now, and have changed the way many of us edit our photos. Available in Camera Raw or Lightroom’s Basic Panel, Profiles are simply starting points for further edits. There are some Profiles that are designed for raw photos, and others that let you apply a specific look or color treatment. Once done, you can use an Amount slider to control the strength of the effect (raw profiles excluded). Delve deeper into Profiles, and you’ll discover even more benefits. You can create your own Profiles (Alt-click the New Preset icon in the Preset Panel) and even include LUTs made in Photoshop or downloaded from elsewhere. WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/2KxSX2l OUR FOUR FAVORITE PROFILES… 2 MAKE LOCAL ADJUSTMENTS When it comes to editing your…

In October Adobe released the latest version of Photoshop. One of Photoshop CC 2021’s headline features is the new Sky Replacement Tool, which uses machine learning to automatically recognize the sky in your outdoor photos, isolate it and drop in another sky of your choice. You can now replace a dull sky with a few clicks. Of course, there’s a whole debate around whether the act of sky replacement tarnishes landscape photography, diminishing the joy of capturing a real-life scene. But leaving that aside, the Sky Replacement Tool is astonishingly good at what it does. It’s able to isolate even difficult areas of sky, like the gaps between the pier in our example, or other intricate details like tree branches and buildings. This release also introduces Neural Filters, which – among other…

Black-and-white treatments and portraiture go hand in hand. But what’s the best way to strip out the color, and what other edits can we make to enhance a monochrome image? In this tutorial, we’ll explore a few techniques you can use to create stunning black-and-white portraits, from the best conversion tools to essential enhancements, such as dodging and burning. Converting a photo to black and white shouldn’t just be an ‘effect’: there should be a reason behind the change. Perhaps the monochrome tones enhance the subject, or draws attention to textures and form. Or perhaps the color is a distraction, and its removal gives the viewer breathing space to focus on other aspects of the photograph. With portraits in particular, color can be an unnecessary addition. By stripping it away, you can…

Here we’ll look at how to craft a colorful dancer image from a series of photos of paint. This involves both shooting skills and Photoshop techniques. First, we’ll get set up to shoot vibrant photos of paint by capturing the colors as they travel through water. Once done, we’ll progress into Photoshop, where we’ll warp the photos into the shape of our dancer. As such, this is effectively two skills in one. So if you’re mainly interested in capturing beautiful paint abstracts, you can follow along with the first part; if you’d rather work on the Photoshop skills, you can skip the shooting part and use the supplied images to craft your own painterly figures. For the shoot, we need a clear container full of water. A fish tank is ideal, but…

1 FISH TANK A small fish tank like this is ideal, but any plastic or glass container will work. Ensure the glass is as clean as possible before you start filling the tank with water. You’ll need to refresh the water after every few shots, so this project is best done near to a sink. 2 FLASHGUN An off-camera flash is the best way to capture the paints, as it gives your images a clarity that is hard to achieve with natural light alone. Position the flash to one side of the tank, angled slightly away from the backdrop so that it doesn’t spill onto it. 3 REFLECTOR By positioning a reflector opposite the flash on the other side of the tank, we can bounce the flash light into the shadows to even out the…