Photoshop Enhancing Websites

[Billthy]

Ever since I got my D50 I have been looking for awesome photoshop websites that show how to professionally enhance your digital photos and give great photoshop tutorials for just about everything in photoshop. I was wondering if anyone could post some of your personal favorites. Thanks everyone

[peterish]

I don't know of any great tutorials sites since I learned PS for myself pretty much. Here's the basics of what you need to know:

These features are all found by clicking "Image" -> "Adjustments", then clicking 1 of the following:

-LEVELS: In the window that pops up, there's a rectangular box with 3 sliders below it. Slide the middle one left/right to brighten/darken the image. Play around with the other 2 sliders to see what effects they produce.

-CURVES: In the window that pops up, there's a diagonal "/" line; by clicking and dragging the line, you can bend/twist it. The effect is to increase contrast. Generally, bending the / line into a gentle S shape improves the image. Becareful not to drag too much.

-COLOR BALANCE: Pretty straight forward...play with the 3 separate sliders to achieve the desired coloration.

-HUE / SATURATION: -Hue: changes the overall colorcast. -Saturation: moving slider to the right produces stronger colors; while moving it to the left takes away color until the image turns into black and white.

-The last useful tool, UNSHARP MASK, can be found by clicking "Filter" -> "Sharpen" -> "Unsharp Mask"

The name of this feature is misleading, because it's actually used to sharpen images.

To use, leave the 'threshold' at 1 (for now). Then move the 'amount' and 'radius' sliders to the right until the desired sharpness is achieved. I find that it works best when the amount and radius are at the same value. For example: try doing Amount = 40, Radius = 4.0, and Threshold = 1. This should drastically sharpen up any image.