Basketball Player full tutorial

                                         Matt Kloskowski


Here is a link to the full tutorial for the picture of the basketball player on the broken concrete that we looked at in class
http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photoshop-compositing-secrets-create-a-studio-sports-portrait--psd-15475

fx Drop Shadow

 Click on this link I think that you are familiar with this form of shadow creation
Drop shadow-

Curves

A good tutorial on using curves,one of the most powerful editing tools available to you
http://phlearn.com/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-curves

Shooting Tethered in Capture 7

http://www.phaseone.com/en/Imaging-Software/Capture-One-Pro-7/Tutorials.aspx

Beautiful Photography

Beautiful Composites by Eugenio Recuenco

Creating an alpha channel Mask

Creating an Alpha channel mask
Creating a mask by copying one channel and creating contrast. Our in class example was replacing the sky behind the tree.
This demo explains the technique well.

Creating an Alpha channel mask-Example the sky-tree demo-http://infiniteskills.com/blog/2011/03/how-to-create-alpha-channel-masks/

In our second in class demo we replaced the background of a studio image by again selecting the blue channel>-making a copyby dragging it to the copy icon on the bottom of the dialogue box. Go to the Image menu choose-Apply Image using a blend mode of Multiply. Using your Brush tool paint over the image with the brush in the Overlay blend mode. When painting with black the dark pixels will be affected and the light ones should remain untouched. When painting with white, the light pixels will become lighter but the dark pixels should remain unaffected. Build up contrast until you have a black and white silhouette. click on the letters RGB in the RGB channel. Drag the image that you want to use as a background onto the first image. With your channels dialogue open drag the blue channel copy onto the load as selection icon(the one that looks like a circle made up of dotted lines.you will notice that the selection has become visible as marching ants on the new background.
Make sure that the layer that will become your background is active. Hit the Add layer mask icon. and BOOM you will see the selection that you have made burn through the background layer example above. You should use a blend mode of multiply in your layers panel. You may need to make the channel mask active to work a little more on your mask with the brush tool using either black or white. to make it perfect.You could also go to maskand use the refine mask dialogue A slightly feathered edge(1 Pixel) can make the edge blend more easily with the background.