Step #1 - Start the job - Develop the Raw file in Lightroom In order to write about a portrait processing session, you first need a good portrait photo, so I asked my friend and colleague Julia Kuzmenko (www.juliakuzmenko.com) to send me one of her excellent portraits and gladly, she agreed. This photo was taken in very warm lighting conditions, so I decided to cool it. 

This is the fourth (and last) in a series of articles and accompanying videos that detail my approach to fine art nude photography. In this installment I will show you why I don't use a light meter when shooting fine art nudes. I will talk about the "value of gray" and why you should ALWAYS shoot RAW when doing this type of work. Special emphasis will be given to the techniques that you see in the images displayed here as well as on my web site www.JoeEdelman.com

CEO and Co-Founder of PSKiss.com Tal Ninio shares some insight on DNG Camera Profiles and how to use Cross Camera and Creative profiles to bring out the most in your images.

Shooting architecture is always a challenge. The beauty of architecture photography is that there is a lot variety in styles and types, shapes and sizes of buildings (especially if you get to travel around the world).

HDR or High Dynamic Range photography is all the rage these days. HDR Photography enables the creation of images that render every detail of a scene by combining multiple exposures into a single image. When you do this you can create something that looks accurate to your eyes, enhanced to super-realism or something fanciful and artistic. Here's an example of three exposures combined to create the final scene.

For this article, I thought I'd share a simple tip that addresses a common problem. I always enjoy reading about shortcuts and tips like these, and this is a tip that I've been demonstrating in my workshops for years. This tip covers an effective way to make more precise crops and square or rectangular selections. This tip will work in Photoshop CS2, CS3, CS4 and CS5 (possibly Photoshop 7 and CS as well). Photoshop Lightroom 2 and 3 also have a similar workaround, which I will cover in a future tip.

When looking up at the sky on a clear night, sometimes we are able to get a sense of just how vast the universe really is. If you are fortunate enough to be far away from a city then you will be dazzled with billions upon billions of these tiny reflecting gas giants. As a photographer, one can't help but get excited at the notion of how much beauty one can find in a night sky, however most people feel daunted when it comes trying to capture a starry night. With a simple search on Flickr you can find hundreds of thousands of photos of the night sky.  Every once in a while you will come across an image that was executed so perfectly, that you almost feel as if you were there. You might ask yourself, how did they do that? How do they compose that image in the dark? Where would I set my focus on? How do you light up a tent correctly during a long exposure? Lets see if we can answer a few of these questions...

We've had quite the journey thus far. By now, you have rocked it out in the field and captured some fantastic brackets. You've also nailed down your image management process, ensuring that you know exactly which images you will be tone-mapping. This leaves us with our final phase. The last stop. I admit it's bold to say that every digital image you take will see some sort of technical refinement but it's the truth. Barring strict photojournalistic ethics, just about every image you share, in one way or another, will be refined to taste.

When I made the jump to digital I happily gave up my darkroom as well.  It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it – I really did – but Photoshop easily took the place of stinky chemistry and orange safelight.  Being able to make minor changes in real time and without test prints was a miracle in itself. After the novelty wore off, I began to miss some of the things I used to routinely do in the darkroom.  Manipulating contrast and grain through processing tricks to create stellar black and white prints was just one of them.  In time I figured out how to recreate many of my favorite film/developer combinations in Photoshop but, frankly, it was a bit tedious.  I know that sounds silly, given the immediacy of digital manipulation, but it took time to get just the right Channel Mixer combination as well as a perfect grain structure.

So, you finished reading ‘HDR Best Practices Guide - Part I: In The Field’, and went out for a shoot.  You had all of your wits and your gear about you when you set up your tripod and fired off those lovely brackets.  You’ve got the raw materials (fine, pun partially intended) and now it’s time to refine them into something truly beautiful.

By Andrew Darlow With the recent release of Adobe Photoshop CS5 I thought I'd offer a tip illustrating how one of the application's newest and most touted features (Content Aware-Fill) can help photographers in a few specific ways.

One of the most common questions that I get asked by readers is how does While Balance and Color Profiling play into my HDR work flow.  I think it is an extremely valid question to ask and it is critical that you address in your own work flows.  Unfortunately, I don't think that many people consider this when shooting brackets.