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The Best Indoor Light/ Online Photoshop Tutorials, Online Photoshop Workshops, Photography Workshops

02-12-2013

Now that winter is upon us, do you ever struggle with finding beautiful light for pictures?

I have found the most perfect place for indoor pictures in my home.  It’s the perfect location on sunny or even rainy days.

I simply throw open my front door!

I have my subject stand in the doorway of the front door of my home facing out toward the light (with my subject’s back toward the inside of my house).  I then stand outside (with my back to the street) a few feet from the door frame.  Voila!  Gorgeous light and especially wonderful catchlights in the eyes.

So throw open your doors and take some beautiful photos of your loved ones or clients.

We’d love to see your “doorway photos”- please post them on our Digital Darkroom Secrets Facebook wall or leave a link in the comments below.  We can’t wait to check out your gorgeous work!

 

 

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Lensbaby Love/ Online Photography Workshops, Online Photoshop Workshops, Free Photoshop Tutorials

02-12-2013

Do you ever go through periods as a photographer where you feel like you lack in creativity?

I had been feeling that way recently, until my wonderful husband bought me a Lensbaby Composer Pro for my 39th birthday.

I love the versatility of the Lensbaby Composer Pro with the Sweet 35 optic.

It’s perfect for these cold winter days that are getting shorter and shorter.  I pulled out the Lensbaby to play around with it a little more today. To read more about the Lensbaby lenses and fun optics click HERE.

 

To see how I (Krista) and Rachel create beautiful and dramatic B&Ws without actions, visit our Digital Darkroom Secrets Workshops.

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Creating a Custom Action- Free Editing Tutorial/ Free Photoshop Tutorials, Online Photoshop Workshops, Photo Editing Workshops Online

09-18-2012

Rachel and I absoultely love creating our own custom actions in Photoshop.

It saves us SO much time in Photoshop and allows us to spend more time with our families and our clients.

You can create your own custom actions to speed up your workflow, too.

Let me show you how.

1.  Open Photoshop and open any picture to work with.  Open your actions pallette and make sure that you are not working in button mode.

2.  Click on the “Create a New Action Set” button.  In the dialoge box, rename your set and click okay.

3.  Now click on the “Create a New Action” button.

In the dialog box, rename your new action.  I renamed mine “Soft Edit”.  You can also assign this custom action a function key to create a shortcut for you to use when you are editing.  I like to assign my new action a custom color so that it can easily be found when I’m working in button mode.

You will then click record.

Here is where the magic happens.  As you edit, every edit that you make will be recorded.  You can make your own adjustment edits or even run a favorite action and sharpening at the end.  Take your time.  You can even reduce the opacity of the actions or edits that you make, just remember that Photoshop is recording every adjustment that you make.

4.  When you are finished recording your adjustments and edits, click the “Stop Playing/Recording” button.

Now you have a custom action that you can run on a set of images or on all of your images.  This will save you TONS of time in Photosh0p.

We’d love to hear from you!  Try creating a custom action of your own in Photoshop and let us know how this tutorial worked for you.  Feel free to post comments here in our blog or on our Facebook page HERE.

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Lucidtutorial - You are absolutely right when i read your articles i can create my own custom actions which is speed up my workflow.Thank you very much for sharing.

Sharpening Photos in Lightroom

09-12-2012

I use Lightroom at the beginning of my workflow and normally sharpen in Photoshop as my last step. But sometimes I need to just use Lightroom for a super quick edits and that is when I use sharpening in Lightroom instead of in Photoshop.

Here is my screenshot of Lightroom 4. The circled area is where the sharpening controls are at. (in the Details panel)

free photoshop tutorial, digital darkroom secrets

There are 4 sliders in the sharpening section in the Detail module.

The first one is the amount slider. This is the overall strength of the sharpening effect. Lightroom defaults this setting to 25 and it ranges from 0 to 150. The higher the number, the more sharpening will happen.

The second slider is the radius. This is basically controls how fine of detail is going to be sharpened. The larger the number, the larger the radius. If you go too big, you will get a halo effect, so don’t get too carried away!;)The default is 1.0.

The third slider is the detail slider. This will help reduce the overall halo effect. This one works backwards with the numbers. If you have the slider up at 100 (it goes from 0-100), no reduction in the halo effect. If it is set at 0, you will not have any halo. The default is 25.

The fourth slider is like the third. It masks out the overall sharpening effect. The higher the number, the more masking will occur. The default on this slider is 0.

Now, of course, I will let you know what settings I prefer to make this even easier!

I like to keep the amount around 50-86, the radius anywhere from 0.6-1.3, and detail from 22-30 and the masking from 0-49. These are definitely not perfect settings for all images, but it should help give you an idea of possibly where to be. It definitely depends on each image.

I hope this helped! Lightroom is always a quick and easy way to sharpen your images to speed up your workflow!

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%postname% - [...] I posted another free tutorial over on the Digital Darkroom Secrets blog today. If you are interested in learning how to sharpen in Lightroom, check it out here. [...]

Lucidtutorial - It’s a amazing tips.When i read this tutorial i know how can i sharping the image quick by using Lightroom of in Photoshop.Thanks for sharing.

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