Photography Week

Welcome to the world’s No.1 weekly digital photography magazine. If you’re already a reader, thanks for your continued support and involvement; if you’re new to Photography Week, you’ve come to the right place! In addition to expert advice, brilliant

Venus Optics has announced the new Laowa 10mm f/4, an ultra-compact rectilinear pancake lens for APS-C mirrorless camera systems, which the company is billing as one of the world’s widest lenses of its kind. The lens is available for Canon RF, Fujifi

Capturing balanced portrait shots out on location is challenging, and sometimes impossible where lighting equipment cannot be carried on site for safety reasons. Shooting the background on location and then the subject in the studio is a more effecti

Compositing is actually not a new concept – it has been a part of the photo-editing process since the days of film photography. In decades past, it was still possible to seamlessly blend image components together in the dark room, only this was done

At the extreme end of the artistic scale, compositing work can produce highly visible blends and stylised images. Many photographers who focus on this type of work are not trying to produce seamless shots, where the boundaries between each component

Adjust shade by adding a light or switching this off. Generally even, two-light setups provide the most successful extractions Match the direction, colour and softness of your main light to the expected lighting of the background for credible final l

One of the challenges of pro composite photography is knowing which elements should be captured first. Which works better – finding a subject to fit a background or a background to match your subject? In an ideal world, we would have a concept of wha

When shooting your subject, write down the details of the subject distance from the camera, focal length used, camera elevation and exposure settings. This allows you to capture backgrounds that are better matched to the final requirements. Set the h

When shooting backgrounds for a specific image, or simply when out shooting for non-compositing purposes, try to capture a range of backgrounds and textures that can be used in future compositing projects. Look for walls, lighting elements and neutra

This intelligent feature adjusts the precision of the selection based on edge properties. Use higher settings for hair or fine detail This feature enables the user to preview the extraction using a mask, with colour and type based on subject properti

You can add a mannequin or stand in to preview the perspective and shadows. Here I created a background in 3D using Unreal Engine, which made it easier to create a model and then add my subject. You can also use a version with no model. Once you have

Once you have selected and extracted your image elements, it’s time to start blending them all together. This is often the stage when photographers who are new to high-level compositing make mistakes. For a composite image to truly work, each element

Apply basic fixes in Camera Raw. In Photoshop, use Ctrl/Cmd+J to copy the layer and Filter > Blur > Average. Change the layer blending mode to Color, and add a Clipping Mask so it affects the subject layer. Control the effect with the opacity slider.

To find out how you can get Photography Week delivered straight to your device every week for just a few pennies, simply search for Photography Week on any of the platforms below AVAILABLE ON YOUR DEVICE NOW! https://apple.co/2RjoI0a http://bit.ly/2

When lighting your subject, do so with the background lighting in mind for credible results Shoot each element against a background that makes selecting and extracting as easy as possible Aim to reduce colour from the background bleeding onto your su

You can do all sorts of things with layers in Photoshop, from experimenting with blending modes and filters to using adjustment layers to enhance your images. But one layer-based technique that is perhaps less well-known is the use of clipping masks.

15 MINS When you take a photograph, the shutter generally opens for just a fraction of a second. But when you shoot in extremely low-light conditions, such as at night or while using a strong ND filter, the exposure time required can extend to severa

The US National Audubon Society has announced the winners of its annual photography contest, with Jack Zhi taking the Grand Prize for his dramatic image of two white-tailed kites in flight, with one clutching its prey. Zhi says: “I studied white-tail

www.tamron.com £828/$999 The Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD G2 is something of a modern classic, reinvented. The original edition was excellent in every way, shoehorning a useful ‘standard’ zoom range and fast, constant f/2.8 aperture rating into a

N-Photo is a monthly magazine for Nikon photographers, and is packed with technique and Photoshop video lessons every month. http://bit.ly/3atHLfO https://apple.co/2TNE26T PhotoPlus is a monthly magazine for Canon photographers that features expert