Making It Look Like It Was Shot In A Huge Studio

If you are shooting against a white or black background, you can give the illusion of having shot something in a huge studio. It is really quick and simple using Photoshop. Just make sure your background is either pure white (use the dodge tool) or pure black (use the left hand slider in Levels or the burn tool).

In Photoshop, press D on your keyboard to give you the default background colors (black and white). The X key will toggle which is the background and which is the foreground.

1. Set your background color the match your photo.
2. Select the crop tool and drag it across the full size of your photo.
3. Grab the edges of your crop frame and drag them out to the size you want.
4. Hit Enter on your keyboard and the background color will be filled in.

The photo above was taken against a 6' x 7' Lastolite Hilight background with white vinyl on the floor in a small living room.

Lightroom Killer Tips

If you're an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom user, you should check-out a great blog called lightroomkillertips.com Matt Kloskowski of Kelby Training posts a wealth of information, with a mixture of tips, videos and free presets. The blog has been running for a long time now, so there's loads of content to work through. You can also expect a lot of tips for Lightroom 3, now that it's on beta release.

Photoshop Snapshot Layers

Here's a tip for one of the quickest ways to edit in Photoshop. It's called Snapshot Layers and is based in the History Panel and uses the History Brush. Load a photo into Photoshop and make sure you have the History Panel displayed, if not, got to the Windows drop-down menu and make sure there's a tick next to History.

For the photo above, I went to Filter then Blur and then Radial Blur. Click Ok and the Radial Blur will be applied to the full image. Now click on the small Camera icon at the bottom of the History Panel to make a snapshot. Make sure the new Snapshot is highlighted (it's the one at the bottom). Now you need to select a source in the history that you want to brush back onto the image. Click the small box to the left of the original Snapshot and a History Brush icon will be displayed in it. Select the History Brush from the left hand Tools Panel. Now paint in a circular motion in the centre of the photo and if you have chosen the right source and destination, the original photo should start to show through the blurred image (like the image above.

To darken a sky, adjust the Levels or the Bightness/Contrast for the full image and then use the History Brush to bring back the foreground. Or why not change the image to Black & White and use the History Brush to bring back selective color (color popping).

The best way to see the full potential of Snapshot Layers is to mess around with it. It's a quick and easy way to do most jobs in Photoshop. Remember to click on the Camera icon each time you make a change to the image, that way, you can bring back pixels from any point in the history of your editing.