Tutorial 26, Chapter 2 - Bethany

In this chapter we start by using Nik Color Efex Pro for skin softening and then back to Lightroom briefly for cropping and rotation. Finally we get into Nik Silver Efex Pro to start the black and white high key portrait conversion. We begin with presets that get us quite a long way towards where we want to go.

Tutorial 26, Chapter 2 - Bethany

Tutorial 26, Chapter 1 - Bethany

In this tutorial we'll take a nicely lit studio portrait and turn it into a dreamy high key image fit for a magazine cover. We'll start off using Lightroom 4 in this first chapter to fix some levels and colour issues and produce a rather nice colour version of the picture. Then in chapters 2 and 3 we'll use Nik Silver Efex to turn that into a bright, clean high key black and white image.

This tutorial was recorded in 2012 but not released until 2013. When it was recorded Lightroom 4 was still pretty new and Google hadn't bought Nik Software yet.

Tutorial 26, Chapter 1 - Bethany

Photoshop Alternatives - Corel promise to keep offering boxed copies

Adobe recently announced that the only way to buy Creative Suite products like Photoshop from now on will be through their Creative Cloud. In the wake of that announcement I've heard nothing but criticism from Photoshop users with a great many looking for viable alternatives. Corel must have heard them too because they're very wisely offering CS users special pricing on the Corel suite of creative products which include Corel Draw and Paintshop Pro. In their press release Corel promised that they would continue to offer both subscriptions and perpetual license "boxed copy" style purchasing options.

“We strongly believe that users should be able to choose how they would like to purchase their software,” said Nick Davies, EVP & GM Graphics, Digital Media & Productivity Software at Corel

So if you're one of the many upset Photoshop users looking for a product to switch to you might be wondering how Paintshop Pro holds up? I'm happy to report that it's a pretty smooth switch over. Paintshop Pro emulates much of the way Photoshop works with layers and most of the keyboard shortcuts are the same. Best of all Paintshop Pro has 16-bit per channel colour support so there's no need to compromise the quality of your images like you would with Photoshop Elements. 

I'd say Paintshop Pro is well worth a look. Check out their page for CS users looking to switch. You can see the prices and download a free trial there. Paintshop Pro is Windows only. 

Tutorial 14 re-released

I've been steadily moving my old shows over to YouTube. It makes sense to put the content where the viewers are. But in the process I realised that there's a lot of stuff in those shows that was timely when it was released but much less interesting now. So the new versions of the old shows will, from now on, be stripped down to just the important bit - the tutorial. I'm also increasing the video quality everywhere I can and uploading 1080p versions where possible. As always these videos will remain free and you'll be able to download them if you wish.

So in that vein I've re-released Tutorial 14 in improved quality and stripped down to just the meat of the shows. It was a long one - 8 chapters but there's a TON of good photoshop tips in there and darn near all of it is still relevant to CS6 today.  So go and check it out. Here's links to the YouTube pages or you can find Tutorial 14 in the Video Tutorials section of the site here.

• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 1 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 2 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 3 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 4 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 5 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 6 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 7 - Ophelia's Mother
• PhotoWalkthrough Tutorial 14, Chapter 8 - Ophelia's Mother

Tutorial 25 - Marillion Concert Panorama

I this single chapter tutorial I'll show you how to manually stitch a panorama using Photoshop CS6 and select which parts of each image you want to appear in the final result. This is also a pretty impressive demo of what Photoshop can do. We stitch 4 hand-held photographs taken with the camera held above my head at a concert. Nearly everything moved between each shot but Photoshop still manages to stitch them. 

Tutorial 25 - Marillion Concert Panorama