One of the most popular ways photographers are using these lenses is to make a scene appear as if it’s a miniature model. This is done by photographing a scene from above in a typical angle one would view a toy scene. These lenses are expensive and take time to learn, but you can do a pretty good job faking the effect by simply using Photoshop and an easy trick that only takes minutes.

First open an image that you’ve taken from a higher altitude. You want it to appear as if you are looking down on the scene. Here I’m using a photo I took last year at Lake Como in Northern Italy. It helps for the image to have something of interest taking up a small location that will be in focus. I’m going to want the town circle close to the lake, where there’s greater dimension to the buildings to be where I want the effect to take place.

Start by pressing the “q” button to enter Quick Mask Mode. Then press the letter “g” to use the gradient.

In the Gradient Options in the upper-left make sure you are using a Reflected Gradient as seen here:

Now hold down shift and starting from where you want the center of your focused area, draw a straight line vertically as far as you want the focused gradient to go from your center. Remember that too much area in focus will lessen the effect while too little won’t be as interesting, so it will be a good idea to play around with this technique. When see how easy it is, you’ll have no problem experimenting. As you can see here, half of my gradient is from the base of the green tree in front of the tower to just below the white villa on the hill. Remember your line only makes up half of the gradient because it’s “reflected.”

When you finish drawing your vertical gradient and let go you see the mask here in red. Because it’s a gradient mask, the red area and your mask will not look as if it spans all the way to the end of your vertical line.

Now hit “q” again to exit Quick Mask Mode and you’ll see your selection.

Now click Layer>Blur>Lens Blur

The default setting in Lens Blur works pretty well depending on the resolution of your photo so play around with the Radius slider to change the amount of the effect. Next you can use Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation and up the saturation a little until it resembles a colorfully painted model to give it added effect.

The whole process took about three minutes which is a great alternative if you want a miniature effect and cannot afford $2k for a fancy lens. Now you can have BIG fun making things look really little.

There are the usual places to view fireworks; out in the open, sitting on the bay with tens of thousands of people, or you can get creative and find your own little spot all by yourself. Jeff’s decision this night led us down to the Coronado Golf Course. He did some planning to find the best private view by taking in to consideration where the boat would be anchored in Glorietta Bay that was launching the display. He then carefully considered the foreground. There are few places as lush and beautiful as golf courses and Coronado’s 8th hole green is set up perfectly for a fireworks display over Glorietta since it has everything, palm trees and lush vegetation, a nice clearing, and best of all: a tranquil pond right in front for some nice reflections.

So we hauled our chairs and photo equipment down on to the links and setup at our location (right off the green of course as not to damage the dance floor.) Within a few minutes we realized how rewarding this private little location was. Are there better locations? Probably, but there’s something about large crowds I try to avoid if possible.

So here’s a checklist of things to consider when shooting fireworks:

What you’ll need

A SLR or any camera you can put in manual mode to adjust aperture, ISO, and shutter speed.
A sturdy tripod
A remote shutter release
Creative thinking for your location

ISO

Use a low ISO like 100-200. This will give you the cleanest noise free images.

Shutter Speed

Since the beauty of fireworks are the light trails they make, it’s best to use a longer shutter speed. Think somewhere around a couple seconds, but because fireworks all vary in size and duration, the best technique is to use Bulb Mode so you can have the shutter open for precisely the time you want. That way you can start the exposure right before the fireworks burst and stop it when the trails disappear. For this you’ll want a remote shutter release which explain later.

Aperture

A good aperture for fireworks is between f/8-f/16.

Manual Focus

Set you focus to manual and make sure it’s set to infinity.

Focal Length

Typically you’ll want to shoot at a wider focal length, but there’s nothing wrong with cropping it in a little tighter with a longer lens in an artistic and abstract way.

Use a remote shutter release

This helps for shooting with Bulb Mode and keeps you from having to touch your camera causing shake during long exposures. You don’t need an expensive one, just make sure it’s compatible with your camera. I think I paid $12 for mine and it works like a charm.

Use a sturdy tripod.

This is an absolute must for long exposures unless you have something else you can set your camera on, but you have a better chance for shake and damage to your beloved equipment by setting it on something not meant for holding cameras.

Creative thinking for your location

Shooting just fireworks is kind of boring. Add a nice foreground or something to tell a story. Be creative.

That’s pretty much it. Remember always to practice respect when using locations for your shoot and leave everything the way you found it. Especially golf courses.

Mid-day is rarely a good time for photo taking outdoors unless you’re shooting black and white, but life doesn’t always occur during the magic hour either so there has to be some type of compromise. Everybody has photos like these in their collection whether they use a $50 point-and-shoot or a 5k DSLR: images with a lot of haze and no punch to them at all. I decided today to browse through some images that would normally not be included on my site just to show you how to add a little more life to them.

As you can see, there’s a lot to be desired in this image. Bad light, haze, boring. I’m not going to go as far as to say there’s really any true rescue for this image. It’s never going to be worthy of much, but it can look better than this quickly and easily and I’ll show you how.

The first thing, and what will make a dramatic impact on this image is one click away. Click Image>Adjustment>Auto Contrast and it will add a lot more punch and clarity. It builds a histogram of the image and spreads the values out so the broader tonal-range is being used. This is very helpful for photos that have been taken in bad lightning conditions. This quickly makes images look more crisp with one click.

It made my image a little dark so I then opened up the Levels dialog Image>Adjustments>Levels and dragged the white arrow to the left.

My image is now looking better, but my sky is washed out and I want to balance out the overall photo so I’m going to add a faux neutral density filter to the top section to slightly darken the sky. This is an optional step and you could skip this if you want. Create a new layer for your gradient layer. I then start by making sure black is my foreground color, then I click on the Gradient Tool (G). and make sure the gradient is set to Foreground to Transparent as shown here.

Now using the gradient tool I click and drag down from the top of the image to just past the horizon.

This makes the top half of my image look like night time with the sun only shining on land. Only LSD or Armageddon could produce an environment like this so lets take this down a notch.

Simply reduce the opacity on the gradient layer to your liking and you have a better image than you started with. Could you do more with Photoshop? Yes. Could it be better? Yes, but this image isn’t worth spending a lot of time on anyway. I just wanted to show you a quick and easy way to improve images where you have no choice of the conditions you are shooting in.

This took two minutes to complete so now you can get back to watching Hoarders.

What you’ll need is a camera you can control manually, a tripod, a cable release or timer, at the very least a semi-wide angle lens, and some serious cojones, balls, courage, machismo, chutzpah, or whatever your word for it may be. You may even call it absolute stupidity since we serve as electrical antennas when out in the elements during a lightning show. Always remember that any time you’re outside in a thunderstorm, you are risking your life. If it’s possible to be inside some type of shelter this would be ideal, but sometimes that’s just not possible. It’s also just fantastic, I might add in the most sarcastic of ways, that astrology books say I’m at risk of death by fire, explosion, or being struck by lightning.

So here we are sitting in the pool, enjoying some margaritas and tequila shots when the weather started getting a little weird. You could feel the electricity in the air and before long some rather ominous clouds could be seen on the horizon. As soon as I saw lightning I got out of the pool, grabbed my camera and since I didn’t have my tripod with me, found a hollow inverted pole I set my camera on so I wouldn’t have to worry about shake. At this point the lightning was far enough away that I wasn’t nervous about being wet and out in the open. This first shot was taken at this location. I had to take over one hundred shots before I was lucky enough to catch this since there was so much light I couldn’t use long exposures yet. This was taken with my Nikkor 18-200VR lens at ISO 100, f/22 – 1/3 of a sec at 18mm. I shot this at f/22 because there was a lot of foreground objects I also wanted in focus, but I could have also gone wider. Hey, I’d been drinking.

As the storm approached and the thunder grew much louder, we decided to get in doors. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed upstairs to near the top floor where my brother and Tina had a balcony with a perfect view. This time I had my mandatory tripod since it was starting to get dark. One of the first shots is the intro photo for this blog post. This shot was taken with my other lens, the Tokina 11-16 ATX at ISO 100, f/11, 7 seconds at 13mm.

Here’s a guide for reference, just adjust your shutter speed for correct light:
For dangerous lightning that is very close – 100 ISO, f/16-f/22
Relatively close, up to a mile – 100 ISO, f/11
Distant lightning 3-5 miles – 100 ISO f/5.6
Distant lightning 5-8 miles – 100 ISO f/4
Far away lightning 8-15 miles – 200 ISO f/4-f/5.6

Once it was totally dark, I was able to leave the shutter open for 30 seconds and since there were times where strikes would occur every 5-15 seconds, I would capture lightning just about every time and sometimes multiple strike in one exposure. Shooting lightning in conditions like this is not at all difficult. The camera and nature are really doing all the work, leaving you to sit back and enjoy the show, just be safe. At the very least, try to have some cover and never drink cocktails when shooting lightning.

To start off, each image will be different, obviously, and will demand different types of cloning techniques. I chose this image, because replacing people with water and waves perfectly illustrates this tool and it’s abilities for this use.

Here’s the image. This is the beach at Tulum, the Mayan city in Quintana Roo, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. As you can see, its an amazingly beautiful place. One of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen, but it can get rather crowded since waves of tour buses flood in all day. I love the image of my beautiful wife on a spectacular beach, but not with all the other people I don’t know there too. Let’s make this a little more intimate.

The key to cloning away unwanted items in your photos is to work with the shapes and movement in your image. It helped me in this particular case that I’m a surfer and understand how waves move water and foam around on the surface.

I started by cloning out the boat on the left side of the image. I used the Clone Stamp (S) tool sized at 18 pixels with a feathered brush. As you can see here, there are gradients of color in the water around the boat. It’s important to really study the areas that surround what you are removing because it’s what needs to replace the item being removed. Because there appear to be horizontal bands of color that correspond with water depth, this will be the lines you use, the movement if you will. You can see the area I’m using to clone out the boat here. Remember that its important to continuously clone from different spots within the same area and color range so you don’t start making unrealistic patterns in your image.

Here, you can see a very distinct difference in color at the apex of the wave these guys are floating over. This is the line to follow when cloning these guys out.

Be sure to remain using this technique throughout the different types of surfaces. If there’s a line where surface foam ends, this line should continue though the area the people are taken out of.

The following image shows the most difficult part of the image to clone. Here, a great portion of whitewash needs to be created to where it ends in the face of a wave. To do this, I searched for another section of the whitewash that could serve as at least the bottom part of the section. You can see the arrow indicating the section I used.

Here I used other areas of the top of the whitewash, especially areas where water drops can be seen in the air above to complete this area. I then used some of the sandy water to the right of the guy to finish off the flats.

Next I need to clone out the people immediately around my wife. To do this, I used the Polygonal Selection tool with a feather of one pixel and selected the area to clone so I make sure to not to effect her with my cloning frenzy.

Once I took care of this area, it was pretty much a repeat of the same techniques for the rest of the image. The whole process took ten minutes. Not bad for a tourist free image that appears as if we had this beautiful tropical beach to ourselves!

Cloning is fairly easy, but always remember to go with the flow and use the shapes and movement in the surrounding areas to predict what will replace the unwanted parts of your image. Good luck and contact me if you have any questions.

Click here to view a another sample of where I’ve used this technique.

Start by copying photos into a new folder called Mosaic. I just copied and pasted images at random and ended up with 550 of them. Be sure the images in this new folder are copies and not originals.

Next, you want to start an action. To do this, open up the first image in your new Mosaic folder and open the Actions palette. (Windows>Actions) Now click the arrow in the upper right hand area of the palette and select new action. Go ahead and name the action, I named mine re-size.

Now go to Image>Image Size and check Resample Image, make the image size 1cm X 1cm at 200ppi and click OK, save the image and close it. Now go back to the Actions Palette and click stop. You’ve just recorded the image size adjustment.

The next step will be to turn your action in to a droplet. Go to File>Automate>Create Droplet. Click the Choose button and decide where you want to save your droplet, select the re-size action you’ve just created and click OK.

Now go back to the new folder of copied images you created, select them all and drag them over the Droplet icon. Make sure you are dragging the copies! This will convert each image to a 1cm X 1cm square.

Now that all the images have been reduced to their smaller size, it’s time to make the mosaic. To do this click File>Automate>Contact Sheet II.

Select the images you want to you use by clicking Choose and then enter the measurements you want to use. I used 55cm X 40cm and 200ppi. Now decide how many rows and columns you’ll need. I chose 50 columns and 30 rows and made sure to uncheck Auto Spacing so I could make sure there is no spacing between the images. Since the images are square they will fit together nicely. Check the Flatten All Layers box and click OK.

Here are the small images put together in the contact sheet. If you didn’t have enough images, simply copy and paste them to fill the canvas, just be sure to Flatten the image after you do by clicking Layer>Flatten Image.

Now decide what you’d like to use as the main image, but be sure it’s at least the size of your canvas. Now click File>Place and find this image. This will place the image in a new layer above the smaller ones. Set this image layer’s options to Hard Light.

That’s it! You can play around with the Curves on the bottom layer if you want to adjust the contrast a little. That’s up to you.

There are so many ways to do things in Photoshop. This method is one of the many I may use for a given project. You may have a better way. Always do what works best for you.

Start with a blank page and fill it with light, baby blue color. Now make a new layer to make your bubbles on. Select the Circle Selection Tool with no feather and make a medium sized circle in the middle-upper left hand area of the page. Then, while holding down Shift, make another smaller circle to the right of it. You can make as many circles as you wish, but make sure you keep the Shift key held down. If you don’t like a circle you’ve made, hold down the Option/Alt Key and deselect it with the Circle Selection Tool.

Once you’ve made your circles, fill them with white.

Now the fun part: Using the Eraser tool with a feathered brush set to an opacity of 100%, start to erase the middles of the white balls you’ve made. For this I adjust my brush size to about 75% of each ball and simply click inside each of them three times. That’s all you’ll need to erase to create your basic bubble. Just make sure you adjust your brush size for each bubble.

Now it’s time to take your bubbles to the next level. Using the Paintbrush, set to feathered and 100% opacity, make short sweeping strokes on the upper left hand corners of each bubble. Be sure to adjust your brush size for each bubble.

Now it’s time to make the background a little more interesting. With a large feathered Paintbrush make long vertical sweeping strokes with a darker blue. Here, you can stylize however you wish, just think hula dancers and mai tais.

Here I take a large feathered Dodge Tool set at 100% opacity and do small sweeps in light areas of the background just to add a little more depth.

I do the same with the feathered Burn Tool set at 100% opacity to the dark areas.

My last step is to take the Smudge Tool set at normal and 50% strength and blur some of the hard edges on my light reflections.

All done! This took about 5 minutes, but I could easily take more time and make it more elaborate. This is just the simplest way to make realistic looking bubbles. There are so many ways to do things in Photoshop. This method is one of the many I may use for a given project. You may have a better way. Always do what works best for you. Here’s an example of these bubbles in action:

Mahalo,
Tyler

Lighting and makeup can do a lot, but there are times when it’s just not enough. In this tutorial I show one way of achieving a final photo that pops.

The first thing I did was open up the Levels Dialog and give enter the properties: 12 1.00 243 to give the image a little more depth and contrast boost.

The next step is to clean up all the stray hairs covering her face. For this, I used the Clone Stamp set to lighten with a feathered brush and reduced the opacity to 40%

I did the same for any blemishes I found.

To get rid of the dark circles under her eyes I made a feathered Clone Stamp a little larger, set it to lighten and cloned the area directly under the dark areas.

To diminish the shiny areas on her face I used Select>Color Range>Highlights, copied the highlights to a new layer, and Gaussian Blurred the layer to 18% so it wasn’t too dramatic.

Next I used the Lasso Tool and set a feather at two pixels to select the whites of her eyes. Then I clicked Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation and lowered the saturation to -19 to reduce redness and upped the brightness to +6 to make them slightly whiter. Be careful not to overdo this. It’s easy to do.

I used the same Lasso Tool set at a feather of two pixels and selected her iris and pupils. I then copied them to a new layer and used Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask set at 73, 3.0,0. I clicked ok and repeated this one more time to add some punch to her eyes.

She had some fray on her tank top under her arm so I used the Clone Stamp set to normal at 100% opacity and used a sweeping motion from her arm down towards the seam.

Then cloned the vertical left edge downward to meet up with it and make it look natural.

To add a little more life to her and Kevin’s hair I selected the highlights I could see with the Lasso Tool set with a 35 pixel feather and set the levels at 0,1.00,219.

To reduce the harsh shadows a little I adjusted the Curves as such.

I then selected her lips with the Lasso tool set at a feather of 4 pixels, and used Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to these settings: 73, 3, 0 to add some pop and a little extra shine.

That’s it! As I always say, there’s so many ways to do things in Photoshop. This method is one of the many I may use for a given project. You may have a better way. Always do what works best for you and happy editing!

-Tyler

Using the Ruler Tool, click and drag a line across the image going with the horizon.

Next, click Image>Rotate Canvas>Arbitrary.

A dialog box will come up showing you the degree of rotation necessary to straighten the image based on the line you made with the Ruler Tool.

Click OK, and your image is straightened out. Now all that’s left is cropping out the white edges.

That’s it! Cropped and straightened out!

Last week my Grandmother asked me if I could repair an old, damaged photograph she had of my father when he was a kid. I told her I would try, but couldn’t promise anything. I knew there would be a possibility the photo would be beyond my ability, or at least beyond my technology. Upon receiving the photo in the mail, my worst fear became a reality; this was going to be no easy task.

As you can see, this photo was so badly damaged that a good portion of his face had been ripped from the paper. This usually occurs when a wet photo has time to dry and stick to other photos it may be stacked with.

I’ve supplied a list of tips for separating photos that have been stuck together here:

• Damaged photos for which you do not have negatives need to receive attention first. Once photos have stuck together or become moldy, it may not be possible to save them.

• Handle wet or stuck photos carefully because surfaces may be fragile. Try not to touch the image surface with your

• It is a good idea to take new photographs of all photos as soon as you can see a clear image just in case their condition worsens. Take new photos before and or after soaking (soaking explained below).

• Remove photos stuck to mattes, glass, or frames, if possible, without causing too much damage. If the photo is really stuck, follow the soaking instructions below. Take a new photograph before you attempt to remove the stuck photo or soak it. Also, if the stuck photo is in good condition, it may be possible to scan it in the frame as is and then send a digital copy to a restorer such as Image Master for restoration.

• If you have a number of photos stuck together, they can be soaked in slightly warm water. If the water becomes dirty, change it often. It could take about an hour to loosen them.

• Wet photos may be rinsed in clean water, if need be, and sealed in a plastic garbage bag with a tie or a Ziploc-type plastic bag.

• It is a good idea to place wax paper between each photo.
• If a freezer is available, freeze the photos immediately. Later, the photos may be defrosted, separated, and air-dried.

• If no freezer or refrigerator is available, rinse wet photos in clean water and dry them, face up, in a single layer on a clean surface such as a table, towel, or clean plastic laid out on the ground.

• You will reduce the growth of mold and mildew by reducing humidity. Increase air flow with fans, open windows, air conditioners, and dehumidifiers.

• Don’t dry the photos in direct sunlight.

• You may want to add weights to the tips of each photo corner to help reduce curling.

If the damage has already been done and you feel up to a challenge, here are some tips on repairing and restoring the photos using the methods I used. Keep in mind that unless you have an artistic eye and an ability to understand and see what the missing parts of a face should look like, don’t try to tackle a job like this, and always work from a copy of the original.

What you’ll need:

1. A decent scanner. If you don’t have one, hit up your local Kinko’s or copy store.
2. Any version of Photoshop.
3. This isn’t necessary, but I used Alien Skin Exposure, which mimics actual film types and is a plug-in for Photoshop.

Step One: Scanning

Be sure to scan your photo at the highest resolution possible. I recommend, at the very least, you scan at 300dpi. The purpose for this is that you’ll be using other parts of the image to repair, and you can get unexpected results with lower quality (not to mention the fact that film resolution is a lot higher and you’ll have a loss in pixels. It’s likely, though, with small pictures that any loss in pixels won’t be noticed as long as you’re sure to scan at the highest possible DPI).

Make sure you clean any dust or fingerprints. Loose dust may be removed before scanning with compressed air, a soft paintbrush, or one of the optical quality dry cleaning cloths can be used for both dust and fingerprints.

Step Two: Color Correction

There are many ways to color correct in Photoshop. The one

I use most often is Threshold, which is found by creating a new adjustment layer.

• To do so, create a new layer with the photo in it by selecting all (control-A), copy (control C), and paste (control V), then click on the little yin-yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and click on Threshold. This will bring up the threshold window and everything will look black and white.
• Slide the little slider all the way to the left, and then slowly bring it back. The first black pixels that appear in the window are the darkest part of the image. Click ok when you first see them.
• Now zoom in to these pixels and place a color sample marker in the middle of one of these black areas. The Color Sampler Tool can be found by holding down the Eye Dropper tool.
• Once you’ve marked the dark area, you can now get rid of the Threshold layer by dragging it in to the trashcan located at the bottom of the layers palette. You’ll now be back to the normal view of the top layer, but your new sample marker stays visible.
• Next repeat the steps for Threshold, but slide the slider to the right. This will be the lightest point in the image.
• Sample that, throw the Threshold layer away, and it’s time to color correct.
• Click Image>Adjustments>Curves to open the Curves palette.
• Once in the Curves window, click on the Black Eyedropper tool and click within the dark area sample you made in the Threshold step. You may need to zoom in to get an accurate placement.
• Do the same for the light sample, but obviously use the white Eyedropper within Curves. These steps will find black and white within your image and will help you correct your colors.

  

Step Three: Repairing and Restoring

Start with the Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop and set the mode to Darken. This clones pixels from one area and replaces all the pixels of another area that are too light. I used this tool in the right side of the forehead and parts of his hair. I made sure to use a soft edge brush of different sizes for this technique so the areas b

lended well.

In my particular case, I then focused my attention to the huge torn-out area in the middle of his face.

• Here I used the Clone Stamp Tool with the mode set for normal. I used a large feathered brush and cloned along the jaw line. This allowed me to clone the area from dark to light along the jaw line and in to the area that’s missing, giving it a natural flow with the rest of the image that’s visible.

  

• As I work, I use different brush sizes and will use a lot of Undo’s (Control-Z) as I go along if I feel I made something that doesn’t look natural. You can also use the history palette to go back some steps.
• Once you fill the torn-out area, you’ll need to go back in and fix trouble areas with the clone stamp to even out the shadow and light in areas so they fit with the rest of the image.

It’s important to have a good artistic eye, because an image as damaged as this will require you to create what’s not there; for instance, re-creating the right side of his mouth and lips. The great thing is, the left side is there so you can copy and paste that area, flip it horizontally, rotate it slightly, and place it where it would need to go. Then use the Clone Stamp to even out the edges. The background areas in this case were easy to restore and I wanted to restore the image back to a rectangle as it was without the paper frame, which had stuck to it.

You’ll notice that as you fix areas with a soft edge clone stamp, they’ll appear smoother than the rest of the image since this particular photo had a lot of grain in it. For this I simply clicked Filter>Noise>Add Noise and clicked the box in the bottom left that says Monochrome. I them adjusted my noise until it looked like it was close to the original.

At this point, I was happy with what I had done, but there were some areas where the color of his skin didn’t look right, it didn’t have a natural overall look to it. To fix this, I used Alien Skin Exposure. In Exposure I was able to mimic an old black and white photograph while also adding a natural sepia tone. For this I used the setting Sepia – Mid Band Split. I actually couldn’t believe I was able to do the job I did on this restoration considering it’s really my first time with an image this bad.

Step Four: Printing

This part’s easy. Send it to White House Custom Color for all your printing needs. A photographer friend told me about them a couple months ago and I’ve received such beautiful prints from them at unbelievable prices. For about half the price of local printers for the same product, I can have this photo printed on metallic paper and have it sent back within two business days. The best part is, your photos will be processed by real photographers, not some lab clerk at the local drugstore who doesn’t care about quality.

Good luck to all, and happy repairing!