How to remove a tattoo in Photoshop

In real life, it's not an easy feat. But with what I've learned from the guys from Phlearn.com, it's relatively easy to remove a tattoo using Photoshop!

Check out this clip: 

It shows you how to a remove a tattoo. This video shows you how to work with the

• Spot Healing brush tool (J)
• Using the brush tool and sample a color
• Add skin texture
• Working with layers and layer masks
• Overlay blending mode in combination with a 50% Grey fill

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picture from Pixabay.com

How to create a Jigsaw Puzzle Effect in Photoshop

You probably know by now that I love learning about Photoshop from other photographers. What's better than to learn from the experts themselves? There's so many great tutorials out there on the web and I try to select interesting ones to share them with you. 

Today I watched this clip and learned some new things.  

And ofcourse I had to give it a go myself! I find the trickiest part is to use the pentool. More on that in this clip from Phlearn

Here is our puzzle from Amsterdam

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picture from Amsterdam by pixabay.com

How to use the pen tool

One of the things I often do in Photoshop is making selections.  

There are so many way to make selections in Photoshop. But the most accurate one is done by using the pen tool. It looks very difficult but with some practice believe me it's not that hard. This clip by the Phlearn guys is great and shows you how to use the pen tool.

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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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A quickie! How to whiten teeth in Photoshop

Let me give you a really easy and super fast way to whiten teeth in Photoshop. 

1. Open the image (picture from Pixabay)
                                         
2. Drag a line around the teeth with the Lasso tool
   
3. Hit Cmd or CTRL U
4. Choose the yellow Channel
   
5. Decrease the saturation and increase the Lightness
   

Voila! Here's a creature with teeth that are very much whiter than in the image we started with. It's fast and easy. There are ofcourse loads more ways to do the job, but you have to keep in mind to keep it natural. Well, having said that: that's the way I like it. 

Here's a really cool Plearn video with another - more advanced - technique. 

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Basics: what's stopping you?

Do you sometimes feel like you just don't have any inspiration? Or how to create that powerful image? Or just have the simple question, where are the hotspots in town ?

Thank goodness for the net! 

So you're suffering from a lack of inspiration. Check out Flickr or 500px to see loads of great pictures that can inspire you. Let the colours and compositions draw you to new ideas. What also works for me is to just go to town. Any town'll do. Take a walk and look around you. With you head filled with inspirational ideas from checking out Flickr and 500px, you might just see your surroundings in a whole new light. 
It can also be a good idea to go out and shoot with a prime lens. Take just this one lens and go out to shoot an entire day. Forcing you to be creative, to find new ways to properly capture what you see. This video of Marc Wallace gives some more insight. 
And ofcourse, it's always a good idea to check out what other photographers are doing. Photographers you follow on social media are easy to check out. I'm a fan of the work (and workflow) of Serge Ramelli. It always works for me to check out his latest tutorials and publications to give my inspiration a boost. 

When going on the net, it happens to me quite regularly that I see a picture and wonder how did they do that? 
There's ofcourse several answers to that question. One way is to look on Youtube. If you want to know how for example digital blending works, just type in digital blending and you'll get a zillion hits. 
Guys like Serge Ramelli and Aaron Nace publish heaps of free tutorials. If you're really into their stuff, there's also great paid tutorials available. 

An other way is to look into the EXIF data of a picture. In the EXIF data you can find things like exposure, aperture and ISO (and a lot more). This can help you a lot to understand how to make a (simular) image. On Flickr you can see the EXIF data of a lot of pictures.

This EXIF data can help you when going out there to shoot yourself. 

So, now you've got the inspiration flowing, you know how to create that really cool image and you're off to a city. What is the best spot in town to make your great images? 

A very good site with a lot of high quality images is 500px. Let's say you're off to Amsterdam and you have no clue about the hotspots.

Other way is to visit the map of 500px. Just find your town and zoom in and you get images and their location.

So don't let anything stop you to pick up your camera and shoot. Have fun out there, go shoot some great pictures! 

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Basics: the colour wheel

It probably comes as no surprise that colours give your picture more impact. The tricky part is: how to use colours? 

So, speaking of colours: there are three categories:  

Primary colours: red, yellow and blue
Secondary colours: green, orange and purple
Tertiary colours: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green & yellow-green

One way to give your pictures more colour depth, is to use the colour wheel. A colour circle - based on red, yellow and blue - is traditional in the field of art. Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colours in 1666. The idea behind the colour wheel is that complemantary colours give a strong image by using both warm and cold colours. 

Complementary colors are opposite each other on the colour wheel. So for example you can use red and green or blue and orange. By using those opposite colours you add more depth to you photo. 

There is a great blog which explains the use of colours in the foreground and background of your photo. You can also watch this video on Youtube from Serge Ramelli. He postprocessed a great sunset image using the technique of colours to add depth to his picture.

Another way to add colour to your image, is to use colours in the same range. If this aroused your interested, make sure to check out this cool guy: Aaron Nace from Phlearn. He has a really quick and interesting explanation on the use of the colour wheel in this video. More interesting stuff can be found on his site. 

Now go out there and be colourfull!