My new video shares inspiring photographs and fascinating facts about the mysterious continent Antarctica.
Download my free ebook Antarctica / Two Visions here.
Find out about my Antarctica photography workshops here.
Enjoy this selection of images from Scoresbysund, Greenland.
These images are selected from three ongoing series – Revelation, Constellation, and Contrail.
View more images from Greenland here.
Find out more about my Greenland workshops here.
I’m exhibiting my first metal prints!
My metal prints are produced by Blazing Editions with Epson dye-sublimation technology on ChromaLuxe aluminum panels at very large scales in very limited editions. These materials offer a unique ability to hold and reflect light at expanded scales that increase their impact even further. Viewer’s early responses have been exciting!
You can see my new metal prints at two separate events.
I’ll be speaking at both events.
Come visit!
October 25 – 27, 2018
New York City – Jacob Javits Center
Reception on October 25th from 5:30 to 7:30pm
This is a joint exhibit with NYC Dance Company’s Ken Browar and Deborah Ory.
November 9 – December 31, 2018
East Greenwich, Rhode Island
Reception on November 9th from 5:30 to 7:30pm
This is a joint exhibit with Joyce Tenneson
RSVP here!
Austin Kleon offers a collection of pearls of wisdom drawn from his books Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work.
View more Austin Kleon videos here.
Learn more about Austin Kleon here.
View more Creativity Videos here.
Learn more in my Creativity workshops.
My newsletter Insights is out!
This issue features valuable techniques for making selections in Photoshop easy.
Sign up for my free newsletter here.
Maine is beautiful! And it’s never more beautiful than in the autumn during harvest season. The air is crisp and the place comes alive with color. It’s extraordinarily picturesque. Here are a few highlights to look for this fall.
Mountains of color
Color on the water
Color in the air
Color on the ground
Fields of late season wildflowers
Blueberry fields so red they look like they’re on fire.
Sometimes they actually set the fields on fire.
Rocky quarries
Tumbled beach stones
Playful cairns
Quaint lighthouses
Working harbors
Rugged island life
Mysterious misty mornings
Rich evening afterglow
And this is just the beginning. There are so many more reasons to visit Maine in autumn! Who knows what you’ll find.
Find out more about my Acadia Maine Fall Foliage Photography Workshop here.
Get sophisticated selections quickly.
Photoshop offers two great selection tools that use pattern recognition to make the process easier and faster – the Magic Wand tool and the Quick Selection tool. They get complex jobs done quickly and the results they generate can be quite sophisticated. But which one do you choose?
The Lasso tool is best for defining highly irregular selections manually.
The Polygonal Lasso tool is best for defining rectilinear shapes.
The Magnetic Lasso tool uses pattern recognition to define existing contours.
Photoshop’s Lassos (Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, and Magnetic Lasso) are go to tools for drawing irregular selections.
Which Lasso tool you choose depends on the job you need to get done.
The Lasso tool is best for defining highly irregular selections manually.
Just click, hold and drag to define a selection. Draw selections in closed loops from beginning to end; if you let go of a selection halfway through a shape you’re drawing a straight line will automatically be drawn from where you let go to where you started; on rare occasions, this can be useful.
The Polygonal Lasso tool is best for defining rectilinear shapes.
The Polygonal Lasso tool differs in that it only draws straight lines. Click, don’t hold, drag to the point you’d like to draw a straight line to and click again, then repeat until you define a closed shape. While drawing a selection, you can alternate between the Lasso and Polygonal Lasso tools by holding the Option key.
The Magnetic Lasso tool is best for taking advantage of pattern recognition to define existing contours.
The Magnetic Lasso tool is different; it uses edge detection to draw. You simply guide it roughly along a contour you’d like to define and if the contour has enough contrast the tool will find it. (Using an adjustment layer, you can temporarily boost the image’s contrast, while making a selection to help the Magnetic Lasso tool find edges more easily … and then delete the adjustment layer after the selection is complete.) If you draw too quickly with the Magnetic Lasso tool it becomes less accurate. If you find you’d like to refine the line it defines you can press the Delete key to eliminate the anchor points it makes along the way, one at a time, in the order they were made.
Remember, if you plan to feather a selection substantially you don’t need to be precise; close enough will do, so don’t waste your time making perfect selections for very general applications.
Read more about Selections & Masks.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
A simple Rectangular Marquee selection.
A second selection is added using the Shift key.
A second selection is subtracted using the Option key.
The intersection of two selections is created using both Option and Shift keys.
There are so many times when you make a selection in Photoshop and it’s not quite right. But if the selection just needs a little more here and/or a little less there, there’s an easy fix.
You can press the Shift key to add or the Option key to subtract a new selection to any existing selection, no matter how the existing selection was made or what tool you’re making the new selection with (Lasso, Marquee, Magic Wand, Quick Selection). Hold both the Shift and Option keys at the same time and you’ll get the intersection of the new and old selections. You can do this as many times as you like.
Sure, you can use the Add to selection, Subtract from selection, or Intersect with selection options in the top toolbar, but these key commands are easier.
Read more about Selections & Masks.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
Photoshop offers two Marquee tools (Rectangular or Elliptical) for making simple geometric selections. They’re easy to use.
Click hold and drag to define a selection.
Hold the Option key to draw from the center of the shape.
Hold the Shift key to constrain the shape to a perfect square or circle.
You might question how often you’ll use simple geometric selections, particularly in complex photographs, but you’ll be surprised. They’re excellent for quickly selecting large areas of a canvas, which can be further refined with any of the other selection tools. They’re extremely useful if you feather them heavily; targeting the center of an area then fading off gradually to create vignetting effects, either for the entire image frame or a small portion within it.
Read more about Selections & Masks.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.