[dkabab]

i hope all of this makes sense, not sure if im a good teacher or not. ive used photoshop for well over 12 years now, so its pretty much second nature to me, so forgive me for overlooking vital steps.
if there is something that i skip, or you dont understand, please feel free to ask the question, im more than happy to help out where i can.
there will be some things i dont know, but im sure there are others here who can post the answers....


TUTORIAL 1 - REFLECTIONS

Kit - circular polarising filter, tripod

i am assuming people who know how to use photoshop have some knowledge of LAYERS and MASKING.
to start with you will need to set your camera on a tripod so the shots you take are identical.
rotate the polarising filter until it blocks out the reflections on one of the planes. by this i mean usually it will eliminate all reflections of horizontal panels or vertical panels. take the photo.
next, rotate the filter around to eliminate the reflections on the other plane.

now that you have the 2 images (sometimes more but we'll stick to 2 for now) you can open them up in photoshop.
now since i shoot in RAW, theres a lot you can do to the pictures before you start working on them. my camera is set to not apply any extra contrast/colour etc.. so the images do look a bit flat. but after a bit of tinkering, you can see they come to life.





ok so now you have both images open, as you can see, the reflections on both images are quite different.





ok so next, copy one of the images and paste it onto the other. select the top layer click the MASK button on the layers box (its the square with a circle in the middle)



as you can see by this image, masks work on the principle of On/Off. black is off white is on.



so by using the airbrush, and painting black/white, you eliminate some of the top layer revealing the image underneath. as a result, we can eliminate unwanted reflections.



then finally, i like to use the BURN tool to go around the edges/ground to create some contrast and texture, aswell as darken it up a bit.





NOTE: there are easier and quicker ways of doing this, like copying the 2nd image and pasting over the top, then adjusting the layer blending to multiply, overlay etc... whichever ones works best. however, this doesnt always get the desired results, and i like doing everything manually.


Hope this helps.

[98octane]

That's a great tutorial.  Thanks heaps.  I've never used mask before, so I'll give it a go tomorrow and will post results soon...

[dkabab]

not a problem... i will try and think of another one to do.

[STi Nut]

Gonna give this a go, i love photoshop and have been using it for the past year or 2 but have never gotten that good at it, so the concept of layers and masking is still new to me, i used layers before but this will be my first time masking

[dkabab]

be sure to post how you go!!!

[STi Nut]

when i get out and take some shots of my own i will post them, wont be able to get some good shots till later in the week, but i used the 2 photos that you put up as a stating point just to get an idea of how it works, I am good with the basics of photoshop but i would love to learn more about it!

[cel]

Thanks for putting up the tutorial dkabab, next time I'm taking the dslr out for a day I'll give it a shot 

[Gusto]

It's a good idea; I should use my polarising filter more