Advanced editing techniques

Time to touch down on some slightly more advanced editing techniques which as you can see make a huge difference to the original photograph using Adobe Photoshop CS3. I've included the original for you to follow this step by step until you understand the technique - then you can use it on any photo you wish ! The one thing I always do before any other editing is cropping. Cropping is a very personal thing - there is no right or wrong way to crop an image. I've read many books telling you how you MUST crop things, but many times I've disagreed with them - so remember it's your photograph and focus on the image YOU want to make ;) So once you've made the crop you want and you're happy you can do 1 of 2 things. You can resize it now - this will make the editing process run much faster ( depending on the speed of your pc / mac ) or you can leave it full size if you wish to print it out and then resize later for the internet / emails. You can then sharpen the image to bring out extra details by choosing " Sharpen " and " Sharpen edges " Then I used a great little Photoshop plug-in called Bleach Bypass Pro by Red Paw Media and you can grab it FREE here It's great for so many things - I cant recommend it enough ! So now we have that nice harsh, gritty look how to get the colour + black and white seperated ? Well, using the lasso tool, carefully trace around the flower. When done select " Inverse " and " Greyscale " This will make everything outside the flower black and white. Then deselect the flower you traced around so you're editing the entire image again. Finally go to shadows / highlights and add a small amount of highlights ( about 4% )

Then add a border and you're done !

So in smaller steps :

1. Crop the image to the size of your choosing, resize if using for the internet, if not leave it full size.

2. Use the sharpen tool and select " Sharpen " once, then " Sharpen edges " once to bring out extra details.

3. Use " Bleach bypass pro " plugin once on its default setting.

4. Using the lasso tool, trace around the flower then select >> Inverse and then image >> adjustments >> black and white then deselect the flower again.

5. Go to image >> adjustments >> shadows + highlights and set highlights to 4%

6. Add a border and save.

Done !