Last day to join the contest

Tomorrow is the last day you can join my photography contest sponsored by OLONEO. After that the voting will start. The raffle will continue for one more week, so don’t forget to join. To find all the info about the contest, please go here: https://www.hdrshooter.com/2013/11/18/photo-contest-sponsored-by-oloneo/

10 basic Photoshop shortcuts to make your work easier

While editing photos, I use Photoshop all the time. And making it easier and faster, one has to use as many shortcuts and possible. So I thought that some of you, who are just beginners, would find useful a short list of 10 shortcuts, I think one should know and use in Photoshop. There are of course many more, but these are the ones I think everyone should start with.

1. Space – pan image. This is the one you should get used to first. When you hold the space bar, your cursor changes into a hand and you can move around the photo. This make all edits so much faster than hawing to use the tool or scroll bars.
2. Ctrl + Space – zoom in/zoom out. This is another one that makes all your work so much faster. Instead of having to choose the zoom tool, just use this shortcuts instead. While holding these two buttons, press your left mouse button and drag up/down to zoom in/out. This is the fastest way to zoom around the photo.
3. F – full screen. Make you work easier, and hide all you don’t need. It cycles through three modes, so choose the one you like the most
4. D – reset colors. This resets the foreground color to black and background to white. This is very useful when you work with masks, and you need to quickly reset you chosen colors.
5. X – switch colors. Switches the foreground and background color selection. Great for when you are painting a mask, and you need to switch a lot between white and black.
6. Ctrl – move. Move tool is very important in Photoshop. And so you don’t have to always select it, there is a quick access to it. In almost all other tools, when you hold down Ctrl, you will be temporarily switched to Move. When you release the key, you will continue with the tool you had.
7. Ctrl + Shift + V – paste in place. Everybody knows what Ctrl + V does, and this is and advanced version of that. It will paste your selection on the same place from where you took it. For instance if you copy your watermark from one file to another, it will appear on the same place as it was.
8. Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E – merge visible. While you are editing your files, quite a lot of steps need to be performed on a merged copy of all the layers (like high pass sharpening). This shortcut makes creating such a new layer much faster, even if you have to press 4 keys at once
9. Ctrl + Alt + Z – step backward. Ctrl – Z is the usual keyboard shortcut for step back, but if you want to go more than one step back in Photoshop, you have to use this one
10. Shift + Backspace – fill. Always when you need to fill a layer, or a mask with black, white, 50% grey, or you need to use content aware fill on the selected area, just press this and select what fill you need.

A cold evenings light

The weather looked so promising today, so I went out shooting with Pedro Kin from www.pedrokin.com. And we got a nice sunset, with interesting clouds, just the color wasn’t there. I just could not get the look I hoped fore, even after quite a long edit. So I have to be satisfied with the photo how it is. It has to be better next time :)

Imagenomic Black Friday sale

I found another great Black Friday deal for you. Imagenomic is runing a 30% discount on all their products. I personally love their Noiseware pro plugin, as it the best noise reduction plugin I have tried. I’ve been using it for quite a long time now. For further details head over to the Noiseware page on the Imagenomic site, just if you like it, don’t forget to use the code “THANKU2013” for the 30% discount. This offer is valid until tomorrow. And while you there, don’t forget to check out also their other plugins.

Purple sky around the Lighthouse

I just could not decide what to edit for today. I started to edit 6 different photos, but I didn’t like anything I created. In the end I went with a sure thing. All my photos from this lighthouse look so great, so editing any of them will create something I like. So here it is, a lovely sunset shots from the Neusidler see.

This is a manual blend from 5 shots.

Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just few days away, and as it is the best time to buy new software, I thought I share with you some interesting deals I came across. So here is the first one. For the next few days Topaz Labs has discounted the whole Topaz plugins Collection almost by 50%. It’s really worth checking out. The amount of all the available effects here is just stunning. You can find them all on the Topaz Labs site.

5000 likes

My fan page on Facebook just reached 5000 likes. Thank you very much everyone who follows me there and I hope that over time there will be many more of you :)

Color therapy

Some time ago I was thinking, how would my photos looks without structure. I mean, when you do a B&W photo, you keep the structure, but remove the colors. So what if I removed the structure and kept the colors. I just wondered what I would get. And with a little playing around in Photoshop, I got this little series of very colorful minimalist images. It’s funny that even without any subject in them, I still get a similar feeling from them, as I did from the photos they were created from. The sunset, sky, grass colors are so unmistakable, that even on their own you feel like you see the objects :)

What do you think?

Cold evening by Danube

For today I chosen for you a photo I took two weeks ago by the SNP bridge in Bratislava. The water level at this time of the year is quite low, which really allows one to get down under the bridge, so getting also all these rocks into the shot. The light was not that great, but that is normal for this time of year. Hopefully it gets a little better, as I would so like to go out and get some new photos.

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and then blended with original exposures in Photoshop.

New newsletter

From today you can sign up for my Newsletter. I’m still in the process of creating everything for it, but I will be sending the first one very soon. I plan to send one to four every month, never more than once a week (all depending on how much new stuff I have to share with you :)).

The newsletter will include a selection from updates from the blog, whats new here and a access for all my new guides before I post them to the blog. And don’t worry, I won’t spam you :)

So for those who would like to keep in touch with my blog, feel free to sign here:

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Blue water in Dresden

I’m finally getting back to HDR after the last few days filled with editing party photos. It’s fun, but so much work. I’m so thankful for the sync function in Lightroom :) But here I have for you a photo from Dresden.

I created it by using manual blending. I had 5 exposures, but even on the +2EV the area under the bridge was black. I tried to brighten it up, but even in the RAW file the area was still dark. Strange how it got no light reflected from the water. Nest time here, I’m doing a +4EV bracket :)

Stay in touch with the blog with the HDRshooter newsletter. I promise not to spam you and never post more than one a week. This will not be a regular newsletter, I will create one every time I have enough content to share with you.

You wonder what the newsletter is about? It will include:

• Info on any upcoming events or contests on the blog
• Access to all the new guides and reviews before they are accessible on the blog
• A list of all the updates to the blog from the recent weeks
• A selection from the recent photos posted on the blog

 

Or you can check out the archive to see how it looks :)

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Free e-book for all subscribers – Capturing Fireworks

To say a big thank you to all of you who subscribe, I created an e-book on taking Fireworks photos just for you. Once you subscribe and confirm you email, you will receive a welcome email with the download link. An those of you who already are subscribers, don’t worry, the link will also be in the next edition of HDRshooter newsletter :)

The book is all about how to take fireworks photos, and here is a little preview:

Archive

Issue #1 – How to remove lens flares and much more!