Recently I was in the mood to create something a little wild in Photoshop that I could also license as a royalty free stock photo.  I’m not the visionary type that can just get ideas in my head, and then go run and shoot all of the separate pieces.  I’m more of the type that shoots a lot of “stuff”, browses through it all, and realizes later (sometimes accidentally) which elements might play nicely together.  So, I started with a shot from my own photo library of a few little kids running. They were the son and daughter of some friends of mine, and I got a shot of them running through the park during a family photoshoot I did for them about a year ago. When I was in NYC recently, I caught a crazy shot of the traffic driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, with a slight gap in the traffic. I was standing above the highway on the foot path, and shot it at a slight angle so that it looks a bit more candid.  What was the result? Here it is!

The original kids shot:

The final:

The shadows were a bit tricky, but I got them right.  The size and skew angle of the children was probably the most difficult part.

It’s so much fun when you realize that you can combine multiple photo pieces to create and entirely new and different composition. Gotta love it!  The parents and kids got a kick of of it, and laughed their heads off on seeing this final result   That’s about as good as it gets.

Now why would someone want to use this photo?  Why bother going through all of the trouble to compose such an image?  Why not?  First of all, I had fun doing it.  Even if I don’t make a dime from the photo, that right there was worth it.  But unfortunately, homeboy has to pay the bills.  If my wife thought I messed around all day on the computer creating “fun” photos that I couldn’t sell, she probably might not be very pleased with me.  How might someone put this final image of kids running through highway traffic to good use in an advertisement or magazine article? I was thinking it might apply to childhood behavior concepts; perhaps even hyperactivity or ADHD.  Wild kids, kids gone wild, or other topics of that nature.  What about the location?  It’s New York City, and we all know that NYC is one of the most visited cities in the entire world.  Maybe an article about family friendly vacations to the Big Apple might find a nice use for this hilarious photo.  In the end, it can be applied to a number of different concepts.  Safety, behavior, travel, parenting, and more.

Image keywords: add, ADHD, bad, boy, Bridge, Brooklyn, brother, cars, Chase, chases, chasing, Children, control, crazy, Danger, dangerous, excited, freeway, Fun, funny, Girl, Happy, highway, hyper, hysterical, Kid, Kids, loose, misbehaved, misbehaving, mischievous, motorway, out, playing, plays, running, siblings, Sister, smiling, Street, tag, teen, together, Traffic, uncontrolled, undisciplined, unsafe, wild, young, youth

Here Bob “The Miz” Mizerek shows us how we can create vignettes in two different styles using Adobe Photoshop.  Vignetting is an effect that is also very easy to add to your images using Adobe Lightroom.

Here Bob “The Miz” Mizerek shows us how we can simulate shallow depth of field in Photoshop.

We made it to the park to bring the dogs for a walk on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  The daffodils were out in full bloom.  There are tons of them over at Hubbard Park in Meriden, Connecticut right now.  What a great location for Spring Photoshoots, especially for those “shorter subjects” (kids and pets).  Just thought I’d share a few of our snapshots.  Here is the before and after of our Yorkie Beagle mix – we didn’t like how the leash looked, so a little bit of Photoshop took care of that.

You have to love the clone and patch tools… they are a life saver.  Click here for a video tutorial on how I did it.

Aaron Goodman is the man. I’m blown away by his stuff. He knows his gear, his lighting, and (even more importantly) his Photoshop; and he’s not afraid to use all of these skills in unison. His concepts are mind blowingly creative – enough to knock your socks off. Some of them are so simple, yet effective, that you think to yourself, “gee why didn’t I think of that?”.  The SAT’s with the pencil girl is one of my favorites. I want to try and think of more of these types of conceptual images, to add to my stock photography portfolio; as long as I can afford to spend the amount of time on them that they will obviously need. In the past I’ve spent hours and hours on images that have a very low return, so obviously when it comes to selling images like these through microstock outlets, you have to use your own good judgement and planning.

Read more in this excellent article by AfterCapture magazine here.  All images Copyright © Aaron Goodman.

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”

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