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Photoshop Effects For Posters

December 29, 2011 / Bruce posted in Photoshop, Tips / No Comments

Content provided by webdesign14.com, edited for clarity

If you’re not used to poster making within Photoshop to shade your paper prints, then this list of effects will definitely be of help. These are by far the most favorite Adobe Photoshop effects that poster creative designers choose to use. They’re all the essential tools along with features to help anybody produce attractive looking posters with Photoshop. So keep reading and also make a note of all these effects.

1. Posterize! Naturally, the fundamental effect that you can use within Photoshop to help make the coloration posters really seem like paper prints may be the effect called “Posterize”.

As the label indicates, this effect in essence provides what will be a little more grainy outcome present with a number of the far more aged poster designs. You can find this effect in the Image->Adjustments selection. You can of course modify the intensity of the effect by changing the slider once you activate this effect.

2. Opacity effects. Yet another excellent result that is definitely for coloration poster patterns is opacity effects. The particular opacity is simply how opaque as well as clear the layer is. Sometimes, excellent poster design and style effects can be done any time one particular level is a bit more obvious above or below another layer.

3. Photo filters. Beneath image adjusting solutions, you might also have an interest to utilize a particular photo filter adjustment for the coloration cards. This adjustment helps you to include a number of coloration masks to your design. If you like “Sepia” effects that will replicate old photographs, then you might want to use photo filters for your personal custom made posters.

Photo filters also allow you to apply warming as well as cooling filters or even just personalized shades to achieve the same impact just with distinct tints. There are a number of applications or plugins to create these types of effects, and maybe they are just the thing for ensuring background scenes or even just acquiring particular effect. For more information on photo filters, Google “photo filters”.

4. Artistic filters. Now, if you want your poster to be more imaginative, you can utilize the creative filter systems with Adobe Photoshop. You get to these beneath Filters-> Artistic option. Using this pool of filters you can add wonderful creative effects just like Tinted Pad, Film Feed, and a lot of different filter effects that make your paper prints resemble a far more modern day thing of beauty. Naturally, you can certainly alter just how powerful the filters are by adjusting the various sliders.

5. Stylize filter. A different sort of filter found beneath the filter selections are classified as the stylize filters. This doesn’t seriously add imaginative addendums to your custom made poster design, but it surely manipulates the style by itself to provide a specific form of exciting influence. Some of the prevalent stylize filters have the stuck shape benefits, wind turbine side effects along with polarize effects.

6. Drawing filter. If you need your color posters to look more like paintings or drawings, then the drawing filter is a filter collection that you want to understand more about. You could basically alter your posters right into a charcoal print, a new visual painting, or the photocopy variety print out along with many other effects. This can be ideal for making certain impressionistic elements mimic what we are looking at attractive to anyone.

7. Texture and consistency filters. Last but not least, when you need your coloration styles for your posters to look just like these were branded with some type of substance, then your texture and consistency filters tend to be what you would enjoy. These filters convey a specified method of “material” for the entire layer to your design. You may make this look like it was published around canvas, throughout gemstone, with components and lots of other types involving textures. Many people also acquire further smoothness to make really specific looks. This is a plus in order to imitate diverse products inside your color poster pattern.

With almost all these seven useful side effects, your current color paper prints need to be really well beautifully made with quite eye catching images. Naturally, use all these effects together with taste, do not overdo these filters. You will want to be able to make use of them adequately and at the proper application for a variety of styles.

Photographing Fireworks

July 3, 2011 / Bruce posted in Tips / 3 Comments

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have been receiving a number of tips on how to photograph fireworks. In this post, I will re-post and expand on those tips for everyone. The goal here is to see lots of really great fireworks shots on the internet in the next few days!

Fireworks Tips

1. Use a tripod and a cable release to prevent motion blur, i.e. don’t touch the camera! If you don’t have a tripod, you might be able to use a shoe, bean bag, or something else to hold the camera still. For best results, use a tripod.

2. Set your aperture for a good balance between not enough or too much time on the shutter. f/11 seems to work best for me.

3. Use ISO 200. If you use 400 your shutter will be to short for the capture, 100 your shutter may be too long. You may need to adjust this. For example, in last years fireworks show I was fairly close to the fireworks and fireworks are bright. ISO 200 kept overexposing the images before I was able to capture the entire firework, so I changed the ISO to 100 which allowed more time on the shutter without over exposing the images. Just remember, ISO 200 is not a hard and fast rule, but it is a good starting point and may do just fine for the show.

4. Shutter speed, if your camera has a “bulb” setting use it. This allows you to hold the shutter open for as long as you want. If not, then set the shutter speed to some where between 3 to 8 seconds. You will need to check your first shot and adjust longer if under exposed, and shorter if over exposed. The shutter is also your creative control for getting the artistic shots. In the example images below, the shutter speed is anywhere between 4 and 14 seconds.

5. If you are far away, use a telephoto lens, if you are close, use a wide angle lens. Try to anticipate the area where the fireworks will be. As seen in my images below, I needed a wider angle lens as some of the fireworks got cut off. Set your focus to infinity as indicated on the lens.

6. Combining multiple fireworks into one shot – hold the shutter open and use a black card or something like it to block the lens between fireworks, just don’t touch the lens. This isn’t required at the Loveland fireworks show as there are multiple fireworks going off all the time.

7. Vary your shutter speed for artistic effects.

That’s it! Don’t forget to enjoy the show!

Simple tilt-shift corrections in Lightroom

February 12, 2011 / Bruce posted in Learning, Tips, Tutorial, Uncategorized / No Comments

In this video tutorial, I show you the basics on using lens corrections within Lightroom to apply simple tilt and shift corrections to an image. As noted in the video, it is better to do this in camera if you have or can afford a tilt-shift lens. If you can’t, then this is a simple method that allows you to make these kinds of corrections in post.

Creating the Illusion of Shallow Depth of Field

January 9, 2011 / Bruce posted in Learning, Photoshop, Tips, Tutorial / 1 Comment

In this, my first video, I show you how to change the depth of field of an image to reduce background distractions. The video is a little rough since it is my first. I would be very interested in hearing your feedback on this. Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

A couple of things I forgot to mention in the video. When using the brush tool to get up close to the edges as you are creating the mask, use a medium soft brush, the blending is better and looks more realistic. Getting the edges to look right takes some practice. Also, when using the clone stamp tool to remove the haloing around the subjects, as long as you are painting on the image (not the mask), you don’t need to worry about cloning over the edges of the subjects. The mask is taking care of this.

Photographing Pets

November 18, 2010 / Bruce posted in Tips / No Comments

I was at the Vets office the other day where I have some of my brochures, and was asked “how do you get the pets to stand still?” I replied, “I don’t.” This question leads me to believe that photographing pets is frustrating for most people because they are trying to pose their pet. Well, if you know anything about animals you should know that you can’t pose them. It just doesn’t work that way.

Usually after answering the first question above, I will then have to answer the next question which usually is “then how do you get such wonderful images that look like the animal is posed?” To which I answer, “I wait for the animal to pose itself, then fire off a rapid sequence of shots.” To which I generally hear something like “wow, I don’t have the patience to do that”, or “wow, my camera won’t do that”, which is why there are professional pet photographers – like me. I’ll be honest here, there are sometimes I don’t get very many shots that work. Sometimes I will shoot over 100 images of one animal and only get one or two that work (so glad to have a digital camera – can’t image how expensive this would be on film). This suggests that you need to be ready, have your camera preset so it only has to focus and click (take the shot). This too can be frustrating because the animals are always moving and they don’t wait for you, you have to wait for them and then shoot as fast as possible when they are in position.

So if you would like to try pet photography, here a are few guidelines to help you out:

Photograph the pet in their own environment. They are more comfortable in places they know and are more likely to give you that perfect shot.
Use available light as much as possible. Most pets don’t do well with the flash, so use available light when ever possible. This means you will need a fast lens – a good f/2.8 should work just fine, and you will have to increase the ISO. Don’t be afraid to increase the ISO, a little noise in the shot won’t ruin it. In fact, sometimes the noise adds to the shot.
Before you start snapping pictures, let the animal get to know you. If you allow the animal to get to know you, you are more likely to get a shot that captures the animals personality (as in the shot below).
Get down on their level. Don’t just shoot the pictures from above, get down on the floor with them and shoot from their point of view.
Have fun. Play with the animals, involve the animals family, you’ll get some good action shots this way.
Last, but not least – remember, animals are people too. What I mean by this is that animals have feelings. They love attention, and want to be the center of everything going on. So make them the center, then take your pictures.

Not Again!

Your Own Worst Critic

November 7, 2010 / Bruce posted in Thoughts, Tips / 1 Comment

Let’s face it, when it comes to your photography who is the most critical? You! Okay, maybe not for you, but this is definitely the case with me. I am very critical of my photography! Take these two images:

November Sunset

Morticia

At first I didn’t like either one. I felt like the sunset picture was just a run of the mill “flat” sunset, yet this is one of my most popular images! I recently donated a framed image to a local Catholic school for auction, and this is the image they chose out of literally hundreds of choices!

As for the picture of Morticia (my cat), I can’t tell you why I didn’t like this one because I still haven’t figured it out. After receiving a lot of comments on how wonderful this image is, I stopped trying to figure out what I didn’t like about it, and started to look at it for what I did like. I’ve concluded that for a pet portrait, it’s pretty good! Yes, I can admit that I do good work sometimes.

A Mentor once told me, it isn’t what you think – it isn’t what the competition judges think – what is most important and determines what is good and what is not is what the people think. Forget about what you don’t like, if others like it accept that they like it and don’t be so critical about it.

So the tip today is to get other’s opinions before you trash an image. It’s helpful if some of those opinions come from fellow photographers, but don’t rely on their opinion alone. Sometimes there will be an appeal to the general public as in the sunset image above, and if you plan on selling to the general public it should be their opinion that matters most!

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