Photoshop Tutorials

As part of this blog I hope to direct readers to the best resources that the web offers amateur photographers. One of those resources is PS tutorials. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of them out on the web, some better than others. I can't claim to have seen even half of them, but have found some better than others.

No matter your view on PS (in a later post I hope to discuss the ethics surrounding photo editing), you have to admit that it is a very powerful tool. One that very few probably fully understand and can utilize. So, with that in mind, I hope to regularly feature websites that have outstanding PS tutorials.

One very good tutorial series is You Suck at Photoshop, put together by Donnie Hoyle. He spends time teaching fundamental PS techniques, with the assumption that you have been in PS before. His tutorials are a bit offbeat and very funny. The language can be a bit rough, so turn down the speakers if kids are around.

Much of what he teaches may not be directly useful to a landscape photographer, but you learn so much in the process of doing these tutorials, that you will come out better off for having done them.

Photoshop Actions

Many, if not most, photographers nowadays use Photoshop (PS) in some form or another. One of the neat features of PS is the ability to use actions to batch process photos so you don't have to do them one at a time. You can also record actions that you use frequently and save them and share them with others. Ree Drummond, on her Pioneer Woman website, has posted a few action sets that she has put together and that do some pretty cool stuff. I have linked to her page here, where you can download the actions sets. I don't know if they work in all releases of PS or PS Elements. I use them in CS4 and they work great. Download them and give them a try.

Introduction

To start out this blog, I will introduce myself. My name is Tom and I am a transplant from the western US to the midwest. I have been gone for a little over a year and miss the west quite a bit; I hope to return within the next few years. I am a full time grad student who sometimes wishes he were a full time photographer. Maybe one day. Right now I am content to take photos on weekends.

The bulk of my photography has been done in the west, though I have shot some since I have lived in the midwest. It is the west that captures my attention and fascinates me most. I hope, however, to highlight great outdoor photography from all across the world, not just the western US.

I decided to put this blog together to provide resources for the amateur nature and landscape photographer. As a rank amateur, I am always looking for ways to improve my photographic skills and find new places to shoot. My hope is that this blog becomes a place for photographers like to me (I hope somebody else is reading this blog) to find information about neat places to shoot, useful techniques, to see inspiring photos from professionals and other amateurs, and communicate with each other.

Being that I am unschooled in photography, I expect that most of what I present will come from other sources, which I will be careful to cite and link to. Ultimately, I would like this to be a place where an amateur landscape and nature photographer can come to get great information.

A note about the title: most visitors will recognize the darkroom technique of dodging and burning used to lighted or darken certain parts of an image, or will at least know that there are Photoshop tools by those names. I myself have only once used the techniques in a darkroom. They are very useful and widely used in helping to bring the most out of an image. I hope that this blog helps amateaur photographers to capture their very best images and get the most out of their photography.