How Photoshop Can Add Hours to Your Life with Rick Allred

With any of the Adobe Photoshop tools that use a brush size (paint brush, clone stamp, healing brush, dodge tool, burn tool, etc), you normally change the brush size by going to the Options Bar, click on the Brush Size pop-down menu, pick a brush size, and then try it out... If that brush size is too big or too small, it’s back up to the Options Bar to try again.

One of the ways to stay younger-looking when using Photoshop is to become more efficient and faster with your skills. The faster you are, the less time you spend hunched over a keyboard, and the more time you are out doing what you love—making photos!

A short cut that I found adds hours (maybe even days) to my life is the use of the bracket keys "[" and "]". They are located to the right of the letter “P” on your keyboard. When you are in a tool that uses a brush size, click the left bracket key "[" to make the brush size smaller. To make the brush size bigger use the right bracket key "]".

It may seem like only a few seconds that you save. Believe me, seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days... using Photoshop shortcuts is like having a time piggy bank! Cash in!

Learn more from Rick in his workshop
Beginning Adobe Photoshop
May 24-28, 2010

Visit his web site at www.rickallredimagery.com to see what he's up to.

Add Drama to Your Lighting with Joe McNally

One of the first principals of using flash, often times, is to move that flash in close. So close that it almost encroaches on the frame and the composition you are creating. Reason being, the bigger the source of light, and closer that light is to your subject, the softer, more wrapping, and more forgiving the quality of the illumination. Highlights get rounded and easy going. Shadows start softly, growing deeper gradually, and retain detail.

But what if you want sharp, hard, clearly delineated shadows? The soft approach is not the only one available to you for environmental portraiture. Occasionally, the situation at hand calls for hard, fast, dramatic light. Light that creates shadows that are like a knife edge, and go to black immediately. For this effect, it is advisable to reverse the soft light mandate of “closer and bigger is better” and make your light source small and far away.

The ballerina is being illuminated by an SB-900 hot shoe flash that is out in the street, in a rain storm, and about 90 or so feet from here. The result is drama, and strong shadows.

Learn more from Joe in his workshop
Traveling Light: Location Lighting with Small Flash
August 1-7, 2010

Visit his blog at www.joemcnally.com/blog/ to see what he's up to.