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    How to relight a scene for drama and contrast with the simplest of masking techniques

    ByRod Lawton

    So many of the advances in photo editing software right now use AI, principally AI noise reduction (good), AI upscaling (if you need it) and AI subject masking – ESPECIALLY AI subject masking. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s not. I’ve used it a lot, on all sorts of images, but for most of the edits I do, most of the time, I use a much simpler approach based around carefully positioned radial masks.

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    Lightroom adds Feather and Edge adjustments for AI masks – but how useful are they?

    ByRod Lawton

    One of the issues with Lightroom’s AI masks is that although they create very precise and accurate masks, they also tend to be very hard-edged. If your masking adjustments are fairly mild, you probably won’t notice, but if you push them to extremes, these hard mask edges become obvious. In particular you start to see strong edge artefacts and outlines. So can the new Edge and Feather adjustments fix this?

  • Is AI sky replacement ethical? I can’t be the only one struggling with this

    ByRod Lawton

    It seems so harmless. AI sky replacement is not even in the same league as generative AI, since it just uses AI masking and blending techniques to add in a new sky that’s also perfectly real and did exist, just not here. It’s just made something easier that needed a bit of Photoshop skill before. But it does cast light on some important questions about facts, representations and motives.

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    Printing and framing photos without the stress

    ByRod Lawton

    Too often, photos are doomed to a virtual life, existing solely on your computer screen or shared digitally via social channels or websites. There are many who feel, however, that a photograph does not properly exist until it’s printed. So here’s a guide to printing and framing photos as easily and effectively as possible.

  • Knowing how to do things and knowing WHAT to do are two different things

    ByRod Lawton

    You’ll find no shortage of tutorials on how to achieve certain photo editing effects in different editors, but very little on which direction to take your images. It’s all ‘how’ and no ‘why’. That’s why I rate software like the Nik Collection and ON1 Photo RAW so highly. They don’t just give you tools, they give you ideas.

  • If you’re interested in architectural photography, this one small adjustment is crucial

    ByRod Lawton

    I’m talking about the one thing that it’s very difficult to avoid when taking pictures in any urban environment, and that’s tilting the camera. Even the smallest tilt can make the most careful architectural study look like a snapshot. It’s the tiniest of details but one of the most important, in my opinion, for this kind of photography.