I remember the first summer I got my digital SLR. Back then, I was just getting into everything you could do with, and I was positively fascinated with sunsets. I wanted to capture all of the colors, the reds, the purples, the in-betweens. The light at sunset is like nothing else. I remember religiously dropping [...]

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We recently did a tutorial on the multiply blend mode and how you can use it to correct an image that is too bright. If you followed the tutorial, you no doubt realized that Photoshop Elements has quite a few options for blending layers. One of them is the direct opposite of the multiply blend [...]

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No matter how much we try to make our images just right, sometimes we mess up. That doesn’t mean we have to give up, however. With some simple editing in Adobe Photoshop Elements, you can bring color back into your overexposed images and possibly save them from ruin. Just follow these simple steps.

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Have you ever wanted your pictures just a little bit brighter or darker than what your camera gives you? Sure, you can always go into Photoshop Elements and adjust it after the fact, but shouldn’t the camera allow you to do it as you’re taking the photo? Why can’t you just pick an exact shutter [...]

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From day one, we’re taught to avoid motion blur in our photography. That’s because most motion blurs are unintentional. They are the result of you shaking the camera ever so slightly as you press the shutter button. What results usually doesn’t look all that interesting because there is no underlying theme. With that said, there [...]

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Shooting in low light situations is difficult. It presents a combination of problems for which there is no single quick fix. You can decrease the shutter speed, but if you don’t have a tripod, your image will be blurry. You can bring a flash with you, but if you’re too close to your subject, you’ll [...]

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The sunny 16 rule is a handy reference for beginner and pro photographers alike. It’s a guide you use to get the right exposure (a.k.a. brightness) when you want to use manual mode and don’t have a light meter or other diagnostic tools on hand with you. I’ve had a lot of readers asking me [...]

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Have you ever heard of the sunny 16 rule? It seems to have all but disappeared in most modern discussions of photography. As a matter of fact, it’s one of many rules that photographers seem to have forgotten. That’s a shame because the sunny 16 rule serves as a nice way to check your current [...]

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Good photography, just like any art, should tug at our heartstrings. Images should make us feel one way or another, and if they don’t, we tend to ignore them. What you photograph is important. We’ve shown how subject selection can seriously impact the mood of your photos. But there’s something else that goes beyond this. [...]

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The sunrise and the fog. They are two of the most dramatic elements you can add to any photograph. When you combine them, they can create the feelings of mystery and foreboding. Today, we’re going to learn how to take pictures of mist on a lake just after the sun has risen. There’s a special [...]

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Photography is a mysterious art. Somehow, by pressing all the right buttons and using all the right settings, you can turn an ordinary scene into a work of art. Because photography is so strange, so out of the ordinary, certain photography myths have grown out of our desire to explain what’s going on behind the [...]

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Here’s a handy one for you point-and-shoot photographers. Have you ever wanted to get one part of the scene just right, but you could never get the colors to pop out? Sometimes you know more about the thing you want to photograph than your camera does. You know you want the sky to be blue, [...]

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In my regular Ask David column, I answer common questions from my readers. By answering them here, I hope to help everyone else who might have this problem, and not just the person who asked the question. Today, we cover aperture changes, the focus lock button, stealing photos, and curtain flashes.

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Digital cameras come with a variety of different automatic modes, each with their own distinct purpose. By learning some of these modes, you can ease the transition from automatic photography to manual photography. That’s certainly the case with shutter priority and aperture priority modes. I’ve recently discussed both those modes in my newsletters, but which [...]

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Exposure is everything in photography. If your images are too bright or too dark, you lose a lot of the information and contrast that makes a good image worth viewing. You may have heard me talking about exposure before, but now it’s time to go into more detail. There is a way to ensure that [...]

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