If you were wanting to have your mind blown today, the video above might do it. It's a demonstration of a piece of 3D object extraction and manipulation software that made its debut at SIGGRAPH 2013, and it may just offer a glimpse into the future of photo manipulation.
Swedish photographer and retouch artist Erik Johansson creates amazing photo manipulations -- in fact, we've actually featured his work before. This, however, is the first time we've had the opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at how these manipulations come together.
Need to send someone some RAW photographs but hate the fact that they weigh tens of megabytes each? You can actually resize the files to smaller sizes quite easily in Lightroom, making sending small copies back and forth a snap.
As post-production software continues to become more and more powerful, researchers are doing their best to keep up by developing new methods of spotting digital photo fakes. In the past, we've seen that noise patterns and even Twitter trends can help spot fakes, but a new method out of UC Berkeley is taking a look at something else entirely: the shadows.
Back in mid-June, Yahoo! purchased Ghostbird and pulled the company's popular advanced mobile editing app PhotoForge off of the app store. If you weren't one of the lucky ones who purchased the app before it got pulled and you've been looking for a suitable alternative, look no further: Leonardo has you covered.
Check out this portrait of the hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse by photographer Paul Mobley and digital artist Mike Campau. Can you tell how it was created?
Alien Skin Software's Exposure 5 is a starting point for building stylish and creative photos that will impress even the harshest of critics. With hundreds of ideas to pick, layer and build upon there's really no limit to what you can make. Opening an image for the first time in Exposure 5 may prove a little overwhelming with the vast array of filters there are to tinker with. Everything from a subtle film look still available at your local shop to the original daguerreotype feel. It is …
I had the opportunity to photograph the newest dormitory on the Florida International University campus a couple of nights ago and I thought I would share a little insight on the process of lighting such a large structure.
Photography purists might want to look away on this one. The above video is a 9 minute time-lapse that speeds up 7+ hours worth of Photoshop CC work. That work was spent creating an intense composite that wound up consisting of 284 layers before it was all said and done.
Photographers are intimately familiar with the myriad filters available to them through Photoshop. Nothing like the Instagram-style "filters" we've come to hear about more and more often, these have names like Grain, Diffuse, Ocean Ripple and Pinch.
Digital image editing technology -- culturally controversial uses aside -- has enabled us to do some pretty amazing things. In the past, we shared a video that showed how the Internet came together to restore a WWII veteran's Navy photo to its former glory.
One of the great workflow possibilities that was opened up by the advent of digital photography is the ability to easily create panoramic images. It's become trivially easy to generate panorama images, so much so that it's even become an integrated feature into smartphones.
You know those computers in Minority Report and Iron Man that are completely controlled through hand gestures? One day soon, we may all be using Photoshop in the same way.
I did my first surreal photoshoot with a model this past weekend. Here's a breakdown of the process from start to finish.
Photographers still irked about about Adobe's decision to make Photoshop rental-only have a new alternative with the re-release of the pioneering LightZone application as a free, open-source program for Windows, Linux and (eventually) Mac OS.
Full disclosure: I've never done commercial photography and don't exactly know what goes into making a picture for an advertisement. The only knowledge I have on this subject is the hours of behind the scenes work I’ve watched, the hundreds of magazines, blogs and tutorials I’ve read and, obviously, the billions of ads that have bombarded my field of view since the first moment I began to comprehend visual information.
The know-how to properly shoot day-to-night or night-to-day when you're capturing a time-lapse can add a special something to your final product, but the task may seem daunting at first. That's why photographer Preston Kanak has put together this comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorial that discusses three approaches to shooting the perfect day-to-night time-lapse.
Mystery solved: Beyonce is so riled up about restricting photographer access because she's hell-bent on projecting an image somewhere between "Photoshopped" and "impossible." …
There are two types of clipping you probably try to avoid introducing into your images during post-production: luminosity clipping (when the brightest areas of an image become white, or when the darkest areas become black), and channel clipping (when the data within an individual channel becomes compromised). Both forms – unless you've made a deliberate decision to clip your data – are something to avoid.
Photographer Jeff Cable has come a long way from his first few gigs shooting Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in San Francisco. Mostly sports-related, his résumé now includes images from the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, a stint as the official Team USA Hockey photographer during the 2010 games in Vancouver and the Team USA Water Polo photographer during the 2012 games in London.
The California government health agency First 5 was created to help "nurture and protect our most precious resource -- our children." As such, one of their programs aims to stop childhood obesity by reaching out to parents and educating them about proper nutrition.
When it comes to viewing and editing RAW photos, many photographers turn to editing software such as Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Aperture. But one developer hopes to harness the power behind web browsers to view -- and potentially edit -- RAW image files.
Self-taught Photoshop hobbyist Patrick Thorendahl has an interesting pastime that has gotten him a lot of media attention as of late: he likes to 'shop himself into photos of A-list celebrities. The resulting shots have gone viral and earned him some 50,000+ followers on Instagram.
Traditionally, a photographer's post-processing workflow does not include a web browser, but rather, tools like Lightroom and Aperture. Pics.io is hoping to change that, and is working to bring serious RAW picture editing and collaborating to the web browser.
Between a recent post here on PetaPixel about the Beauty of Space Photography, and my own experiments on blending series of images using averaging techniques, I noticed some rather interesting alignments in technique.
Here's a tool you may not have heard about but may useful at some time in the future. It's called Clipping Magic, and it's designed to remove backgrounds from user-uploaded pictures.
Redditor Steven Withey's grandfather Derek is an 87-year-old WWII veteran who served in the Royal Navy, and a little while back he showed his grandson a badly damaged Navy photo (of a photo) of himself as a 20-year-old.
Dr. Neal Krawetz, a computer science PhD who specializes in non-classical computer forensics, online profiling, and computer security, made some pretty damning claims in a blog post recently. After taking a close look at Paul Hansen World Press Photo 2012 winner (seen above), he concluded that it was "a digital composite that was significantly reworked."
North Korea has a history of Photoshop fails, so you think the country's neighbor to the south would take heed and keep a close watch on manipulation. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case, as the above photo painfully clearly illustrates.
A couple of weeks ago, we shared a sneak peek of Adobe's upcoming Shake Reduction Tool for Photoshop that has been dropping jaws ever since an advanced preview was debuted all the way back in October of 2011. The tool selects a section of the image, uses some complicated calculations to determine how the camera was moving when the photo was taken, and then remove the blur -- pretty incredible stuff.
Tablet computers may soon rival desktop computers in RAW editing potential. Adobe has revealed that it's working on bringing Lightroom-style photo editing to tablet devices, and the software would include powerful RAW photo editing features that are currently found only in the desktop versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.
Scouring through a huge number of photos and editing all of the 'winners' can be a tiring task, especially when you consider that one day may consist of hundreds or even thousands of photos. A great workflow can help significantly expedite that process, and fortunately for us, pro photographer Nick Fancher has chosen to share his.
In addition to taking beautiful fashion photos, Serbian born photographer Elena Jasic also occasionally uploads a tutorial or two to her YouTube channel. One that has gotten some attention lately is this simple video that offers one way to dodge and burn non-destructively in Photoshop.
From the very first version of Lightroom in 2006, Adobe has been releasing public betas prior to shipping to make sure that the final product has all of the kinks worked out, and this year is no exception. Earlier today, Adobe released the public beta of its upcoming Lightroom 5, complete with video and photo examples of a few exciting new features.
Following on the heels of a similar announcement by Adobe itself, design marketplace Creative Market has announced that it too has set up an in-app marketplace for Photoshop users. Out now, Creative Market's Photoshop extension allows users to browse and buy from the company's massive catalog of templates, fonts, infographics and more without ever leaving the comfort of Photoshop.
NBC recently received some criticism for distributing the above photo of Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon to several news outlets -- some of which used it on their front page -- without disclosing that the background and road in the image were fake. Being an entertainment outlet, however, they were granted a pass; the fakery was obvious and it was the news outlet's job to figure it out and disclose it to their readers.
Amateurs just getting into post-processing sometimes opt to purchase the much cheaper Photoshop Elements over spending the hundreds more it would cost to get the industry standard pro version. Unfortunately, the gap in features between Elements and the upgrade leaves a lot to be desired, which is why the ElementsXXL plug-in came to be.
When Google acquired Nik Software back in September, the photographic community took it as a sign that the internet giant was focusing more intently on our passion. But last week, when Google announced it would be pulling support for the desktop version of Nik's popular mobile editor Snapseed, the same people wondered if this spelled the end of the rest of Nik's well-respected suite of plugins.
Some people have been asking for tips on how to do star trails. There seems to be a few misconceptions and a few different methods. Here's a tutorial on my personal technique.
Unsharp Mask: the sharpening filter of choice for photographers everywhere. It’s a fantastic tool that can really take an image to the next level when used correctly and I’m here to tell you that you should never use it again. That’s right, bid it a fond adieu and stop using Unsharp Mask. Forever.
In February 2012, Adobe launched a photo editing app for Android and iOS tablets called Photoshop Touch. The software price priced at $10, and offers many of Photoshop's core features in a touch-based interface.
Up. That’s all you need to say. Last November, we took on a project with Wired UK magazine to photograph Richard Branson’s latest venture in attempting to conquer the final frontier: space. We spent the good part of a week in the deserts of New Mexico and California, photographing the spaces and places, the infrastructure, the people, and ultimately Sir Richard himself.
The vast majority of my photographic work is environmental portraiture, corporate and editorial photography, and interiors, some of my commercial photography does include product photos. Quite honestly, some of this stuff is pretty straightforward, take a nice representative image of the product on a clean white backdrop so it integrates onto a website (also white) seamlessly. Sometimes a client gives me a bit more artistic license, and sometimes I get to do a shoot that's just for me.
French photographer Serge Ramelli made this short 30-minute tutorial that teaches the basics of using Lightroom 4 to post-process your digital photographs. If you're just getting into using Lightroom and shooting in RAW, it's a helpful primer that will allow you to hit the ground running.
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.
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!
Here's a humorous and lighthearted 5-minute video titled, "Fafa's Photoshop Tutorial." Created by the comedy series Glove and Boots, it's a short and sweet introduction to using layers in Photoshop... taught by puppets. Think Sesame Street meets Scott Kelby.
When Space Shuttle Endeavour was making low level flyovers of famous landmarks across the United States a couple of months ago, Adobe Lightroom Quality Engineer Ben Warde was able to photograph it flying by the Golden Gate Bridge. The 10-minute video above shows how Warde post-processed one of his best shots from that day using basic Lightroom adjustments. While the information may be basic for many of you, it should be helpful for people who are just starting out with programs like Lightroom, …
Here's a great introductory retouching tutorial by photographer Sara Kiesling, who writes, …
Visual Supply Co (AKA VSCO), best known for its film emulation software, has launched a new product that's designed to reduce the time you spend post-processing your images in Adobe Lightroom. VSCO Keys is a tool that adds powerful and customizable keyboard shortcuts to Lightroom 3 and 4. You can assign keys to the various sliders in the program, allowing you to keep your hands off your mouse during photo editing.
