Photoshop masterclass
Fine-art photos: Develop your imaging skills to create your own signature style
Once you delve under the skin of Photoshop, you can start getting really arty in the way you reinvent
your pictures. Whether your photographic leaning is towards landscapes, portraits, nature or architecture, you can create and apply a new look that forms a unique, personal style. By isolating colours and adding textures, it’s relatively quick and easy to generate the visual ingredients that can be applied across a whole set of images, and create a brand-new signature style that’s unique to you. The beauty of this approach is that it allows you to take your shots in a different direction, and put a considered, artistic stamp on what you do. The techniques employed here are all simple, but once they’re combined, the effect is dramatic, and will turn any shot into a moody and atmospheric piece of digital art.
A lot of the groundwork is done at the raw conversion stage, and shows that Camera Raw isn’t just for tweaking the contrast and colour to get a better-looking version of what you’ve captured. When it comes to taking your photography in a new direction, Camera Raw is a genuine creative tool in its own right, and lays the foundation for a new style.
Once you’ve followed the tutorial, and practised on the supplied start image, try it on your own pictures, adjusting the techniques and the intensity of the effects to create your own visual style. Create a set of shots with a similar look, and you’ll have added an extra artistic string to your imaging bow, that fuses your photography with contemporary digital art.