So let’s say you mistakenly used incorrect camera settings and your “beautiful” photo is disappointing with a low-res, blurry, pixelated appearance. Before you slap yourself on the forehead and dump the shot in the trash, pay close attention to the eye-opening tutorial  below.

Photographer Pejman’s YouTube channel is a great source of basic Photoshop techniques, advanced image manipulation methods, and in-depth portraiture retouching skills.

Today’s quick episode explains how to transform photos full of unsightly artifacts using easy-to-handle upscaling and image-restoration adjustments that take less than four minutes to explain.

Pejman uses a portrait photo to demonstrate the process, but the techniques you’ll learn will work equally well with other types of pixelated images that look as though they were captured with an old 3-megapxel camera. And here’s what’s so interesting: “We’re not adding anything new to the picture; we’re just making the pixels we already have look their best.”

The first step from Photoshop’s menu bar is choosing Edit, Preferences, and Technology Previews from the dropdown menus that appear. It’s important to check the box called Enable Preserve Details Upscale. Then press OK and you’re ready to proceed.

Next click on the Image tab from atop the menu bar and select the Image Size option, change Resolution to 300 pixels, and change Resample to Preserve Details. Then move the Radius Noise slider to a value of 30, and once again press OK.

Now zoom in on your photo and marvel at how much better it appears, but there’s still more work to do. The next step takes place in Photoshop’s Layers panel where you’ll activate a background layer by pressing Command or Control “J.” Then go to the Filter tab atop the screen and choose Other followed by High Pass from the ensuing dropdown windows.

Pejman says “the Radius setting here is completely dependent upon your image resolution, but I prefer a value of three for this photo.” He then explains why to temporarily choose black-and-white when zooming in on the shot for further refinements.

At this point you’re almost there, and Pejman walks you through the necessary steps which begin by changing by changing the Blending mode from Normal to Soft Light. Now you can adjust the strength of both Layers until you like what you see before finally merging them into one impressive shot.

There’s much more to learn about gear, post-processing, and capture techniques on Pejman’s instructional YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit when you have time to explore.

And don’t miss a recent tutorial we featured with another accomplished pro who demonstrates how to use Photoshop’s Blend If Sliders to transform dull images into spectacular photos that say “WOW.”  

Skylum, makers of popular AI-powered Luminar Neo, has announced the release of Aperty, an all-new professional portrait editing solution that promises faster natural-looking results and abundant advanced features.

The beta/developer preview version of Aperty, known then as “Project Barcelona,” first appeared in late summer. It is absolutely neither a replacement nor competitor for Luminar Neo. Aperty combines powerful editing tools with the batch-processing ability to apply the edits automatically to similar images thereby streamlining workflow and reducing photographers’ time at the computer.

Aperty is Built on Innovative Technologies

Face Mesh Of Up To 4000 Dots
To assure precise and accurate edits, every face is segmented into 4000 dots for analysis and refinement.

Face and Body Segmentation
Aperty’s proprietary segmentation technology detects up to 30 classes of face and body parts, enabling detailed retouching and reshaping adjustments.

Synthetic Data Set Generation
Consistent with everyone’s concern about the security of intellectual property, Aperty’s AI models learn from synthetic data and do not infringe on the original work of creators.

Key Features of Aperty

Skin Smoothing
Self-explanatory. Well-suited for every portrait situation.

Blemish Removal
When you need it, you need it. Preserves permanent details, removes or restores freckles.

Face/Body Skin Color Correction
Removes undesirable colorcast on the models’ faces sometimes caused by improper or mixed lighting.

Studio Light
May be worth the price of admission all by itself. Skylum says, “A dynamic tool that enables users to set up artificial lighting sources and apply light textures during post-production. With the ability to create up to 5 light sources, users can place them anywhere in the image to craft the perfect scene.”

Presets/LUTs
Deploy Presets and LUTs to manage color-graded images easily. Set an amount to apply and fine-tuned the results.

Masking
Easily create AI masks and customize masks with brushes, gradients or luminosity. Fully adjustable.

Makeup
Leveraging Aperty’s Face Mesh and Segmentation technology, apply blush, sculpt contours and adjust highlights in post-production.

Aperty’s DNA
Aperty was designed in close collaboration with Australian professional portrait photographer Julia Trotti. Check out her YouTube channel.

Availability & Pricing
Aperty is available directly from Skylum at $29.90 for a monthly subscription or $299 for a one-year subscription. All plans include the latest version, 24/7 technical support and activation on two devices.

∞ Jon Sienkiewicz

Here’s a frustrating and all-too-common dilemma: Your landscape photographs consistently lack punch, and nothing you’ve tried during the image-editing process seems to resolve the problem. Well, there’s one very effective technique you may have missed, and that’s what you’ll learn in this tutorial from the popular PHLOG Photography YouTube channel.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a German pro who is just as adept on the computer as he is with his camera in the field. In this 14-minute episode he comes to the rescue by demonstrating how to use Color Contrast in Lightroom to give bland outdoor images significantly more “punch” while retaining a natural and realistic look.

Mohrle pulls up an image that you can download with a link in the description beneath the video, and here are the problems: It’s a classic autumn scene with super dark clouds and a very bright foreground that got hit by direct sun. In other words it’s a very imbalanced shot.

The goal of this powerful transformation is this: “We want to take advantage of the cold colors in the back and the warmer tones of foliage in the foreground.” Because this in a contrast-rich scene, the first step is merging an HDR image. Mohrle selects five photo from the filmstrip at the bottom of the workspace and demonstrates how to accomplish this straightforward technique.

Now it’s time for a few global adjustments to the overall scene. Mohrle expands Lightroom’s Basic panel and changes the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Landscape which immediately ramps up saturation. He drops both overall exposure and highlights to recover details in the brightest portions of the frame, and then he opens up shadows and blacks

At this point the image looks rather flat but this was Mohrle’s intent, because this enables him to employ local enhancements to reintroduce contrast and pump up colors in a thoughtful and selective way.

Now it’s time for the real magic as Mohrle strategically applies a number of masks that significantly boost the WOW factor of his original image, and he walks you through the simple steps. After that, all that remains to complete the impressive transformation is a bit of color grading, sharpening, and cleanup.

This lesson is a powerful example of others you’ll find on Mohrle’s instructional YouTube channel, so be sure to take a look.

We also recommend that you watch the tutorial we featured recently with another post-processing expert who demonstrates a timesaving Lightroom technique for automatically batch-editing and synchronizing multiple images shot under similar light.