Hard Light Effects in Photoshop –

This is the first live tutorial I recorded so I had no idea what I will end up with. Basically I wanted to show how to get a high contrast hard light effect in Photoshop, almost HDR looking. I wanted to keep things realistic so I used the contrast masking technique to keep the original shadows of the model.

Resources FREE DOWNLOAD: https://downloads.psdbox.com/hard-light-effects-in-photoshop/
This tutorial can be followed in Adobe Elements as well.
0:00 Intro
0:51 Making the background
3:17 Background adjustments
7:49 Adding the model
8:54 Shadow masking in Photoshop
13:07 The hard light effect using dodge & burn
20:50 Hard light effect effacement with filters
23:49 The Shadows/Highlights filter for HDR effect
25:56 Sharpening

Model stock image by Marcus Ranum: http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/
Background image by Julia Starr: http://night-fate-stock.deviantart.com/
Sky stock image by Pelleron Stock: http://pelleron-stock.deviantart.com/

#11 – Adjustments – Photoshop for beginners

Adjustments are used to change the colors and contrast of your image. In this tutorial I will show you the benefits of using adjustment layers and show you a few of the most common ones like Hue/Saturation, Color Balance or Levels and Curves.

Contrast Masking – Masking/Extracting Shadows

Masking shadows is difficult let’s face it and this is a problem that had no easy solution for me until now.

If you want to replace the background of a model shot for example, how do you keep the original shadows on the new background without having the texture of the original background over them?

In this video I will show you how to incorporate the original shadows of an image on a new composition using blend modes, levels and some masking. Really easy and awesomely useful especially for photographers that need to replace backgrounds.

Original article about contrast masking: http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/contrast-masking-photoshop.html

Man stock image: http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/art/Fly-1-255405147