Tutorials

Whether you are a beginning photographer or a seasoned professional, there are always new things to learn and more areas to improve in. PetaPixel regularly publishes in-depth tutorials on a wide range of subjects, from Photoshop tips and post-processing techniques to ideas on building your own cameras and do-it-yourself equipment.

Simple Lightroom Trick Helps You Find Sensor Spots (or Anything Else) in Your Photos

Using Lightroom to remove spots caused by sensor dust is a pretty straight forward process: just click "Visualize Spots" and use the Spot Removal tool, right? Well, photographer Anthony Morganti thinks that he's discovered a better way, and in the video above he shows you a "hidden" Lightroom trick that makes it easy to systematically search your images for sensor spots... or anything else for that matter.

Use Composition to Enhance Your Candid Photos

Composition doesn't make a candid, but a good composition can enhance it. It can amplify what you feel about the subject matter or invoke a reaction all on its own. Today I’m going to share with you 5 tips on composition to enhance your candids.

Four Modern and Creative Christmas Portrait Ideas in Two Minutes

Tajreen Hedayet of Tajreen&Co is back with a great holiday portrait tutorial that won't waste your time. In just two minutes (actually less) Hedayet covers four creative Christmas portrait ideas for anyone who wants to create some photos with a "commercial and catalog feel" this holiday season.

5 Creative Portraits in a Crappy Parking Lot

You don’t always get perfect locations or circumstances on every shoot, so in this video, we wanted to show you how to achieve 5 creative and unique portraits in a small parking lot.

A Simple One-Light Portrait Setup Every Photographer Should Master

Portrait photographer Miguel Quiles' most recent video breaks down his favorite one-light setup for portraits. The tutorial is perfect for beginners who are just getting started with flash photography—not only is it easy to replicate, but having a one-light setup in your back pocket is a must as a portrait photographer.

Photoshop 101: How to Create a Stop Motion Animation

The latest episode of Adobe's YouTube series "3 2 1 Photoshop" is for anybody who wants to get into stop motion photography, but has no idea how to actually create a simple animation from a series of still photos.

How to Build a Low Budget Photography Set

For my latest project, "we are the dead," I decided to build a room in which to shoot my pictures. I had absolutely no idea how to do this, but there were some facts I needed to consider.

How to Price Your First Photo Shoot

If photography is your chosen career path or even just a hobby, at some point, someone is going to ask you to take some photographs in exchange for a paycheck.

How to Photograph Christmas Light Displays

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Streets are filled with joyful songs and gorgeous light displays. Some Christmas trees and illuminations are so large that photographing them can be tricky. Next are some tips and composition ideas, with examples, that can help you take better photos this holiday season.

A $60 DIY Photo Ceiling Rail Lighting System

What started off as a quick lighting test in my garage has turned into a full investigation and installation of my own DIY photography ceiling rail system. My shooting space measures 7x10 feet (2x3m) -- not a great space for shooting portraits.

How to Shoot UV ‘Liquid Flow’ Photos

Dropping colored milk into water and photographing the effects is nothing new – these experiments have existed for decades and can yield some very interesting abstract images. The technique can be brought into the “mad scientist” realm by switching gears slightly – using UV flashlights and fluorescing ink, we can make it glow!

RAID/NAS/DAS for Photographers on a Budget

Not everyone needs the massive terabytes of storage that are possible with a RAID/NAS/DAS storage device. But you don’t need to fill up all the drive slots in one of these devices to get the advantages offered. This article is going to look at how to set up a storage device similar to offerings from Synology and Drobo with a small amount of storage (4-8TB) that gives you the benefits of the RAID redundant storage now with room to grow with your storage needs.

Why Rent a Photo Studio? A Look at the Pros and Cons

If you are like a lot of photographers, you are used to shooting outdoors at a park, the beach or on the city streets somewhere. You guerrilla shoot in interesting locations with whatever gear you have or feel you can get away with.

How to Get Great-Looking Skin Tones in Lightroom

Ryan Breitkreutz over at Signature Edits has created a useful tutorial that dives into one of the most critical aspects of portrait photography: skin tones. In this 30-minute video, he shares some his personal tips and techniques for capturing natural-looking skin tones, first in-camera, and then in Lightroom.

Street Photography 101: Shooting from the Hip

In this article, I'm going to share my basics of shooting from the hip, a fun way to get candid, up-close street photos. We’ll cover camera settings, what to look for, and other techniques along the way. Let’s get into it!

How to Win at YouTube as a Photographer: Advice from the Pros

So you've just finished school and now you have a diploma to certify and declare that you're a bona fide photographer/filmmaker. Or you could be an experienced professional who is just about to wrap your latest gig and now it's time to reach out to your network in search of the next job.

Dodging and Burning in Lightroom to Transform Your Landscape Photos

There’s a common misconception among beginner photographers, especially those that are just getting started with post-processing and editing their landscape photos. This mistaken belief is that dodging and burning is a highly complex procedure that should only be attempted by seasoned professionals and Photoshop wizards -- this belief could not be further from the truth!

5 Common Portrait Photography Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Portrait photographer Miguel Quiles is back with another useful video for aspiring portrait photographers. This time, he's put together a video outlining the five most common portrait photography mistakes that he's seen over the years, and how he suggests that beginners avoid or fix them.

Match Cuts Part 2: How to Create Compelling Transitions

Filmmaker Daniel DeArco is back with the promised Part 2 of his tutorial on creating cool and compelling "match cuts" to up your transition game. In Part 1, he showed you how he captured the three shots that he would be using to create the match cut; in Part 2, he takes us the rest of the way there in post.

How to Create Killer Match Cuts like Daniel DeArco

Creative consultant and talented videographer Daniel DeArco is one of the best there is at creating impressive transitions from shot-to-shot in his videos. In his latest video, he'll take you behind the scenes to show you exactly how he created one of the coolest cuts in his recent empathy video.

Back to Basics: A Beginner’s Guide to Capturing ‘Moody’ Portraits

Rachel and Daniel of Mango Street—one of the most popular photography channels on YouTube—have put together a great, straight-to-the-point guide to capturing that "moody" style of portrait that's become a popular counter-point to the "dreamy" overexposed look that often dominates lifestyle imagery.

Macro Photography Trick: Create ‘Rainbow Flares’ with a CD

The glorious colors of summer are fading away, and the windy weather makes outdoor macro photography difficult. In other words, it’s the perfect time to take photography inside and stage creative photos with things around the house.

This Crash Course Will Help You Master Luminosity and Luminosity Masks

Photoshop expert Sid Vasandani of StyleMyPic has put together a fantastic, in-depth look at luminosity masks that could significantly speed up your photo editing workflow. If you don't understand luminosity or you've never used luminosity masks, this tutorial could legitimately change the way you make selections.

A Beginner’s Guide to Black and White Photography

Video journalist Logan Baker over at Shutterstock put together a handy primer for anybody who is looking to get into black-and-white photography for the first time. The tutorial amounts to an easy-to-follow beginner's guide that we highly recommend you check out if you're just getting started in this genre.

How to Double the Resolution of Your Smartphone Photos

"Super-resolution" and "pixel-shift" photography isn't just possible if you have a fancy camera that can move the sensor 1 pixel between shots. As Usman Dawood of Sonder Creative demonstrates in this video, you can even do it with your run-of-the-mill smartphone, shooting hand-held.

5 Tips for Shooting ‘Explosive’ Toy Photos on a Budget

Kirk Schwarz over at Practical Photography recently put together a short tips video for anybody who wants to get into toy photography. If you've never taken these kinds of photos but have always wanted to try, you'll find Schwarz' tips for shooting an "explosive" toy photo on a budget in the video above.

3 Often-Overlooked Tips for Perfect In-Camera Exposures

There is a lot to dive into when it comes to perfecting and understanding exposure. In this video and article (part one of a two-part series), we’ll be covering important in-camera functionalities such as using the Highlight Alert, your Histogram, how to set up Display Brightness, as well as the importance of shooting a flat Picture Style to get the right information.

How to Make a DIY Wood Photography Backdrop

Want a tabletop wooden backdrop you can use for photographing everything from products to babies? Here's a 10.5-minute video by Erik Tande of DIY done wrong showing how you can make your own for basically zero cost.

The Best Flash Diffusers for Macro Photography

Light macro photographs can be tricky. If you are a beginning macro photographer and do not know where to start when it comes to using a speedlight to illuminate your subjects, here is a complete guide to different flash diffusers you can use for macro photos.

Photo Hack: Use an IKEA Lampshade to Photograph Reflective Products

Dustin Dolby from Workphlo is great at creating simple, to-the-point photography tutorials that can really up your product photography game. And in his latest creation, he shows you how a cheap IKEA lampshade is actually a great, all-in-one diffuser solution when photographing reflective products—in his case, a watch.

How to Shoot Explosive Toy Photos

Toy photography is a really fun way to create really epic-looking images on a tiny scale. It really hones your skills as a photographer, as lighting and action are what makes this look so dynamic and amazing.

Shooting 250MP Portraits with a 42MP Sony a7R II

The latest Sony cameras have the ability to shoot "pixel shift" images that create an ultra-high-resolution version of your scene. But what if you don't have a Sony a7R III or IV? Do what wedding photographer Ben of Bach Photography does in this video and steal a technique from landscape photographers.

Four Subtle Lightroom Adjustments for Better Portraits

If you're looking for a quick set of useful techniques that will help improve your portrait photography, this video from Tajreen Hedayet of Tajreen&Co is a great resource. In just four minutes she covers four subtle-but-impactful Lightroom adjustments that you can use to create more professional-looking portraits.

How to Shoot Handheld Focus Stacks for Macro Photography

Handheld focus stacking is a brilliant solution for many scenarios. It saves you all the troubles of using a focusing rail in the field and provides a maximum of flexibility. Whenever you need more depth of field than you can get with trading off image quality, this is the way to work around it.

How to Create a Focus Stack in Photoshop

Did you know that Photoshop has a built-in focus stacking function? This article explains about how it works and how to make the most of it.

Beginner’s Guide to Focus Stacking for Macro Photography

One of the greatest challenges in macro photography is the depth of field, or DOF for short. Not only does the zone of sharpness drastically fall off as we get closer to our subjects, other factors such as the lack of light and diffraction softening make it tricky to use narrow apertures on top of that.

A 10-Minute Guide to Getting Started in Astrophotography

Photographer Trevor Jones of AstroBackyard started doing astrophotography back in 2010 using his smartphone and point-and-shoot camera. After working on his craft for nearly a decade, Jones just made this 10-minute video guide sharing what he would do if he were starting out in astrophotography all over again today.

The 7 Hardest Parts of Photography (and How to Conquer Them)

Photographer Nigel Danson recently asked his 50,000+ followers on Instagram -- most of which are outdoor and landscape photographers -- what they think the hardest part of photography is. After getting back 1,827 responses, Danson made this 20-minute video to share the responses.