Damien Symonds

Your Spyder3Express gives you buggerall control over those options. For now, you don't need to do anything different. Just order the test prints. Order them from a few labs, would be my recommendation. When you get them in, hit me up and we'll talk further about the calibration.

This is such a broad question. It varies a lot depending on what you're manipulating. So I'll need you to show me the photo you're working on.

I'm so sorry, I can't discuss white balance here. That's a matter for the Raw Class.

There are several ways. If you want to do it permanently, right-click on the raw file in Bridge, and choose "Develop Settings > Clear Settings". If you don't want to do it permanently, but rather just to have a look at how it was before, open it in ACR and choose "Camera Raw Defaults" from the submenu. That way, if you don't want it permanently restored to original, you can just Cancel out of ACR afterwards. A bit more info here.

I have no idea either. Seriously. It always depends on the angle and style of the gradient. Just click around and see what happens. You can't break anything, I promise. After.

There are a few steps in the process, yes, but it's all spelled out there. Don't rush. Take your time, you can do it. At first, just do the masking very roughly. Don't worry about precision until after you've done the colour stops part. Right. Then finally you can do the precise masking. Yep, so choose "Linear" instead of "Radial", and choose the angle of your choice.

I don't have any "tricks" for you, sorry. Just painting with white as you have been. However, in my playing I found that I was leaving an annoying faint rim of the dark green, so when you download this PSD, you'll see that I used a pink layer as well as the white layer, to try to combat that.

Ah, I see. I understand now.

Do you mind showing me the SOOR? What else was in the background originally?

Normal.

You'll find that the search function on my new site is much better than my old one. If you simply typed "eyedropper" into the search bar, you'll get those same articles.

Hi Sharlene, there's one here, and a slightly less relevant one here.

You should have a "PrtScrn" button on your keyboard? Usually it's somewhere at the top right corner, above or near your Backspace key. Once you press it, the screenshot is in your clipboard, and you can simply create a new blank document in Photoshop, hit Ctrl V to paste the screenshot onto it, then save it as a jpeg to upload here. Or, you can simply search in your Start Menu for "Snipping Tool". It's a great little app, very easy to use.

The really only come into play with VERY noisy images. The ones where you've had to push the Luminance slider above 90. Then, aggressively swing the other sliders both ways, to see the full impact of their adjustment. Like a slowing pendulum, gradually your swinging will become smaller as you zero in on your preferred value. Sorry, I can't discuss that here. You'll learn all about it in the Raw Class.

I think she looks ... "over-perfected", if you know what I mean.

I'm so sorry Katie, there's a heck of a lot I want to discuss about this photo, but I can't do it here. Only in the classes.

Always 0% hardness. Never higher. Only the size varies, according to the area I'm masking. No, not at all. In this one, you'll see it was straight gradients.

The specs look great on both. Interesting reading the reviews at the bottom of the pages, though. The second one seems a bit more favoured? As long as your graphics card supports 4K, of course.

Yes. That's very unusual. Are you saying that you've got your screen at its absolute minimum brightness, and it's still brighter than the prints?

Of course. Facebook compresses everything. It's great, well done!

Download the PSD file Done using this method, and as you'll see, the addition of some Levels layers to make sure the background around the hair blended perfectly.

Oops, I forgot to darken the area between her legs. I think this is better:

Hi Dayna, as the others have said, process your raw file flatter before attempting any Photoshop work on this.

Looks good.

How about this?