ACR

Deke's Techniques 215: Defringing Purples and Greens in Camera Raw 7

Deke's Techniques 215: Defringing Purples and Greens in Camera Raw 7

Hey, gang. It's me, Deke! Actually writing a blog post for my very own site. Weird! But, honestly, Colleen's so good at it, who needs me underfoot?

Even so, in rare form, I attend (hello!) to announce this week's free technique. Now I warn you, this movie is not terribly humorous or exciting. In fact, while watching it, I yawned once. Okay, twice. But it was late. And besides, this movie is seriously educational. Perhaps even dangerously so. For this week, I explain how to use the Defringe slider bars in Adobe Camera Raw 7, which ships with Photoshop CS6.

Oh, crap, that sounds dull as shit, even with all the italics.

We start with the following helpful sign that warns men with chest erections not to stumble off obvious cliffs. Wait, no, I have that wrong---there's no red slash through the sign. So it must recommend that men with chest erections stumble off obvious cliffs. Phew, boy am I glad I misread that sign! I'm pretty sure I had a massive arm-shaped chest erection at the time.

The Danger-Don't-Fall-Off-This-Cliff Guy

Sadly, that misses the point, and it's already much more entertaining than the boring-ass video that accompanies this post. Which, if I haven't already mentioned it, is dull. Great grandpappy-discretion advised. Read more » 

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Deke's Techniques 205: Creating an Antique Photo Effect

Antique photo of a castle

In this week's free Deke's Techniques episode, Deke imagines himself the king of the Irish castle we dramafied last week. And he imagines his reign took place in Ye Olde Sepia-Toned Tymes. Which is sort of hard to reconcile, given this Dunguaire Castle was built around 1520, long before the 1980s when Photoshop came along to make photos look like they came from the early 1930s. And yet, his method for antiquing a photo is useful in any age, long past the Imaginary Sepia Age of King Deke the Creative of County Clare.

Here's a before (left side) and after (right) view of Deke's halluncinatory ancestral home, replete with delightful grain and decay in the after photo: 

before and after antique castle photo

So even if your goal is not to make a photo of a 600-year-old castle look roughly like it was taken 100 years ago, this Camera Raw-based process will be useful for oldifying your own photos, giving them a carefully crafted antique look that goes way beyond your standard Instagram filter. 

Read on for the simple steps in this process:  Read more » 

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Deke's Techniques 203: Developing a Dramatic Castle in Adobe Camera Raw

Dramatic ACR developing

My dear dekeO'politans, are you in the St. Patrick's Day spirit yet? It's just our luck that Deke has decided that this week's Deke's Techniques episode features an Irish castle that we stumbled upon on our trip to the Emerald Isle. In this week's video, you'll see how Deke took that ordinary vacation photo and turned it into this dramatic image (complete with mysterious woman in red on the left.)How did Deke turn the interesting but nondescript photo shown below into the dramatic photo above? With the help and power of Adobe Camera Raw.  Here is the original inside the ACR interface, ready for its makeover:

Read on to witness the transformation of this "Oh, pull over, this looks mildly interesting" photo into the dramatic "Oh, this is why we came to Ireland" landscape: Read more » 

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Camera Raw JPEG editing for the iPhoto Faithful

I know most of you dekeOtopians work and play and generally exist inside Photoshop. But for those of you who prefer the photo-wrangling power of iPhoto but want to still explore the pixel-domination of Adobe Camera Raw (or pure Photoshop for that matter), I made this quick video to explain how to set Preferences in both apps so that can actually happen. 

The question was inspired by a member of lynda.com who saw some cool movies about what ACR could do for JPEGs but still wanted to use iPhoto as her photo database. The movie format was inspired by listening to Deke for several years. So I decided to take on three whole minutes of training while Deke recorded his entire Illustrator One-on-One course in the lyndaBooth next door. It gave me new insight into what both authors and viewers (and editors) endure in the video training process! Read more » 

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