Damien Symonds

Make it easy for yourself. Shoot them as actual silhouettes. Like, against a bright window or whatever.

Yes, you'll learn about those thing in the Raw Class and the Skin Class respectively. Have you seen this offer?

Yep, that's better, thanks. Now, can you tell me what areas are troubling you?

You have to move this window over So that it's not under the device.

It's because you have the brightness window sitting underneath the device, of course.

Hi @Daria, just fyi, your photo is untagged. This is REALLY bad. Whenever you're saving photos, for any purpose, make sure the profile is embedded. So just to be safe, do you mind re-saving and re-posting this photo, so I can be sure I'm seeing its colours correctly?

Ok, run this action on a landscape image and tell me what you think of it: Download Action

Darn it, would you answer the question? It might be the difference between being able to achieve this hare-brained scheme, or not. The little "bite" out of the mask in the top right corner - is it important?

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. I still don't understand why you wasted so much of our time with that Gradient Map nonsense. Now, please address this question:

That's a layer of colour on Linear blend mode. Is that how you'd use it if we can work out how to automate it? A layer of colour on a blend mode?

This one, do you mean?

How important is the little missing piece at the top right corner?

Yes, but what type of layer would it be? Certainly not a Gradient Map one.

It makes absolutely no sense; and I think if you stopped to think about it you would see that. To what kind of layer will this C-shaped mask be applied?

What if their photo is portrait orientation?

Including the slight cut-out at the top right corner.

Please answer the question. How does this C-shape have broad relevance to people's photos?

And you really think that that mask shape will have relevance for people's photos?

You need a way to automate this C-shaped mask?

I'm still confused. Why are you applying a gradient map to the edges of a photo?

You keep saying "gradient" but your screenshots are of Gradient Map layers, which are a very different thing. So I need you to explain the situation further. Why are you using Gradient Map layers?

A little bit of motion blur there, but that's hard to avoid altogether with animals. I think this will be ok.

This is great.

Actually, I think you might have removed a bit too much colour noise. But yeah, Luminance noise needs a bit more removal. Focus will be fine.

Oh, I don't know about this one. If you're desperate you can use it, but it would be good to find a better one if you can.