Short and sweet

1. Photographing deep overcast scenes produce bluish images. If you use cloudy white balance, you can eliminate the blue. When shooting outdoors, I only use daylight WB. If I want to mitigate the blue cast, I use the ‘temperature’ slider in ACR or Lightroom. This means there is one less thing to do when shooting. 2. This is a typical out of focus foliage image I use as a natural background for all kinds of images, from macro subjects to birds, wildlife, and people. To create this kind of picture, turn off autofocus and use a telephoto lens with a large lens aperture. Vary the degree of abstraction manually with the focusing ring.

3. Including the moon in a nightscape, whether it’s obscured by clouds or not, requires two separate exposures and then the two shots have to be combined in Photoshop. There is too much contrast between the very bright moon and night landscapes or cityscapes to expose correctly in one frame. 4. Unfortunately Adobe is discontinuing 3-D capability in Photoshop. Now, if you want to work in a 3-D environment, you have to subscribe to Adobe Substance 3-D Modeler. This program has much more sophistication than Photoshop’s 3-D, but it will cost more money to get involved in this type of imagery. §