Lens flare in photos, including artificial lens flare, is fairly popular… though not with everyone. A lens flare can add life to a photo, giving it a story or energy. But it can also ruin a photo. Here we’ll be showing you how to add lens flare to a photo—as well as where you definitely want to avoid it.

“Delete” is one of the most useful buttons, both on your camera and on your computer. And you shouldn’t be afraid to use it if a photo is mediocre—since in the end it will help you get better.

Color adjustments are right up there alongside tone-curve adjustments as the most common edits you’ll make to your digital photos. No matter whether that’s a global repair to a photo that was tinted by a bad white-balance setting, or complicated creative edits using selections.

Maybe you’ve been there—standing somewhere with a breathtaking nature scene in front of you. You pressed the trigger a few times, but for all the world you couldn’t get a picture that really showed the beauty you had before you. What was the problem?

Perfect sharpness in a photo isn’t always something you want. Blurring can come in handy both when fixing mistakes in your photos and as a tool for creative expression.

Metropolises are more than just streets lined with glass and steel skyscrapers—they’re also living organisms full of endless motion and commotion. Almost never-ending streams of cars flow through the streets—the urban arteries—and human figures rush by on the sidewalks. Motion is the city’s essence. And you can express it in your pictures using a fairly simple technique—blurring the picture.

What do you do if you’ve brought back beautiful photographic memories from your vacation, but they don’t look at all as lively and colorful on your computer as you remember them? If you need to add some shine to washed-out photos, try these four easy techniques for enlivening colors that are too pale.

Street photography is dynamic and full of surprises, once-in-a-lifetime moments, stories, and faces, as well as unexpected enchanting corners. It throws the cover off of day-to-day life and details that we normally overlook. And meanwhile you can do it practically anywhere. You just pick up a camera and head out into the street.