PSU_February_2016_PDF

THE ADOBE ® PHOTOSHOP ® “HOW-T0” MAGAZINE › › february 2016
Learn how to capture
out-of-this-world images of
planets, galaxies, and nebulae
PHOTOGRAPHY
SECRETS
We go under the hood
to take an in-depth look
at layers in Photoshop
PROVING
GROUND
®
IN-DEPTH
STEP-BY-STEP
TUTORIALS
PHOTOSHOP
DOWN AND
DIRTY TRICKS
NEWS, REVIEWS
AND OTHER
COOL STUFF
creativity
anywhere
Adobe Creative Cloud
mobile apps will help keep
your creativity in sync
The Official Publication of
The Official Publication of
Visit our website at kelbyone.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS › › FEBRUARY 2016
Layout: Jessica Maldonado
FEATURE
52
Creativity Anywhere
Current technology has given us the power to be creative no matter
where we are. From desktop computers to laptops to tablets to
smartphones, you now have the ability to capture and create in
just about any environment. Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Adobe’s Head
of Outreach & Collaboration, shows us how to unlock all of that
creative potential using the latest and greatest Adobe mobile apps.
He even gives us a sneak peek at a cool app that’s not available yet.
Bryan O’Neil Hughes
Departments
From the Editor 6
Contributing Writers 9
About Photoshop User Magazine 10
KelbyOne Community 12
Exposed: Industry News 18
Columns
50 PHOTOSHOP TIPS
64 DESIGN MAKEOVER
That’s How the Cookie Crumbles
76 PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS
An Introduction to Astrophotography
131 FROM THE ADVICE DESK
How-To
DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS 20
Commercial Sports Graphic
42 BEGINNERS’ WORKSHOP
Mapping One Image onto Another
The Hateful Eight Poster Effect 30
46 PHOTOSHOP PROVING GROUND
Layers, Part 1: Opacity
DeVine 36
70 LIGHT IT
Portable Lighting: Let’s Go

› › KELBYONE.COM
Lightroom Magazine
LIGHTROOM WORKSHOP 89
Dodging, Burning, and Adjusting Individual Areas of Your Photo
UNDER THE LOUPE 98
Leveraging Slideshows
MAXIMUM WORKFLOW 104
Tethering in Lightroom
LIGHTROOM Q&A 116
LIGHTROOM TIPS & TRICKS 118
Reviews
122 PortraitPro 15 Studio Max Edition
123 X-Rite ColorChecker Passport Video
Macphun’s Aurora HDR Pro
124 Capture One Pro 9
125 Exposure X by Alien Skin Software
Picture Instruments Color Cone
126 StudioMagic I and II
127 Eddycam Fashion Strap
HP Z25n Monitor
128 Akurat Lighting A1 On-Camera Video LED Light
NEC MultiSync EA275UHD
129 Photoshop Book Reviews
Steve Damstra
Colin Falcon Ron Wetherell
DYNAMIC
RANGE
110
Processing Realistic
Starscapes
Sean Arbabi teaches us how to capture starscapes, balancing the
light of the stars with the ambient light in the scene. He then takes
us into Lightroom to show us how to get the most out of those
images, taking them from great shots to amazing shots.
Sean Arbabi
But Wait— There’s More
KEY CONCEPTS
These icons at the beginning of columns indicate there’s a short video on a tool
or function used in that tutorial at the Key Concepts KelbyOne member webpage
at http://kelbyone.com/keyconcepts.
DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT
Whenever you see this symbol at the end of an article, it means
there are either downloadable practice files or additional content
for KelbyOne members at http://kelbyone.com/magazine.
Dodge & Burn tools
Lasso tool
Layer masks
All lighting diagrams courtesy of Sylights
Pen tool
Smart objects
Quick Selection tool
Click this symbol in the magazine to return to the Table of Contents.

A FEW WORDS FROM › › SCOTT KELBY
From the Editor
staff favorites and
instructor-led curriculums
› › photoshop user › february 2016
006
We have an amazing issue for you here, but before we get to that, I want to take just a sec to tell you about some pretty exciting
things we’re adding to the KelbyOne site for our members.
The current workflow for our members is to log in and search for the topic they’re interested in (retouching, compositing,
lighting, etc.), and they get a bunch of full-length classes and quick-tip videos to choose from. In essence, it works like a search
engine for online classes, right? But when that list of results comes up, which classes should you watch first, which are the best,
which best suit your needs, and so on? In 2016, we’re working to help you along, and we’ll soon be releasing the first step in
that journey by sharing our own picks for classes that we think will start you off on the right foot.
You’ll see this new Staff Favorites section appear in the left-side navigation on the member site, but this is just a small step leading
to even bigger things that we’re working on (but just right down the road timewise), which are instructor-led curriculums. This
is where our KelbyOne instructors break things down into categories, and give you a list of classes, in the order you should watch
them, to get you where you want to be. For example, if you want to learn sports photography, portrait retouching, or compositing,
instructors who are absolute experts in those fields will give you a complete curriculum of classes, in the proper context and order,
so you can learn the techniques and concepts you need to be a success. We’re going to take things even further than that, but
these are some solid first steps to help guide you through the learning process and make learning even easier.
Beyond all the Photoshop and Lightroom online classes that we have, we also want to make sure that if you buy a new
camera, you can count on us having an online class ready and waiting for you on how to use that camera, so you can get up
to speed really fast. Also, keep an eye on the little “bell” icon at the top of your member dashboard—up there, we share new
classes that have been released recently, along with any new member discounts we’ve negotiated and other stuff we hope will
make your membership more valuable. There will be lots of other great stuff coming in 2016, but I wanted to share a little of
our roadmap with you here (but again, this is just the beginning).
Okay, onto other fun stuff: Mobile apps are just exploding into the digital imaging space, and Adobe has really hit their stride
in the past year in that area with some really incredible technology (including some stuff I wish we could do on the desktop).
That’s just one of the reasons we’re honored to have Adobe’s own Bryan O’Neil Hughes here in the mag with a feature on
Adobe’s latest mobile apps, along with a look at what’s coming very soon. It’s really incredible what they’re bringing to mobile,
so it’s worth checking out right now (it starts on page 52).
Also in this issue, our good friend Mike Olivella gives a wonderful introduction to astrophotography, including discussing
the equipment and techniques you’ll need to know to make amazing out-of-this-world images. If you’re a Photoshop beginner
(or even a seasoned user), Scott Valentine, with part one of a two-part series on layers in Photoshop, takes us in-depth into how
layers work together, including layer and Fill Opacity, Blend If, Masking, and Clipping Masks. In our Lightroom “mag within a
mag,” Sean McCormack talks about the benefits of tethering, how to set it up in Lightroom, and some equipment that will
make tethering easier (and safer). But that’s just a tiny bit of what’s in this awesome info-packed issue—our first since we’ve
gone all digital (you’ll be seeing some cool new stuff coming to our digital editions as well!).
There’s a lot going on, and it’s going to be a busy year of learning—we’re glad to have you here.
All my best,
Scott Kelby
KelbyOne President & CEO
Editor & Publisher, Photoshop User

The official publication of KelbyOne
FEBRUARY 2016 • Volume 19 • Number 2
EDITORIAL:
Scott Kelby, Editor-in-Chief
Chris Main, Managing Editor
Contributing Writers
Ajna Adams • Sean Arbabi • Steve Baczewski • Corey Barker
Peter Bauer • Pete Collins • RC Concepcion • Michael Corsentino
Seán Duggan • Daniel East • Rod Harlan • Bryan O’Neil Hughes
Jessica Maldonado • Sean McCormack • Mike Olivella • Colin
Smith • Lesa Snider • Rob Sylvan • Scott Valentine • Erik Vlietinck
Jake Widman
GRAPHICS:
Dave Damstra, Production Manager
Jessica Maldonado, Associate Art Director
Margie Rosenstein, Senior Graphic Designer
Angela Naymick, Graphic Designer
MARKETING:
Ajna Adams • Kleber Stephenson
WEB:
Brandon Nourse • Mario Ocon • Yojance Rabelo • Aaron Westgate
PUBLISHING:
Scott Kelby, Publisher
David Moser, Executive Publisher
Kalebra Kelby, Executive V.P.
Jean A. Kendra, Business Manager
ADVERTISING:
Kevin Agren, V.P., Sales 813-433-2370
Jeanne Jilleba, Advertising Coordinator 800-738-8513 ext. 152
Veronica (Ronni) O’Neil, Director of Circulation/Distribution
800-738-8513 ext. 235
HOW TO CONTACT KELBYONE:
U.S. Mail: 118 Douglas Road East • Oldsmar, FL 34677-2922
Voice: 813-433-5000 • Fax: 813-433-5015
Customer Service: info@kelbymediagroup.com
Letters to the Editor: letters@photoshopuser.com
Letters to the Lightroom Editor: lightroom@photoshopuser.com
World Wide Web Including the Photoshop Help Desk,
Photo Gear Desk, and Advice Desk: http://kelbyone.com/my-account/
helpdesk/
COLOPHON:
Photoshop User was produced using Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 and
Adobe InDesign CC 2015. Roboto was used for headlines and subheads.
Frutiger LT Std for text.
This seal indicates that all content provided herein is produced by KelbyOne, LLC
and follows the most stringent standards for educational resources. KelbyOne is
the premier source for instructional books, DVDs, online classes, and live seminars for
creative professionals.
| fuel for creativity
All contents ©COPYRIGHT 2016 KelbyOne, LLC. All rights reserved. Any use of the
contents of this publication without the written permission of the publisher is strictly
prohibited. Photoshop User is an independent journal, not affiliated in any way with
Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom,
and Photoshop are registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. in
the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned belong to
their respective owners. Some of the views expressed by contributors may not be the
representative views of the publisher. ISSN Pending.

PHOTOSHOP’S MOST WANTED › ›
Contributing
Writers
SEAN ARBABI
has been a widely published commercial photographer the past 25 years. He authored
The Complete Guide to Nature Photography (Crown Publishing) and recently produced a
video series on the Nik Collection (Peachpit). For more info, visit www.seanarbabi.com.
STEVE BACZEWSKI
is a freelance writer, professional photographer, graphic designer, and
con sultant. He also teaches classes in traditional and digital fine arts photo graphy.
His company, Sore Tooth Productions, is based in Albany, California
PETER BAUER
is an Adobe Certified Expert that does computer graphics consulting for a select
group of corporate clients. His latest book is Photoshop CC for Dummies. He was
inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2010.
PETE COLLINS
is an education and curriculum developer and website overseer for KelbyOne.
He is one of the Photoshop Guys and co-hosts Photoshop User TV. With a fine arts
background, Pete is well versed in photography, graphic design, and illustration.
RAFAEL “RC” CONCEPCION
is director of content and education for KelbyOne. An Adobe Certified Instructor in
Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom, RC has 10+ years in the I.T. and ecommerce
industries. RC has held training seminars in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America.
MICHAEL CORSENTINO
is an award-winning wedding and portrait photographer, Photoshop and Lightroom
expert, author, columnist for Shutter Magazine and Resource Magazine, and speaker
and international workshop leader. Learn more at www.michaelcorsentino.com.
SEÁN DUGGAN
is the co-author of Photoshop Masking & Compositing, Real World Digital
Photography, and The Creative Digital Darkroom. He leads workshops on digital
photography, Photoshop, and Lightroom (SeanDuggan.com).
DANIEL EAST
is an author, free lance writer, presenter/trainer, and consultant with more than
20 years’ experience in photography, pro-audio, and marketing. Daniel is also founder
and president of The Apple Groups Team support network for user groups.
ROD HARLAN
is an industry veteran with 25 years’ experience as an author, educator,
photo grapher, multimedia artist, and Photoshop addict! He shares content at RodHarlan
.com and is a trainer for Adobe, NAB, FMC, WEVA, and KelbyOne, among others.
BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES
is Adobe’s Head of Outreach & Collaboration. He spent 15 years on the Photoshop team,
and then drove the expansion to mobile with Photoshop Mix & Fix. A keynote speaker,
author, and 4x MAX Master, Bryan was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2011.
JESSICA MALDONADO
has been art director of books at KelbyOne for more than eight years, has created
video tutorials for LayersMagazine.com and reviews for Photoshop User magazine,
and co-hosted Photoshop User TV in 2013.
SEAN McCORMACK
is the author of Essential Development: 20 Great Techniques for Lightroom 5.
Based in Galway, Ireland, he shoots subjects from musicians, models, and
actors to landscapes and architecture. Learn more at http://lightroom-blog.com.
MIKE OLIVELLA
has been a photographer for Florida State University Athletics, Unconquered Magazine,
and a stringer for two international wire services. His sports photographs are published
worldwide, and he has won numerous awards. For more, visit www.baselineshots.com.
COLIN SMITH
is an award-winning digital artist, photographer, and lecturer who has authored
18 books and has created a series of training videos. Colin is also the founder of
the online resource PhotoshopCAFE.com and president of Software-Cinema.com.
LESA SNIDER
is the author of Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, Photos for Mac and iOS:
The Missing Manual, several eBooks, and more than 40 video courses. She also
writes a weekly column for Macworld. For more info, visit PhotoLesa.com.
ROB SYLVAN
is the Lightroom Help Desk Specialist for KelbyOne, on staff at the Digital Photo
Workshops, and the author of Lightroom 5: Streamlining Your Digital Photography
Process. You can learn more at www.lightroomers.com.
SCOTT VALENTINE
is an Adobe Community Professional and Photoshop author. His latest book
is The Hidden Power of Adjustment Layers (Adobe Press). Keep up with him
at scoxel.com.
ERIK VLIETINCK
founded IT Enquirer in 1999 (http://it-enquirer.com). A J.D. by education,
Erik has been a freelance technology editor for more than 20 years. He has written
for Macworld, Computer Arts, Windows NT Magazine, and many others.
JAKE WIDMAN
is a writer and editor who lives in San Francisco. He’s been covering the intersection
of computers and graphic design for about 25 years now—since back when it was
called “desktop publishing” and Photoshop was just a piece of scanning software.
› › kelbyone.com
009

› › ABOUT PHOTOSHOP USER
Image: Adobe Stock; Illustration: Corey Barker
Photoshop User
Magazine
Photoshop User magazine is the official publication of
KelbyOne. As a KelbyOne member, you automatically
receive Photoshop User ten times a year. Each issue
features in-depth Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography
tutorials written by the most talented designers,
photographers, and leading authors in the industry.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
About KelbyOne
KELBYONE
is the world’s leading resource for Adobe ® Photoshop ® , Lightroom ® , and
photography training, news, and education. Founded in 1998 as the National
Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), KelbyOne has evolved from
NAPP and KelbyTraining to create a singular hub for creative people to learn, grow,
and inspire. From photographers to graphic designers, beginners to professionals,
KelbyOne is open to everyone.
There’s no faster, easier, and more affordable way to get really good at Photoshop
and photography. You can join for only $19.99 per month or $199 U.S. for a full
year of training. To learn more, visit www.kelbyone.com.
Member Benefits
PHOTOSHOP USER MAGAZINE
Ten issues of the best Photoshop tutorial-based magazine in the industry.
MEMBERS-ONLY WEBSITE
Our extensive website features time- and money-saving content.
ONLINE CLASSES & EDUCATION
Thousands of Photoshop and photography tutorials, full online classes,
and quick-tip videos.
MEMBER DISCOUNTS
Save anywhere from 2–3 times your membership cost by using our many
industry-related discounts.
TECH SUPPORT
Fast, friendly Photoshop, Lightroom, and photo gear help; equipment
advice; and more from certified experts.
MEMBER COMMUNITY
KelbyOne members range from beginners to pros and love to lend each
other a hand. Together, we have built the friendliest, most knowledgeable
Photoshop and photography community on the Web.
NEWS & REVIEWS
Unbiased coverage on the latest equipment, plug-ins, and programs
in the marketplace.
WEEKLY E-NEWSLETTER
The KelbyOne Insider is your weekly connection to everything KelbyOne.
It’s produced exclusively for members to keep you informed of everything
new in the industry and at KelbyOne headquarters.
010
FIND KELBYONE MEMBERSHIP DETAILS AT kelbyone.com or call 800-201-7323 Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EST.

KelbyOne Community
› › Inspiration, information, and member musings to fuel your creative think tank
BY AJNA ADAMS
The Winners of the KelbyOne
photo & design contest announced
The KelbyOne Photo & Design Contest was our most popular social media photo contest to date, culminating in thousands of
submissions from all over the world. We featured five categories—Landscapes, Babies & Families, Illustration & Design, Pets, and
Wedding & Portrait—and the response was astounding with nearly 4,000 entries!
Congratulations to our hand-selected winners: Colin Falcon, Karlen Mkrtchyan, Carla McMahon, Ron Wetherell, and Jack
Podlas. We’d also like to give a special congrats to our People’s Choice winner, Hanna Salin! Check out the winning images starting
below and on the next three pages.
Each winner received an amazing prize package. Colin Falcon was our grand prize winner, and he received a Canon EOS 7D
Mark II with an EF-S 18–135mm lens, a Canon PIXMA PRO-100 printer, one year of the full Adobe Creative Cloud, a one-year
KelbyOne membership, a $200 B&H Gift Card, an Airport Navigator from Think Tank Photo, and a 4-in-1 Lens from Olloclip.
The other category winners each won a Canon PIXMA PRO-100, a Canon PowerShot G9 X, a one-year KelbyOne membership,
one year of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan, a CityWalker 30 camera bag from Think Tank Photo, a 4-in-1 Lens from
Olloclip, and a $50 B&H Gift Card.
And finally, the People’s Choice winner, Hanna Salin, won a one-year KelbyOne membership, one year of the Adobe Creative
Cloud Photography plan, a Suburban Disguise camera bag from Think Tank Photo, and a 4-in-1 Lens from Olloclip.
KELBYONE PHOTO & DESIGN CONTEST >> LANDSCAPES
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
COLIN FALCON | WWW.PIXVAULT.CO.UK

KELBYONE PHOTO & DESIGN CONTEST >> BABIES & FAMILIES
KARLEN MKRTCHYAN | WWW.SILENTSHUTTERPHOTO.COM
KELBYONE PHOTO & DESIGN CONTEST >> ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN
CARLA MCMAHON | WWW.CARLAMCMAHON.CO.ZA

KELBYONE PHOTO & DESIGN CONTEST >> WEDDING & PORTRAIT
JACEK R PODLAS | HTTP://JACEKPODLAS.WIX.COM/JRP-CREATIVESTUDIO
MEMBER SINCE 2015
KELBYONE PHOTO & DESIGN CONTEST >> PEOPLE’S CHOICE
HANNA SALIN

Social Media Moment:
it’s all about instagram
Right now in the world of social media, Instagram is what’s
hot. If you’re a photographer, you need to be on Instagram.
The great news is that Scott Kelby’s new course on Instagram,
How to Build an Instagram Audience, has just been released on
KelbyOne.com! Follow Scott at Instagram.com/ScottKelby
and be sure to follow us, too, at Instagram.com/KelbyOnePics!
And while you’re at KelbyOne.com don’t forget to check out
all of our new courses, including the ones listed below.
Fresh New Class
released at kelbyone.com
Here’s a roundup of some of our latest classes and tutorials
that you won’t want to miss. Log into your member account
at www.KelbyOne.com or check out these new releases on
our app.
Inspirational Interview with Mark Rodriguez
Join Mia McCormick as she sits down with multi-talented
artist Mark Rodriguez, who recently took the Best in Show
award at Photoshop World. Mark’s background is in graphic
design, and he’s a successful animator and illustrator in his
day job, but his unique and creative images are what have
captured the attention of everyone at KelbyOne!
The Secrets to Capturing the Best. Dog. Photos. Ever. Taken.
Join the fabulous Kaylee Greer, commercial pet photographer
based in Boston, as she shows you how to capture the
best dog photographs you’ve ever taken. In this class, Kaylee
works with four different dogs in different locations, ranging
from the local park to the local animal shelter. You’ll learn
her tips and tricks for engaging with her subjects to bring out
their unique personalities for portraits that owners will love
for a lifetime!
Master FX: Real Movie Poster Effects in Adobe Photoshop
Ready to learn the techniques used to build a Hollywood movie
poster? Join Corey Barker as he leads you step-by-step starting
with a simple studio shot and building it into a full design.
KELBYONE PHOTO & DESIGN CONTEST >> PETS
RON WETHERELL | WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/WETHERELLRON
PHOTO FOR AD IN TALLY-HO MAGAZINE

KelbyOne Community
Who's Who
in the kelbyone community
Antonio Martez is an award-winning fashion, beauty, and
lifestyle photographer represented by the international illustration
and photography artist agency, Illozoo & Pictozoo.
Antonio has graced the pages of Jamaque, Alchemist, INDIE,
and a host of other international lifestyle and fashion magazines
and fashion houses. Antonio Martez Photography is
based out of his White Space Studio home in the Chelsea
area, the Art Deco epicenter of New York City.
Speaking of Photoshop World, is there a particular
instructor to whom you would like to give a special
shout out?
Terry White: this man is an Adobe guru! He is truly one of the
most amazing people I have ever had the chance of meeting
and conversing with. He has truly became a great friend and
mentor since our meeting at Photoshop World 2015.
Why train with KelbyOne?
I feel that training with KelbyOne will assist me in becoming
the best artist and creative I can be in an ever-changing
market and industry.
Are you working on any cool projects right now?
I’m currently working on several commercial campaigns
ranging from Petit Pois, a Miami-based ready-to-wear
apparel company, to an editorial cover and feature story with
Venue Magazine. I really look forward to the continuation on
my ongoing project, “BLIND BEAUTY,” which is my take on
the world of beauty and how blind we have become to true
natural beauty.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
016
You’re pretty new to the KelbyOne community. How
did you learn about KelbyOne and what has your
involvement been?
I’m six months into the KelbyOne community. I learned of
KelbyOne through the various videos I watched on YouTube
of Scott Kelby and his many guests on the Grid.
You went to your first-ever Photoshop World last year.
What was your major takeaway from the event?
Yes, the 2015 Photoshop World conference was the first
one I attended. I was completely blown away by how accessible
that many of the presenters were to assist with questions
or just for a general conversation.
Antonio Martez
What is your greatest source of inspiration in both life
and at KelbyOne?
My greatest source of inspiration comes from what I call
“Zest of Life.” The Zest of Life for me comes from doing
what I feel is my passion and purpose on a daily basis.
My greatest inspiration that I get from KelbyOne is that
I can see myself being on the same platforms that many
of those who I watch via YouTube are on. Being a part
of KelbyOne and having direct access to those whom
I watched over the years has truly made me appreciate the
KelbyOne community even more. ■
Antonio Martez

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT › › STEVE DAMSTRA
MEMBER SINCE 2010 | HTTP://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/STEVE.DAMSTRA.9?FREF=TS
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT › › STEVE DAMSTRA
MEMBER SINCE 2010 | HTTP://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/STEVE.DAMSTRA.9?FREF=TS

Exp sed: Industry News
› › The latest news about photography gear, software, and services
BY CHRIS MAIN
Canon Announces
the EOS-1D X Mark II
On February 1, Canon revealed the Mark II version of its flagship EOS-1D X camera.
With a new 20.2 megapixel 35mm Full Frame Canon CMOS sensor and Dual
DIGIC 6+ Image Processors, this new camera will be in high demand by everyone
from sports photographers to wildlife shooters. The EOS-1D X Mark II has a long
list of new features, many of which are firsts for EOS cameras.
Continuous shooting speeds are now up to 14 frames per second (fps) with
Auto Exposure (AE) and predictive Autofocus (AF) for viewfinder shooting, and
up to 16 fps in Live View mode. With the Dual DIGIC 6+ Image Processors, you
can capture up to 170 consecutive RAW images at 14 fps.
The EOS-1D X Mark II can shoot 4K video at 60p and Full HD video at 120p with
Dual Pixel CMOS AF. At 120p, videographers can produce high-quality slow motion video,
and with 4K Frame Grab, photographers can create 8.8-megapixel still JPEGs from 4K video right in the camera.
The camera also has a new, built-in Digital Lens Optimizer to help correct aberrations (which is kind of like having the Lens
Corrections panel from Lightroom inside your camera). It also has an improved 61-point High-Density Reticular AF II system with
expanded coverage. All 61 points are selectable by the user, and each point supports AF at maximum apertures up to f/8, which
means precise focus even when using super-telephoto lenses with an extender—a huge benefit to wildlife photographers. It has
two card slots: one that supports CF memory cards up to UDMA 7, and another that supports CFast, which is especially useful
when recording 4K video.
A first for the Canon EOS-1D series, the Mark II also features a 360,000-pixel RGB+IR metering sensor with enhanced precision
and performance compared to its predecessor. It can also detect and compensate for flickering light sources such as sodium vapor
lamps that are often used in gymnasiums.
Other features include built-in GPS, an improved grip, and an enhanced AF sensitivity that works in much darker shooting conditions.
The Canon EOS-1D X Mark II is scheduled to ship in April for an MSRP of $5,999 for the body only. A Premium Kit will list for
$6,299 and will include a 64-GB CFast memory card and card reader. For more information, visit usa.canon.com/EOS1DXMarkII.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
018
The Odin II Trigger
by Phottix is now available
According to Phottix, the new Odin II Transmitter will give photographers more control than
they’ve ever experienced before. With each of the five groups having its own access button,
it’s easy to pick a light, make changes with the large control dial, lock in the settings,
and then shoot. A large, illuminated LCD panel shows all settings at a glance, and if you
switch off a group, it disappears from the screen for a streamlined viewing experience.
You can pick from 32 channels; the first four channels offer three groups and
are compatible with the original Odin receivers. Channels 5 through 32 use the
new functionality of the Odin II receiver, including user-set digital ID for secure
triggering. High Speed Sync with TTL flashes and OverDrive Sync with manual,
wire-connected, studio-type flashes, enable flash photography at up to 1/8000.
A built-in AF assist light helps with autofocus in low lighting. Other features include
TTL power control +/– 3EV; manual power control 1/1 to 1/128; second curtain sync
(Nikon, Sony only); flash zoom control; modeling light control with Indra500/360;
2.4 GHz, with a range of 332' (100m); and firmware upgradable.
The Odin II for Canon will be available in various countries throughout February and March. The Odin II for Nikon will be available a
few weeks later. The Odin for Sony will be introduced in late spring. For more information, visit www.phottix.com.

› › exposed: industry news
New High-Performance
64" fine art photographic printer from Epson
Epson recently introduced the 64" SureColor P20000 printer, the successor to its Epson Stylus Pro 11880. The SureColor
P20000 features an all-new, high-performance 10-channel PrecisionCore MicroTFP print head that delivers output up to 2.8x
faster than previous Epson models for production-level printing without sacrificing quality. This new 2.64" print head can
print at extremely high resolutions up to 2400x1200 dpi and supports variable size ink droplets as small as 3.5 picoliters for
excellent print quality.
Combined with the new Epson UltraChrome PRO nine-color pigment ink system, the SureColor P20000 provides exceptional
color and black density. Epson UltraChrome PRO is the first pigment ink set to feature four levels of gray ink technology,
including Gray, Light Gray, Dark Gray, and Black pigments to provide seamless transitions with less visible noise
and reduced bronzing for better grayscale output. In addition, the SureColor P20000 uses improved Resin Encapsulation
Technology for output with superior gloss uniformity, and exceptional overall contrast ratio and clarity. A new Yellow pigment
formulation provides up to twice the overall print permanence and longevity when compared with previous-generation
ink sets.
The Epson SureColor P20000 will be available in March for $11,995 (MSRP). For additional information, visit www.proimaging
.epson.com.
Nikon Introduces
two new flagship cameras
At CES 2016, Nikon announced a new flagship FX-format DSLR and a new flagship
DX-format DSLR. (Yes, that’s two new flagship cameras.) On the FX side,
the new Nikon D5 features a Nikon-developed 20.8-megapixel CMOS sensor
and an all-new AF system with Nikon’s first dedicated AF processor:
the Multi-CAM 20K AF sensor module. This system offers superior AF performance
with 153 AF points, including 99 cross-type sensors and dedicated
AF processor. The D5 is capable of capturing 12 frames per second
(fps) with full AE and AF, or 14 fps with the mirror locked. The EXPEED 5
engine dramatically enhances camera performance, delivering low noise
and high-speed image processing, including the power needed for
4K UHD video at 30p. The native ISO ranges from 100 to 102,400 but
is expandable from 50 (Lo-1) to 3,280,000 (Hi-5), offering near-night
vision capability. Other features include a new 3.2" 2359K dot XGA LCD
with touchscreen functionality and a built-in 1000 Base-T 400MBps Ethernet connection for image
transfer, with speeds up to 1.5x faster than the D4S. The D5 will be available in March 2016 (body only) for $6,499.95 (MSRP)
in two different versions: dual XQD card slots or dual CF card slots.
On the DX side, the new Nikon D500 features a new 20.9-megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor capable of excellent lowlight
performance, with an ISO range of 100–51,200, expandable to 50–1,640,000 equivalent. It can capture 10 frames per
second (fps) with full AF and AE with a buffer that allows for up to 79 shots. Fitted with the same AF system as the Nikon
D5, it includes the Multi-CAM 20K AF sensor module and 180K RGB metering system. It also has the ability to capture 4K
UHD video at up to 30p, as well as Full HD video at a variety of frame rates. The D500 will be available in March 2016 (body
only) for $1,999.95 (MSRP) and in a kit configuration that includes an AF-S DX NIKKOR 16–80mm f/3.5–5.6 G ED VR lens for
$3,069.65 (MSRP).
Nikon announced several other new products at CES as well, including the Nikon KeyMission 360 (the first in their series
of action cameras), the SB-5000 Speedlight, the WT-6A Wireless Transmitter, and the WT-7A Wireless Transmitter. For more
information on the two new flagship cameras, as well as the other new products, visit www.nikonusa.com. ■
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HOW TO › ›
& Down
Dirty
Tricks
commercial sports graphic
BY COREY BARKER
So the last thing I wanted to do was sign up for another social media
site, but I jumped into Pinterest because it’s a great resource for
finding inspiration and ideas. This one came from a very cool sports
ad that I saw, and I thought it would be a cool technique for a high
school sports photo or something similar. Once you see how it’s
done, you can decide what to do with it. Have fun!

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step One: Start by opening the image of the main subject
that you want to use, or if you’re a KelbyOne member, you can
download the files with which we’re working. This subject is on
a white background, which will make her a bit easier to extract.
[KelbyOne members may download the files used in this tutorial
at http://kelbyone.com/magazine. All files are for personal
use only.]
Step Two: We don’t need the volleyball in this image, so grab
the Lasso tool (L) in the Toolbox and draw a loose selection
around the ball. Press D then X to set your Foreground color
to white. Then, press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill
that selected area with white. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D)
to deselect.
Step One
©Adobe Stock/.shock
Step Three: Because our subject is on a solid white background,
let’s use my trusty channel method to extract her. Open
the Channels panel (Window>Channels) and click on the Green
channel, as this one is where the subject is darkest. Right-click on
the channel, choose Duplicate Channel from the pop-up menu,
and click OK.
Step Two
Step Three
Step Four: With the duplicate channel
active, click the little box to the
left of its thumbnail in the Channels
panel to make it visible. Click the
Eye icon next to the original Green
channel to hide it. Press Shift-Delete
(PC: Shift-Backspace) to open the Fill
dialog. Choose Black from the Contents
drop-down menu and change
the Mode to Overlay. Click OK. This
will make the gray areas darker while
leaving the background white. Do
this a second time to make them
even darker.
Step Four
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DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Five: We want the subject to be solid black, but too many
Overlay fills will roughen the edges. So instead, select the Brush
tool (B) in the Toolbox and choose a round soft-edged brush.
Press X until the Foreground color is black, and change the Mode
setting in the Options Bar to Overlay. Now paint in the light areas
to force them to black. Some areas may need several strokes
to make them completely black. Again, this won’t change the
white background even if you paint into those areas. If there are
any areas that won’t go to solid black, change the Brush Mode
back to Normal, decrease the size of your brush using the Left
Bracket key, and paint over those areas. You’ll have to be careful,
though, because in Normal mode, you can now paint on the
white background.
Step Six: Once the subject is solid black, press Command-I
(PC: Ctrl-I) to invert the image, making the subject white and
the background black. You can continue to adjust the channel
if needed. Now hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key as you go
under the Image menu and choose Duplicate. The Option (PC:
Alt) key will create the duplicate file directly, bypassing the Duplicate
Image dialog where you can rename the duplicated file.
Step Five
Step Seven: In the duplicate file, go to Image>Adjustments>HDR
Toning. If you’re using the practice file, then drop the Saturation
to –100 before adjusting the other settings to those shown here.
Click OK.
Step Eight: In the Channels panel, hold down the Command (PC:
Ctrl) key and click on the Green copy channel thumbnail to load
the shape of the subject as a selection. With the selection active,
press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to copy the subject to a new layer.
Step Six
Step Nine: Back in the original subject file, click on the RGB
channel at the top of the Channels panel to make it active and
hide the Green copy channel. In the duplicate file, switch to the
Move tool (V), hold the Shift key, and click-and-drag the HDR
layer back to the original subject image. Holding down the Shift
key as you drag will center and align it with the original subject
layer. In the Layers panel, change the layer blend mode to Over-
Step Seven
› › photoshop user › february 2016
022
Step Eight

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
lay and drop the layer Opacity to around 85%. Press Command-E
(PC: Ctrl-E) to merge the HDR layer into the Background layer.
Step Ten: Use the Green copy channel in this document to make
a selection of the subject again, and then copy it to a new layer.
We’ve hidden the Background layer here so you can see the
extracted subject.
Step Eleven: Create a new document (File>New) for the final
design measuring 600x800 pixels. Go back to the subject image,
and using the Move tool, drag the extracted image to the new
document. Press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to enter Free Transform,
hold the Shift key, and drag a corner handle to scale
the subject in the composition as you see here. Click-and-drag
inside the bounding box to reposition the subject. Press Enter
when done.
Step Ten
Step Twelve: Here
we have a texture that
we’ll add to the background.
You can use
this texture that’s part
of the exercise download,
or you can use a texture of your own. I like this one because
it has a framing element inside. To keep good detail in the texture
while removing the color, set the Toolbox colors to their defaults
by pressing D. Then, go to Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map,
and click OK.
Step Eleven
©PhotoArtTextures.com
Step Thirteen
Step Thirteen: Using the Move tool and holding the Shift key,
drag this image into the new document and then use Free Transform
to scale the image to fit in the composition. Also, make
sure the texture layer is positioned below the subject layer in the
Layers panel.
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DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Fourteen: Drop the
Opacity of the texture layer to
85% and then click the Add
Layer Mask icon (circle in a
square) at the bottom of the
Layers panel. Choose the Gradient
tool (G) in the Toolbox, click
on the gradient preview strip
in the Options Bar, choose the
Foreground to Transparent preset
in the Gradient Editor, and
click OK. Also in the Options
Bar, click on the Radial Gradient
icon. Make sure the Foreground
color is set to black by pressing
D then X. Now draw a couple of gradients in the document to
add them to the layer mask, which will hide parts of the texture
so it doesn’t draw attention away from the subject.
Step Fourteen
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Fifteen: Now we’re
ready to add some text. Select
the Type tool (T), click on the
Foreground color swatch near
the bottom of the Toolbox,
choose a red color in the Color
Picker, and click OK. Click on
the canvas to set a new text
layer. I couldn’t make out what
the original poster said, so I’m
going to type “SPIKE” in a font
called BN Machine, but almost
any thick, bold font will do. Go
to Edit>Transform and choose
Rotate 90° Counter Clockwise.
Then, press Command-T (PC:
Ctrl-T) to enter Free Transform
and scale the text to fit almost
the full height of the image area. Drag the text near the left
edge of the image and press Enter to commit the transformation.
Drag the text layer to the top of the layer stack in the
Layers panel.
Step Sixteen: We want to add a cracked texture to the text
so that it looks like shattering glass. An image of broken glass
should do the trick (this texture is also available in the exercise
download).
Step Fifteen
©Adobe Stock/alexkar08
024
Step Sixteen

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step Seventeen: Once
again, remove the color
using the Gradient Map
trick we used in Step
Twelve, and then use
Levels (Command-L [PC:
Ctrl-L]) to boost the dark
contrast until most of the
background behind the
cracks is black. In this
example, we dragged the shadows slider to 168. Click OK to
close Levels.
Step Seventeen
Step Eighteen: Using the
Move tool and holding the
Shift key, drag this texture
into the main image and position
this layer just above the
text layer in the Layers panel.
Go to Edit>Transform>Rotate
90° Counter Clockwise. Press
Option-Command-G (PC: Alt-
Ctrl-G) to clip the texture inside
the text.
Step Eighteen
Step Nineteen: In the Layers
panel, set the broken glass
layer to Screen. Add a layer
mask, and then use the Gradient
tool like we did in Step
Fourteen to hide a couple of
areas of the glass texture to
vary the look.
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Step Nineteen
025

DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Twenty: With the text layer active, click on the Add a Layer
Style icon (ƒx) at the bottom of the Layers panel, and choose Gradient
Overlay. Use the settings shown here to add a light effect
to the text. Be sure to click on the Gradient preview thumbnail,
choose the Foreground to Background preset, click OK to close
the Gradient Editor, and then check on the Reverse box. Clickand-drag
inside the document to position the center of the Gradient
Overlay where the subject’s arm meets the origin of the
cracks in the glass texture on the letter E. Click OK.
Step Twenty-One: We want to make the lettering look like
there are shards of glass breaking off, so we’ll need to make a
custom brush to create the glass shard particle effect. Create a
new document (File>New) that’s 500x500 pixels with a white
background. Grab the Lasso tool (L) in the Toolbox and draw a
selection that looks like a glass shard similar to the one we have
here. Press D to set your Foreground color to black, and then
press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the selection with
black. Then, go to Edit>Define Brush Preset. Name the brush
when prompted and click OK.
Step Twenty
Step Twenty-One
Step Twenty-Two: Switch back to your working document,
and select the Brush tool (B). The new brush you just created
should be selected, but if it’s not, go to the Brush Presets panel
(Window>Brush Presets) and select it from the bottom of the list.
Open the Brush panel (Window>Brush) and click on Brush Tip
Shape. Set the Spacing to around 229%.
Step Twenty-Two
Step Twenty-Three: Next, activate Shape Dynamics. Set both
the Size Jitter and Angle Jitter to 100%. Also, check on Flip X Jitter
and Flip Y Jitter. Then, activate Scattering and check on Both
Axes. Lastly, push the Scatter amount to around 382%.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
026
Step Twenty-Four: If you’re using the practice files, you’ll want
to set the size of the brush to around 50 px in the Options Bar
(use a larger brush for higher resolution files). Add a Layer mask
to the text layer, and make sure
the Foreground color is set to
black. Starting at the arm of
the subject, paint around that
area so it looks like pieces of
broken glass are missing from
the lettering. Here’s a view of
the mask. You can Option-click
(PC: Alt-click) on the layer mask
thumbnail in the Layers panel
to see it in the main window.
Option-click (PC: Alt-click) again
to bring back the image.
Step Twenty-Three
Step Twenty-Four

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step Twenty-Five: Click the top layer in the Layers panel to
make it active, and then click the Create a New Layer icon at
the bottom of the panel to create a new layer at the top of the
layer stack. With the same brush still selected, Option-click (PC:
Alt-click) on the red of the text to sample that color. Then, paint
shards of glass around the broken areas of the text. This will create
the effect of fragments breaking off.
Step Twenty-Six: One last thing:
We want to bring most of her arm
in front of the text, so Commandclick
(PC: Ctrl-click) the layer thumbnail
of the main subject layer to load
her shape once again as a selection.
Once you have the selection, click
on the mask thumbnail on the text
layer to make it active again. Select a
round, hard-edged Brush and paint
away the text in front of the arm.
Step Twenty-Five
As a finishing touch, drop in a player’s name using the Type
tool. Apart from any adjustments that you might want to make,
you’re pretty much done. ■
Final
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027

HOW TO › ›
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Dirty
Tricks
the hateful eight poster effect
BY COREY BARKER
Being a big Quentin Tarantino fan, I just had to have a go at his latest
movie The Hateful Eight. There were a lot of poster designs done for
this movie, and this exercise examines one of the coolest posters.
Once you have the technique down, it will be easy to repurpose it for
your own designs, plus it’s a lot of fun.

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step One: For this design, we need a background image of a
snowy wilderness scene. Here, we have a nice shot from Adobe
Stock that will work, but we need to make some changes first.
[KelbyOne members may download the files used in this tutorial
at http://kelbyone.com/magazine. All files are for personal
use only. If you’re looking for downloads for a past issue, just
hover your cursor over the circles below “View Previous Issues”
to see the month and year of the various issues.]
Step Two: Remove the color from the scene by pressing Shift-
Command-U (PC: Shift-Ctrl-U). Open Levels by pressing Command-L
(PC: Ctrl-L), grab the midtone slider below the histogram,
and push it to the left to around the 3.5 mark. This will greatly
lessen the contrast of the image. Then, go to Output Levels just
below and push the shadow slider to around the 39 mark. Click
OK when done.
Step One
©Adobe Stock/Leonid Tit
Step Three: Select the Gradient tool (G) in the Toolbox. In the
Options Bar, click on the preview strip, choose the Foreground
to Transparent preset, and click OK to close the Gradient Editor.
Also in the Options Bar, make sure the Linear Gradient icon is
selected, and set the Mode to Overlay. Press D then X to set
white as the Foreground color. Now drag gradients from each
of the four sides about a quarter of the way into the image to
create a white fade all the way around the image. Do this directly
to the Background layer.
Step Two
Step Four: Now create a new document (File>New) that’s
1000x700 pixels. Using the Move tool (V) and holding the Shift
key, click-and-drag the wilderness scene into this new document
(the Shift key will center it in the document). Press Command-T
(PC: Ctrl-T) to enter Free Transform, hold Shift-Option (PC: Shift-
Alt) and drag a corner point to scale the scene to fit in the new
image window (Shift will constrain the proportions, and Option
[PC: Alt] will transform it from the center). Press Enter to commit
the transformation.
Step Four
Step Five: Now open the main subject image, which is also part
of the exercise download. This is a gunfighter image shot on a
neutral background. We need, of course, to extract him from
the background, but first we’re going to do some HDR Toning
effects. Go to the Image menu, hold down the Option (PC: Alt)
key, and choose Duplicate. The Option (PC: Alt) key will bypass
the Duplicate Image dialog.
Step Five
©Adobe Stock/ysbrandcosijn
Step Six: In this duplicate image, go to Image>Adjustments>HDR
Toning. Set the Saturation setting at the bottom to –55%. Then,
up in the Tone and Detail section, set the Detail way up to around
140%. Drop the Exposure to about –0.50. Lastly, go to the Edge
Glow section and set the Radius to 67 px and the Strength to
about 1.08. Leave Smooth Edges unchecked and click OK.
Step Six
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DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Seven: Back in the original
image of the subject, grab
the Quick Selection tool (W) in
the Toolbox. Use the Bracket
keys on your keyboard to
change the brush size, then start
painting over the subject to create
a selection. Continue painting
until the entire subject is
selected, minus the background.
If you happen to select some of
the background, just hold the
Option (PC: Alt) key and paint
back over that area to remove
it from the selection. Be sure to
remove the small background
areas between his arms and
body from the selection.
Step Eight
Step Eight: Click on the
Refine Edge button in the
Options Bar to open the Refine
Edge options. Since there are
no soft edges, just set the
Edge Detection Radius slider
to around 1.5 px. Then, set the
Output To drop-down menu
at the bottom to New Layer.
Click OK when done.
Step Nine: Go back to the HDR Toned version and use the
Move tool to drag it to the original. Hold down the Shift key
so that it lands centered and aligned with the original. Also,
make sure it’s positioned above the extracted subject in the Layers
panel. Press Option-Command-G (PC: Alt-Ctrl-G) to clip the
HDR layer into the extracted layer. Also, change the layer blend
mode to Color Dodge and the Opacity to 55%.
Step Nine
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Ten: When done, press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to merge
the two layers into a single layer. Then, use the Move tool to
drag the subject into the wilderness scene, and use Free Transform
to scale him to fit in the composition, as you see here. Press
Enter when done.
Step Eleven: Click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom
of the Layers panel. Set the blend mode to Overlay and
drop the layer Opacity to 75%. Also, clip this layer to the layer
below, as we did in Step Nine, by pressing Option-Command-G
(PC: Alt-Ctrl-G).
032
Step Ten

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step Twelve: Now we’re
going to use the same
white gradient that we
used earlier in Step Three
except select the Radial
Gradient icon and change
the tool Mode in the
Options Bar back to Normal.
Add some gradients
around the edge of the
subject to create an edge
light effect to help him
blend into the scene better.
Step Thirteen: Now we’re ready to add the brushstroke effect
similar to the original poster. Here we have a group of strokes,
also from Adobe Stock. These are also part of the exercise download.
The color isn’t right, but that’s not important because
we can change that. We just need the shape of the strokes, so
remove the color by pressing Shift-Command-U (PC: Shift-Ctrl-U).
Step Twelve
Step Thirteen
©Adobe Stock/Roman Samokhin
Step Fourteen: Press Shift-
Delete (PC: Shift-Back space)
to open the Fill dialog. Set
the Contents drop-down
menu to Black and the Mode
to Overlay. Click OK. This will
force the dark gray to black and leave the background white.
Step Fourteen
Step Fifteen: Open the
Channels panel (Window>
Channels) and hold down
the Command (PC: Ctrl)
key as you click on the RGB
channel thumbnail to load
the white area as a selection.
We need the brushstrokes
selected, so go to
Select>Inverse, which will flip the selection to the main objects.
Step Sixteen: Back in the Layers panel, create a new blank layer,
click the Foreground color swatch near the bottom of the Toolbox,
select a deep-red color like the one shown here, and click
OK. Press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the selection
with red.
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Step Sixteen
033

DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Seventeen: Using
the Lasso tool (L), make a
loose selection around the
top two horizontal strokes.
Then, copy-and-paste these
selected strokes into the
main layout image. Once
there, press Command-T
(PC: Ctrl-T) to activate Free Transform. Hold the Shift key and
click-and-drag outside the bounding box to rotate the object
90°. Still holding the Shift key, drag a corner point to resize the
strokes, and then click-and-drag inside the bounding box to
reposition them on the left side of the subject as shown. Press
Enter when done, then drag this layer below the subject layer in
the Layers panel.
Step Seventeen
Step Eighteen: Switch to
the Move tool, hold down
the Option (PC: Alt) key, and
then click-and-drag a duplicate
of the strokes to the right
side of the subject. Go to
Edit>Transform>Rotate 180° to
rotate this duplicate layer so it
looks different than the original.
Press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to
merge this duplicate layer with
the original brushstroke layer
below. Change the layer blend
mode to Multiply to make the
strokes blend with the wilderness
background.
Step Eighteen
› › photoshop user › february 2016
034
Step Nineteen: Add a new
blank layer at the top of the
layer stack and grab the Gradient
tool again. This time change
it back to a Linear Gradient and
press D then X to set the Foreground
color to white. Drag a
gradient from the bottom edge
of the image to above his belt to
add a white fade.
Step Twenty: Add another
blank layer at the top of the
layer stack and press Shift-Delete (PC: Shift-Backspace) to
open the Fill dialog. Select 50% Gray from the Contents dropdown
menu, set the Mode to normal, and click OK. Go to
Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Set the Amount to 400%, the Distribution
to Gaussian, and check on Monochromatic. Click OK.
Step Nineteen
Step Twenty

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step Twenty-One: Now, go under the Filter menu again and
select Blur>Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to 3 Pixels and click OK.
Step Twenty-Two: Press Command-L (PC: Ctrl-L) to open the
Levels dialog. Push the shadow and highlight sliders way in
toward the middle as shown here to get an instant snow effect.
Feel free to tweak these settings to increase or decrease the
amount of snow. Click OK when done.
Step Twenty-Three: Change
the layer blend mode to Screen,
and there you have it! ■
Step Twenty-One
Step Twenty-Two
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Final
035

HOW TO › ›
& Down
Dirty
Tricks
devine
BY PETE COLLINS
You may have seen various images that have vines or branches wrapped
around products from companies selling anything from fertilizer to beer.
It’s a great way to frame the product and draw the eye around the composition
to where you want the viewer to look. The technique used to
accomplish this look is really easy to apply and has the added benefit of
introducing some folks to the power of Puppet Warp.

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step One: First, gather your main elements. For this, we’ll be
using a generic bottle and a wooden log from Adobe Stock.
When you’re looking for an image to use for the vines, you may
want to choose a log with nice bark texture; this will add character
to the vines and emphasize their curves. Try different images
to see what kind of results you get and experiment to see if you
like the vines fat or skinny.
[KelbyOne members may download the files used in this
tutorial at http://kelbyone.com/magazine. All files are for personal
use only.]
Step Two: You’ll need to remove the log from the white background.
The Quick Selection tool (W) can make this quite easy,
and depending on how precise you want to be, you can go the
extra step and use Refine Edge to make sure everything is perfect.
Step Three: Once you have the selection made with the marching
ants dancing around the edge of the log, press Command-J
(PC: Ctrl-J) three times to copy the selection onto three new
layers. In the Layers panel, click the Eye icons next to the Background
layer and the two lower copied layers so that you’re only
working with the top log layer. We’ll use the other layers later.
› › kelbyone.com
©Adobe Stock/Vankad
©Adobe Stock/salita2010
Step One
Step Two
Step Three
037

DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Four: To transform the log into our first section of vine, go
to Edit>Puppet Warp. You’ll see the log with a bunch of triangular
segments, and anywhere you click on the log will drop a
pin. The pins act as holding points/control points for warping the
object. If you just put down one pin and then try to move things,
the object will more than likely just spin around that pin. You
need at least two pins so that you can keep part of the object
in place while warping the other pin. It may take a bit of playing
around to get used to it, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a
wonderful tool.
The key to Puppet Warp is to try to use as few pins as you
can because each pin works in conjunction with the others and
you don’t want to add any funky edges or bends. If you mess
up, you can undo or click on any stubborn pins and press Delete
(PC: Backspace) to remove them and try again.
Step Four
Step Five: For the log to be turned into a vine, you’ll need to
stretch it and give it an S shape so it will wrap around both edges
of the bottle (or whatever product you’re using). That way, when
you mask out the top and bottom of the vine, it will look as
if those sections are going behind the top and bottom of the
bottle. The more severe the curves, the more pins you’ll need
to strategically place along the log to help control the look. You
could make the whole vine by adding just a few pins and severely
stretching the log, but breaking it into sections will make shaping
it easier, and leave more bark detail. The more severe the
warping the more likely those parts of the object will start to look
funny. Press Enter to commit the Puppet Warp.
Step Six: Once you have the first section of vine shaped how
you want it, use the Move tool (V) to drag it over to your bottle
image, and position it in front of the bottle. Line it up, resize,
and rotate it by using Free Transform (Command-T [PC: Ctrl-T]),
making sure that the ends of the vine are completely overlapping
the bottle. You also want to ensure that there’s space between
the bottle and the curves of the vine that are closest to the bottle.
Press Enter to commit the transformation.
Step Five
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Seven: Now we need to use a layer mask to hide the ends
of the vine behind the bottle. Click the Add Layer Mask icon at
the bottom of the Layers panel (it looks like a rectangle with a
hole in the middle). Switch to the Brush tool (B), and press D
then X to set the Foreground color to black. In the Options Bar,
click on the brush preview thumbnail, set the Hardness to 100%,
and then paint over the ends of the vine where they overlap the
bottle. If you mess up and mask too much of the vine, press X to
switch to white, and paint back any areas that were hidden by
black. When you’re done, the edges of the vine and the bottle
038
should be crisp.
Step Six
Step Seven

› ›DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS
Step Eight: Go back to your log file, hide the S shaped log layer,
click on one of the copied layers below it, and click where its Eye
icon used to be to make it visible again. Repeat the Puppet Warp
process for this log, but this time you only need to bend it slightly
since it’s going behind the bottom of the bottle and then out of
the frame. After practicing on the S shape, this should be a snap.
Step Nine: Now you could create a third section of vine for the
top section by warping the third layer so that you have three
Step Eight
unique vines, but a shortcut is to use the same vine you created
in the previous step for the top and the bottom. Bring them over
to your bottle image and use Free Transform to reshape, resize,
and rotate them, as necessary. Once they’re in place, mask them
so they appear to be coming from behind the bottle.
Step Ten: To give more life to the vines, you may want to add a
little greenery. This could be a patch of moss, flowers, or in this
example, some little sprigs of a plant. Place one section so that it
looks like it’s coming out of the vine and then make a copy and
move it to another location. Transform the copy so that the two
sprigs don’t look identical, and use layer masks to hide any parts
that should be behind the bottle or vine.
Step Nine
Step Eleven: Once those pieces are in place, what’s really going
to help sell the composite is to make sure you have proper shadowing.
You’ll want to add shadowing where the bottle and the
vine interact, along with dodging and burning any vine areas
that may be too dark or light, respectively, for the environment.
This is the art of compositing, a skill that has to be learned and
practiced. If you want to get better at compositing, you’ll need to
learn where to put shadows and highlights, and then the Dodge
and Burn tools (O) will become your friends. Don’t forget to add
shadows where the vine would be behind the bottle, especially
at the top of the neck. Notice that we also darkened the bottom
of the bottle to give the appearance that you can vaguely see the
©Adobe Stock/jcsmilly
› › kelbyone.com
vine through the liquid.
Step Ten
Step Eleven
039

DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKS › ›
Step Twelve: The bottle needs to be dressed with an appropriate
label. Design your own or use a stock label, then place it
between the bottle layer and the main vine layer in the Layers
panel. A great tip to help the label look like it’s part of the bottle
is to lower its Opacity in the Layers panel to between 95 and
97%. Just that little tweak will let some of the bottle’s coloring
and contrast come through ever so slightly. Also, don’t forget to
add a shadow where the vine crosses the label.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Thirteen: Find and place a suitable background image that
fits with your product. If you’re using the download files, click
on the lock icon next to the Background layer to convert it to a
regular layer, and drag your new background image to the bottom
of the layers stack. Next, select the bottle using the Quick
Selection tool, make sure its layer is active in the Layers panel,
and click the Add Layer mask icon to mask out the white behind
the bottle, revealing your new background image below. Resize
and position the new background image as needed.
Step Fourteen: Depending on the scene, you could have the
bottle sitting on the ground, but oftentimes you’ll want to place
it on a base in front of the scene. If that’s the case, a quick solution
is to grab a grungy piece of wood and transform it with Free
Transform. Just Right-click inside the transform box and select
the Perspective option. Now when you drag a corner handle, it
will transform the object in perspective. After you transform the
base, remember to add the shadows of the bottle and vine on
top of the wood so that they look like they’re all together in the
same scene.
And there you have it, a great way to highlight a product that’s
simple to do and has great impact. Understanding and practicing
with the Puppet Warp feature will allow you to bend just about
any object to your will. ■
Step Twelve
Label: ©Adobe Stock/DavidArts
Step Thirteen
Wood Base: ©Adobe Stock/picsfive Background Image: ©Adobe Stock/GIS
040
Step Fourteen

HOW TO › ›
Beginners' Workshop
mapping one image onto another
LESA SNIDER
One of the slickest Photoshop tricks ever is to wrap one image around the contours of another. It’s great for
creating conceptual imagery for ads or artistic purposes. To perform this feat, we’ll create a displacement
map—a grayscale image that Photoshop uses to warp and bend one image to the curvature of another.
Read on!
Step One: Open the image you want to map another image
onto and then choose Window>Channels. To make the best
displacement map, use the channel with the highest contrast.
Click each channel to view it or, if you’re in RGB mode (and
you probably are), you can cycle through different channels by
pressing Command-3, -4, and -5 (PC: Ctrl-3, -4, and -5); stop
when you land on the one you want to use. With the highest
contrast channel active (Blue here), choose Duplicate Channel
from the Channels flyout menu (circled).
[KelbyOne members may download the files used in this
tutorial at http://kelbyone.com/magazine. All files are for personal
use only.]
©Adobe Stock/beautyblowflow
Step One
Step Two: In the dialog that opens, choose New from the
Document drop-down menu (circled). In the Name field, enter
“Map” and click OK. When you do, Photoshop opens a new
document containing the channel you picked in Step One.
Step Three: In the Map document, choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian
Blur. In the resulting dialog, enter a value of 1–4 pixels (try
1 for low-resolution images and 4 for high-resolution images)
and click OK. The goal is to blur the image so the map is
slightly smooth.
Step Two
› › photoshop user › february 2016
042
Step Four: Choose File>Save As and, at the bottom of the
dialog, make sure the Format drop-down menu (PC: Type) is
set to Photoshop and that the Alpha Channels checkbox is
turned on. Click Save. Close the Map document by choosing
File>Close.
Step Four

› › BEGINNERS' WORKSHOP
Step Five: When you cycled through the different channels
back in Step One, Photoshop temporarily turned off the composite
channel (the one that shows your image in full color).
So in the original document (the one you opened in Step One),
turn all the channels back on by clicking the composite channel
at the top of the Channels panel (circled) or by pressing Command-2
(PC: Ctrl-2).
Step Six: Create a selection of the guy’s back. In this example,
we’ll select the white background and then invert the selection
to select his back. Press-and-hold the fourth icon from the top
of the Toolbox (circled), and from the resulting menu, click
the Magic Wand tool. In the Options Bar, set the Tolerance to
around 20. Mouse over to the image and click once within the
white background. Choose Select>Similar to have Photoshop
select more pixels that match the one you clicked. Shift-click
bits of the background that aren’t yet selected (a plus sign
appears beneath your cursor). Don’t worry about the guy’s
hair or towel; we’ll deal with those spots later. Now invert the
selection by choosing Select>Inverse.
Step Five
Step Six
Step Seven: In the Options Bar, click the Refine Edge button.
In the dialog that opens, set the Smooth and Feather sliders
to 1 pixel (or higher if you’re working with a high-resolution
image) and then set the rest to 0. From the Output To dropdown
menu, choose Selection, and click OK.
Step Seven
Step Eight: Save the selection by choosing Select>Save Selection.
In the resulting dialog, enter “back” in the Name field
(circled) and click OK. Now choose Select>Deselect to dismiss
the marching ants.
Step Eight
Step Nine: Choose File>Place Embedded and in the dialog that
opens, navigate to the motherboard image and click Place. To
resize the image, Shift-drag any corner handle and then press
Enter. In the Layers panel, use the drop-down menu above
the layer locks (circled) to change the blend mode to Multiply
(when using your own imagery, experiment with other blend
modes to see which one works best). Next, lower the Opacity
setting (also circled) to approximately 50%.
©Adobe Stock/Svetoslav Radkov
› › kelbyone.com
Step Nine
043

BEGINNERS' WORKSHOP › ›
Step Ten: With the motherboard layer active, choose
Filter>Distort>Displace. In the resulting dialog, leave the factory
settings as is and click OK. If you’re not sure whether the
default settings have been changed in the Displace dialog,
press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key to change the Cancel
button into a Reset button; click it and you’re back to the
defaults. In the next dialog that opens, navigate to the Map
document you saved in Step Four and click Open. If you watch
your document closely when you click Open, you’ll see the
motherboard shift to the contours of the back.
Step Eleven: Choose Select>Load Selection and, from the
resulting dialog’s Channel drop-down menu, choose the selection
you saved earlier (back, in this example) and click OK.
Step Ten
Step Twelve: With the motherboard layer active, click the
circle-within-a-square icon at the bottom of the Layers panel
(circled) to add a layer mask. Photoshop hides the motherboard
from everywhere except the selected area.
Step Twelve
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Thirteen: While the mask is active, you can hide the
motherboard from additional areas (the hair and towel). Press
B to activate the Brush tool (circled) and press the D key on
your keyboard to reset the color chips at the bottom of the
Toolbox (also circled) to the default values of black and white.
Press the X key to flip-flop them so black is on top. Mouse over
to the image and then brush across the hair and towel. If you
hide too much of the motherboard, press the X key to flip-flop
the color chips so white is on top and then brush back across
that area. (When you’re working with layer masks, using black
con-ceals and white reveals.)
Here’s the final result, complete with the Layers panel.
As you can see, the end result is well suited for an ad for back
pain due to excessive computing. Until next time, may the
creative force be with you all! ■
Step Thirteen
044
Final Image

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HOW TO › ›
Photoshop Proving Ground
SCOTT VALENTINE
layers, part 1: opacity
So you know about layers, right? They’re the building blocks of pretty much everything you can do in Photoshop,
from organization to detail work. It’s a pretty basic idea, and it’s probably one of the first things you learned
about in the world’s most popular digital image-editing application. Rather than try and hash over things you
already know, I’d like to present some ways of thinking about layers that should help your understanding of
what layers can really do for you.
Just so we’re all on the same page, you can think of layers
as containers that stack on top of each other. Each container
(layer) holds information that’s split into two general parts:
content and instructions. Content is stuff you can actually
see in the layer—pieces of your image. Instructions do something
with content to change it, usually by looking at content
from lower layers.
The classic way of
looking at layers is
like a stack of transparencies
or glass;
as you look down
on the stack, you
see the composite
of all the individual
contributions. This
painting is made up
of several layers that
combine to give you
what you see on
Photoshop’s canvas.
©Adobe Stock/msdnv
That’s fine to describe content, but instructions are a
bit more challenging. Instructions in this case are mathematical
functions, which take in information, do some
math to it, and return a result. The math that a function
performs is directed and manipulated by variables. If this
sounds complicated or boring, just hang in there; it’ll make
sense soon!
Let’s put all of this in terms with which we’re familiar.
Functions in Photoshop are things such as adjustment layers,
transparency, and blending modes. Variables is another word
for content, so any image you have on a layer affects how
the function behaves, usually by getting combined with the
content from lower layers.
The simplest example would be two layers. The bottom
layer could be a photograph, and the top layer might be
some text. On the top text layer, the function says, “Anywhere
that’s not covered up by text, show the content from
below; otherwise, show the text.” The variables are the photograph
and the text. When you combine them, the result is
exactly what you’d expect: text over a photo.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
046

› › PHOTOSHOP PROVING GROUND
While this looks like a trivial example, it’s the basis for
understanding more complex techniques. Here are two key
elements to think about:
1. Photoshop moves information up. Whatever is at the
bottom is processed first, then the output is moved up
as input to the next layer.
2. Each layer represents a composite of everything below
it. This is pretty important because it says functions
don’t combine across layers.
white area (100% Opacity) is content that gradually fades
to transparent (0% Opacity) where you can see the checkerboard
pattern. The pixels themselves carry transparency
information. Even if a pixel has 0% Opacity, it’s still content
on the layer.
The second point can be confusing, so think about it this
way: Each layer behaves as if it’s the top layer in the stack,
so if you turn off every layer above it, what you see on the
canvas is what Photoshop uses as input from that layer to the
layer immediately above it. There are no leftovers, only variables
that weren’t affected due to transparency. Put another
way, 100% transparency on a layer is a unique set of instructions
that say, “Do nothing.”
What do we get from these two somewhat academic
observations? Mostly this: order matters. That is, if you
change the order of layers, it’s likely that your results will
change. The output of any given layer is the input to the next
layer up, so changing the order of the layer stack will change
the total output.
The other idea we get is that of a virtual image. As I mentioned,
the image you see on Photoshop’s canvas is the result
of performing functions on variables—content and instructions
being combined. The image doesn’t exist until you
render it in some way. Even when you save and reload the
PSD or TIFF file, the canvas is the representation of all those
layers, not a single image by itself, so that means you can
change the output by changing something on any of the layers.
When you flatten the layers or print it, then it becomes a
real image. This is less important to understand, but I felt the
need to include it for completeness—and because I’m a geek.
Alpha Instructions
Now that we have these fundamental ideas out of the way,
let’s describe some features of content and instructions. I
want to define “content” as actual pixels on a layer. In the
example above, the text content is only the letters you can
see. All the areas where you can see the photograph are not
considered content on the text layer. Why should you care?
Because layer styles such as Drop Shadows, Bevel & Emboss,
and Stroke all depend on that definition. They apply to the
edges of the content on the layer.
Content can have opacity. Content Opacity, or how
much of the current content you can see through, is a feature
of each individual pixel. Check out this gradient. The
There is a twist, however. Opacity is a special type of
instruction channel called “alpha.” Photoshop applies this
instruction in different ways depending on the content and
any other instructions that are being used. (Note: Alpha is
actually a channel, but would take more space than I have to
explain properly. Calling alpha a type of instruction is a necessary
simplification.)
For now, you can think of alpha as a step in the stack of
instructions that gets shuffled around in different situations.
The practical use for this is that you can get different transparency
effects by choosing different alpha tools.
Now that we’re clear (get it?), let’s look at other alpha
instructions:
Layer Opacity: Layer Opacity applies to all content and layer
styles. As you drag the Opacity slider toward zero, everything
on that layer becomes more transparent, including
layer styles.
Fill Opacity: A special version of Opacity is called Fill, which
does the same thing as Opacity, but it’s calculated only on
the content itself; it ignores layer styles. That means you can
apply a Drop Shadow to some layer content, then reduce
the Fill to zero and be left with only the Drop Shadow. The
content vanishes. If you did that with Opacity, both the content
and the Drop Shadow would vanish. Fill also applies to
Background: ©Adobe Stock/picsfive
› › kelbyone.com
047

PHOTOSHOP PROVING GROUND › ›
content that already has lower Opacity, but Fill can’t add back
Opacity to content.
Blend If: The third kind of layer alpha, found in the Advanced
Blending section of the Layer Style dialog, is called Blend If. This
alpha is only applied to specific kinds of content based on the
brightness value (either gray or individual color channels). Like
Fill, it only considers actual content; layer styles are ignored.
Blend If also has a trick up its sleeve. It uses a comparison
function (the “if” part). Blend If can use the current layer information
(content and instructions combined), or it can use the
output from a lower layer. In plain language, it says to “blend
this layer’s content with whatever is below if some criteria are
met.” The criteria are the brightness values of either layer.
When using Blend If for This Layer, layer styles aren’t
affected—it behaves like a selective Fill Opacity. But when
using Underlying Layer, layer styles are affected.
Mask: There are two more features to talk about that concern
layers and transparency: clipping and masks. Remember
above when I said alpha instructions are actually channels?
Well, here’s where that information starts to make sense.
A mask is really an alpha channel attached to a specific layer
(or group of layers). An alpha channel is a grayscale image
that’s applied to another image and provides instructions
about what’s transparent and what’s not. In the case of
masks, Photo shop treats white as opaque, and black as transparent.
This is mostly independent of other alpha instructions,
and gets added on top of everything else. That means you
still have access to Content Opacity, Layer Opacity, Fill, and
Blend If, and then the layer mask gets added after all of that.
Clipping: Clipping refers to using the content of one layer
as a mask for another. A clipped layer has content and is
above a target layer with content. The clipped layer’s content
only shows up where the target layer content exists. Let’s go
back to our first example and switch the order of the text
and image layers. The text is now obscured. But if we clip
(Option-Command-G [PC: Alt-Ctrl-G]) the image layer to the
text (target) layer, the image content now fills the text.
Next issue, we’ll tackle blending modes and adjustment layers
in terms of how they behave in a stack. It’s gonna get geeky
in here! ■
› › photoshop user › february 2016
048

DEPARTMENT › ›
Photoshop Tips
boost your productivity and creativity
COLIN SMITH
› › photoshop user › february 2016
050
I have a grab bag full of tips for you this issue. I decided,
rather than have a theme, I’d do it shotgun style and provide
a variety of tips, so there’s something for everyone. Yup, even
you. I hope you enjoy these and they serve you well.
Colored Layer
There are lots of times when you may need a plain colored
layer in Photoshop, for example, to unify the color in compositing.
When making a colored layer in Photoshop, don’t just
create a new layer and fill it with a color; instead, it’s better to
use a Solid Color adjustment layer, Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid
Color. For starters, it will keep the file size smaller. Also, it’s
easy to change the color: Just double-click its layer thumbnail
in the Layers panel and choose a new color from the Color
Picker. The adjustment layer isn’t only faster, but it’s more
flexible. One other thing is if you increase the size of your
document, the adjustment layer will continue to fill the page.
Copy Multiple Layers Across Documents
Since last year’s update to Photoshop CC, you can now dragand-drop
multiple layers and adjustment layers between
documents in tabbed view. Select the layers you want to
copy in the Layers panel and drag them up to the tab of
the document to which you want to copy them. When the
window opens, release the mouse button, and you’ve completed
the move—no U-Haul required.
Lock Brush Settings
I use a Wacom tablet
all the time and I love
it. One thing I don’t
love is when pressure
sensitivity is turned on
for brush size when
I don’t need it. You can
turn it off, but as soon
as you choose another
brush preset that, by
default, has pressure
sensitivity turned on for
size, it comes back on
because brush presets override local settings. You can override
this override, though—how meta! Go to the Shape
Dynamics section in the Brush panel (Window>Brush) and
turn off Pen Pressure in the Control drop-down menu for
Size Jitter. To apply this setting to all brushes, click the little
padlock next to Shape Dynamics and it will be locked, even
if you change brushes.
Change Brush Opacity
To set the opacity of a brush, press a number key on your
keyboard. They’re in 10% increments, so just press the 1 key
for 10%, the 5 key for 50%, etc. For 100%, press the 0 key.
If you quickly type in two digits, such as 2 and then 5, you can
dial in an exact opacity.
Force that Type Tool
If you work with a lot of text in Photoshop, one thing you
might find frustrating is adding new text to a text-heavy
page. When you click with your Type tool, instead of creating
new text, it selects existing text. Annoying! If you’re
clever, you lock the underlying text layers so they won’t be
selected. If you’re super-clever, you’re reading this column
and about to discover a faster fix: Hold down the Shift key
while clicking with the Type tool and a new text layer will be
created—every time!
Sharpen the Photo, not the Noise
Have you ever sharpened a photo just to find that all you’ve
done is drawn attention to the noise? Here’s the thing:
Digital noise is usually more apparent in the shadows.
Before you go off and create some elaborate workflow
with Blend If, let’s just use the tool Adobe has provided
us: Smart Sharpen. Go to Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen,
expand the Shadows/Highlights section, and fade the
shadows. Voilà! Done.
Cleaner Selections with Color Range
Color Range (Select>Color Range) is a great tool for making
selections; you just click on a color and adjust the Fuzziness
to clean up the selection. The only thing is that sometimes
it leaves little unselected spots on the shadows or highlights

› › PHOTOSHOP TIPS
because this tool also looks at luminosity, not just color, to
make a selection. You can select more colors or increase
the Fuzziness when using Color Range, but this contaminates
the edges of the selection. Here’s what I do: Make
the selection with Color Range, and then apply Quick Mask
(the Q key on your keyboard). Go to the Channels panel
(Window>Channels) and look for the Quick Mask channel.
Click on it and open Levels (Command-L [PC: Ctrl-L]).
Drag the black and white triangles until the spots disappear,
and click OK to close the Levels dialog. When you’re done,
press Q again to get out of Quick Mask, and you now have
a cleaner selection.
Dragging Shadows
Drop Shadows are awesome and fun. You can easily apply
one by choosing the layer style at the bottom of the Layers
panel (the ƒx icon). Don’t waste your time using the Distance
and Angle controls, though. With the layer style open, you
can click-and-drag the shadow right in the document window
to put it exactly where you want. Try it: It’s quite fun
dragging the interactive shadows on your image.
Reset Your Filter
When you’re in a dialog, it’s easy to get carried away with the
settings; in fact, sometimes you get so carried away that you
create a huge mess and can’t get out of it without exiting and
going back in again—system abort! There’s a better way. If
you hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key, the Cancel button
will turn into a Reset button. Click Reset for a mulligan and
try again.
Stealing Presets from Lightroom
Did you know that you can grab your presets from Lightroom
and change them into Adobe Camera Raw presets
in Photoshop? Start by applying the preset to an image
in Lightroom and open it as a smart object in Photoshop
(Photo>Edit In>Open as Smart Object in Photoshop). Now,
in Photoshop, double-click the smart object thumbnail in the
Layers panel to launch Camera Raw. Go to the Presets tab,
click on the Create New Preset icon at the bottom, name
the preset, and click OK. That’s all you have to do. Done!
The cool thing is that it doesn’t matter which image you use
for the preset to hitch a ride, because you aren’t using the
image for any other purpose. ■
› › kelbyone.com
ALL IMAGES BY COLIN SMITH
051

Bryan O’Neil Hughes
› › photoshop user › february 2016
052
DECORATIVE BACKGROUND IMAGES © ADOBE STOCK

EVERY APP SHOWN HERE IS FREE. Nearly all are available on
both iOS and Android, and in the case of the former, they run
on both the iPhone and iPad. Each app requires an Adobe ID.
If you’re using a free membership, this enables access to your
files and projects across devices (you can sign into any mobile
device or Web browser to access your work). If you’re an existing
Creative Cloud member using our desktop software, you’ll
find a deep level of integration between mobile and desktop
platforms and all of the files between them.
Adobe Capture CC
Let’s start on the phone with an app that stands
nicely on its own, but is pure magic for existing
desktop CC users: Adobe Capture CC. We know
that the iPhone is the most-used camera in the
world and a pretty amazing one at that, but
what if it could see more than just photos and
videos? Capture does just that, extracting harmonious
color combinations, vector shapes, powerful
brush tips, and color “looks” from the world
around us. There’s a lot to Capture, so let’s just
look at one function.
The Shapes section of Capture is one of the
most magical and intuitive, but there are a couple
of tricks. Here’s how it works:
STEP ONE: Upon login, go to the Shapes section of the app and
select or create a library for your creations to live in.
› › kelbyone.com
053

Step Two Step Four Step Five
STEP TWO: While the default is a live camera, remember that
you can access any imagery from your camera roll, Creative
Cloud account, and more by simply tapping the thumbnail in
the lower right.
the content is patiently waiting in your Libraries panel.) Suddenly
everything—menus, fonts, signs, logos, or textures—looks a lot
more interesting. My favorite use of this app is converting my
son’s napkin sketches into scalable, archival media.
STEP THREE: The trick to creating a great vector is tapping the
main image window to preview the effect, then using the slider
to adjust the intensity—be careful of shadows and overlapping
content.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
STEP FOUR: At the Refine screen, zoom in to remove (or add)
any pieces of your vector.
STEP FIVE: Shape then magically resolves a smooth, infinitely
scalable, vector shape from your live camera or pre-existing
photo. These vectors can be exported and shared, so that they
can be used in any of the other Adobe mobile apps, or put to
great use on the desktop. (When you launch Photoshop CC, etc.,
Colors, shapes, and brushes auto-populate
the Libraries panel in CC Desktop apps.
054

iPhone vs. the iPad
In moving from the iPhone to the iPad, I should explain
why I use each. The iPhone is with me always. While limited
in size, it’s the most convenient platform in terms
of its camera and connection (social). I can (and often
do) write long emails and edit photos on it. For editing,
given the choice, a larger screen would afford me more
pixels and precision. The truth is, prior to the iPad Pro,
I was using the iPhone for almost all of my mobile editing.
But with more pixels than my Retina MacBook Pro and a
stylus (Apple Pencil) that “just works,” I’m shooting on
the phone and editing on the iPad Pro. Nearly everything
I’m about to show you can be done on either your iPhone
or iPad (no matter what size).
Creative Cloud App
The iPad also makes a fantastic portfolio, so
before we delve into editing, let’s talk briefly
about access. The Creative Cloud app allows you
to access any of the files you’ve created on the
desktop, your phone, or your tablet. This is a fantastic
way to share finished work with a client or
to reference desktop files on the road. The app
gives you much more than access, though; with
a long-press on a thumbnail, you can rename,
move, delete, and share files—any of these
changes will be reflected anywhere you find the
files (mobile, Web, and desktop).
Beyond this powerful, standalone app, Creative
Cloud content can be opened in all of the Adobe
Mobile apps.
› › kelbyone.com
Note the varied file types, which are all accessible anywhere
055

Lightroom Mobile
Lightroom Mobile has evolved from a companion
application to Lightroom on the desktop to
a potent standalone, mobile image editor. Let’s
look at both workflows and what they mean to
anyone working with photos.
If you’re an existing Lightroom desktop user,
Lightroom Mobile gives you access to any of your
synced desktop files by using a proxy-based system
(smaller files that pass the changes between platforms)
that allows you to edit, nondestructively,
anywhere, anytime. Not only can you rank and
sort on the fly, but you have access to an incredible
amount of Lightroom editing power, right there
in the palm of your hand—even features such as
Dehaze. Whether you’re star-ranking, cropping,
or deep in image editing, all changes are synced
between devices and up to date, and everything
is natively nondestructive so that cropped B&W
you made for Instagram is always an uncropped
color image under the hood.
Okay, let’s say that you’re shooting more
mobile than anywhere else, and you’re new to
Lightroom. Here are a few tricks to get you producing
gorgeous images, quickly!
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056
Familiar controls, such as Highlights, Shadows, Clarity, and Dehaze,
mean that powerful editing can be done on your phone or tablet.

The Enable Offline Editing option copies files locally.
Enable Auto Add will put any mobile captures in a
Lightroom Mobile collection.
iPhone 6S capture meets Lightroom Mobile—basic tonal adjustments,
a slight vignette, and Dehaze.
STEP ONE: Launch Lightroom Mobile and add selected photos
from your camera roll. These will come in as full-resolution files,
automatically sorted by date and time.
STEP TWO: After you’ve added your files to a collection, you’ll
see three dots to the right of the collection. Pressing those dots
will reveal some powerful controls, such as Enabling Offline Editing,
which is a must for travelers. This is an opt-in because photos
take up a large amount of space, but I cannot recommend
this enough for those of you who fly or are often disconnected.
STEP THREE: While there’s incredible depth to the app, it’s
designed to be consistent and friendly with the desktop. For those
of you new to Lightroom, I suggest starting with one of the many
presets and then delving into Adjust. In addition to the default
Basic tonal adjustments, touching the far left icon in Adjust
will reveal more powerful controls for Curves, Vignette, B&W,
Dehaze, and more.
STEP FOUR: One last tip: If you’ve applied settings that you like,
don’t go through all of the steps again with the next (similar)
image(s). Scroll to the far right of Adjust and apply previous. You
can also long-press on an edited image to copy settings, select
another image, long-press, and then paste settings!
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057

Photoshop Fix
MIKE HILL
The idea with Fix was to bring Photoshop’s
retouching to everyone, everywhere.
That was a lofty ambition, but
I think the team went above and
beyond in their delivery. Not only can
Fix do a number of things that desktop
users love, but it can also do a
number of things that are unique to it.
This is probably the most feature-rich
1.0 app that we’ve ever turned out,
so I thought I’d take you through a
quick portrait retouching. I found the
model of imperfection: me.
A nice photo by my good friend Mike Hill, but man, I need help.
STEP ONE: When it comes to any brush-based
operation, Fix becomes more precise the closer
you zoom in—a great example of more pixels
equaling more precision. With overlays turned
on, you can see that I’ve quickly removed a
number of blemishes. Note that this tool is a
hybrid, which can also act as the Patch or Clone
Stamp tool.
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058
STEP TWO: Skin smoothing is unique to Fix
and works extremely well. My tip is to reduce
the Opacity to 50% or less. Fix knows the difference
between skin and detailed areas like hair,
so even if I scrub hastily, the result is applied
only to the skin. While slightly cartoonish when
zoomed in close, I trust that I can still smooth
a bit more aggressively.
STEP THREE: You’ll notice that Light is the
equivalent of Dodge and Burn, but this is a
great example of how bringing Photoshop
power to touch means not only an entirely new
interface, but a friendlier and more familiar
language—no scary, dated terms here. I don’t
need to adjust local tones, but I do want to
work on my teeth. For that I’ll use Color set to
Step One
Step Two

Desaturate. Again, adjust the brush dynamics
as they work for you; I like small, soft brushes
set to low Opacity. You can always brush
over again to build up the effect, not unlike a
toothbrush in this case. Notice how close I’ve
zoomed to get the teeth, but not the gums. If I
did misstep, I have a Restore brush and several
levels of Undo to lean on.
STEP FOUR: You can use Color for digital
make up, changing the tones in a sunset, the
color of hair, or in this case, my eyes. My tip
here is to select a very diluted version of
the color you like and set Opacity at 50% or
less. With one eye colored, you can see the
difference before and after. The Color Picker
shows how the selected color can be a bit
misleading—remember Undo and Restore are
your friends.
Step Three
STEP FIVE: Clearly, I could spend a lot more
time on my tired, old, face, but the last thing
I’ll do is apply a vignette. Note that these can
be applied off-center and you can control the
shape and even color of the overlay.
STEP SIX: Here’s the finished product shown
with some of the options I now have. Sending
to Photoshop will translate the image into
individual layers, masks, and adjustment layers,
and a full-resolution PSD file will await you in
Photoshop CC.
Step Four
Liquify is one feature that’s much more
fun to try than describe! Take a picture of
yourself or a friend, bring it into Fix’s Liquify,
and click on Face. Points are auto-magically
placed on eyes, nose, chin, jaw, etc. I’ll
warn you now, this is addictive! All operations
in Fix are layers under the hood. That’s
what allows you to revisit and edit each at
any point, except for Liquify, which flattens
your image. For that reason, I recommend
Liquifying first.
Step Six
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059

Photoshop Mix
Similar to Fix, the idea with Mix was to
bring Photoshop’s powerful selection
and compositing tools to everyone in
a friendly way. Mix and Fix both take
full advantage of the GPU and that’s
at the heart of what now allows Mix
to edit multiple layers and enjoy the
magic of blend modes. Let me show
you my favorite use of Mix: creating a
multiple-exposure effect.
STEP ONE: I began by isolating this image of
my wife in Mix’s Cut Out. Selections are made
much like Quick Select in Photoshop: You select
the area that you want and then toggle to subtract
and select the area that you don’t. With an
image like this, I zoomed in and worked around
the edges I wanted to isolate. This gave me
more precision. While working an image like
this is time-consuming, the process can yield
very impressive results.
Step One
STEP TWO: Next, I press the + icon to add the
image I want to blend. This technique enjoys
imagery that’s out of place, so I used a rotated
image of trains. Rotation and transform are simple
pinch-and-twist gestures. The trick now is to
drag the thumbnail of my wife onto the thumbnail
of the trains and choose Copy Mask on
Layer. Having done that, we now see the trains
trimmed in the shape of my wife in this image.
Step Two
› › photoshop user › february 2016
060
STEP THREE: Here we see the effect with a
Soft light blend and Opacity lowered to 82%.
STEP FOUR: My last step was to add a third
image with the + icon and use a Multiply blend
(see next page).
Like Fix, Mix files sent to Photoshop will honor
all masks, layers, and blend modes. Tonal adjustments
will even come in as Adobe Camera Raw
smart objects! You may have noticed that there’s a
common design language with Mix and Fix. They
also share a project-based system that lets you
begin on one device and continue on another
simply by signing in. Both apps are natively
Step Three

Step Four
nondestructive, feature multiple undos, and are deeply integrated with Apple
Pencil. Finally, all of these apps feature tutorials and guided edits within the app.
Adobe Post
Post is a very recent release and is quickly rivaling Capture as my
favorite iPhone app. (As of this writing, Post is only available for
the iPhone.) Post allows you to create very quick, beautiful, social
graphics (text on images).
STEP ONE: Choose a photo from your local Camera Roll, Lightroom, or Creative
Cloud. Double-click to add text. Now, click Design to toggle through presets.
And here’s where it becomes fun: You can now select the text and customize it.
STEP TWO: You can toggle Palette and multi-click on each color combination,
but be warned, this will change the color of the text (which you probably just
changed). For this reason, I move to the Photo control and adjust its color, skipping
over the middle Palette control. Once finished, click on the watermark
(#AdobePost), and you’ll be prompted with the option of removing the mark by
sharing with a friend.
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061

Adobe PaintCan
This app is a Labs effort, meaning it hasn’t officially been released.
You wouldn’t know it to use it, though; PaintCan works great on both
the iPad and iPhone. Personally, I prefer it on the phone, as the UI is
more simplified, and I enjoy working with mobile captures to dramatically
change their look. My first tip for success here is: Choose a solid
photo to start with, as the composition needs to work for it to become a
good painting. Next, I suggest first running it through Lightroom Mobile
to amplify the Clarity (midtone contrast) and Vibrance. From here, the
steps are simple:
STEP ONE: Work the tools left to right,
zooming in for detail as you go. I often finish
with a broad brush around the edges.
I rarely use the last two brushes.
STEP TWO: The final output has a white
border with an app credit; both can be
turned off in the settings control, found
in the upper left-hand corner of the app.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
062

Astropad
I’m a big believer in rethinking things for
touch, and delivering apps in a native,
approachable, task-based fashion. While
some people ask for Photoshop CC running
on an iPad Pro, I think they’d quickly find
that driving around a thousand menu commands
via touch would be maddening.
There is, however, a use case that makes
perfect sense, and (for me) it took a stylus
to take this idea from being good to great.
The combination of the iPad Pro’s 5.6-million
pixel screen and a pressure-sensitive
Apple Pencil, both talking to a tethered
Photoshop CC, well, that’s pretty awesome.
If you’ve ever used a Cintiq, this is
similar: The iPad becomes an input device.
Astropad is so Photoshop-centric that it
comes wired with common PS controls.
Designed and built by former Apple
engineers, the app is very nicely done. My
only recommendation is to tether via USB,
rather than Wi-Fi. I find the latter to be
spotty and have more latency, which likely
has more to do with the connection than
the app. For anyone doing serious illustration
or retouching in Photoshop, Astropad
is definitely worth a closer look.
Astropad being used on the iPad with FiftyThree Pencil
So that’s a brief introduction to just some of what Adobe is doing with
mobile. We’ve built a number of other truly awesome apps: Comp for layout
(imagine thousands of gorgeous fonts on a touch device), Photoshop
Sketch and Illustrator Draw for raster and vector illustration, and much
more. You can learn more, and link to the free downloads by following
this link: www.adobe.com/creativecloud/catalog/mobile.html.
These apps are by no means static; we’re constantly updating features
and expanding platforms. I can promise you that all of this will
continue to get more and more interesting. The feedback from our
users has always been key to providing useful technology, so whether
you’re looking to learn more or just share your thoughts on how we
can do better, please feel free to reach out to me.
Thanks for reading. I can’t wait to see what you do away from
your desks! ■
COURTESY OF ASTROPAD
BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES (bhughes@adobe.com) is Adobe’s Head of Outreach & Collaboration,
closely working with product teams, partners, influencers, and press. Bryan spent 15 years on
the Photoshop team, a decade as Product Manager (CS3–CC), and then drove the expansion
to mobile with Photoshop Mix and Fix. Bryan is a regular keynote speaker, author, and 4X MAX
Master—his videos have enjoyed more than 12 million views. He lives with his wife and two
boys in the Santa Cruz Mountains where he’s slowly restoring an old truck. Bryan was inducted
into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2011. Check out his work on Instagram at bhughes222 and
Behance at Behance.net/bryanoneilhughes.
ALL IMAGES BY BRYAN O’NEIL HUGHES, EXCEPT WHERE NOTED
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063

COLUMN › ›
DesignMakeover
JAKE WIDMAN
CLIENT
Appalachia Cookie Company
http://appcookieco.com
before
“‘We talked about not just bringing
the brand to a more current state but
also to a point where he could really
expand and build on the brand style
and brand system.’”—Bateman
that’s how the cookie crumbles
David Holloman opened his Appalachia Cookie Company (http://
appcookieco.com) in the mountain town of Boone, North Carolina,
in late 2013. The company started with baking cookies and
delivering them to students at Appalachian State University, Holloman’s
alma mater. Over its first year, the company saw dramatic
growth, fueled in part by celebrity chef Paula Deen deeming
the product one of the 10 best cookies in the country.
By the beginning of 2015, though, Appalachia Cookie Company
was also outgrowing their original logo and image. The company
launched with a logo “born out of necessity,” says Holloman.
“We were on a deadline to get something for the marketing
materials.” They wanted something that said both “cookies” and
“mountains,” and they came up with a drawing of cookies with
bites taken out of them to leave jagged peaks. “It captured what
we wanted,” says Holloman. “It looked good for the first year.”
But it didn’t suit an ambitious, growing company. Holloman
wound up chatting about his brand with Charles Bateman, who
at the time was working for a marketing and advertising company
called High Country 365. High Country was doing printbased
marketing work for Holloman, and when the two men met
one night at a bar’s trivia contest, they started talking about the
company’s website and, soon, about the future of the brand.
“We talked about not just bringing the brand to a more current
state but also to a point where he could really expand and
build on the brand style and brand system,” recalls Bateman. The
discussions gradually moved from just rebuilding the website to
ways to update the brand into something that could work across
different print media, digital media, and retail applications.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
makeover submissions
We’re looking for product packaging or labels, print advertisements, websites, and magazine covers that are currently in the marketplace for future “design
makeovers.” So if you or someone you know has a design that you’d like us to consider making over, or if you’re a designer and you’d like to be considered for a
future “Design Makeover,” send us an email at letters@photoshopuser.com. (Note: This is purely a design exercise and the designers do not work directly with
the client, create functioning websites, etc.)
We’ll also be covering real-world makeovers in this column, so let us know if you recently had a branding makeover or if you did a branding makeover for a
client that you’d like us to consider.
064

› › DESIGN MAKEOVER
CLIENT
Appalachia Cookie Company
http://appcookieco.com
the problem
When Holloman and Bateman first started talking about a brand
refresh, Bateman hadn’t actually tasted any of the cookies. “I knew
that the product was out there,” he recalls, “but I’d never sampled
it. I think Dave’s done a great job in building a name, and he also
does a good job of marketing to the right demographic. I have
three children in the school system, and they’re all very aware of
the Appalachia Cookie Company.”
But Bateman felt that the logo the company had launched with
was “a little too cartoony.” “We didn’t feel that it evoked enough
of a brand that was going to appeal to a long-term consumer,” he
says. He thought the company could build a brand and a business
that could not just stand on its own but be taken national—not
just the business model, but the brand itself.
To that end, he thought it would be possible to reinvent the
cookie as a lifestyle choice rather than just a product. “I wasn’t
involved in the naming of it,” Bateman continues, “but I think
that intrinsically there’s some power to the word Appalachia
as opposed to Appalachian. Appalachian is more of a proper
name for the mountain range, whereas Appalachia evokes more
of the community spirit.” As a region, Appalachia is cohesive
despite spreading over a large area and multiple states, Bateman
believes, and it’s known for its entrepreneurial endeavors—like
the cookie company.
Bateman also wanted to come up with an identity that would
be Southern without being too distinctly Southern. “The recent
trend in graphic design has brought in a lot of retro styling themes
and some elements that might be more easily recognized as
Southern,” he says. “But we wanted something that was going
to be bold without being overly bold, and be Southern without
being overly Southern, and be very distinctive without being weird
or too one-of-a-kind. We tried to find a balance.”
about the client
APPALACHIA COOKIE COMPANY
Appalachia Cookie Company describes itself on its website as “a late-night delivery service located in Boone, NC.” The company specializes in offering cookies and
brownies baked to order and delivered while still hot, in particular to hungry students at Appalachian State University. The website also promises, “We know that
you can’t very well have cookies without milk, that’s why we also offer cold milk delivery as well as hot chocolate and freshly roasted, high-quality, fair trade, organic
coffee.... We are proud to use high-quality ingredients and, when possible, locally sourced ingredients. Listen, we understand that sometimes you just want something
sweet and don’t want to leave the house. Now, you don’t have to.”
The company also does catering and has a mail-order service for nationwide delivery. Its stated commitment is “not only to bake and deliver a high-quality product
to our customers but also to better the community in which we operate. A healthy community means a healthy business.”
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065

DESIGN MAKEOVER › ›
DESIGNERS
Charles Bateman / Logan Hall
www.charlesbateman.me / http://loganhalldesign.com
the process
To carry out the redesign, Bateman enlisted the help of graphic
designer Logan Hall. Hall knew Bateman from doing an internship
at High Country 365 while he was in school, and even after the
internship, the company continued to give Hall design work.
For the Appalachia Cookie Company logo, “I gave Logan a lot
of creative freedom,” says Bateman. “I would manage some of the
strategic direction and give feedback on how we would work with
a specific idea, but I gave him a lot of leeway with where we could
build the brand, what color palettes we should use, and how we
could start to apply the system to different applications.”
Hall thought there were some good aspects to the existing
logo, “but we wanted a more refined approach than that,” he
says, “something that hinted at the ideals of Appalachian living
and a high-end gourmet food brand without specifically referencing
the mountain imagery. We were also going for kind of a
hip, modern look because the demographic is primarily collegeage
kids.” Hall’s initial approaches retained some kind of cookie
image, but he wanted to pair it with type that had a script-like or
handmade feeling.
Holloman turned out to be an “exacting client,” in Bateman’s
words. “He wanted to see iterations, he wanted to understand
how the system could work.”
So Bateman and Hall collaborated on putting together “mood
boards” to communicate different approaches to the logo. “We
sent over probably about 10 or so preliminary ideas to let Dave
decide what direction he thought was working best,” recalls Hall.
Holloman would respond with “I like it” or “Keep working on it,”
and the designers would move on to the next round. Eventually
they came to focus on a logo that was primarily a wordmark, without
a lot of additional graphics.
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066

› › DESIGN MAKEOVER
DESIGNERS
Charles Bateman / Logan Hall
www.charlesbateman.me / http://loganhalldesign.com
the result
The design team presented a lot of different typeface options,
recalls Bateman, including scripts, sans serifs, and slab serifs. But
they finally settled on one they felt had a rustic (but not too rustic)
feeling. “For Appalachia, it’s kind of based on stacking logs,” says
Hall. The design starts with the font Aventura—the one designed
by Jimmy Kalman. (There are multiple fonts with that name.) “And
then there’s a slab serif for Cookie Company,” Hall continues. That
part uses the font Serific from Fontsite.
The new logo is slowly being rolled out across the product line.
“People really like it,” says Holloman. “We’re still in the process of
making the switch.”
“The first thing I saw the new logo on was a printed circular
that Dave sent out at the beginning of the new college semester,”
says Bateman. “And I’ve seen it on a table tent and a tablecloth.
The website was recently finished, near the end of last year.” The
website still shows a box with the old logo at the National Shipping
link, but that should change soon.
Bateman also found the project personally satisfying. “I like
working with brands that have a vision for the future,” he says.
“And if anyone has that, it’s Dave Holloman. This redesign was an
example of being able to start from a small, ‘Hey, we might want
to update our website’ and evolve it to, ‘Hey, we’re going to overhaul
your entire brand system and bring you forward to your next
growth phase.’”
about the designers
CHARLES BATEMAN / LOGAN HALL
Charles Bateman has more than 14 years of sales, marketing, and management experience in the marketing, advertising, and financial industries. As the director
of operations for Main Street Marketing, he managed all of the firm’s print, Web, and event promotion projects. He also oversaw the building of the firm’s online
media outlet, High Country 365, including its website and mobile apps. Charles is currently the principal of Bateman Consulting (www.charlesbateman.me).
Logan Hall (http://loganhalldesign.com) is a freelance graphic designer based in Boone, North Carolina. He has a BFA in graphic design from Appalachian
State University and specializes in branding, identity development, illustration, and motion graphics. Music is also a huge part of his life—he plays guitar, bass, and
mandolin and has played in bands since he was 16. ■
› › kelbyone.com
067

LIGHT IT
PORTABLE LIGHTING:
LET’S GO
IN JUST A FEW SHORT YEARS, THE POWER, WORKFLOW, AND CAPA-
BILITIES OF MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHY HAVE EXPERIENCED NOTHING
SHORT OF A MAJOR GROWTH SPURT, GOING FROM PROMISE TO
REALITY. FROM STANDALONE MOBILE APPS TO THOSE THAT SYNC
WITH THEIR DESKTOP COUNTERPARTS, MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHY
HAS COME OF AGE.
By Michael
Corsentino

› › LIGHT IT
I
ncreased bandwidth, less expensive memory, powerful
processors, a host of mature software titles,
competitive data rates, and robust cloud-storage
solutions have all helped usher in a mobile photography landscape
that now includes file formats such as TIFF and PSD, once
the sole province of the desktop. The march forward is ongoing
and promises to continue unabated—great news for the photographer
on the go!
Lighting manufacturers have done a great job keeping pace
with the never-ending quest for increased portability, bringing
exciting, first-of-their-kind, lightweight, battery-operated, TTLcap
able, and wireless radio-enabled strobe and handheld flash
products to market. These, along with a plethora of high-quality
portable lighting modifiers designed specifically for photographers
on the go, represent a revolution in location lighting and
its possibilities. Whether you’re shooting with handheld flash or
small strobe, there are exciting developments and new products
in each arena.
The gear landscape is vast, so in this article I’ll focus only
on the tools and techniques with which I have personal experience.
I’ll explain how and why I use these tools and share my
two favorite, no-fail location lighting patterns. Hopefully, you’ll
gain some insight into the exciting world of portable lighting.
I’ll be talking specifically about off-camera flash, otherwise
known as OCF. It’s how I work 99.9% of the time and it’s
what I recommend to anyone serious about lighting work. If
you’re not already using OCF, start now! This topic alone could
fill an entire book, but suffice it to say that getting your flash
off your camera will dramatically improve your results with
artificial light. Don’t be afraid, just jump in!
exposure modes, flexible groups, and super-simple interface.
(If you’re interested in learning how to unleash the power of this
exciting system, be sure to check out my forthcoming class on
KelbyOne. Yep, a shameless plug!)
I’ll cover a few of my favorite Speedlite modifiers below,
but first here are my favorite ways to work with the 600EX-RT.
As I mentioned above, OCF is the way to go. Once off camera,
I vertically orient and manually zoom the flash head to
200mm. I do this when I’m working with bare flash. This
does two things: It creates a beam of light that more closely
matches the vertical shape of the human body, and it creates
a tighter pool of light with a natural, in-camera fall-off. (That
means less vignettes needed in post!) If you’re working with a
light modifier, you’ll want to let the shape of the modifier dictate
orientation, and zoom your flash head to a value that provides
enough coverage for that modifier. The 600EX-RT also
provides a lot of flexibility with respect to exposure modes. I’ll
discuss when it’s best to use manual, TTL, or High-Speed Sync
(HSS) below.
If you’re a Nikon shooter or you’re using an older Canon
flash and you’re interested in wireless radio-based communication
between your off-camera flash(es) and your
camera, look no further than the PocketWizard FlexTT5
system (http://www.pocketwizard.com). These rock-solid
radio triggers are reliable and provide both manual and
TTL capabilities.
HANDHELD FLASH
Let’s start with handheld flash. There are a ton of great options out
there but my personal hands-down favorite is the Canon 600EX-RT
and ST-E3-RT Speedlite system (http://www.usa.canon.com).
This first-of-its-kind radio-enabled wireless flash-and-controller
combo is itself a revolution in handheld flash technology and
usability via its built-in radio, powerful features, mix-and-match
Canon’s 600EX-RT Speedlite has built-in radio-enabled wireless communication,
an easy-to-understand streamlined interface, mix-andmatch
exposure modes, groups, high-speed sync, and much more.
This cross-lit image perfectly illustrates the benefits of
radio-enabled communication between flashes and triggers.
Because radio signals are unconstrained by line-of-sight
requirements, I’m able to easily hide and trigger an
accent light placed behind the wall, camera right. This is
something not possible with optically based systems.
Michael Corsentino
› › kelbyone.com
071

LIGHT IT › ›
SMALL STROBE
Handheld flash units are great, but when you need more
power, nothing beats small strobes. The last few years have
seen amazing developments in this category. Profoto’s B1 an B2
(http://profoto.com/us/home) and Elinchrom’s Ranger Quadra
and new ELB 400 battery packs (http://www.elinchromus.com)
deliver between 5 and 10 times as much power as a Speedlite;
sport powerful, lightweight lithium batteries; and provide flash
counts reaching into the hundreds at full power, and thousands
at lower power. Add to this powerful and easy-to-navigate digital
interfaces, wireless radio controllers, and highly portable
form factors, and you have a winning combo.
There are some important differences between each system
that are worth noting. Profoto’s B1 and B2 are TTL-capable
while Elinchrom’s Quadra and ELB are not. I’ll cover exposure
modes below, but this honestly isn’t a deal breaker because
I find myself using Manual the majority of the time. The Quadra
and ELB offer 400-Watt seconds of output over the Profoto’s
B2 at 250-Watt seconds. Profoto’s B1 is a powerful contender
at 500-Watt seconds and it’s a tool on which I often rely; however,
it’s the heaviest and largest of the group. Each tool offers
different capabilities and trade-offs; it’s up to you to make the
call about which one fits your needs.
EXPOSURE MODES
The three exposure modes I use most often are Manual, TTL,
and HSS, in that order. For some reason, Manual exposure mode
strikes fear into the hearts of burly men. I don’t get it; it couldn’t
be simpler. Do you want more light or less light? That’s Manual
in a nutshell. Dial it up or dial it down—it’s that simple. Manual
is best when distances between your subject and flash are
constant. TTL, on the other hand, is perfect when the distances
between your subject and flash are in flux.
There’s a misconception in some circles that the use of
TTL forfeits the user’s creative control; this couldn’t be further
from the truth. Through distance and other calculations, TTL
does the heavy lifting for you, providing an exposure that’s a
solid starting point. After that it’s up to you to make the exposure
your own using a mixture of ISO, shutter speed, aperture,
and flash exposure compensation (FEC).
Keep these simple guidelines in mind in ambient light and
flash scenarios: Shutter speed controls the amount of ambient
light contributed to the exposure; and aperture and FEC control
the amount of flash contributed to the exposure. Aperture
is nuanced as it governs both ambient light and flash, so you’ll
want to lean more heavily on FEC to fine-tune your flash output
when using TTL.
HIGH-SPEED SYNC
When it comes to creating dramatic portraits with moody skies
and ominous clouds, HSS makes it easy. This is because HSS allows
the use of shutter speeds beyond your camera’s top flash sync
speed or X Sync rating, typically around 1/160–1/200. With HSS,
you can use shutter speeds all the way up to 1/8000. This makes
the use of flash and wide apertures in mixed-light situations easy.
Remember, shutter speed controls the amount of ambient light in
an exposure. The ability to dramatically reduce the ambient light
allows you to underexpose the background, sky, etc., and use
your flash to expose your foreground subject properly.
It’s important to think about flash and ambient light as
two independent light sources, each controlled separately.
I typically underexpose the ambient by around 1–2 stops for
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Profoto’s B1 delivers an impressive
500-Watt seconds of power and hundreds
of pops at full power. This compact battery-operated
mono head offers a digital
interface, wireless control, and Manual,
TTL, and HSS exposure modes.
Profoto’s B2 packs a lot into a small package.
This 250-Watt seconds battery pack
and head system offers Manual, TTL, HSS
exposure modes; wireless control; a digital
interface; and a line of OCF light modifiers.
Elinchrom’s new ELB 400 portable battery pack
and head system delivers 400-Watt seconds of
power, a digital interface, wireless control, and
numerous flash modes not found elsewhere,
such as stroboscopic, delay, and others. With
two heads available, one for action and one for
slower work, and Manual and HSS exposure
modes, there’s something for everyone.

› › LIGHT IT
this kind of look. Creating dramatic portraits is easy using
this method. (I cover this in detail in my class on KelbyOne.
Another plug!)
given the right conditions, you can use the sun as the accent
light. Both can be used with bare flash or modifiers, or a combination
of both bare and modified flash. So no excuses; get out
there and try these lighting patterns. You’ll be glad you did!
Cross light: This pattern is simply two lights (or one light and
the sun) facing each other along the same axis with the subject
sandwiched between them. This arrangement provides a
key light with directional light and an accent that adds dimension.
Rotate this pattern around your subject, placing the key
light on the right or left, with the accent light always on the
opposite side.
Michael Corsentino
Underexposing the ambient light by one or two stops and
using flash to properly expose your foreground subject is a
great way to create dramatic portraits.
LIGHTING PATTERNS
Here are my two favorite, no-fail, mobile lighting patterns: cross
light and wedge light. They’re both two-light patterns; however,
Here’s an example of cross lighting. I’m using two Canon
600EX-RT Speedlites. The accent light has a 1/2 cut of CTO
(color temperature orange) gel on it to mimic the setting
afternoon sun and warm up the model’s hair.
Michael Corsentino
Cross lighting doesn’t always have to be created with
two flashes. Here I’m using one Profoto B1 as my key light
and on the opposite side I’m using the sun as my accent
light to create a highlight on my model’s hair.
Michael Corsentino
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LIGHT IT › ›
Wedge light: This pattern is created by
placing two lights in a pie slice or wedge
shape relative to your subject. These lights
can then be rotated around your subject to
introduce more or less shadows.
Michael Corsentino
In this image, I’m using two bare Speedlites, each manually zoomed to
200mm and vertically orientated in a wedge lighting pattern to create a
key light on the model’s face and an accent light on her hair.
MUST-HAVE GEAR
Handheld flash meter: Don’t even get me started! The reasons
why you need a handheld flash meter could fill an entire article;
but trust me, despite what you may have heard, this is an
indispensable tool. My meter of choice is the Sekonic L-758DR
(http://www.sekonic.com).
Light poles: When light stands aren’t allowed or you’re on
the go, check out Lastolite’s Non-Rotating Extending Handles
(http://www.lastolite.com). I use them constantly. They
extend from 29–91" and have a 5/8 stud at the end.
Portable light modifiers: My go-to favorite light modifier is
Elinchrom’s 27.5" Rotalux Softbox Deep Octa. It’s highly portable,
extremely versatile, and delivers a beautiful quality of light. Other
favorites include Lastolite’s Ezybox and Strobo line, Expo Imaging’s
Rogue system (http://www.expoimaging.com), and Chimera’s
Octa 30" Collapsible Beauty Dish (http://chimeralighting.com)
—it’s killer! You can’t beat a beauty dish when it comes to creating
soft light with just the right amount of contrast; however,
beauty dishes have traditionally been anything but portable. This
30" collapsible version changes all that and does double duty as
an octabank when needed. If you’re just starting out and want
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More often than not, one light will do the trick. Here I’m using
one Profoto B1 modified with an Elinchrom 27.5” Rotalux Softbox
Deep Octa. I love this highly portable modifier for its beautiful
quality of light and the variety of ways it can used.
Michael Corsentino

› › LIGHT IT
one catchall modifier, make it a convertible umbrella such as the
Lastolite 8-in-1 Umbrella.
One quick tip with modifiers: Most softboxes and octabanks
have a central hot spot. This is where the light is the strongest
and arguably the least pleasing. Working with the light at the
edges of these modifiers, you’ll get a much more pleasing result.
This is called “feathering,” and I recommend it.
Reflectors and diffusers: These are easily the least expensive but
most useful pieces of gear you’re likely to get your hands on.
Pick up a 30" Lastolite TriFlip 8-in-1 Reflector Kit and a 30"
Silver/White Lastolite TriGrip Reflector. With these you’ll be able
to diffuse sunlight, soften and broaden flash, and bounce light
wherever you need it.
MOBILE TETHERING
Everything looks great on your camera’s small LCD screen; it’s
only later when viewed on a larger monitor that unseen mistakes
become painfully visible. For this reason, I’m a huge proponent of
shooting tethered in the field and studio. Great wireless and wired
solutions such as CamRanger (http://camranger.com) and Manfrotto’s
Digital Director (http://www.manfrotto.com) allow
you to easily use your iPad as a large field monitor for real-time
proofing and camera control. [For more on shooting tethered to
Lightroom, see “Maximum Workflow,” p. 104.—Ed.]
DO A LOT WITH A LITTLE
I’ve covered a lot of gear, but keep in mind you don’t need a
king’s ransom’s worth of equipment to get started with mobile
lighting; quite the contrary, you can accomplish a ton with one
light and one modifier. In fact, I recommend starting this way.
Working with one light keeps things simple and allows you to
really get to know each piece of equipment and what it’s capable
of before you add the next. Build your lighting kit slowly and
deliberately, picking up new pieces only as needed. When you
do, make it your business to explore all the ways to use your new
acquisition. This way you’ll be able to squeeze every last bit of
utility out of each of your tools. ■
Combining bare and modified flash is a great way to
vary the quality of light used in an image. Here I’m using a
Canon 600EX-RT modified with a Chimera Octa 30”
Collapsible Beauty Dish for a soft yet contrasty key light
and another 600EX-RT, bare and zoomed to 200mm, to
eliver a punchy accent light on my model’s hair.
Michael Corsentino
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PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS › ›
AN INTRODUCTION TO
BY MIGUEL A. OLIVELLA, JR.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY IS MY PHOTOGRAPHIC
ESCAPE. AS A PROFESSIONAL SPORTS PHOTO-
GRAPHER, I’M PAID TO RUN AROUND AND
FREEZE ATHLETES IN MOMENTS IN TIME. FOR
THE PAST THREE YEARS, MY RELAXATION HAS
BEEN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY; THE YANG TO MY
YIN AS I SPEND HOURS IN MY OBSERVATORY
DURING NEW MOON WEEKENDS IMAGING
CELESTIAL TARGETS.
Inside my dome observatory during an imaging run
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‹ ‹ PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS
GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
Left: My first astro image, a full moon shot in 1980 through a telescope with a 35mm film camera.
Right: A full lunar eclipse shot in 2010 with a DSLR through a 400mm lens and a teleconverter.
Astrophotography doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Most of us can drive an hour to get away from city-light pollution and
take photos of bright objects, such as the moon, simply by placing a cell phone camera on the eyepiece of a telescope.
DSLR image of the Andromeda Galaxy
Naturally, the quality of the image won’t be comparable to what’s possible with more sophisticated gear, but there’s a lot of astrophotography
that can be accomplished with everyday photography equipment. Beyond that, the sky is literally the limit, depending
on your interest and budget.
KEEPING IT CHEAP AND SIMPLE
Star Trails
Photographing star trails is one way to engage in astrophotography with basic photography gear. All you need is a camera body
capable of long exposures (Bulb mode); a wide-angle lens; a tripod; and a moonless, clear night at a location free from as much light
pollution as possible.
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PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS › ›
An intervalometer is well worth the investment, but not essential. This device will automate the imaging process by allowing you to
program shutter speeds, number of exposures, and exposure intervals. Once the imaging sequence begins, it does the rest. All that’s
left for you to do is replace the camera’s battery if and when needed.
For circular star trails, locate Polaris (the North Star) and compose the image with Polaris in the frame. All other stars will appear to
revolve in a circle around Polaris.
Eiffel Tower star trails composite
I created my Eiffel Tower composite using a Nikon D600, a 15mm Sigma f/2.8 fisheye, a Phottix TR-90 Intervalometer, and a tripod.
The star trails consist of twenty-four 15-minute exposures at ISO 1600, f/2.8, and then layered together. The Eiffel Tower image was
shot at f/2.8, ISO 1600, and 1/40.
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Meteor Showers
The technique used to shoot star trails can also be used for capturing images of meteor showers. Because of the sporadic appearance of
meteors, numerous exposures are necessary to capture enough light streaks in the sky. To create a meteor shower in one image, shoot as
many images as you can, select the ones with light streaks, and then layer them together while masking out everything but the light streaks.
My Perseid meteor shower composite (see next page) was created with a Nikon D800E and a NIKKOR 17–35mm f/2.8 lens piggybacked
atop my Celestron NexStar 8SE computerized telescope to minimize blurry stars. Absent a motorized piggyback telescope,
keep exposures to a maximum of 30 seconds. I used ISO 1600 at f/2.8 with my intervalometer set to 60-second exposures every
3 minutes for 6 hours on two successive nights. I added a few longer exposures of the sky to capture the Milky Way. The foreground
image was shot during the day and then converted in Photoshop to simulate night, adding a faux-light painting effect.
The Milky Way Galaxy
The Milky Way is another astrophotography image that can be captured with basic photography gear. At a clear, dark site on a moonless
night, locate the Milky Way in the night sky. A quick search on the Web should help you find it. The best views in the Northern
Hemisphere are from February through September.

‹ ‹ PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS
Perseid meteor shower composite
The Milky Way
Using a tripod-mounted camera, start with ISO 3200 at f/2.8 with a 25-second exposure. Next, shoot several over- and underexposed
images that bracket this exposure. Images shot with a shutter speed in excess of 30 seconds will show some blurring in
the stars, but no worries.
Finally, in Photoshop, layer your images one on top of the other. Mask out the poorly exposed portions from each image. Do
the same for any blurry stars from the slow shutter speed images. Then, merge your layers and make final processing adjustments.
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PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS › ›
TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Solar System Imaging: The Moon
Imaging the solar system is a natural progression from wide-angle sky images, and an easy way to delve deeper into astrophotography.
The Moon: Nikon D300, NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8 lens with 1.4x teleconverter, ISO 200 @ f/16 and 1/125.
Background: Nikon D3S, NIKKOR 17–35mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 3200 @ f/2.8 and 25 seconds.
Because the targets are bright, exposure times are short enough to prevent blurry star images. A tripod as a base will suffice
and a full-frame DSLR will yield better images than cropped sensor bodies. Added cost will come into play if you lack a long focal
length lens.
After setting up, find the moon in your viewfinder. Shutter speeds will typically be 1/250 for a full moon, 1/60 for a quarter moon,
and 1/15 for a slivered crescent moon at ISO 400 and f/16. Once you have the moon composed in the viewfinder, shoot quickly
because the moon won’t stay in your frame for long.
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Solar System Imaging: Planets
Going from moon to planetary photography requires a step up in equipment. To avoid blurry, faint images of planets, you’ll need a
telescope that has a focal length of 2000mm or more to achieve the necessary magnification for these targets.
An investment of $500 or so in a used 8"
Schmidt Cassegrain telescope (SCT) will give
you the necessary focal length. Celestron and
Meade have been making SCT telescopes for
years and they’re plentiful on the used market.
You’ll also need a T-mount attachment
for your camera to connect a DSLR camera
body to the back of the telescope. Finally, a
Barlow lens is a must. Barlow lenses increase
magnification without affecting f-stop value.
They come in various magnification factors
from 2–5x, and while you can scrimp on
these lenses, the only ones I’d recommend are
TeleVue Powermates. These are optimized for
photography and are well worth the price tag
of approximately $200 for a new one, less for
used ones.
The imaging process is the same as the one
described for shooting the moon, with one
exception: because of the slower shutter speeds,
use a remote shutter release or the camera’s selftimer
feature to trigger the shutter. You should
also lock your mirror in the up position. This
will minimize camera vibration, which produces
blurry images.
Jupiter: Nikon D3S, Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope, and TeleVue 4x Powermate.
Ninety images @ ISO 800, f10, and 1/10th to 1/30th.

‹ ‹ PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS
DEEP SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER
For deep-sky targets, such as nebulae and galaxies,
a motorized mount is a must. There are
two types: Altitude-Azimuth mounts (Alt-Az) and
German Equatorial mounts (GEM). The GEM is
the best choice for astrophotography. Once the
mount is polar-aligned, lengthy exposures can
be taken without any target movement. Expect
to pay $500–$1,500 for a quality GEM that can
handle a DSLR with long lenses and/or many telescopes.
To ensure smooth operation while imaging,
the mount’s rated weight capacity must be
twice the weight of the equipment you intend to
use, so purchase wisely.
Saturn: Nikon D3S, Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope, and TeleVue 5x Powermate.
Ninety images @ ISO 800, f/10, and 1/2.5 to 1/6.
Star field: 17–35mm lens @ f/2.8, ISO 3200, f/2.8, and 25 seconds.
My imaging telescopes. Left: Celestron NexStar 8" SCT with Alt-Az go-to mount; Center: Takahashi TSA-102 4" refractor with Celestron
CGEM equatorial mount; Right: Astro-Tech 12" Ritchey-Chrétien truss tube telescope with Takahashi EM-400 equatorial mount.
Learning To Walk
Deciding how to shoot deep-sky targets will determine
equipment selection that will, in turn, dictate
the size, quality, and detail of the targets being
imaged. Wide-field images can be captured with a
DSLR, a modestly priced 80mm (3") refractor telescope,
and a Celestron Advanced VX GEM mount
(30-lb load capacity). Not counting the camera,
your investment would run approximately $1,500–
$2,000 by the time you add desirable accessories
such as dew heaters and an autoguider.
This photo (right) is an example of what’s possible
with this setup, including the accessories. I
shot a total of 160 images at various shutter speeds
ranging from 10–45 seconds at ISO 1600, and 10
images with 1–3 minute exposures to layer in a sky
Wide-field image of the nebulae in the Orion constellation.
Orion’s Belt is the diagonal line formed by the three blue stars
on the left, ending with the blue star in the center nebula.
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PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS › ›
saturated with stars at the end of the Photoshop process. Before wrapping up, I shot ten “flats” at each shutter speed, twelve “darks”
at each shutter speed, and ten “bias” frames for the pre-Photoshop processing in software that “stacks” the images together.
“Flats” are images taken by covering the end of the lens with a white T-shirt and shining a flashlight on it. They’re used by the
stacking software to correct any difference in brightness in the main images. “Darks” are images taken by covering the end of the
lens with the lens cap. Half of the darks are taken at the beginning and the other half at the end. Darks correct the dark signal
flaws in image sensors. “Bias” frames are images taken with the fastest possible shutter speed the camera can shoot and the lens
cap on. They contain only the noise generated by the camera’s electronics on the sensor. This noise is subtracted from the data in
the darks to identify the true sensor noise. These extra images are time-consuming but they’ll allow you to create the best possible
final image.
Learning To Run
Adding more sophisticated equipment, such as a bigger telescope and mount, will yield larger, more detailed images of your targets.
For comparison, here are images of the nebulae in Orion taken through a 4" Takahashi refractor on a Celestron CGEM mount. The
equipment investment is now in the $3,500 (used) to $5,000 range (new). The targets are much larger in the frame with more detail.
Horsehead and Flame Nebulae in Orion
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Running Man and Great Orion Nebulae

‹ ‹ PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS
Sprinting
For comparison, below are examples of the Horsehead Nebula and the Great Orion Nebula through my 12" Astro-Tech Ritchey-Chrétien
truss tube telescope, Takahashi EM-400 mount, and a QSI 683 mono CCD camera with a full complement of filters.
Horsehead and Flame Nebulae with a 12" Ritchey-Chrétien telescope
› › kelbyone.com
Great Orion Nebula with a 12" Ritchey-Chrétien telescope
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PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS › ›
The telescope has a 2,432mm focal length at f/8—a bit shorter and faster with the flattener—and 12" light-gathering capability. The
CCD camera has a full-frame 8.3MP sensor and a built-in cooling mechanism that will cool the sensor down to –40° Celsius to minimize
noise. Finally, the Takahashi mount slews and tracks like a fine-tuned sports car. Here are more examples of what this rig can do.
Cone Nebula (left), Christmas Tree Nebula (to the right of the Cone), and Fox Fur Nebula (upper center)
Eagle Nebula
Sombrero Galaxy
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Sculptor Galaxy
Trifid Nebula

‹ ‹ PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS
Tadpole Nebula
› › kelbyone.com
Whirlpool Galaxy
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PHOTOGRAPHY SECRETS › ›
Elephant Trunk Nebula
Lagoon Nebula
Moon
Veil Nebula
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Astrophotography with friends: My 10' dome observatory (center) between a friend’s roll-off roof
observatory (left) and another friend’s pod (right) at the Chiefland Astronomy Village in Florida.
If you’ve been looking for a way to expand your photographic horizons and if you enjoy capturing images of spectacular objects,
astrophotography may be a new interest for you. You can do it alone or add a wonderful social element to the activity by doing it with
friends. Either way, the images that are possible are beautiful and limited only by your interest. ■
Miguel (Mike) Antonio Olivella, Jr. is a professional photographer based in Tallahassee, Florida. Mike has been a featured photographer for Florida
State University Athletics (for more than ten years), Unconquered Magazine, and a stringer for two international wire services. His sports photographs
are routinely published worldwide. Mike’s wildlife, travel, landscape, and astro images have garnered numerous awards and have been exhibited in
various solo and joint gallery exhibitions. You can see more of Mike’s work at www.baselineshots.com, on Google+ (Mike Olivella), or on Facebook
(Miguel Antonio Olivella).
ALL IMAGES BY MIQUEL A. OLIVELLA, JR.

Scott Kelby
Rob Sylvan
Sean McCormack
89 98 104 110 116 118
Sean Arbabi
Scott Kelby
Scott Kelby
Tips
&
Tricks
BY SEÁN DUGGAN
Questions & Answers
BY SCOTT KELBY
Dynamic Range
processing realistic starscapes
BY SEAN ARBABI
Maximum Workflow
tethering in lightroom
BY SEAN Mc CORMACK
Under the Loupe
leveraging slideshows
BY ROB SYLVAN
Lightroom Workshop
dodging, burning, and adjusting
individual areas of your photo
BY SCOTT KELBY
lightroom magazine › contents › ›

dodging, burning, and
adjusting individual areas
Lightroom
of your photo
Workshop
BY
SCOTT KELBY
Everything you do in the Basic panel affects the entire
image. If you drag the Temp slider, it changes the white
balance for the entire image (it’s a “global adjustment”).
But what if you want to adjust one particular area
of your image (a “local” adjustment)? Then you’d use
the Adjustment Brush, which lets you paint changes
just where you want them, so you can do things
Excerpted from The Adobe Photoshop
Lightroom CC Book for Digital Photographers
like dodging and burning (lightening and darkening
different parts of your photo).

› › lightroom magazine › ›
step one: Here’s the original
image—one of the amazing ceilings at
St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, Italy. It
needs a lot of work. The bright sunlight
coming into the dome fooled the camera’s
metering system (and, apparently,
the guy holding it, as well. Ahem…)
and underexposed most of the image
by quite a bit. That’s the key—there
are parts that are too bright, and areas
I wish were brighter. This is where
the Adjustment Brush, which lets you
selectively dodge (make certain areas
brighter) and burn (make certain areas
darker), totally rocks. It was born for this
stuff, but I don’t use it until I at least
get my basic exposure right, so let’s do
that first. In the Develop module’s Basic
panel, let’s tweak the sliders to get us at
least in the ballpark.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
step two: Since it’s way underexposed,
let’s start by dragging the
Exposure slider to the right to help the
overall brightness. The light coming in
from the top of the dome and the windows
is pretty bright, so let’s lower the
highlights in those areas by dragging
the Highlights slider to the left quite a
bit. Finally, I’d like to see more detail in
the shadow areas, so let’s open up the
Shadows a nice bit, too (as shown here).
Okay, it already looks a lot better, but
the areas right around the dome are still
pretty dark, and the gold ceiling area on
the left is too bright. The ceiling area at
the top center is too bright, too, and so
are the columns on either side of it. As
is often the case, there are some areas
that need to be brighter and some that
need to be darker.
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› › lightroom magazine › ›
step three: The Adjustment Brush
is found in the toolbox right above the
Basic panel (it’s the tool on the far right,
shown circled here), or just press the
letter K on your keyboard. When you
choose it, an options panel pops down
(seen here) and you’ll see that you can
paint using nearly all the same controls
you have in the Basic panel, except
that Vibrance isn’t there. (Rats!) But, at
least we have other cool stuff, like noise
reduction and moiré removal, so it kinda
makes up for not having Vibrance. Kinda.
With the Adjustment Brush, you choose
which adjustment you want to paint
with by dragging one or more of those
sliders, and then you just start painting
that adjustment right on your photo.
tip: changing brush sizes
To change your brush size, press the
Left Bracket key to make it smaller or
the Right Bracket key to make it bigger.
step four: Since you don’t actually
see the effect until you start painting
on your photo, how do you know
how far to move the sliders? Well, this
is going to sound weird, but you don’t.
You literally just make a blind guess at
how much you think you might want of
a particular adjustment, and then you
paint over the area you want to adjust.
Then, once you can see the adjustment,
you go back to that slider and tweak the
amount until it looks right. The good
part is you get to make your final decision
after you’ve painted over the area,
so you can get it right on the money.
For example, here I (1) got the brush,
(2) dragged the Exposure slider to the
right a bunch, (3) painted over the dark
area on the right side of the dome to
brighten it, and then (4) went back to
the Exposure slider and lowered the
amount until it looked right to me.
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› › lightroom magazine › ›
step five: Once you stop painting,
you’ll see that a little white circle
with a black dot in the center appears
on your image right at the spot where
you started painting. (If you don’t see
the black dot, look down in the toolbar
under your image and make sure Auto,
Always, or Selected appears after Show
Edit Pins. If you don’t see the toolbar,
press T.) That’s called an Edit Pin (shown
circled here in red), and it represents the
change you just made to the right side
of the dome. As long as you see a black
dot in the center, it means that adjustment
is “active,” and if you start painting
again right now it just adds to what
you’ve already painted. So, let’s continue
painting around the rest of the dark
areas surrounding the dome (as shown
here, where that area is much brighter
now). By the way, that little Edit Pin automatically
hides as you paint.
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092
step six: When you’re done brightening
around the dome, and you now
want to adjust a different area (for
example, let’s say you want to darken
[burn] the gold ceiling on the left center
of the image, so it’s not too bright),
you can’t just drag the Exposure slider
over to the left and start painting. That’s
because your Edit Pin for the dome is
still active. Moving the Exposure slider
will make the area you painted around
the dome darker. You have to tell Lightroom
to “Leave what I did around the
dome alone. Now, I want to paint a totally
separate adjustment, somewhere
else in the photo, with different settings.”
You do that by clicking the New
button at the top of the Adjustment
Brush panel. Now, you can lower the Exposure
amount and start painting over
that bright middle-left ceiling area without
disturbing your original brightening
of the area around the dome. Each time
you want to paint with a different set of
adjustments (so that area is controlled
separately from the last area you painted),
click the New button.

› › lightroom magazine › ›
step seven: Okay, after you click
the New button, go ahead and lower
the Exposure amount and the Highlights
amount, and start painting over
that middle-left gold ceiling area, so
it’s not so bright. I figured we’d take
down the highlights at the same time
since there’s a bright light fixture right
in the center of that ceiling area. When
you’re done painting, move your cursor
out of the way (drag it over the panels
on the right side), and now you’ll see
two Edit Pins: (1) which is now just solid
gray—there’s no black dot in the center
because it’s not the active pin—and represents
the area brightened around the
dome, and (2) which represents the area
you just darkened (the gold ceiling on
the middle left). It has a black dot in the
center of the pin because it’s still active,
meaning if you move any sliders now, it
will affect that gold ceiling area.
➋
➊
tip: deleting edit pins
To delete an Edit Pin, click on it then
press the Delete (PC: Backspace) key.
step eight: If you want to go back
and work on the area around the dome,
all you have to do is click on that gray
pin. It becomes the active area, and all
the sliders automatically update to the
last settings you used on that pin, so
you can continue right where you left
off. It’s not unusual for me to have five
or six Edit Pins in a photo (occasionally
more) because I needed to adjust five or
six different areas. Now, what do you
do if you make a mistake or paint over
something that doesn’t look good? For
example, look at the light fixture in the
center of the gold ceiling area on the
left. It looks gray, which looks weird
(light isn’t usually gray). To remove the
adjustment over just that light, pressand-hold
the Option (PC: Alt) key,
which switches you to the Erase brush.
Now, just paint over the light fixture
and it erases the adjustment in only that
area, and the light looks normal again.
Above: Darkening the gold ceiling also darkened
the light fixture, making it look gray
Above: Erasing the effect just over the light
fixture brings back the original natural look
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step nine: Before we wrap up erasing,
two quick things: (1) as with the
brush, you have complete control over
how your Erase brush works in the
very bottom section of the Adjustment
Brush panel. Click on the word Erase (as
shown here) and it displays the settings
for the Erase brush. You can choose the
Size, Feather (how soft the edges are),
Flow (whether it paints a solid stroke at
100% opacity or whether you want it to
build up as you paint), and you can turn
on/off Auto Mask (we’ll talk about that
next). (2) You have two regular brushes
to choose from, as well, called “A”
and “B,” and you can choose their settings.
I usually make my “A” brush have
a soft edge and my “B” brush have a
hard edge (I lower the Feather amount
to 0), so if I run into a situation where
I’m painting along a wall or other area
where a soft edge looks weird, I can
toggle over to my “B” brush using the
Backslash (/) key on my keyboard.
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step ten: I’m going to switch to a
new image for just a moment to talk
about Auto Mask (you turn this on/off
near the bottom of the panel). When it’s
on, it kind of senses where the edges of
things are and keeps you from accidentally
painting where you don’t want to.
Take a look at the image on top, here.
I want to darken the background, but
when I paint on it near the guard’s arm,
it also paints over his arm. However, look
at the image at the bottom. When I turn
Auto Mask on, it senses the edge and
lets me paint over the background next
to his arm without spilling over onto it
(pretty amazing!). The trick is knowing
how it works: You see that little + (plus
sign) in the center of the brush? That
determines what gets painted, and any
area that + travels over gets painted.
So, as long as that + doesn’t go over his
arm, it won’t paint over it, even if the
outer rim of the brush extends way over
onto his arm (as shown here). As long as
you keep that off the arm, it leaves that
area alone.

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step eleven: Before we get back
to working on our church ceiling,
I wanted to mention one more thing
about Auto Mask. When it’s turned on,
the brush runs a bit slower, because it’s
doing “math” as you paint (determining
where the edges are). So, if I’m painting
over a big sky or wall or other area
that doesn’t need the brush doing fancy
math, I turn it off so things go faster.
Okay, back to our church. I think that, at
this point, you’ve got the idea: In a lot of
images, there are some areas you want
brighter and some you want darker, and
this brush not only lets you do that, but
you can add any of the other sliders, as
well. This is awesome because you can
brighten an area and make it sharper,
or darken an area and make the color
more saturated, too (great for skies).
Let’s go ahead and darken and brighten
a few more areas here (like darkening
the dome at the top center. Then, I’d
brighten the area along the bottom of
the image, darken the two columns up
top on the sides, and even lower the
Highlights in the dome itself to bring
back some detail there. You can see I’ve
got nine Edit Pins now).
tip: how do you know if
you’ve missed a spot?
Press the letter O on your keyboard
to show a red mask over the area you
painted on the active pin (to see it temporarily,
move your cursor over the
pin). If you missed an area, paint over
it; if you spilled over onto something
you didn’t want to, press-and-hold the
Option (PC: Alt) key and paint it away.
step twelve: Okay, now, how
about a finishing move that I usually
use in landscape photos to add an extra
“kiss of light” to highlight areas in
the image? Click the New button, make
your brush pretty large, increase the
Exposure to about 1.00, and then click
once over highlight areas as though
little beams of light are hitting them.
Here’s a before/after.
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step thirteen: By the way, dodging
and burning isn’t just for cathedrals
and it isn’t just for travel and landscape
photos. I routinely use it for portrait
work, and here’s a typical example:
when you’re lighting an outdoor portrait
and the flash not only lights your
subject, but spills over onto the ground
and lights that, as well (as seen here,
which looks lame because our goal is
to light the subject’s face the brightest,
and then have fall-off so the light gets
darker and darker as it moves down
your subject until it fades away. In short,
it shouldn’t make it to the ground).
Above: You can see the light from the flash spilling onto the ground.
step fourteen: When this happens,
here’s a quick fix: get the Adjustment
Brush, lower the Exposure
amount, and paint over the ground until
you don’t see the flash spilling onto it,
which gives you a much more professional
look.
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tip: moving your
adjustment
In Lightroom CC, you can now drag a
pin to move it to a new location once
you’ve copied-and-pasted the Adjustment
Brush edit onto other photos, like
similar ones from the same shoot. If you
didn’t use a tripod, chances are either
you or your subject moved a tiny bit
from shot to shot. Now you can drag
the adjustment a tiny bit, too! To return
to the way clicking-and-dragging on a
pin used to work (when you dragged
over the pin, it moved all the adjustment
sliders in tandem instead), just
press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key,
then click directly on the pin and drag
left or right. ■
Above: Here’s the photo after lowering the Exposure amount and painting over the ground.
When it gets close to her boots, turn on Auto Mask, so it doesn’t darken them (unless you
want that). If you did darken them, I would hit the New button, then don’t lower the
Exposure quite as much, and then paint over just her boots separately.
ALL IMAGES BY SCOTT KELBY

Under
the
Loupe
leveraging slideshows
BY ROB SYLVAN
A slideshow can be a simple yet powerful means to display a
collection of photos in a variety of ways. Lightroom CC/6 introduced
some welcome new tools to the Slideshow module that
really improve the final product.

› › lightroom magazine › ›
A well-done slideshow has the power to emotionally engage
your audience beyond what’s possible by viewing static still
photos alone. While Lightroom’s Slideshow module is by no
means the most full-featured product for creating a slideshow,
the fact that it’s integrated into the Lightroom workflow does
give it a major advantage over competing products. With the
introduction of Lightroom CC/6 we gained the ability to add
multiple music tracks, a way to sync slideshow transitions to
the beats in the music, a method to preview the slideshow at
different aspect ratios, an automated pan-and-zoom effect to
liven up the display of still photos, and a number of smaller
tweaks to improve the experience.
My family recently said a sad farewell to our beloved dog of
(almost) 16 years. Sixteen years that spanned a significant part
of my marriage and the entirety of my 14-year-old son’s life to
date. As you can guess, our dog’s life was well documented,
and these photos told not only his story, but the story of our
growing family from our first home to our first move, to our
son’s arrival, to his growth as a young man, and every trip,
snowstorm, naptime, and playtime along the way. I gathered
up a collection of these photos and decided to create a slideshow
to share with family and friends who knew and loved
him, and in so doing gained a new appreciation for this part
of Lightroom. If you’ve written off the Slideshow module or
simply not used it at all, you might want to give it another
chance. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of
the experience.
start with a collection
While not required, it can make the start of the process a
lot simpler. I created a collection for this project and then
set it as the Target Collection by Right-clicking the collection
and choosing that option from the contextual menu.
From there, you can go through your Library and add photos
(and videos) to the collection by selecting them and
pressing the B key (shortcut to add to Target Collection).
I set the sort order of this collection to Capture Time, which
made sense for this project, but you can change the sort
order via the View>Sort menu (or use the Sort menu in the
Library Toolbar). You can even drag-and-drop photos while
in Grid view or the Filmstrip to create a custom sort. This
can always be changed later, if needed. From there, click
the Slideshow button in the Module picker to start creating
the slideshow.
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templates are starting points
The Template Browser (below) contains a number of basic
Slideshow templates that can serve as a way to jump-start
your project. There’s probably not one that is perfect for your
needs, but all are entirely customizable, so choose one that
looks the closest, and start tweaking. Before you start to
modify the layout, you might consider the answers to a few
questions, such as: Do you want to display text along with
your photos? Do you want to include an identity plate? What
do you want for a background? Will there be an intro and/
or ending screen in addition to the photos? Do you have the
music tracks in a supported format? The answers to these
questions will determine the choices you make in the panels
on the right side of the Slideshow module.
be aware of your content
You may have started a collection, as I did, with the intention of
including all photos in the collection in the Slideshow; however,
there are plenty of other scenarios where maybe you’ll start by
selecting an existing collection of photos, and you only intend
to use a subset of those photos in the actual slideshow. There’s
an easily overlooked Use option in the Toolbar that, by default,
will be set to All Filmstrip Photos. Click that Use drop-down
menu or go to Play>Content, and choose from All, Selected, or
Flagged Photos based on what best fits your project.
create a saved slideshow
Before you go too far in your customization choices, it’s a good
idea to click the Create Saved Slideshow button in the upperright
side of the interface. This creates a special type of collection
that will remember not only all of the photos included in
the slideshow, but all of your customization tweaks as well.
This will open the Create Slideshow dialog where you can give
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this creation a meaningful name, choose where it’s located,
and configure additional options. These output module creations
have unique icons displayed in the Collections panel
that can be double-clicked to jump right to the module where
they were created for ease of access.
adding overlays
I rarely get questions through the Help Desk (now Advice Desk
on KelbyOne) about how the layout controls work in Slideshow,
as they’re very what-you-see-is-what-you-get intuitive;
however, there are a few things I think that are worth clarifying.
The first is that in the Overlays panel you’ll find one of
the very few (and very small) differences between the Mac
and Windows versions of Lightroom. You’ll only find the drop
shadow controls for overlays on a Mac. I don’t know why, but
I do hear from Windows users wondering where those controls
have gone, so I just want you to know that they don’t exist.
When it comes to overlays, you can add an Identity Plate,
a watermark, rating stars, and text overlays. The one type of
overlay that constantly confuses people is the text overlay, so
let’s take a closer look at how this works. The text overlay is
driven by text templates that can pull text from each photo’s
metadata or can contain custom text. The key is to select
(or create) the right template for your needs. Here’s how:
step one: Click the ABC button in the Toolbar to access
the text templates.
step two: Click the drop-down menu that appears to
select from a selection of pre-loaded templates, or choose
Edit to open the Text Template editor. Let’s choose Edit to see
how templates work.
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step three: The Text Template Editor is very similar to
the Filename Template Editor in that it uses tokens to pull
different types of data from the photo’s metadata, or custom
text, or you can type right into the template itself. Click
the Preset drop-down menu to look at how the preinstalled
templates were made. Clear the template window and create
your own template using any combination of tokens that
suits your needs. Once you’ve included the desired tokens,
click the Preset drop-down menu and choose Save Current
Settings as New Preset, and give the template a meaningful
name. For this project I’ll use a template that pulls the caption
from the photo’s metadata.
Note: Use the Caption or Title preset if you want to display
unique text for each photo in your slideshow, then enter a
caption or title via the Metadata panel in the Library module.
step four: Position the text overlay by clicking-and-dragging
it to where you want it to display. A sticky anchor point
will appear to lock onto various corners and midpoints on
the photo or background, which determines where the text
overlay will display as the slideshow progresses. I chose a midpoint
on the background to keep it consistent. Resize the text
overlay using the resize handles on the overlay itself. If no text
appears on your slide, make sure you’ve entered the text in
the photo’s metadata. The font color, opacity, and face can
be configured in the Overlays panel.
Deleting any overlay is as simple as selecting it and pressing
the Delete key.
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add music
Music is key to creating an emotional connection with your
audience. We now have the ability to add up to 10 tracks,
though one or two will probably suffice for most projects. The
first step is to make sure you have the music in one of the supported
file formats (.mp3, .m4a, or .m4b), and the rights to
include said music based on where you’re going to display the
slideshow. There are a number of affordable outlets for licensing
music files such as Triple Scoop Music and Song Freedom
(to name a couple), but do your research before sharing your
slideshow with the public.
Click the switch on the new Music panel to enable audio to
be included. Once enabled, click the plus sign (+) in the panel
to navigate to the music files and select them. The Music
panel will display the duration of each track as well as the total
for all tracks. You can re-order the tracks within the panel by
dragging and dropping them into the desired order. Select a
track and click the minus sign (–) to remove it from the project.
control playback
The Playback panel got the most attention in this latest version.
Some of the sliders were given more intuitive names,
which is great. The most notable new features are the ability
to Sync Slides to Music and the Pan and Zoom function. You
can check Sync Slides to Music if you want the slide transitions
to be based on the beats in the music instead of a set
time interval. Note: When checked, any included video files
will only display the poster frame in order to keep in time with
the transitions, so not a good option if you want video clips
to play.
The Fit to Music function (see above right) has been
improved, and does a better job of actually fitting the slideshow
to the music duration. Set the Crossfades time first, then click
the Fit to Music button to set the Slide Length. If your slideshow
does include video, you’ll want to experiment with the Audio
Balance slider to find the right mix of audio from the video clip
and your music soundtrack.
The new Pan and Zoom function, more commonly known
as the Ken Burns effect, can add a little (or a lot of) motion to
your stills as the slides transition through. This setting requires
experimentation to decide if it’s right for your slideshow, but
my experience says less is more as you cannot set it per slide.
You can use the Draft or Standard setting on the new Quality
drop-down menu at the bottom of the panel as you’re
experimenting with settings to speed up playback.
When the slideshow is ready, you can play it from inside
Lightroom with music or you can output it as a video, PDF,
or a series of JPG slides. Video is the only export option that
includes the music. I find exporting as a video gives me more
playback options even if I’m going to run the slideshow from
the same computer. It’s nice to have choices. ■
ALL IMAGES BY ROB SYLVAN
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Maximum
Workflow
BY
tethering in lightroom
SEAN Mc CORMACK
“Maximum Workflow” continues to look at hardware
and software to help your workflow in Lightroom,
and in this issue, we’re going to discuss
tethering, which is the process of connecting your
camera to a computer in order to view images as
they’re shot. It can be cumbersome to set up, so
it’s not as frequently used as it could be, but we’re
here to show you how to get it up and running in
Lightroom, and some items that make it easier.

› › lightroom magazine › ›
The name “tether” conjures up images of ropes and lines
with a water skier. It’s not too far from the truth with
Lightroom tether. You take a compatible camera, connect
a suitable wire between it and the computer, and turn on
tethering. As you shoot, each photo will be imported into
Lightroom and appear onscreen.
why tether?
Why would you even want to tether? An image may look
great on the back of your camera, but tethering allows you
to see the full-resolution RAW file on a large screen, so it’s
easier to see focus issues, motion blur, or composition errors
that could ruin the shot.
If you look at behind-the-scenes shots or videos of any
medium to large production shoot, you’ll see someone manning
a laptop or computer, checking the files coming in, and
providing feedback. You’ll often see the client standing at
the computer too, so there’s no guessing if they’re happy
with the results. Just because you see tethering used in larger
shoots, though, shouldn’t stop you from using it for smaller
productions. Here’s how to get tethering.
Another great, must-have gadget from Tether Tools is
the JerkStopper. The JerkStopper attaches to the camera’s
strap holder and to the TetherPro cable, allowing you to
create slack on the cable between the JerkStopper and the
camera’s USB connector. This means that if someone trips
on the cable, it will pull the camera rather than break the
USB connection.
practical tether
First, get a suitable cable for your camera. For a full list
of compatible cameras, go to http://helpx.adobe.com/
lightroom/kb/tethered-camera-support.html. Additionally,
third parties offer software for Pentax, Samsung, Olympus,
and Fuji (X-T1 only). By way of example, I’m tethering with a
Canon EOS 5D Mark III, which has a USB Mini-B socket, so a
USB to USB Mini-B cable is required.
While you can get long, basic USB cables from just about
anywhere, I highly recommend a TetherPro cable from
Tether Tools for the following reasons. First, you’ll avoid
a trip hazard—because of its color. Many years ago while
using a standard black cable on location, I managed to
catch the cable and send a 5D Mark II flying to the ground.
I saved the camera with my foot, but the USB cable broke
the USB connection inside the camera during the fall. The
bright orange of a TetherPro cable acts as a visual reminder
on set that you’re connected, helping you to avoid tripping
on the cable. Second, TetherPro cables are thicker than normal
USB cables, making them hardier with a better signal.
And third, they’re available in long lengths, which you generally
need for tethering.
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Looking for an all-in-one solution? Tether Tools make
table mounts to go on lighting stands or tripods. This means
you can mount your computer right beside your camera on
your tripod for immediate feedback. It’s more than usable
on location as well.
step one: Go to File>Tethered Capture, and click Start
Tethered Capture.
lightroom tether
You can start Lightroom tethering with or without a camera
attached. While most cameras will tether without a memory
card, some (like my 5D Mark III) need a card in the camera. If
in doubt, use a card, and it can also act as a backup, which is
always a good idea. If you have images on the card already,
start Lightroom tether before attaching the camera to prevent
Lightroom from opening the Import dialog.
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step two: This opens the Tethered Capture Settings dialog.
Each tethered shoot is referred to as a “Session.” Give
the session a name. You can opt to turn on Segment Photos
by Shots, which will open an additional dialog after closing
the current dialog where you can name the shots.
this extends the dialog to include a list of available collections.
As this is a fresh catalog in this example, only the Quick Collection
is available.
step five: To make a new collection, click the Create Collection
button. Give the collection a suitable name, and click
Create. This new collection will be added to the list as the
chosen collection. It also appears in the Collections panel.
You can opt to put it inside a collection set, but you’ll need
to have the collection set created in advance (one of Lightroom’s
foibles). You can also make this new collection the
Target Collection.
step three: Naming allows you to choose from the standard
filename templates, as well as allowing you to edit your
own naming templates. You can have the Session Name used
as part of the file naming, though you should use a uniform
naming system on all your files.
step four: Destination allows you to select a location for
the files on any connected drive. Click the Choose button to
change it. Next is Add to Collection, a newer feature. Clicking
step six: Finally, you can add a Metadata preset containing
information relevant to the shoot, such as copyright information,
etc., as well as apply generic tags that suit all the
images using Keywords in the Information section. Click OK
to start tethering.
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› › photoshop user › february 2016
step seven: If you selected to Segment Photos by
Shots, then you’ll see the Initial Shot Name dialog. Type a
name to begin.
The tether modal dialog will appear. Let’s look at its parts:
1. This shows the currently connected camera, or No Camera
Detected if it can’t find one.
2. This displays the current camera settings. You can only
view them; you can’t change them in Lightroom. They
can, however, be changed on camera.
3. Here you can change the Develop Settings by choosing
a preset. Alternatively, you can edit the first image that
comes in and then choose Same as Previous to copy
these settings to each consecutive image that comes
into Lightroom.
4. The Close dialog button will quit tethering.
5. This is the Session Name from the Tethered Capture
Settings. If you had Segment Photos by Shots selected,
this name would also appear here.
6. Click the Shutter button to take a shot remotely.
7. The Settings button opens the Tethered Capture Settings
dialog.
Now you’re ready to begin. (It takes far less time to get going
than it did to read this far.) Start shooting. As you shoot, you’ll
see “Transferring Files from Camera” appear in the Module
Picker at the top left of Lightroom.
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If you’re in Loupe view, each image will display, replacing the previous one. A good tip is to press F to turn on Full Screen view,
especially for clients. The image fills the screen and hides Lightroom completely. Press F again to return to normal viewing.
Here’s a quick look at the Grid from a recent shoot where I was using tether so students from a makeup class could see photos
of their models.
troubleshooting
Tether in Lightroom is great, but sometimes it can just stop for no reason. Once upon a time, the camera going to sleep
would break tether and only restarting Lightroom and reconnecting the camera would work. If it stops for you, here are
a few things to try. If a step doesn’t work, try the next one! One of those steps will usually get tethering going again.
1. First, turn the camera off and on again.
2. Next, disconnect and reconnect the camera.
3. Restart tethering.
4. Restart Lightroom, start tether, then connect the camera.
5. Finally, if all else fails, restart your computer, restart Lightroom, start tether, then connect the camera again.
Tethering is a really useful tool and a great timesaver for knowing you have the shot. Tools such as those from Tether Tools also
make the process far easier. ■
› › kelbyone.com
ALL IMAGES BY SEAN McCORMACK
109

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Lightroom Magazine › ›
Dynamic Range
processing realistic starscapes
SEAN ARBABI
It never gets old staring up at the night sky. The mind wanders, the imagination runs wild, and the shifting stellar
canopy that never seems to change feels like an old friend joining you through life’s journey. Constellations were
the first calendar tracking of the seasons, as well as a latitude indicator for travelers navigating north and south
on our planet. For every outdoor photographer comes a challenge to capture this often awe-inspiring event that
occurs with every turn of our globe.
The continued advancement of image
sensors has taken nighttime photography
to a whole new level, diminishing digital
noise and upping light sensitivity, while
vastly improving the dynamic range: the
stops of light a digital image sensor can
cover, from the brightest highlights to
the deepest shadows. These innovations
have given stargazing image-makers extra
latitude to create some wild scenes of the
dark expanse.
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This issue, “Dynamic Range” focuses on
creating stunning nightscapes with the
goal of realism for the final image file. This
not only comes from your experience of
how these scenes appear through a pair
of human eyes, but also how contrast,
exposure, light, and detail manifest during
these hours of darkness. We’ll discuss
how knowledge of the night sky can give
you a solid starting point, some of the
challenges you may face documenting a
extremely low-lit scene, and how to process
your image file to maximize the detail
and tones captured.
Step One: Before you become a photographic
night owl, planning your outing
can give you a good head start. Travel
to an area far away from any major city,
often referred to as a green zone. Artificial
city light can flood skies, casting an
orange glow of light pollution, diminishing
the visibility of starlight and Milky Way
detail. A moonless night is another option
to consider for better star detail, as seen in
this 13-second exposure of Yosemite Falls.
Step One

› › Lightroom Magazine ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
If you prefer to add detail and color, moonlight can illuminate
your landscapes; however, as a light source, it can
also potentially obstruct stars. Clear skies are another option,
although some clouds can add a dynamic touch depending
on the scene. Finally, understanding where the Milky Way
is located and which way the stars move depending on the
direction you face—north, east, south, or west—can also
assist your nocturnal compositions. From Dark Skies to The
Photographer’s Ephemeris, there are sites and apps to assist
with all of these decisions, helping you determine optimal
shoot dates and locations.
Step Two: Documenting scenes of nature can be tough, but
fumbling around in the dark to catch a night scene in all its
glory is yet another challenge. Make sure to include a headlamp
for hands-free camera operating, and an extra flashlight
as a backup or to paint the landscape with a touch of artificial
light for additional detail. Also essential are a remote shutter
release and tripod, a sturdy easy-to-use model to keep your
camera locked in position for long exposures.
Creating a pleasing composition is another hurdle to
overcome, so previsualizing your final scene can give you an
idea of what lens you choose, direction to face, and what
you may or may not wish to include in the shot. Reviewing
your scenes on your LCD screen after the capture can help
you straighten horizons or force you to recompose to include
important elements.
Focusing is yet another issue to tackle since the accuracy
of the infinity mark on most lenses is off just enough to blur
stars, and autofocus fails in such low-light levels. Let your eyes
adjust to the darkness for a few minutes, enable manual focus,
use the infinity mark on your lens as a starting point, then look
through your viewfinder to fine-tune focus. The LCD can then
come into play to determine how accurate you are with sharpness
by reviewing the image and zooming into specific star clusters.
Live View may also help here, digitally zooming into a few
stars for tack sharpness through manual focus, avoiding any
bokeh effect. A tripod, remote, and LCD preview for sharpness
were all used for this image of Half Dome on a moonless night,
captured with a 70mm lens, f/2.8 for 8 seconds using ISO 6400.
Step Three: When operating in extreme low-light situations
such as star-filled skies, meters begin to fail; therefore, critical
exposure settings and camera functions must be considered
to capture the detail needed for postprocessing. Shooting in
RAW should be a given because of the amount of detail and
latitude the format offers. Using a solid DSLR or mirrorless
camera system with manual controls is another good tool to
have. The better your image sensor is with ISO, the less noise
and more detail captured.
Exposure charts combined with past trial-and-error experience
can give you the proper settings needed since some
shutter speeds may take as little as 8 seconds, or run for hours
in bulb mode. A larger aperture setting, low f-stop number, is
preferred since the amount of light is so low; exposures can
lengthen greatly if you attempt to capture more depth-offield
through a smaller aperture.
ISO, the measurement of your image sensor’s sensitivity to
light, for the most part should be set above 1000 but below
6400 since noise build-up can create a nightmare with star
detail. Higher ISOs also keep stars from becoming trails, due
to the rotation of the earth, by ensuring shorter exposures.
› › kelbyone.com
Step Two
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ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Lightroom Magazine › ›
One general guideline to avoid star blur is known as “the
500 rule.” Simply divide 500 by the focal length of your lens,
and that equals the longest exposure, in seconds, you can use
before the stars start to trail in your shot. For example, using
a 20mm lens on a full-frame camera, divide 500 by 20, giving
you 25 seconds, the longest time you can expose before the
stars appear to move.
If you plan to capture star trails through a long exposure,
a lower ISO gives you much less noise, and the light absorbed
by the lengthy time exposure can capture the detail needed.
Wide-angle lenses work best to cover larger portions of the
sky, but any lens can be used; just recognize that the longer
the lens, the more opportunity for camera shake, as well as
a smaller aperture that’s tougher to see through, requiring
careful focus and a higher ISO setting. Faster lenses, ones
with larger maximum apertures, are also a benefit since the
wider openings make it easier to see through the viewfinder,
allow more light to hit your sensor, and give you the option
to use lower ISOs for less noise.
To balance artificial light with ambient starlight, the artificial
light you provide, or that’s provided through another
source, must match closely to the extremely dim ambient
light level of the stars. Go outside that limited range and your
exposure is lost due to the difference between an extremely
bright artificial light and low-level starlight combined, hence
an unrealistic final scene or a ton of post work to recover
the image. Waiting for the campfire to lower to a flicker was
the key to this image, while artificial light from a headlamp
was used to add a touch of detail to the glacial erratic sitting
below a star-filled sky. The RAW file was exposed at f/4 for
15 seconds using ISO 1600 with an 18mm lens.
Step Three
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Four: Once you have a solid RAW
file to work with, various postprocessing
techniques in Lightroom CC can
help you stretch the capabilities of
your image sensor, pulling out extra
detail while correcting other imperfections.
Using presets to fix night scenes
may not be the best option, as every
situation and exposure requires specific
recovery and adjustments. Take
this Yosemite image of a tent below
the Milky Way. The balance of the tent
glow and the nighttime sky are a bit
high in contrast, but not enough to
lose detail in either area. Initial adjustments
are done in the Lens Correc-
Step Four
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› › Lightroom Magazine ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
tions panel of the Develop module: turn on Enable Profile
Corrections to correct for lens vignetting or distortion, and
Remove Chromatic Aberration, which is often seen in the
stars in the corners of the composition.
[KelbyOne members may download the file used in this
tutorial at http://kelbyone.com/magazine. All files are for personal
use only.]
Step Five: Next, use the sliders in the Basic panel of the
Develop module to recover highlights and open shadow
detail. For this specific image, an extra step is taken by creating
a Mask Overlay using the Adjustment Brush (K) to
recover highlight detail and correct white balance in the
tent, while not affecting the pinpoints of light in the sky. In
this example, I’ve turned on Show Selected Mask Overlay so
you can see where I’ve painted with the Adjustment Brush.
The letter O will turn the overlay on and off.
Step Six: The second Mask Overlay using the Adjustment
Brush (K) covers the upper part of the scene to color-correct
the sky. Click the word “New” at the top of the Adjustment
Brush panel to add a new pin to your image. That way you
won’t affect the Adjustment Brush settings that you just
applied to the tent. If your image only contains a silhouetted
landscape with the stars above, this step isn’t necessary. A
Fluorescent white balance is often a good place to start, neutralizing
greenish skies while offering a cooler sky tone. You
can also adjust the white balance manually in the sky using
the Temp and Tint sliders in the Basic panel. Skies are rarely
green (not including the northern lights) and, if you’re a good
distance from any metropolitan area, shouldn’t appear as any
other hue besides a deep blue, falling off to a slight orange
near the horizon. It’s how we see most night skies, outside
of a stark black tone. Therefore, balancing your sky to match
this tone helps assist the lifelike aspect for the final scene.
Step Five
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Step Six
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ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Lightroom Magazine › ›
Step Seven: To maintain realism, there should
be a balance between what we can see with
the naked eye and what an image sensor can
record; however, at night when the sensor can
retain so much more detail, collecting the light
over a longer exposure, some artistic license can
be taken to enhance certain areas. The goal is
to bring out important detail while maintaining
a strong sense of a nighttime feel through dark
tones, solid contrast, and a proper exposure.
Adding contrast to the night sky brings out the
detail in the disk-shaped glowing band of the
Milky Way. You can either use the Lights slider
in the Tone Curve panel of the Develop module,
or make adjustments by adding another
Mask Overlay with the Adjustment Brush using
the Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, and Whites
sliders in the Adjustment Brush panel.
Step Seven
Step Eight: In any night scene, you should
maintain a deep black area, what we use
to call D-max in film and print processing.
The Histogram can be a good tool to check
this. Just recognize that you’ll have quite a
bit of clipping, loss of detail in the shadow
areas, and this is okay. We’re working with
a night scene and if you attempt to show all
detail in all areas, this can result in a bizarre
unrealistic-looking starscape. Knowing when
and where to enhance and brighten detail is
a critical step toward this realistic approach.
› › photoshop user › february 2016
Step Nine: Once you’ve made all your major
adjustments, use Lightroom CC’s new-andimproved
Noise Reduction sliders in the Detail
panel of the Develop module. Reducing digital
noise created from higher ISOs removes the
gritty look of the final scene, but use these sliders
cautiously so you don’t remove many of
the stars in the sky. Zoom in to 1:1 or 2:1 in
the Navigator panel at the top left, adjust the
sliders, then turn the Detail settings on and off
with the toggle switch at the top left of the
panel to compare the before and after.
Step Nine: Before removing noise
Step Nine: After removing noise
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› › Lightroom Magazine ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
Step Ten: Once your image has the look and feel you desire,
move into Photoshop (Command-E [PC: Ctrl-E]) to make any
final touch-ups and save a PSD or TIFF version of the final master
file. Be subtle in your approach and remember, photography,
as an art, can be creative and subjective, but when the aim
is for a natural feel, nonfiction is better than fantasy. ■
› › kelbyone.com
Final
ALL IMAGES BY SEAN ARBABI
115

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Lightroom Magazine › ›
&
Questions Answers
SCOTT KELBY
› › photoshop user › february 2016
116
When I’m painting over large areas
with the Adjustment Brush, sometimes
the brush really lags. Is there any way
to speed this up?
Here’s one thing that can make a big speed difference: Turn
off the Auto Mask checkbox in the Adjustment Brush (K)
panel. When you’re painting over a large area with Auto
Mask turned on, it’s trying to detect the edges of things, so
it’s doing all this behindthe-scenes
math, and
that slows the brush
down (and gives you
little gaps sometimes as
well). So turn it off when
you’re well away from
areas you don’t want to paint over, and this will really speed
things up a lot. What I do is keep Auto Mask off nearly all
the time, and only turn it on when my brush gets near the
edge of an area I don’t want to accidentally paint over. Give
that a try—I think you’ll see an immediate speed boost.
In the Print module, in the Print Job
panel, how come when I drag the
Brightness or Contrast slider, I don’t
see anything change?
It’s because it’s not
actually changing the
brightness or contrast
of the image file itself
—it just applies those
adjustments to the
version of the image it
sends to the printer, so
that’s where you see
the brightness or contrast
changes appear. It
takes a test print or two
to find out the right
amount of Brightness
and Contrast to match
what you see onscreen
to what comes out of
your printer.
A lot of times when I shoot products
on a white background, the white areas
have a bluish tint to them. What’s an
easy way to get rid of this?
As long as the rest
of the image doesn’t
have a lot of blue in
it, you can try this
technique I use when
I run into this situation:
Go to the HSL
panel, click on the
Saturation tab, and
click on the Targeted
Adjustment Tool (TAT) in the top-left corner of the panel.
Then, click-and-drag downward on the white background to
remove the bluish tint. It will automatically select the right sliders
to reduce that blue tint.
What is a Target Collection and why would
I use it?
Lightroom has a Quick Collection that lets you add any image
to it by clicking on the image and pressing the letter B. Some
folks use this as a temporary collection while sorting images,
but if you’d prefer that a different collection be used when
you press the letter B, you can set any collection to be your
Target Collection (instead of the Quick Collection). Just Rightclick
on the collection that you want to use in the Collections
panel and select Set as Target Collection. Once you do that,
clicking on an image and pressing B will send your image to
the collection you targeted, instead of to the Quick Collection.

› › Lightroom Magazine ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
Here’s how I use a Target Collection: When I’m doing a
studio shoot, I create a new collection, set it as my target collection,
and sync that collection to Lightroom Mobile on my
iPad. Then, I hand my iPad to the art director or client on the
set, and when I take an image during the shoot that I want the
client to see, I press the letter B, and the image goes into that
collection and over to the client on the iPad. That way, they
only see the images I want them to see, and not ones where
my subject didn’t have a great expression, or where I messed
up the composition, or when the flash didn’t fire, etc.
If I’ve used the Adjustment Brush on
an image, and I’ve applied a number of
different sliders (for example, Contrast,
Highlights, Whites, Blacks, and Clarity),
and later decide that the entire adjustment
was a bit too strong, is there a way I can
reduce all those sliders by the same
percentage amount, or do I have to drag
them one by one?
Actually, there’s a way you can move them all in tandem
so it’s more like turning down the intensity of your entire adjustment.
If you look near the top-right corner of the Adjustment
Brush panel, you’ll see a little black disclosure triangle (boring
official name) that’s aiming down, which indicates it’s already
displaying (or disclosing) all those sliders. Click on that disclosure
triangle, and it tucks all those sliders away, but it reveals
something new: an Amount slider that lets you adjust the
overall amount of all the sliders at the same time. Dragging
it to the left will proportionally reduce all of the applied settings
at once.
I keep hearing about new features
being added to Lightroom Mobile
(like Split Toning and Tone Curve),
but I can’t seem to find them. Where
are they hiding?
In Lightroom Mobile, tap on the Adjust icon, then tap once on
the little lens opening icon on the far left of the screen, and a
pop-up menu of Develop module features will appear. That’s
where you’ll find Split Toning, Tone Curve, and more.
Sometimes the area that the Spot Removal
tool (Q) picks to sample is way off, and
the results look terrible. I know I can drag
the sample circle to a new location and it
will sample from there instead, but is there
a better way to do this, or is it just one of
those things you have to do manually?
There’s a way to have Lightroom automatically pick a different
sample spot for you—just press the Forward Slash key on your
keyboard and it picks a new spot. You can press it multiple
times until you see a result that looks better than the original
one it chose.
Is there a way to pick which image appears
as the one that’s visible in an image stack?
Absolutely. Start by clicking the two lines next to the image
thumbnail in Grid view (G) to expand the stack so you
can see all the images under that one thumbnail. Now,
move your cursor over the image you’d like to have as the
cover thumbnail for the stack and its number in the stack
appears up in the top-left corner; for example, if you have
16 images in your stack, and you moved your cursor over
the ninth image in the stack, you’d see a white box appear
that says “9 of 16.” Click once directly on that number and
that image now becomes the thumbnail for the stack when
it’s collapsed. ■
› › kelbyone.com
117

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Lightroom Magazine › ›
& TipsTricks
SEÁN DUGGAN
One of the cool things about Lightroom and Photoshop is
that, since they’re both Adobe products, they “play well
together.” Because of this, it’s easy to take a file from Lightroom
into Photoshop for additional editing. In this month’s
column, we’ll take a closer look at the details of the back and
forth between Lightroom and Photoshop.
why make the trip to photoshop?
Lightroom is a very capable program in terms of applying
“global” adjustments that affect the overall image, as well as
targeted “local” modifications that affect only specific parts of
a photo. These changes are nondestructive and can be modified
or undone at any time, which is one of the great things about
working in Lightroom. In my own workflow, a trip to Photoshop
might be triggered because I need a much more precise
and specific local edit than I can create with Lightroom’s local
adjustment tools, or perhaps I need to apply more intricate and
complex retouching, or I might want to use the photo as part
of a multi-image composite. For some people who are new
to Lightroom, but already well acquainted with Photoshop, a
trip into that program may occur simply because they’re more
familiar with Photoshop. My approach is to do as much as
I can to the file in Lightroom and then bring it into Photoshop
for those adjustments or modifications that I just can’t do in
Lightroom, such as the precise layer mask seen here.
into Photoshop, the title tab for the file may still show the file
extension as the RAW file from where it originated, but at this
point it’s no longer a RAW file.
The file will appear in Photoshop in the resolution, bit depth,
and color space you’ve specified in the External Editing Preferences
(Lightroom [PC: Edit]>Preferences). When you save the
file in Photoshop (using the normal File>Save menu command,
or the Command-S [PC: Ctrl-S] shortcut), it will be saved in the
file format specified in this dialog, and placed back into the
same folder as the original RAW file. (There’s also an option
in the External Editing Preferences to stack this edited file with
the original.)
› › photoshop user › february 2016
118
to photoshop and back with raw files
When you open a RAW file from Lightroom to Photoshop
using the Photo>Edit In>Edit in Adobe Photoshop command
(Command-E [PC: Ctrl-E]), Lightroom will apply any adjustments
you’ve added in the Develop module and process the
RAW file into Photoshop. Note that when the file is opened
alternate paths into photoshop
Depending on what you want to do with your file, there are a
few other choices available in the Photo>Edit In menu.
Open as Smart Object in Photoshop will do just that,
extending all the nondestructive flexibility of smart objects (far
too numerous to list here) to the file when it arrives in Photoshop.
If it’s a RAW file, you’ll be able to re-edit any Lightroom
Develop adjustments by double-clicking the smart object layer
thumbnail and opening the embedded RAW file into Adobe
Camera Raw.
Open as Layers in Photoshop is one of my favorite commands
and is for opening multiple files as layers into one
document. This is ideal for when you want to create a multiimage
composite and have Lightroom and Photoshop do the
basic layer setup for you.

› › Lightroom Magazine ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
There are also options for Merge to Panorama in Photoshop
and Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop. Lightroom CC also offers
its own commands for panoramas and HDR that don’t require
Photoshop, and you can find those under Photo>Photo Merge.
the further edits fork in the road
Once you’ve taken a file from Lightroom to Photoshop and
back, you’re faced with a fork-in-the-road situation. Will further
editing only be done in Photoshop, or will it be a combination
of both newer Lightroom edits and additional Photoshop
edits? The main thing to understand is that there are
some limitations to how the Photoshop edits (especially layers)
and any new Lightroom edits can work together.
reopening a psd, tiff, or jpeg file
into photoshop
When you choose to open a non-RAW file (i.e., a TIFF, PSD,
or JPEG) into Photoshop using the Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E)
shortcut, a dialog appears that asks you what you want to edit,
and it presents you with three possible options. These options
include an explanation, but some new users are still perplexed
by the choices, so let’s take a look at these and deconstruct
exactly what happens.
• Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments: As advertised, this
will create a new file and apply any Lightroom adjustments.
So, if you’ve already brought a file into Photoshop, added
layers, saved it back to Lightroom, and now you’ve applied
some more Lightroom adjustments, here’s what you’ll get:
A file in Photoshop where your previous layers have been
flattened, but the new Lightroom adjustments have been
applied. The loss of my Photoshop layers is what makes this
option a non-starter for me most of the time, but it might
be useful if you’re opening a JPEG from your smart phone
and want to apply any Lightroom adjustments and do further
work in Photoshop.
• Edit a Copy: This creates a copy of the original file, but Lightroom
adjustments will not be visible in Photoshop. If it’s a
layered PSD file, then your layers will be preserved and editable.
If you choose to save the metadata to the file (Command-S
[PC: Ctrl-S]) before bringing the file into Photoshop,
you can make new edits in Photoshop and when you save
and close the file, the version that comes back into Lightroom
will still have the Develop module adjustments that
weren’t visible in Photoshop.
• Edit Original: The term “original” here is quite problematic.
Most people think it refers to the original file that the camera
created, but this isn’t necessarily the case, especially with a
RAW file. It refers to the original file that was created during
the first trip into Photoshop, or to an original JPEG (possibly a
camera original, but possibly not), TIFF, or PSD file. All layers
will be preserved and, as long as metadata is saved to the file
before making the trip into Photoshop, any Lightroom edits
will be reapplied once the file arrives back in Lightroom.
the curse of the multiplying files
Since each of the first two options in this dialog create a copy
of the file, using them too many times with the same file is a
sure way to end up with lots of files that all look very similar,
and it can be easy to lose track of just which file is which.
Because the default behavior for Lightroom is to append
“-Edit” onto the original filename, if you see files that are
named something like “Img_2384-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-
Edit-Edit.tiff,” then you know that you’ve probably invoked
that command many times on the same original file.
changing the way externally edited
files are named
In the aforementioned External Editing Preferences, the last
option in the dialog lets you modify how the filenames are
appended for files that are edited in external applications. For
instance, I use the naming convention of “-M” to indicate a
“master file,” which is how I think of the layered files I create
from a RAW original.
creating alternate edit in
photoshop presets
In the center section of the External Editing Preferences is where
you can specify an external editor in addition to Photoshop. This
is also the place where you set up some plug-ins. I’ve used this
section to set up an alternate Photoshop editing preset that
I use for JPEG files from my iPhone. My default edit in the Photoshop
configuration opens the images as 16-bit ProPhoto
RGB files, which isn’t really appropriate for 8-bit JPEGs from
a camera phone. So I’ve created a special preset for those files
that, when used, will open them as 8-bit Adobe RGB files. Once
you’ve chosen your application and file settings in the Additional
External Editor section, select Save Current Settings as
New Preset from the Preset drop-down menu, name it in the
New Preset dialog that appears, and click Create. This preset
will now appear in the Photo>Edit In menu. ■
ALL IMAGES BY SÉAN DUGGAN
› › kelbyone.com
119

Product Reviews
PortraitPro 15
Studio Max Edition
Make Portrait Retouching Easy and Even Fun!
Review by Jessica Maldonado
› › photoshop user › february 2016
122
An experienced Photoshop user can take hours of meticulous attention
to professionally retouch a portrait from start to finish. But how
often do we have the luxury of giving our full attention to every
image—especially for a large project or if we’re on a tight deadline?
I reviewed and recommended PortraitPro back in ver sion 12,
and now I have the pleasure of working with the PortraitPro 15
Studio Max edition. It’s just as good as before, but with several
new features that are just plain fun to use. (In fact, I found it hard
to stop playing with it long enough to write this review!)
PortraitPro instantly detects the faces in each image opened,
and it’s an easy process to make any tweaks: Just drag around the
outlines to match the face in your image. Out-of-the-box “after”
results are pretty good, so you potentially have a retouched image
ready to go in less than one minute. My lingering issue with the
automatic results is that they include Face Sculpt. While a few portraits
will require adjustment, and some clients may even request
one (a smaller nose, perhaps), it irks me that it’s part of the default—
even for children! But, it’s one click to remove, and easy to save a
custom preset that doesn’t include Face Sculpt (especially handy for
batch work). And, speaking of batch adjustments, they’re impressively
fast, although they occasionally return some funkiness, so
I’d recommend taking a peek at each image in your batch before
closing out of PortraitPro, then you can tweak the face-detection
outlines, where necessary, to avoid these aberrations.
At the top of the control panel on the interface is a list of Presets,
including a few that add makeup (new this version). No preset
is perfect, but these make for good starting points. Everything
is easily fine-tuned with sliders in each section, so it can’t hurt to
flick through the presets rather than start from scratch. Again,
with a couple of clicks, you can save your favorite results as custom
presets.
The Skin Smoothing Controls give great results, with separate
sliders for the left and right under-eye areas, around the mouth,
etc. There’s a long menu of skin texture fills, so skin will still look
like skin, not just blurred or noisy. For larger blemishes that the
controls can’t fix, there’s the Touch Up Brush (cousin to Photoshop’s
Healing brush) for targeted zapping. Below that are the
Skin Lighting Controls, where you can move the light source,
adjust shadows, even add Left or Right Kick lights. If you go crazy
in this section, you can create artifacts outside the face area, but
you can resolve that by backing off on the adjustments. Down in
the Skin Coloring Controls, there’s a new menu of skin settings,
ranging from Illuminating Dew to Icy Frosting to help you get an
Before
After with Makeup
even wider range of looks. All the skin sections let you view and
edit the skin area easily (think Quick Mask or Refine Edge).
Additional sections include Eye Controls and Mouth & Nose
Controls, which give you sliders for each eye, the top and bottom
lip, and teeth. You can brighten, sharpen, whiten, adjust eye and
lip color, and even add contact lenses (I found this handy in a stock
image where the iris texture was lost to noise).
New to this version are Makeup Controls. Although these may
not always be necessary, they’re totally fun to use, and they might
come in handy if a photo shoot lacks a makeup artist or the model’s
makeup has worn away. (As with every section/slider, however,
too much can look fake.) I especially like the mascara and
false eyelashes, which remind me of brushes that Corey Barker
created for Scott Kelby’s book, Professional Portrait Retouching
Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop. I’d love to see
PortraitPro partner with a cosmetics company for real-world color
palettes, but for now it’s great to be able to sample color from
your photo or choose from the spectrum.
This is powerful retouching software at a very reasonable price.
The Studio and Studio Max editions can be used alone or as a
Photoshop or Lightroom plug-in, handle RAW files directly, and
support different color spaces. PortraitPro 15 Studio Max edition
takes what can be a tedious, repetitive task, and gives good
results quickly, so you can move on to other work—if you can tear
yourself away from playing with it! ■
Company: Anthropics Technology Ltd. Price: $239.90
Web: www.portraitprofessional.com
Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Hot: Myriad features make retouching fast and enjoyable
Not: Hair-coloring features and presets could be improved

› › GET THE SCOOP ON THE LATEST GEAR
X-Rite ColorChecker Passport Video
Four Reference Color Targets in a Clamshell
Review by Erik Vlietinck
In December, X-Rite released its ColorChecker Video range of
products, including the ColorChecker Passport Video, which uses
a clamshell design with four targets rolled into one. It integrates
with Color Finale, a professional color grading plug-in for Final Cut
Pro X by Denver Riddle.
The ColorChecker Passport Video has a white balance target,
a 40 IRE midtone gray patch, a color target, and a focus target.
The color target has six chips specifically designed to align with the
color axis on a vectorscope.
The workflow is simple. Before you start your actual take or
shot, you place the ColorChecker for a couple of seconds somewhere
in the frame facing the camera, making sure the reflective
black patch doesn’t reflect into the lens.
When everything’s been done correctly, you can shoot your
clip as usual. In postproduction you can now correct colors using
the card as a reference tool. The card makes the correction process
a lot easier because you’re dealing with primary colors.
The whole process becomes really efficient when it’s integrated
with your video editor, such as with the Color Finale plugin
for Final Cut Pro X. In color grading apps, such as Adobe’s
SpeedGrade, you miss out on this user-friendly integration. Even
then, it’s easier to get colors right using the target and the software’s
vectorscope.
For DaVinci Resolve (Blackmagic Design), a Color Match feature
will soon integrate with the ColorChecker, while other apps will
integrate the ColorChecker in their correction workflow as well.
The white balance and 40 IRE patches allow you to improve
the color preview on your camera’s display so your histograms are
more reliable. The focus target helps with edge focusing; however,
users of cheaper lenses will benefit less with this target than
others because of moiré problems.
The company also offers a large ColorChecker Video for studio
work. ■
Company: X-Rite, Inc. Price: $149
Web: http://xritephoto.com/video-targets Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Hot: Form factor; lightweight; 4-in-1
Not:
Macphun’s Aurora HDR Pro
Advanced Color Control and Color Toning
Review by Steve Baczewski
Early HDR software gave photographers a process to combine
bracketed exposures of a scene and maximize the dynamic range
otherwise too wide to be captured by a single exposure. Sadly,
the results were often garish, lacking subtlety, and left a vacuum
for a more photorealistic look.
A collaborative effort between Macphun and HDR maven
Trey Ratcliff, Aurora HDR Pro has arguably the most powerful
comprehensive toolset on the market, providing users with a creative
license to roam from the otherworldly to photorealistic. This
Mac-only Pro version works as a standalone and as a plug-in for
Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and Elements.
Much of the Aurora interface will look familiar. The slider
names are appropriately descriptive; however, some sliders have
levels of complexity with fine distinctions, so I’d suggest users
might benefit by reading the manual and watching website video
tutorials, including an hour-long video with Trey Ratcliff.
Aurora Pro supports all the popular proprietary RAW formats,
and you can drag-and-drop files on Aurora’s splash screen or
export them from your image editor. Initial processing includes
options for ghost reduction, alignment, and chromatic aberration.
Five 42-megapixel Sony RAW files took two minutes to
process. There are 38 wide-ranging presets for use as a point
of departure, but Aurora’s power is in its vast toolset. Edits can
be done globally or selectively. Key features include luminosity
masks, advanced tone mapping, a sophisticated layers section,
blend modes, masking, brushes, and image detail enhancement.
A histogram tracks your every move.
Although I found using the split screen before-and-after mode
very practical, I hope the next version of this software will include
a history feature or an option to save snapshots for versions worth
further exploration. While you can dial it way up stylistically, Aurora
HDR Pro is great with creating a balanced, natural HDR look. If you
create HDR images, Aurora Pro is well worth looking into. ■
Company: Macphun Software Price: $99
Web: www.macphun.com
Rating: ◆◆◆◆
Hot: Multiple export options including social media
Not: No history or snapshot feature
› › kelbyone.com
123

REVIEWS › ›
Capture One Pro 9
The Best Keeps Getting Better!
Review by Michael Corsentino
› › photoshop user › february 2016
124
Capture One Pro 9, Phase One’s new full-version update
to their flagship RAW conversion and image-editing
software, continues its history as an imaging tool
worthy of love, something users have come to expect.
I use this software every day and am a big fan of
its elegant design, powerful toolset, and best-in-class
RAW conversions.
This is mature software, so the majority of enhancements,
additions, and updates in any new version aren’t earth shattering,
reinvent-the-wheel revelations, but rather those that build
steadily upon and improve Capture One Pro’s already solid foundation.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t a slew of exciting new
tools and compelling reasons to upgrade to version 9, because
there are. Here’s a look at some of what’s new and improved.
Keywords: Two new tools have been added to Capture One
Pro 9: the Keyword tool, which enables the addition/removal
of keywords to individual or multiple images; and the Keyword
Library tool, which can be used to create and manage multiple
keyword lists or import them from other sources.
Improved Contrast Engine: The Exposure Contrast slider can
now add contrast, while at the same time preserving hue, saturation,
and lightness values. Curves has a new Luma mode that
constrains contrast changes to Luminance only, also preserving
hue and saturation values. Making contrast (and its impact on
color) independent goes a long way toward better, more accurate
color fidelity.
Local Adjustments and Masking: Masking Brush Settings now
include Flow and Airbrush sliders, both welcome additions. Flow
and Airbrush controls are especially useful when it comes to
creating complex masks and dodging and burning. Straight Line
Masking lets you create a mask outline by first clicking to define
the desired square, rectangle, or similar straight-line shape, and
then filling it to complete the masked area.
Updated Color Editor Interface: The Color Editor is now a tool
palette that can be undocked from others and resized, when
needed, for improved visual feedback when selecting color
ranges. With the Create Masked Layer from Selection option,
you can now use color range selections to create Local Adjustments
Masks. This very powerful feature makes all the tools in
the Local Adjustments toolset available for use with masked
color range selections.
Rescaling Engine: Capture One Pro 9’s Rescaling Engine for
reducing or enlarging images from their original dimensions has
been completely overhauled, allowing users to preserve the quality
and sharpness of their images regardless of output size.
Tethered Shooting Battery Power Status Indicator: A batterypower
status icon has been added to Capture One Pro’s Tethered
Shooting toolbar, thus helping to prevent unwanted interruptions
from loss of power.
Import DNG Catalogs: For those considering, or now in transition
from Lightroom to Capture One Pro, there’s good news!
Lightroom catalogs containing DNG file-format images can now
be imported easily into Capture One Pro.
If you haven’t dipped your toe into the Capture One Pro 9 pool
yet, now might just be the perfect time to download the free
30-day trial. Just sayin’. ■
Company: Phase One
Price: $299 (Upgrade: $99); $15/month
single-user subscription
Web: www.phaseone.com Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Hot: Keyword tools; revised contrast engine; color editor masks
Not:

› › GET THE SCOOP ON THE LATEST GEAR
Exposure X by Alien Skin Software
Film Emulation and Effects Plug-in
Review by Daniel M. Eastr
It’s always a huge plus when a developer strives to improve upon
one of their flagship products, and it’s especially true when they’re
listening to their end users along with their own research and
development. As they always do, Alien Skin Software steps up
their game with a major update to their popular Exposure plug-in/
standalone software with version X.
There’s a lot to love, but let’s focus on what’s new and
improved. My personal favorite is seamless access to photo files:
Exposure X lets you preview, view, select, and organize your
images, saving a lot of time. You can work at will with a folder
of images from within the launched software. While there’s no
specific button to apply your effect(s), a simple export shortcut
does the trick (for Mac users, it’s Command-E).
Another great feature is that you can make edits in other software
and immediately see those results in your previews—and the
previews are really fast. The one stumbling block (and it’s not a big
one) is that the preview window doesn’t seem to use the same
color profile as the image once you’re back in Photoshop (or your
preferred editing software); but it’s just a preview.
The controls are more accurate, have more abilities, and effects
can be stacked in a nondestructive layer, so blending effects with
the original offers countless options for your final output’s look.
Even after years of working with all of the previous versions, Exposure
X is so much fun to use that I want to go back to some older
images just to see what they might look like with these new filters,
effects, and controls.
Exposure X is all of the things that made every preceding version
a photographer’s favorite, but it adds even more options,
control, and speed, thus providing the potential for more timeless
images in the creative photography market. ■
Company: Alien Skin Software, LLC Price: $149 (Upgrade: $99)
Web: www.alienskin.com
Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Hot: Faster; new features; file management
Not:
Picture Instruments Color Cone
Color Correcting in the HCL Color Scheme
Review by Erik Vlietinck
Color Cone is a new app that enables you to correct colors and
create color lookup tables (LUTs). The app is based on a terrific
concept, but its design could be better.
Color Cone consists of one window with four segments. The
preview window shows your image and the adjustments made
to it, while the other three segments deal with the adjustments
themselves. Color Cone renders colors in the HCL scheme using
eyedropper samples on the interface.
The eye catcher is the dual cone in the center of the right
panel; however, the cone cannot be rotated or otherwise
manipulated. You can manipulate the samples, but that quickly
becomes unwieldy when there are a lot of them.
Although the app has a clumsy design, the workflow is simple:
You use the eyedropper to select a color you want to adjust
in your image, fine-tune the selection, and a mask shows your
selection. Lastly, you adjust the color using the Target controls.
When you’re done, you can either save the adjustments as a preset,
or as a 3D LUT in any of half-a-dozen LUT file formats for use
in other apps such as Photoshop.
Unfortunately, the process is only straightforward if correcting
images with easily discernible colors. For example: When
colors bleed through to the background, you’ll need so many
samples to get it right that it makes selecting them incredibly
hard. It’s especially difficult when they’re close together, as you
have to “scroll” through all of them to find the one you need.
That’s inefficient because there are no layers or even a list to pick
from directly.
In addition, the app doesn’t support RAW images, which in
my opinion doesn’t make sense. Color Cone is really a brilliant
idea that in practice leaves much to be desired. ■
Company: Picture Instruments, UG Price: $189
Web: www.pictureinstruments.com
Rating: ◆◆◆
Hot: Concept; HCL scheme; 3D LUT export feature
Not: Interface; no RAW support; no numeric feedback on sliders
› ›
125

REVIEWS › ›
StudioMagic I and II
One-Click Compositing Suite for Photoshop
Review by Rod Harlan
› › photoshop user › february 2016
126
StudioMagic I & II is a full-fledged, robust, compositing suite built
into Photoshop panels. For novice Photoshop users, StudioMagic
will allow them to push the limits of their creativity beyond the
level of their Photoshop skills. For advanced users and working
professionals, it will save time and money by greatly accelerating
their visual effects workflow.
The StudioMagic Designer Set caught my attention as much
for what it’s not than for what it is. It’s not a collection of actions
or a big pile of filters to further clutter up your Photoshop panels.
It is a very clever group of lengthy Photoshop scripts tied to
one-click buttons on grouped Photoshop panels, which all work
together to make dramatic images as quickly and easily as possible.
Basically, StudioMagic harnesses the power of Photoshop
under its hood, and reduces many of its most complicated tasks
to a few simple mouse clicks, so that anyone can create the look
of Photoshop masters in a fraction of the time.
It starts with StudioMagic I Pro-Panel that includes CutOut,
ShadowCaster, and LightBrush, the foundational tools needed
to ready your subjects for compositing.
CutOut takes the guesswork out of Photoshop’s Refine Edge
command by using industry-tested professional defaults, simple
sliders, and checkboxes. CutOut can cut out and replace skies
or remove subjects from backgrounds in seconds, even with
detailed edges or flying hair.
ShadowCaster is the logical extension of CutOut. It easily
creates an accurate shadow so your subject is believable and
anchored in its new scene. Change a shadow’s direction, opacity,
and softness to match scene lighting, or create shadows
based on time of day, and then copy the same shadow settings
to multiple subjects in the same scene.
LightBrush takes flat-looking images and adds focus and
drama by painting with light (which is really just a layer mask).
If you make a mistake, just click a key, and paint back the light
you removed.
StudioMagic II includes the following five major compositing
toolsets for enhancing your images or working with StudioMagic
virtual sets:
Enviro turns a summer landscape into a snowy blizzard, creates
a drenching rainstorm, or fills a field with thick morning
fog. You can even change daytime to sunset! The Enviro toolset
includes: Season Shifter, Let it Snow, Rain Maker, Fogged In,
and Sunset.
LightingEffex creates that magical moment when light breaks
through the clouds or a sudden beam streams through a window.
The LightingEffex toolset includes: Color Match, LightRays,
LightBeams, LightBursts, and Edge Light.
Reflections is one of the most powerful scripts. In just a matter
of seconds, it creates slick mirrored effects and controllable
water ripples that usually take much longer to produce. The
Reflections toolset includes: Water Reflect and Mirror Image.
Compositor places a selection of commonly used photographic
enhancements at your fingertips so you can add them
to an image with a click of the mouse. The Compositor toolset
includes: Cloud Creator, Moon Clock, Over the Rainbow, Starry
Night, Lightning Strikes, and Birds & Flocks.
HyperZap is a module inspired by contemporary sports images,
magazine covers, and movie posters. It’s the closest thing that this
package has to a filter set, but it delivers an image style that’s both
contemporary and commercial. The HyperZap toolset includes:
Grunge Boost and Color Pop Effects.
All in all, the StudioMagic I & II Designer Set, bundled with
12 Virtual Studio Sets, is a good deal at $249, both for Photoshop
novices who want to produce better work than their current
skillset, and for advanced users who want to save hours
producing these same effects from scratch. And if you use the
special Photoshop User magazine promo code “PUser-2016,”
you can save 20% through March 30! And if you’re a KelbyOne
member, be sure to visit the Discounts section at KelbyOne.com
for even more savings on LayerCake products. ■
Company: LayerCake Inc.
Price: $249 Designer Set
Web: www.layercakeelements.com
Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Hot: Simple buttons/sliders work fast; excellent results
Not:

› › GET THE SCOOP ON THE LATEST GEAR
Eddycam Fashion Strap
When a Camera Strap Isn’t Just a Camera Strap
Review by Michael Corsentino
There are those who would argue that a car is just a car. As long
as it gets you from point A to point B, what’s the difference?
While this is basically true, there’s a clear difference between a
Porsche and a minivan, not just in price but also capability. The
same can be said of camera straps; but considering that they’re all
that stands between your much-loved camera and Newton’s law
of gravity, having a strap that’s up to the task is critical. If you can
also find one that’s sexy, even better!
German-based Eddycam is the Porsche of camera straps, producing
handcrafted elk skin camera straps in a variety of colors
and styles. Their marketing materials say their straps were developed
with the individualist in mind, coming with small scratches
and imperfections inherent in the rugged frontier environment
where they’re sourced.
Eddycam prides itself on using high-quality components, craftsmanship,
and paying attention to detail, such as quintuple-stitched
webbing and special 4700-N tensile-strength thread; non-breakable
stainless-steel adjustment clips; and sturdy polypro pylene
connecting elements. Made from elk skins up to 2.4 mm thick,
Eddycam straps provide stability, elasticity, and comfort using the
proprietary treatment process at Eddycam’s Finnish tannery.
I’ve been using my Eddycam strap for several weeks now with
my Fuji X-T1, and I can tell you firsthand that these straps live up to
their hype. They’re well built, very comfortable, and great looking
too. Keep in mind the strap I tested, as well as a large part of the
Eddycam line, is best suited for lighter cameras, such as mirrorless,
rather than larger DSLR bodies.
With more than 100 versions in 8 colors and 17 different color
combinations, each available in three widths, lengths, and configurations,
Eddycam Fashion straps have a lot to offer. ■
Company: Eddycam Price: From $135
Web: www.digitalback.com
Rating: ◆◆◆◆
Hot: Five-year warranty; beautiful design; high-quality components
Not: Best suited for lighter cameras
HP Z25n Monitor
Narrow Bezel, 25" IPS Display
Review by Daniel M. East
As the displays for design and photo professionals improve their
technologies and overall quality, one might imagine that a new,
slim-profile, energy-efficient model from HP would be just what
the doctor ordered for your latest upgrade. Unfortunately, in a
market that now boasts 4K displays from brands such as Dell and
Acer for around the same price, the HP Z25n has a bit of catching
up to do.
On the plus side, the screen has a 2560x1440 resolution with
a 16:9 aspect ratio that is clear from all angles of viewing, but it
stops short of the 3840x2160 4K resolution that’s quickly becoming
the standard—for now. While the screen quality is good—
the images are very sharp, clean, and clear—there is variation in
the appearance edge-to-edge. Contrast and saturation are neutral
but they’re not consistent. With a 1000:1 static contrast ratio,
there is less “true black” where one might want it. The deepest
black tones seem slightly artificial relative to the very good white
balance. The picture-in-picture capability is nice in theory but, in
this size, a second display might offer better options.
The Z25n has a full complement of ports for HDMI, DVI-D,
DisplayPort 1.2, mini-DisplayPort 1.2, and four USB 3.0 connec-
tions in its roughly 16 lb. structure. It also has a very stable feel
to its pivot positions for both horizontal and vertical viewing. In
spite of its nice design, the Z25n is pricey compared to similar
products from its competitors, and it lacks the control over color
that is so critical to this industry. Overall, this is a good monitor
that simply needs to step ahead of the competition instead of
running behind. ■
Company: HP Price: $429
Web: www8.hp.com
Rating: ◆◆◆
Hot: Sharp image; lots of connectivity options; slim design
Not: Lacks color control; contrast varies edge-to-edge
› › kelbyone.com
127

REVIEWS › ›
Akurat Lighting A1
On-Camera Video LED Light
Highest Color Rendering Index with V-WHITE
Violet Chip Technology
Review by Erik Vlietinck
With dual color balance using two sets of diodes and the ability to
mix color temperatures in various combinations, the A1 manages
to achieve the highest CRI values in the industry with an Ra of 98
and an R9 of 97. The A1 throws about 1100 lux on your subject.
The A1 is small enough to fit comfortably on top of a video camera,
be it a professional ENG camera or a Sony A7. Made out of aluminum,
it weighs next to nothing. Optional barndoors use strong
magnets for mounting and include a separate diffusion glass.
The A1 can be powered by any type of battery used in the video
industry. I chose to have the Sony NP-F adapter fitted. Equipped
with an NP-F970 battery, the light has about 4–6 hours runtime.
You can also power the A1 with an optional power adapter, or by
using your own 6–14 Volt DC adapter.
I tested the A1’s luminous output and its color accuracy with
a spectrophotometer. The A1’s claims are no exaggeration, with
only slight differences between what’s on the control knob and
the measured temperature, even when using the mixed color output
settings.
The barndoors and diffuser option are meant to control the
light. Using magnets on the front bezel, they’re extremely easy
to attach and detach from the unit. The diffuser glass sits loosely
between the unit and the barndoors and does double duty as a
protection for the LEDs. You don’t lose f-stops when using it.
The A1 comes with a jointed mounting system that gives you
more accurate targeting of the light. It lets you aim the A1 only in
the horizontal and vertical plane. This system is also made of metal
and can be replaced if desired. ■
Company: Akurat Lighting, Sp. z o.o. Price: $449.95 (Barndoors: $79.95)
Web: www.akuratlighting.com Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Hot: CRI values; luminous output; size; quality of build
Not:
NEC MultiSync EA275UHD
27" 4K LCD Desktop Monitor
Review by Daniel M. East
› › photoshop user › february 2016
128
As the design and digital imaging industries continue to move
into 4K as the standard for displays, the product choices are
becoming more competitive. As one of the leaders in this migration,
NEC delivers an excellent option for those who want to balance
form and function with a price-point that won’t break the
bank: Enter the MultiSync EA275UHD 4K monitor.
While your best view with this display is head-on, the nearly
180° of clear viewing is impressive. In fact, it’s one of the first
things you may notice before calibration. Like its larger sibling,
the PA322UHD, the EA275UHD has touch controls and a clarity
that cannot be ignored. This is an excellent display with natural,
neutral contrast, plus excellent light and “human” sensors to
accommodate nearly any ambient lighting situation.
The EA275UHD has an ECO mode that saves more than 50%
of power consumption on an already lower power drain monitor.
Further, it’s Energy Star, TCO, and RoHS environmentally compliant.
The closest competitor to the EA275UHD is the Dell 27 Ultra
HD, which is $100 less, but its image quality isn’t as balanced, nor
does it have the viewing angles or vertical viewing capabilities of
the NEC. The sound quality of the internal speakers is the only
stumbling point for this display (as it is for so many manufacturers).
The “barky” 500Hz–2Khz sound is barely listenable and
harsh to the ears so, in this case, the real purpose of this monitor
is sight over sound.
When it’s time for an upgrade to a new monitor that provides
more features than its competitors’ at a midline price, the NEC
27" EA275UHD is worth your consideration. While it may not be
as inexpensive as some of their competitors’ models, the overall
image quality, features, and functions of this monitor make it an
excellent choice and a standout in this category. ■
Company: NEC Display Solutions Price: $799
Web: www.necdisplay.com
Rating: ◆◆◆◆
Hot: Image quality; text clarity; viewing angles; fast startup
Not: Speaker quality

› › BOOK REVIEWS PETER BAUER
Photoshop Masking & Compositing,
Second Edition
By Katrin Eismann, Seán Duggan, and James Porto
Achieving Your Potential As a Photographer:
A Photographer’s Creative Companion and Workbook
By Harold Davis
While there’s no doubt that this book is worth sixty bucks,
there’s no need to pay that much. You can purchase the paperback
directly from www.peachpit.com for $47.99 or from
www.barnesandnoble.com for $44.99. Peachpit.com also offers
digital versions in the formats EPUB, MOBI, and PDF (reviewed
here) for $38.39. The Barnes & Noble Nook version runs $30.49.
Okay, now let’s talk about the five-star rating: If you do anything
more than red-eye correction and color balance to an image,
buy this book. You’ll learn to make selections that isolate part
of an image that needs a specific adjustment, how to combine
multiple images into a single piece of art, and do those things
that separate common photography from great compositions.
With red-eye correction, you’re isolating one part of the image
(or two) for adjustment. Imagine being able to do that to anything
or any part of an image!
This book is also less expensive at www.barnesandnoble.com
and www.amazon.com, and is also available as an eBook on
Amazon and the Apple iBooks Store (but at the list price). Much
of the book is designed around the workbook. The author displays
many of his own photos, often with information about
how he took the photo and what decisions he made in the
process. Other images are for illustrative purposes. This book
is intended for photographers who want to spend disciplined
time and effort in order to improve their work. The introduction
explains the author’s intent. Some of the chapters provide
very specific information about a technique or process, while
others (such as the “Artisanal Print Making” chapter) offer only
some generalities. Likewise, some of the exercises in the workbook
have very specific instructions and goals; others (like the
exercise on printing) aren’t related to the chapter content.
Publisher: New Riders Pages: 487
Website: www.peachpit.com
Price: $59.99
Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
Publisher: Focal Press Pages: 257 (including 48 page workbook)
Website: www.focalpress.com
Price: $34.95
Rating: ◆◆◆◆◆
› › kelbyone.com
129

Photoshop
February 2016
I N D E X O F A D V E R T I S E R S
For advertising information, please contact Kevin Agren, V.P. Sales, at 813-433-2370.
email: kagren@kelbymediagroup.com
4 Over, Inc ........................................IBC
www.4over.com
[ K ]
Photoshop World Conference & Expo .........68–69
www.photoshopworld.com
[ B ]
Best of The Digital Photography Book Series, The .....97
www.kel.by/bestofdp
[ E ]
Elinchrom .........................................11
www.elinchromus.com
[ H ]
KelbyOne....................................8, 28–29
http://kelbyone.com
KelbyOne Live . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120–121
http://kelbyone.com/live
[ M ]
Miller’s Professional Imaging .................. IFC–3
www.millerslab.com/affiliate
[ P ]
Phottix* ...........................................41
http://phottixus.com
[ T ]
Tamron .............................................7
www.tamron-usa.com
[ Z ]
Headshot: The Secrets to Creating Amazing
Headshot Portraits, The.............................49
http://kel.by/hurleyheadshot
Photoshop Elements 14 Book for
Digital Photographers, The* ........................45
http://kelbyone.com/books
Zoo Printing ..................................... 130
www.zooprinting.com
*Advertiser offers discount to KelbyOne members. Visit http://kelbyone.com/discount for more information.
While every attempt has been made to make this listing as complete as possible, its accuracy cannot be guaranteed.

COLUMN › ›
From The Advice Desk
› › Answers to Photoshop and gear-related questions
BY PETER BAUER
I’m a little confused about the difference between the Image>Adjustments commands and using
adjustment layers. And now we have Camera Raw and a Camera Raw Filter inside Photoshop.
What’s the difference?—Kathleen
To: Kathleen
From: KelbyOne Advice Desk
The key is flexibility, the possibility of going back to a layered
PSD or TIFF file and making changes to the changes
you already made. If you use an Image>Adjustments
command, the pixels are changed forever. If you use
an adjustment layer, you can re-open the adjustment’s
dialog and apply different settings.
This might happen if you change your mind about
how the image should look, or it may be because you
want to create a custom copy of a particular image
because this print will be hung in an area with unusual
lighting. If, for example, you have a client who will be
hanging your print under fluorescent lighting and you
want it to look as good as it does under daylight, you
may need to add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
(or make changes to an existing adjustment layer),
play around with the settings, and create small sample
prints until you get exactly what you want. If the print
will be hanging in a very brightly lit room, you may
need to work with a Curves adjustment layer to get the
exact look you want.
Remember, one of your most important advertising
tools is the people seeing your work. If it doesn’t look
good because of the lighting in the room, you may
be missing a sale (or several). I like to see where my
prints will hang (or at least a photo of the area) and a
paint chip of the wall color so I can judge the lighting
before making a print for that specific spot. I also like
to know the distance from which people will first see
the image so that I can sharpen appropriately. Unfortunately,
the various sharpening filters aren’t available as
adjustment layers, so each print is a separate file. When
working with adjustment layers, you have a couple of
options so that you don’t end up with several copies of
the same file.
You can, for example, add a single Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer and use the Note tool (nested in the
Toolbox with the Eyedropper tool [I]) to keep track of
what settings you used for each print. Alternatively,
use a series of Hue/Saturation adjustment layers,
each appropriately named, and have only one of the
adjustment layers visible at the time you make that
specific print.
The Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop is simply a filter
that offers you most of the capabilities of the Camera
Raw plug-in. But, it’s a filter and the changes it makes
to an image are permanent—if you re-open the filter,
all the sliders are set back to their defaults. And keep
in mind that using the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop
doesn’t convert your image into a RAW file.
The Camera Raw plug-in, which is used with RAW
image files, is used prior to opening the image into Photoshop.
You do have the option of opening images from
Camera Raw into Photoshop as smart objects rather
than as image files. Doing so enables you to go back to
the Camera Raw plug-in to make changes by doubleclicking
the smart object layer thumbnail in Photo shop’s
Layers panel. Filters applied to a smart object are applied
as smart filters so, much like an adjustment layer, you
can double-click the filter in the Layers panel to re-open
it and make changes. Flexibility!
The KelbyOne Member
ADVICE DESK
Are you taking advantage of the Advice Desk at the KelbyOne member website? This is the place where you can get all of your
Photoshop and Lightroom questions answered by our Advice Desk experts. Not only that, you can get photo and computer gear
help and advice, as well. What are you waiting for? Visit the Advice Desk section under My Account on the KelbyOne member
site today! ■
› › www.photoshopuser.com
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Photoshop User magazine is the official
publication of KelbyOne.
Each issue features in-depth Photoshop
tutorials written by the most talented
designers, photographers, and leading
authors in the industry.
As a KelbyOne member, you
automatically receive Photoshop User
delivered digitally ten times a year.
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