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This simple technique turns Content Aware Fill into a very powerful tool

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Content Aware Fill is one of those features of Photoshop that many users love to hate. So much so that quite a few of us have called it Content Aware Fail since it was first introduced in CS5. Personally, I’ve only found it to be really all that useful for extending clear blue skies, and even there it occasionally wants to put a branch or a building flying in the middle of nowhere.

This video from the Jesús Ramirez Photoshop Training Channel, though, shows me something I never knew about Content Aware Fill. That it respects layer masks. Something which turns it into a much more reliable and useful tool. This method makes it very easy to use Content Aware Fill where you previously might not have even tried.

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Quick tip: How to make sure you didn’t miss a single dust spot in your photo

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No matter how hard you try, your sensor will eventually get a few specks of dust. Now, you have two options: clean the sensor, or clean the photos by removing the dust spots in post-processing. If you prefer the second method, this short video by Benjamin Warde will show you how to make sure you haven’t missed a single part of the photo.

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This is why you should post-process your photography

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I took the best photo of my life today. I came down from the mountain and loaded it up on my computer. When I brought the photos up on my screen, they were just trees. Bummer. But it felt so good; looked so good on my camera’s LCD. What’s the deal with that?

This is why processing is the key to a great image. This is why revision is the key to great writing. Polish your gemstones. A great thought, a great idea, a great RAW is only just the beginning of something better. It is a seed. Without nurturing and pruning, it really is nothing special.

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Loupedeck puts Lightroom controls right at your fingertips

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Control decks have only just recently started to become popular with photographers. They’ve been an integral part of video editing & colour workflows for years, though. Now that the lines between stills and video cameras are a little blurred, the reach of these useful devices has expanded. Other devices like the Palette Gear, and BrushKnob have started to pave the way. But now, we have a more complete desktop controller for talking to Lightroom.

The Loupedeck allows you to quickly and easily access many of Lightroom’s most used tools without having to hunt through dialogues or scroll down lists of options. The control console is aimed amateur and professional photographers who want to work efficiently. Anybody who’s ever come home from a wedding or vacation with a couple of thousand images to sift through is going to understand the benefits of such a device.

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PortraitPro Body now lets you change your subject’s entire body

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This is one of those announcements that’s going to split the photography world in two. Some will be over the moon that such a tool exists. Others will be infuriated that yet another piece of software is taking the skill away from photography & retouching. A few will also not care one way or the other.

Regardless of your position, PortraitPro Body from Anthropics Technology is here. Described as “the Industry’s first dedicated full body retouching software”, it’s designed to speed up workflow. It also works for both male and female subjects.

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Use Lightroom’s Virtual Copies to save storage space

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We’ve all had a situation where we think we’ve created the perfect image, but we want to try something. Perhaps it’s to test an idea, sometimes it’s just to see how it looks or play with a preset. Whatever the reason, the last thing we want to do is undo all the work that came before it.

“Undo” is great, but it’s easy to forget exactly where you were, especially with small changes. Making your own presets is also an option. Then you can easily revert to it after you’ve messed around with it. Virtual Copies are a much easier solution, and in this video from Phlearn, Aaron Nace shows you exactly how they work and how to use them.

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How to make a plane fly in Photoshop

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David Stoddart is a photographer and post-processing obsessive from Suffolk. He travels the Uk creating composites from his adventures, and has recently been creating a series based on planes from the world wars. Here David takes us through one of his composites.

This is one of my favourite Photoshop composites, mostly because the subject matter of the Avro Lancaster is close to my heart and also as it was quite a simple project with most of my concentration going into the lighting and shadows and not too many layers for once.

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Before and after: hard light, and overwhelming tones

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Ever since the middle of high school, I’ve been immensely interested in “the process.” You know, that middle bit between point A and point B that nobody but the artist ever sees. I’ve always loved peeking behind the scenes to see where something started and what kind of work and thought went into creating the finished product. To satisfy those of you who are like me, here’s another post in my Before/After series which not only shows you my images straight out of camera and the final product (hover over the image to see the before), but which uses each image to explain a bit more about what I do in post. If you’re just here for the freebies, enjoy the article! If you want to dig in way further, I cover every step of my post processing in my Editing + Consistency class. Enjoy, friends!

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The BrushKnob USB dial wants to help you speed up your Photoshop workflow

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External dials and gizmos have been common in the movie industry for years.  Their sole purpose in live is to help speed up workflow and productivity, assisting with things like editing and colour grading.  Now, they’re starting to become more popular for the regular desktop and stills editing with Photoshop.

BrushKnob, developed by Japanese concept artist, Wataru Kami, is a very inexpensive attempt to bring this kind of capability to the masses, releasing the entire project as OpenSource; circuit, code & all.

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Using white balance for setting the mood in a photo

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White balance, something we’re all familiar with these days. Be it setting it to a preset on the camera, dialing it in by eye or perhaps even going as far as to using a colour checker passport / grey card to nail it in camera. It seems that most of the time, a lot of people are either using white balance to “start from an accurate base” so that any tweaks they do in post or Lightroom etc start from “0” so to speak, or, they just leave it on auto.

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