This is one of my favorite pictures from the annual photo workshop I lead to Venice, italy during carnival. This composite shows the power of Photoshop, which is its ability to make precise selections. When an area of a photograph is selected, that means you can do something to it and the rest of the picture is unaffected. That gives you tremendous creative control. For example, in this shot I applied the Monday Morning filter in Color Efex Pro 4 by Nik only to the background because it was selected. I wanted to give the scene behind the costumed model a dreamy, moody, and abstract quality while the model remained untouched by the effect. Sometimes precise selections take a fair amount of time to make, but once you've invested the time and effort into outlining an object in the picture you can save it (Select > save selection) for future use. This is where Photoshop and Lightroom part ways. If you want to do this kind of creative work involving selections, you can't use Lightroom. It has to be done in Photoshop.
4 Comments
Sep 5, 2015, 11:31:18 AM
Jim Zuckerman - I'm glad you find these blogs useful, Rosemary. I appreciate your feedback.
Sep 5, 2015, 11:28:41 AM
Rosemary Sheel - Nice one! and v. useful idea. I'm going to remember this.
Sep 5, 2015, 9:09:56 AM
Jim Zuckerman - Hi Robert, In the DVD for sale on my website, I show several of my favorite Photoshopped images and explain how I did them. The cover photo -- two knights with a foggy forest background -- is a scenario that took precise separation of the subjects from the original background. Just knowing how I did this one image will transform your ability to work in Photoshop. I recorded this when the latest version was CS4, but the techniques I show are exactly the same in Photoshop CC. Here is a link:
http://www.jimzuckerman.com/dazzling-photoshop-dvd-by-jim-zuckerman
Sep 5, 2015, 7:40:16 AM
Robert - Do you have a webinar or tutorial available similar to replace sky's that details the process of making selections in PS.