You will see many really good photographers  shoot buildings from a low position creating a distortion called keystoning. This is sometimes desirable for a dramatic effect but I believe it is used far to often.  I will show you an example of this effect and how to eliminate it if you wish, using Photoshop.

Trey Ratcliff of “Stuck In Customs” is a great photographer. Far, far better than I but in this example I felt what I did with his image in Photoshop is more appealing, to my eye. I think Trey was shooting from this very low angle to reduce the amount of the pavement and maximize the amount of the dramatic sky. He was using a very wide 14mm lens. The combination of the wide-angle lens and the tilt of the camera contributed to this exaggerated effect. If you shoot a photo like this and you want it to have a more standard look here’s how you fix it.

[I have the original Photoshop CS so I know at least this version and the versions after that can do this.]

Open the photo in Photoshop. Click “View” and “New Guide”. Guides are just there to help you get your image straight. Create as many guides as you need. I used two for this photo. Drag them to where you need them. Do a “Control A” to select the image. Select the “Move Tool” from the pallet. Click “Edit” and then go to “Transform” and “Skew”. Click the corners and drag out to make alignment adjustments. After you align photo you may have to make other “Transform” adjustments. In this case I did “Free Transform” to make the building taller because the “Skew” adjustment made the church look squat.

I felt too much attention was given to the sky and not much to the church so not only did I straighten it out but I enhanced the definition to the art on the church by adding some contrast using the curves tool. I think that sometime HDR photos seem a little flat.

In my version of Trey’s photo the dramatic clouds are still there but there is a lot more attention to the building. The sides are vertical and the frescos on the building are brighter and show more detail.

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After you close the path you must turn the path into a selection. Click on the paths pallet at the bottom of the pallet click “Load Path As Selection”. Now you have a selection.

This technigue works well with objects with defined edges. There are other techniques for hair and other things with less defined edges.

Fireplug On Black

Just like on the previous PhotoShop tip I use the “Pen Tool” to select the subject (fireplug in this case). Invert the selection. Open “Hue and Saturation”. I reduce “Saturation” to -100. This photo has a second “saturation layer” that brightens the yellows in the leaves in the foreground making them brighter and reduced the greens and blues in the background to darken the foliage.

Mike Bacayu

This is a photo taken with my new Canon 50D but what I am most excited about is the Photoshop skill the I perfected. You see this photograph had terrible clutter in the background. (I think there was even a guy with his finger in his nose back there. Otherwise it is a great picture.) The cure of course is you select the background and then blur it. The question is, “How do I make an accurate selection?”. The answer is “the Magic Wand Tool”. Just kidding! The correct tool to use is the “Pen Tool”. If you practice with the “Pin Tool” you can make a very accurate selection. It is very difficult to get use to and you kinda just have to figuer it out. Here are is a tutorial that will try to explain it.