If you’re new to photography, there can be many concepts that still seem overwhelming and confusing. In this video, Aaron Nace of Phlearn explains the basics of aperture to help you grasp the concept and see what the change of aperture does for your shots. But the fun part is: he uses Star Wars Lego (and even Master Yoda’s voice occasionally) to guide you through the theory. I think that it hardly gets more amusing than that.
This is the best way to sharpen your images in Photoshop
No matter what gear you use, sharpening is just a fact of life. Even if you’re using a super sharp Sigma Foveon sensor, or a Phase One Achromatic back, all digital images can benefit from a little sharpening assistance.
Photoshop and other applications offer a million different ways to sharpen your images. Some are more effective than others. And a few are quite versatile, while others are a little more rigid. This tutorial from Phlearn shows the method I’ve been using to sharpen 95% of my images for the better part of the last decade. The High Pass Filter.
How to create quick and easy cinematic colour grades in Photoshop in 2 minutes
There are a million ways to create cinematic looking colour grades, but this has to be the quickest I’ve seen. All it requires is a single colour adjustment layer set to exclusion blend mode. In this two minute video from Phlearn, we see just how quick and easy it is to do.
New to Pen Tool? This tutorial will help you master it in under 8 minutes
The Pen Tool allows you to cut out anything in Photoshop, and it’s especially useful with objects that have hard edges. However, many photographers find it difficult to master. Aaron Nace of Phlearn guides you through this great tool in this video tutorial. If you haven’t mastered the Pen Tool yet, this video will help you learn and improve in less than eight minutes.
Photoshop quick tip: how to brighten portraits and preserve skin tones in two minutes
When you shoot some underexposed photos, brightening them up is usually not too much of a problem. However, making portraits brighter can result in desaturated, unnatural skin tone. In this quick tutorial, Aaron Nace of PHLEARN shows you how to brighten up a portrait and keep the skin tones saturated and natural-looking. And you can do it all in only two minutes.
How to easily create fuller eyebrows in Photoshop
The ‘90s are way behind us and thank god, so are the ‘90s super-thin eyebrows. For the past couple of years, full and well-shaped eyebrows are a beauty trend, and Aaron Nace from Phlearn will teach you how to make them look just like that in Photoshop.
How to add freckles to any model in Photoshop
Freckles are beautiful, but not all of us are lucky to have them. So, we can sometimes cheat a little bit. If you want to add freckles to your model’s face, you can use make-up, of course. But if you’d rather add them after the shoot, Aaron Nace from Phlearn will show you how. In this simple tutorial, he’ll teach you how to create custom brushes and turn them into natural-looking freckles in a couple of minutes.
7 ways to improve your portraits with a reflector and white foamcore
5-in-1 reflector is a super-handy tool for both bounding and diffusing the light. Arron Nace from Phlearn shows you seven different setups you can create using a single light, with the addition of a reflector or even simple foamcore. Both the reflector and the foamcore are pretty cheap, yet they are versatile and can help you create a whole lot of lighting setups. Check out some of Arron’s suggestions for using them for portrait photography, both in the studio and outside in the sunlight.
This is how you photograph an invisible man
The story of The Invisible Man has fascinated people for more than a century. It’s been a common inspiration for movies, TV shows, and even photographs over the years. Getting the effect in-camera, though, is often extremely tricky, if not impossible to do. So, we have to resort to Photoshop.
I’ve seen a number of techniques on the Invisible Man thing for Photoshop over the years. But this one from Phlearn has, by far, the most amount of thought put into it of any I’ve seen before. Aaron Nace covers the entire process from planning and shooting the images to compositing and editing them in post to create the final piece.
How to add a coloured background to your portraits in Photoshop
Adding coloured backgrounds to portraits is often done in camera at the time of shooting. It’s a quick and easy process that can be done either with the use of gels on your flashes, or by using a coloured backdrop. Sometimes, though, you’re shooting for a client, you don’t know what colour they ultimately want. Or, perhaps it’s for yourself, but you haven’t decided what colour you want the background to be.
In this Photoshop tutorial from Phlearn, Aaron Nace shows us how we can quickly go from a simple grey or white background, to any colour background we want. Aaron shows us some of the finer points of masking around hair to get a clean mask, and then giving the background a more natural feel with a vignette.
