Category Archives: Tip of The Day

Adobe Photoshop, Mobile, Mobile Photography, Photography, Tip of The Day, Uncategorized

How to add a sunset effect in Photoshop

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How to add a sunset effect in  Adobe Photoshop with only in one step

I took this picture few year ago in NYC using my iPhone‘s camera.

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The above image was taken in the evening through a glass window with  MANY PEOPLE around me so I did not have time to adjust my camera settings. Thanks  to Adobe Photoshop I can  improve my image (because I know how warm and beautiful the sunset looked and I want to make my photo looks as close to original condition as possible).

Window> Adjustments
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Color Lookup > FallColors.look
lcl

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You can change the layer’s opacity (if needed)

 

My New Book  “Digital Painting for Photographers in  Adobe Photoshop CC “ on Amazon

Adobe, Adobe Comp, Adobe Lightroom CC, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Mix, Adobe Sketch, App, Creative Cloud, Digital Art, HDR, Mobile, Mobile HDR, Photography, Photoshop Painting, Tip of The Day, Training, Wacom

Importance of Daily Digital Exercise

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Importance of Daily Exercise

 

Portrait

I found that daily exercise is very important for many reasons. Daily exercise helps with exploring/developing  new techniques, polishing your skills, pushing your artistic vision into another higher level, and teaches you how to be productive and not to be stressed under the “less time” pressure.

Adobe Photoshop Daily exercise: try to have 20 minutes every day to create something new in PS. its not supposed to be too complicated or perfect. Try to composite 2 or 3 images together (and the best practice is to composite random images, not images that you thought will be good with some composition. Just choose images with absolutely different style, schemes and start working on your  Photoshop composition).
Photoshop Painting: try different styles of painting every day. Don’t spend more than 20-30 minutes and you don’t need to finish your painting if you don’t have time. Just practice with brush strokes, colors, try different brushes.

Photography: simply keep your camera next to you all the time. See something > take the shot. Different light, different angles. Try it and you will see a huge improvement just in a few days!

Mobile Apps: what could be easier?!!! You have your mobile devices with you all the time! So Adobe Photoshop Sketch, Adobe Photoshop Mix and Adobe Photoshop Fix. Try them and you will be impressed with your improvement just in a few days!

Traditional Painting: use any paper you have. Don’t try to finish your masterpiece every day. Exercise with different brush, pencil strokes, composition.

Adobe Photoshop, Creative Cloud, Digital Art, Photoshop Painting, Tip of The Day, Training, Wacom

Digital Painting Made Easy with The Mixer Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop

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Victoria Pavlov Studio

My favorite and primary tool in my digital painting is the Mixer Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop CC.

I have two styles in my digital painting:
Painting for Photographers (you don’t need to have any painting experience)
Painting from Scratch (you need to have painting experience or you need to be willing to learn how to paint 🙂  )

 

For the last few days I have received many questions about my favorite technique using the Mixer Brush Tool (digital painting for photographers)

My favorite technique:
Favorite Brush: Per Stroke Brightness Variance
Preset: Custom
Load Brush after Each Stoke ( clean brush after each stroke)

brush

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Painted with Adobe Photoshop CC & wacom

Victoria Pavlov Studio

 

 

App, Mobile, Tip of The Day

My Favorite Scanner App is Scanner Pro

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One of my favorite business apps is Scanner Pro by Readdle . With Scanner Pro I can scan any document, paper, receipts, or just an image and save or share it using my mobile device. A great app for just $2.99!!!!

When you first login to your app the welcome screen will ask you to join. Simply enter your email address and now you are ready to turn your mobile device to portable scanner.
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I am always using the manual scanning option for accurate edge adjustments after scanning.

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Take a Picture of your paper, document, images you want to scan  (also you can scan  from your Camera Roll )

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And now you can manually adjust edges of your scan to fix the persepective

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Now you have MANY options to share your scanned document

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Also you have MANY different choices to upload your document to cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and more!

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With Scanner Pro it doesn’t matter where I am. I don’t need to be at my office to scan a document. My mobile device is my pocket scanner now!

 

 

Adobe Lightroom CC, Photography, Tip of The Day, Wacom

Black & White with Adobe Lightroom CC

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Photoshop Tutorial

Today I will show you how to create a Black & White image in Adobe Lightroom in only 3 steps

Select the image you want to work with
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Switch to the Develop Module
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1: Choose Black & White from the Basic panel
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Adjust the sliders to get the look you want or use mine below
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2: Using Tone Curve panel change numbers of each slider ( Highlights, Lights, Dark, Shadows )
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3: Change numbers of each B & W slider (it will depend of your image)

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Adobe, Adobe Photoshop, Creative Cloud, Digital Art, Tip of The Day, Training, Wacom

Create Black and White image in 3 steps

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Photoshop Tutorial

Today I will show you how to create black & white image in 3 steps using Adjustments Layers in Adobe Photoshop CC

Open your image you want to work with
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1: Adjustments > Black and White
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Using the black slider of each to the right/left you will  modify influence of the colors  in the resulting of black & white image.

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2: Highlight t your image layer ( Layer 1 )  > Adjustments > Selective Color
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Change number of the black slider of each color ( move the slider to the left or right)

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3: Adjustments > Color Lookup >2Strip.look from the 3DLUT File ( selected by default )

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Adobe, Adobe Muse, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Mix, Adobe Sketch, Adobe Slate, Adobe Stock, Digital Art, HDR, Mobile, Mobile Photography, Photography, Photoshop Painting, Tip of The Day, Training, Wacom

5 reasons to use Adobe Stock

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Painted with Adobe Photoshop CC and Wacom

I was looking for stock images for a many years and I was not impressed with what I could see on a market  until I was introduced to Adobe Stock.

I am professional photographer, digital artist, and educator. I am working and teaching  Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Muse, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Lightroom, and all Adobe mobile applications and I found that Adobe Stock is the BEST source for my design, photography, painting, education workflow. Why?

Reason 1:
I’ve heard many people say: ” I am a professional photographer, designer and I am not using any stock images”. Hmmmm so if you need any professional  image, background, graphic image to build your clients “travel with us” website you will go around the world to take pictures of the places were your client offers services? And keep in mind that as usual our clients don’t know what image(s) they will use and they are depending on us to show them at least a few examples that they can choose from. So if you multiply all the costs of traveling around the world, and the time just to take pictures, your price for client’s website will rise up significantly and I am not talking about the extra time that you need to build the website. My question is: will your client wait at least 7 extra months and pay 99% more than he/ she should pay just to let you use your own images? The answer is NO and NEVER.
So reason #1: use Adobe Stock images to make your workflow more productive along with building great communication between you and your client.

Reason 2:
When you working on your client project and you’re not sure which image you or your client  will use with your design, simply download a “preview” version of the image(s) your want to use, finish your design, project, show it to your client and if your client approves your design simply click on Adobe Stock image > License image and you will visually see  that your Preview image will be replaced with high resolution, ready to use royalty free image. You don’t need to do any EXTRA steps that will increase your workflow time and your client will receive the final copy of the approved project in no time!
So reason 2: Fast and stress free workflow

Reason 3:
Quality
Adobe Stock is a worldwide library (40 million +) of the best photographers, digital artists, designers.  All images are with HIGH quality ready to use right away.

Reason 4:
The price
You have many optiosn to subscribe to Adobe Stock
1: As a Creative Cloud member you are saving 40% of the monthly plan!!!!!!
10 images a month
US $29.99 / mo
Annual plan, paid monthly

  • Add to a Creative Cloud subscription
  • Additional images at US$2.99
  • Rollover up to 120 images

2: 10 Images a month
US $49.99/mo
Monthly plan

  • Additional images at US$4.99
  • Rollover up to 120 images

3: 750 images a month

US $199.99/mo
Annual plan, paid monthly
  • Additional images at US$0.99

4: Single images are just US $9.99 without a subscription

Reason 5:
If you are a photographer, digital artist, 3D artist, graphic designer you can make money selling your work. You can sell your images, even the ones taken with your smart phone!! You can make money from your work just from your home using your computer!


 

 

 

 

Adobe, Adobe Lightroom CC, Adobe Photoshop, Creative Cloud, Digital Art, Photoshop Painting, Photoshop World, Tip of The Day, Wacom

ParticleShop Plugin for Adobe Photoshop

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Geisha

ParticleShop is a brush plugin for Adobe Photoshop.

I was introduced to ParticleShop the brush plugin for Adobe Photoshop at Photoshop World 2015. I liked the demo and I decided to buy and try this plugin ( You can download the trial version to try first).

First of  all I want to point  out that if you are looking for a great painting plugin this in NOT your plugin. I can’t imagine using this plugin for my type of painting. My primary and one and only application for my all digital painting work is Adobe Photoshop CC and most of the time I am using the Mixer Brush Tool. Also I am using Adobe Sketch ( Adobe mobile drawing application) as well. So if you will ask me what is the best application for a digital painting I will answer: The ONE and ONLY Adobe Photoshop CC.

I am not using any third party plugins.   As an  Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber the main and primary reason for  me to use ParticleShop plugin is that this plugin is works with the newest version of Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 and the one one license you purchase will be installed for Adobe Photoshop CC  and Adobe Lightroom as well.

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The ParticleShop plugin is a great plugin for any type of artistic retouching. It’s amazing with hair and high fashion retouching, and if you like to apply any effects to your image you’ll probably like it. Because ParticleShop is the brush plugin for Adobe Photoshop you have access to all powerful Adobe Photoshop futures, including layers and if combine the plugin with other Photoshop features you will create a very powerful image. With the ParticleShop plugin you have control over your image, you can control the brush strokes:  light, color, and angle. You can apply multiple brush(es) effects in one image. Combine, change the  color,  and opacity of the brush. You can apply brush strokes effects and return to Photoshop and apply the layer mask, duplicate the layer and continue your workflow using Adobe Photoshop. If after that you want to  return to ParticleShop you can do it at any time.

I like the plugin and will use it for sure with my design and art workflow.
I have only two complaints about the Starter Pack Options:

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1: I wish I had at least two different types of each default brushes.
You can buy additional brush packs for $29.99 each but I am not sure I will spend $29.99 for each brush pack (each plugin has 11 brushes and  so it would be 11 packs) just after I spent $49.99 for the plugin. If I would have at least two different combinations  of each brush as a Starter Pack Options I would feel much better.
2: I had trouble making some of my brushes big enough for my image ( 6016 x 4016 ) even after I made  the Brush size by Maximum = 750 ( Starter Pack Options)
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Geisha

Before

Geisha

After

 

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Adobe Photoshop, Digital Art, Photography, Tip of The Day, Training

Drawing effect with Adobe Photoshop

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How to convert your photo into a drawing  using  Adobe Photoshop CC.

Open your image you want to work with

Tutorial

 

1: Image > Adjustments > HDR Toning

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Tutorial

 

 

2: Filter > Camera Raw Filter

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! Move Dehaze slider to the left. Moving Dehaze slider to  the left or to the  right you will control how light or dark your pencil stoke is

7

 

 

3: Window > Adjustments > Exposure

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Drawing Effect Tutorial

 

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