Last summer I had chance to shoot a few weddings. This is Christina and Joe’s Wedding in Auburn, WA area.

This is my first portfolio posting. Spent a couple of hours tinkering with Photoshop today to put together this canvas. Smart objects were extremely helpful.

I also used lightroom 2.7 to organise, select my images then tweak them in Photoshop CS4. Lghtroom has the Control-E command that loads the selected image straight into photoshop which makes the workflow much faster.

Spent the day looking for and trying out different photoshop CS4 workflow actions..

I highly recommend looking into workflow actions if you’re just starting out with photoshop like I am. It’s a quick way to learn how to leverage photoshop to get some basic and creative effects into your photos.

Here is a screenshot of some of my workflow actions now:

In looking into how to create page layouts in photoshop CS4, I came across the concept of mask layers and smart objects.

Smart objects are imported image files in which if you change the original image file, the changes will be reflected in your imported smart object. It is also really easy to change the smart object to reference a different image file.

Masks layers are transparent layers in which you fill the layer with shapes. On top of the mask layer you have a 2nd layer, for example a photo image. Now the transparent pixels in the mask layer act as a ‘mask’ to the top layer.

For example, in the below image, I have a transparent mask layer that contains 3 rectangles (2 squares, and one middle rectangle), the rest of that layer is transparent. I add 3 layers on top containing the 3 images you see. Each of the 3 images are imported as smart objects, so I can actually ‘right click’ on the image layer and select “replace content..” to change the photos within the 3 frames.

Here’s an online reference that helps explains and walks through how to use clipping masks: Peachpit Misunderstood Photoshop: Clipping Masks

shooting in strong sunlight usually causes a lot of problems like extreme shadows, lens flare and badly exposed images. while it’s safer to shoot in diffused conditions (lots of clouds, start or end of the day), a lot of the real interesting & creative shots happen in harsh lighting conditions like strong sunlight.

below is an image shot at noon in the summer at gas work’s park in Seattle. a lot of the shots worked well, but some, like the one below, were plagued with lens flare issues. even with long lens hoods and careful positioning & consideration of the sun, the sun still found a way to blow out some of our shots.

while it is always definately better to shoot well and minimize post-edit work, i found while playing with some of the 35 Free Essential Workflow Actions for Photoshop by alittlephotoshop.com, we were still able to somewhat salvage some of the badly exposed images.

here are some of the steps i took:

1. 2-pass sharpening (discussed last posting, workflow actions provided)
2. duplicate the layer and use ‘multiply’ layer mode (Workflow action #25)
3. Tweaked image shadows/highlights (images>adjustments>shadows/highlights)
4. Portrait finishing effect discussed a couple of posts ago
5. Cropped to 2/3rds

Generated some workflow actions to perform sharpening on images. These settings were taken from The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby.

These were the following settings:

1. Basic
2. Soft Subjects
3. Portraits
4. Moderate
5. Maximum
6. Luminosity
7. Two-Pass

The last 2 are the highly recommended ones. Both help minimize color artifacts (spots and noise) and halos that you typically start to see with lots of sharpening.

I’ve packaged all 7 sharpening techniques into this workflow actions file.

Here’s an example of using the two-pass sharpening technique, before/afters:

Here’s another example of using two-pass sharpening for an image that had slightly out of focused subjects on the right of the image:

Earlier today, I didn’t understand what Photoshop Workflow Actions were. After a few hours of tinkering, not only am I’m using Workflow Actions, I’ve built a couple of my own, and posted them for download.

I look forward to searching online for other people’s workflow actions to download and try out. I’m sure there are much better workflow actions out there.

Even though the workflow actions I created are mediocre, I think the journey of making my own helped me understand more deeply what workflow actions are and also helped me become a lot more comfortable in the concept and how to use them.

One more trick from The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby is applying a “portrait finishing effect” to images. This makes portraits more soft and make the subject glow.

Breakdown of the Photoshop CS4 steps needed for this effect:

1. Sharpen the image
2. Duplicate the layer
3. Apply Gaussian Blur (20px) to layer (Under filters>blur)
4. Adjust opacity of blurry layer to 20%

Here is a Workflow Action File for this technique.

Here are the before/after results:

Not sure how I feel about this effect. I’ll keep it in my Photoshop action set for the time being.

Another trick from The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby is applying a high-contrast portrait effect to images.

It only takes a couple of steps in Photoshop CS4.

1. Create a duplicate layer
2. Desaturate the bottom layer (Control-Shift-U)
3. Top layer, change the blend mode from Normal to Soft Light (or Overlay)

Created a workflow action for it. Download it here. (.atn Photoshop Action File)

Here is the impact of this effect:

Download my Photoshop CS4 file for this image. (PSD file) (3.9MB)

I’ve heard about Workflow Actions before but never really understood what they were. I know they’re super fundamental in using Photoshop effectively, so I spent some time trying to figure it out.

Here’s my understanding: a “workflow action” is simply a group of photoshop steps that you record which you can replay back over and over.

There are 2 ways to replay back a “workflow action”:

1) Have the workflow action assigned to a shortcut key say F11 or Control-F11. Press that shortcut key when you want the workflow action to execute

2) Open the action panel (F9), go into button mode (click top right corner of action panel, drop down menu, select ‘button mode’), then click on the desired action button

I spent some time playing with 35 Free Essential Workflow Actions for Photoshop by alittlephotoshop.com.

Here is the before and after, when playing with those free workflow actions.

I applied the following workflow actions (in this very order):

Nothing too exciting, but good to learn how workflow actions work. Time to create a few of my own.

I’m currently working through The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book For Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby. There’s a section called “Creating Photo Collages” that I was interested in learning. Not too sure what I’ll use it for though, probably more web design than for my portfolio. Nevertheless, I’ve always been interested in learning how to blend photos together.

After working through the steps in the book, I found a similar online resource that walks through similar steps: Film Strip Photo Collage In Photoshop Tutorial, Part 2.

Here is my final outcome.

Here are the 2 original photos I started with (from Chris & Kerri’s Wedding back in August 2008):

On a side note, I slightly tweaked the 2nd photo. It seemed a little washed out, so I darkened it using Curves (Control-M) in Photoshop CS4 and applied the preset ‘darker’.

Finally, here’s a copy of the Photoshop CS4 file (PSD file) (4.3MB)