Photographing Whiteford Lighthouse in South Wales with my Drone

A couple of weeks after very nearly smashing my camera, lens and a filter at Whiteford Lighthouse in South Wales, I headed back with a completely different game plan: leave the main camera at home and take only my DJI Air 2 drone. Ordinarily, to photograph the lighthouse at the right angle you have to be near it, and because it stands such a long way offshore, that means waiting for the tide to go out. I didn't want it stood on a flat, dry, rocky sea bed with no water around it, so the drone was the answer. The question was whether the quality would be good enough, and I'm very happy to say it was; I was blown away with the results. The video takes you on the photo shoot and then through the retouching steps in Lightroom and Photoshop for the final image.

Photoshop Layers and Selections Webinar with Rocky Nook Publishers

Thursday of last week I presented in a webinar hosted by my publishers, Rocky Nook all about my latest book, The Photoshop Layers and Selections Workshop.

It was so good to see so many people tune in LIVE and also to see the numbers of folks that had signed up to be sent the recording.

If you missy it and fancy checking it out, Rocky Nook have also now posted the webinar on their YouTube Channel that I’ve now added below…

At the end of the presnetation we went through a Q&A and one of the questions posted asked about the new selections and masking function in Camera Raw and Lightroom, and in particular about using the Color Range option…

Susan asked…

“Can you only subtract one colour point at a time or can you click multiple times on slight variations in the color in the same subtract operation?”

Originally I answered that I ‘thought’ you could only do one at a time however a friend of mine Trevor Ager messaged me to say that you can actually add more by holding down the Option (Mac) / Alt (Windows) keys and clicking.

Hope you enjoy the video.

Cheers,
Glyn

CROP your images BIGGER: 3 Right Ways and 1 Wrong Way

Composition is so important; it can make or break a photograph. Here I go through three ways to alter the composition and make an image bigger using the Crop Tool in Photoshop, so your pictures look their very best on screen, in print or on social media. The three are cropping combined with Content-Aware Fill, cropping combined with Content-Aware Scale, and Merge to Panorama, and at the end I show how I made the fake skirting board you'll see in one of the pictures.

TRY THIS if you need BIGGER BACKGROUNDS in your Photo Shoots

If you ever place a background behind people when you're photographing them, whether that's an individual or a group, there'll be times when it just isn't big enough. Here I show how to use Photoshop to do all the hard work of blending images together to fake a bigger background. It's simple and fast, it can save the photo shoot, and it saves you money too.

FINALLY! Look Up Tables (LUTs) in Lightroom (Install, Use, Manage)

Colour Look Up Tables (LUTs) are a brilliant way of colour grading your images in Photoshop, adding mood, atmosphere and your own style, but what if you do more in Lightroom, or Lightroom is all you use; can you still use them? The short answer is yes. They do need to be installed first, though, and although it's a simple process, it isn't just a case of clicking an install button. There are a few steps involved as well as a hidden keyboard shortcut, and this video goes through how to install, use and manage them. For Lightroom (Cloud), you need to navigate to the folder where Camera Raw has previously stored your LUTs. On a Mac that's ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Settings, and on Windows it's C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings.

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Autumn / Fall Effect: Transform your Landscape Photographs

It's my own fault that I didn't manage to grab a single autumn photograph in 2021; I spent every opportunity photographing down on the coast in Devon or over the border in Cornwall. Autumn is a magical season for photography, with the landscape covered in burnt oranges, reds, yellows and browns, so until the next one comes round, here are a couple of ways to fake it using Photoshop. The first uses a single adjustment layer and the second uses one of the Neural Filters. Once you've seen them both, you can decide which one you think works and looks best.

TRY THIS and get PERFECT PRINTS Every Time! (Lightroom + Canon Printers)

Printing can be incredibly frustrating, and costly, when it doesn't turn out right. You can follow all the advice about calibrating your screen and using paper profiles, and still the print doesn't look good or match what you see on screen. The good news is that it might not be down to anything you're doing wrong; it may actually be an issue somewhere with the software or the printer. If you print from Lightroom using a Canon printer, in particular one of the newer models, this video shows how to fix it, and the fix is easy.

SKIN RETOUCHING: How to fix Sunburn Skin FAST and EASY with Photoshop

If only it was this quick and easy in real life to get rid of sunburn. Alas no, but here's a super fast and easy skin retouching technique for dealing with sunburnt skin in your pictures using Photoshop. Everything is done with just one Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, so there's very little to it and nothing complicated to remember, which makes it an easy one to add to your own retouching.

Perfect Eyes with Photoshop Neural Filters (Video Tutorial)

Ok so yesterday I shared a new video on my YouTube Channel going through a recent-ish photo shoot I had with a female surfer.

In the video I go through a Behind the Scenes showing what went into making the picture whilst on location but then show how just one slider in Photoshop made the final picture, I believe, a winner.

As is always the case, it’s the small things that make the BIG difference in Photography and Retouching, and that’s exactly where the Neural Filters in Photoshop comes in when used sparingly.

You’ll see what I mean in the video but also, and I think importantly, why the filter had to be used in the first place.

Cheers,
Glyn

So often it's the small things that make the big difference in photography and retouching. This video takes you through a photo shoot I had with a female surfer, starting behind the scenes on location to show what went into making the picture. From there I do a quick edit using the selections and masking in Lightroom to bring the sky and the sea to life, then show how just one slider in Photoshop's Neural Filters changed the direction of her eyes. Used sparingly, that small change made the final picture, and I also explain why the filter had to be used in the first place.

GoPro Hero 10: BEST SETTINGS (I was wrong...it's actually quite GOOD)

My first GoPro, a Hero 5, disappointed me so much that it went into a drawer and never came out again. The Hero 10 looked like a vast improvement, so I added it to my kit, only to be disappointed again. After it got smashed and GoPro kindly sent me a replacement, I gave it one more go, and it turns out the footage is really good, but only when you use it in manual. Here I share the settings I use, including 5.3K, a manual shutter at double the frame rate, ISO between 100 and 800, a high bit rate and the Linear lens, plus some much improved footage.