I already put up articles about most software I use, but not yet that much about Photoshop. So today, let’s look at few random tips for Photoshop.

Fade adjustment

This is one small feature that is great for when you are doing retouching. What it does, in simple terms, is allows you to set the opacity on your last used adjustments. So if you for instance use the Patch tool, to replace a part of your image, and you feel that the changes is too strong, you can use the Fade adjustment and tone it down.

To use this, right after you do the adjustment, go under Edit/Fade, and choose the percentage you need. But beware, it works only on the last adjustment, so if you do something else after that, the adjustment will no longer be available.

Hide selection

This is a must when you do Luminance masking or any other manual blending. The marching ants of selection can be so in the way, and making it hard to blend correctly. So you have to know that you can hide them, and actually do that very often.

To hide the marching ants, you have to go under View/Extras (or Ctrl+H) to toggle the visibility. Again, a little note, remember if they are hidden or not, as it’s very easy to forget that you have a selection active, when it’s not visible.

Selection in the way

Change workspace

Save your workspace

This is one thing I never used until I got a huge monitor. I can arrange and safe different setups for Photoshop and then just switch between them. I have one for when I use Photoshop in full-screen, one when only using it in a smaller window. This just makes switching so much easier.

To do this, just setup you Photoshop workspace as you like, and then choose the workspace drop-down and create a new workspace. Once you have all the ones you want, you can switch between them by choosing them from the same drop-down menu.

Use Last filter

Sometimes you just need to use the same filter over and over. Either for different layers, or different image. To make this easier, there is a simple solution in Photoshop. By choosing Filter/Last filter (or Ctrl+F), the last filter will be used on the actually selected layer.

And even better, this does not just work with Photoshop filters, but also with additional ones, like Color Efex or Noiseware. Choosing it, will use the same filter, with exactly the same settings as you used last time.

Align layers

Perspective crop

Align layers

One thing one needs to do a lot, is to align layers. Especially if one take photos handheld for HDR. There are many ways to align layers, but one of them is to just use the internal Auto-align. This works quite well most of the times, but don’t expect miracles.

To use auto-align, just select the layers you want to align, and choose Edit/Auto-align layers. If you have taken photos from the tripod, I suggest using reposition instead of auto mode. It’s so there are no distortion in the separate layers only movement.

Correct distortion by cropping

Cropping is a very useful tool in Photoshop. But you can use it for more than just cropping the image. You can use it to extend the canvas of you image, just by cropping it for a bigger size than it was, or you can even correct perspective distortion by cropping.

To do that, you have to choose the Perspective crop tool from the tool bar. Once you select the area with it, you can move every corner separately to select the area that will be stretched into a rectangle image. So just move them inside and confirm by Enter and you are done :)

This one would really fit into Dubai, with all the neon lights there, but in reality this bar is in Prague, in the Boscolo hotel. And I chosen this photo for today, as there were not many interiors on the blog recently, so it was time to include one :)

This is a manual blend form 5 exposures, done in Photoshop.

Since I posted so many fireworks photos this last few weeks, I chosen one also for todays process post, to show you how it was edited. So this is of course one of the photo from the New Years fireworks. So here goes.

Finished photo

Original photo

This was of course an edit from a single RAW file. I started in Lightroom, where I first removed the perspective distortion, toned down the highlights and removed chromatic aberrations. From there I exported two version, one normal and one underexposed by one stop.

1st export

2nd export

I loaded the first export into Oloneo Photoengine, where by changing the strength and contrast, I created a base for my further edits. Then I loaded it, and the two Lightroom exports into Photoshop. There I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up).
1. Oloneo Photoengine result.
2. The brighter Lightroom export, to brighten the ship and the corners.
3. Darker Lightroom export to darken the center explosion.
4. Merged layer on which I removed dust spots and filled in the corners.
5. Color efex tonal contrast to add more contrast to the explosions.
6. Imagenomic noiseware to remove noise form the sky.
7. Added overall contrast.
8. Recovered the shadows a little from the Photoengine result.
9. Selective contrast to few more spots.
10. Small de-saturation of the red color.
11. The colors were still to strong here, so I used a copy of the Photoengine result, set to color and just softly brushed over few spots.
12. Brightened the center a little, as it looked too gray after the edits.

Oloneo edit

Photoshop edit

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

On Wednesday I posted a guide on how to create a reflection in Photoshop, but I never posted just the finished photo. So here it is today, and if you want to try and create it yourself, you can find the guide here.

Been a while since I updated the wallpapers page, so I’m doing it today. This time I added three new wallpapers taken all in Zermatt in Switzerland. As always, there are all available in 1920×1200 and 1600×1200, and you can get them from the wallpapers page.