I often get asked what a Smart Object is in Photoshop and what they are used for? I'll try and answer that question in an easy to understand way and I'll show one of the advantages of a Smart Object in this article. What is a Smart Object? A Smart Object is a Photoshop layer [...]
A Tuscan Sunset is often a wonderful sight to witness. There seems to be something magical about watching the warm Tuscan sun setting behind the mountains and lighting up the clouds as it departs. This is the second article about the story behind the image. This article tells the story of how I managed to [...]
I thought I'd tell you the story of this image of our man in Fornovolasco, Italy. This is the first of a series of articles where I will be telling the story behind the image. I often try to point out to people who attend our workshops, that the photographs we take don't just happen. Rather, photographs [...]
The Orton effect is a method of post processing that gives a dreamy soft focus look to a photograph. The Orton effect is named after its creator, Michael Orton. He originally created the effect by stacking two separate images on top of each other; one in sharp focus and the other was shot slightly out of focus. Originally, [...]
Lightroom previews will be made automatically by Lightroom as it imports photographs. Lightroom uses these previews to display the thumbnails in the grid view inside the Library Module as well as the larger previews in the Loupe view, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web modules. You have the choice of 4 sizes of Lightroom previews that can be [...]
This is a little-known method that will allow you to accurately achieve the correct white balance in a photograph using Adobe Photoshop. There are lots of methods for correcting the white balance in an image but this one achieves one of the most technically correct results for white balance. Rather than using the traditional white [...]
We have just published our Tuscany workshop dates for 2017 on the site. As always, the places on these workshops are very limited. Our policy of keeping the numbers low on each of our workshops ensures that everyone who attends will be given close and unique attention. We know that everyone who attends [...]
A DNG file is an alternative to the many different versions of raw files offered by the many different camera manufacturers. The name, DNG, is shorthand for - Digital Negative. It was developed by Adobe and is therefore compatible with all of their software applications. Adobe developed it to overcome the problems posed by having so [...]
There has been a lot of negative things said about photography during the midday sunlight. No doubt you'll have heard that you should avoid taking photographs during the midday hours because of the harsh lighting. Similarly, you'll have heard that you should only shoot at dawn and dusk. I'm here to add a little balance [...]
It may seem odd to ask "Is HDR photography dead". Odd because some people may not know what HDR photography is and odd because a lot of photographers may not even care. Firstly, the acronym HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. The dynamic range of an image is the range between the brightest and darkest [...]
