Tutorials

Want an ultimate single-page cheat sheet for looking up keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC? The design team over at setupablogtoday have created just that: massive sheets that you can study and explore to your hearts content.

COOPH just released this short 3-minute video in which adventure photographer Ray Demski shares a number of helpful tips for travel photography. It covers everything from the preparation stage (e.g. making your camera look nasty and putting your contact info on it) to shooting (e.g. looking for cool natural frames) to making sure your data is safe.

Here's a quick look at how I created some homemade "petzval swirl" bokeh that mimics photos taken with the new Petzval 58 Bokeh Control Art lens.

Editor's note: This DIY tutorial uses a specific product called Compound 9, but you could use the same ideas/concepts with different materials and/or objects.

A few weeks ago, Colin Devroe, a friend from Twitter, introduced me to the concept of a panoselfie when he created a Flickr group for it and tweeted at me.

Want to play around with pinhole photography by building your own cardboard camera? Photographer Raymundo Panduro of Pixel Análogo has just released a free template for building a 35mm sprocket camera.

Freelensing is the use of a lens decoupled from your camera, manual orienting the lens on various angles to tilt and shift the lens to alter the focal plane. Freelensing is a great method of isolating your subject or creating interest in an otherwise flat or busy scene. This technique has been around for ages but helps achieve a similar look to that created by a tilt-shift lens used often in wedding photography.

Need to do a quick tracking shot on a table but don't have any dedicated camera equipment for doing so? A book and some fine powder can be a cheap and easy way to get the shot in a pinch.

One of the most important aspects of fine art macro photography is capturing a non-distracting background so your subject stands out. I tend to like clean and colorful backgrounds, but there are situations where dark backgrounds may be desirable. This article will showcase one method of how to capture black backgrounds in macro photography. We’ll take a look at using flash falloff.

My name is Kyle Hart, and I'm the founder of Rhino Camera Gear. In this post, I'll be sharing an easy technique for combining a real-time camera move with a time-lapse to create a simple composite without doing any rotoscoping.

Having an overhead camera rig can be useful for certain types of photography, including product shots, how-to images, and food photos. If you enjoy the challenge and joy of building your own equipment when you can, an overhead rig is another opportunity to do so. You can create one with some cheap materials and some basic workshop skills.

In this post, I'll share a trick I use to get some adjustments "beyond" +100 or -100 in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.

Indian photographer Kunal Daswani created this short and sweet beginner's tutorial on how you can easily shoot a product photo using natural window light and a few sheets of white printer paper.

Here's a 10-minute video in which well-known wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer shares 5 of his top tips for lighting in wedding photography. He covers bouncing the light, backlighting, turning a flash into a "light grenade," moving light closer, and continuous lighting.

I recently had the absolute pleasure of meeting and shooting with Mackenzie Johnson! Today I'm going to share how I turned my portrait of her into a painting. Not everyone is a painter, but with a little time and patience -- and Photoshop -- I believe anyone can achieve this effect.

In video productions, microphones are often covered with a synthetic fur cover that's commonly referred to as a "dead cat" or "windmuff." The hairs block wind from hitting the microphone, greatly reducing the amount of wind noise that gets recorded.

Before getting on a plane for a vacation in Monaco recently, I knew that I wanted to do something different from the previous ‘holiday highlight’ videos that I've done before. We were only in Monaco for a few days and despite having an amazing time, the footage I got wasn't particularly exciting. I decided that I probably wouldn't end up doing anything with it unless I thought of an 'edge'.

If you're a Nikon shooter who wants a better grasp of how your camera's autofocus settings work, check out this 11-minute video by Steve Perry of Backcountry Gallery. He runs through all the most critical aspects of the AF system, from the types of AF (e.g. single, dynamic, group) to how to set your custom functions to suit your system to your style of shooting.

I’m what I’d call a professional hobbyist when it comes to photography. I try to make it my life, but my passion sometimes overrides my business sense for it.

Photographer Michael Zelbel of Good Light Magazine published this short video tutorial on how you can use a simple white shopping bag as a cheap way to add soft off-camera lighting to your portraits.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to achieve high magnification in your photography, you need to know about the reverse lens macro photography technique. Reverse lens macro photography has allowed me to achieve the magnification I couldn’t come close to with my more expensive equipment.

Want to try your hand at creating a solargraph? Photographer Justin Quinnell recorded this informative and humorous 14-minute video tutorial on how you can create a pinhole camera for 6-month-long exposures using only a beer can, some photo paper, a pin, and lots of gaffer tape (which Quinnell calls the "elixir of life").

Photographer Chris Lambeth offers this short and sweet 3-minute tutorial on how you can use a Levels adjustment layer in Photoshop to reveal subtle sensor dust spots in your photos. Dragging the Levels sliders helps make the spots pop out of the image, allowing you to easily select and edit them out in the base image.

Adobe Lightroom CC/6 has been a hot topic in the photo community ever since it was announced a week ago. Although most discussions have focused on the "big" features such as HDR, panoramas, and performance, I have personally found one small addition to be the most useful new feature in my own workflow. I'm talking about the new "Add to Collection" option -- it's a bigger time saver and organizational boost for me than anything else that was introduced.

While I strongly prefer adding creative touches to my photos with physical tricks and effects -- such as using dry ice for fog -- sometimes I do need some digital manipulation done in Photoshop. Here is my technique for adding some fake fog to a photo in just 4 easy steps.

Here's a helpful little infographic that has been floating around the Web. It's a simple look at how the "exposure triangle" -- aperture, shutter speed, and ISO -- affect the outcome of photographs. It's not a complete picture, of course (for example, it doesn't say why you'd ever choose a higher ISO versus a lower one), but it could be a nice illustrated reference for those just starting out in photography.

Photoshop teacher Howard Pinsky shares this quick 9-minute video tutorial on how you can use Photoshop to repair old and damaged photos. The restoration is done using the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and Clone Stamp tools.

Want a portable and powerful LED light for illuminating your shots? The "Sun-Blaster" is a 1000 watt equivalent LED flashlight that you can build yourself for around $40.

Travel photographer Jimmy McIntyre created this short 3-minute video tutorial to share a trick for adjusting the brightness of specific colors in your shot without affecting their saturation.

The other night I came across the work of photographer Victoria Will, who made real tintype portraits of some actors who attended this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

A while back I got my hands on my first tilt-shift lens. Since then I have carried it with me nearly every day, grocery shopping and subway riding – you name it. It’s quite a special and fascinating piece of glass even having aged 43 years.

I’ve always found photos of star trails -- the arcs the stars paint across the sky as the earth turns -- fascinating. They’re one of the things that we can “see” with a camera that we can’t see with our eyes. Technology has changed how we shoot star trails, making star trail shots in locations we previously thought impossible possible.

Want to give your photographs a "Hollywood movie" look? Here's a fantastic 25-minute tutorial on how to do cinematic color grading on your photographs using Photoshop. The technique involves using the Curves tool to create a teal-orange look, a color scheme that is very prevalent in movies released in recent years.

Raspberry Pi project platform PiJuice is currently raising funds for its portable module on Kickstarter. As a demo of its capabilities, the team has created a step-by-step tutorial showing how the product can be used to build a DIY Raspberry Pi compact digital camera.

If you're just getting started in learning how to light your shot with flashes, you may be confused about the terms "high speed sync" and "flash duration." Here's a helpful 6-minute primer in which photographer Daniel Norton explains what these two concepts are, how they differ, and which situations they come in handy for.

In my mind, there are three important elements of a photograph. Lighting, Composition and Moment. Every picture that I love has these elements, in varying amounts. A great picture may have strength in all three areas, or it may be, for example, such an emotional moment that it overpowers poor composition or light.

Here's an idea for a fun weekend project and/or personalized gift: make some custom candles that feature your photographs. It's actually incredibly easy, and you may already have the necessary materials lying around at home.

A few years ago, we wrote about how phones can be used as negative film strip viewers by simply inverting the screens. Swedish photographer Adam af Ekenstam took the idea a step further by using an iPad and iPhone together as a simple yet powerful negative viewing station.

UK-based glamour photographer Markp created this short video tutorial on how he sharpens photos captured at high ISOs in Photoshop without adding more noise to the image. His technique involves creating a High Pass duplicate layer of the photo, desaturating it and reducing noise on it, sharpening that layer, and then blending it into the original photo with Photoshop's "Linear Light" blend mode.

Steve Perry of Backcountry Gallery offers this short Photoshop tutorial on how you can enhance the eyes of your wildlife subjects and make them pop. He uses a Curves layer, a layer mask, and a brush to paint in some brightness. "When it comes to wildlife, it's all about the eyes," Perry says. Now that's a bright eyed deer.

Some couples are naturals when it comes to posing gracefully for the camera, while others may be more awkward and require more guidance from the photographer. Here's a short video in which wedding photographer Jasmine Star shares 3 simple but helpful tips she's learned over the years for helping create natural moments between couples. She suggests that you should focus on: (1) touch, (2) appendages, and (3) physical tension.

Here’s a fun and very easy way to do professional product photography light painting using your iPhone, or any other phone or tablet for that matter. The bigger the screen the better the results, but a standard phone screen will absolutely do the job.

Photoshop's Auto Color adjustment is a simple way to color correct a photo in just a couple of clicks, but it doesn't always produce the look you're going for. Here's a short tutorial on another easy way to do color correction that puts a little more control back in your hands without making things difficult.

Photographer Josh Cripps of Professional Photography Tips made this short and sweet introductory tutorial on how you can use 10-stop neutral density filters to capture long exposure photos in bright daylight. These filters drastically reduce the amount of light hitting your lens, allowing you to blur slow-moving things in your scene (e.g. clouds or streams).

I was working on a commissioned artwork in Photoshop today and I noticed something. I keep my left hand over the shift key pretty much the entire time I am working in PS. That little button does a LOT. So I thought I would take some time and show you guys what you have been missing out on if you haven’t taken advantage of shift key functionalities in PS before.

Here's a tutorial by New York City-based photographer Jeff Rojas that offers a crash course on how to use the Liquify Filter in Photoshop to make realistic retouches to your images.

Note: This is part two of a series on depth of field. you can read part one here.

Photographer Levi Bettweiser of the Rescued Film Project regularly processes large batches of old films of different styles and eras. Earlier this year he received quite a bit of attention after finding, processing, and sharing 31 rolls of undeveloped film from World War II.

Want a better understanding of how Photoshop's sharpening filters work and how to best use them? Here's a tutorial in which Photoshop expert Deke McClelland discusses using Photoshop's features to bring out clearer details in your digital photographs. McClelland discusses all the sharpening filters found in the Sharpen menu in Photoshop (e.g. the one-click sharpening filters, Unsharp Mask, and Smart Sharpen), as well as the Sharpening panel found in Adobe Camera Raw.

A white seamless background is a staple of photography and video studios. Photographer Zack Arias of DEDPXL has created a fantastic (and lengthy) two-part tutorial on the basics of the setup.