If you’ve bought any of Scott Kelby’s “The Digital Photography Book”, volume 1, 2, or 3 (I’ve bought the three of them – I’m a big Scott Kelby fan and also clearly a showoff) you will be familiar with the section at the end of each book called “the recipe to get this shot”. In this section he gives a brief explanation of how different shots were achieved and post-processed. Now there is a video available where you can watch and see how the shots were done, it’s called “Photo Recipes Live”.

You can watch the first 45 minutes for free (see below) and if you like what you see you can buy the full two hour video from Peachpit. You can use the coupon code KELBYPREMIERE to get the two hour video for $29.24 which should be a saving of 35% during checkout on peachpit.com.

Note: I didn’t receive any payment or there’s no affiliate link here, just passing on some info.

Issue number 18 of PhotographyBB magazine is out and available for download here. The magazine is completely free to download and is great read for photographers.

This month’s magazine includes a look at the new Pentax K-7 digital SLR, as well as articles on tips for better photographic composition techniques. The July edition also examines portrait lighting and composition techniques in a brand new “Portrait Photography 101″series, along with Lightroom and Photoshop tutorials.

I have an article in the magazine on how to convincingly add fireworks to a photograph using advanced blending modes, which you might find useful for lots of other uses too.

Here’s a quick way and easy way to accurately straighten up your photos if they’re looking a bit lopsided. As with many techniques in Photoshop, there is more than one way to straighten a photo. This method uses the measure tool.

1. Open up the picture that needs to be straightened. Here’s one I took where it looks like the water is running towards the right hand side of the image.

2. Select the Measure tool from Photoshop’s Toolbox. It’s one of the tools hidden underneath the eyedropper tool. Click and hold the mouse on the eyedropper till you see the flyout menu.

3. Look for something in the picture that you know should be straight. In this case, the horizon line between the sky and sea.
Click-and-drag the Measure tool horizontally along this straight edge in your photo, starting from the left and extending to the right.

You’ll notice that as you start to drag, the angle that you’re dragging at, will be displayed in the Info palette (if you have it open) and also at the top of the screen in the Options Bar.

4. Choose Image > Rotate Canvas. Then choose Arbitrary, which opens up the Rotate Canvas dialog box.

Here’s the really clever part. Photoshop will have already filled in the angle required and whether it should be rotated clockwise or anti-clockwise. So all you need to do now is click OK.

Voila! A straightened picture. As you can see, we’re left with some extra canvas, so we need to crop off the excess.

5. Select the Crop tool from the toolbox or press C, then drag out a cropping border. When you’re happy with the crop, press Return/Enter.

And the final, cropped and straightened image looks like this.

Is this a method you’ve used before in Photoshop? What other ways have you straightened images?

There are many ways to convert an image to black and white in Photoshop. In the past I’ve written about the Desaturation Adjustment Layer and also converting using Calculations (not as hard and mathematical as it might sound!). Today, I’m taking a look at a method which will produce really nice, dynamic black and white photographs. The method in question uses an adjustment layer and the channel mixer, and it’s really easy.

The Channel Mixer adjustment layer first appeared in Photoshop 5, so unless you have a VERY old version of Photoshop you will be able to convert your images with this technique.

1. Open your colour image in Photoshop.

2. Click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

3. From the pop-up menu choose Channel Mixer. The Channel Mixer dialog box opens and you’ll see lots of sliders to play with!

4. Check the Monochrome box at the bottom left corner and your image will immediately be converted to black and white.

By default, when you hit the monochrome checkbox, the Red channel is set to 40%, the Green to 40% and Blue Channel is set to 20%. Most of the time, the conversion will not be the stunning black and white you want it to be, so this where we use those sliders to make our own adjustments.

In theory, many Photoshop instructors reckon that the percentage values on the sliders should add up to 100%, but the fact is, every image is different and if the numbers don’t add up on the sliders but the print looks great, what difference does it make.

6. To give the image some extra contrast, a formula that works well (devised by Photoshop master Scott Kelby) is to set the Red channel to about 75%, set the Green and Blue channels to 0% and consider this your starting point. Now drag the Green and Blue sliders to the right. You’ll see a dramatic change in the image as you drag to the right and will create a lot of extra contrast. If the highlights on the image start to look very blown out (i.e. very white), then drag the Green and Blue sliders back to the left.

The other slider to look at here is the Constant slider. This adjusts the overall brightness. In this example, I darkened the whole image down by dragging the Constant slider to the left, to a value of 5%.

When you’re happy with how your image looks click OK. You can see the values I used for this photograph below.

The best thing about working with an adjustment layer is that you’re not changing or harming ANY pixels in your image. A new layer is created and the adjustments are applied through a mask.

If you want to go back and change your black and white conversion, simply double-click on the Channel Mixer thumbnail (3 circles) on the adjustment layer and the dialog box will open again.

And that’s it! Here’s my before and after images;

Issue 15 of PhotographyBB Magazine – the absolute best, free photography and digital imaging magazine is available for download now.

Editor in Chief, Dave Seeram had these comments regarding this recent release:

“Issue 15 has just become one of my favourite releases to date. This month the contributing authors have gone above and beyond the call of duty to put together a really informative issue. Not only do we have some great Photoshop® and Lightroom™ tutorials this month, but we also tackle some of the issues facing photographers in the world today. We have an Urban Landscapes shooting techniques segment in our Photography 101 column, and a look at the recent 2009 Photoshop World convention held in Boston last month, from our insider John Ogden.

We also have two guest contributors from our Twitter following, along with some new reader image galleries from our Flickr group. In our Photography Around the World column we are taken on a magical photographic journey to Belize for a look at the life, culture, and the Mayan ruins. This is truly an issue you don’t want to miss!”

I’m delighted to also be involved with this edition of the magazine and have contributed an article showing you how to use clipping masks in Photoshop to achieve a popular artistic effect.

You can download the latest edition of PhotographyBB here.

Thanks to Phil for organising a photowalk in Dublin last weekend. It’s a great opportunity to get out for a no-pressure meetup with photographers. We walked from the Spire in O’Connell Street through Temple Bar Market, then on to Dublin Castle. The weather was unusually fantastic – generally in Ireland if you try to organise something outdoors nature conspires against it, but last Saturday was fabulous.

Some of the photographers there on Saturday were Alan, Phil, Will, John, Darren, Ryan, Redmum, Julie. I met lots of other cool people that day, apologies for not linking to you this time, but will take notes on the next walkabout!

You can see more of my pictures on the pix.ie website.