Posts Tagged ‘Adobe Photoshop Software’

How Adobe Photoshop Will Make Money From Your Digital Photos

March 2nd, 2010



Today, Adobe Photoshop is considered to be one of the best photo editing software programs available today. It is very easy to use and it will be able to provide all the tools you need in order to edit digital images. Although it is true that this particular software is expensive, you have to consider that there are ways where you can make some money out of this software. By being a little creative and by familiarizing yourself with the tools in Adobe Photoshop, you can make a lot of money out of this software.

So, here are some of the things on how you can make money out of Adobe Photoshop.

The first is by offering a photo restoration service. For sure, there are quite a lot of people who wants to get their old photos restored. You have to consider that moisture and even sunlight can cause damage to photographs. And, there is a chance that someone out there considers their old photographs as priceless. By offering a photo restoration services, you will be able to make a lot of money out of the Adobe Photoshop software. For photo restoration, you can use the healing brush tool, the spot healing brush tool, and patch tools. This particular software can make any old or damaged photos look new again.

You can also offer your services as a photograph doctor. As a photograph doctor, it will be your job to fix red eye, pet eye and even “finger over lenses” syndrome. Aside from that, you will also fix poor lighting, poor exposure, and dark photographs. With Adobe Photoshop, you will be able to fix all these things quite easily. And, the best thing about it is that you will be able to charge a high fee for these small services. You can also make a colored photograph in to a black and white one and vice versa. You have to remember that not everyone is a good photographer and with your services, you can be sure that you can never be short of bad photographers seeking your services.

Adobe Photoshop is not just about editing photos, but it is also about enhancing them with the graphic design utilities. This software will be able to provide you with tools that will enable you to design greeting cards. You can enhance photos and convert them in to drawings or paintings, you can combine photos with another photos, and much more. You can design birthday cards, condolence cards, and even get well soon cards as well as Christmas cards and other cards for different holidays.

T-shirt design is another way that you can earn something from Adobe Photoshop. If you always think about something that would look great on a T-shirt, you will be able to make this a reality with Adobe Photoshop.

Of course, in order for you to really make money out of Adobe Photoshop, you will need to have a color printer, photo paper, digital camera, and scanner.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of ways on how you can earn money out of Adobe Photoshop. From photo restoration, to web design, you will have a lot of opportunities in making money out of Adobe Photoshop. Remember these tips and you can be sure that you will be able to have a great time earning money with Adobe Photoshop.

By: Dave Martin Peters

How to Photograph Artwork With a Digital Camera For Use on the Web

February 7th, 2010



Getting a good digital image of artwork is very important if you want people to get the full impact of your artwork. You need to have good quality digital images of your artwork for Online Galleries, PR materials, exhibitions and galleries. Your digital images are your artwork online, so they need to look as close to the original artwork as possible. You want to make a good first impression, don’t you? If you have a great piece of artwork and it looks dull, dark and gray on the computer screen, it will automatically disengage the viewer and viewers will not want to look at it, it will not interest viewers.

Equipment -

1. Camera – I use an Olympus 4.0 Megapixel digital camera which is a decent camera, but any good quality digital camera will work. Read your camera instruction guide to find all the options for taking good quality pictures. Always take high resolution .tiff pictures because you can always decrease the image quality and file size of a digital picture, but you can’t start from a low resolution image and make it high resolution.

2. Lighting – You do not have to have an expensive photo lighting system or a really expensive camera, what I use is those clamp on metal reflectors that you can buy from the hardware store and I use 500 watt photo light bulbs from the camera store in the clamp on metal reflectors. I use four of these at one time.

3. Tripod – A tripod is also very helpful, but you can do without it if you have to. Use a sturdy tripod with tilt and rotation. If you don’t have a tripod, make sure your shutter speed is at least 1/60 and hold the camera steady and squeeze the trigger gently.

4. Photo Editing Software – The final component is the computer software to adjust the images on the computer, I use Adobe Photoshop software which is awesome. There are many other Photo Editing software programs available, and basically you just need to be able to crop the image and adjust the colors and the lightness and darkness of your digital images.

Procedures -

1. Shoot indoors with at least two 500-watt photo flood lamps (3200K) mounted in reflectors. If your artwork is 22″ x 30″ or larger you should probably use four lights.

2. Put the artwork on a piece of black matte board for a background. Fasten art to the black board with double-stick tape, tacks or use a black mat. Place on the wall or on an easel or on the floor. The art must be parallel to the camera lens, the center of the lens pointing at the center of the art. Use a bubble level to be sure camera and art are level. Tape a gray/color scale next to the art so that you will have a reference for adjusting the color of your digital image.

3. Lamps should be 4-5 feet away from the art, position the lights at a 30 degree angle to the surface of the artwork and point each of the four lights to a separate corner of the artwork so that the light will evenly illuminate the entire surface of the artwork. Check to be sure there are no hot spots, shadows or shine reflecting off the art. The room should be completely dark when you shoot. Cover the windows and turn out the lights. For textured work like collage try raking the light, using just one light from the side and adjusting the exposure accordingly.

4. Fill the viewfinder or LCD (digital) with the IMAGE ONLY, centered and absolutely square to the sides, top and bottom. Move the camera or zoom lens, not the art. Focus carefully in the center of the art.

5. The best combination is a slow speed setting (1/8, 1/15, 1/30 sec.) with a high f/stop (f11 or f16) for color saturation and sharp image. If you don’t have a tripod, you will need to use at least 1/60 shutter speed. The best setting for balancing the light is “tungsten” (which is the type of light bulb you will be using). Tungsten is under “white balance” in the camera settings. Change your white balance setting to tungsten, if your camera has that option.

6. Always take the highest resolution .tiff image possible (for print applications), you can always save that as a .jpg or .gif or .png for use on the web. For the web, a .gif file at 72 pixels per inch resolution is good for most web applications because it has a small file size and loads quickly.

7. Edit your digital image, in your photo editing software, so that it matches the look and feel of your artwork.

8. Organize you digital artwork files on your computer in folders so that you can easily browse to them for upload to online galleries.

Miscellaneous -

Group your artwork by size and shoot the same sizes in sequence, so you don’t have to adjust the camera or easel so much. If your pieces are a standard size, place tape on the floor to mark the position of the camera, lights and easel or art stand and also the placement of the art. It will save you time when you shoot again.

By: George McKim

Digital Photo Editing Software For Free

January 21st, 2010



Part of the fun of taking digital photos is editing the final version using software to get the exact final result you want. There several great free software programs from the simple to the advanced that can help any amateur photographer. Here’s my top four picks for free photo editing software, based on what type of editing you want to accomplish.

Ifranview – both Editor and Viewer

Probably the quickest to learn and easiest to use for basic cropping, adjusting colors, and basic special effects is called Ifranview. It’s been around for years and if you just want to crop, or rotate, change the format, or fine tune the color balance of any digital photo, this is an excellent choice. Extremely simple but also easier to learn than any other photo editing software. It’s small in size, fast in operation, and can be used as a slide viewer too.

Photoscape – Free Easy To Learn Photo Editor with Lots of Features

If you want to get down to pixel editing and making advanced changes Photoscape is a very good choice. It is loaded with features and also very easy to learn. Photoscape has several modules for different editing chores that include a viewer, editor, batch processor, converter, layout print tool, screen capture, combining photos, and even a face search feature. This is a great photo editing software for kids, ages 8 and up.

GIMP – Only For the Serious Amateur

For the serious amateurs who need powerful photo editing functions, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a raster graphics editor that provides high-end functionality. Much like the commercial Adobe Photoshop software, you can do many sophisticated editing tasks with GIMP. In development since 1995, it is available on just about any platform including the MAC OS. The features are extensive which means there is a serious learning curve too. But for serious armatures it’s a great choice and can provide many of the same abilities of popular and expensive popular photo editing software. But there is also a ton of tutorials and help forums that can get a new user up to speed quickly.

Picasa – Best Combo Photo Editor And Online Sharing

And if you want to both edit and share your photos online, Google has an online application called Picasa. One of the many new online applications Google has brought out in the past few years, Picasa has many features and is very easy to learn and use. You can edit your photos, then organize into web albums and share with anyone online with the Picasa Web Albums application. This also gives you a great way to backup photos just in case disaster strikes your home computer. You can also order hard prints and even different items with photos printed on them as gifts.

All of the software above has some good features and provide the novice with a good free solution for photo editing. You can find their website by searching by name at Google (too many links to put in article). All of the software programs have a lot of support and it’s fairly easy to find any answers to questions online. Some provide tutorials, some don’t even need tutorials they are so easy to learn and use.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, it’s time to get out the digital camera and start taking pictures. Even when you don’t get the perfect photo, you can go in and make any changes or improvements with this great list of free photo editing software.

By: John Dow