The Philosophy of Nikkor is a series of videos which Nikon started to release in April of last year. Every so often a new video is released containing insight into the creation of their Nikkor lenses. There are interviews with everybody from the designers and product managers right down to those making the individual components. In the latest video, Volume 6 released recently, we hear from those who make the optical glass....

Are you a fan of The Avengers? If you are, you’re gonna love this tutorial by Colin Smith of PhotoshopCAFE. In this 12-minute video, he’ll teach you how to create the awesome disintegration effect from The Avengers (Infinity War and Endgame). 1. Cutout 1. Cutout When you open the image, cut out the subject using your preferred method for making selections. Refine the selection so it’s as precise as possible, and make two copies of the cutout (press Ctrl/Cmd + J twice)....

I can’t say for sure whether or not this tutorial includes any spoilers as I’ve not actually seen Avengers: Infinity War myself yet. But I would imagine there maybe are, even if it’s just spoiling an effect or two. It seems Thanos has some kind of pretty powerful “Super Punch” in the film (again, haven’t seen it, don’t know). Jordy Vandeput over at Cinecom has deconstructed the effect to bring us this tutorial on how to recreate it in Adobe Premiere Pro....

Softboxes are wonderful tools for product photography. They allow you to get nice soft shadows, and beautiful edge highlights to make your product shine. But if don’t own them already, and all you plan to shoot are a few photos for eBay, it can get expensive. There’s light stands, flashes, the softboxes themselves, possibly reflectors and other doohickies. This video from commercial photographer Leo Rosas shows a fantastic technique to create an “invisible softbox” using lightpainting techniques....

Here’s a great article on how to achieve the “real” effect with a strobe. Here’s a shot with and without my tip: What I’m doing here is obviously taking the background darker to create a stronger separation between the subject (focus point) and the background (environment / supporting palette). A few key things to remember here are with regards to exposure, clean outline on the subject (for easier selection / cleaner image) and why not just use a strobe?...