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How to blend two landscape photographs together in Photoshop

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Part of the joy of landscape photography for me is standing around and waiting for the light to change. You put your camera on its tripod, compose a shot and wait, taking photos every few minutes, whenever the sky or light or whatever looks interesting.

I caught the tail end of a storm in Santorini, Greece, with heavy clouds blowing over right at sunset. An hour or so later and it was blue hour, with streetlights and buildings lit up. Both photos are below, after being edited in Lightroom using the Lightroom Develop System.

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8-bit vs 16-bit images – does it really make a difference what you work in?

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It’s an argument that’s been around for as long as digital photography. Should I edit in 8-bit or 16-bit mode? What are the benefits of one over the other and does it really make any difference at all? In this pretty in-depth video, StyleMyPic walks us through what it means and busts two of the most common myths surrounding bit depth.

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Watch this gimbal starter guide to get you shooting cinematic video quickly

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Gimbals can be wonderful filmmaking tools, and they’re ideal for adding interesting movement to your shot with the minimum of fuss. But they’re not always easy to get to grips with instantly. To get the best out of them, you need to practice and experiment. If you’re very new, though, just searching on YouTube for gimbal tutorials can get overwhelming. Many of them cover advanced techniques without really showing you the basics.

In this video, Jason Vong goes through some gimbal basics to get you shooting cinematic footage as quickly as possible. And he not only talks about the techniques he uses but also his lens choice to get the most impact.

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How to balance your strobes with ambient light on location

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Many users of flash feel quite comfortable with it in the studio. The studio makes things fairly straightforward. You expose to eliminate all the ambient light and then you add it back where you want it with your strobes or speedlights. But when many newer flash users struggle when they get out on location, where you can’t or don’t want to completely kill the ambient light, but need to add flash.

In this video, Jay P Morgan at The Slanted Lens looks at how to mix strobes with the ambient light and how to balance them outdoors to achieve a good exposure.

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Why shutter angle is way better than shutter speed when shooting video

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Although “shutter angle” is mostly a digital concept these days rather than a physical thing, it’s the term that determines how the camera calculates your shutter speed when shooting video. It’s a foreign concept to many photographers, though, especially if they haven’t used cameras which utilise it. This video from DPReview explains why it’s the best way to control your shutter when shooting video.

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5 easy shot transitions you can make using a gimbal

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Gimbals are fantastic tools for filmmakers. Personally, I’m quite partial to Zhiyun, having a Smooth C, Crane 2 and Crane 3 LAB at my disposal. In this video from Mango Street, we see five shot transitions that you can only really get easily if using a gimbal. They’re using the DJI Ronin-S in the video, but you can apply these transitions to just about any gimbal these days.

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Here are six different ways you can shoot a timelapse

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Timelapses aren’t always as fun to make as they are to watch. The shooting process involves a lot of sitting down and just waiting for it to be done. But the results usually make it well worth it. But how many different ways can we actually shoot timelapse? This video from Rob Nelson at Science Filmmaking Tips we look at six different ways we can shoot timelapse from the super basic to more advanced setups.

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How to shoot smooth timelapse of fast moving subjects during the day

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Timelapses are a lot of fun to shoot. I don’t shoot them anywhere near as often as I would like, but I try to shoot them as often as I possibly can. Shooting them in daylight, though, can present some challenges, especially if you have fast-moving subjects like people or vehicles. Yes, when it comes to timelapse, people are fast moving subjects.

It often results in very jerky motion with one frame looking drastically different from the last, losing that flow of motion we like to see in a timelapse. There is a way to solve the problem. Two, actually. And in the above video from Fenchel & Janisch, Moritz Janisch walks us through both of them.

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How to stack Milky Way shots and composite them with your own custom foreground

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Sometimes, the scene before you that you want to shoot just doesn’t line up with the sky that you want. Maybe it’s cloudy every night or perhaps the Milky Way just rises and falls on the wrong part of the sky. But what you can you do about it? Well, after watching this video from astrophotographer Milky Way Mike, you’ll be able to shoot and composite your scene exactly the way you want it.

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Five tips to get perfect selections and cutouts in Photoshop

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Making selections and cutting out is probably the most common use for Photoshop. It’s used on countless product shoots, not to mention compositing. And it’s something that almost all of us need to do at some point during our photography journey.

Selections can be tricky, though, especially if you’ve not used them before. And even sometimes if you have used them before, given how often Adobe seems to change how they work. But here’s Colin Smith from photoshopCAFE to show you five tricks to help get perfect selections in Photoshop.
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