Ever take a nice outdoor photo or landscape and wonder, “Gee what happened to that nice blue sky there was on that day?”  Well, a lot of time depending on the direction of the light and your exposure, the sky will become blown out.  You might lose a lot of cloud detail, and a lot of the deep blue color you remembered from that day.  Check out this quick and easy Photoshop technique using simple selections and an addition sky images, for “digital Photoshoptic surgery”.

Blown out skies ruin a lot of good photos – don’t worry, they’re very easy to fix in Photoshop in under 5 minutes.

The dodge tool set to “highlights” is mind blowingly helpful when it comes to shooting white seamless, or objects over white.  It’s always better to get it right in the camera or in the studio, but sometimes that doesn’t always happen. Here is an older Photoshop tutorial I thought I’d resurrect from the dead today.  It shows you how you can quickly and easily clean up your photos shot over white or light gray by using the dodge tool in Adobe Photoshop. This allows you to avoid having to tweak levels, make an actual selection or use masking.

Here the Miz shows us how to conduct “Photoshoptic Surgery” on an image of a tractor with some dull/flat colors. Here we learn how to use curves and the photo filter option to really bring out the colors and saturation in Photoshop.

Here’s my first impression on flick panning, a new feature added to CS4.  When you click, drag, and release, the image glides and slides all over the place.  ME NO LIKEY OKAY!?

I found the answer already, after I recorded the screencast, of course. It’s so easy – just go to: Edit->Preferences->General and then uncheck “Enable Flick Panning”

A great video tutorial by Deke McClelland on how to use the reset and purge functions in Photoshop CS4 to increase the performance.  Clean out Photoshop’s plumbing when things get clogged up: Reset and purge.

When you’re making a quick selection in Photoshop, a lot of times you will realize that because you were feeling so lazy the selection really came out like crap.  The edges are jagged and fringed, and basically look like crap compared to if you had actually used the pen tool and done it the right way in the first place   Either way, sometimes you just feel like being lazy.  This method show how to defringe a fringy edged image.  The Miz’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

Here Bob shows us how to use the screen layer blending mode in Photoshop to improve detail and levels.  He also demonstrates how to create a simple gradient layer to improve the sky with the soft light layer blending mode.  The Miz’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.  This is a nice brief tutorial – I’m going to try and remember these simple pointers the next time I’m editing a landscape photo with a blue sky.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

Here Bob show how to create a unique layout with simple square shapes in Photoshop.  Clipping group is something I had never even heard of until I watched this tutorial.  I really like how non-destructive the editing is with these methods.  Everything Bob does, he does it in ways where he can easily modify it without having to go backwards in the history tab. Overall this is a really cool effect that you can easily tweak the template to your own style or personal preference.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

Did you ever wonder how to make realistic water reflections?  Sure, there are filters that will do this for you.  Flaming Pear makes the flood filter which is another way to achieve this.  Filter Forge is another.  Here Bob illustrates how to create this look from scratch in Photoshop with an ultra realistic water ripples effect.  Best of all, it costs you nothing but your time (only about 5-10 minutes).  The Miz’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

I came across a great Photoshop video tutorial today demonstrating how to properly use the liquify filter to enhance images of people.  This guy does a great job of showing a little about what each tool does, and how simple it is to use it.  I’ve stuck to the basics up until now, but this tut has helped me learn a lot.  You really can do anything to people with this tool…make their butt larger or smaller, their boobs, their arms and legs, eyes, face, twist their head, even.  Yes you can become a digital plastic surgeon!  Now, obviously we don’t all have this much time to invest into perfecting every single image.  In stock, buyers want what’s real as well, not just perfection.  Keep that in mind, but have fun playing with this sweet tool.

Video by imaging expert and award-winning author Deke McClelland

Below are a few other videos demonstrating how far you can go with the liquify filter.