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Pixel Bender (PB) is a free Photoshop filter plug-in that you can download from Adobe Labs here. You can download it for CS4 but you will not have access to the “Oil Painter” filter which is the most popular filter unless you are using CS5. I haven’t really clicked with this filter but it is good for some applications. I always set up on a duplicate layer before running the program so that I can make adjustments. For this Dahlia image I desaturated it before starting and added some contrast and Accented Edges in Photoshop before running the PB filter.

Now, I have obviously taken some serious creative liberties with this image.  For starters, my camera doesn’t make square photos.  I used a fairly heavy digital grad filter to darken the sky with a heavy dose of clarity to give more separation in the clouds, added some global negative vibrance to mute the colors, made a curves adjustment to increase contrast, dodged the bison to make them stand out a bit more from the meadow, added a vignette and some “grain” – all in Lightroom 3.  I exported the image to Photoshop CS4 and experimented with different blurs using the gradient tool to keep the bison sharp-ish while blurring out the background.  I didn’t like the results of any of those efforts.  What to do?  Hmmm…

The perfect mono conversion…its so subjective and down to personal taste does it even exist? Here is my quick 3 step process to having a go.

Editing with minimal screen furniture

Desaturate? Channel Mixer? Greyscale?

Of course there are many different ways to do a mono conversion and none of them are right or wrong. Some of you may have better or faster ways but this is the way that seems to give me the most pleasing results in a reasonable amount of time, especially for portraits.

The perfect mono conversion…its so subjective and down to personal taste does it even exist? Here is my quick 3 step process to having a go.

Before and after mono conversion

Desaturate? Channel Mixer? Greyscale?

Of course there are many different ways to do a mono conversion and none of them are right or wrong. Some of you may have better or faster ways but this is the way that seems to give me the most pleasing results in a reasonable amount of time, especially for portraits.

Another of my quick processing techniques, sharpening for web sized images. Whenever you re-size an image for the web you’ll find it looks a tad soft (if you think your images don’t, apply some sharpening and see how they suddenly seem to pop from the screen more than before), it’s easy to get back that nice crisp, clear look though. As usual there are many ways of doing it…I keep it nice and simple as this article below will show.

No sharpening and selective sharpening

Whilst the image above looks quite sharp to start with, I wanted the fine feather detail and head area to stand out just that little bit more, and this is how I did it. Remember, sharpening should always be the LAST step in your processing!

Ever had one of those shots that ‘almost’ worked but the framing was just off? Or you wanted to clone out a small distraction near the edge of the frame but there was too much detail to try and match with the clone stamp? Well here is a very quick and neat way to add in some extra canvas, and fill it with original picture information so it matches the rest of the image perfectly. It takes 30 seconds and requires no fiddling with the clone stamp and paint brush – which also makes this technique ideal for Photoshop beginners as well as more advanced users.

Before and After canvas extension

Ok, so the base image I am using for this demonstration is a little tight in the frame but it’s nice enough and serves as a good image to do this quick tutorial with. It’s a simple duck swimming across the water, however, I ran out of room to pan and so caught the duck too far to the right of frame so the composition isn’t ideal. The image would of course look better if the duck had a little more room in front of it than behind. The way a lot of people would tackle this is to extend the canvas and use the clone stamp and paint brush to try and put some detail back in the shot. This method is fine if you only want to touch up a plain area, but, as soon as you start needing to add in area’s that have some detail or a variation in light/colour change etc…well, things can start to get fiddly and time consuming as you try to match the old canvas with the new…but without having duplicate area’s of detail or patches of light and dark that don’t flow together well – the tell tell sign of a rushed clone job.

With this image there are some texture/ripples in the water and although they are quite simple I don’t really want to have to spend time trying to clone them. So, let’s see how I quickly gave the duck a little more space to swim in to, whilst still retaining the original texture and ripples in the water just in front of the duck.

Less Is More
I try not to do too much editing to my images, with the thought process that if an image requires too much work to get it looking good, I should just go and shoot it again. However when using Photoshop, one of the things that I quickly learned was this…shortcuts make editing a much faster process. There are however MANY to be learned, so I thought I’d go back to basics with a video to show a few of the more commonly used ones as a beginners guide. They may be simple, but once learned, I guarantee they will speed up your editing.

Further down you can see a brief list of what is covered in the video for quick reference. However do check out the video to see examples of them in action, as well as a couple of extra tips that show examples of how you can really use them to your advantage.
 

In a nutshell
The video above talks about and demonstrates the following basic functions amongst other tips:

B to select the paintbrush
S to select the clone stamp
C to select the crop tool

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM, 1/250 sec at f / 6.7, ISO 100

 
PhotoMerge in Photoshop offers many creative options for photographers!

Here are examples of recent images of mine using PhotoMerge. I’ll discuss my approach for each image, and hopefully you will get some ideas for your own photography.

Yosemite (see above)

Several years ago, I found myself in nearby Yosemite Valley after a snowstorm. The fresh snow and low-angled light made a spectacular scene! I decided that this was a perfect time to create a panoramic image. Using my favorite 70-200mm lens, I composed vertically and exposed three images across the breadth of the Valley. I didn’t bother to level the tripod and camera since the light was changing quickly. However, I did frame more widely since I knew I would have to crop later in post-processing. PhotoMerge won’t align perfectly if each image isn’t linear to each other, but as long as you overlap the frames by about 30%, and you can visualize the final crop without sacrificing the composition, you’ll be OK.