Photographer’s Photoshop CS4 Companion

Photographer’s Photoshop CS4 Companion

Important note:
The entire eBook is downloaded as one 198MB Zip file. After checking out with PayPal, click the return to Mark S. Johnson Photography link to be redirected to your download link. You will also receive an email with a copy of the download link.

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Free Excerpts

Thanks for your interest in my Photographer’s Photoshop CS4 Companion eBook. If you’re reading this, you’re already on a path to deeply gratifying image-making. With amazing software like Photoshop CS4 in our tool kit, photographers have never been so empowered to create the images of our dreams.

I created this eBook with a simple philosophy—make learning Photoshop fun! To satisfy my goal, I communicate in plain English using detailed screen captures to support what I write. Although it’s important to understand many of the technical features of Photoshop, I always keep in mind that the reason you’re using Photoshop is to be creative. Therefore, I try to convey only enough of the technical information to build a foundation for what you’re learning. Then, I focus attention on ways to use this awesome program to create images that inspire!

If you take the time to explore these free excerpts, I’m confident that you’ll wind up downloading the complete 839-page eBook.

To purchase your copy, click here.

Improving a Landscape Photograph with Content-Aware Scaling
The new Content-Aware Scaling feature in Photoshop CS4 is awe-inspiring. It’s capable of scaling the area around a subject while simultaneously protecting the subject itself from scaling. This sort of power makes it easy to expand a sky or shrink an undesirable region. Imagine being able to fit a 5×7 inch image into a 4×6 space without cropping. In this lesson, you’ll examine a ground-breaking use for Content-Aware Scaling that will change the way you think about capturing wide-angle landscape photographs.
Download This Free Excerpt and Sample Image

Understanding Curves
A Curves adjustment layer is far and away the most powerful brightness, contrast, and color correction tool in Photoshop. In CS4, Adobe improved the way that you interface with the Curves dialog, but hid a few of the options that used to exist. In the following lesson, you’ll go on a tour of Curves—learning to navigate the new interface as well as exploring all of the fundamental Curves image correction strategies.Download This Free Excerpt and Sample Image

Combining Two Exposures to Extend the Tonal Latitude of an Image
When a scene has too much tonal range to be captured in one exposure, it’s possible to capture two exposures and use Photoshop’s awesome tools to combine the best brightness values from each. In this lesson you’ll work with an image that has bright highlights and deep shadows scattered randomly throughout the scene. You’ll use an ingenious technique where you pull a selection from one of the color channels, then alter the selection using the Refine Mask dialog and a Levels adjustment. Download This Free Excerpt and Sample Images