postprocessing

Building The Ultimate Photo Editing Workstation

Building a solid workstation is critical to photographers and retouchers. We find ourselves sitting at the desk for 7-10 hours a day to meet deadlines. If you dread going to your editing station, it can make post-processing a chore that you don't look forward to, which means delayed deadlines and unhappy clients.

Landscape Photographer: Why I Don’t Use Global Sliders in Lightroom

When you use Lightroom, do you edit globally or locally? Many (possibly most) people use the global editing sliders liberally when processing an image. But landscape photographer Thomas Heaton's most recent video makes a good case for using mostly local adjustments and leaving those global sliders alone.

Alternatives to Adobe Lightroom in 2019

Adobe recently announced that it would both discontinue downloads of older versions of Creative Cloud apps (which includes Lightroom and Photoshop), and revoke the license for older software. Further, Adobe tweeted that consumers “may face potential claims of infringement by third parties.”

5 Signs You’re Over-Editing Landscape Photos

One of the more difficult aspects of post-processing is identifying when you’re starting to over edit a photo. It’s common knowledge what many of the characteristics of an over-edited image are, but determining when you’ve gone too far, that’s the challenging part. In this 14-minute video, I break down five tips that have helped me to understand and identify when I’m beginning to over process an image.

Using a MIDI Controller with Lightroom for a More Efficient Workflow

Editing images with software like Lightroom typically involves changing parameters like exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and so on for more than 90% of your work. These parameters are controlled using sliders that you have to drag with your mouse -- sliders that emulate physical controls. But why not use such physical controls like sliders or control dials directly?

7 Lightroom Tips to Transform Your Winter Photos

The frigid winter months provide an exceptional opportunity to capture unique photos, but they aren’t the easiest to create due to extreme weather conditions and the many post-processing nuances related to snowy winter photography. In this 14-minute video, I review 7 Lightroom tips that have helped me along the way with my winter post-processing workflow.

How to Shoot Portraits in Dappled Light

I’ve been photographing weddings for 10 years now, so I’ve seen and dealt with nearly every lighting scenario possible, from a dark church with no windows, to a wedding ceremony at high noon with not a cloud in sight. But one thing most photographers don’t know is how to photograph in dappled light!

6 Lightroom Tips to Create Moody Landscape Photos

It seems the moody edit trend has been going strong for quite a few years now and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down. There’s probably not a better time of the year to capture moody landscape photos than the winter months.

10 Photoshop Hacks for Portraits

Photographer Irene Rudnyk made this 22-minute video to share her top 10 Photoshop hacks when working on portraits. These are tips and tricks Rudnyk says she uses all the time on all of her photos.

3 Tips for Choosing Between B&W and Color

Something I’ve always found difficult was knowing when an image should be converted to black and white and when it should be left in color. It’s one of the more contested discussions in photography and there really isn’t a “black and white” or cut and dry answer to it. After much trial and error, I’ve come up with three questions that I consistently ask myself when trying to determine if a color image is a good candidate for B&W.

5 Post-Processing Mistakes Beginner Photographers Make

Looking back at my early photography, I shake my head in embarrassment. I know I should be proud of the fact that I’ve come a long way since then, but it’s hard not to notice just how poorly processed those images are. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Testing the Speed Boost in Luminar’s Jupiter Update

Luminar has a new update, and it’s fast! Although I recently published an extensive review of raw processors that included Luminar 2018 v1.1, the new update called Jupiter (v1.2) has significant changes and improvements. I believe it warrants an updated review covering the important changes. So here it is.

Here’s the Best Way to Match Tones in Composite Photos

One of the most common difficulties with compositing photos is having the color tones of the different parts of the image match. This can be tricky to achieve, but this 10-minute tutorial by Photoshop expert Antti Karppinen shows a powerful way you can do it using a Selective Color adjustment mask.

The Difference Between Vibrance and Saturation

To the untrained eye, the difference between the vibrance and saturation sliders is not immediately obvious. Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel explains the subtle difference between these two useful tools in this 5-minute video.

5 Ways to Change the Color of Anything in Photoshop

Changing the color of an object using Photoshop is a typical use case for the software, and there are many ways to do it. This 20-minute video from Nathaniel Dodson of tutvid that examines 5 separate ways to re-color or add color to objects.

Using LAB Color in Photoshop to Add Color and Punch to Photos

The LAB color space is particularly useful for boosting colors and definition in images due to the way it handles colors when compared to RGB and CMYK. Rather than describing how colors should appear on a screen or in print, LAB is designed to approximate human vision. Colin Smith of photoshopCAFE shows in this video how this color space can be utilized in Photoshop to easily improve your images.

Using Focus Stacking on Landscapes for Extreme Depth of Field

Focus stacking is a technique typically used in macro shots to achieve a large depth of field. It’s a relatively simple concept: take many images focused at slightly different distances and combine the sharp portions to a single image in post. This 6-minute video from landscape photographer Mark Denney will show you how to utilise the technique in landscape photography.

3 Lightroom Tricks That Will Change How You Edit Photos

Lightroom is a fairly straightforward and simple piece of software to get your head around. But, like anything, there are always shortcuts and tricks you can use to improve and streamline your workflow. In this 6-minute video from Travis Transient, try out these 3 top tips for making Lightroom life flow more smoothly.

Macphun Luminar is Now on Windows: Get the Free Beta

Macphun announced earlier this year that it will be releasing its popular photography software for Windows after focusing on Mac up until now. Today the company made its first big move by launching a free public beta version of Luminar for Windows.

Adobe Admits Lightroom is Slow, Says Speeding It Up Is Top Priority

If you're a photographer who's frustrated with Lightroom running slowly (even on a powerful computer), you're not alone -- it's a struggle shared by many, many people who use the program. But hope may be on the horizon. Adobe has just taken the rare step of publicly admitting Lightroom's performance issues and says fixing it is the company's top priority.

Quick Tip: Refining Local Adjustments in Lightroom

Making local adjustments in Lightroom can be a great way to bring attention to a specific part of your image, but they lack an opacity slider to retroactively change the strength of the effect. This 4-minute video shows you how to tweak the impact of your adjustments after they’ve been applied.

This Website Reveals How JPEG Photos Were Edited in Lightroom

As photographers, we’re always interested in how other people edit their photos to achieve a certain look. Pixel Peeper is a new website that can take a JPEG and tell you exactly how it was edited in Lightroom, along with the camera model, lens, and settings -- as long as that info is found in the file's EXIF data.