Category Archives: tutorial
Copyright Isn’t Just for Photographers….
The web makes for an interesting place, and often I get emails from folks asking for suggestions and recommendations on how to best protect their images from being used without their permission (and let’s not mince words here – nobody wants to have their work stolen). Often my response is a bit of this and that, suggesting to make images “web-safe” (i.e. low resolution so they can’t really be re-printed), and to limit the images you publish. (The more you put out there, the more you have to monitor.)
Creating the color video
As promised from last weeks post on Youtube, I promised to share the “how to” on the creation of the little teaser video for transitioning from a black and white photo to color. For those that don’t remember, the video is here:
Creating a Monthly Desktop Calendar
I alluded to it yesterday, and have already had several people inquire about the procedure to create this desktop calendar. It’s really quite clever, and kudos go out to Jeffrey Friedl over on his site for the script: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/calendar He does a decent job at the basic explanation, but since we are a visual world, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to run things from beginning to end! Fair warning – this does require Photoshop as the script (I don’t believe anyway) will run in Lightroom because it uses layers… 1. Download the script from the link above (I … Continue reading
Against my better judgement…
For those of you that have been following the blog for a long time (and let me know who you are, because I want to ask why!), you may recall that I used to put out video tutorials on how to do various things inside of Photoshop. After plodding around with that for a while, I came across the gurus of NAPP and realized that several were already doing it, and doing it much better than I ever could. So, rather than re-inventing the wheel, I abandoned the video tutorials in favor of just sharing my “wisdom” in the form … Continue reading
The never-ending tease…
With the company annual meeting coming up this week, I have been very busy with work-related stuff, that has only permitted me short bouts of time to do personal things, so I have not had a chance to record the podcast for today. But, as a perennial teaser, I promise it will be up tomorrow, along with the newest edition of the “What’s This?” series. Then, on Thursday, a new article has been finished, so I’ll be posting that material for your reading enjoyment. (On a side note, I am also guest-blogging for Towner Jones Photography on Thursday too, so … Continue reading
And the countdown begins…
With today being December 1st, the countdown has officially begun until Christmas. Of course, retailers began counting even before Halloween this year as they try to stretch this season of spending out as far as they can, but with now only 24 shopping days until Christmas, there is no denying that the ads asking for your hard earned dollar will increase into a frenzy (not unlike the number of radio stations that play carols exclusively for the next 25 days). So, where should you really go to shop for holiday presents this year? Your nearest photo store naturally! Here are … Continue reading
Be Careful With Contests
While doing the annual purging of the tryptophan ritual ysterday I came across Photojojo, which listed 12 contests on their website. As usual, appropriate disclaimers were given as you may or may not surrender your copyrights to images even for entering the various contests. I took a look through them, and one of them struck me by surprise: National Geographic. Here is the copyright condition for participating: “By entering the Contest, all entrants grant to Authorized Parties (National Geographic Society and its licensees) a royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable perpetual, nonexclusive license to reproduce, distribute, display, and create derivative works of the … Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Football, Turkey, tryptophan…lots of great stuff going on today. Enjoy the time with families, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow (maybe). That’s it for today, so this can be considered a “No Blog Thursday”…
What’s This – Week 20
We took a week off last week from the mystical photo posting of “What’s This?”, but I am happy to say it’s back again today. Here’s a slow pitch one for everyone as we stop thinking about photography and start thinking about Thanksgiving. WHat’s the image above? The winner, as always wins thousands of dollars in cash and prizes, a lifetime membership in all photo associations, a new car, their own private island, and of course, bragging rights here on CB. Yeah, okay, pretty much nothing but the last one can be taken seriously. Anyway, in light of the upcoming … Continue reading
Monday Morning Quarterback
After a rather exciting weekend photographically I thought today might be a fun way to share my experiences with the readership in the form of an audio podcast! That’s right, I am going to try and get established again with a weekly podcast you can listen to. Today, I talk about my experiences with the Colorado Strobist group over on Flickr. Also, I hit on the subject of learning on your own versus in a community. It’s kind of an interesting mix of two related schools of thought, and hopefully will get me back on the band wagon for audio … Continue reading
What’s This? – Week 14
If you post it, they will guess…that’s the theory I’m going with this week. Anyone have any ideas? I took a different approach to it this go around, hopefully a little more abstract… Good luck, and Happy Shooting!
Take your camera with you!
I was driving home from work yesterday with my camera bag in the seat next to me when I saw this on the opposite side of the road. So, I swung around, popped out of the car, set up and used the roof of the car for stability and snapped off a few shots wide open and about 800 ISO. As a full-size image it is a bit noisy, but here it looks pretty good. To me, that’s proof positive that it always pays to have your camera with you. That’s the “Tuesday Tip” for this week. Enjoy and Happy … Continue reading
Tuesday Tricks
Orange Jason Moore has his bi-monthly Photographic Compostion posted today, so be sure to stop over there and see the others (I am sure they were more creative than the one I came up with at the last minute yesterday…) Rather than record a tip or trick for this Tuesday, I thought I’d share a few ideas and suggestions I’ve picked up from various magazines, forums, and photo communities for managing and handling your gear in the field. These things have become almost second nature to me now and I can’t tell you how helpful these tips and tricks have … Continue reading
What’s This? – Week 12
Here’s one for everyone…what’s this? I had to go through some archives to find one that fit what I was looking for this week, but I found it. This is a crop of a larger image. The only thing I did was a little levels adjusting, the crop, and then some sharpening. Can you identify this? Share your thoughts in the comments! The winner – wins! As always, happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
A few of the Creative Suite 4 Features!
Before the release of CS4 in Adobe’s announcement this morning, I happened to see a post in the NAPP member forums of someone thanking the Photoshop Guys for their top ten of the new features for the latest edition of Photoshop Creative Suite 4! So, for those who want the early bird news, here’s a hint of what Adobe will be talking about later this morning: Better scrolling with less jaggies as you zoom in and out of images. The Adjusment Panel – Adobe has added a dedicated panel for your layers adjustments On-screen image adjustments – you can now … Continue reading
Eureka! Tutorial Tuesdays Triumphant Return!
For those that have been visiting the blog, you know that Podpress, my plugin of choice for putting out podcasts has been broken for some time as the developer has not released an update that makes it compatible with WordPress 2.6 Well, since it has been several months now, I am officially parting ways with it as my method for publishing. Thanks to the folks over at Blubrry, I have been successfully able to implement a new alternative to embed podcasts into the native feed that already exists for CanonBlogger. So, in the interests of getting the content posted to … Continue reading
I think I can…think, and thank!
The cloud and haze of my head cold has lifted and I find myself able to think clearly for the first time in several days…almost a week. With the fervor and excitement of the 5D Mark II hitting the blogosphere, and the requisite discussions now settling to a dull roar, it’s time to get back to the business of blogging on everything photography! To start, I’d like to call out for thanks fellow NAPP member Erik Bernskiold. Not only is he a talented Photoshopper, but he knows quite a bit about web design too (and he’s like 1/3rd my age!). … Continue reading
Hot off the Presses: Canon 5D Mark II announced late yesterday!!!
Stop the presses! No What’s This today! CANON ANNOUNCES THE 5D MARK II!!! Here’s the first pics Canon released. The specs are pretty impressive and pricing is already amazingly low! I saw this over on TWIP, and verified it on Canon’s site. Here’s everything about it, specs, pricing, and photos! I didn’t want to jump on the 5d Mark II rumor bandwagon, but with this being public, I must say…”Holy Crap!” There’s also links at the end of this post to some video samples with audio in 3 of them from the camera. They look and sound pretty darn good … Continue reading
Geographic Composition
Today is the latest installment of the Geographic Composition series from Jason Moore, noted photographer and Photoshop Pro over on his blog. I had the privilege of being a contributing participant again, so in lieu of the typical tutorial that is associated with Tuesday postings, here is the shot that I shared in the Geographic Composition series. The theme for this most recent series is Big and Small. Be sure to stop over at Jason’s blog to view the rest of the images (it’s an excellent resource to for creative juices and to see the latest trends in the industry. … Continue reading
Monday Morning News
To start off, I have a little housekeeping news to share. The feed is fixed! As you may or may not know, the podpress problems with the WordPress interface have also been creating feed problems too. So, for the time being I am probably going to refrain from trying to embed multimedia files within the posts. After going back and looking at some validation errors, I also re-tagged a few posts to try and clean things up. Well, the long and short of it is that feedburner is now working again, so feel free to go back to feeds as … Continue reading
Friday Follies
Another week in the record books, and the poll has changed out. Since the week pretty much consisted of discussions about noise in your photos, let’s see what people are using in the way of 3rd party plugins. So, take a moment to participate in the poll on the right. Thanks for all the participation last week – 29 people voted! Let’s see if we can crack the barrier of 30 this week! Today I thought it might be fun to share a few links to fun Photoshop resources – reasons to laugh and just take a break from it … Continue reading
Now the flip side
Earlier this week I talked about various ways to decrease noise in your images. While preventing and removing noise is something we typically do like to address in our work flow – there is also the flip side where noise or grain can enhance the quality of a print. All one has to look at for examples where noise can have an impact is in black and white photography. Grain gives an added sense of detail to black and white photos. The same can also be said for sepia-toned photos, those with a slightly yellowish, an “old-fashioned”, or “antique” look … Continue reading
What’s This?
Nothing fancy today – just something to whet your creativity – can you guess what this is? It took me a while to dig through my archive of images to find one that I could crop this way and effectively not give it away. The winner….well, wins! Good luck to all, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow! Oh yeah, don’t forget to vote in the poll – how much time do you spend shooting for your own projects each month?
Just under the wire…
enver did mighty fine yesterday in their handling of the Raiders, so hats off to them for getting the season started on the right note. Go Broncos! As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, today is Tutorial Tuesday, and since time is ticking away from me here, I’ll get right to it. The tutorial today does a comparison of reducing noise from the built in settings inside Photoshop versus a third party plugin. Granted, I went through it pretty quick and didn’t go into a lot of detail on the various settings, but I did want to give you … Continue reading
