Tabla de contenidos para June 2020 en Practical Photoshop

1 START STITCHING Initiating a panorama merge in Lightroom or Camera Raw is easy (both have identical panorama controls). In Lightroom, simply select the set of photos you want to merge then right-click them and choose Photo Merge Panorama. If you have shot the panorama as an HDR (with several exposures for each segment), you can use the HDR Panorama command to merge to HDR at the same time. In Camera Raw, select the photos in the filmstrip, then right-click them and choose Merge to Panorama. 2 PROJECTION CHOICES Each of the three projections will affect how the images that make up your panorama are stretched or warped… SPHERICAL Spherical maps out the frames as if they were pasted onto the inside of a sphere. It’s useful for 360-degree panoramas…

1 TRY PTGUI If you want greater control over your panorama stitching, it might be worth investing in dedicated panorama software like PTGui ($140/£88 for personal license). You can choose from multiple projections and create multi-level or 360-degree panos. There’s no max image size so if you please you can craft incredible giga-panos with an impossible level of fine detail and astronomical resolution. 2 STITCH MANUALLY If you’re comfortable using layers and masks, you can build your own panorama with relative ease. Simply open all images in the set as layers, use the Move Tool to reposition and transform them if necessary, then add Layer Masks and paint with black to hide parts of a layer, or white to reveal them. It’s more laborious than the other methods here, but…

1 TRIPOD You need to shoot a series of shots in perfect alignment, so the camera needs to stay still. A sturdy tripod is crucial. We used a gimbal head, which has a handy sliding tripod plate, allowing us to shift the camera between sets for a macro panorama. 2 WINDOW LIGHT This project is best done indoors, as a gust of wind can cause the flower to shift position. Window light is ideal for macro photography, as it gives lovely soft, diffused, illumination that gently reveals the textures and details in the flowers. 3 USB CABLE You need to attach our camera to a laptop or computer with a USB cable (or Wi-Fi, if your camera has it). This way, you can use the Helicon Remote app to control…

01 OPEN HELICON FOCUS When you have all your shots, you can combine the sharp parts from each frame in Helicon Focus. Just drag the set of photos in and click Render to combine them. If needed, play with the three Rendering Methods. Once the process is done, save the stack. If you’ve shot a pano, you’ll need to repeat this step for each segment. 02 OPEN CAMERA RAW After stacking all the segments in Helicon Focus, the next step is to stitch them together. One of the easiest ways to do this is in Photoshop’s Camera Raw filter. Highlight all the images in Adobe Bridge and click Open In Camera Raw, then click the top-left menu in Camera Raw and choose Merge To Panorama. 03 RETOUCH AND TIDY Experiment…

There are two kinds of composite image. First there are those that bring two or more photos together to create something fantastical or surreal. The second type are those that seamlessly blend several frames in a way that appears to be completely natural. Focus-stacking and panorama stitching fall in this latter category. These two techniques offer a means for creating all kinds of incredible imagery. Learn how they work, and you may never go back to taking single photos again. This is compositing as a function rather than as a means for creative or conceptual works. Take focus-stacking, for example. Here, by merging the sharp parts from several frames, the aim is to extend the sharpness and depth of field of the image beyond what a single frame could achieve.…

1 SHOOTING FOR A FOCUS STACK Focus-stacking allows you to extend the depth of field so that a subject can be sharp from front to back. It’s especially useful in close-up photography, where the depth of field is so limited when the subject is close to the camera, even at the narrowest apertures. We’ll look at a more advanced method of shooting for a focus stack in a few pages, but here’s the basic method. Simply use a tripod and take a series of shots while incrementally adjusting the focus ring (in manual focus), until you’ve captured front-to-back sharpness across the entire subject. Take care not to move the camera between frames. If you find the extended depth of field leaves the background looking too detailed, move the subject further…

01 DOWNLOAD FREE TRIAL Helicon Focus allows you to shoot a focus stack (with the bundled Helicon Remote app), then piece together the sharp parts from each shot. After downloading the free 30-day trial from heliconsoft.com, open the Remote app and attach your camera via a USB cable. 02 TETHER AND COMPOSE The Live View display will appear on your computer screen. Now finalize the composition. Keep in mind the edges of the frame will be cropped when the images are stacked, so frame loosely. We used a vertical orientation, as we’re going to shift the camera to shoot a panorama. 03 SET FOCUS RANGE Next, set the nearest point you want in focus. Helicon Remote lets you shift the focus in tiny increments with a set of arrows, and…

The Filter Gallery is a creative hub for an abundance of effects in Photoshop. If you’re looking for a different look or a fun treatment, you’ll find plenty of vibrant options here. Broadly speaking, these are creative effects filters rather than the more pragmatic filters found in the Blur Gallery or the Liquify Filter. They can be used, for example, to give your image a pencil sketch look, a painterly finish or a pattern-like texture. All the filters in the Filter Gallery work by altering pixels using universal algorithms, so the effect isn’t tailored towards the content of the image, but rather the make-up of the pixel values. As such, a filter effect, while fun, can sometimes seem tacky or generic. One way you can combat this is by combining…

PHOTOSHOP CC FROM £9.98/$9.99 PER MONTH WINDOWS, macOS Photoshop is the software of choice for most professional and non-professional photographers. Beyond the standard photo-editing features, it boasts a vast array of more creative tools and filters. Layers are one of the key differences between Photoshop and Lightroom. They enable you to mask out selected parts to build up increasingly sophisticated images. ELEMENTS 15 £79.99/$99.99 WINDOWS, macOS Elements is the consumer variant of Photoshop, and contains many of its key tools and features within a simplified interface. It’s limited, but it does provide access to layers for those who have switched to a Lightroom workflow. LIGHTROOM CC FROM £9.98/$9.99 PER MONTH WINDOWS, macOS Lightroom CC combines professional imageprocessing tools with asset organizing. It keeps all its images online in the Creative…

Photoshop has many types of layers and adjustment layers available, but there are six that you’ll find you need to use again and again. Learning how they should be used may seem a little daunting for beginners, but once you’ve got to grips with them, you’ll find they play a part in the creative process of almost every image you make. 01 LEVELS This should be the first layer you add to an image, because it fundamentally alters the tonal range of the entire image. Create a Levels Adjustment Layer, drag the Black point slider inwards until it touches the lefthand edge of the histogram, and drag the White point slider inwards to the right-hand edge. This remaps the tones of the image to make more of the available tonal…

SHOOTING THE PANO There are two main choices for merging panoramas in Photoshop - either the Photomerge command found in Photoshop itself, or the Photo Merge Panorama command available in Lightroom/Camera Raw. We’ll look at both options in the coming pages; but first, let’s take a quick tour at some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you shoot the set of images you’ll need for a panorama… DO… …SHOOT VERTICAL SEGMENTS Horizontal segments will work fine, but verticals tend to have less distortion (and more segments equal higher resolution); so ideally turn your camera on its side. …USE A TRIPOD A tripod is handy, but not essential. Use a tripod with a spirit level and level out the feet, then level your camera too using the live view…

1 GET STARTED Navigate to your set of panorama images in Adobe Bridge and highlight those that you’d like to use. Go to Tools > Photoshop > Photomerge. If you want to open the set of images directly from Lightroom, then select them, right-click and choose Edit In > Merge To Panorama In Photoshop. You can also initiate the command from within Photoshop with File > Automate > Photomerge. 2 PREVIEW PROBLEMS The big disadvantage to merging in Photoshop over the Lightroom/Camera Raw method is the fact that you can’t see a preview of the stitch before you commit to making it. Merging panoramas can take a while (especially if there are lots of images in the set), so it’s annoying to have to do so before you can see…

One of the most appealing things about macro photography is the way it lets you see a tiny world in fantastic detail. But what if the detail straight-out-of-camera just isn’t enough? Here we’ll combine two camera techniques that enable you to expand depth of field and your image’s resolution. This will result in a level of fine detail that simply wouldn’t be possible with a single frame. Depth of field is one of the main considerations with close-up photography. When the subject is very close to the lens – as is usually the case with macro shots – the depth of field can be incredibly shallow, even when you’re using a narrow aperture. As long as your subject is stationary, you can get around this problem by shooting a focus…

01 USE A SLIDING PLATE If you want to increase the resolution of your image for extra detail, why not shoot a macro panorama? There are expensive rail systems that can shift your camera position for you. If you want a budget alternative, use a tripod head that has a sliding plate, like the Benro gimbal we used here. 02 SHIFT AND REPEAT After our first set of focus stack shots are in the bag, we slide the tripod plate to shift the camera position a few centimeters to the right, then set off the focus stack again to capture another 40 shots. Then just repeat for further segments. If you don’t have a sliding plate, try nudging the tripod, or alternatively the flower, to the side slightly.…

How often do you open up a freshly captured photo with great anticipation, only to be a bit underwhelmed by the image onscreen? Colors may look dull, highlights look washed out or shadows look too deep. However, it’s easy to enhance these details, add punch, and create an image that looks more like the scene you remember. Take our bluebell portrait here. Initially the colors looked disappointing and nothing like the vibrant blues we experienced during the shoot. But with a few simple tricks, it’s possible to come up with something much more pleasing. Camera Raw and Lightroom offer all the tools you need to carry out these enhancements. But while the interface is intuitive and simple, the tools aren’t all immediately obvious. So in this tutorial, we’ll explain how…