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Articles by Richard Hales

About Richard Hales (35 Articles)
Richard’s first foray into was photography was as an apprentice photographer for Oxford University over 20 years ago. From there Richard went on to study photography at University somehow gaining a BA & MA, he still is rather confused how he managed to do this. After University and an unfinished (and un-started) PhD Richard “retired” from photography for a few years to pursue a career in wine and, oddly, scrap metal before returning to photography and setting up a wedding and portrait photography business in Worcestershire. As well as running his photography business Richard is currently working on a bread & jam making book. He is the average height for a Nut.

The Lightroom J Trick

27/11/2015

There are various versions of this quick and easy contrast fix for Lightroom doing the rounds on the internet (I got the inspiration from Mastin Labs’ post) and its about Tip Squirrel had their very own version of it! This contrast fix isn’t for every image but is really helpful on those tricky flat images that don’t want to play ball. And, secondly, this “fix” works best with RAW images. [More]

Macphun Noiseless – First Look

09/04/2015

Noise has been a bette-noir of the digital photographer since the first digital images were created and it persists to this day even with the massive strides the camera companies have made with technology to minimise it. All that said the problem is still out there and evident in every camera from the high-end DSLR through to your smartphone camera. [More]

Tonality by Macphun – A Review

18/08/2014

The world of black & white conversion apps is a competitive one these days with the some stiff competition from Nik’s SilverEfex Pro 2, OnOne’s Perfect Black & White and Topaz’s B&W Effects. Having been a long time user of the first two of these apps (I’ve yet to try the latter) I know it would be a brave/mad man to pitch into this battlefield and hope to come out a winner with your first effort. But this is what Macphun have done and, boy, have they done it well! [More]

OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 8 – The Verdict

12/12/2013

First up, this application works as a standalone or with Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Aperture and there are three purchasing options, the Premium Edition works with all of the above and as a standalone, the Lightroom and Aperture version works with those two applications, Elements and as a standalone and the Standard version is a standalone only. Currently prices for the Premium edition are discounted to $179.95 (approx. £110 on 9/12/13) for new users and $99.95 (approx. £61 on 9/12/13) for an upgrade. There is a free 30 day trial available too from http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/suite8/ [More]

Review – OnOne Perfect Suite 8 Public Beta

17/10/2013

onOne software recently released a public-beta of their latest version of Perfect Photo Suite which could be a very significant point in the companies development as a maker of plugins for Photoshop, Lightroom & Aperture and a creator of a stand-alone processing application. I’ve downloaded a copy to have a play and see how it works. Now, obviously this is a public beta so there are some issues, bugs and blanks to be filled etc., so its impossible to make a proper judgement of what the final release will be like but we can get a reasonable idea of what the software will do. [More]

Lightroom 5 And the new Radial Filter

15/08/2013

One of the best new features introduced with Lightroom 5 was Radial Filters. Radial Filters combine the controls of the adjustment brush (exposure, contrast, sharpness etc.) with circle based control points (if you’ve used any of the Nik filters you’ll be used to these sort of control points already). The new Radial Filters are really easy to use and can be a great tool to improve your photographs. [More]

Quick Slimming Retouch in Lightroom 5

13/06/2013

My first ever tutorial for TipSquirrel was on slimming a subject in Photoshop now, with the release of Lightroom 5, we can achieve that result in a new way. Oddly the way to achieve this slimming process is found in the new feature in Lightroom 5 which is designed to straighten vertical and horizontal lines; these features are found in the Lens Corrections panel in the Develop module. [More]

Faking a Graduated Neutral Density Filter in Camera, Lightroom and Photoshop

01/05/2013

Ever been out and with your camera and see a great shot but when you get to process it the sky is all blown out and no amount of processing can get it back to how it looked? Well, one of the ways to get around this is to use graduated neutral density filters, but you may not always have them with you so there is another way. This alternative method involves a few camera controls and (don’t run away) HDR! Proviso, this method is very good but not 100% foolproof so don’t expect perfect results every time and you need Photoshop CS6 to get the best results. [More]

Conditional Actions in Photoshop

30/01/2013

The latest update to Photoshop (only available to Creative Cloud users, don’t blame me talk to Adobe, but I probably agree with you) included something called Conditional Actions. Conditional Actions are a way of adding a clause to an action that will cause another action to run if the clause is applicable or another to run if it isn’t. Clear? No, probably not, so I’ll create a real world example to explain more clearly (hopefully). [More]

Creating an iPhone Effect in Photoshop

28/11/2012

Like most of the population I’ve been using my phone a lot to take photographs and there is one particular app that I tend use. I really like some of the looks that this app creates and I wondered if could recreate the look of my favourite settings in Photoshop, so after some playing around I finally came up with the following recipe which is a fair approximation. [More]

A Summery Lightroom Preset

25/07/2012

Its typical, when you plan a tutorial to create a Lightroom preset that evokes a feeling of the long hot days of summer to act as an antidote to the unending days of rain and drizzle the British weather decides that maybe the Olympics (am I allowed to use that word at the moment?) should be welcomed in with sunshine and a mini heatwave! Oh well, in the full knowledge that the balmy climate won’t continue for much longer I will plough on as if its still hosing it down. [More]

Photosmith 2 – A Review

18/06/2012

Photosmith is an iPad app that claims to be the ‘bridge’ between Lightroom and the photographer allowing them to sort, keyword and organise photographs ‘in the field or when traveling’ and even when ‘hiding from the rain under an awning in Bogota’ when ‘even a slim notebook is unwieldy’. The app works with JPEG and RAW files and integrates wirelessly with Lightroom. [More]

An Easy Eye Enhancing Tip

03/05/2012

A quick and easy tip for a Thursday.  This tutorial is really an extension from a post I did a while back on High Pass Sharpening but in this tutorial we’ll be applying it to eyes and controlling [More]
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