Photoshop and our Photoshop tips could improve your photography 1000%!

Why? How could our Photoshop tips help you? Imagine the amount of (otherwise great) photos you discard because they are either a little under or over exposed. Maybe something got in the way of that perfect photo just as you fired or some other minor imperfection made you hit that delete key!

For the last few years, it has added a whole new dimension to my photography. Years ago I built a black and white darkroom in the loft, and it took AGES, and copious amounts of paper and chemicals, to satisfy my creative itch! Needless to say, colour processing didn't get a look in, I left that to the pros at the labs!

When I first discovered Photoshop, I was baffled and bemused by the sheer scale of what I was looking at, I may as well be learning Japanese! It is the most comprehensive editing software available today and I suspect for a long time. I read up on as many Photoshop tips as I could find from magazines, websites and lately, blogs.

NEW: For the past two years I have been using Kevin Kubota's Photoshop Action sets on most of my wedding images and find them invaluable. See more info here...Kubota Photoshop Actions

In typically "Me" style, I just loaded a photograph and started to play around, clicking this, sliding that ... it wasn't long before I got very frustrated with the sheer amount of features and effects available and so I shut the whole thing down for a while.

Then I started to read, and to listen to other people and their own Photoshop tips, people who knew what they were doing, and it wasn't long before I was as "at home" with Photoshop as I was up in the loft in the early 80's! It is not unusual for me to spend up to 8 hours a day on Photoshop CS nowadays. I run EVERY photograph I take through it whether for minor adjustments, or a full creative splurge!

I will show you simple Photoshop tips and techniques such as turning a somewhat bland photograph into something useable, for example...

A large Spanish Real Estate company, asked me to do something with their logo for an awards ceremony. This is the logo.

The same company asked me to produce an A1 print based on the Ocean's Eleven theme using the Directors of the company. Again, using the wonders of Photoshop CS I came up with this. I think they liked it, it is still hanging on the wall as large as life!

If you are serious about photography and feel that you want to explore a new and exciting avenue, give it a try. Once you get the hang of it, I can assure you that you will Always use it! It will really get your creative juices flowing.

Use the "Free Adobe Photoshop Download" Icon below to take you to Adobe's website. You can download the trial version there. Once you have it installed, try some, or all, of our Photoshop tips and see how you get on.

There are many other editing suites out there but none come close this one in terms of features and professionalism. However, it is pricey and not feasible for most people. With the amount of programs available, most with free trial, it is easy to end up with a PC that has 5 or more editing programs on it!

Please, please, please just stick to a maximum of 2, otherwise you will get confused as to which one does what and how?

If Photoshop is too much at this stage (both financially and on a learning curve basis), then I would suggest you look at Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 or 6 . They are the "baby brothers" of Photoshop, much cheaper and more user friendly. It is also a great start to get you learning all the exiting techniques and alterations you can make.

One other piece of software I find myself using more and more is ACDSee. It is a fantastic program that allows you to upload from a scanner, burn to a CD, remove red-eye and do most basic editing techniques. Most of all it has the best file viewer facility that I find myself using use all the time.

If you want to scan through all the photos in one of your files, you simply click on the one you want to see and then use the scroll wheel to flick through your pics. That's not all by a long shot...

For more information and brief review on this great bit of software, click here.

So you know everything about Photoshop?

I wish! There are very few people out there that have the time to learn this package inside out, there is just SO much to it! One of the tutorials that I will give you, is the basic run through that I give each photo I take digitally. I recommend that you try it and see the difference it makes to your photos. Also, as a start have a look through the following Photoshop tips, most of these you will find yourself using more and more as you progress further with Photoshop:

• Adding Catch lights to the eyes
• Convert images to black and white
• Correct Red/Yellow colour casts
• Create a vignette effect on your images
• Add a Watermark to your images
• Adjust colour saturation/enhance colours
• Levels/curves/contrast
• Sharpening
• Improve skin tones and increase highlights without Photoshop CS "Highlights" tool
• Using the Paths Tool to Isolate your subject (Page is 500KB approx)
• Remove blemishes from the face
• Straighten Walls
• Adjust Shadows and Colour
• Effective Cloning
• Noise Reduction
• Stitching Panoramas
• Resizing and Printing Photos