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Photoshop CS5 Top 5: Refine Edge

Published by | Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Refining selections and creating masks are unglamorous but utterly essential Photoshop techniques—you’ve got to master both in order to perform tricky compositing tasks, such as extracting a person from an image and then adding a different background.

In Photoshop CS5, the Refine Edge command makes the process less tedious. In today’s installment of Photoshop CS5 Top 5, Deke McClelland shows it in action. Watch as Deke uses Refine Edge and its cousin, Refine Mask, to create a finely crafted mask that encompasses every strand of a model’s hair.

The lynda.com Online Training Library® is full of courses for every member of the Creative Suite family. Browse our Adobe CS5 training to learn what’s new in Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, Premiere Pro, and more. And stay tuned, because we’ve got more CS5 training coming in the weeks ahead.

Previously in Photoshop CS5 Top 5:
Monday—Common Sense Enhancements in Photoshop CS5
Tuesday—High-Dynamic Range Photography

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Posted in Photography | 1 Comment »

Photoshop CS5 Top 5: High-dynamic range photography

Published by | Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Your eyes see better than your camera does. That’s particularly true with scenes containing a wide range of brightness values. Try to take a sunny-day photo on a beach, and you’ll be hard pressed to find an exposure setting that captures details in shadows and bright areas like.

High-dynamic range photography is one solution. Take multiple shots of a scene, each at a different exposure setting, and then blend them to create an image with a broader dynamic range than a single exposure can capture. And as anyone who spends time on Flickr can tell you, HDR is also the gateway to surreal-looking images containing exotic colors and tones.

Whether you want to be subtle or brash, the greatly improved HDR features in Photoshop CS5 are worth a close look. They’re the subject of today’s Photoshop CS5 Top 5 movie. Watch as Deke McClelland walks you through Photoshop CS5′s HDR toning and HDR Pro features.

If you’re a photographer, don’t miss Chris Orwig’s Photoshop and Bridge CS5 for Photographers New Features. You’ll find more about HDR in this course, and more about all of the Creative Suite 5 tools in our Adobe Creative Suite 5 training.

Previously in Photoshop CS5 Top 5:
Monday—Common Sense Enhancements in Photoshop CS5

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Posted in Photography | No Comments »

Five Days of Photoshop: Photoshop CS5 Top 5: Common Sense Enhancements

Published by | Monday, April 19th, 2010

Last week, Adobe announced its Creative Suite 5 line. We’ve already blogged about our first wave of CS5 courses, and you can browse our growing course lineup.

There’s more. Every day this week, the lynda.com blog features a movie spotlighting some of the best new features in Photoshop CS5. Your tour guide is one of the most influential voices in the Photoshop community—Deke McClelland— who has been burning the midnight oil updating his encyclopedic Photoshop One-on-One series of courses.

We call Deke’s tour Photoshop CS5 Top 5, but you’ll actually see more than five features in action. Today, we showcase a selection of what Deke calls common sense enhancements—those features, big and small that, in his words, “will have you gasping and saying, finally!“ Learn about the new Straighten button, the Content Aware Fill tool, and more.

So sit back and gasp for yourself, and join us every day this week for a look at some of Photoshop CS5′s best features. For an overview of what’s new in Photoshop CS5, see Jan Kabili’s Photoshop CS5 New Features. And to upgrade your neurons to full CS5 compatibility, visit our current list of Adobe Creative Suite 5 training.

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Posted in Photography | No Comments »

From Polaroids to Lensbabies, low-fi photography thrives

Published by | Thursday, April 8th, 2010

A few weeks ago, I bought new digital SLR. And last week, I bought a few packs of funky film and a thrift-shop Polaroid camera that was made forty years ago.

I’m a big fan of what’s often called “low-fi” photography—photography that’s much more about mood than it is about perfect technical quality. (more…)

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Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »

Digital SLR trends and the convergence of photography, video, and audio

Published by | Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

I shot this with my new Nikon D3S using an ISO speed of 8000. Shooting with high ISO speeds puts photos at risk for a bit of digital noise, but they allowed me to capture this fast-moving performer without blur, without flash, and without a tripod. Dreamy.

I bought a new camera recently: a Nikon D3S. I’d been reading all about the D3S and similar cameras, and decided that I had to experience their capabilities for myself. It would be good for my job as a photography content manager here at lynda.com, I reasoned, and it would be more fun than paying my mortgage.

It turns out I was right on both counts, though my mortgage holder has yet to weigh in.

(more…)

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Posted in Audio, Photography, Video | 7 Comments »

Master your compact camera with our latest live-action course

Published by | Thursday, January 28th, 2010

In Chapter 1, Getting the Most Out of the Lens, Derrick shows us how to use sunglasses as a polarized filter.

Compact, point-and-shoot cameras are getting better and better. They’re also getting more complex, sporting features that give you the kind of creative options that were once the exclusive domain of bulky, expensive cameras.

With our latest course, Getting Professional Results from a Compact Camera, photographer Derrick Story shows you how to master your camera’s exposure settings, control its flash, and squeeze every bit of performance out of its optics. Go on-location as Derrick shoots everything from panoramas to macros to nighttime shots, then return to the computer and see how to make them look their best.

This course is one of a growing series of live-action courses that we’re publishing. The world is about more than software, and we’re working hard to bring it to you. In our Photo Assignment courses, we take you on location to learn how to shoot natural light portraits, master fill flash, and conquer tricky backlight situations. (more…)

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Learn Lightroom 3 from Photographer Chris Orwig

Published by | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

lightroom

The computer industry is usually a secretive place. Companies keep their product plans to themselves, and all product discussions take place under the Cone of Silence from TV’s Get Smart.

That’s one reason why Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is a breath of fresh air. Adobe has made a prerelease version of its popular photo-management and photo-enhancement software available for free downloading. Curious to see what’s new? Grab the beta preview and try it.

But how do you learn it? By diving into Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta Preview, a new lynda.com course from Chris Orwig, photographer and instructor at the Brooks Institute. It’s more than two hours of detailed instruction on all the new features in Lightroom 3′s beta version, and it includes comparisons that illustrate what has changed from Lightroom 2.

Chris will also be doing courses on the final version of Lightroom 3 next year. But why wait? Download the free public beta and dive into the next version of Lightroom right now.

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Hello from the new Content Manager for Photography: Jim Heid

Published by | Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Meet Jim Heid, lynda.com's Content Manager for Photography

Meet Jim Heid, lynda.com's Content Manager for Photography

Smile, everybody! I’m Jim Heid, the new Content Manager for photography here at lynda.com.

Some of you may recognize my name from the pages of Macworld magazine, where I’ve been writing since the dawn of time. Or you might know me from my The Macintosh iLife series of books on Apple’s iLife suite. A handful of you might even be familiar with my photos on Flickr.

At lynda.com, my job is to help plan our photography-related courses. And we’ll be offering a lot more in the future. Of course, you’ll see new courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and other essential digital imaging tools. But you’ll also see courses on photographic technique: Lighting, composition, lenses, and more.

For anyone who loves photography, this is a great time to be alive. Cameras, lenses, and imaging software have never been better. But at least as important, the Internet has given each of us a global audience, a way to inspire and be inspired. At lynda.com, we’ll be taking advantage of this revolution in imaging, too.

You’ll be hearing from me frequently here on the lynda.com blog. In the meantime, I’d love your comments containing suggestions on the types of photography courses you’d like to see.

In 1944, Popular Photography magazine ran an article containing predictions for the future of photography. Among them:

  • “It is possible to perfect the camera to the point where it will become an automatic instrument which will focus, expose, and process the film by the mere push of a button.”
  • “I should like to see [the camera] develop until it takes its place with the pencil and the typewriter as an instrument of our everyday language.”
  • “Networks will make it possible for everyone in the world to see pictures of news events at the same time.”

Welcome to the future.

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Posted in Behind the scenes, Photography | 17 Comments »

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