In this post-production class, Karl shows you the Photoshop tools and techniques he needs to polish and perfect the image he captured in Still Life Pasta: Food Art.

Having decided he wants to add this shot to his professional portfolio, Karl undertakes some meticulous post-production to get it looking just right. This includes reshaping, rearranging and resizing the pasta shells and spaghetti noodles using a range of tools including the Lasso tool, the Liquify filter, the Distort filter, the Ruler tool and the Rotate function.

Karl also demonstrates how to chamfer edges and make hue saturation adjustments, in addition to how to use layer masks and remove imperfections with the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tool.

He finishes up by adjusting the contrast using burn and dodge layers, altering the balance and mood of the image and controlling where the viewer’s eye is drawn.

The final result (below) shows the fruits of his efforts, and highlights what you can achieve in your own post-production work.