Two long distance walking trails cross West Sweden, both easily accessible by train from Gothenburg.

The post On Foot in West Sweden appeared first on The Travel Magazine.

Most outdoor photographers know that using a Curves adjustment in Photoshop or Lightroom is one of the best ways to add contrast and boost the tonality in an image to make it more compelling. But there’s a unique trick for using Curves in Photoshop, and it works wonders with one simple adjustment.

Austin James Jackson is a young, professional landscape photographer based in Southern Utah, whose shooting and editing skills belie his age. In this quick tutorial he demonstrates a method for using Curves that he relies upon for “almost every single photo that I edit,” and it’s easy enough for anyone to use.

James says that even if you’ve used Photoshop’s Tone Curve in the past, “I’m going to show you something you don’t know that will make any photo look amazing.” While this technique is a no-go in Lightroom, it can be replicated with any photo-editing software that lets you fully adjust the tone Curve.

James begins with a pretty forest scene on his screen and grabs the Curves adjustment tool. Before jumping into his trick, he provides a quick overview of how the Curves graph works to lighten or darken an image—simply by dragging and moving the diagonal line in the box. He also illustrates why the “S-Curve” is so commonly used.

Now it’s time for James’ favorite quick Curves adjustment that he prefers to a standard S-Curve that often results in bright areas that are too bright, and dark portions of  scene that are overly dark—often obscuring details in both portions of the frame. His technique works because you can make as many points on the Curve as you want.

James drags up the bottom left point and drags down on the right point. As you’ll see, this essentially protects the highlights and shadows while enhancing details and interest in both areas of the shot.

These simple adjustments take less than 20 seconds, and a quick glance at the before/after images reveals the effectiveness of James’ unfamiliar trick. He repeats this quick maneuver with two more landscape photos, one of a stand of redwoods and another of a seaside scene, just so that you’re convinced. In all cases his results are impressive.

You can find more straightforward editing techniques by paying a visit to James’ YouTube channel, and by watching a tutorial we posted earlier that explains a simple technique for fixing any photo with a skewed perspective or converging vertical lines.

If you’ve been playing around with the beta version of Photoshop 2024 for what seems like forever, it’s time to get real as the official release has been unveiled. We enlisted the help of one of the world’s most acclaimed image-editing experts to help you understand and use the most important new capabilities.

Instructor Unmesh Dinda lives in Mumbai, India but he’s an internationally acclaimed image-processing expert who teaches workshops across the globe. There are almost five million subscribers to his wildly popular YouTube channel and if you’re not already a follower it’s time to take a look.

In this episode Dinda takes a deep dive into the headline features of Photoshop 2024, and insists that “with new Filters, Generative AI, and several fixes, this update changes the course of Photoshop forever.” So set aside 12 minutes, pull up a chair, grab pen and paper, and let’s dig in.

Dinda begins with what he calls “Filters on steroids” and this description isn’t too far off base, because there’s a myriad of new options and he demonstrates how they work. You can easily modify every aspect of this tools, modify the intensity of colors, and change the opacity of each effect. All of these filters are non-destructive in nature, so you have the option of a do-over whenever you want.

If you’re unfamiliar with executing an update Dinda explains how to do that by going to your Creative Cloud desktop app to quickly get this “shocking” new version. Then Dinda turns to a description of Photoshop’s new Remove tool and the updates it includes. As you’ll see it offers more control and versatility than ever before.

Next on Dinda’s list are what provoked all the excitement over the beta—namely the remarkable AI-based Generative Fill and Generative Expand features. If you’ve yet to experiment with these amazing tools Dinda will quickly get you up to speed today. Photoshop 2024 also includes a guided tutorial you can always refer to if you run into a jam.

Some folks have wondered about any potential limitations for using Photoshop’s generative features, and Dinda clarifies all that, while explaining how Adobe’s “Generative Credits” work. Basically, you’ll receive a certain number of credits, depending upon your plan, and you’ll spend them whenever using any of the generative capabilities.

Dinda explains how to determine the number of credits you have. You’ll still be able to use Generative Fill and Generative Expand once you’ve used up your credits, but the process will slow down. At some point in the future Adobe will offer the opportunity to purchase more credits if you so desire.

There’s much more to learn in this lesson for speeding up the learning curve, to take a close look and jot down a few notes. Then head over to Dinda’s YouTube channel for more image-editing tips and tricks.

And for those of you who are Lightroom users, be sure to check out the beginners guide we posted that explains everything you need to know about tools in the Basic tab.