Members Evening

This weeks members evening was full of amazing content, from Vincents journey to a photo shoot were he produced some really stunning portrait shots, all on the theme of the viking female warrior. To Johns presentation about creating audio visual displays John went on to treat us to two fantastic audiovisual presentations. After the break we had a great practical demonstration on the use of Adobe's Camera Raw from Aamir. Many thanks to all our contributor's.

Unfortunately we ran out of time for our fourth presenter David Hardy on his new Affinity 3 talk. However David did ask me to publish some content and useful links in this newsletter.

Competition 2

Next week's meeting is the first print competition of the season. I understand from David Hardy that there has been a record number of prints entered into this comp, which is fantastic news. So good luck to all who have entered.

Roger Fountain

Our next speaker Rodger Fountain has asked David Hardy to release this article to all WPC members.

THE WORLD OF FINE ART ARCHITECTURAL IMAGES.

Members of Wilmslow P.C.  I am delighted to be able to join you all on Tuesday 2nd December  2025.  The following is a brief overview of my own thoughts towards Fine Art Architectural photography and those artists that have inspired me along the way.

Joel Tjintelaar is a world renowned fine art architectural photographer who has recently produced a masking techniques which are worth viewing. I have not purchased any of his videos etc. Joel works closely with Julie Anna Gospodarou in some of their joint techniques and workshops.

Ben Harvey is a young architect from Sussex who has some brilliant videos on "You Tube". He is working closely with Joel T to introduce photographers using Joels techniques.  He is learning from the master himself as he shares on You Tube.

The other person I enjoy following is a Jay Cohen of JC Images from New York, he is really cool in his approach and a gifted teacher. Check him out on "You Tube".

Another favourite are the dramatic images of Wolfgang Mothes, a German photographer.  I also enjoy viewing the work of Les Forrester, Inaki Hernandez-Lasa, Theodore Kefalopoulos & Thomas Peck.

SOME OF THE TOOLS I USE IN MY PROCESSING in Photoshop.

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/make-selections-photoshop/

Choice of "Selection" tools to create Freehand selections.

Quick Selection Tool

Polygonal Lasso Tool - with the ability to Add, Subtract & Intersect with Selections.

Pen Tool

Without selections, we'd have no way to adjust or edit specific areas of an image. All we could do is adjust the entire image as a whole.

The Quick SelectionTool allows us to quickly select objects just by clicking over the perceived selection.  Certain of its attributes need to be tweaked to obtain the best results.

The Polygonal Lasso Tool allows you to click around the edge of the required selection.

A combination of both works well.

Or spend a little time with Photoshop's Pen Tool and you'll be making surgically-precise selections around just about anything!  (Takes time to master) 

Choice of "Gradient" tool.

(There are five gradients available, the most useful are listed below)

Linear Gradient

Radial Gradient

Reflected Gradient

I recommend watching how the above techniques are mastered by watching some excellent videos on "You Tube" by Ben Harvey and Jay Cohen. There are also a multitude of other videos on the use of the above tools.

Good luck

Roger

Thank you Michael for this timely article

Adobe Photoshop Subscriptions

Once again it’s that time of year when I remind everyone that Photoshop subscription renewals are cheapest during the Amazon Black Friday & Cyber Monday period.

But this year it’s all different…

Here’s what has happened:

Adobe have discontinued the least expensive option “Photographers Plan 20Gb” and replaced it with “Photography 1Tb” at a much higher price of £20/month.  And this new plan has had quite a few features trimmed off it, although Adobe don’t mention that, and use of AI is cut down (hooray!) unless you pay extra; but the core bits, Photoshop & Lightroom, remain. 

If you already have the “Photographers Plan 20Gb” you’ll be allowed to renew it, but only through Adobe directly i.e. no Black Friday deal is likely.  You must be an existing subscriber and switch to an annual payment plan before your current subscription expires to keep it, but must wait till the last 30 days before your prepaid subscriptions expire before switching to the auto-renewing annual plan.  This is likely to cost £120 a year if you opt to pay annually.

Here’s a Trap! -  I still see Amazon (fulfilled by Amazon Media EU) advertising “Photographers Plan 20Gb 1 year subscription” at £99.98 but my understanding is that if you buy it you cannot stack it up for after your current sub expires.  Instead it'll start when you redeem, and run in parallel with any active sub you may already have.  It is actually a subscription via Amazon and effectively the £20 discount is an introductory offer, future years will be same as direct with Adobe.

Or you can ‘upgrade’ to the 1Tb plan and perhaps there’ll be a Black Friday deal on that, but you won’t be allowed to downgrade thereafter.  You’ll be paying more for the luxury of an additional 980Gb, less software and less AI stuff.  But who knows what price they will pitch it at?  Maybe it’ll be worth it?  Past experience (of the 20Gb plan) is that the offer price got better as the days went on, then suddenly disappeared.  And was often shown as multiple prices simultaneously depending how hard you looked.

I can’t guarantee all this is correct as Adobe don’t make it easy to figure out.  But beware!

Thank you Michael