Back in 2009, Popular Photography announced the winning photos of its latest Reader’s Photos Contest. Two of the winners (shown above) had some photographers scratching their heads, due to the fact that they’re “Photoshop jobs” rather than non-manipulated stills.
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Here’s some potentially huge news from the photo-editing software industry today: Adobe may be giving away its older Creatie Suite 2 for free. This includes Photoshop CS2.

It may sound sketchy or like a mistake to you, but it’s found over on Adobe’s website on a page titled “CS2 Downloads.” It appears to be down at the moment (we’re getting a “Site Area Temporarily Unavailable” message), but that may be the result of hordes of people trying to snag the software at the same time.
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It’s not easy to remember life before Photoshop. When we do, we think of a world where picture were straightforward, always showing exactly what happened to be in front of the lens when the exposure was taken. But that’s not entirely the case.

Trick photography has been around for centuries, and even though the folks in Victorian times weren’t nearly as concerned with artificially slimming down, they did like to have some photographic fun once in a while. This set of headless photographs from the 19th century is a great example of the kind of ‘fun’ we’re talking about.
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Faking the look of old films is becoming ubiquitous in the world of mobile photo sharing apps, but so far the popular apps have stuck with various films and not older photographic processes. If you want to create a photograph that mimics the look of a wet plate, it’s actually pretty easy to do in Photoshop.
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Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a photograph of you holding yourself up. I hope it will give you a good idea of how I create this type of image so that you can create a similar image yourself! Obviously, this is not the only way to create this type of image, but it is the way I have found most believable, as the connection between the two subjects actually occurs in real life. Enjoy!
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A couple of weeks ago we shared a rumor that today would be the day Adobe officially announced a few major improvements to Photoshop CS6, including support for Apple’s Retina display. Well, as luck (or good sources) would have it, we weren’t wrong. This morning Adobe announced several exciting updates to Photoshop and Creative Cloud.
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Photo-editing wizard Corey Barker of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals wanted a photo of his house decorated with Christmas lights but was too lazy to physically put up the decorations… so he did it in Photoshop. All the colorful lights and decorations you see above were ‘shopped in.
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Last month photographer Chris Crisman entered the photograph above, titled Butterfly Girl, into the World Photography Organization’s 2012 World Photography Awards. It was selected from the thousands of entries as part of a promotional campaign for the contest and in that process was spread out all over the Internet. From the Daily Mail to the Huffington Post, the story about the World Photo Awards and Chris’s photo made the rounds across the web.

In particular, on the UK news site The Daily Mail, the photo generated a ton of comments and sparked some controversy as to whether or not it was appropriate for a photography competition. This caused me to ask myself the question: “What defines a photograph?”
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If Adobe Photoshop tools could work their magic in the real world, what would people use them for? One obvious application would be as a beauty product, which would allow people to ‘shop actual faces instead of photos of faces. Budapest, Hungary-based photographer and graphic designer Flora Borsi recently shot a series of photos that humorously depict how it might work. The project is titled, “Photoshop in Real Life.”
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When photographer Devon Mikale was in high school, he created this lengthy manual for his newspaper class to help others learn how to get started in Photoshop. The high school’s faculty loved it so much that they ended up purchasing it for re-distribution in future classes. Mikale has graciously allowed us to publish the guide here for free.

It’s a lot of images and information, but if you’re just starting out and have been overwhelmed by all the different things you need to learn, this guide will walk you through the fundamentals.
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