Welcome to issue 146

Portraits with character!

'Our apprentice learns the art of character portraiture, shooting professional soldiers

LIGHTBOX

Our favourite Nikon images from the 15th Environmental Photographer of the Year competition

MASTER RAW!

Transform your captures with just 10 essential edits using Adobe Photoshop CC’s Camera Raw. Dan Mold shows you how to finesse your skills

1 HOW TO CROP AND FIX LENS DEFECTS

Some simple tweaks to get you familiarized and started in ACR

2 BASIC RAW EXPOSURE ADJUSTMENTS

Lift the shadows, retain highlight detail, adjust your exposure and boost colours in this important editing stage

3 SHARPEN YOUR SHOTS FOR BETTER DETAIL

Use the Detail panel to create razor-sharp images with sharpening and masking options

4 REDUCE DIGITAL NOISE TO SMOOTHEN YOUR SHOTS

How to smooth out graininess and unsightly noise

5 USE TARGETED ADJUSTMENTS TO ENHANCE YOUR IMAGE

Edit smaller portions of the frame with specialized adjustment tools before fine-tuning the final image

6 FIX GEOMETRIC DISTORTION WITH THIS GREAT TECHNIQUE

Go to the Geometry panel to stop buildings from ‘leaning’

7 TAKE CONTROL OF COLOUR

Finesse your colours and tones with ease

8 CONVERT TO CLASSIC BLACK & WHITE

Simple steps for creating a striking moody mono masterpiece

9 ENHANCE YOUR PORTRAITS WITH THE SPOT REMOVAL TOOL

Discover how to tidy up blemishes and remove distractions easily

10 SAVE AND EXPORT YOUR FILES

Finish off your work by saving your edited photos

Supercharge your skills

Mike Harris provides easy-to-implement tips that will help to improve your photography for 2023

Sphere of the dark

Mike Harris shows you how to add multiple orbs of light to your images with this light-painting technique

Make a mini movie scene

Mike Harris uses a macro lens and LED lights to capture a film-like image of a tiny action figure

Create stunning mono images

Jon Adams shows how to use your gift to craft classic B&W finishes

The long and short of it

James Paterson shoots better blur by shutter-blending to combine longer and shorter exposures in a single frame

Shirlaine Forrest

Whether shooting rock gigs, fashion models or the high-speed track sport of roller derby, Shirlaine Forrest is one of the busiest photographers you will ever meet. She pauses just long enough to tell Keith Wilson why she always carries a bag of sweets and how Bob the Builder fixed it for her

Shoot for the moon

Photographer and Apollo missions obsessive Andy Saunders carefully restored thousands of film frames for his Apollo Remastered project

Readers’ letters

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the

Picture books

Melinda McIntyre travels beyond the confines of photography to create mixed-media images that tell stories full of emotion and meaning

NIKOPEDIA

The only camera manual you’ll ever need...

Test it yourself

How much difference does the format make?

Ask Matthew...

Our resident Nikon expert Matthew Richards answers your questions and solves your problems. If you have a Nikon-related question, email it to mail@nphotomag.com

PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR 2022

The search for the world’s best Nikon photographer of 2022 is finally over! Each issue the monthly N-Photo POTY 2022 photo contest’s top 10 images have been selected by the N-Photo team – but this month we pick the best of the best and crown our winner of the N-Photo Photographer of the Year 2022 competition!

GearZone

New gear, buying advice and the world’s toughest tests

WIN! A Nikon Z9

The overall winner of N-Photo’s Photographer of the Year 2023 will receive the grand prize of a Nikon Z 9!

New gear

Here’s what caught our eye this month

Nikon Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S £15,499/$15,499

Action and wildlife photographers should love this super-telephoto with a trick up its sleeve

Photo finish

Printers for photographic output come in many shapes and sizes. Discover the perfect match for your Nikon camera from these best buys

Canon PIXMA TS6350/6320 £135/$100

A compact yet capable printer that’s equally good for documents and photos

How we test

Here’s how we put photo printers through their paces...

Canon PIXMA TS8350/8320 £180/$200

A six-ink printer – but it’s not the usual mix you might imagine

Running costs

Quality photo prints don’t come cheap...

Epson Expression Photo XP-970 £235/$300

Go large without piling on the pounds, thanks to Epson’s ‘small-in-one’ printer

Pocket printers

For photo printing on the go, there are some neat mobile models

Canon PIXMA G650/G620 £255/$329

This dye-based, six-ink MegaTank printer is aimed squarely at high-volume printing

Bottling it up

The pros and cons of using bottled ink instead of cartridges

Canon PIXMA PRO-200 £449/$599

This A3+/13-inch dye-based photo printer is simply epic for photo quality output

Rapid results

Go-faster printers can save time if you’ve got lots of prints to output...

Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 £699/$899

Canon takes A3+ photo printing to a new level with its latest imagePROGRAF printer

Big is beautiful

Print size is a big issue when you choose a home printer...

Epson EcoTank ET-8550 £730/$800

An upsized EcoTank printer that uses bottled ink for its quality prints

Dye or pigment ink?

These common ink finishes both have strengths and weaknesses...

Epson SureColor P900 £1080/$1249

Supersize your photos with this surprisingly compact printer

Inks galore

More cartridges generally mean better print quality

The winner is… Canon image PROGRAF PRO-300

But there’s something for everyone in this group of printers

Nikon in 2022

Nikon was never going to trump the year of the Z 9, but 2022 has still proven an unassuming gem, says Mike Harris