Digital Photography

Tips for Getting the Most out of Window Light

July 1, 2011

Don’t you love shooting in homes that have perfect windows? The main window that I used in each of the following photos is on the right side of the photos. But the room essentially had 1.5 walls of windows, so there was an enviable amount of light. I had fun experimenting with the different looks [...]

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Portrait Retouching, Part 2: Photoshop Elements Tutorial

June 23, 2011

My Portrait Retouching Workflow tutorial for Photoshop Elements generated lots of good questions. To answer them, I going to give you some advanced portrait techniques in this tutorial. Here’s my before and after: Other than my basic workflow steps, this tutorial will show you how to repair blown out pixels, make eyes larger and add [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Montage

June 9, 2011

Photoshop Elements is made for montages like this: How did I make it? I took a short cut, by starting with an MCP Print It Board, size 20×20. But you don’t have to start that way. You can start by finding a background image and sizing it to the aspect ratio that you want. Then, [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Portrait Retouching Workflow

June 3, 2011

After my MCP Mini Fusion Photoshop Elements tutorial last week, several people asked about softening skin and applying lipstick in Elements. It didn’t seem right to write a tutorial about those techniques without giving you my entire portrait workflow. These are the basic steps I use on any close up portrait. Depending on the subject, [...]

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Photoshop Elements Workflow Order

May 27, 2011

Workflow order in Photoshop Elements causes many people stress. Too much stress, in my opinion. Last week, I wrote about Lightroom workflow and suggested that the order of your edits isn’t all that important. Lightroom works differently from Elements, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that workflow is unimportant in Elements, but [...]

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Free Action for Photoshop Elements: Mini Fusion Tutorial

May 20, 2011

Mini Fusion, MCP’s latest free action for Photoshop Elements, has gotten so many raves that it’s worthy of a tutorial showing just what this freebie is capable of. Actions, as we all know, sometimes make a huge and instant impact on a photo, and other times they need tweaking. The beauty of Mini Fusion is [...]

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Workflow Order – Don’t Sweat It!

May 18, 2011

Workflow order is the topic that I get asked about most often in my classes, whether it’s the Lightroom or the Elements class. People worry that there is one and only one order that post processing work should be done in, and that not knowing this order is going to ruin their photos. Put your [...]

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When High Resolution Photos Are Absolutely Necessary

May 6, 2011

In digital photography, most of us have settings on our cameras allowing us to select the quality of the images we record. Some cameras allow you to record Small, Medium or Large JPEGs, plus one size Raw. Other cameras allow you to choose from multiple Raw sizes as well. My Canon 7D offers the following [...]

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Blinkies or the Histogram? You Tell Me.

April 12, 2011

Perfect exposure is one thing you and I could probably talk about forever, right? Do you aim for one stop over or straight down the middle? Evaluative or spot? And how do you know when you’ve nailed exposure? That brings me to the current topic – blinkies vs. the histogram. Here’s my theory, but I’m [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Problem Photos? Open JPEGs in ACR

April 5, 2011

Photoshop Elements has an underutilized feature for folks who haven’t converted to shooting in Raw yet. If you shoot in JPEG, you might think that you have to miss out on the easy exposure and white balance adjustments that Adobe Camera Raw provides. But that’s not true! You can open any JPEG in Raw and [...]

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Overexposed Plus Out of Focus and Completely Happy

April 4, 2011

Is this image a digital photography mistake, or is it art? One skill that I continually practice is the ability to view my photos with an embracing and kind, thankful and non-critical eye. What I create is my own art, whether anyone else likes it or not. And if I create an image like the [...]

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Amazing New Lightroom Tip

March 23, 2011

Ok, so it’s not techncially “undiscovered” material, but it’s new to me and I love it! My Lightroom catalog contains over 30,000 images. And it’s been a bit sluggish lately. For instance, when I am scrolling through a set of images in the Library, it might take a couple of seconds for the scroll to [...]

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How Many Versions of Each Image Do You Save?

March 21, 2011

Each time I teach a Photoshop Elements class, someone asks this question. And people are often surprised to learn that I save 4 or more copies of my favorite images. Yes, having multiple versions of the same image definitely takes up hard drive space. That’s why I have two of these babies. I chose this [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Flatten vs. Merge vs. Stamp Visible

March 17, 2011

Wait a minute. I thought the beauty of Photoshop Elements is that you can save all your layers in a PSD file, and then go back and edit them at any point in the future. Why would I ever want to flatten those layers? I’m going to take you through my workflow on this image [...]

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