Digital Photography Guide

Using the heal brush in Adobe Lightroom

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Many times when taking pictures outside or when travelling we come home to see that there have been dust or other distracting particles on our lenses that gave blemishes on our photos. If you are using Adobe Lightroom this is however an easy fix in Develop mode.

This is a quick guide to how you use the Heal tool in Lightroom and I am using version 4.1 but the tool has been around since at least version 3. If you do not have Lightroom, please read the article on how to get the same result using GIMP!

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Quick tip on f-value and blurred backgrounds

A photograph of a single object is a case where we want to get all the focus in the photo on the object while we want to reduce all other pars so that they do not interfere with our object. This is often done using a blurred background and you see this very often in portrait photography.

When taking a photograph the f-value we set the camera on is often used to blur or not blur the background. It is easy to think that to get that beautiful blurred background we just need to set a small f-value and we’re done. This is however not the entire thruth.

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Jawline in portrait photography (movie)

I came across a movie by Peter Hurley about the importance of jawline in portrait photography. Looking at the examples he provide it is clear how a portrait can change fundamentally with the slightest movement from your model. I highly recommend this move/tutorial for all photographers wondering why their portrait photos just wont look professional. Myself; I learned lots from it!

It’s all about the Jaw from Peter Hurley on Vimeo.

HDR effect using GIMP

The HDR effect has been heavily overused lately but that should not keep it out of your photos. There are a number of photos which can really be strengthen of this effect and one of these are portraits of faces full of details. For this guide I will use a photo of an elderly man I found at Flickr where we will aim to lift the straws of beard but also the texture of his skin to make this photo really pop out.

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Colorize a black and white photo in GIMP

This is a quick tutorial on how to use GIMP for colorizing a black and white photograph. The technique is described in general instead of in detail since each photograph will be unique in its own composition. The photograph I used is of Albert Einstein (and I borrowed the photo from this site) and this is one of my favorite photo of him since there is something beautiful over the playfulness in his smile.

The same technique can be used for Adobe Photoshop or other software as well and the method we are using are similar to what we did earlier when we exchanged a selected color in an image.

Let us begin!

Start off with a black and white photo. The wider spectrum of grey tones and the more dynamic the photo is, the better the end result will be.
Create a new layer
Select the brush tool and with the new layer selected, paint with a warm orange color over all parts of the portrait where you want skin.

Advanced:You can start of by a large brush and go into more details using the eraser afterwards.
When you have painted parts of the photo where there is visible skin, with the selected layer in the Layers toolbox, change the blending type to multiply. Using the transparency of the slider you can adjust the strength of the color.
Do the same for the other parts of the image you want colorized, adding a new layer for each new color. Set each layer to blending type, Multiply when finished.
When all parts have been colorized, right click on any of the layers in the Layers toolbox and select Flatten image.

Advanced:Using Color adjust, you can set the overall color to meet your goal or to tweak the full color range. It can also be used to ting the part of the photo which was not colored into a warmer or colder tone.
Done.