Edit your first photo
Bring out the best in your photos with these fundamental photo-editing techniques.
Published
1 Crop and straighten
Using the Crop tool, you can trim edges, change the shape and size of a photo, and even straighten a crooked shoreline or horizon.
Welcome to Get Started with Photoshop for Photography.
In this series of videos, I'll walk you through the basics of editing a photograph in Photoshop from your first editing steps to saving a polished version.
When you finish watching the series, you'll be able to use the Photoshop fundamentals you learn here to make your own photographs look fantastic.
We'll focus on editing in Photoshop in this series, but keep in mind that using Photoshop and Lightroom together are the perfect combination for photography.
You can organize, edit, and share your photos in Lightroom and take them even further in Photoshop.
In this video, I'll cover opening, cropping, and straightening a photo in Photoshop.
Let's begin in the Start screen which you'll see when you launch this version of Photoshop.
Open the sample image we're providing or your own photo by clicking the Open button on the Start screen or by choosing File, Open to locate an image.
When the image opens, activate the crop tool in the Tools panel, and a resizable crop box immediately surrounds your image.
You can drag any corner or any edge to adjust the shape of the box, and you can click and drag within the box to reposition the photo underneath it.
When you do, Photoshop darkens the soon-to-be cropped away pixels outside the box, giving you a preview of what the crop will look like.
To constrain the crop to a certain size, use the menu at the left of the Options bar at the top of your screen which includes some commonly used crop presets.
For example, to preserve the photo's original aspect ratio, choose Original Ratio.
Now as you adjust the crop box, the photo's original relationship of width to height is preserved.
If you want to crop your photo to particular dimensions rather than ratios, you can choose from this section of the menu which includes options in inches for print and options in pixels for online use.
If the menu doesn't include the values you want, you can enter them in the boxes to the right of the menu.
If the image also needs straightening, click the straighten icon in the options bar, and your cursor turns into a tiny plus sign.
Now click and drag to draw a line across an area in the image that really should be straight such as this boat ramp.
When you release your mouse button, Photoshop rotates the image.
It's a good idea to have Photoshop hide the cropped pixels instead of delete them so you can change your mind about this crop in the future.
To do that, turn off Delete Crop Pixels in the Options bar.
When everything looks good, click the check mark in the Options bar or press the Return or Enter key on your keyboard to crop the image.
Now choose View, Fit on Screen, to enlarge the image so you can continue editing.
Let's save the work you've done so far by choosing File, Save As, and in the Save AS dialog box, choose Photoshop from the Format or Type menu.
Leave the Layers check box turned on, and then click Save.
Saving in the Photoshop format retains your cropped pixels as well as any layers you add as you continue to work on this photograph.
In fact, it's a good idea to save often while you edit, so at the end of each video in this series, remember to choose File, Save, to update this saved Photoshop document with your new edits.
You'll learn more about options for saving in the last video in this series.
So to recap, in this video, you learned to use the crop tool to improve composition and straighten an image, and you also learned how to save the document in Photoshop format.
In the next video, we'll use adjustment layers to improve this photo's lighting and color.
Open a file (0:41); Crop (0:57); Straighten (2:04), Save (2:50)
2 Improve lighting and color
Brighten a photo and make its colors pop using adjustment layers.
In this video you'll learn to improve the lighting and color in your photographs using adjustment layers.
These special layers instruct Photoshop to make the change on a completely separate layer.
This not only protects your original photograph, it gives you maximum editing flexibility too, as you'll see in this video.
Let's add an adjustment layer to make this image brighter and to add some punch.
Click the half-black, half-white circle at the bottom of your layers panel and choose brightness contrast.
Notice the new adjustment layer in your layers panel and how it's highlighted, which indicates it's active.
The properties panel that opens offers controls for the active adjustment layer.
These controls will affect all the layers below this adjustment layer in the layers panel, which in this case is the photograph on layer zero.
In the properties panel, try clicking the auto button to have Photoshop correct the image for you.
And then adjust the sliders to your liking.
To see a before and after version, click the visibility icon to the left of this adjustment layer in the layers panel.
So here's our before, and here's our after version.
If the adjustment looks too strong, you can use the opacity setting near the top of the layers panel to reduce its strength.
While the image looks a lot better, the colors could stand some boosting.
So let's add a hue saturation adjustment layer, and in the properties drag the saturation slider to the right until the image looks good to you.
Go ahead and close the properties panel by clicking the icon in the upper right.
The image looks even better, though the grassy area and some of the more colorful houses now look a little too vibrant.
To fix that we'll hide the adjustment from those areas using a layer mask which is the white thumbnail that comes with every adjustment layer.
Since this mask is filled with white, the adjustment we made is visible across the entire photo.
However, by adding black to the mask the adjustment can be hidden in those areas.
To hide the adjustment make sure the mask is active, which is indicated by the white brackets on the layer mask thumbnail in the layers panel.
Now grab the brush tool from the tools panel, and in the options bar click the brush preset picker and choose a soft edge brush.
Use the size slider to set the brush tip pixel size to approximately 150 pixels for this image.
Press return or enter on your keyboard to close the brush preset picker.
Now take a peek at the color swatches at the bottom of your tools panel.
The foreground color swatch determines what color the brush tool uses.
When you have a layer mask active, your only choices are white, black, or gray.
So if the foreground color swatch isn't black, go ahead and reset them to their default values by clicking the tiny icon at the upper left of the color chips, and then click the curved arrow to its right to switch them so black is on top.
Now mouse over to your image, and brush across the areas in which you want to hide the adjustment.
You can change brush size as you go using the left and right bracket keys to the right of the P key on your keyboard.
For example, you can tap the right bracket key to increase brush size or the left bracket key to decrease brush size.
If you happen to hide too much of the adjustment—let's say you hid the reflection of the red house in the water—click the curved arrow above the color swatches to switch them so white is on top, and then brush back across that area to reveal the adjustment.
Remember when you're working inside a layer mask, black conceals the adjustment and white reveals it.
To quickly assess the changes you've made to the image, you can compare a before and after version.
To do that, hold down the option key on a Mac or alt in windows as you click the visibility icon to the left of layer zero in your layers panel.
When you do, Photoshop turns off all the other layers.
So here's our before.
And here's our after version.
As you can see, adjustment layers made short work of correcting this image, and the layer masks that come with them let you hide changes from areas that don't need it.
Adjustment layers remain editable too.
For example, to change the color boost, double click the hue saturation adjustment layer thumbnail, and in the properties panel you can adjust the saturation slider.
If you decide you don't like an adjustment layer, you can delete it by making sure it's active in the layers panel and then pressing the delete or backspace key on your keyboard.
Let's resurrect that layer by choosing edit, undo delete layer.
Now choose file, save to save your document again with the same settings you used in the last video, including the Photoshop format, which will preserve your adjustment layers for re-editing in the future.
In the next video, you'll learn how to remove unwanted content from an image using the spot healing brush and patch tools.
Brightness/Contrast (0:18); Hue/Saturation (1:20); Edit an adjustment (04:19)
3 Remove unwanted content
Easily eliminate distracting elements with the Spot Healing Brush tool and the Patch tool.
>> In this video, we'll use the Spot Healing Brush and Patch tools to remove unwanted objects in a photo.
Both tools do a great job of blending your retouches with the surrounding area as shown here in this before and after example.
While you can do all of your retouching on the original image layer, I like to retouch on separate layers in order to protect my original image and to increase editing flexibility.
I'll delete the layers I made by tapping the Delete or Backspace key on my keyboard so we can recreate them together.
I'll zoom in to the image by pressing and holding the Cmd key on a Mac or Ctrl in Windows and then tapping the Plus key on my keyboard a few times.
Once zoomed in, you can reposition the image on screen by pressing and holding the Spacebar on your keyboard and then dragging with your mouse.
Let's start with the Spot Healing Brush as it's the easiest to use and it's great for removing small objects like the cows in this pasture and some of the more distracting poles.
Start by creating a new layer by choosing Layer, New, Layer, and enter "spot healing" into the Name field and click OK.
Alternatively, you can create a new layer by clicking the New Layer icon at the bottom right of the Layers panel.
In the Tools panel, activate the Spot Healing Brush and in the Options bar, make sure the Content-Aware button is highlighted.
Now turn on Sample All Layers to have Photoshop look through the currently active yet empty layer to layers underneath where the pixels actually live.
Mouse over to your image and make the Brush Size slightly larger than the item you want to remove.
You can tap the Right Bracket key on your keyboard in increase Brush Size or the Left Bracket key to decrease it.
Now put your cursor at the item you want to remove and click.
When you do, Photoshop uses pixels immediately outside the brush cursor to remove the item.
You can also click and drag with this tool.
For example, we can decrease Brush Size even further and then click and drag to remove some of these more distracting poles.
As you can see, Photoshop is doing an incredible job removing these items from the photograph.
Reposition the image again by pressing and holding the Spacebar and then dragging with your mouse so you can see all the distracting items that you need to remove.
Now if you don't like the results of one of the removals, you can always undo it and try again.
So let's choose Edit, Undo Spot Healing Brush, and then let's have another go by using a slightly smaller brush cursor and by making shorter brush strokes.
To remove the boat in the foreground, let's increase Brush Size so the boat fits within the brush cursor and give it a single click.
Reposition the image again.
Now to remove larger items such as this red roof here, you'll get a better result if you tell Photoshop where to copy the pixels from which you can do using the Patch Tool.
So let's begin by adding another new empty layer by choosing Layer, New, Layer.
Let's enter "patch" into the Name field and click OK.
In the Tools panel, click and hold your mouse atop the Spot Healing Brush and from the menu that appears, choose Patch Tool.
In the Options bar, set the Patch menu to Content-Aware and then turn on Sample All Layers.
If you don't see the Sample All Layers check box, then you forgot to choose Content-Aware from the Patch menu.
Now click and drag to draw a rough selection around the item you want to remove.
Be sure to make the selection slightly larger than the item itself.
Otherwise, you may end up with a ghostly outline of it.
To tell Photoshop where to copy pixels from, click inside the selection and then drag it to the area in the image you want Photoshop to use for the patch.
When you release your mouse button, Photoshop performs the patch and blends it with surrounding pixels.
While the selection is still active, be sure to experiment with the structure and color fields in the Options bar.
To preserve more of the texture from the area that you copied pixels from, increase the Structure slider.
To preserve less of the texture, decrease it.
To perform more color blending between the two areas, increase the Color slider.
To perform less color blending, decrease it.
When everything looks good, deactivate the selection by choosing Select, Deselect.
Now let's choose View, Fit on Screen, and assess the removals by turning off the visibility of the layers we added in this video.
As you can see, the Spot Healing Brush and Patch Tools did a great job to clean up this image.
I'll turn those layers back on in the same way.
Now choose File, Save to save your document again with these changes.
The Photoshop format preserves your content removal layers so you can continue to edit them in the future.
In the next video, you'll get creative with this image as you learn how to blur parts of it using a filter, how to turn it into a beautiful black and white, and how to add a color tint.
Spot Healing Brush tool (00:53); Patch tool (3:00)
4 Add creative effects
Convert color to black and white, add an old-fashioned tinted look, and play with focus using the Tilt-Shift Blur filter.
In this video you'll learn how to apply a few creative effects to your image.
We'll use a filter from the blur gallery to apply a fun tilt shift effect to this scene.
We'll employ an adjustment layer to drain the color from the image and then add an artistic color tint.
Let's start by putting all the layers into a protective wrapper called a smart object which enables us to apply an editable filter to all the layers it wants and protect the original photo.
To do that, activate the top-most layer by clicking it and then shift click the bottom-most layer, and Photoshop activates all the layers in between.
Now choose filter, convert for smart filters, and click OK if you see a message.
Photoshop tucks the layer content into the protective wrapper of a smart object so the filter you're about to run happens to the wrapper instead of what's inside.
By the way, you can always access your original layers by double clicking the smart object layers thumbnail in the layers panel.
Now choose filter, blur gallery, tilt shift.
This filter lets you simulate the look of a miniature village in this image.
Here's how it works.
To reposition the filter, drag the black and white pin.
To control blur strength, use the blur slider in the tilt shift panel on the right side of your screen.
Drag right to increase the amount of blur or drag left to decrease it.
To control the size of the in-focus area, drag one of the solid lines up or down.
To control the size of the blurry areas, drag one of the dash lines up or down.
To rotate the focus area, drag one of the white circles atop the solid line in a circular motion.
When you're finished, click OK in the options bar at the top of your screen and Photoshop applies the filter.
To experiment with different filter settings, double click the filter's name in the layers panel to reopen it.
If you want to hide the filter effect from part of the image, activate the smart filter mask which is the white thumbnail shown here and then paint with black or gray.
In fact, we did this on an adjustment layer mask in the second video in this series in order to hide part of the adjustment.
To delete a filter, drag the filter's name to the trash icon at the bottom right of the layers panel.
I'll choose edit, undo delete smart filter to bring that filter back.
Another common creative effect is to turn a color photo into black and white which you can do using an adjustment layer.
To do that, click the half-black, half-white circle at the bottom of your layers panel and choose black and white.
In the properties panel that opens, you can use the sliders to adjust the contrast in the image.
For example, to darken the reds in the image, drag the red slider to the left.
To lighten the reds instead, drag the slider to the right.
To add an artistic color tint to the image, turn on the tint check box.
When you do, Photoshop tints the image with light brown creating a sepia effect.
To change the color tint, click the colored square next to the word tint.
In the color picker that opens, click within the vertical bar to choose a range of colors and then click within the larger box to its left to pick a brightness level.
Click OK when you're finished and then close the properties panel.
As long as you've saved the file in Photoshop format, you can experiment with contrast and color tint later on.
To do that, double click the black and white adjustment layers thumbnail in the layers panel and then adjust the settings in the properties panel that opens.
To delete the effect altogether, make sure the black and white adjustment layer is active in your layers panel and then tap the delete or backspace key on your keyboard.
Now choose file, save to save your document in Photoshop format to preserve the changes you made in this video.
So to recap, in this video you learned how to use the tilt shift blur filter safely and how to reopen it to fine tune its settings .
You also learned how to create a black and white image and how to add a custom color tint.
In the next video, you'll learn how to sharpen your masterpiece, save it with all of your layers intact, and how to save it as a .jpeg in order to share it with others.
Smart Filters (0:16); Tilt-Shift Blur filter (0:57); Black and white (02:26); Color tint (02:56)
5 Sharpen and save
Apply a sharpen filter to give your photo a finishing touch. Then save your edited file in PSD format to preserve your layers for future editing. To share your photo online or by email, save a copy as a JPEG.
In this video you'll learn how to sharpen an image which is an important final editing step.
You'll also learn how to save an edited photo into different formats for different uses.
First, let's talk about what sharpening really means.
Sharpening an image in Photoshop is similar to sharpening a kitchen knife.
In both instances you're emphasizing edges.
On a knife it's easy to identify the edge.
It's the side that can cut you.
In a digital image, it's the areas of high contrast where vastly different color pixels meet, such as where a tree meets the sky, or in our case, where red roofs meet white siding and where the lake meets the shore.
To emphasize those edges, Photoshop lightens the light pixels and darkens the dark pixels.
There are many ways to sharpen an image in Photoshop, though in this video we'll use the smart sharpen filter because it's quick and easy to use.
The first step is to prepare your layers for use with smart filters, which we did in the previous video in this series.
Since you can run multiple filters on a single smart object, we're all set.
So choose filter, sharpen, smart sharpen.
In the dialogue box that opens, you see a preview of the image on the left and controls for sharpening on the right.
To enlarge the preview, drag the lower right corner of the dialogue box.
Next use the zoom tools beneath the image preview to set your document zoom level to 100% so you can see an accurate sharpening preview.
Now click and drag within the preview box to bring an important part of the image into view.
Set the preset menu to default, and then adjust the sliders to your liking.
The first slider we'll adjust is radius, which tells Photoshop how many pixels on either side of the high contrast edge pixels to emphasize.
You can think of this setting as sharpening width.
The higher the number, the more obvious the sharpening.
For the best results, keep this setting low.
Next with the amount slider at 200%, drag it slowly leftward until the sharpening looks good to you.
If you see any speckled flakes appear in the image, drag the reduce noise slider to the right to get rid of them.
When everything looks good, click OK and Photoshop sharpens the image.
To reopen the filter and change its settings, double click the filter's name in the layers panel.
To hide both the smart sharpen filter and the blur filter for parts of your image, you can activate the smart filter mask, which is the white thumbnail shown here, and then paint with black or gray.
We did that on an adjustment layer mask on the second video in this series in order to hide part of the adjustment.
To delete the filter, drag the filter's name to the trash icon at the bottom right of the layers panel.
In order to preserve your layers and filters so you can edit them in the future, be sure to save the document in Photoshop format.
To do that, choose file, save as, and from the format or type menu choose Photoshop.
Leave the layers check box turned on and click save.
In order to share the image with other people who don't have Photoshop, to post it on the Web or submit to a printing service, you need to save it in a different format.
So choose file, save as, and this time choose .jpeg from the format or type menu, which is a great format for a full color photograph, such as the one we're working with here.
Go ahead and rename the file so you don't overwrite your sample file.
And click save.
In the .jpeg options dialogue box, you can set the quality of the image.
The higher the quality, the larger the file size.
The lower the quality, the smaller the file size.
I'll set the quality menu to medium, which is great for posting the image online or for emailing.
If, however, the image will be printed, be sure to enter 12 into the quality field for the highest possible quality.
And click OK.
Of course, the techniques shown in this video series only touch the tip of the iceberg of what's possible in Photoshop.
It's worth mentioning that Photoshop pairs beautifully with other Adobe apps, such as the image organizing, editing, and sharing powerhouse Photoshop Lightroom, as well as mobile apps such as Adobe Mix for combining imagery into your own artistic vision and Adobe Fix for applying quick edits to your mobile photos before bringing them into Photoshop for more heavy-duty retouching.
I hope you've enjoyed this video series, and I encourage you to explore the myriad tutorials in the Learn Library on adobe.com so you can learn how to turn the image you have to the image you want.
Sharpen (0:10); Save (2:50); Photoshop with Lightroom and mobile apps (4:14)
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