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... a little Photoshop makes all the difference.
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Welcome to WatchPhotoshop.tv
Learning Photoshop is no push-over. It wouldn’t be worth it if it was. But after
five years of teaching Photoshop face-to-face, and now on video, we believe the
resources below will take you further, quicker, on your Photoshop journey than
anything short of personal tuition. We promise it, with a money-back guarantee.
What do I get when I buy the course?
You’ll receive a DVD, posted free of charge anywhere in the world, to the address you provide when completing your transaction.
The DVD contains the Photoshop course outlined below – that’s over 12 hours of step-by-step tutorials on High Definition video.
You can duplicate what you see in the videos with any version of Photoshop Elements (v9 or later) or Photoshop CS (v4 or later).
To start your Photoshop journey just put the DVD into your computer. It contains a web page that’s similar to what you see below.
Open that page, and all the images below become clickable links that start playing the videos on the DVD. The original images
from each tutorial are also there, so you can duplicate exactly what you see in each video tutorial. Follow the course structure if
you wish, from beginner to advanced, or dip into the various techniques as the need arises in your own photography. It’s so easy.
Buy 5 or more DVDs and save!
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To purchase the DVD click the button at right to pay by credit card or Paypal.
If you pay in a currency other than Australian dollars, the price will be shown
in your own currency before you okay the payment. Your DVD ships next day.
Part 1: The course begins with three videos to set you up for your Photoshop journey...
(Run your mouse or cursor over each image to pop-up more information)
How to set up your Photoshop workspace.
Keeping your photos safe and organised.
Photoshop Elements, CS, or Lightroom?
Part 2: Next, you’ll explore the three must-have Photoshop skills you’ll use again and again.
(Run your mouse or cursor over each image to pop-up more information)
Take complete control over light & colour
The selection tools - where the magic begins
Layers & masks make Photoshop what it is.
How to recompose an image after you’ve taken it.
Choosing between portrait and landscape mode.
Using the free transform tool instead of the crop tool.
Using the rectangular marque tool to re-compose a copy of the original.
Part 3: Easy Exercises
#01 - Dispose of your Rubbish
We’ve all taken shots ruined by a lampost, car, rubbish bin - something that
just shouldn’t be there. These stretching exercises will whisk them away.
As soon you become familiar with the skills
taught in the three ‘must-have’ videos in
Part 2, start exploring the step-by-step examples in this section.
Roll your mouse or cursor over the small
images to see which skills each video
teaches. If you get stuck on any technique
just go to the video in Part 2 that covers it.
Remember, you can try these using the
same original images we used when we
were recording the videos. Just go to the
Open command in Photoshop, and then
navigate to the DVD directory that holds
all the original images.
Getting rid of a background and replacing it with another.
How to select a foreground subject with the quick selection tool, a layer and a mask.
How to increase canvas size to improve composition.
How to prepare a background to work well with a new subject.
Using the clone stamp to get rid of a street sign.
#02- The Background Story
Using the brilliant Quick Selection tool. In this example a boring background
is spoiling a great wedding shot. Learn the quickest fix of them all.
How to fix vignetting, and other issues that affect the edges of photos.
The distort tool can pull a problem out of the frame.
A fill layer can blend away unwanted detail in the sky,
Using a large soft brush, colour matched by the eye-dropper tool.
Using the clone stamp to cover blemishes with a sample of nearby detail.
#03 - Polishing Paradise
Crooked horizons, unnatural skies and dark corners often spoil great scenic
shots. Here’s are the techniques every travel photographer needs to know.
#04 - Let’s Get This Straight
Correcting perspective problems that occur shooting buildings or interiors,
especially with wide-angle lenses. Are your walls tiltling? Here’s the cure.
Increase canvas size prior to removing extreme perspective
Use the distort tool to pull building walls up straight and parallel.
Using the clone stamp to remove powerlines.
Using hue saturation to completely change colour detail in an image.
Fixing flash reflections in eyes and polished surfaces.
How to construct a new catchlight in an eye.
How to clone stamp out harsh flash reflections on spectacles.
#05 - Not So Flash
Once-in-a-lifetime shots can be spoiled by ugly flash effects like red eyes, and washed out colours. Here’s Photoshop’s first aid kit for fixing flash injuries
Removing haze from landscapes
Layers, masks and levels practice.
Quick selection tool on landscape elements
How to increase overall contrast to return clarity to a landscape.
How to adjust contrast to ideal levels for different areas in the one image.
#06 - Lifting the Fog
On hazy days your camera can make sparkling landscapes look lifeless and dull.
Learn how to blow the mist away with these simple contrast enhancements.
Preparing images for display once you’ve edited them.
Increasing resolution in the Image Size window
Making a small file produce a good-sized print
Collapsing a very big file to send by email,
Making a photo the best possible size for showing on an HD screen.
#07 - Away with the pixels
Get a handle on image resolution. Then you can always print, email and display
your photos at their very best on your wall, on screen, or via email attachments.
Recomposing an image to fit the rule of thirds
Control highlights and bring detail up out of shadows
Balancing skies in sunsets
Increasing canvas size to allow recomposing
Building new areas with the clone stamp.
#08 - After the Event
Sometimes you realise, too late, you should have framed a shot differently or
adjusted the exposure.Here’s how Photoshop can give you a second chance.
Using the info palate to understand color & black and white
Using hue/saturation to convert to black and white, color by color.
Adjusting contrast with a levels layer, sensitive to previous colours.
Adding a low opacity color layer to add mood to black and white.
#09 - Black, white and everything in between
A smart technique for converting colour photos into dramatic monochromes.
It’s much better than letting your camera do it when you’re taking the shot.
Assess an image to establish its visual strengths and weaknesses
Stretching and reframing an image with the transform tools
Adjusting light to shift attention to and from different elements.
Using brightness/contrast layers to ‘spotlight’ important elements
#10 - When less is more.
One of Photoshop’s great features! It’s so easy to fine-tune the composition
of a photo when you don’t get it right ‘in camera’.
How to recompose and straighten the scene using the distort tool
How to set black point and white point for optimal contrast
Typical levels adjustments for sky, scenery, streets, buildings
Enhancing reflections in water.
Removing unwanted details from a scene.
Part 4: Mainstream Moves
#11 - Sky and Water
The classic Photoshop workflow you can apply to pretty much every landscape
which depicts good sky, clouds and reflections in water. That’s a lot of them!
As your experience grows, you’ll notice a lot
of Photoshop work is about mastering a few
key techniques. It’s the ability to do those
few things really well that produces the
richest rewards. They’re all here in Part Four.
The beauty of all these exercises is that they
are based on ‘real’ photos which have been
taken by enthusiasts just like you. So the
challenge of getting them right is the same
as you‘ll face enhancing your own photos.
You’ll also see the idea of ‘workflow’ begin
to emerge. It’s like driving a car - you do a
lot of stuff in much the same way, whether
you’re going to the supermarket, the beach,
or cross country. You’ll save a lot of time as
your own Photoshop routine develops.
Roll your mouse or cursor over the small
images to see which skills each video
teaches. If you get stuck on any technique
just go to the video in Part 2 that covers it.
How to spot and correct lens distortion on wide angle shots.
Using the Photoshop grid to set horizontal distortion
Using the Photoshop grid to set vertical distortion
Spot perspective corrections with skew tool
Clone stamping out image remnants
#12 - Wide angle blues
At wide angle settings lenses distort the shape of your subject. If you recognise
lens distortion when you see it, it’s easy to get your shots back on the level.
How to replace highlight detail that’s burnt out
How to remove chromatic abberation using hue/saturation
Using solid colour fill to replace small areas of sky
Using the opacity slider to fine tune adjustments
#13 - The sky’s the limit
Trees, buildings, people - anything set against a hot bright sky is a candidate
for chromatic abberation - a purple fringing that spoils so many sunny shots.
More over-exposure problems and unwanted details
Using recomposition to get rid of unwanted edge details.
Using the polygonal lasso tool to stretch areas to cover unwanted details
Fine tuning light and colour to emphasis subject
#14 - Lasso that horse
The fastest selection tool in the west is the polygonal lasso. Here’s how it can
rid any photo of ugly details, and improve its composition at the same time.
Using templates to quickly resize images.
Landscape or portrait?
Setting up a psd file that you can use for each common size.
Applying titles, frames and coloured backgrounds.
Printing borderless
#15 - Working smarter
Templates can save you a lot of repetition and maths when you’re producing
prints in the most common photo sizes. Concentrate on quality not quantities.
Copyright your pictures.
Using the horizontal type tool to create your personal watermark
How to rasterise and select type styles
Placing, resizing, and setting watermark opacity
#16 - Your photos are... your photos.
There are many ways to put your photos on the web, and many ways they
can be borrowed or stolen. A clear mark of ownership is the best defence.
Using Photoshop to polarise and create a depth of field effect
Remove glare with a levels layer
Produce a depth of field effect with the gradient tool
Unlink a mask from its layer to control effect placement.
#17 - Polarising in depth.
Here’s Photoshop’s replacement for that nuisance polarizer in your camera
bag, plus a depth of field effect that’s adaptable to any shooting situation.
How to set page size and resolution for printing
Gathering the images and using the place command to distribute them.
Composing the montage and blending the edges of the images.
Using the quick selection tool to define a picture element
Resizing using the Free Transform tool
#18 - Putting It All Together
When it takes several photos to tell the story, why not combine them into one?
Here’s how to create dramatic montages for your wall, album or scrapbook.
Using eye-dropper and color brush to cover hot spots
Borrowing a sky from another photo
Blending a new sky over the top of the old one.
Using the multiply blending option to make a clean new sky.
#19 - The sky’s the limit.
Burnt out highlights, especially in the foreground and the sky, are ugly and
distracting. A little paint, and a powerful blending mode make a fast fix.
Setting white point and black point on subject
Sketching light source path with polygonal lasso
Using levels layer to create light source
Creating a shadow for the light source
#20 - Little ray of sunshine..
Even if the sun won’t shine while you’re taking that special photo you can
always add a sunbeam or two afterwards.
Removing scratches.
How to correct colour casts and shifts with hue saturation layers
Using transform distort to change original composition
Using the magic wand tool to remove a burnt out sky.
Choosing a new sky to replace a burnt out one.
#21 - Everything Old is New Again
When precious photos and slides are scanned, the results often disappoint.
Learn to restore the colours and details that bring back the memories.
Resizing details in an image to add emphasis without cropping.
How to copy and enlarge specific details, then create a mask
Dealing with continuity issues against original background
Blending expanded details into backgrounds
#22 - Time to upsize.
What if you want the subject of your photo to be larger, but the background
to stay the same? Selective upsizing is all about hiding the evidence.
Overcoming difficult masking challenges with sky and trees.
Using the crop tool to exclude as much of the difficulty as possible.
Extending ‘good’ sky to cover badly over-exposed areas
Using multiply and linear burn to blend sky seamlessly with trees
#23 - What to leave out?
Sometimes the best way to deal with troublesome areas in an image is to try
to get them out of the picture. This masking challenge has a cool solution.
Using the rule of thirds and distort tool to create more powerful compositions
Using Layer Via Copy to isolate important elements for enhancing.
Using the brightness/contrast layer to highlight subjects
Using the layer style Inner Shadow to model sunlight on subjects.
#24 - A bridge too far.
Recomposing this fine shot of an historic bridge has added impact and
applying a Photoshop layer style makes the structure really stand out
Shifting subjects around an image for greater impact.
Using the rectangular marque tool to copy and replace backgrounds
How to create a mask in Photoshop Elements before version 9.
Using the quick selection tool
Navigating around an image with quick zooming and moving.
#25 - Local Colour
Your travel shots are almost-great? Chances are Photoshop can polish the
composition, light and colour, and make them worthy of a place on your wall.
Quick fix for bright scenes that are too contrasty.
How to use a contrast mask to make a negative of an over-exposed image
Using the Overlay blending mode to mix the negative with the image
Finishing the balance with hue/saturation and sharpening.
#26 - Quick smart makeover.
For your ‘everyday’ shots here’s a fast polish and shine that you can do
in a couple of minutes, once you’ve mastered it - and that’s easy too.
Part 5: Get The Picture?
Repairing unattractive flash effects in portraits
Fixing false skin colours with hue/saturation
Using fill layers and opacity to remove shiny hot spots from the skin
#27 - Photoshop’s skin clinic
You can make a real difference, and make friends as well, when you repair
the damage that in-camera flash inflicts on people pictures.
These exercises all make an important point
about Photoshop and your own photography.
As your editing skills grow, the things you can
do with photos AFTER they’re taken, begins to
influence how you think about them BEFORE
they’re taken.
You ‘ll see how an ‘impossible’ shot can still be
taken in ways that allow Photoshop to remedy
most of the problems afterwards.
Distracting objects, messy backgrounds, dull
light, bleached skies - all kinds of issues that
ruin otherwise good shots - can be resolved
with the advanced techniques sampled here.
Roll your mouse or cursor over the small
images to see which skills each video
teaches. If you get stuck on any technique
just go to the video in Part 2 that covers it.
Choosing between the quick selection and magic wand tools
Using the elliptical marque tool to choose circular elements and shapes
Dramatic lighting effects with levels and colour layers.
Layer order effects and adjustments
Using blur effects to represent speed
#28 - You Can’t Be Serious!
Take the time to have some fun with your images. Explore new techniques and
effects. You’ll find they can be really benefit your more ‘serious’ Photoshop work.
Recomposing a macro image.
Using a grid to apply the rule of thirds to an image.
Changing brightness and color to de-emphasise picture elements
Using blur filters to soften unwanted detail.
Intentional vignetting to highlight central content.
#29 - It’s a small world
Macro photography is fascinating, but that high magnification also dramatically
emphasises anything that’s wrong with the picture. Photoshop to the rescue!
Using the quick selection tool to define what can be saved.
Using the refine edge settings to blend and feather subjects into new backgrounds
Using the transform scale tool to move and re-compose subjects.
Using a levels layer to remove a colour cast using complementary colours.
Using the clone stamp to ‘grow’ a small segment of background to fit a bigger space.
#30 - Extreme makeover
When your worst shots, happen to contain your favourite memories, you need a
radical Photoshop fix. This one’s a great Selection/Transform tool workout as well.
When to choose black and white conversion
Using a high-key levels layer for dramatic light
Using the hue/saturation lightness slider to set grey levels
How to apply a sepia colour cast and a vignette
Using high unsharp mask settings to get a gritty atmospheric texture
#31 - The old fashioned look
Nothing is quite as evocative as a high-key black and white picture. And if it starts out in colour, you have a world of choices during the conversion.
Matching light direction quality and colour between source and destination
Pasteing and resizing new background over the model subject
Shifting new elements for the best composition.
Brush techniques to mask subject and blend into background.
#32 - Background briefing.
When a background’s gotta go, it’s gotta go, but to find and fit a convincing replacement you need to make the right choices, in the right order. Like this.
When not to choose the clone stamp and patch tool.
Using a layer by copy to isolate work area.
Expanding layer by copy to create full blemish coverage
Masking and moving the new layer to match ideal coverage
Final perfect skin match with levels layer.
#33 - Hair today - gone tomorrow..
You’d better have your Photoshop savvy turned up high if you’re going to
start messing around with a face - it’s a very touchy subject.
Cutting outlines to transpose subject to new environment
Working around random, unclear edges
Choosing new backgrounds that suit subjects
Using the distort tool to suggest movement
#34 - Lateral thinking.
Saving a good shot - that’s got some hard-to-fix flaws, is often a matter of
thinking outside the square - and imagining a whole new picture.
Using a low opacity mask brush to create new light sources
Using a strong saturation layer to mimic bright street lights
Adding a creative frame around images to give context
Putting text blocks on a picture using the text tool.
Colouring and stretching type fonts for special effects.
#35 - Day for night.
This image began life as dreary shot taken on a dull day. With some masking
magic we time-shift to midnight when the lights burn bright in this city alley.
Part 6: The Cutting Edge
Most photographs are still taken
using the compressed data format
known as JPEG. If your photos are
still JPEG’s you’re settling for second best. Change to Camera Raw to give
your photos ever chance to shine.
If you want to take your photos for
a walk on the wild side, this video
will give you a whole bunch of new
ideas and proven techniques used
by graphic artists, poster designers,
scrapbookers and montage gurus!
A complete workflow! Starting with
camera settings, this tutorial shows
you how to choose every move you
make as you create an image. It also
explains High Dynamic Range which
captures scenes just as we see them.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us... enquiries@watchphotoshop.tv