There are times when the image size of your camera just isn't big enough. I know that I've been on beaches that just seem to go on forever, but my camera is limited in that it takes only so much of the scene in. In some cases you can buy a wide angle lens that will see most of the beach, but many cameras don't have that option.

Fortunately, Photoshop offers a solution. If you take a series of photos, Photoshop will stitch them together for you and provide one long photo. This process is automatic and easy. This tutorial will show you how it's done and how to take photos for this reason.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

It's very likely that you have seen a portrait where the subject looks soft and dreamy. It's done to soften the edges (and wrinkles) in a portrait to flatter the subject. 99% of the time the subject is female and you may have noticed old movies also use this effect. The Man will look sharp and chiseled, while the Woman looks soft and vulnerable.

In the day of film this was often achieved with a filter added to the lens which would create a softer halo on the negative. In the digital age, this can be done with Photoshop - and very easily as well. The advantage of doing this digitally is that you can preserve the original image and create another image with any degree of softness you like.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

I'm sure you've seen photos of tall buildings and noticed the walls lean in at the top. This is a common effect that happens when you take photos and although the photo records the perspective, it's not always a desirable look. Photoshop allows you to correct this quite easily. You can also distort the image in other ways and I'll show you the common methods.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

So you have your brand spanking new digital camera that takes great, huge photos - and you can't wait to show them off. So you take a photo of your dog and email to your best friend. The response is lukewarm. Why? Because you sent him a huge 10 meg file that's taking forever to download over his dial-up modem. After putting a stranglehold on his email for 30 minutes, it doesn't matter how great your photo is, your friend is going to block you from sending more.

Sound familiar? Maybe that's an exaggeration, but you need to know how to use images on the web. This tutorial will give you some guidelines on resizing and quality.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

In many cases, you will find that you have a great image, you might have worked on exposure and color and now you want to print an image or post it to the internet. You will find that a lot of times you need to crop the image to fit the standard print sizes or resize the image to fit on a web page - sometimes, you'll do both.

This tutorial will give you some guidelines towards these functions and lead into the next tutorial that deals with internet and email images.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

Long before there was color film, there was black and white. To many, black and white photos are a more pure expression of the art. Black and white photos also hearken back to a time of less complication. Your parents or grandparents probably have a shoe box of old black and white photos.

Digital cameras record in color. Sometimes you might take an image that you feel doesn't need color to show its message, or you want to make it simpler. Photoshop can do that for you. And there are a couple of ways of doing that.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

So far in this level you have learned about exposure and color. In a vast majority of your images, these will be the only corrections you need. If it's not exposed right, the colors won't matter much (and vice-versa). That's my theory, anyway. I'm sure you've realized that there are lots of built in filters in Photoshop for adding 'artistic' effects. I have to say that most of them are overused and clichéd. You can learn those on your own, press a button and get an effect. In this level I want to teach you practical image manipulation methods. If you get bored at any time, just go to the filters an play around - they're fun, but not much use.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

The last tutorial explained some of the basic theory and concepts regarding color. This tutorial will put the theory into practice by showing you how to correct photos using a variety of methods.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

There is a big difference between how your eye sees color and how your camera sees color. Your eye will look at a scene and recognize objects and somehow your brain figures what objects are what color. But if you look at a while sheet of paper, even under colored or artificial light, your brain tells you that the paper is while because that is the color is should be. Your camera will look at the same piece of paper and if your light is slightly yellow (incandescent light), it will record the paper as slightly yellow because it doesn't know what color it should be. What this means is that your camera will not always record the color that you expect or want to have in the final image.
This tutorial will explain the basics of color to help you understand how to make better looking photos.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago

This tutorial will show you how to correct an image that is either too bright or too dark. There are a few ways of doing this in Photoshop, and the method you use will depend on a few things like how much correction is needed, how much time you want to spend and your ability. Try each method and see how you like it. You might find that initially you keep with the simpler methods, but as time goes on you will find a use for each.

submitted: 5 years and 3714 days ago