Hello Fellow Creators!

This week's live streaming tutorial in the Premium Membership is also September's Sneak Peek  beginner-intermediate level tutorial offered to the public titled "My Happy Place."

In this fun fantasy levitation tutorial, we focused on learning how to place a subject into a completed background while adjusting lighting and tones to fit any mood.

Included this month are 2 Free high-quality jpg. Download yours to keep forever! Tara also shows us where to gain additional png's found on her favorite stock websites, such as the book and glasses from Pixelsquid and a model from Deposit Photos.

You will start by making your additional digital selections, then download the image or add them to the lightbox. 

Use select subjects to grab your model quickly. Next, go to Select>Select and Mask and use the refined edge brush to work your way around the edges of your subject, especially around the hair. 

Use a...

Whether you have a family member in the service or you favor images with a military motif, it’s always a good time to show your support to our troops and promote patriotism. Tara Lesher Education group member, Carrie Hampton, did a beautiful job creating nationalistic composites and was kind enough to share her techniques with us.

As a military spouse, Carrie enjoys creating composites that pay homage our flag and the U.S. Military’s A10 Warthog that her husband flies as a member of the Air Force. She believes these images deliver a strong message of pride and solidarity. Carrie particularly admires the A10 as a beloved and dependent military aircraft. 

To create The Patriotic Boy image, Carrie shot photos of a friend’s son whose father is also a pilot. She used a neighbor’s flag that was attached to a flag pole and brought it down for the shoot and also had the young boy wear an oversized pilot’s jacket.

Carrie shot the photo using the Brenizer...

Hello, fellow creators!

This week's live streaming tutorial, "polar coordinates filter," is found in the Photoshop 101 category inside the premium membership. Tara demonstrates how to utilize any landscape, location shoots, or textures to custom design a unique warped cylinder effect by using the polar coordinates filter.

Up in the Clouds

First, we choose a fluffy cloud shot and click Command or Control J to make a copy of the background layer. Then click >Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates, making sure you choose >Rectangular to Polar option.

This simple step swirls a standard cloud into a swirling vortex!

Use the spot healing tool or the clone pattern stamp tool to eliminate the line that this filter effect creates.

Building composites with your landscape and nature shots is a truly personalized touch to add to your photography edits.

City Twilight

In the second example, we learn multiple techniques with one image. By flipping the image...

Hello, fellow creators!

 Today’s Dragon Whisperer is the premium membership sneak peek released just for August. This image is being made into a jigsaw puzzle available this holiday season in major retailers worldwide like Amazon, Target, Walmart, and through the toy company itself TOYNK.com!

You are going to learn about lots of free and paid stock sites while you build this composite.

Gather Castle ImagesFirst, find your stock images to build your composite.

This image uses a castle, a dragon, candles, smoke flames, sparks, a crystal ball, and a sky.

There are several free sites like PNGtree, Unsplash, and Clipart Library to browse. Visit Adobe Stock, PixelSquid, or Shutterstock if you’d like to invest in a premium stock site. 

 Pro tip: having at least one high-quality premium stock membership gives you images you can always rely on. 

To begin, first set your image size to at least a minimum of 3,000 pixels on your width and height.

Castle, Windows...

Hello Creators!

 In this week's premium membership tutorial, you're going to learn through three image examples how to use the motion-blur feature. This Photoshop tool will apply a surreal aesthetic, as well as complement any of your spooky, sport, or dramatic edits.

Let's get started.

First, open the photo that you want to use. Go to File > Open, choose your photo, and click Open. Then control or command J to copy a background layer.

Next, Choose Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and adjust the angle to match the direction of your image, creating a sense of movement by adding a blur that flows in one direction. In this case, vertically with the tree line.

Use the distance setting to control the amount of blur that is applied.

Isolate the blur effect by applying a mask layer to keep the detail and using the soft black brush tool to brush over areas that should not be blurred, like in this example, where we want the subject in...

Hello, fellow creators!

This week's live streaming tutorial in the premium membership is also July's sneak peek offered to the public titled "Fire Goddess." A fierce fantasy image edit with fire and smoke overlays, various blend modes, and layer styles. 

Geared towards intermediate to advanced Photoshop users, but as a newbie, I found the broken down step by step sections easy to navigate and valuable on where to obtain viable stock for practice and clients.

Background LayeringFirst, we want to use the rectangle marquee tool to click and drag and select our whole volcanic background.  Then control or command C to copy, followed by control or command V to paste.

Quick Tip: To keep your same dimensions when resizing your background, be sure to hold down the shift key.

Adding a rock from another piece of stock, we use the quick selection tool to select all around the rock then control or command T to grab it and paste to our volcanic background...

Hello, fellow creators!

I had a Whale of a good time with this edit...( see what I did there?)

In this week's live streaming tutorial, "Roadblock Whale" found in the Compositing Hand edits category. Tara shows us a fun, surreal-vibe edit using only two stock images from Deposit Photos.

Deposit Photos is a premium site Tara personally uses. It is required to pay for each image or packages. But don't worry. There is a TON of free stock sites available.

Pixabay and Freeimages.com are just a few from the list.

Setting the scene

You can choose any scene or other aquatic creature you wish. Maybe a field of flowers, emerging from the surface of the moon or even a backcountry road verses payment?  The techniques learned in this tutorial have a wide range of uses.

Make a Big Splash! 

Here you will select around the whale to pick up the splash and background water around the whale. Copy (command C) and Paste (command V) the...

Hello fellow creators!

Nothing says summer like bathing suits, and beaches, right?

In this week's live streaming tutorial, "Summer Buddies" found in the Artistic Hand edits category Tara shows us how to achieve the perfect Americana vintage postcard feel using an original JPEG image. 

Even Tara admits at least once a year accidentally shoots in jpeg while she meant to shoot in-camera raw.  I was glad to know my noisy jpeg images still had hope!

Oops, I did it again

Starting in-camera raw we bring up the shadows and bring down the highlights due to the cool tones of the original image. To counteract that, Under the luminance of the HSL greyscale, bring the oranges up just a bit to give it the warmness it needs to feel vintage.

NOTE: Remember all of the adjustments are going to be more extreme if you are working with a jpeg image.  Just make adjustments according to your own edit.

Toes in the sand

By opening up curves to bring up the...

Hey everyone!

Bringing the real and the fictional together was not as challenging as expected!

I created this sea monster composite to show how easy it was to edit this with the techniques applied. This is one of the easiest composites available in the membership because the stock graphics already have such an illustrative feel, eliminating much of the work like editing lighting, shadows, color tones or things like that. The final image looked much more like an illustration or a painting.
In the video tutorial, I include exactly where I was able to get the stock images and filters used. Sign up for the premium membership to find out where.

Different techniques like adjusting shadows and tones, adding warmth, warping some images and using contrast and exposure were applied. Using the soft brush tool, I was able to take out any harshness in the composite. In most of my tutorials, you’ll see that the subject is the center of attention but for this one, since the boy is so tiny,...

This powerful editing tool will lend a dreamy glow to your portraits that can be the difference between a good photograph and an unforgettable one. 

Butterfly GardenFirst, copy your background layer with control or command J on your PC or Mac.

By clicking filter, blur, then Gaussian blur, we can achieve a stunning blur effect that doesn’t make the subject blurry.  Switching the blend mode to screen, allows just the soft background blur around your subject to have the heavenly glow.

The amount you are going to blur will depend on your image and your taste. Play with your radius to see the effect in your own edits!

Head in the bubble clouds

Sometimes soft light looks good as well, so...