Photoshop with Matt: Recent Episodes
Peachpit TV
Matt Kloskowski, education and curriculum developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, takes you step-by-step through Photoshop's features in this series of screencast-based tutorials that reveal techniques the professionals use.
When you travel across time zones, you probably don't set your camera date/time to the new location's time. While Lightroom will indeed let you change this on each photo, this video will show you a much easier way to do it for a group of photos all at once.
One of my favorite new features in the latest batch of CC 2014 changes is the Path Blur filter. Finally, as you'll see in this video, we can blur things along a specific path (even curves), rather than in just one direction.
Retouching images and removing distractions is always a tricky thing. While some tools may work for one area, the same tools may leave unwanted effects in other areas. That's where one of the newer settings for retouching tools comes in. With the Color Adaptation options that we now have, we have a better and more effective way to remove distractions while hiding your tracks so nobody can see the work that was done.
Adobe sneaked a really slick (and very requested) feature in to the latest Creative Cloud update to Photoshop and Camera Raw. In fact, it's not even in Lightroom yet. Basically, if you're using the Graduated or Radial Filter, one of the biggest requests was always to be able to brush the filter effect away from certain areas. Sadly, you've always need to switch over to layers, masks, and Photoshop for this. But not anymore! With the new update, you now have an eraser brush built right into the Graduated and Radial filters so you can adjust the brush effects within Camera Raw.
If you've ever photographed a waterfall, you probably know the skill it takes to get the water looking just right. Typically we want the water to have that smooth silky look to it, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. With this tip, you can help it along after the fact.
Lightroom and Photoshop work well together to create panoramas, but those panos take a while to stitch together. (A real problem when you finish and aren't happy with the results!) That's where this tip comes in really handy: create an Export preset in Lightroom that makes stitching together a "test" pano fast and simple. From there you can decide if it's worth spending the extra time to edit the photo all the way through.
Lightroom (and Camera Raw) both have a really cool feature that let's you selectively sharpen your photos without sharpening everything. It's part of the Adjustment Brush, and in this video you'll see how you can apply it, as well as a little known tip for making it even sharper.
If you've ever had to watermark a bunch of photos, you know that doing it manually can be a total pain. In this video, Matt shows you how to automate the process as well as how to make the best graphics for your watermarks.
Everyone loves their presets. But one of the most common questions I hear is whether or not you can use your Lightroom presets in Camera Raw. Well, you can, but you'll need a little workaround that we'll go over in this video.
Photoshop has a hidden cropping trick that will help designers and photographers alike to visually crop your photos. We'll reveal the trick in this video.
Lightroom is perhaps the best place to lay out a print, but there are a few hidden options that make it a lot easier if you ever want to reuse the same print settings again in the future. This video will show you those options so you can create reusable templates.
Lightroom has a few little features and shortcuts that are sometimes inadvertently activated. If you find Lightroom acting strangely, and you don't remember turning on certain features, it can really throw you off. We'll check out the 5 most common culprits in this video.
If you're trying to lay out an image precisely in Photoshop, Guides are your go-to tool. In this video we'll go over all the little tips and tricks that making creating and working with guides much easier.
With the increasing power of the healing tools in Photoshop and Lightroom, questions about whether to use the cloning or healing tools in different situations have popped up. There are a few key differences on when it's best to use each tool, which Matt Kloskowski covers in this video.
Matt takes a photo from start to finish, taking a raw file with no adjustments and showing all of the typical changes and enhancements he does to photos using just the tools in Lightroom or Camera Raw. (No Photoshop!)
Panoramas (AKA: Panos) look awesome. They really make a great impact, and they're easy to photograph. But sometimes, unless we have one of those fancy pano-shooting bullheads on our tripods (and most people don't), we're left with some extra area in our panos that we need to crop out. With this tip, you can save a lot of that area and make your panos larger with even more impact.
If you like contrasty, gritty looks in your photos, you're going to love what the Clarity slider can do. But this tip isn't just about using the Clarity slider — it's about how to take the clarity slider to the next level with a little-known trick to make it even more intense.
Making your type look professional is probably the single most important thing you’ll do (other than actually choosing the right words for your image). Sometimes Photoshop adds a little too much space between letters. Or even worse, it scrunches two letters so close together that you can’t tell what they are. Using this tip, you’ll be able to fix those issues and make your text look much more professional.
If you're a designer, chances are you're pulling colors from different images, websites and just about anywhere when designing your images. With this tip, you'll see the image doesn’t even need to be in Photoshop for you to be able to sample a color from it.
Yep. I said it. The most powerful button in Lightroom. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it’s actually right in front of you. When you see what it does, you’ll never go back to not using it.
The more you use the Puppet Warp tool, the more you appreciate just how many areas it can be helpful for. Once you learn this secret tip for keeping your changes non-destructive, you’ll use it even more.
You’d be amazed at how many tools and palettes use the Opacity setting in Photoshop. But with just one keyboard shortcut, you’ll see you can change it in no time flat.
If you’re using the brush tool in Photoshop, picking the exact size of your brush is as important as anything. Using the Heads Up display brushes makes choosing that size a very easy and visual process.
If you find yourself wanting to move around Lightroom faster, navigating the panels is something to get used to. But with this tip, you’ll find that you’ll get exactly to the settings you want faster than ever.
Matt shows how to make more accurate selections when building composite images. As he demonstrates, this trick can make a big difference when pasting your selections to images with significantly different background colors than the original.
Matt shows how Photoshop keeps track of changes in its History setting, and how you can tweak those settings to ensure it saves more states than the default. This little detail may save you a lot of time if it's ever needed.
You'd be amazed at what one tiny keyboard shortcut can do in Photoshop. From hiding things that get in the way, to accidentally not showing you a selection that you know is there, the hiding shortcut is a great one to understand. In this video, Matt gives you some tips and tricks on what the keyboard shortcut does and how to change it if it ever gets in the way.
With all of the new technology in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop, it's easy to get caught up wondering what tool to use (and where to use it) for cloning and healing. In this video, Matt shows you the main cloning/healing tools in Photoshop and Lightroom/Camera Raw, explaining when each one works better than another.
The Graduated Filter is one of the most-used tools for enhancing and correcting bright skies in Photoshop and Lightroom, but it comes with a price: it tends to darken any tall objects in your foreground. With this trick you'll be able to get the best of both worlds and keep your skies (and foreground) both looking great.
Here's a run-down of my favorite Photoshop tips. These are little tips, tricks, and shortcuts that make working every day in Photoshop easier and faster, especially with some of the common things we do to our photos over and over again.
If you like shooting with wide angle lenses, you've probably come across buildings, walls or trees that look like they're leaning over. With this new Creative Cloud enhancement, Photoshop has a one-click fix that helps straighten things out automatically.
If you're taking photos in low light, you've inevitably run in to some noise issues (that grainy stuff that you see in the darker parts of your photos). For years photographers turned to 3rd-party noise reduction programs to help get rid of it, but Photoshop CC has some of the best noise-reduction technology out there that is simple and quick to use.
If you're scanning in old photos and putting several of them on the scanner at once to make things easier, you're going to love this tip. It's basically a one-click way for you to crop and straighten all of those photos without lifting a finger (except your mouse finger, that is). Trust me, you're going to love it.
Photoshop has had an HDR merging feature for a while now. In the latest release of Photoshop CC, however, Adobe added a couple of new features that help you edit your HDR photos and really take advantage of the detail that you get when shooting multiple exposures.
Photographers all can agree on one thing: they want their photos as sharp as possible.Matt shows you how, with a little bit of planing in-camera along with a blending feature in Photoshop, you can take the sharpest parts of two photos and combine them together for one super-ultra sharp photo.
When we think of composites, we usually think of combining a bunch of different photos. But you'd be amazed at the killer designs you can create by getting creative and using one photo in multiple places for the same collage. Matt shows you how in this video.
Photo restorations can be some of the most rewarding projects, as you can have the ability to bring back people's memories of great times or loved ones. In this video, Matt shows you some tips and tricks on figuring out which tools will help you get the job done.
The Patch tool has long been one of my favorite retouching tools in Photoshop. It works when no other tool does the trick. Over the years the Photoshop team has added a few new features to the tool that have sneaked by most people. This video takes a look at the tool and checks out some of those new features, showing how they can help us retouch and remove distractions from our photos.
One of the essential items in any outdoor photographer's bag is the polarizing filter. It adds color, reduces glare, and can really help give a boost to your outdoor photos. But one of the downsides of that filter is that it can often make your skies look fake. Using some quick Photoshop techniques, though, we can combine two photos and take advantage of the polarizer while still having a great-looking sky.
One of the features that Photoshop users have been clamoring for is the ability to go back in to Camera Raw after you've already made adjustments, without actually losing all of your Photoshop work. In Photoshop CC, Adobe lets you do just that. Now you can open Camera Raw as many times as you'd like, and with a little trick you'll learn in this video, you can even save your settings each time so you can adjust them whenever you want.
In the latest CC version of Photoshop, Adobe really ramped up the retouching tools in Camera Raw. Before the update, you could only clone and heal spots. But now with the new enhancements you can use them just like any other brush, which opens up a whole new world of retouching possibilities.
In this video Matt reverts one of his portfolio photos back to the original raw photo -- with no changes applied -- and shows you the entire editing process from start to finish. You'll see the Camera Raw/Lightroom adjustments and how he finishes things off in Photoshop to come up with the final portfolio image.
Photoshop is great for working on photos and collaging them together. But what happens when you create a killer template and want to reuse it for another project? Do you have to go through all of the same work again to put it together? Nope. With a feature called Smart Objects and a little bit of pre-planning, you can have Photoshop (very quickly, by the way) replace multiple versions of a photo in one template with another.
Lightroom fans love the Previous button. It does one simple thing - do-over. It basically reapplies whatever you just did to a photo, to the next photo. Camera Raw actually has a similar feature. It's not called the same thing, but it's just as useful if you quickly want to apply changes from one photo to another.
I've always been a big believer that dodging and burning is one of those things that helps your photos dramatically. In this tutorial I'll show you one of my tricks for helping the process out and really making the dodge/burn experience much easier.
Whenever Adobe releases new updates, it's always great to get a head start and find out what's new for photographers. In this video Matt cuts right to the chase and shows you his top 5 favorite features for photographers in Photoshop Creative Cloud.
If you're printing, you need to watch this video. You see, when our photos are small on the computer, it's easy to overlook small spots in the sky or background. But when we see them printed (especially large prints), those imperfections stand out like a sore thumb. With a little help visualizing them, you can easily get rid of them and clean up your prints in no time.
Years ago, Dan Margulis wrote a book on the Lab Color mode in Photoshop. One of the tricks he showed in the book is a great way for boosting colors in your outdoor photos. With a quick color mode change and a Curves adjustment, you'll see how you can take your photos from "eh" to vibrant in just a few clicks.
If you've used layers and blend modes for any amount of time, you've probably encountered the mysterious shift in appearance when you try to merge layers. Here's a quick tip that'll help you merge without losing any detail and visual changes you've made.
We're always told that we need to sharpen our photos differently for web and print. But how? How do you best add sharpening so you know which image is web and which is print? Better yet, how do you add sharpening in a way that doesn't require the creation of two separate files. With a little creativity and smart filter layers, you'll see how.
In the Creative Cloud, Photoshop has a new feature that's actually been around for a while in older programs - conditional actions. Actions are great, but they're mechanical. This means that Photoshop normally can't make a decision on what action to play if it encounters an unexpected image type. In this video you'll see that, with conditional actions, you can do just that.
Long exposure photography has really become popular, but the movement and motion that comes with long exposures brings all new problems to our final image. For example, what if something happens to be moving during your long exposure? Here's a great tip for you to get the best of both worlds by keeping the parts of the photo you want still and sharp while allowing other parts of the photo to blur from the longer exposure times.
When Adobe released the last round of updates to the Creative Cloud, they added a feature to one of my favorite retouching tools - the Liquify Filter. This time around, we'll take a look at how Liquify is now smarter and what it means to your photo editing process.
The type tool is one of the most important features in Photoshop. In this video, Matt goes over 10 (ish) tips to help you get the most from it.
If you've ever wanted to compare your color photo with a black and white version, or even another version, you'll love the Snapshots feature in Camera Raw.
Word clouds are images that are simply made up of words: Some large, some small, some scattered around the image, different colors and shapes. They're actually very cool looking by themselves, but when you add a photo and a bit of Photoshop to one, you can really create some great-looking designs.
Long exposure photography has really taken off in the last year. The silky water and streaky cloud effects can make a photo look stunning. Sometimes, though, you don't have those neutral density filters with you to take the long exposure shots. Matt shows how you can still get some of the same effects using Photoshop.
It's amazing how Adobe Camera Raw keeps getting more and more powerful. We typically think of using it to adjust the exposure and color of our photos, but you can do so much more. In this video we'll take a look at some quick and basic portrait retouching that we can do with the Adjustment Brush.
Ever notice that typical paper sizes don't match the size of the images coming out of our cameras? It happens quite a bit, especially if you print 8x10s - you'll notice you always have to crop part of the photo so it fits on the paper. Photoshop has a feature that can help out called Content Aware Scale. It let's you scale (move and stretch) the image to fit a certain size, but also lets you tell Photoshop what parts are important so it doesn't mess with those areas. It comes in really handy for common print sizes, so if you find yourself printing a lot, you've got to check it out.
If you're an Elements user, you need to watch this video. Elements 11 just made a huge leap in the world of selections with it's new Refine Edge technology. If you've ever wanted to make complex selections, this tool is going to make your job infinitely easier.
One of the new features in Photoshop CS6 that continues to get a lot of buzz is the Content Aware Move Tool. It builds on some already killer "content-aware" technology and gives us the ability to move things in a photo from one spot to another. It's one of those things you just gotta see.
We typically think of a panorama as an image that captures the entire width of a scene. But with the technology that we have today, there are some incredible things we can do with the panorama-stitching technology in Photoshop to create images that weren't possible just a few years ago.
In this video we'll work with a photo from start to finish. Yep - I'll clear the settings in camera raw and you'll see the original photo. I'll walk through all of the things I usually do in Camera Raw and then jump into Photoshop to finish things off with some quick retouching, sharpening and finishing effects.
Adobe released a very cool filter with Photoshop CS6 called Field Blur, probably one of the most realistic blurs in Photoshop. If you ever wanted to make your photo look like it was shot with one of those expensive shallow-depth-of-field lenses, Field Blur is a great way to do it.
Sharpening is a key stop along any photo that we bring into Elements. More times than not, though, I find I'm only sharpening certain parts of a photo. In Photoshop Elements 11, Adobe added a feature that makes it easier than ever to selectively apply sharpening to parts of the photo that you want to stay really sharp, and leaving it off of parts of the photo that aren't as important. This video demonstrates that new feature.
It's Fall again, and if you live in a part of the world where trees will soon lose their leaves, you've probably got some photos of those leaves changing colors. In this video you'll see there's a really great little recipe for enhancing those fall colors and making them really stand out.
Ever wanted to see what your photo looked like as a black and white but then quickly revert to the color version? Or maybe you've adjusted a bunch of settings on your photo, only to realize that you liked the way it looked after just a few changes. Photoshop has a feature called Snapshots that lets you create different versions of your photos so that you can always get back to a certain point without moving all of the sliders to get there.
If you're printing, the chances are that you may need to reduce noise in photos that were taken with a high ISO setting. But a lot of times by reducing the noise you run the risk of blurring the photo. With a setting in Camera Raw, you'll see that you can selectively reduce the noise in just the shadowy areas of the photo and help preserve any of the details that you need to remain crisp.
The more I use the selective white balance controls in Camera Raw, the more I realize they're one of my "go-to" tools these days. With just two sliders you can enhance and correct the color in your photos. Throw in the fact that they work with both the graduated filter and the adjustment brush and you've got some really powerful ways to enhance your photos.
The presets panel in Photoshop is your one-click way to your favorite photo recipes. Once you find a combination of effects you like in your photos, you can create a preset that remembers everything (yes, everything!). That way, if you want to apply an effect to another photo, you're just one click away. Trust me, once you start making presets, you'll never stop!
Adobe added something called the "process version" a while back in Camera Raw. Now, when each new version of Photoshop comes out, they change that process version. The latest, 2012, comes with some great new features and tools, demonstrated here, for editing your photos.
If you've ever lost an image to a crash in Photoshop then you're going to love this feature. And if you work with large files, you're going to love it even more. Photoshop CS6 comes with some new background save and auto save features that not only come in handy, but also save you a bunch of time.
If you work with type a lot in Photoshop, you'll know that the more type layers you have, the harder it is to control and change your text. In Photoshop CS6, they added something called Type Styles which let you define a style for a set of type layers and then quickly change that style (and all of the associated layers) with just a few clicks.
There’s a little feature in Camera Raw 7.1 (the latest update to Adobe Camera Raw) that lets you take a full 32-bit image (basically, an image with crazy amounts of tonal range in it) right into ACR. So instead of tonemapping your HDR image in Photoshop, you can use the controls you’re already used to in ACR to do it. It’s pretty amazing when you see it in action and just how far you can push the image to get the most range and depth from it. Plus, it’s kinda cool to think where the technology can go from here.
Some of the little (but really significant) changes in Camera Raw and Photoshop CS6 are to the adjustment brush and graduated filter. They're not new tools but they have a couple of new settings that allow you to adjust the color of specific parts of the photo. You probably didn't know you needed these new adjustments, but once you use them, you're not going to be able to live without 'em.
Camera Raw added a few new sliders that change everything in Photoshop CS6. The Basic panel is probably where we spent most of our time when it comes to the Camera Raw interface. In CS6 Adobe changed a few sliders to not only make them easier to use, but to make them way more powerful when it comes to adjusting your photos.
Photographers that use wide angle lenses are going to love this filter! While Camera Raw and Lightroom both have great tools for fixing perspective problems in your photos, Photoshop CS6 has really taken it up a notch with the Adaptive Wide Angle filter. Now we no longer have to make a choice to fix perspective in just one part of the photo. The new filter lets you draw on exactly the areas you want to correct (yes, you can choose several in one photo, if you'd like), and it does all the work for you when it comes to correcting perspective or distortion.
Photographers or retouchers working on photos of people tend to work on subjects' faces and overall skin tones. Selecting those skin tones has always been a manual process, though. Now, with CS6, we have a selection tool that'll take away all the work of making the selection and free up your time to quickly make the adjustments you need.
If you were ever a fan of the Lighting Effect filter in Photoshop, you'll be happy to know that it has returned in Photoshop CS6. Lighting Effects is a great little tool that lets you add lights to your images after the fact . You can position them in different places and even control the intensity and color of each light. In this video we'll take a look at the new (well, kinda new) filter and how to use it.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes you'll see when you first open CS6 is the interface. It's dark… like, really dark! In this video we'll take a look at the new interface and some nice little changes that'll streamline your whole Photoshop experience.
Tilt-Shift lenses are great for photographing architecture and tall buildings. They've even become synonymous with the Tilt-Shift blur effect that makes your images look like "miniature" photos. In Photoshop CS6, Adobe gave us a new blur filter that let's you add that effect without the need for the tilt-shift lens. We'll explore that filter in this video.
Retouchers swear by the Liquify tool. However, if you've used it before, you probably know it's never been the fastest tool out there (and that's putting it mildly). We've long had tips and tricks to make it faster, but in the end, it was a really slow tool to use. In CS6 it's gotten a significant speed boost as well as some enhancements that make it easier to use, as you'll see in this video.
The Crop Tool got a huge update in Photoshop CS6. If you've ever used Lightroom before, you'll find it looks pretty familiar. But if you haven't, you'll notice cropping in Photoshop is a brand new experience. We'll take a look at all the new features of the Photoshop CS6 Crop Tool in this video.
Matt Kloskowski explores some of the new Blur Filters in Photoshop CS6, focusing on features found in the Field Blur and Iris Blur tools and a dramatically different method of adjusting settings within the tools.
One of my favorite filters in Photoshop doesn't actually come with Photoshop CS5, but it's free to download from Adobe. It's called Pixel Bender, and the specific filter in it is called Oil Paint. If you ever wanted to give your photos that "artistic painterly" look, you'll absolutely lose your mind over this one. The effect it gives is flat-out amazing, and it just takes a few clicks rather than a few hours to do. (It comes with the CS6 beta, too!)
If you've ever used the Clone Stamp tool or even the Healing brush in Photoshop, you know they work amazingly well. However, if you've got a larger area to fix, sometimes the brushes can take a lot of time and still not give great results. In this video we're going to take a look at another alternative for cloning using a more unusual method.
In the second part of this 2-part series, Matt shows you a technique to break apart a complex selection into 2 areas using Photoshop CS5's Refine Edge and Defringing features. You'll learn which settings work best for easy-clean-edged selections and which areas work best for detailed or wispy hair selections.
In the first part of this 2-part series, Matt shows you a technique to break apart a complex selection into 2 areas using Photoshop CS5's Refine Edge feature. You'll learn which settings work best for easy-clean-edged selections and which areas work best for detailed or wispy hair selections.
This time around we'll revisit and oldie but a goodie in Photoshop: a trick to create some extra light beams using a simple filter to enhance scenes with a lot of trees or windows in them.
In the final part of this series on blend modes in Photoshop, Matt continues with the last 2 blend modes you'll need to enhance contrast. They're actually very similar to each other, but there are some important differences that we'll take a look at so you'll know exactly which one to turn to.
In the second part of this series on blend modes in Photoshop, Matt introduces the 2nd blend mode you'll use often if you want to brighten parts of your photos and images.
Blend modes are one of the coolest aspects of using Layers in Photoshop. But, there are so many of them (over 25!). How do you figure out which one to use? You don't. In the first part of this series, Matt will show you that you really only need 3 (maybe 4) blend modes to accomplish just about anything you want to do. We'll start with one of the most popular.
After teaching Photoshop at a live seminar one day, I realized one of the most-asked questions wasn't about a specific technique in Photoshop — instead it was about something I was doing to show off my photos after I was done working on them. In this video we'll take a look at all of the full screen options in Photoshop to make showing off your work easier, whether you're by yourself or with a group.
One thing that Camera Raw doesn't have is versions. For example, what if you want to compare a black and white version of your photo with a color version? There's really no "official" way to do it in Photoshop. However, there is a feature called Snapshots that'll help out.
One of the hardest things to do in natural light portraits is to make sure that people have enough light on their faces — depending on the sun, available shade, and position of other people in the photo, sometimes faces can be too dark. Luckily there's a really simple way in Photoshop to help fix this after the fact.
The vanishing point filter helps you put things into perspective (Photoshop things, that is). Matt Kloskowski shows how the vanishing point filter works and provides some tips for its use.
Matt Kloskowski talks about why you may need to sharpen your photos - even if you are decreasing the size of your image - and then shows you how it's done in Photoshop.
Matt Kloskowski shows how to minimize the impact of a subject's wrinkles in Photoshop without completely removing them using Content Aware and the Spot Healing Brush.
It's worth spending extra time on especially cool features in Photoshop. In this episode Matt Kloskowski returns to puppet warp and provides keys to making the effect really effective. Watch the podcast to see how smart objects fit in.
Last time he explored Photoshop's content aware feature, Matt Kloskowski made a photo fit onto a larger canvas. This time he shows you how to resize an image for a smaller canvas without distorting key parts of your photo.