A truly compelling picture won’t have any distractions that might steal attention from its subject. But sometimes you just can’t avoid having distractions in the shot. Fortunately you can get rid of them easily with retouching. And you’ve got several ways to do it.

Quick and precise focusing even in difficult light. That’s one of the main advantages of DSLRs. They also offer photographers several focusing modes that make it easier to photograph every kind of scene, from static to action-packed. But it can be hard at first to understand them all. So join us for a look at which mode means what and when to use them.

Shutter Priority and Aperture Priority. Take a look at which mode to use when, how to work with them, and when it pays to choose manual mode.

The times when camera makers were waging megapixel wars are gone. And even the smallest resolution that you’ll regularly encounter in new cameras is enough to let you print your photos at fairly large sizes. So how is it with MPx counts, and what do they mean for your printing?

Photo editors have some quite powerful tools available for removing objects from photos—for example the clone stamp and healing brush.

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.

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.

By mastering work with artificial light sources, and especially flashes, you break free of several exposure limitations that hold you back when you’re taking pictures in natural light. Using flashes also gives you much sharper pictures, because the flash is so short that it eliminates motion blur.

The major advantage of artificial light sources over natural light is that you have them fully under your control. There are many tools for changing their characteristics. Artificial light lets you photograph topics that would be impossible to handle under natural light.

Work with natural light has simpler equipment demands than work with artificial light, but on the other hand, you don’t have the light fully under your control. But you can still direct and enhance the light, using reflectors and diffusion panels.