A lot of people here edit their photos to make them even more beautiful!
How did you guys learn the editing and stuff?
Tutorials? Or you just decided to try everything in Photoshop/Gimp/whatever editing program used ; and learn on your own?
I need some help on the editing and how to learn stuff on Photoshop so I can do the rest on my own (not by following online tutorials)
I hope I am making sense!
Editing is something I play around with, but really don't know what I am doing. I usually look on-line if I want a particular effect, but most of the time I improvise.
The trick I think is to start with a basic editing program, then work your way up to something like photoshop. The whole layer function in photoshop still confuses me.
Usually when I am following an online tutorial it says "Okay now duplicate the layer" , so I'd be like "Okay sure! *duplicates it* Now what the hell is a layer and why did we duplicate it?"
But yeah, thanks!
The first thing to learn about Photoshop is to not try to learn everything. Google is your friend. Every time I feel I want to do something specific to a photo and don't know how to do it, I just Google it. The top few results are usually good enough. If it's something particularly complex then video tutorials can help but I rarely use them. That way you'll only ever learn the stuff you really need. I've also invested in a book dedicated to photo restoration which I dip into from time to time.
My main piece of advice is to clue yourself up on "non destructive editing". This is where layers come in - imagine them like the separate "cells" used in traditional animation. The majority of edits, improvements and changes can be done without adjusting the original picture, so you can always go back and change something. That's the most important first step: learn your layers and apply this method to non-destructive editing.
My biggest tip is never to save over the original. Always save to a new document so you can go back and start again. And save as you go along - I forgot once and did something stupid (I still don't know what) and it all went wrong.
I started by just playing around but recently I took the time to go through the Adobe Camera Raw basics tutorials at Phototuts+ and am really glad I did. I now understand more about what I'm doing and why/when I should do certain adjustments. Phototuts+ is a great resource. They have a bucket load of tutorials on just about anything you can think of.
I only do very basic editing myself. I strongly recommend that you follow Matt's advice. Those tutorials will give you a solid foundation.
Here are a few things that I've learned along the way too:
- shoot in RAW, if possible, as this will give you more control during editing (more image information available)
- save your work in your software's native file format (this preserves all the different edits for modifying later if needed, i.e. layers remain seperate, preserves original image file)
- export your fnal product in a format suitable for your delivery medium (normally JPG, full size for printing, reduced size for web, all layers are merged with the source image during this step, source image and editing file unchanged)
- the choice of software is less important as long as it supports layers, use what you have,become famiar with the tools that you use regularily (Photoshop CSx =$$$, Gimp = free, ArcSoft ver6, PS Elements ,PS Lightroom, and many more) and build on your skills over time (this is not something you will learn overnight)
Thanks a lot guys!
I'll put all those in mind, and thanks for the websites!
Personally , I use www.photoshopessentials.com
Steve Patterson, is so good, and writes everything step by step to make it as easy as possible!
But I will also check out the rest :D
Thankyou!
Just a small note on naming your photos, especially if you're going to be taking a lot like we do here. I've found a "military date" format to suit, e.g.:
20100605.JPG
To number the actual frames, Windows has a simple way of doing this which will keep them in order. Highlight the day's photos, then right-click on the first one and select "Rename". Name it thus:
20100605 (1).JPG
All subsequent photos will be given a consecutive number and kept in order.
When you edit a particular photo and want to create a number of different versions, never overwrite the original. Do all your stuff in your Photoshop PSD file (which is how all editing should be done), then do a "Save As" and name your versions thus:
20100605 (1A).JPG
20100605 (1B).JPG
This method will ensure that any photo organising software keeps the photo variations listed directly after the original. Meanwhile, do as many PSD files as you want in Photoshop if you are unsure about your editing skills. Better to be safe than sorry.
One final note: If you take a lot of photos and then choose the best of them to put in your photo archive it's also a good idea to first backup ALL your camera originals onto a DVD - this is in addition to your main pictures backup when you've done all your renaming and editing. By this I mean backing up whatever comes out of your camera with nothing done to it (not even file renaming). Imagine it like your camera negative. If you did have some kind of disaster, then you'd have these to go back to. But at the same time, your main photo archive would be backed up anyway so if something happened to your "camera negatives" it wouldn't be the end of the world.
I'm too cheap (ok, too broke) to pay t learn Photoshop. So I learn by trial and error, and I look up tutorials on the web and YouTube. There are stacks of them.
I use photoshop cs3 and most of what I've learned has been by playing around and just using every button to figure out what exactly it is that button does. I do, however, like to mess around with tutorials and livejournal has a LOT of awesome tutorials, but these are more so for coloring effects, icons (100x100 images), etc. You can find some good ones there.
I have the book Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual, and I love it. Sometimes I want a hard copy that I can just index and reference really quickly. They have one for Photoshop Elements as well.
practice practice and more practice. I use online tutorials, youtube hase some. Ron Bigalow is very good at explaining things and you can always pause the video until you catch up. I just follow along and make my own notes. Like anything, the more you work at it the more familiar it becomes and the easier it gets. I use photoshop CS4. It was intimidating at first but it is not scary anymore. I find that when you really love what you are doing the learning comes easy :D
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The trick I think is to start with a basic editing program, then work your way up to something like photoshop. The whole layer function in photoshop still confuses me.
But yeah, thanks!
My main piece of advice is to clue yourself up on "non destructive editing". This is where layers come in - imagine them like the separate "cells" used in traditional animation. The majority of edits, improvements and changes can be done without adjusting the original picture, so you can always go back and change something. That's the most important first step: learn your layers and apply this method to non-destructive editing.
Photoshop Layers Explained
Non-Destructive Editing
Here are a few things that I've learned along the way too:
- shoot in RAW, if possible, as this will give you more control during editing (more image information available)
- save your work in your software's native file format (this preserves all the different edits for modifying later if needed, i.e. layers remain seperate, preserves original image file)
- export your fnal product in a format suitable for your delivery medium (normally JPG, full size for printing, reduced size for web, all layers are merged with the source image during this step, source image and editing file unchanged)
- the choice of software is less important as long as it supports layers, use what you have,become famiar with the tools that you use regularily (Photoshop CSx =$$$, Gimp = free, ArcSoft ver6, PS Elements ,PS Lightroom, and many more) and build on your skills over time (this is not something you will learn overnight)
I'll put all those in mind, and thanks for the websites!
Personally , I use www.photoshopessentials.com
Steve Patterson, is so good, and writes everything step by step to make it as easy as possible!
But I will also check out the rest :D
Thankyou!
20100605.JPG
To number the actual frames, Windows has a simple way of doing this which will keep them in order. Highlight the day's photos, then right-click on the first one and select "Rename". Name it thus:
20100605 (1).JPG
All subsequent photos will be given a consecutive number and kept in order.
When you edit a particular photo and want to create a number of different versions, never overwrite the original. Do all your stuff in your Photoshop PSD file (which is how all editing should be done), then do a "Save As" and name your versions thus:
20100605 (1A).JPG
20100605 (1B).JPG
This method will ensure that any photo organising software keeps the photo variations listed directly after the original. Meanwhile, do as many PSD files as you want in Photoshop if you are unsure about your editing skills. Better to be safe than sorry.
One final note: If you take a lot of photos and then choose the best of them to put in your photo archive it's also a good idea to first backup ALL your camera originals onto a DVD - this is in addition to your main pictures backup when you've done all your renaming and editing. By this I mean backing up whatever comes out of your camera with nothing done to it (not even file renaming). Imagine it like your camera negative. If you did have some kind of disaster, then you'd have these to go back to. But at the same time, your main photo archive would be backed up anyway so if something happened to your "camera negatives" it wouldn't be the end of the world.
I'll make sure to put all the tips in mind!
I have the book Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual, and I love it. Sometimes I want a hard copy that I can just index and reference really quickly. They have one for Photoshop Elements as well.