Another cool feature in the latest version of Photoshop CC, customize your toolbar

The latest version of Photoshop offers the possibility to customize your toolbar. Pretty cool if you ask me and it's easy to do: 

How to go about it: 

Go to Edit > Toolbar

Or click on the 3 dots in the toolbar:

  
A popup screen appears:

This is where you can customize the toolbar just the way you like it. Tools you never use can be hidden by dragging them to the right. 

And if you'd like to start all over again: you can always restore the default settings.

It's a nice feature that can help you to use the toolbar in Photoshop.

But I think the best and quickest way to use the toolbar is using and knowing your keyboard shortcuts. So if you want a brush hit the B on your keyboard of hit the E tool if you want to erase something.

Here is a handy picture from Phlearn with the shortcuts

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Tutorial: making a splash

There's so much to discover in the world of photography! I love to try something new every once in a while. Today I tried my hand at splash photography. To get an idea of what I mean with splash photography, do watch this clip from Gavin Hoey.

Time to get started. What do I need? A white background and a white subsurface. I used a small table and put it in front of a white door, using white cardboard as underground. I put one speedlight to the side. And for the splashy bit of the picture, I filled a wine glass with some red lemonade. Voila! 

After the set-up was done, I grabbed my camera to start the shoot. First I focused on the glass and then I switched my lens to manual. I wasn't really satisfied with the first couple of pics I took: the background was a bit grey-ish, not nearly as white as I imaged it would come out. So I cranked up the power of the flash. 

And this was the outcome, not too bad for a first timer at splash photography! 

These are the basics:

1. Put your camera on a tripod
2. Focus on your subject with F8 or more
3. Switch to Manual focus
4. Switch on your flash on 1/8 power (as a starting point)
5. Set your camera around 1/200 and ISO 200 (as a starting point)
6. Take a shot and check if you like the lighting. If the background needs brightening, put more light on it with your speedlight. 
7. Drop and shoot a lot to have a range of pictures. I prefer to work with a remote control. 
8. Import the pictures into Lightroom and edit the best one(s)
9. Start cleaning up the mess you left behind at the scene of your shoot..... 

And with photoshop/ Lightroom it's very easy to change the colors

There are loads of possibilities with this kind of photography. We'll be doing some more experimenting with this in the next couple of weeks to improve our technique. I for one prefer the background to be even more white. And it sounds like fun to experiment for example with milk and fruit and white subsurface and dye. In other words, did you like this post? Make sure to check back in a couple of weeks (at least) to read some more about splash photography! 

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