Meeting 10 January – A ‘How To’ Evening With Brian Clarke

Our first meeting of the New Year was one of our regular tutorials with Brian Clarke, this time demonstrating how to use some of the more esoteric facilities of PhotoShop.

We asked him, in advance, what the curriculum for the session would be and gave us this information:

• Layers & Layer masks
• Levels & simple colour correction with use of the histogram
• High Pass method of sharpening
• Advanced Method of Dodging & Burning using layers
• Black & White conversion from colour using the Channel Mixer and exploding some crappy myths that exist with this method of working

(We were not entirely sure what all of the terminology of the last item actually meant but we assumed it was technical jargon in common use by seasoned photographers )

Anyway, we had a very stimulating evening being shown all about Layers and how PhotoShop can be used to perform miracles on even the most unpromising material. Brian showed us many examples of the techniques he used to correct and transform digital images and he answered our many questions with skill and patience.

Brian is the author of many ‘how to’ papers which available for download here.

Thanks, Brian, for being such a knowledgeable source of information on this often challenging topic!