Photoshop | Adam Sund Photo Blog

1Aug/100

My photoshop – your images part 3

I've received yet another photo, which I've gone through in this danish photoshop walkthrough video.

Here's the video in HD

Make sure to check out My photoshop - your images part 2

Tagged as: photoshop, tutorial, video No Comments

27Jul/100

My Photoshop – Your Images

Inspired by my colleague Nicolai Brix who does critique of reader's images on his blog, I've decided to open up for photoshop-needy images.

All you have to do is find a photo that you're a bit stuck with but really sees the potential in, send it to my mail info@adamsundphoto.com, write a few comments about it (what's missing, what you think would look good etc.) and I'll choose a few of them, do a bit of non constructive critisism of them and then start turning them into something completely different - I'm kidding - I'll try to be as constructive as possible.

Make sure to check out the First Victim

Tagged as: guide, photoshop, users, video No Comments

26Jul/100

Time lapse photoshop video – My first

It all started when I saw my friend Michael Flarup showing his mad mad graphic design skills in a home made Time lapse video.

That's when I knew I had to try something similar. Not being half as wicked as him and not having the quarter of patience, I need that the whole timelapse concept had to be remodelled a bit.

I ended up with a program called HyperCam 2, but appearently it did not have such a time lapse feature. But as always, Frank Visler came to my rescue and designed a script that would create the illusion of time lapse by pressing "snapsnot" in the program in 2 second intervals.

The photos used is of Mikkel Mphotography, A colleague of mine - handsome guys, isn't he?

Or straight link for HD

Tagged as: photoshop, time lapse, video No Comments

22Jul/1029

Photoshop workshops – who’s with me?

I'll be doing photoshop workshops this fall, so if you are either interested in beginners or advanced classes, let me know in the comments.

Here is the information - in Danish:

I efteråret afholder jeg workshops i Adobe Photoshop på begynder- og øvet niveau.
Jeg har tidligere afholdt kurser både som selvstændig og som underviser hos FoF, og til dagligt er jeg skribent for det officielle canon-bruger-site Miteos.dk, hvor jeg har fået det noget prangende prædikat ”photoshop ekspert”. På min blog laver jeg ofte photoshop tutorials og guides, men vil nu gerne tilbyde workshops, hvor man i højere grad kan tage udgangspunkt i de enkeltes ønsker og behov.
Jeg arbejder til dagligt som fotograf, og i naturlig forlængelse af det, vil disse workshops tage udgangspunkt i billedredigering.
Udover at dykke ned i specifikke emner, værktøjer og elementer af programmet Photoshop, vil jeg også fokusere på hvordan man går til bestemte type billeder – landskabsbilleder kræver en anden form for redigering og redskaber end portrætter, hvor babe- og glamour også adskiller sig fra Fashion og beauty.

Photoshop er en værktøjskasse, og det nytter i sig selv ikke noget at lære værktøjerne at kende, hvis man ikke ved hvad man skal bruge dem til eller hvad man i sidste ende vil bygge. Jeg vil guide jer i retning af hvordan man kan bruge værktøjerne, og hvordan man bruger photoshop til at opnå langt bedre resultater med sine billeder.
Herunder er et mere præcist indblik i hvilke konkrete værktøjer, der vil blive arbejdet med på de to forskellige niveauer. Dette kan bruge som en guide til at placere dig selv i enten den ene eller den anden kateogri.

Begynder

Lære photoshops overflade at kende.

Introduktion af begreber inden for photoshop

Genveje
- Kendskab til de vigtigste

Forståelse for hvilket slags redskab photoshop er

Masker

Lag/layers
- at arbejde non-destruktivt

Justeringslag

Håndtering af filer
- billeder til net
- lagring af originalfiler
- lagring af photoshop filer
- billeder til tryk

Beskæring

Fjerne ting/Clone tool

Resize
- opskalering af billeder
- klargøring til print

Sort/hvid konvertering
- måder at konvertere samt opnå bestemte slags S/H billeder på.

Kontrast
- måder at opnå kontrast på, og hvad man bør være opmærksom på

Farvemætning
- hvordan styrer man farvemætning

Opacity på lag

Øvede

Introduktion af begreber

Fritlægning
- Redskaber til forskellige typer opgaver

Workflow
- Rækkefølge på lag
- filhåndtering

PWL – paint with light
- Den ikke destruktive måde at arbejde kreativt med dodge og burn
Kunstige lyskilder
- Lysforståelse og efterligning af lyskilder

Flere billeder i et
- Hvordan klipper man flere billeder sammen – og får det til at fungere.

Hud
-   Babe redigering
-   Normal hudredigering
-   Fjerne rynker

Lave skygge
Lave røg
Lave modlys
Skarphed
Flares
Grain/noise

Color grading

Vignette
Opacity på lag
Blending modes.

Farve elementer (blendingmode color)

Liquify
Shadow/highlight

Cartoon look

Kurserne vil foregå i aftentimerne i hverdage (eller søndage hvis alle protesterer), og vil typisk vare 3-4 timer a 2 omgange - dvis samlet 6-8 timers undervisning.

Der vil være kaffe og kage, og det vil foregå i Storkøbenhavn.

Prisen vil være 900-1300 Kr (alt inklusivt) pr. deltager for et helt forløb.

Tagged as: class, course, photoshop, workshop 29 Comments

19Jul/101

Video tutorial on layers, masks and adjustment layers

I guess video tutorials for Photoshop is my new thing. I guess it's mostly because I'm stubborn and don't like loosing any kinds of fights.

Meaning, last week, my computer got infected my a malicious virus from downloading a video converting tool for... yes, a video tutorial which was a little too big for uploading on Youtube.

Now, 6 days later, it's still completely busted, so I've borrowed my dads laptop (with 4 times the RAM, thank you dad) and started going through subjects for tutorials that people around me had suggested.

The virus may have locked down my computer, but those video tutorials WILL see the day!

Yeah, this time, it's a fairly basic tutorial on layers, masks and adjustment layers - On Danish (mostly because it's getting featured at Miteos.dk at the same time)

Or watch it in HD HERE

Make sure to check out the others

http://adamsundphoto.com/blog/2010/04/my-first-video-tutorial/

http://adamsundphoto.com/blog/2010/07/video-tutorial-on-creative-editing/

Tagged as: photoshop, tutorial, video 1 Comment

12Jul/100

Video tutorial on creative editing

After my last photoshop challenge I received yet another image from Martin Wennerstrøm. This time, the challenge was somewhat similar to the first - but instead of doing the same approach, I went all Dave Hill on it, and ended up with this video tutorial.

(My advice would be to watch it in HD)

Tagged as: editing, photoshop, tutorial No Comments

7Jul/103

Photoshop Challenge

My dear colleague Frank Visler poked me on facebook and said, go edit this photo. Having respect for the elderly, I of course obliged.

In this post, I will demonstrate how I managed to make a blown out photo of some nice looking cars look a bit more dramatic.

This is the original unedited photo taken by Martin Wennerstrøm

And here's what came out of photoshop 20 minutes later.

This is not by any means a full makeover - that would take a bit more than 20 minutes. This challenge was to make the image look more dramatic through fast editing and with some easy tricks to do so.

Let me guide you through it.

Here we have the image opened in Photoshop.

To me, the challenge was to make due with a pretty cool image which unfortunately had burned out areas.

- My first layer was a curves layer, which pretty much was used to pull out whatever information I could in the brightest areas.

- Next, i made a copy of the original layer, added motion blur (vertically), masked it, and painted back the effect on the wheels. We don't want to see the prints off the wheels if we are to create the illusion of a burn out.

I had my hazzle with the rims. I made selections of the 3 visible ones (I left out the top left one) and tried to add some blur effects to them. But because of the crooked angle, non of the blur effects was really suited.

- What I then did was to take the smudge tool and smudge away within the selection of the largest rim. I figured the other ones would be too covered in smoke. Yes, Smoke.

- In order to create the illusion of smoke, I usually create several layers, take a brush with low flow (4-5%) and paint in different shades of grey and white. That way, I can add this smoky effect. I didn't work the first few times, but if you keep trying, you'll most likely end up with something that works - it's all about creating the illusion.

- Here, I added a sky to add drama (I guess that's my thing). What I also did was make a new layer, take a white brush with flow of 10-15% and repeatedly dab white areas around the lady.

- After that, I added a color balance layer where I adjusted the mid tones and dark tones to get the bluish feel.

- on top of that, I added a PWL layer (paint with light - empty layer set to overlay) and painted with black and white (5% flow) to add highlights and drama to other areas. I also used this to add the skidmarks on the ground under the wheels. This basically works the same way as dodge and burn.

Finally, I merged all the layers together on top of it all (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E), dublicated (CTRl+J) and changed the top layer to vivid light.

I then inverted it and added surface blur (30 ish in both values). Again, I do the CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E thingy to merge to top. Delete the second layer still in vivid light mode and change top layer to overlay. I add a layermask to paint where i want this effect.

If the last section made no freaking sense at all, just use highpass. But by doing it the way described above, you avoid the nasty looking halos one always end up with after using highpass to sharpen up the image.

Feel free to throw Photoshop challenges at me from time to time.

Tagged as: challenge, editing, photoshop, tutorial 3 Comments

23Apr/100

Photoshop wizard on New site

You remember this post? Well here's the revelation.

Not more than a week ago, I was contacted by Kim Skovsby, a photographer and administrator of the danish online Canon community Canoneos.dk.

He came to me with a proposal: To become a part of the panel of experts writing on the new site that he is to administrate (whereas the old canoneos.dk appearently was controlled a bit more by Canon itself).

The site will have experts in sports photography, landscapes, portraits and so on, but he wanted me on board as the photoshop expert writing articles on different photoshop matters, making video tutorials and offering workshops and courses on the matter - basically the things I already do here on the blog.

Of course I still encourage you guys to visit the blog every once in a while (especially you English speaking dudes and dudetts - the other site is in Danish) but swing by

miteos.dk and drop a comment on how awesome this is ^^

Adam approves

Tagged as: adamsundphoto.com, adamsundphoto.com/blog, canon, photography, photoshop No Comments

15Apr/101

Jill Greenberg – the manipulator

Every once in a while, you stumble upon something truly amazing whether it be a movie, a piece of music, a fantastic restaurant or a peach perfectly ripe.

That happens in photography as well, and it happened to me when I saw the work of Jill "the manipulator" Greenberg.

She's an american photographer who caught the medias attention when she did a portrait series of crying infants after George Bush was re-elected for his second period in office. The series was called Four more years and was her way of saying, screw you republicans - I'll make baby cries each time you win stuff. Yeah, I'm not sure that was the actual argument, but she made the babies cry genuinely (by having the parents offer candy and then take it away). Needless to say, America was outraged by this horrific act.

3 3/4 years later, the newspaper The Atlantic hired Jill Greenberg to portrait John McCain, the republican presidential candidate . Being the anti republican she is, she of course took advantage of the situation and did some interesting shots of the little knowing McCain. You can read the full story here or just take a look of some of the images shot of the dear old McCain:

Now that we've finished with the prologue, lets continue to what this should really be about - a great photographer and what we can learn from her.

After seeing her photos the first time, I rushed to youtube and searched for Jill Greeenberg + behind the scnes - I absolutely HAD to know how she made the portraits she did and how they were lit. And I managed to find some videos showing that, so if you have the time, lean back and take in what you can - I know I've done so a million time by now.