The Photoshoper Boy

Are your portraits looking dull and lifeless? Photoshop’s Adjustment Layers are just what you need. We explain how simple non-destructive tonal changes and Photoshop effects can enhance and transform your people pictures. Adjustment Layers enable you to correct and enhance your images in a variety of creative ways. You can use them to do everything from lightening and darkening to adding punch, converting to mono, correcting colour casts and more. As the name suggests, they sit on their own separate Layer in Photoshop’s Layers panel, but unlike image-based Layers, they don’t contain any actual pixels. Instead they work by affecting all the Layers below them in the stack. This means that, just like any other type of Layer, they stay independent from all the other elements that make up your image. You could apply adjustments directly to your image, but this makes any changes permanent. Making adjustments on separate Layers means they’re endlessly editable, and you can take adva...

If you’re looking for some new family photo ideas and are bored of the same traditional poses, creating a multi-frame photo grid like that popularised by the television show The Brady Bunch is a really fun and easy option. Photo grids are a fantastic way of displaying a collection of portraits, and in this project we’re going to show you how to capture a set of candid family portraits, and then arrange them in a grid. While you can  download photo grid templates  and software for creating grids from the internet, it’s easy to create your own in Photoshop Elements. To liven up our portrait grid we’re going to add colourful backdrops to each image, so shoot your headshots against a plain background so that they’re easy to cut out. You’ll also need to leave plenty of space around your subjects’ heads, so that you can crop in closer, if necessary, at the editing stage. Photographing families can be a challenge, especially if there are a co...

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to create a reflection in Photoshop by using transformation tools and filters to add water to landscapes. Reflections can add a pleasing symmetry to scenic shots, but they can be tricky to produce in-camera – a strong wind may create too many ripples for a clean mirror image. Here, we’ll show you how to add computer-generated reflections and control the strength of the ripples, before tweaking the colour and tone. How to add a reflection in Photoshop 01 FLIP THE TREE Download our start image and follow along ! Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the tree, then press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the selection and paste it onto a new layer. Grab the Move tool, then tick Show Transform Control. Drag the central pivot point to the bottom of the bounding box. Right-click inside the box and click Flip Vertical. Hit Enter. 02 CREATE A REFLECTION MAP Create a new transparent layer, then go to Edit>Fill. Set Contents to Use: White and click OK. ...

In this tutorial we show you how a few simple Photoshop effects using Lens Flare filters can add romantic lighting to your  outdoor portraits . Shooting into the light is a great way to create a variety of different effects, and while silhouettes are an obvious choice and easy to shoot, adding a bit of lens flare can have an equally dramatic effect. As always, there’s a Photoshop filter that can not only apply the effect, but can also be adjusted to fit and blend in with your image 
with seamless results. Here we are going to show you how to quickly enhance a portrait so colour, light and tone reflect that of an image shot into the light, before adding a touch of lens flare to give a final flourish to the effect. How to enhance outdoor portraits with Photoshop Lens Flare effects 01 Portrait retouching Select the Patch tool and draw under the darkness of the left eye. Keep your finger held on the mouse button drag and release the selection onto the cheek. Use the same t...

With this really cool portrait idea we’ll show you one of the oldest photography tricks in the book… how to play with perspective and make the viewer question what they see. Ypu can get fun and creative results by playing around with perspective and composition, and by combining images. For this project we’re going to draw the outline of some steps on the ground, then get two models to lie on the ground to create the illusion that they’re running up the steps, and paste in a shot of the sky to enhance the effect. If you want to try this project yourself you can copy our setup, or come up with your own variations – you could have a person jumping between two ‘rooftops’ for example. Ask your subjects to dress in bold, bright colours to enhance the surreal look of your image, and use balloons or other colourful props. You’ll need to find a suitable location to set up your shoot: we used a large open space beneath a flyover, out of the way of passers-by. So get your...

The so-called Dragan Effect is a fun, creative way to give your people pictures a dramatic makeover. We explain how to use a few simple Photoshop effects to create HDR-style portraits with real impact. While high dynamic range (HDR) imaging techniques were originally conceived as a way of combining multiple exposures to maximise tonal range in high-contrast landscape scenes, HDR software also enables photographers to produce hyper-real effects, and it’s this aspect of the process that has captured the imagination of many HDR enthusiasts. This hyper-real look is characterised by vibrant colour and eye-popping detail in landscape and cityscape images; however, a similar effect was being applied to portraits long before the HDR craze – and it only needs a single exposure. Polish photographer Andrzej Dragan first pioneered the technique, and his name has become synonymous with this stylised type of finish. The so-called ‘Dragan effect’ is a method of pulling out every last bit ...

In this tutorial we show you how to move mountains and transform your landscape images using a few simple Photoshop effects  and montage photography techniques. No landscape photograph can convey the drama and atmosphere the photographer felt at the time of capture. You can get close, but more often than not, the images from a landscape shoot will seem mystifyingly average when you see them for the first time on your computer at home. The secret to making more of these initially disappointing photos is to infuse them with the lost emotional impact at the editing stage. This infusion could be subtle,  such as a new sky , a mist effect, or it could be something more radical, such as a montage photography technique, which is arguably much more evocative than any of our start images.     In the tutorial below we reveal how to blend together a series of images using a variety of layer masking and opacity techniques to recreate depth and mood in a landscape. ...