Lessons in being a pro photographer.

Okay, heres a photo from my crappy samsung phone camera, lets open photoshop and try and convince people I'm a pro.



Heres a couple of techniques I've put together to replicate photos I've seen all over the internet.

Lesson 01: Crappy vintage style photos.

1. Open your photo.
2. Duplicate layer. (Ctrl+J)
3. Apply Cooling Filter 82. (Image / Adjustments / Photo Filter)
4. Blend mode: Hard light. (Layer / Layer Style / Blending Options)
5. Create new layer. (Ctrl + Shift + N)
6. Select the shape tool (U) and draw an ORANGE rectangle over the whole image.
7. Blend mode: Soft light. (Layer / Layer Style / Blending Options)

And you get this.



Lesson 02: Fake HDR Effect

1. Click 'Open As'. (File / Open As)
2. Set 'Open As' drop down box to 'Camera Raw', then open your photo.
3. Put 'Fill Light' and 'Blacks' all the way up, ignore everything else.

And out comes this.



Lesson 03: Colour Isolation

1. Open your photo
2. Take out all the colour (Ctrl+U, then put the saturation all the way down)
3. Make a new layer, Blend mode: soft light (Ctrl+Shift+N, Make sure you set Mode: soft light)
4. Pick your colour, grab the brush (B) and start painting.

If you can stay in the lines as well as I can, you'll end up with this.



Lesson 04: Smoothing (Scratches, dents, pannel gaps, peoples faces etc.)

1. Open your photo
2. Duplicate Layer (Ctrl+J)
3. Dust + Scratches Filter, Radius: 8, Threshold: 3 (Filters / Noise / Dust and Scratches)
4. Gaussian Blur, Radius: 4 (Filters / Blur / Gaussian Blur)
5. Create Layer Mask (Layer / Layer Mask / Hide All)
6. Now grab the brush (B) and start painting in white, it'll smooth everything you paint.

If you're overly excited and don't know when to stop, you might have it looking like this.



Hope you enjoyed my guide, throw away your posh cameras and open photoshop.
Show me what you got, Plus points if you can use this stuff tastefully!

i cant use potatoshop

omg mick i actualy love u!
been lookin for hdr tutorials all over the net and the ones ive found are right complex

Its not HDR, its a fake way of doing it - but also, please use it sparingly. I just did some overdone silly things to show there was nothing to it - making something look nice is experimenting and knowing when to stop lol

i cant open my fotos as raw ...fml

What photoshop you using?

i have a HDR thing on my iphone? never use it though?

cs2 mick

You can get similar cheesy effect by going into Image / Adjustments / 'Shadows/Highlights'