Thank you to everyone who came along to Friday nights talk on Photoshop and Lightroom. I hope you all picked up a few tips from the evening.
The evening was split into 3 sections and I’ve listed the key points and linked in some videos below for you to watch at your leisure.
Displaying a panel of 3 in Lightroom and Photoshop
This was about working towards the Jeff Lang Trophy and helping the members work out a Panel of 3 photographs before going to print.
In Photoshop, load the 3 photographs you want to display and then select the ‘Window’ Menu, then ‘Arrange’ and final ‘3-up vertical’, this will display the 3 images equal across your screen. You can then re-arrange the panel and swap photographs as you wish.
Tip : If you want to display the photograph completely in the windows press Ctrl + 0 and this will resize the photograph to fit in the window
In Lightroom, make sure you are in the Library module and select the the 3 photographs you want and then select the ‘Survey Mode’ button or press the ‘N’ key. This will display the photographs in the order they are displayed in the film strip. If you wish to close the control panels so the photographs display across the screen press Shift + Tab keys together and you can toggle the control panels off and on.
If you wish to change the order, in the Library module, select the ‘View’ menu, ‘Sort’ and then ‘Custom order’. You cannot re-arrange the photographs in ‘Survey Mode’ so switch back to ‘Loupe Mode’ or press the ‘E’ key. This will allow to drag and drop photographs into an order you wish the photographs to be displayed and simply switch back to ‘Survey Mode’ once you have them in the order you wish.
Removing Halos
This was about removing those horrible white or black lines from edges in your photographs. These are avoidable and it’s best to work out what you are doing in post processing that creates these halo’s to avoid having to remove them and saving yourself the extra work.
The main causes of halos
- Bad selections from masking
- Sharpening
- Difficult exposure blending/HDR
The link below is to a very good tutorial on removing halo’s.
Please take into account when doing the editing if you want the removal to be permanent or to use layer so you can keep all the data and have more flexibility should you wish to re-edit.
Using the Gradient Tool
The gradient tool is a very useful tool in Photoshop and I used the gradient tool in this talk to edit smoke trails. It can be used to colourise photographs, turn them to black and white or create masks, etc.. I covered a lot during the evening and here are a few videos that you can watch and practice using the Gradient tool.
Creating fineart smoke trails in Photoshop
Creating colour in smoke Photoshop
The Gradient Tool in Photoshop
How To Make Fading Gradient Transparent Effect – Photoshop Tutorial
How to Make Gradient Background in Photoshop 2023
Photoshop: How to Create a Portrait of SMOKE.
Create Art with Smoke and Light: Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace