Unlock the keys to Self Employment for Beginners! Your Freelancer Success is finally here. This video is part 3 in the series of How To Succeed as a Freelancer. If you take the time to watch them all, I will have given you every freelancer trick that I can think of to help you thrive. From finding Clients, to keeping them coming back. Success truly…

I want to clear up the usual common misconceptions about Color Modes, Color Models, Color Profiles, and Color Spaces. Give me a few minutes of your time, and you will no longer be confused by it. The base cause of this confusion stems from my research in this topic. Half the websites say one thing, and the other half say something else. Rest assure…

In this video, I’ll introduce you to three important topics that are essential for working with digital images in Photoshop, and these are pixels, image size and image resolution. Having a solid understanding of how they are related to each other is essential for getting the best results when resizing images, both for print and for the web. Let’s t…

I'll be talking about how to keep yourself sane throughout your retouching career beyond Photoshop and growing your portfolio. Because working from your home office and making money isn't all about the basics of Photoshop, it's about business. This video aims to teach you real-world skills on how to handle clients the right way and on how to make t…

The sad thing about working as a freelancer is that thanks to the word "Free", people often think that the work you do is low cost. In their mind, they are doing YOU the favor by keeping you busy, and helping you grow your portfolio so you can start making some real money. This mindset completely undervalues your work, forcing you to spend all your…

What is the difference between editing images in 8-bit or 16-bit? While it should be obvious that 16-bit color is significantly better than 8-bit color. After all, 8-bit is only 16.7 million colors when comparing that to 16-bit which is 2.81 Trillion Colors. However, it just doesn't seem that way to the naked eye. This is because humans can only se…

What is the 300 DPI Myth? What are DPI, PPI and LPI? John Ross will explain to you the differences between Dots Per Inch, Pixels Per Inch, and Lines Per Inch. You will learn how to use them to supply images for Print magazines. In this video we are going to cover a topic that nobody ever talks about. DPI, PPI and LPI. More specifically, dots per in…

For Advanced Photoshop Magazine #130, I was asked to show how I create my selections. In this extended video, I'm going to show you the ins and outs of Professional Masking. Properly masking an image with Adobe Photoshop is often done using one of the simple selection tools like Magic Wand or Lasso. This is simply the wrong approach. You should act…

I will tell you all about the magic of Smart Objects and Smart Filters. For any retoucher, it's important to develop a non-destructive workflow. Smart Objects and Smart Filters will give you the ability to go back and forth between your actions without permanently damaging your photo. The post Smart Objects and Smart Filters | Photoshop Basic 2 Tut…

When working in Photoshop, while most of it is creative, sometimes you will want to be as accurate as you possibly can. Rulers and guides come in handy because they help you create specific points in your image that you may want to refer to at a later point in time. The post Rulers and Guides | Photoshop Beginner’s Tutorial appeared first on The Ar…

Aside from the Lasso-based tools, we can also use the Magic Wand when it comes to making selections in Photoshop. You can press and hold the Quick Selection Tool to choose the Magic Wand Tool. When you click on a section in your image, it selects an area based on the range of colors that your provide, limited by the value of your Tolerance in the O…

The purpose of making a selection, is so that you can make changes within a limited, and controlled area.There are a variety of tools you should consider when making selections in your image. There are several that will allow you make direct selections by drawing them, and a few that let you make your selections based on color. I will preface this …

Selective Color is the go-to tool for simple color correction. Little need for masking, and no confusing RGB sliders. You just need someone to give you a little direction, and you will find how easy this tool can be. As with the other Adjustment Tools, you can find it with the Adjustments Palettee, which is found within Window – Adjustments. The se…

Let’s say you have an image that’s looking pretty pale. When you want to adjust the saturation of an image, I normally don’t recommend using the Saturation Adjustment. Instead, what we’ll be using is the Vibrance Adjustment, because it has Saturation included, and gives you more control over your adjustments. Over at the Adjustments Palette, you ca…

When you want to create tonal changes the easiest and simplest way possible, your best bet is to use Levels. Simply go over to the Adjustments palette (or if it isn’t open yet, go to Window – Adjustments). There, click on the icon that says “Levels”. Another way would be to go to the Layers palette and click on the Black/White Circle icon that says…

Adjustment Layers work like tinted sheets of glass that you overlay on top of your image one at a time. It’s kind of like a tinted or colored light bulb. You can turn on/off the effect, or adjust the values as a separate layer on top of your original image background layer. For instance, on top of your base layer (original image), we can make tone …

The Color Picker in Photoshop is used for a variety of different reasons. At a basic level, it can be used to choose a color, and then then you can paint with that color. Once you become more familiar with how it works, it can be used to match colors, transfer color values from one program to another, for internet use, or otherwise communicate with…

Nearly every image can benefit from Cloning or Healing. It could be removing flyaway hair, dust on the lens, skin blemishes, or any of the other hundred things I could think of. Some corrections require some skill, and knowledge to handle the various tools properly. One tool stands alone for it's absolute simplicity, the Spot Healing Brush. Older v…

When it comes to navigating around your image, there are two tools and one palette that will come in really handy. This video will walk you through how to use the Navigator Palette, Hand Tool, and Zoom Tool. These are some of the most basic items in Photoshop, and they are really easy to use. Except maybe the Zoom Tool (otherwise known as the Magni…

Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes, especially when it comes to perfecting our retouching. In those moments when you just can’t find the right adjustment for something, the History Palette comes to the rescue. By default, you will have 20 past steps that you can undo. The history palette basically just allows you to go back to your previous ac…

Layers make up a huge chunk of the magic of Photoshop. It is one of the most crucial tools that you can use especially for non-destructive editing, but it is also one of the most confusing if you don’t quite know how to make your way around it. Don’t worry, I will help you master and understand just how each layer works by giving you the simplest a…

Do you see that toolbar that runs along the top of Photoshop, below the main menu? That is the Options bar. The Options bar changes depending on the tool that you have selected. For instance, if we click on the Eyedropper tool, the Options bar changes into the different options and settings specifically for the Eyedropper tool only. As we go furthe…

The Info Palette shows you different information about your image, based on your selected tool. It will tell you about color breakdown, measurements, and other useful tidbits. The post Info Palette | Photoshop Beginner’s Tutorial appeared first on The Art of Retouching.بقلم John Ross

Eager beaver beginners usually just want to start editing photos without even giving much thought to settings and preferences. This is a big no-no, which is precisely why amateurs make this mistake all the time. Preferences greatly affect the workflow of your photos depending on how you want to edit them, so your road to Photoshop excellence starts…

Once you’re inside Photoshop, you come face to face with all these tools, palettes, and seemingly random symbols. Add that to a boring interface and you just might give up on Photoshop right from the start. I’m telling you now that there’s nothing to be afraid of, because we’ll tackle basic navigation through all these palettes to ensure that it’s …

So you took a lovely shot of the perfect night sky, and now you want to start retouching it. When you drag this image onto Photoshop, the first thing it does is not really open it up in Photoshop but in Camera Raw. You’re taken to this interface that all seems foreign to you, with buttons and sliders and you’re thinking, “What in the world just hap…

This short clip will teach you all about Camera Raw Filter, a powerful tool available in Photoshop CC. It basically lets you treat a pixel-based image as a raw file and make adjustments to it. How does that happen? The post Photoshop Tutorial – Camera Raw Filter appeared first on The Art of Retouching.…

After all of the techniques and tools that we talked about, you are now ready to see all these concepts applied into a single image. This tutorial will show you how to actually retouch a photo using all the knowledge you’ve just acquired, all done in a truely non-destructive workflow. The post Photoshop Tutorial – Portraits and Smart Objects appear…

We’ve discussed the wonder of Smart Objects, but it does get confusing for some people, especially for a beginner. This tutorial will teach you workarounds when it comes to working with Smart Objects, and will get rid of your fear of meddling with these seemingly tricky situations. The post Photoshop Tutorial – Smart Objects Inside Smart Objects ap…

This session will tell you all about the magic of Smart Objects and Smart Filters. For any retoucher, it’s important to develop a non-destructive workflow. Smart Objects and Smart Filters will give you the ability to go back and forth between your actions without permanently damaging your photo. For example, after many hours of work, I had 7 images…

Because of all the fancy tools that Camera Raw comes packed with, it’s easy to overlook certain settings that are actually very important. This tutorial will briefly go over the significance of knowing how Camera Raw exports images to Photoshop. Determining your output options will make the work that you do, whether it’s for printing or for magazin…

This Photoshop tutorial teaches you how to isolate certain areas of a photo using Local Adjustments in Camera Raw. Does one cheek of your model look a little too flushed? Is a particular part of the leg covered in unnecessary shadows? You can make your changes specifically to that section alone, without affecting the other areas of your image. The …

This Photoshop Tutorial teaches you the difference between opening up a raw file from Camera Raw as “Open Image” or as “Open Object”. While the former opens up your image as it is, the latter lets you make changes on your raw files , even after you have started working in Photoshop. It does this by opening up your images as Smart Objects. Even if y…

The wonderfully convenient thing about Camera Raw, is that it’s incredibly easy to learn your way around it. Its simple interface and easy to use tools will only take minutes to get the hang of; as opposed to taking many hours trying become barely competent in Photoshop. You’ll see just how effortless it is to retouch your raw photos. So open up on…

Many people wonder what the differences are, between Camera Raw, Photoshop, and Lightroom. To be clear, each one serves a very different function in your Post-Production Workflow. Lightroom is a database that displays your images as thumbnails so that you can organize them into collections, tag them with metadata, and easily export batches out for …

We’ve spent quite a bit of time playing around with the RAW format, so it’s only practical for us to go over a quick overview of the various RAW processors in the market today. There’s a variety of choices out there, so don’t feel like your options are limited. While these are something we are not necessarily recommending over Photoshop’s built-in …

This is a shortened Imagenomic Portraiture Tutorial for people who want a quick tutorial. For those who want to learn more, I have a longer version at this Imagenomic Portraiture Tutorial Extended page. While the content is the same at it's core, the version here is less than half the time, and focuses on the most important details of how I use the…

This Adobe Photoshop Tutorial Video compares and contrasts the JPG and RAW File Formats. Now that we’ve spent some time delving into the twists and turns of JPGs and RAWs, it’s time for us to show you some differences of the two formats when it comes to editing an actual picture. You already know by now that because JPGs have a smaller file size, i…

This Adobe Photoshop Tutorial Video is going into detail about what is so good about the RAW File Format. When you shoot, the picture taken by your DSLR Camera is stored in the RAW File Format, which essentially keeps your image quality exactly as the camera sees it. The Raw file is made up of ones and zeroes that your computer can process. If you …

In this digital world we live in, you see the ubiquitous JPEG everywhere—practically all images you can find online are in this format. Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, JPEG pictures are compressed images that have the .jpg file extension. Basically, JPEGs or JPGs compress images in order to make their file sizes smaller. The most annoyi…

Your browser does not support the audio element. PodCast: Download Running Time: 20 minutes I found this episode buried on a disk somewhere. Apparently I recorded the various parts, edited it, filed it, but never actually published it. Very strange. If I had to guess, I would say it’s about a year and a half Read More The post The Art of Retouching…

Your browser does not support the audio element. PodCast: Download Running Time: 15 minutes Just because you are paranoid, does not mean they are NOT out to get you. I have spent my childhood, and adult life, accepting the fact that everyone expects me to fail. At the very least, what I do is not Read More The post The Art of Retouching Podcast 015…

Photoshop Tutorial – Adjustment Layers This video is available Free for Everyone. Running Time: 6 minutes In this digital world we live in, you see the ubiquitous JPEG everywhere—practically all images you can find online are in this format. Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, JPEG pictures are compressed images that have the .jpg file Read…

This is an Adobe Photoshop Video tutorial that explains Color Models, Color Modes, Color Spaces, and Color Profiles. This is one of the modules from the Photoshop Basic 1 Video Course. I thought this video was a good example of the course content overall. It's a little bit dry, but I hope you find that it gets right to the point, and educates in a …

Color Range tool is a crucial aspect of Photoshop Masking, that many people have difficulties using. The tool plays a significant role in selecting groups of color areas, that need to be adjusted separately in a particular image. Color Range has the quickest, and simplest options available for selecting complex patterns as well. In addition, you ar…

Properly masking out an image in Adobe Photoshop is often done using one of the simple selection tools like Magic Wand or Lasso. This is simply the wrong approach. You should be using Color Range and the QuickMask. In this video for beginners, I will slowly explain how to use both these tools to make simple and complex selections. This video is als…

Your browser does not support the audio element. PodCast: Download Running Time: 20 minutes Adobe Photoshop CS6 Review Adobe Photoshop is used by MANY different industries; Graphic Designers, Video Editors, 3D Rendering, Photographers, and Professional Retoucher. This Adobe Photoshop CS6 Review is from the point of view of the Professional Retouche…

Your browser does not support the audio element. PodCast: Download Running Time: 30 minutes Inside and outside of business, I talk about the things you can do to make you stand out from your competition. Pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone will allow for growth. Keeping yourself out of your comfort zone will result Read More The post The …

Your browser does not support the audio element. PodCast: Download Running Time: 32 minutes But seriously. I can't believe I have been working freelance, from home, for the past 6 months. I make a full time salery from retouching, and part time salery from free videos I created last year. The more I think about Read More The post The Art of Retouch…

Your browser does not support the audio element. PodCast: Download Running Time: 30 minutes Starting with this episode, I will no longer be having the entire episodes transcribed. Most of you will not likely care. For those that actually prefered to read it, I am sorry. I chose to drop it because it took too Read More The post The Art of Retouching…