February 2010
Lightroom Import Backup
By Jerry Courvoisier
I frequently field questions about the Backup feature in the Lightroom import dialog box.
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January 2010
Digital Zone System - Part 1
By Lee Varis
Photography has always been a “technical” art. Since its inception, photography has relied on the leading technology of its day to capture and present images of the world around us.
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December 2009
Creating Selections from Color Tools
by Chris Tarantino
Why use Shadow/Highlight for masks? Really. This is such a great tool to use for masking, I am surprised it isn’t standard. It should have its own section in the manual called “Another tool to use for something it probably wasn’t meant to be used for, but why the heck not!”
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 November 2009
Lightroom fun with export actions
By Kevin Kubota
In this Photoshop tips video, Kevin Kubota uses export actions to quickly post images to a blog, and to quickly and automatically start a ProSelect album.
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Kevin Kubota |
 October 2009
Painting with Light Technique (video)
With Jerry Courvoisier
Jerry Courvoisier’s tip this month uses a technique for image enhancement he calls “Painting with Light.” With the use of an adjustment layer and the screen blending mode feature in Adobe Photoshop, Jerry’s Quick Time Movie walks you through the process. Check out his website for more tips if you can’t wait for the next “Photoshop Tips” installment. PMA TV
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September 2009
How to Remove Mega Moiré: What is moiré, and how do you prevent or remove it?
By Jane Conner-ziser
Moiré is a repetitive pattern of wavy lines or circles that occasionally appear on objects in digital captures. It occurs when fibers or fine parallel details in an object match the pattern of the imaging chip in the camera.
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August 2009
LAB Overlay Technique
This tutorial introduces a new technique for color and contrast enhancement that has many advantages from conventional approaches.
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July 2009
Creating Selections from Color Tools: Hidden Selections
By Chris Tarantino
Why use Selective Color for masks? OK, so reaching for a color correction tool is not the most intuitive tool to use for making selections. I’ll agree to that, but why not use it to make selections? |
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June 2009
By Kevin Kubota
Adding Textures to Images to Photoshop Textures are all the rage; and they are a great way to add depth, interest, and an artistic touch to images.
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May 2009
CS4 Dodge and Burn Tools/Protecting Tones
By Jane Conner-ziser
One feature in CS4 offers the option of “protecting tone” when using the Dodge and Burn Tools. The question is: Is it good?
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April 2009 (Video) 
With Jerry Courvoisier
Photoshop CS4 UI Adjustment (video)
Explore the new Photoshop CS4 user interface changes for Adjustment Layer Panels. Jerry Courvoisier provides a quick overview to explain the enhanced user controls and will have you up to speed in a few minutes, navigating your way through these new features. More free tutorials are available at www.jerrycourvoisier.com . PMA TV >>
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Jerry Courvoisier
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March 2009
The New Color Range in CS4
The Changes Made
By Chris Tarantino
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February 2009
It's All a Matter of Scale
By Kevin Kubota
Have you ever wanted to fit a square peg in a round hole? Well, now you can! With Photoshop CS4, we have a fun new tool called Content-Aware Scale.
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December 2008
Photo Vignette Techniques
By Lee Varis
Vignettes in photography refers to the darkening or lightening of the edge of the frame either as a result of lens deficiencies or as a creative effect.
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November 2008
The Clone Source Panel
By Chris Tarantino
OK, let's be fair about this. How many retouchers or restoration artists out there know what this panel (Fig. 01) is? It's not new; it was introduced with CS3, although without all the fanfare of some of the other more popular tweaks and additions by Adobe.
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October 2008
Got Speed?
By Kevin Kubota
We’re all speed freaks. Admit it or not, we like faster computers, faster software, faster cars ... oh wait, I got carried away. When is an upgraded computer worth the money? If it saves one hour per week in time, how long will it take to amortize? That’s for you to figure out, but here’s a simple way to test and see how your old or new computer is doing. Use it as a benchmark when you upgrade, or to compare it to a friend’s computer/software combo (great for digital drag racing).
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Kevin Kubota
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August 2008
Embedding Copyright Information into Images
By Jeff Greene
The Orphan Works Bill currently before the U.S. Congress has stirred intense debate about usage rights and ownership of an image. While this is not the place to continue that discussion, it does allow for a quick tip on how to ensure that your images remain protected under U.S. Copyright law.
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July 2008
Liquifying Constructively
By Chris Tarantino
The Liquify tool is one of the most frequently used tools in Photoshop. At the same time, it is probably one of the most misunderstood tools in the application – at least as far as utilizing it properly for what needs to be done.
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June 2008
Dirty Little Secrets – Efficiency
Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference. Take, for example, Photoshop. Most of us spend quite a lot of time working our images in this powerhouse of a program, and we certainly appreciate cool new techniques; but sometimes the most significant gains to productivity can be had by simply being more efficient.
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May 2008
Removing Moiré in Digital Camera Files
The quality of digital camera files has improved considerably since the first professional cameras became available several years ago. Yet, even today, digitally captured images can often be improved with judicious post-processing techniques.
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April 2008
Basic Portrait Retouching
One of the biggest advantages of digital imaging technology is it enables photographers to do their own portrait retouching. This saves thousands of dollars of studio expenditures each year, and serves as a value-added service photographers can tap as an additional revenue stream.
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February 2008
My Favorite Technique: Sometimes Photoshop is like a Hummer
We joke sometimes that people own these giant, boulder crawling, desert storming, troop carrying vehicles, yet they rarely see any more action than a trip to the annual Gucci sale. Alas, this is how Photoshop is. We have limitless power, yet we most often use it for very simple tasks.
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January 2008
Background “bokeh”
Limited depth of field, where a very narrow plane of focus is used to provide visual interest, has a long tradition in portrait photography. The Japanese refer to the special quality of out-of-focus areas in a defocused lens “bokeh,” and the subtle “bokeh” of certain lenses is very hard to simulate successfully with digital techniques.
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December 2007
Smart Filters
It’s all about feeling. Feeling the mood of the image when there is a special synergy evolving. Sometimes this synergy is visualized at the time we shoot, knowing we have something special. Other times, the synergy is realized in the creative enhancement part of the process. Either way, the following special filter in Photoshop is a very effective way to create a wonderful feeling and mood.
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November 2007
Auto-Alignment of Layers in CS3
Although automatic features are prevalent throughout Adobe Photoshop, I generally avoid using them since the very reason I’m using the program is to maintain the maximum amount of creative control while processing the final image. In CS3, however, there is a new feature I find quite useful when processing group shots.
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October 2007
Photoshop CS3 improved panoramic stitching
Photoshop CS3 has garnered a lot of attention lately, and for good reason. It’s a great upgrade and well worth the price ... in my humble opinion. Some of its cool features – or improvements, really – have gone relatively unnoticed. The Photomerge function is one example.
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September 2007
Exposure and Tone in Digital Photography: New Control for Digital Capture Using an Old Tool
Photographic technology has remained relatively stable for the last 100 years. In the last 15 years, however, we have experienced a dramatic change in the way images are captured, processed and printed due to the pervasive influence of the computer in all social endeavors.
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August 2007
Matching Colors in Photoshop
Matching colors between images has never been easier. This example shows two images created at the same time with two different digital cameras. Match Color saves the day for the wedding album.
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July 2007
Soft Proofing in Photoshop
The foremost goal of nearly every photographer is to produce an accurate print based on their interpretation of the subject or scene. This has been true since the dawn of photography when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created the first photograph, “View from the Window at Le Gras,” in 1826 ...
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June 2007
Black-and-White Nirvana with Photoshop CS3
Photoshop CS3 is here finally! And with it comes some great new tools. One of my favorites shares a resemblance with a Photoshop cousin, Lightroom.
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May 2007
Curving RGB Color:A lesson in color correcting by the numbers
The digital darkroom offers more control of the imaging process than ever before with the promise of higher quality and quicker, easier results. The price is a steep learning curve and a plethora of creative choices that often leaves us scratching our heads, wondering where to begin.
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April 2007
High Dynamic Range imaging
The next level of digital imaging is in its infant stage, but Adobe Photoshop has included the ability to merge billions of tonal values into a controllable interface called High Dynamic Range (HDR) – a 32-bit feature that, until now, was a technology using floating point mathematics for 3-D graphics film, not photography.
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March 2007
Automating with Actions and Scripts: “Time is Money.”
Our time is our most valuable asset, and most of us would rather spend it behind a camera than in front of a computer. Although digital imaging requires copious amounts of time spent in front of a computer, there are several tools in Photoshop that can streamline the workflow and save precious time.
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February 2007
Simple, Quick, and Beautiful A quick color enhancing, softening, make-it-sing kinda trick
One problem most all photographers face is we stand in front of a beautiful scene or al-luring subject, and we feel emotionally charged about the image we are taking. When we pull the image up on the computer, however, the emotion of the moment is gone and the image feels like it’s missing something.
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January 2007
Calibrating digital camera capture with Adobe Camera RAW
Serious photographers have always tested their equipment to determine the specific characteristics of their image creation capabilities. With film, this was an arduous process requiring multiple exposures and different chemical recipes. Test images were shot through different colored filters to figure out the color bias of a particular emulsion.
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