Quick Fix
Article: Quick Fix: Add A Creative Touch To Your Pictures
We all strive for pictures that look unique, artistic and creative. That goes for when they're framed and hung on a wall, when they're posted on the web, and maybe even when they're published in a book or magazine article. One creative idea is to add...
Article: Quick Fix: Adventures In Aperture
I made this image during my trip to Carnevale in Venice, Italy, this year. Sure, the model is terrific, and the location, an 800-year-old palace, is fantastic. From a technical standpoint, the image is super-sharp, the lighting is flattering and well...
Article: Quick Fix: Clean Up The Background
In my workshops, I used to tell students that the background was almost as important as the main subject. Today, I tell them that it's just as important as the main subject and that it can make or break a photograph. When we're traveling, we don't...
Article: Quick Fix: Digital Image Enhancement With Adobe Camera Raw
Adobe Camera Raw rocks! RAW shooters know that. But get this-the new version of Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS3 isn't only for RAW shooters and wannabe RAW shooters who may have been intimidated by RAW image processing. This image enhancement tool...
Article: Quick Fix: Digital Start To Finish
I usually devote this column to fixing and enhancing pictures in Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS3 and, more recently, Adobe Lightroom. For a change, I thought I'd share my digital start-to-finish process, covering what I do, and what you can do, in...
Article: Quick Fix: Fast Basic Fixes
Readers of PCPhoto know that for my professional work, I depend on Photoshop CS2 for my image enhancements. For pros like me, it's the coolest program around. However, Photoshop Elements, CS2's little brother so to speak, offers many professional...
Article: Quick Fix: Favorite Plug-Ins
Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, in addition to other digital image-editing programs, offer photographers many filters and adjustments to expand their creative horizons. The creative process can be enhanced further by using plug-ins. This Article...
Article: Quick Fix: Fine-Art Conversion
Recently, my good friend Karen Ippolito e-mailed me a fun self-portrait. Karen is a good photographer and a talented artist who has taken many creative photographs with her Canon EOS 5D. However, for this self-portrait, she used a tiny point-and-shoot...
Article: Quick Fix: Fire In The Sky
We all love watching sunsets, looking at pictures of sunsets and, of course, photographing sunsets! The warm colors—deep shades of red, orange and yellow—evoke feelings of peace and tranquility and a sense of awe at nature's wonders. This Article...
Article: Quick Fix: From Flat To Fab
This is a bad news/good news story—one with a happy ending. This past November, I had the opportunity to travel to the bottom of the world to photograph emperor penguins. It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. I planned this trip to Antarctica f...
Article: Quick Fix: Hot Ice And Snow
This column is about how to use the digital darkroom to transform a straight-out-of-the-camera shot into the image you envisioned when you pressed the shutter-release button. First, I'll share some techniques for working in a high-contrast...
Article: Quick Fix: Instant Classic
Transforming an old photograph into one that looks as though it was taken with one of today's top-of-the-line digital SLRs is relatively easy in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and other image-editing programs. You'll find many retouching and restoration articles...
Article: Quick Fix: Letting Your Image Take Off
The opening image for this column was inspired by something that I try to do all the time in real life, with my photography and in the digital darkroom: have fun! The image looks as though my son and I are soaring at top speed high above beautiful...
Article: Quick Fix: Lightroom Hearts Photoshop
Check out the opening image for this installment of Quick Fix. It's the result of using both Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS3 on enhancing a photograph that I took in Cappadocia, Turkey, during a 2024 family vacation. This Article...
Article: Quick Fix: Posterize An Image
Technically, the Posterize adjustment in Photoshop is designed to analyze the pixel colors of a selected area of an image and reduce the number of colors—while maintaining the "look" of the original image. Creatively, you can apply this adjustment to...
Article: Quick Fix: Quality Of Light
You may not believe it at first, but all the photographs in this issue of PCPhoto have something in common. That something in common is, of course, light. This Article Features Photo Zoom 1 ORIGINAL You may not...
Article: Quick Fix: Saving A Backlit Shot
One of the most challenging situations for a photographer is getting a good exposure of a subject when shooting into the sun. That's because the contrast range between the background and the backlit subject is usually too great for a good exposure of...
Article: Quick Fix: Seaside Digital Effects
With winter in full swing, I thought we'd work with a tropical photo—remember, it's summer for our friends in the southern hemisphere. Summer is obviously a great time for photography, and before we know it, the warm days will be back again. Winter i...
Article: Quick Fix: Simulating In-Camera Effects
With a digital SLR, and even with many compact cameras, you can manually select the shutter speed and ƒ-stop for powerful creative control. Fast shutter speeds (1⁄500 sec. and higher) freeze most action, and slow shutter speeds (1⁄30 sec. and slower)...
Article: Quick Fix: Snapshot To Postcard In Five Minutes
Have you ever taken a seascape or landscape picture from inside a moving plane, boat or car, where the view of the horizon line was tilted? Have you ever had to shoot fast to get off a shot without making any exposure adjustments, resulting in an...
Article: Quick Fix: The Details
One of the differences between a good photograph and a great one is how we handle the details. Check out this image of a beautiful Kuna woman who I photographed at the San Blas Hotel in the San Blas Islands, an archipelago of 365 islands that lies off...
Article: Quick Fix: With The End Result In Mind
Thanks to digital, I have total control over my images—and so do you. If I couldn't see the effect of exposure settings on the LCD and make adjustments on the spot, I'd have a lower percentage of keepers. What's more, I couldn't make...
