Dark Side of the Lens

For those with iPhones (boy do I love mine!), iPod Touch’s or other similar devices that can view video podcasts, you can now download my video tutorials from iTunes (for free naturally). The videos have been specially formatted for mobile devices.

Simply go to the iTunes store and search for “Dark Side of the Lens”.

At present the first two tutorials are there and I’ll be adding the rest periodically until I catch up. From then on I’ll publish each tutorial on iTunes the same day as they appear on my blog.

Things here are a little hectic right now with my 2 year old and the fact that his little brother is due in a few weeks. Hopefully though I’ll find the time to get back into video production again shortly.

Simon
http://darksideofthelens.com

Welcome back!

Another in the series of video tutorials on layers in Elements 6, this time on “Adjustment Layers”.

There are several different types of adjustment layer, such as levels or hue & saturation. In this tutorial I demonstrate the use of an adjustment layer, using a hue & saturation adjustment layer as an example.

Don’t get too hung up on understanding the hue & saturation aspects of this tutorial, it is the use of the layer that is important here. I’ll be covering the hue & saturation settings, as well as the other adjustment layer types, in the future.

I have supplied you a copy of the photo that I use in this tutorial, so you can follow step by step if you so desire, but do have a go with your own photos and let me know how you get on.

Simon

http://darksideofthelens.com

As promised, here is the second part of the video tutorial on layer masks.

Photoshop Elements does not include the layer mask functionality, in its native form at least. However, it does include adjustment layers, and these little beauties have their own layer masks. In this video I show you a rather clever trick whereby you can hijack this mask and use it as you would a normal layer mask.

Best of all … it’s really easy to use.

If you are not already used to the concept of layer masks then please ensure you view the video tutorial prior to this one as that will give you the grounding you need to make sense of the one shown here.

Simon

http://darksideofthelens.com

As I mentioned in my last video, I see layers as being about the most powerful tool there is in Photoshop, Elements, and all the good photo editing packages.

Within the topic of layers there are two specific areas that I would define as being the most powerful aspects of layers. These are layer masks and Adjustment layers. In this video, and the next, I will address the former of these, the wonderful layer mask.

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As I photographer I just love looking at photos of all, well ok, almost all, kinds. Often I go hunting for photos to get ideas, or for images for the blog or other web sites I assist with (within copywrite limitations I hasten to add).

Until recently I used Google image search. It was ok, did the job, but that’s about all there is to say about it.

Then I discovered new formula Dazzle-Flash and my whites have never looked whiter!!! Oops, no, sorry, then I discovered this amazing add-on for Firefox (it also works in Flock, I.E. – I am not sure about other browsers).

It used to be called Piclens but has recently changed it’s name to Cooliris. It is my absolute fabourite add-on to Firefox, and I use heaps of them. Here is a very brief demo video from the Cooliris people.

It makes searching for images 100 times faster and 200 times more fun.

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I have had several requests from people (thank you) for some tutorials on using layers in Photoshop Elements. I had intended to leave this until a little later in the piece, but there’s no harm in bringing it forward a little, so here we go.

This first video explains the basic principles. Some of you may already know layers at this level but I want to make sure that everyone has the basics mastered so we can attack the more complicated stuff in the next few videos.

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Adobe have announced the upcoming launch of the next version of Photoshop Elements, version 7.

It is due to hit the shelves in October with an expected retail price of US$99.99 (with a reduced price for an upgrade) if purchased alone, or it is also being bundled with Photoshop.com Plus and Premiere Elements 7 (US$149.99).

Is it worth waiting for this new version if you are looking to buy Elements? Is it worth upgrading from an earlier version? From what I have read it sounds like Elements 7 is going to be a large improvement on previous versions, and let’s face it, Elements 6 is pretty swish anyway.

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I have finally found the time to put up a set of better quality video tutorials for the three tutorials published so far. Yay!!!

The content is the same as the ones you will find in the main blog posts but they are now available in 800 x 600 as Quicktime movie files.

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An excellent way to speed up your editing in Elements, on either the Mac or PC, is to start using keyboard shortcuts.

When I first started photo editing I did everything using the pulldown menus, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. As I became more proficient I found myself starting to use keyboard shortcuts. Even those these may seen, to some, an antiquated approach (who else remembers the days of using something like Wordperfect with huge keyboard overlays to help you remember eleventy hundred keyboard shortcuts?) they can greatly increase your speed when doing common tasks. For instance, it is far faster to do “<command>o” to open a new file than it is to select the correct menu pulldown with your mouse.

So, I have composed a list of shortcut keys to help those that wish to use them. The list is not exhaustive but it covers all of the ones that I feel you are likely to use frequently enough to make them worth remembering.

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A bit of a gap since my last video, thanks to a nasty case of the flu doing the rounds robbing me of my voice (must have also affected my hearing as I didn’t hear anyone being sorry about that!). So, here we go with my latest offering.

Unless you frame every shot perfectly (can anyone outside of a studio?) you will inevitably want to “reframe” some of your photos where your subject is not quite where you want them, or maybe to take out distracting objects close to the edges. If these adjustments can be made by retaining a rectangular section of your photo, and disregarding the rest, then that is exactly when cropping comes into play.

This tutorial shows you several ways to crop your photos, a process that is far easier than many people realise. All the techniques shown can be applied in Photoshop or Elements (with one exception with the guided learning feature in Elements).