Nik Tools (now called the Nik collection) has been around since 1995 as an Adobe plugin. Google bought the tools, then dropped them, and DXO rescued the popular photo-editing aids in 2017. They’ve undergone continuous upgrades since then, and this new version will please Mac users with the new M1 chips.
I’ve been in the game for a little while, and along the way, there have been a few “new” things. New flashes, diffusers, scrims, softboxes, continuous light panels, LED wands, animated photos, cinemagraphs, mirrorless cameras, the list goes on and on, not to mention Photoshop and Lightroom, which update more often than I wash my sheets. But the one “new” I was not expecting to face was a new photography usage that has made me have to think anew about composition: Instagram.
Photoshop allows you to take an image and put numerous creative spins on it, and it can be a wonderful way to expand your portfolio and find your unique creative voice. One great way to add a bit more visual interest to a photo is to overlay a texture on it, and this excellent video tutorial will show you how to quickly and easily do so using Photoshop.
Content-Aware fill is one of the most useful innovations in the history of Photoshop, allowing you to convincingly replace a wide variety of things in an image quickly and easily without having to do a lot of manual cloning and blending. It is not perfect, though, but with a bit of know-how, you can get a lot more from it. This helpful video tutorial will show you everything you need to know about the Content-Aware tool and how to customize it to your needs.
Before you get into any sort of advanced adjustments or edits in Photoshop, you need to select the part of the image you are working on. Depending on the photo, this can be a tricky process, but luckily, Photoshop has a wide range of built-in tools for extracting specific parts of an image or creating layer masks. The Select and Mask workspace is the place to go for a lot of this work, and this excellent video tutorial will show you everything you need to know to use and get the most out of it.
The sky is an integral part of just about any landscape photograph, and as such, it deserves a healthy dose of your attention during the editing process. If you would like to improve your landscape images, check out this excellent video tutorial that will show you three different ways to adjust the sky using Photoshop or Lightroom.
Knowing how to pose your subject, light them properly, and take a good photo is only half of what it takes to create a good portrait. Knowing how to retouch your subject effectively while still maintaining a natural look is the other half of creating a successful portrait, and this fantastic video tutorial will show you how to do it.
