Yup....
Dummies would be me..
I managed to take a "few" (800+) pictures while I was in Japan and there are a handful of photos that I would love to do some work on (I will post a few here) pictures that I took while I was on my trip to Japan with my fiance'.
Would love to know if there is a place that I can learn (website? books?). Or if anyone has some "basic" tips.. I have seen a lot of great photos here so I know you guys would have some advice.
Thanks in advance



Here are some pics that I took while I was in Japan.

 

 

Check out the following links:

http://www.jeanmiele.com/

http://www.normankoren.com/

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

 

thanks for the heads up...

 

Here are some useful photoshop tricks on video
http://tricks.onigo.net/

 

I get a lot of my info from Cambridge in Colour's Digital Photography Tutorials Page.

 

great reads everyone... thanks

 

i like 3 and 4. im not too much of a fan with shots take at standing level. get down/ get up

 

Here is a little PP tutorial I threw together a long time ago. It is super basic, and not the way I do things anymore, but call it a good starting point. I won't get into how you setup your workspace.

This was done with Photoshop CS2

Initial Image:



Crop



Filter -> Smart Sharpen (a CS2 function) - set your radius to 1.0 pixels!



Noise Reduction:



The easiest way to change the brightness and darkness of a photo is with Levels, and you want to do it as a layer - not an Image Adjustment from the drop down menu. One thing about levels and curves: levels are like driving an automatic transmission while curves are like driving a manual.







Play with the Contrast as an adjustment layer.



Bring some of the colors out with a raised saturation layer.



Then you can play with the colors even more with a Selective Color layer.



If you did each step as a layer, your layer dock should look something like this:

 

There are 5 million ways to do this in Photoshop, and each photo may require a different way of doing it. Like I said, this is just a starting point. If you walk away with anything, please be that you do your editing in layers - this is what makes Photoshop so powerful.

When you learn how to use layers and masks, it is amazing what you can do with this program!