An introduction to our ‘Creative workflow’ tutorials

The majority of our Photoshop tutorials centre around a technical discussion of how to use a variety of Photoshop’s tools and techniques to alter and enhance your images, but mastery of these various tools and techniques should be seen as part of a broader process, not as an end in its own right.

In other words, technical competence is a part of the story – a story that must also include a thorough discussion of the aesthetic considerations that inform the creation of powerful and compelling images.

In our Creative workflow series of tutorials we take the creative/aesthetic process as our primary focus; i.e. rather than simply discussing how an image was constructed, we will also be considering why each change was made, and how each of these change contributes to the image as a whole. As with our other image-based tutorials, each will also include a thorough technical discussion of any tools or techniques that were employed, but the emphasis will be upon creative rather than technical outcomes – e.g. how each image was constructed to tell a particular story, what each image says about its subject, and so on.

Part one (published on 3rd September 2008)
In this, the first of our Creative workflow tutorials we will discuss how the two original images (one under-exposed and one over-exposed) were combined to produce the final image, paying particular attention to the creative implications of the various changes that were made.

This tutorial contains over 5300 words, 34 illustrative images and screen grabs, and a detailed discussion of the aesthetic and technical decisions that underpin each stage of this image’s creation.