Landscapes aren't particularly hard to Photoshop, as really there is minimal work to be done, unlike portraiture. Well it depends if you are creating an image from a number of pictures, but I dont do this because it seems kind of deceitful to the viewer.

Anyway this will be a quick and easy tute on how I Photoshop my landscapes. I don't use it on every landscape, of course, but it is good for enhancing the colours in sunsets.

step one: open your image, I took this one earlier tonight.


Pretty ok, but the colours are kind of washed out (I like to overexpose a little so to get detail in the ground). A grad filter would enhance the sky colour, but what about the water? So to fix this duplicate the layer, and Gaussian blur this layer, at about 20. Then set this layer to soft light. I get something looking like this.


If you are pressed for time, you can leave it like this, or add a simple curves adjustment. But I will continue because thats one thing I got plenty of, time ! Anyway. I dont like the blurred vegetation so add a layer mask (the rectangle like box below your layers) and paint away with a black brush. See tip #7...

Hello.

Today we are going to cover black and white (B&W) conversions. Converting images to B&W is a powerful tool, and there are many different ways to do it, each with a different look. These processes are for Photoshop CS2.

There are endless options, but I will cover four major, flexible conversions in this tutorial. They are the Channel Mixer, LAB Conversion, and the Greg Gorman and Daniel Diaz b&w conversion methods.

After going through these steps, it would be a good idea to review my tutorial on Actions, as it will make your life easier to automate these conversions.

I will mention this again, but it's important to note that there is no one right conversion. I often try several different conversions on the one image, as it is not always clear what the image will look like until each is applied. And you can combine two different conversions into one, using Layer Masks. For now, let's focus on the conversions themselves.

One final note - I would recommend doing most of your editing on the image before converting it to black and white - cropping, curves, cloning, removing distortion, etc.

Channel Mixer

Using the Channel Mixer is probably the easiest way to do b&w conversions, and it's flexible, too. When trying different b&w methods on an image, I usually turn to this one first. ...

Hi there.

I've been looking forward to doing this tutorial since I started the blog. We will be covering Curves - including adjusting brightness and contrast with simple and complex curves, and adjusting colour balance using curves. Curves is a very powerful tool and is a big part of what (I believe) Photoshop and post processing is all about. There's much to cover, so let's begin.

Background Information

Let's cover a little history first. In a previous post, I talked about what my most common Adjustment Layers were, and how to quickly add them with Batch Processing. I will quickly cover adding a Curves adjustment layer here, but it would be a good refresher to go over those tutorials quickly.

I'd like to go over four quick point that I think will make using curves easier for you.

Pressing Alt + Left-Click in the curves window will switch back and forth between a small and a large grid. I prefer a small grid as it allows for more visual accuracy.

Clicking the icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the window will alternate between a big and small window. Again, I prefer a bigger window for better accuracy, so long as I don't need the screen space.

If you have added a point on the curve that you want to get rid of, simply click on it and drag it into an adjoining point

...

Hi there.

This is going to be a long post - we have a lot to cover. I posted a tutorial earlier this week on Adjustment Layers and then had some requests for a tutorial on how to add layer masks. Layer Masks are amazing tools and there are several ways to use and apply them.

In this tutorial we will cover masking with Paintbrush, masking using the Colour Range selection tool, how to Move, Copy and Invert masks to other Adjustment Layers, how to adjust the Mask's Edge, and finally, using the Gradient Tool to mask.

Let's first start with some background. Layer masks are applied to specific layers and affect what part(s) of a layer (or Adjustment Layer) apply to the image, and to what degree. You can black-out entire parts of a layer, or reduce its effect by greying-out parts of the layer.

We discussed Adjustment Layers in another tutorial, but you are not limited to this kind of layer. One that comes to mind that I use frequently is copying the background layer. To do this, you first need to bring up the Layers window (Window > Layers, or press F7). Whether you only have one layer (your background layer) or several layers, simply right-click on the background layer and click Duplicate Layer...



Then a window will appear where you can rename that...

How to Add Standard Photoshop Adjustment Layers

As promised in my last post, here is a guide of the adjustment layers I use most frequently when editing photos in Photoshop CS2. The following posts will describe the adjustment layers I use, what blending mode I use for each adjustment layer, and how to efficiently add these adjustment layers to your photos while editing - using actions and batch processing.

Benefits of Editing with Adjustment Layers

Most of the editing I do with adjustment layers can be done without layers - that is to say that edits such as Curves and Hue/Saturation can be applied directly to the main image layer itself.

The benefit to using adjustment layers is that no edit is permanent until you flatten the image. You can even save the image with all of its adjustment layers as a Photoshop Document (.psd), and when you reopen it, all the changes you made to the adjustment layers will still be there for you to change back, remove, or alter.

If you were to, for example, edit curves without layers, then go on to change saturation, crop the image, then add vignetting, the only way to go back and change what you did to the curves would be to go back in the history, to when you changed the curve (thus losing all work done since), or start the image editing from scratch.

With adjustment layers, however, so long as...