Review Digital Camera World 06-11-2013

Digital Camera World

Dramatic Lighting: how to create stylish portraits using simple Photoshop effects Jun 10th 2013, 23:01 In our latest Raw Tuesday tutorial we show you in-depth how to tweak your raw files and use a range of simple Photoshop effects to recreate the look of dramatic lighting in your portrait photography. Back in 2006, Jill Greenberg's stunning portraits of crying children attracted plenty of controversy. To provoke the gut-wrenching emotion on display, a lollipop was offered then taken away, which some critics felt was tantamount to child cruelty. But another thing that stood out about the images was the stylised, intentionally over-the-top enhancements and dramatic lighting. Here we'll show you how to give your portraits a similar stylised treatment by using a range of digital techniques to replace the background and enhance the face. Along the way we'll learn a host of key Photoshop skills, from selective Raw tweaks with Camera Raw's Adjustment Brush, to replacing the background with a colourful gradient. We'll employ non-destructive techniques with Smart Objects, Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers, so each part of the effect can be tweaked at any time. Don't worry if this sounds complicated, because the technique is very simple. If you're using your own portraits, the effect works well on faces that have been lit with a combination of front and side or back-lighting. We captured this baby with one light behind him to the left, and another in front, above and slightly to the right. This gives the face depth by creating lots of highlights and shadows, which can then be emphasised in Photoshop with some intensive dodging and burning. Here's how it's done… How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 1-2 01 Make Basic tweaks Open Adobe Bridge and navigate to your raw file, then right-click it and choose Open in Camera Raw. Go to the Basic Panel on the right and set Temperature 5200, Tint -9 to correct the White Balance. Next, set Whites +8, Blacks -20, Clarity +9, Vibrance +18.   02 Adjust colour saturation We can use the Targeted Adjustment tool to lower the dominant yellows. Grab the tool from the Toolbar. Right-click in the image and choose Saturation. Drag downwards on the background wall. The HSL Greyscale Panel shows the colour values as you drag. Set Yellows to about -35 and Greens -24. PAGE 1 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 1-2 PAGE 2 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 3-4 PAGE 3 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 5-6 PAGE 4 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 7-8 PAGE 5 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 9-10 PAGE 6 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 11-12 PAGE 7 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 13-14 PAGE 8 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 15-16 PAGE 9 – How to create dramatic lighting in Photoshop: steps 17-18 READ MORE 10 reasons your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them) 34 Photoshop effects every photographer must try once Crop photos the right way: classic mistakes and how to avoid them Adobe Lightroom: what every photographer needs to know about the ‘alternative Photoshop’ Adobe Lightroom 5 price and new features confirmed: full software now available Jun 10th 2013, 10:26 The Adobe Lightroom 5 price tag and new features list has been officially revealed, as the beta period for the latest version of Adobe’s image management and photo editing software has come to an end. Formally releasing the software today, the Adobe Lightroom 5 price tag will be £102.57 / $149.99 to download the standalone software from Adobe’s website. Alternatively, the price for upgrading to Lightroom 5 from your current software is £57.64 / $79. Jump to our Adobe Lightroom 5 beta review Among the new features in Adobe Lightroom 5 is an Advanced Healing Brush, which allows users to make precise adjustments to fix irregularly shaped imperfections like dust spots and splotches. An Upright tool analyses each of your images and automatically straightens objects such as buildings and horizons. New Radial Gradients in Lightroom 5 allow users to apply off-centre and multiple vignettes in a single images. Also among the Adobe Lightroom 5 new features set are a range of extended sharing and publishing capabilities. New video slideshow functionality lets users combine their still images with video clips and music, while updates to the Adobe Lightroom Book module allow photographers to personalise photo books of their images from a variety of templates – as well as create their own specific templates. Finally, another of the most significant Adobe Lightroom 5 new features are Smart Previews, which enable photographers to make edits to their images offline without bringing their entire library of original image files with them. Photographers can make changes to their image metadata using the Smart Preview function, and these changes are then automatically applied to the original files when they are reconnected. Adobe Lightroom 5 was initially released as a free, public beta in April 2013, and is now available as an individual license or as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. READ MORE Photoshop CC: the 10 most important features in Adobe’s new software Adobe Lightroom: everything you need to know about the ‘alternative Photoshop’ Photoshop Layers De-mystified: a beginner’s gudie to smarter photo editing Photoshop Levels Tool: 6 tricks all the pros use

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