Free Video: The Russell Brown Show – Tackling Tough Problems

 

Discover the latest Photoshop tips and techniques, delivered by the master himself, Dr. Brown. Learn more than you ever thought possible about the art and skill of Photoshop!

In this Adobe Photoshop CS4 Tutorial, Russell Brown covers a wide variety of new Photoshop tools including Content Aware Scaling, Mirror Image Cloning and the Protect Tone feature.

 

 

Enjoy…

 

Technorati Tags: Russel Brown,Photoshop,Video,Training

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book

Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor's Guide to the Creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC

Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers

Free Video – Learn To Organize Your Photos Using Lightroom

 

Your instructor, Julieanne Kost will show you how to organize and manage your images using the folder  panel inside of  Adobe Lightroom. You begin with the more basic abilities and move to the more complicated ones. Enjoy!

 

Technorati Tags: Lightroom,Video,Training,Julieanne Kost

Video Training Review: Photoshop Magic With Susi Lawson

Written by T. Michael Testi

As I said in my review of her DVD training video The Fine Art of Photoshop, as soon as you see it, you can recognize a Susi Lawson work of art. There is something about it that jumps off the page and says look at me! In Photoshop Magic, Susi Lawson shares more of her techniques and insight, so you get a better feel on how to create these kinds of wonderful works of art.

Photoshop Magic contains 15 videos covering 13 lessons that detail how to work with Photoshop. They cover techniques of working with brushes, creating portraits by using photos to begin your creation and using Photoshop skill to enhance with drawing and painting over the image. Photoshop Magic comes on two disks, one with the videos and one with the necessary images so you can follow along.

Lesson 1, "Festive Cover Art" begins by showing you how to reproduce the cover artwork. You begin with an ordinary photograph and you will see how to create the festive look using Photoshop. This lesson covers setting the background, using selections and curves, showing you how to touch up a photo, filling in hair, and finally using vector shapes add the colorful shapes.

Lesson 2, "Air Brush Art" (two videos) now takes you on a journey to create what I consider one of the quintessential Susi Lawson styles. It has that Saturday Evening Post look to it. Here you will see how to replace the sky background and make the image look like it was shot that way. Again you will learn how to do portraiture retouching to get the best image you can.

Lesson 3, "Landscape Edit with a Punch" now diverges into the world of landscape image enhancement. Here you will learn how to add flair to your landscape by using various Photoshop tools. You start with levels and curves to do your initial adjustments. Next you work with hue and saturation, as well as the sponge tool to bring out the colors. Finally, you see how the gradient tool and high pass filter bring out the details.

Lesson 4, "Switching Backgrounds" shows you how to replace background on an image and make them more believable. Here you will see how to carefully replace an image onto a new background and see how to blend it in.

Lesson 5, "The Best Plug-in on the Net" is from optickVerve Labs' and called virtualPhotographer. VirtualPhotographer includes over 50 presets that let you automatically apply combinations of film grain, color modification, B/W, soft focus, high contrast and many artistic effects. In this video you will see how to apply some of these effects.

Lesson 6, "Fun with Filter Effects" continues in showing you how to use different effects, this time with some of the natural Photoshop filters. Here you use High Pass filter, Poster Edges, and working with the texture filter.

Lesson 7, "Fine Art Grunge" will show you more filters beginning with Find Edges to begin with a grunge feel, then working with Curve and Levels to punch things up. You work with some brushes to get that certain look, as well as using an adjustment layer to add more effects.

Lesson 8, "Draganizer Action" shows you how to work with an action that is included in the extras. This action will step you through a series of sequences that will allow you create spectacular portraitures by bringing out the subject and placing them on a dark background.

Lesson 9, "Creating Pages" (two videos) will show you how to create book pages that have that antique look and feel by creating bent, tattered, and aged pages. Then you will see how to transform it into looking like a book sitting on a table. Finally you will see how to then put an image on this book.

Lesson 10, "Slimming the Figure" will show you how to enhance an image. Here you will see how to slim the waist and arms of girl in a photo. Here you will use the clone tool, pinch tool, and the brush tools.

Lesson 11, "Album Page Composite" will examine how to prepare a page in an album for a senior or wedding photo composite. Here you will see how to place and adjust images, add drop shadows, and text.

Lesson 12, "Shadow Play" you will see how to add and adjust shadows behind a figure to give the image new life. Lesson 13, "Vector Art Simplified" will now take the image that you created in lesson 12 and convert it into a vector art line type drawing.

I found Photoshop Magic incredibly easy to follow along and the techniques are rather easy to use. You will find yourself amazed that these simplistic techniques are all that are needed to get such superior results. In no time, you will be able to create really great works of art. There is some unevenness between some of the videos' sound levels; that is you might need to adjust the volume on one or two of the videos, but it does not really distract from the quality of training that is given here.

Photoshop Magic is available from Susi Lawson Photography for $80.00 plus shipping and handling. Better yet, Susi also has two other videos, Portrait Magic, and The Fine Art Of Photoshop, and you can buy all three at a special bundled price.

If you are still not sure, what I suggest is that you check out Susi Lawson's gallery over at Susi Lawson Fine Art Photography to see some of her work. My guess is that before long you will find yourself wanting to see how she does it. I very highly recommend Photoshop Magic.

Technorati Tags: Susi Lawson,Photoshop,Fine Art,Painting,Video

Book Review: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended For 3D And Video By Chad Perkins

Written by T. Michael Testi

There are a lot of things that Photoshop CS3 Extended can do that Photoshop has never been able to do before. These include importing and editing of video and animating any object in a file. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended For 3D And Video is the first book to provide a detailed look at these new features. This book is geared for both those who want to learn about video and 3D in Photoshop as well as those video producers and 3D artists who want to incorporate Photoshop into their workflow.

The goal of CS3 Extended For 3D is to get you started down the road in using Photoshop for 3D and video. Even if your workflow is print based and you think that there is nothing in this book for you, or you feel intimidated by professional grade 3D and video software packages, this book is aimed at you.

One thing to keep in mind is that because of the specific nature of this book, it does not go over how to use Photoshop. It is assumed that you are comfortable with using Photoshop and know the most basic concepts such as the interface, pallets, tools, how to work with layers and other fundamental topics. CS3 Extended For 3D is 318 pages long divided into ten chapters.

Chapter 1, "Photoshop's New 3D Abilities: The Basics," starts off by looking at Photoshop's new extended capabilities with regard to video and 3D. These include working with 3D files, transforming 3D objects, preset views, and the 3D camera tools. Chapter 2, "Playing with Lighting and Appearance Settings" now shows you how to work with the tools that will light, cut up, and change the appearance of 3D objects. Then you will see how to display wireframes, create cross sections, and learn about some rendering tricks.

Chapter 3, "Even Cooler 3D Tricks," begins to experiment and gets more creative with the tools that you have been learning about. You also begin to learn how to use them with the standard Photoshop tools. You will work with Layer Styles, adjusting color and luminance, and use Layer Masks with 3D Layers. Chapter 4, "Editing Textures of 3D Objects," tackles what may be the most important part of Photoshop Extended for 3D; the ability to alter textures on 3D objects. These changes can be made either non-destructively or permanently, all without having to go back into an external 3D program.

Chapter 5, "Creating Textures for 3D Models," goes over some of the features that are available for 3D users in the standard edition of Photoshop, especially with the creation of textures. Here you will see how to refine bump maps and create a realistic eyeball texture as well as other tips for using Photoshop in your 3D workflow. Chapter 6, "Video Basics," now shows you how to work with video in Photoshop. Once again, the basics are covered beginning with working with files, exporting video, and using audio in your productions.

Chapter 7, "Animating," shows you the six animation properties: position, opacity, style, Layer Mask position, Layer Mask enabling, and Global Lighting. Here you are shown that you can animate just about any layer. With these you can make each of those layers come to life in Photoshop Extended. Chapter 8, "Editing Video," shows you how to do just that, edit raw video footage within Photoshop. Topics covered are cutting video, filling gaps, animation conversions, as well as take advantage of other bells and whistles when it comes to editing your video.

Chapter 9, "Creative Video Techniques," now gets into all sorts of creative video techniques that you can use in your videos. You will work with styles and filters, Paint tools, cloning, healing, and the use of composting. Chapter 10, "Plug-ins and Resources," finishes up by discussing the third-party plug-in solutions that are available for use with Photoshop as well as other resources that may be useful to you.

Adobe continues to push the envelope from within Photoshop and the new extended version is no exception. While narrow in focus, CS3 Extended For 3D is quite broad within the areas of 3D and video and is a needed volume for beginners on this topic as well as those who want to use Photoshop in their workflow.

The author writes clearly and the easy to follow tutorials are great to learn from. I think that this ease comes from his background as a trainer for Lynda.com. Since this release of Photoshop is really a version 1 for 3D and video within Photoshop, Perkins is able to point out strange oddities that he has encountered which may make for an easier time for you while working in this medium.

CS3 Extended For 3D is definitely the resource that you want if looking to get into 3D and video from within Photoshop Extended. The book also comes with a CD that gives you the resources to work with to make your journey much more enjoyable. I highly recommend Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended For 3D And Video

 

Technorati Tags: Photoshop,Video,3D CS3,Photoshop Extended,Chad Perkins

Video Training Review: Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3 With Lee Varis From Lynda.com.

Written by T. Michael Testi

Doing photographic portraits, while rewarding, can also be a challenging skill to master. To do it professionally can take years to perfect and having the right post-processing skills and enhancement techniques are a must. In Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3, Lee Varis uses Photoshop CS3 to bring out the best in photos of people, faces, and bodies. He examines tone and contrast, color correction, retouching, and much, much more.

Your trainer for this library is Lee Varis. Lee Varis is the owner of Varis PhotoMedia, and has worked with photography and computer imaging for the last few decades. He combines digital and conventional photography with computer graphics to create images for use in advertising, commercial graphics, and multimedia. Lee's work has been featured in movie posters, on video box covers, CD covers, and in numerous brochures and catalogs.

Lee has developed a unique approach to photography that takes advantage of certain idiosyncrasies of digital capture technology to create impossible lighting effects. Lee has written several books, including Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies (Sybex) This library is divided into 29 lessons in two volumes and runs four and a half hours. I will break this review down by functional areas. You can see the full lesson listing at the bottom of this review.

Volume 1: The Basics

"The workspace" begins the lessons by showing you around the Photoshop CS3 environment, how to arrange and make custom palette arrangements, customized menus, and other tips to make your use of Photoshop much more comfortable.

"Curves" is sometimes considered one of the least understood tools in Photoshop, yet it is one of the more important image adjustment tools. In this section the instructor begins with a grayscale image so you only focus on tone and contrast and not with color. Next you add color to mix. Here you work with threshold adjustment layer to set black and white points to make your balance adjustments. You then move on to using the same techniques for working with skin tones. Once you get the contrasts, then you work for the most important color in the image; the color of skin. Finally, he finishes up with some speed techniques for streamlining your work.

"The Hue/Saturation command" takes a look at a different problem — getting the red out. This is helpful when trying to get the red tones out of the skin tones. This is done by using the hue/saturation adjustment layer. Varis then ties the curve techniques to the hue/saturation adjustments to complete this section.

"Basic retouching" takes you through the process of retouching images and the tools that are needed to fix images. These include the Healing Brush, the Patch Tool, the Clone Tool, and working with the Dodge and Burn Tools.

"Rebuilding skin" examines what to do when you have to cover up defects. There are times when you have to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. In this case you will learn how to rebuild the skin. This is especially helpful when work with older skin, skin that has seen too much sun, or other problems.

"Depth of field" shows you how to throw the background out of focus. Typically this is done in the camera, but there are times when you need to do it in Photoshop after the fact. This not the usual technique, rather it is one that more accurately emulates the look that you would get in a camera setting.

Volume 2: Advanced Techniques

"Portrait glow" puts together color correction and retouching and adds a soft diffusion glow. Here we step back through many of the same techniques to do a senior portrait, but now with additional tips and trick to make your job easier.

"Basic sharpening" looks at a strategy for sharpening images and covers the basic techniques for getting the clearer images. Also discussed are other sharpening issues such as working with subjects on a plain background, as well as more aggressive sharpening images with motion where not everything is in the same focus.

"Combined tools" works with several tools that we have been previously working with but now combining to make the foreground figure to pull away from the background to give it more shape and effect.

"Black-and-white conversion" takes a color image, beginning with an image of a flower and show how best to make the transition to a black and white image. Here you will learn a number of techniques about the channel structure of color images and how best to take advantage of it.

"Channel mixing" works with channels in the layers and blends them together with layer masks to achieve some interesting effects. Now you will see how to shape your tones by concentrating on the black and white.

"Luminosity blending" changes from manipulating black and white conversions from color, and now applies color changes by using the black and white contrasts. Here you take luminosity and use it to your advantage by changing the tonal structure in the full color image.

"Blending continued" changes things up by this time not using the curves techniques but rather than using hue\saturation, you now use the channels techniques. This you can use when subjects are more saturated and by manipulating channels you get can better results.

"Channels continued" now takes on some other techniques for some more challenging subjects. Here he works on some darker skin using new techniques to achieve better results. You will work with highlights and contrasts to get a dramatic effect.

"Channel mixing wrap-up" finishes up by working on the adjusting the color and contrast by beginning with threshold adjustment and curves adjustment. This time you will see how to work with landscapes instead of people for great results.

I really liked the presentation within this video. While there were times where the techniques were a bit repetitive, I think that it worked for getting the point across and really showing the proper way to accomplish the task. There were no samples with this lesson, which I would have liked, but again the techniques were solid and very important if you need to work with skin and skin tones. I think that Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3 is a must view if you are needing to work with skin.

You can get Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3 only online. The online training Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3 comes in three flavors. A monthly subscription at $25 USD gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 30,768 videos on 458 topics at this time) or you can save a little with an annual subscription at $250 USD. A premium subscription at $375 USD per year gets all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included only on the DVD and premium subscriptions.

You can use Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3 as a training program for the individual student, and it's also good for the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding portrait retouching and working with skin. You can also try out some of the lessons for free at Lynda.com.

Beyond Skin: Going Deeper With Photoshop CS3 Lesson Listing:

Volume 1

• Lesson 1: The workspace
• Lesson 2 Curves and grayscale images
• Lesson 3: Curves and color images
• Lesson 4: Curves and skin tone
• Lesson 5: Curves techniques
• Lesson 6: The Hue/Saturation command
• Lesson 7: Curves and Hue/Saturation
• Lesson 8: Basic retouching
• Lesson 9: The Healing brush
• Lesson 10: The Patch tool
• Lesson 11: The Clone tool
• Lesson 12: The Dodge and Burn tools
• Lesson 13: Rebuilding skin pt. 1
• Lesson 14: Rebuilding skin pt. 2
• Lesson 15: Rebuilding skin pt. 3
• Lesson 16: Rebuilding skin pt. 4
• Lesson 17: Rebuilding skin pt. 5
• Lesson 18: Depth of field

Volume 2

• Lesson 1: Portrait glow
• Lesson 2: Basic sharpening pt. 1
• Lesson 3: Basic sharpening pt. 2
• Lesson 4: Basic sharpening pt. 3
• Lesson 5: Combined tools
• Lesson 6: Black-and-white conversion
• Lesson 7: Channel mixing
• Lesson 8: Luminosity blending
• Lesson 9: Blending continued
• Lesson 10: Channels continued
• Lesson 11: Channel mixing wrap-up

 

Technorati Tags: Photography,Photoshop,Retouching,Adobe

Video Training Review: The Fine Art Of Photoshop With Susi Lawson

Written by T. Michael Testi

 

When seen in the light of the photography and art work of Susi Lawson, most everything else comes across as mundane and ordinary. Her work is fresh, invigorating, as well as instantly recognizable. Much in the way that you can tell a Norman Rockwell work of art as soon as you see it, you can recognize a Susi Lawson work of art as well.

There is something about it that jumps off the page and says, "Look at me!" My first experience was at a local bookstore where I was browsing the photography and art magazines and I saw this remarkable cover of .PSD magazine in which this little girl holding an old fashion brownie camera. She is surrounded by a bright blue sky and large puffy clouds and she has an incredible expression of utter delight on her face.

Since then, Susi Lawson has continued to win numerous awards for her work including the NAPP Grand Prize (Best of Show) 2007 Photoshop User Awards, and first place in the Portrait/Wedding category of the 2008 Photoshop User Awards. Now, releasing her third training video, The Fine Art Of Photoshop, she is once again sharing her techniques for creating these wonderful works of art.

The first part sets up the image, background, and begins some of the treatment to the little girl. The second part completes the base painting. Part three adds details like the butterfly on her hands, some touch-ups to the hair, and some detail work to her shirt. Finally, in what is really the fourth of the videos, you will learn how to add the cracking effect seen on the cover image.

Lesson 4, Smart Smudge (2 Videos) looks at a popular technique in Photoshop painting and examines the proper method to use this technique. In these two lessons you will work with the smudge tool to create the illusion that you are making paintbrush strokes. Then you combine this with regular brushes and work with a layer mask to create the new look. Lesson 5, Blending Textures uses a photo of a fisherman, a water texture, and a marble texture to create an artsy image. Here you will learn techniques of manipulating textures to come up with new results.

Lesson 6, Starry Starry Night examines how to take a flawed image—in this case a nighttime image with a lot of background noise—and make it into a work of art. Here you learn how to add back some of the features that don't show up because of the limited light in the image. These are things like fixing trees, adding stars, and enhancing the lighting by the use of the shadow/highlight control.

Lesson 7, Cartoon Clip Art (2 Videos) teaches you how to create cartoon style images by using photographic images as your basis for creating the line drawn images and then working in Photoshop to fill in the color and parts to make it a cartoon style image.

Lesson 8, Drawing & Painting the Eye (2 Videos) shows you how to work with freehand drawing. You start off by creating a charcoal drawing of an eye by working with shapes, shadows, and technique. Next, using the sketch, you will now see how to paint the eye using more traditional methods.

Lesson 9, Sketching the Face will show you how to draw the face from scratch by seeing how to layout the head dimensions and seeing where the features properly go. While this does not intend to be a complete lesson in doing free-form facial work, it does give you everything you need to get started doing realistic portrait work.

The Fine Art Of Photoshop contains 16 videos covering 10 lessons that detail how to work with Photoshop. It covers techniques of working with brushes, painting portraits, how to use photos to begin your drawing and painting, as well as how to draw in Photoshop. It comes on two disks, one with the videos and one with the necessary images so you can follow along.

In Lesson 1, Getting to know Brushes, you will learn how changing the nature of the brush dynamics can change the look you create. You will see how to create textures, use scattering brushes, airbrushing, and even things like grass brushes. Lesson 2, Painting a Cowgirl takes a picture of Cassa Marie, the same girl from the .PSD front cover, and she shows you how to easily turn it into a painted style image. Using the brush techniques you learned earlier, you will create the background, bring brightness to the eyes, and really enhance the hair.

Lesson 3, Cover Painting (3 Videos) is the feature tutorial from this video in which you will see how to create the image that graces the cover of the DVD case. The image is called Hope. While this kind of work is more natural to try to do in Corel Painter, many people don't want to spend the time to learn another program, and so here you will see how to accomplish this painting in Photoshop.

Lesson 10, Painting Hair looks at how to paint hair in a traditional way for two reasons. First, if you want to create realistic free-hand work, you will need to also need to create hair. But even if you only want to transform photographs to paintings, it will help immensely knowing the techniques of traditional painting of hair. Here you will see how to create the strands of hair as well as how to create differing colors and textures of hair.

I found The Fine Art Of Photoshop incredibly easy to follow along with and will have you working with these new techniques from the first lessons. In fact one of the things that I think really make these videos work is the way that each lesson is self-contained; yes, there are sometimes more than one video for a lesson, but it makes for a complete topic.

What also works is that you first get a very short lesson on the base fundamentals of brushes. Then you get right into complete projects that you can accomplish with the basic skills, and then you get some additional fundamentals that increase your skills, giving you more to practice and get even better.

The Fine Art Of Photoshop is available from Susi Lawson Photography for $80.00 plus shipping and handling. Better yet, Susi also has two other videos—Portrait Magic and Photoshop Magic—and you can buy all three at a special bundled price.

If you are still not sure, what I suggest is that you check out Susi Larson's gallery over at Susi Lawson Fine Art Photography. My guess is that before long you will find yourself wanting to see how she does it. I very highly recommend The Fine Art Of Photoshop.

Technorati Tags: Susi Lawson,Photography,Photoshop,Fine Art,Video

Website/Video Review: The Luminous Landscape Video Journal: Issue 15

by T. Michael Testi (Blogcritics.org , PhotographyToday, ATAEE)
For those who don't know, The Luminous Landscape is a phenomenal website for those who are into photography, especially landscape photography. As with any quality photography site it has its galleries and essays as well as product reviews and tutorials. It has all the things one would expect in a professional photography website.

You may have read my review of Alain Briot's Mastering Landscape Photography: The Luminous Landscape Essays, a wonderful book that explores what it takes to become a master of landscape photography. On the site you can also read Briot's column called Briot's View. The publisher and primary author is Michael Reichmann. He has forged the site into a multimedia learning center with the The Luminous Landscape Video Journal. He is also the host of the video.

The Luminous Landscape Video Journal: Issue 15 is the latest offering from the Luminous Landscape. Although this is the first issue being offered as a download version, the one I am reviewing is the DVD version I ordered from the site. Let me make one point; my only minor disappointment is that from the time I order a DVD until the time I receive it takes about two to three weeks. I suspect this delay has to do with it coming from Canada. Our friends to the north will find the delivery time much shorter, but to me, it deprives me of my instant gratification. When issue 16 is available, I may be trying the download.

In this video, Michael (I have to use the familiar, since I feel acquainted with him from the videos) and the workshop participants are on location in Bangladesh. They have workshops also. The next one is going to the Amazon in April, which already sold out. They explore the wonderful aspects of being in an exotic location and getting the kind of shots one could only imagine being done by a National Geographic photographer. They journey down the river to the woodland of the Sunderban. They explore the Sadarghat - Dhaka's main ferry terminal. They examine the Bangladesh people - poor in wealth, but rich life and spirit.
What makes this work is that the experience is videotaped and shown as a travel film so you can experience the trip, but then they show the stills that came from the trip. You can see the scenery, then you see the image. It gives you the sense of being there and taking in the pictures. The video journal does not stop there. There is a second section featuring Bill Atkinson on Color Management. This is the first of a two-part video that features discussion on color management and profiling. There is a lot of interesting inspiration you cannot get anywhere else.

Part three continues with Bill Atkinson on matte board cutting and print mounting. Here they demonstrate Atkinson's method of cutting and building double matte techniques for gallery quality prints. The last segment is with Brooks Jensen, the creator and co-publisher of the bi-monthly Lenswork, the magazine on the art of photography. It is truly amazing to see what it takes to put together a high quality magazine on a regular basis.

I have been sold on the video journals since the first one I ordered. These are quality DVDs that will provide you with the confidence you need to explore your world. You can now see through the eyes of a photographer and learn the techniques that will elevate your skills to the next level. You can only buy these DVDs at the Luminous Landscape store. If you are trying to enhance your skills as a photographer, and it really does not matter if you specialize in landscape or not, you will want to order The Luminous Landscapes Video Journal # 15.