The Secrets of Wedding Photography in 2020

Wedding photography is mostly known as one of the most challenging shoots nowadays. As of 2019, you can witness couples appreciating innovative styles for capturing the moments of their big day. Photography is a susceptible profession when it comes to the eyes of the viewer and the story that will recall with every picture.

Here are some fantastic and exciting secrets that reveal fabulous wedding photography tips. They can assist a cameraperson and also let couples add charm to their wedding day effortlessly. If you are already arranging two photographers for your wedding day, things may be handy for you.

Adding the Best Tips to Wedding Day Photography

Besides focusing on the guests and planning group shots, there is much more that adds sparks to the photos of this adorable occasion. No wonder, your wedding album is one of the most important and worthy photo albums you can ever create.

Always Be Sure Of Capturing the Firsts

Wedding pictures are memorable for many reasons. While planning the bridal photoshoot, make sure of confirming the photographer about some important moments you want pictured.

Best wedding photographers always look out for the couples’ firsts on the marriage day. Besides capturing the entry of the bride and groom, some crucial firsts come only once in an individual’s life. The first look of the bridal gown and the first view of the groom’s attire is important.

Everything is recordable about the firsts. From the first touch to the first hold, and later on to the first kiss. Capturing every move matters!

Friends Are Real People Who Add the Zing

Giving priority to the bride’s girls and groom’s buddies is essential. Do not miss girly poses of the bride with the bridesmaids or the manly looks of the groom and his groomsmen.

Along with emotional hugs and tears, capture the funny teasing moments with pals. Adopt unique ways that can add more laughter to bridal photography. Opt for the hilarious poses that friends plan for wedding day photography.

Do not miss the bride’s picture will all the groomsmen that can add a unique flair in the album. Similarly, let all the chicks gather around the groom and make sure to click the best of photos.

Look Out For the Unseen Precious Smiles

Smiles are an essential glitter for every occasion. You cannot opt even one out if you start noticing. The important smiles that can make others happy are picture worthy ones.

While focusing on the couple is crucial, concentrating on the guests is important too. Along with the shy, intimate, and emotional smiles of the couple; gathering pictures of family members, friends, and kids also glams up the album.

Always mark sudden moments and the important ones in the best wedding photography tips.

Fake It Exact And Make It Perfect

Unless you opt for fake poses, the trending groom photography flairs or bridal photoshoot attitude is impossible to achieve. Nowadays, best wedding photographers have their list of items and pose that highlight the feelings of the couple.

Assure all the fake romantic looks that trend in 2020 and go for the desirable ones. Also, practice a fake wedding shoot before the occasion to look perfect on the big day.

In case the couple wants every move to happen for the first time on marriage day only, get some practice with friends. Ask married couples for the right steps and make the best out of your wedding day photography.

Notice All the Little Unnoticed Moments

Marriage is one of those days when you can notice a lot of small moments that carry deep meaning along with. The mother holding a hand or the father shedding that precious tear. Capture it all!

The moments in a wedding where the couple change vows are made up of enormous intimate poses. Focusing on all of them can result in a heartfelt wedding photography album. Best wedding photographers always concentrate on the couple around the tables.

Leaving the couple alone is essential but taking eyes off them will surely miss the most vital reaction from the album.

Capture Moments before the Wedding

Before the event starts, there are many ideas that must be added to the best wedding photography tips. The groom greeting his important people and the bride dressing up for the big day are some of the most important captures.

The decorative interior set up and the flowers hanging from the table. The final look of the event right before it starts. Some adorable poses that are captured when no one’s around. The glittering silence of the party about to start.

Everything about the wedding day photography is exceptional. For those who know how to make the best of time can bring in the most beautiful of marriage albums.

Do Not Miss Any of the Family Members

The families of the bride and groom are the second most important people to focus on. All the bridal photography moments are incomplete without the bride’s shot with her mom and dad. Photoshoot with siblings is also an important part.

Similarly, the groom photography is incomplete without the groom’s best picture with his father and an emotional capture with his mother.

Every family has some significant members. Locking them in the wedding photography album is essential for the moments to cherish all life even after they are not around.

Wedding Photography Tips as a Challenge

Many people think of wedding photography as the most difficult of jobs for photographers. There may be a point when you can think the same. Yet, it is not such a rocket science if one knows the right tips.

Of course, experience comes with time, and every couple will not always find that highly expert professional way. Opting smart means will help both the ends during a wedding day photography.

The cake cutting ceremony also is an essential time for the bride and groom. Everything about the marriage day is outward; however, all of it depends on how the photographer and the couple put forward their efforts. Just remember,

“The cake gets eaten, the flowers will die, but the wedding photos will last forever.”

Author – Mark Coblin is a content marketer who works for Coupon and discount codes Platform. A writer by day and a reader by night; He is striving to make the most of the new opportunities that come in his way and excels in everything he does.

Impress Your Audience with 5 Instagram Photo Editing Apps

The world is on Instagram and so should your business be. But just being on the app doesn’t help. You need to offer your audience unique, impressive pictures to keep them engaged. Wondering how? Well, the right photo editing apps for Instagram can help you, which, we’ve listed in this blog.

We all have heard the phrase ‘Pictures say a lot’, and this is particularly true in the era of Instagram. Even you must be sharing pictures and stories regularly on this interesting and popular social media platform as an individual, influencer, or a business.

But the question is, are the photos you’re sharing impressive enough? Are your posts creating good engagement? Are you achieving a good conversion rate?

If your answer is “No, not really there” then, it’s time for you to start using Instagram photo editing apps. And no, you don’t need to do a course to be a pro at it!

Why Should You Use an Instagram Photo Editor?

As per the statistics, there are over 1 billion monthly active users on Instagram with more than 500 million Instagram stories every day. Out of those 1 billion+ users, over 25 million accounts belonging to a range of different businesses.

What’s even more interesting is the fact that 60% of people have said they discovered new products on this platform. Moreover, out of the most viewed stories, 1/3 come from business accounts while a minimum of one business profile gets visited by over 200 million Instagram users daily, per the official figures.

Now, that’s a clear indication of how vital the platform has become over the years and it’s only going to go up in the future. That means, the competition is going to get tougher and you have to stand out among the crowd.

Though Instagram already comes loaded with decent photo-editing features, those are just the basics. To get the most out of Instagram, it’s best to use an Instagram photo editor that accentuates your images, making it more appealing to your audience.

5 Instagram Photo Editors You Should Know About

While there are many Instagram photo-editor apps on both iOS and Android, you can’t afford to miss the following. So, let’s get started.

1. VSCO

The VSCO app, available on both Android and iOS platforms, is completely free for the basic set of functions it offers. The app is packed with exciting preset features that make your photos and videos more stylish and fine-tuned. Applying adjustments like saturation, brightness, contrast, and Grain becomes easy with VSCO’s robust editing tools.

If you don’t like the VSCO app, you can always contact me to edit your Instagram photos.

The app has a lot more to offer if you’re up for a paid membership. From video coloring and exclusive editing tools to a library of 200+ presets, VSCO helps transform the photos into a work of art.

It also has its own creator community where users can discover tutorials, follow each other, and share their images.

2. Snapseed

Struggling to remove distracting elements from your images in a simple way? Then Snapseed is the photo editor you should try. The app, now owned by Google, makes an equal appeal to both the casual and professional photographers with its great effects and filtering options. The app is available for download on iOS and Android at no cost.

If you don’t like the Snapseed app, you can always contact me to edit your Instagram photos.

In addition to the regular rotate and crop tools, Snapseed provides its users with advanced image editing features such as double exposure, tonal contrast, HDR Scape, Black & White, lens blur, as well as white balance.

With Snapseed, you can also share your stunning images directly through the app’s social sharing feature on any social network, including Instagram.

3. Layout

The Layout is Instagram’s own photo-editing application that caters to both the Android and iOS users. With Layout, you can select an image to edit from your photo gallery or click a cool shot instantly with its built-in Photo Booth. Layout becomes a great choice if you’re the one who loves making collages out of your beautiful photos.

If you don’t like the Layout app, you can always contact me to edit your Instagram photos.

The app lets you mix-up up to 9 photos at a time to create personalized, fun collages and layouts. Whether it is flipping and mirroring the image or replacing and resizing it, Layout lets the users be as creative as they want to tell a story of their own.

Moreover, you can also edit images through the filter tools of Instagram and share it immediately on the social network.

4. Square Sized

If you use Instagram, then you already know that you can only share photos on the app if they are square in size. The Square Sized app has taken this basic requirement and turned it into its primary feature.

If you don’t like the Square Sized app, you can always contact me to edit your Instagram photos.

As the name suggests, Square Sized helps you resize your photo in an Instagram-worthy square size. The same is applicable to videos. In addition to the photo-resizing, Square Sized also allows you to take new pictures without leaving the app. Moreover, the app enables you to add wonderful backgrounds, layer filters, overlays, and typography to your shots.

Square Sized is available on iOS with basic features for free.

5. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

With Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC app, you can edit photos on your phone as well as desktop. The editor, available freely for its basic features on Android and iOS, lets you edit and take photos without hassles and share them instantly on Instagram and other social networking sites. Aside from the free version, Lightroom also offers premium features, including syncing functions across devices.

If you don’t like the Lightroom app, you can always contact me to edit your Instagram photos.

With this image editing app, you can modify color, contrast, and exposure of the photo. It is even possible to copy the edits across various snaps for consistency. One more interesting feature? You can do selective editing of the photo with this editor and let the rest of the image be as it is.

Conclusion

So, now that you have a list of the 5 best Instagram photo editing apps, impressing your audience won’t be a headache anymore. Confused which one among these would prove to be the one for your business? For that, all you need to do is download any of the above apps and give it a try.

Author Bio:

Varsha Solanki is a Digital Marketing Strategist at Space-O Canada, a Software development company. She has 3 years of experience in the Information Technology industry. She spends her time reading about new trends in Digital Marketing and the latest technologies.

How to flip a photo in Photoshop?

Today, we’re going to see how to flip a photo in Photoshop. We’re going to do it in two ways. One way will flip the entire photo and another will just flip a layer.

Let’s begin the tutorial.

Method 1  – Flip a photo in Photoshop

This is the easiest one. Suppose you have multiple layers on your Photoshop file, this method with flip all the layers.

Let’s flip a photo in Photoshop.

Image by pics_kartub from Pixabay.

Go to Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Horizontal to flip the photo horizontally.

This will flip the photo horizontally in Photoshop.

To flip the photo vertically, go to Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Vertical

This will flip the photo vertically in Photoshop.

Method 2  – Flip selected layers in Photoshop

In most of the cases, you may not want all the layers to be flipped. You may just want one or two layers to be flipped. We can also flip layers in Photoshop.

Let’s say I want to flip the text in the below photo.

The text is present in a different layer.

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.

This will flip the layer horizontally in Photoshop.

Now, if you want to flip it vertically, go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical.

This will flip the layer vertically in Photoshop.

Bonus steps

If you want to rotate the photo by 90 degrees then you can do that also. Go to Edit > Transform > Rotate 90o clockwise.

This will rotate the photo. Your photo will look like this after the rotation.

If you want to rotate the photo to any other angle, activate Transform Tool by pressing Cmd + T / Ctrl +T.

Now put the cursor next to any eight of the handlebars, and then rotate the layer. Your photo will look like this.

This is all, guys. Check out the offer below.

How to add bleed and crop in Photoshop

photoshop image editor

You might have never heard about bleed and crop if you post your photos online and never bothered about printing them. But, you might head bleed and crop a lot if you print your photos or design. Today, we’re going to see how to add bleed and crop in Photoshop.

Photoshop has not given any standalone feature to add bleed and crop but has given some features that you can use to add bleed and crop. Let’s see how to use it.

Let’s start with the bleed first because we use it more than the crop.

1. How to add bleed in Photoshop?

Before we begin with how to add bleed, let’s understand what is bleed first.

1.1 What is bleed in printing?

Wikipedia has given a very nice and clean definition of bleed.

In printing, bleed is printing that goes beyond the edge of where the sheet will be trimmed. In other words, the bleed is the area to be trimmed off. – Wikipedia

Many economical printers are not capable enough to print edge to edge. So, they left a small piece of an area on the left and right. This left out area is called as bleed.

1.2 How much bleed should I add?

Many printing sites specify the exact bleed size you need to put on your document. If they don’t, a rule of thumb is to go for 0.25 inches on all the four sides.

Now, let’s add bleed in Photoshop

1.3.1 Step 1 – Adding the ruler

Text editing software like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, and Adobe InDesign, etc. have a dedicated menu bar for this. But, in Photoshop, we need to use Guides to add bleed.

The below photo is A4 in size. It has a width of 8.2 inches and has a height of 11.6 inches, and has a resolution of 300 pixels per inch. Let’s add a bleed of 0.25 inches.

Credit – Image by naobim from Pixabay

The first thing we need to do is that we need to add Ruler. Go to View > Ruler or press Cmd + R / Ctrl + R.

Now, right-click on the Ruler and select Inches.

1.3.2 Step 2 – Adding the guide for the bleed in Photoshop

Go to View > New Guide Layout.

Now, write 0.25 in all the four fields of the Margin. Press OK.

This will add a guide that has a width of 0.25 inches. It’s better to keep all your designs and photo inside this guide.

2. How to add crop in Photoshop?

Before we begin with how to add a crop, let’s understand what is crop first.

2.1 What is the crop in printing?

This is not the cropping that you hear a lot. This is different than cutting out the unwanted part of a photo that we usually do with photos before uploading them on social media sites.

Crop marks, also known as trim marks, are lines printed in the corners of your publication’s sheet or sheets of paper to show the printer where to trim the paper. – Microsoft

2.2 How much crop should I add?

Printing sites specify the exact crop size you need to put on your document. If they don’t, a rule of thumb is to again go for 0.25 inches on all the four sides.

Now, let’s add crop in Photoshop.

2.3.1 Step 1 – Increasing the canvas

Go to Image > Canvas Size or press Cmd + Opt + C / Ctrl + Alt + C.

While making sure that the unit is inches, write 0.25. Keep the Anchor at the center and make sure that Relative is turned on.

Press OK.

This will increase the size of the document by 0.25 inches.

The square boxes you’re seeing on the edges are actually the transparent area. It’s included in the document but not painted with any color.

If somehow you print this transparent area, then nothing will be printed. A pink paper will come out as pink, a yellow paper would come out a yellow, and white will come out as a white.

This is all, guys. This is how you add bleed and crop in Photoshop.

Lightroom desktop vs. Lightroom mobile – Which is better?

Do You Need A Adobe Lightroom Mobile

Photo editing is a critical function one needs, especially today with social media. Whether it is social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all of them have a photo editing tool included. But, for photographers or hobbyists, those tools do not work to their expectations. Lightroom Mobile fulfills that purpose with the added mobility and ease of use.

The same applies to the desktop version of Lightroom, which we all love- Lightroom Classic CC. Lightroom mobile CC tries to be as functional as Lightroom Classic CC, with some added advantages. Moreover, you can have all the premium features such as selective editing, brushes, and much more with the subscription in the mobile version. You do not need the subscription for using the same functions in the Lightroom Classic CC version.

Lightroom Desktop vs. Lightroom mobile

1. Synchronization:

Because of the integration of Adobe Creative Cloud in the mobile version, there is a lot of liberty to work across different platforms and devices. You can use your cloud storage of 100 GB with the Adobe Creative Cloud to keep your changes everywhere.
Whereas, in Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, you have most of your work offline.

2. Limited Features in App:

The Lightroom Mobile app is a freemium service that unlocks important features only after buying the monthly subscription. Features such as selective editing, healing brush, geometry /perspective editing, and some online synchronization are only activated after subscribing. This is not the case with the desktop version – Lightroom Classic CC. Even features such as batch editing, are available only to premium users in the Mobile app.

3. Performance:

Lightroom Mobile only works on recent smartphones and not outdated phones such as the iPhone 5S, or several-year-old smartphones in general. You need a good processor for it to work the same as the desktop. Whether it is batch editing, brush usage, selective editing, you need a powerful processor for them to work. Apart from this basic requirement, Lightroom mobile is the perfect on-the-go app for all your editing requirements.

4. Feature Set:

The Lightroom mobile is not a watered-down version of the Lightroom Classic CC by any means. Instead, it has everything you need and has been using in the Lightroom Classic version. Whether it is the histogram information or the batch editing, you can do it all on the Lightroom mobile on your tablet or smartphone!

Conclusion:

Lightroom Classic CC is no different than the Lightroom mobile. It has the same features, same functionality and even better ease of use. Overall, you get the added advantage of mobility and ease of use in the Lightroom mobile, which might be an issue to carry your laptop everywhere for the same. You can use Lightroom mobile with more intuitive touch-based controls on tablets and smartphones.

This way you even make use of the generally better display of smartphones to really get a sense of how the colors look on the screen. But, for heavy or large collections, you may still prefer your desktop-based Lightroom Classic CC to make use of your laptop’s performance and huge storage space is taken up by RAW photos.

What’s new in Lightroom CC?

Adobe Lightroom is a powerful image editing tool that can edit your images with a variety of features. Now, there are two versions of Adobe Lightroom, namely Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC. There is a considerable difference in functionality as well as overall workflow.

Between the two, Lightroom CC is the latest version. Adobe Lightroom CC is server-based, whereas Lightroom Classic CC is the one which works offline mostly, Using Adobe Creative Cloud, you can have all your work seamlessly synchronized across different platforms.

What’s new in Lightroom CC?

While some features are missing from Lightroom CC, but present in Lightroom Classic CC, there is a lot to get excited for. With new features such as Auto keyword adding, a geotagging map, a slideshow feature, you have the liberty to do more with your photos. In Lightroom CC, you can even apply presets to metadata as well as new imports. Another useful feature in Lightroom CC is the smart collections tool.

Related – Lightroom vs. Photoshop

Let’s discuss some points that set the two versions apart:

1. Image categories:

There are two views, in which your images are organized in Lightroom Classic CC. One is the virtual preview aka Collections, and a folder view. The virtual view is a collection of images as per the software’s import and other presets and settings. The folder view lets you see where your photos are present on the hard drive. On the other hand, in Lightroom CC thee is only one method of organization which is Albums. The Albums folder is a virtual categorization of photos under different names and doesn’t appear this way on the hard drive.

2. Keywords:

In both the versions, you have the option to differentiate an categorize photos by using keywords in the metadata of the file. In Lightroom Classic CC you can add structured keywords based on a hierarchy. You can manually add them and work accordingly. Whereas in the newer Lightroom CC, the Adobe AI assistant ‘Sensei’ does most of the work and organizes your images by assigning keyword as per the content of the photo. It is a great feature that works fast and lets you come back to them later.

3. Editing Tools:

The editing tools present in both versions set them apart in how they function. The Lightroom Classic CC has powerful features such as Tone Curve or Split Toe panels. These features are missing from the Lightroom CC, although some updates have changed it to some extent.

4. Panorama:

Lightroom Classic CC has its own powerful stitching panorama tool which lets you make panoramas out of overlapping frames in photos. Lightroom CC, on the other hand, doesn’t have this feature yet.

Conclusion:

There are many features and design elements that separate Lightroom Classic CC from Lightroom CC. In some ways, Classic CC has an edge over the newer version and in other vice versa. The newer version seems like a more streamlined tool to process and work faster and avoid the in-depth tools of Lightroom Classic CC. Overall, Lightroom CC is a great upgrade, but leaves something back in Lightroom Classic CC, to move forward in functionality.

Lightroom vs Photoshop – Which is better?

Adobe is a household name to professionals and hobbyists of all kinds. Adobe software can handle many things, whether it is image editing, management, graphic design or countless other utilities. Let’s discuss Lightroom vs Photoshop today.

Now, when it comes to their most widely used software – Photoshop and Lightroom, there is bound to be a comparison. Both are equally capable pieces of software but excel at different functions.

Adobe Lightroom:

Lightroom is more of a starter’s tool to use for image editing, fixing, and management. It is capable enough to fix and change the smallest details in RAW and other formats in images. And at the same time, it is an easy to use software, which one can learn fast. You can use Adobe Lightroom easily and make your edits quickly. Lightroom is an all in one package to batch edit your photos down to the last detail.

Adobe Photoshop:

Photoshop is a general creation and designing tool that can also do the same things that Lightroom can do. But, its functionality to use as a substitute for Lightroom is incredibly limited in terms of ease of use. Its unique functionality makes it possible to do millions of things like background swap, painting, web design, something that Lightroom cannot do. You have to master all the basics to be able to apply presets, modify images, create from scratch as well as tune images.

Photo by creativelive.com

Lightroom vs Photoshop

Since each of them has its benefits and unique features, it is not a competition. Both are part of the Adobe Suite and in a photographer’s workflow, both are quality essential.

You start with applying color and other fixes on Lightroom. Then, you move to Adobe Photoshop to further edit and add any more changes. After all, photoshop is the Swiss Army knife for graphic design! Whether it is removing, adding or modifying elements, you can do it all with Photoshop.

You can play wit layers, lighting, artificial effects, elements, and a lot of artificial edits in Photoshop. Whereas, in Adobe Lightroom, you cannot add elements and artificial external elements or modify the image’s elements.

Surely, you can remove blemishes, spots, change colors, that too at an advanced level. Whereas you can easily edit and add images to Lightroom, Photoshop is as its name suggests. Photoshop lets you play around with photos and add layers of edits and edit each layer differently. You can even stitch images, and make panoramas, something that Lightroom cannot do. It is kind of like a garage for photos; Lightroom’s name also gives it purpose away clearly.

Much like a photographer’s darkroom, its main purpose is to process images into a fair level of the usable final product. You can show the output of a digital camera’s raw file into a natural-looking image with the tuning tools of Lightroom.

Conclusion:

Both are capable at their own functions and tend to different users. When it comes to ease of use, Lightroom takes the leading position. On the other hand, if it is graphic design or advanced image editing you are looking for, you should learn Adobe Photoshop.

You can edit photos down to the pixel level in Photoshop, and in Lightroom, you can edit everything which looks appealing to a layman looking at a photograph with perfect colors and removing all imperfections in lighting. You can even add multiple images into one image with Photoshop whereas Lightroom lets you apply your desired settings to a batch of your photos.

What is Lightroom?

Lightroom cc logo

As a photographer, whether professional or hobbyist, you need to be able to take stunning pictures. Often times it is the skill and experience which can teach about what settings work best according to the scenery. But, camera and colors play an equally major role in this too! This is where Adobe Lightroom comes in. You can understand what is Lightroom below:

 


Simply put, a phone or digital camera is only good enough to decide what looks best as per its coding and sensor settings. Nowadays, machine learning can do a lot, but in the end, one needs to use their own judgment to take stunning shots. When you take a massive number of photos, it is hard to concentrate on capturing the perfect picture every single time.

What is Lightroom?

Adobe Lightroom is your companion if you find yourself too often in the above scenario. Lightroom, as the name indicates, is the photographer’s best friend. It can manipulate, process and edit photos as required into an amazing end product. Adobe has enabled everything one would ideally need in a traditional sense of a dark room.

Whether it is pushing out amazing looking photographs or tuning intrinsic details about your capture digitally, Lightroom can do it all. You can change all the basic settings such as contrast, exposure, shadows, white balance among so many other available elements. There is a large number of data that a DSLR or even a smartphone captures in one photo.

As a multi platform tool, Lightroom is ideal to use anywhere, be it your smartphone or your desktop computer. Both professionals and hobbyists are using this amazing software to get amazing looking photos. Moreover, it can process RAW files such as .NEF perfectly.

RAW file formats show you how much this amazing software can actually tune and edit in your image. Additionally, whether is is JPG files or RAW, the performance and capabilities of Lightroom give you full and easy to use control over photo editing.

Additional Features:

Lightroom is not only good at editing the basic and finer details of your photos, but also can add a bit of flair to your photos. You can use built in Lightroom presets to completely change the setting and background of an image. Additionally, you can also rely on it to give you an accurate sense of how images would look on any screen in general.

If you need to understand what is Lightroom more, you need to start practicing on it right away and play with the controls a bit. As an easy to use software, it is quite intuitive in how it operates and can be your best buddy in churning out a picture perfect photo session in no time. It can process a bulk of images and you can process them into any desirable format as well.

In addition to bulk processing, Lightroom is perfect in sorting through your library and applying any number of edits to your portfolio. As an all in one package this is the ultimate tool to edit your photos irrespective of size, format, or even quality!

Photoshop Master Reveals Why You Should Never Trust Photos You See On Social Media

Immediately Do About Photoshop

In this age of social media, looks can be very deceiving. The photos on social media often bear little resemblance to when they were taken because they can be digitally manipulated.

A skilled Photoshop master is able to do just about anything to a photo, including making someone look a whole lot better than in real life. A broad nose becomes slim, a thick waist turns into a thin one, flabby upper arms become smooth, eyes look brighter and teeth look whiter.

“Photoshop Holy” – digital manipulation for perfection

A Photoshop master and Weibo user named Kanahoooo has mad photo-editing skills that will make you question those stunning photos you see of people on social media.

She has a huge following on Chinese social media, where she is referred to as “Photoshop Holy.” She says you shouldn’t believe the perfection you see online. People reportedly ask her to make their images look more ‘shiny’ on social media.

The people in the after photos can hardly be recognized from the before photos, often looking slimmer and more beautiful. Her images show just how thin the line is between the beautiful and the not-so-beautiful.

People comment that the photos look unnatural and don’t necessarily make everyone look better. Her response is that what she does is a type of entertainment and that she thinks it is fun to try and make people look different.

Her wizard-level photo editor’s skills are in demand and she is really good at making young girls look perfect. They seek perfection because they feel it is necessary if they want to get ‘likes’ and followers on social media.

Becoming a Photoshop master requires practice

An integral part of digital photography is the post-processing stage. Even when you’ve taken an acceptable photo, there is usually room for some photo editing magic if you want to take it to the next level.

Using Photoshop tools, you can correct issues like slight over-exposure that can wash out skin color and features but it is possible to go a great deal further than that.

Mastering the basics first

Simply learning how to use some of the basics of Photoshop can take time. Adele Markus, a graphic designer who works for Best Essays, says she battled at first to learn how to use the layer panel. She says her early attempts looked as though a child had been busy and it took practice to get the best quality from a photo by applying layering.

Some of the tools in Photoshop are fairly straightforward and easy for beginners to use, whereas others are much more complex and it may take time before you’re ready to use them.

For example, Brightness/Contrast, Exposure, and Shadows/Highlights simply require moving sliders to the right or left to make adjustments. However, more advanced edits require learning how to read a histogram or a chart that shows the tonal range in the photo you’re editing.

Dealing with slight imperfections

Photoshop has many photo-editing tools, such as a Spot Healing Brush you can use to get rid of blemishes and a Clone Stamp tool that allows you to copy pixels from a selected area and then clone it on to another area.

This makes it easy to remove imperfections like a stain on a model’s clothes you didn’t see during a shoot, a spot on the skin, any odd patterns, or a dirty background.

Working on the eyes

One element in photos that can be tricky to get right is the eyes. The less you do to them, the more natural the effect. It’s fine to work on them if they appear a little puffy or have bags under them. However, adding too much sparkle tends to look unnatural and may even make them look unearthly.

Perhaps you’re working on a photo where the model’s eye bags give away the fact that she got little sleep the night before the photoshoot. It takes some practice to improve photos without the changes you make being easy to notice.

Learning how to reduce puffy eyes in Photoshop is not that difficult, but there are different ways to accomplish this and some ways offer a better result than others.

Adjusting colors and shadows

When you start adjusting colors and shadows, you have to understand curves, how to layer and create contrast without creating a collage of blurred colors and overlapping shadows.

Practice makes perfect

When you’re new to a photo-editing program, it is easy to either avoid or overuse fascinating features. The more you use the photo-editing software, the more adept you become.

Kanahoooo or “Photoshop Holy” shares tricks on how to retouch images on her homepage and launches challenges that give other Weibo users a chance to practice and to show off their Photoshop talents. Perhaps your idea of perfection is different from hers – but you still need to put in the time and practice if you want to improve your skills.

Transform photos in Lightroom

Many professional photographers are able to transform photos in Lightroom. This popular photo editing software has many compelling editing functionalities. It allows you to apply your own style, be creative and differentiate your work from other photographers.

Using Lightroom does have a learning curve, but it is not as difficult as learning Photoshop. It is fun to play around with all the features and see what kind of results you can achieve.

When you are learning various editing programs, it takes time to understand how and when to use the various features. Trying too hard to incorporate them too soon is a mistake that beginners often make.

Keep comparing with the original image

A good rule of thumb when photo editing is to make the final images look as natural as possible. In the beginning, it is often tempting to over-contrast or over-saturate a photo, but with time it becomes easier to recognize when an image is well balanced.

Comparing the original image with the edited version while making changes helps you to quickly realize when a photo begins to look unrealistic. For instance, when you want smooth skin, take it slow and work next to the original image so you can see when the skin starts to look plastic.

Less is often more when it comes to photo-editing. For instance, having a bright smile is engaging but over-whitening teeth can make a photo look fake. You don’t want the focal point of the photo to be glaring white teeth.

Conclusion

Editing photos can be fun but you don’t want to fall victim to over-editing. Too many edits will make your photos look unnatural. Of course, if you’re like Kanahoooo, your brief may be to make someone look completely different and you will have great fun doing it. However, if you want to keep your photos looking natural, make only changes you feel are necessary and leave it at that.

About author

Tiffany Harper is a talented writer from New York, an extremely active woman, and a real leader. She began her career as a journalist and later proceeded as an educational writer and editor. Now she works as an experienced subject matter expert with best writing services, sometimes she works as the content consultant dissertation writing service and thesis writing service, like essay writing service in UK, mostly in technology, business, and marketing area. Please do not hesitate to contact her on Twitter.

How to create a silhouette effect in Photoshop?

Sunset Photoshop

Here comes the awaited tutorial. Many of the people demanded me to write a tutorial on creating a silhouette effect in Photoshop. So, here you go.

This is a short tutorial. I’ll be showing you how to create a silhouette effect in Photoshop. I’ll just be using a selection tool and adjustment layers.

Before we begin, let me show you the before and after photos.

After

Before

Image by adamkontor from Pixabay

Let’s begin.

Step 1 – Select the people

Open the photo in Photoshop.

We’re going to use Select Subject to quickly select the people. If you’re using old Photoshop and don’t have Select Subject then you can use the Quick Selection Tool to select the people.

Go to Select > Subject.

This will roughly select the people. The selection is not at all perfect. See the ocean between their chins, chest, and between her legs. Those areas should not have been selected.

Step 2 – Refine the selection in Photoshop

We’re going to refine the selection to deselect the unwanted areas and select the wanted areas. We’re going to do with the help of the Select and Mask tool.

Go to Select > Select and Mask.

Grab the Refine edge brush from the panel. This will show up once Select and Mask is turned on.

Now, start brushing on the edges. See the GIF below. GIF is of 4 MB in size. Give it some time of load. Also, I have increased the speed to two times.

Once that is done, you’ll see the photo without the background.

Step 3 – Give a nice dark effect to the background

Open the layer panel by going to Window > Layer.

Activate the background layer by clicking on the eye icon.

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filter

Click on Preserve Luminosity and drag the slider all the way to the right.

Now, duplicate the photo filter adjustment layer 2 times by pressing Cmd + J / Ctrl + J. In the topmost photo filter layer, turn off the preserve luminosity.

Step 4 – Create a silhouette effect in Photoshop

Time to make the people black.

Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid.

In the next window, choose the black color. Press OK.

In the layer panel, drag the solid color fill layer to the top. Now, hold down Opt / Alt and place the cursor between the Solid Color fill layer and the people layer. The cursor will change to an arrow. Click as soon as the cursor changes. See the below GIF.

And, that’s all. Your work is completed here.