Category: Uncategorized

Enjoy St. Valentine’s Day photo manipulation tutorials. Love and romance is very easy to express. Here you’ll find some tips on how to do it in a proper way.
Photodoto

Settle in for an outstanding 13 mins on the philosophy of portraiture from one of the most interesting portraitists working today. (If you are not familiar with the work of Nadav Kander, you may want to take a look at his website [some NSFW] first.)

Produced by the National Portrait Gallery as a tie-in to the 2012 Olympics, this is by far the most detailed look I have yet seen into how Kander works. As a bonus, there are several still BTS shots showing his portrait sets.

(Via APE)

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Strobist

Facebook is Rolling Out a New Photos Presentation Page.

Facebook is currently in the process of rolling out a new and improved photos page for users. I’ve been part of a beta group testing out this new page over the last week and I have to say that the new photos layout is a huge step forward for photos on Facebook.

It is inevitable that the new page will be compared to Google+’s photos page and while there are similarities there as also some differences as well.

Like Google+, on your photos page, as well as on the photo page of your friends, you can hover over any thumbnail and like or comment on a photo with a single click without ever leaving the page. This allows you to like many more photos in one place at once than you could previously do. This new hover and like/fave/+1 functionality is a major lubricant for social activity on photos.

Although it may feel like Facebook copied G+ here, if my memory serves correct, it was Flickr who first introduced this hover/fave action for us in their “photos from your contacts” page. So maybe Facebook and G+ are both actually copying Flickr here more than anything. One small cosmetic difference between Facebook and Google+ here is that on G+, the +1/comment stats are light gray that light up when you hover to interact. On Facebook the stat information is gone completely unless you hover and then it appears for you to interact with.

One nice hover tool that Facebook also introduces us to here is the ability to remove yourself from a photo directly from the hover action. I’ve never quite understood why people feel the need to tag me in photos that I am not in on G+/Flickr/Facebook, but when they do I usually just delete the tag and block them. It’s nice to be able to more easily do this now with the new photos page on Facebook.

Facebook’s Old Photos Page.

In the past, Facebook’s photos page had a very stale 4×3 small thumbnail format. You had to actually click through to your “Wall Photos” as a separate album to even get to these. The smallish thumbnails were all the exact same size. There was too much white space around the thumbnails.

With the new Facebook photos page Facebook has recropped all of your photos as square photos. While some photographers dislike the squaring of photos on the web, I actually love the square. It’s my favorite crop of all and I think it works well from a design standpoint in showing off the photos. G+’s photos page, btw, uses more of a justified mosiac page that retains a photographer’s original crop and squeezes them all together to fit on a page. I love the justified/mosaic view as well — in fact, I have a hard time deciding whether I like the square or mosaic layout format the most, I just love them both so much.

One of my favorite new features about the new Facebook photos page (that G+ doesn’t have yet) is that it gives you the ability to make some photos bigger than others. Facebook’s new square thumbnails themselves are bigger now than the old 4×3 thumbnails and with less white space on the page, but even better, you can now choose to highlight favorite photos turning them into even larger oversized timeline sized squares.

New Facebook Photos Layout on the “Photos of You” Section. Note the awesome Facebook tshirt I’m sporting in the highlighted photo.

One area where I think that this new manual resizing and highlighting of photos is going to be huge is in the “Photos of You” section. Let’s face it. You’re so vain. I bet you think this blog post is about you, don’t you? Giving people the ability to highlight the photos of themselves that they look the best in will be irresistible to many.

Whether the new Facebook photos page is “inspired” by Google+ or Flickr or not, I think it’s great to see the continued evolution of photo presentation on the social web. In general our photos are getting larger, better looking and easier to engage with. This is wonderful.

One negative about the new Facebook photos page is that like the old photos page it still comes with ads on the right side of the page (unlike G+’s page which is advertising free). I cropped these advertisements out of my screenshots because, well, they don’t look very elegant. Obviously Facebook counts on this advertising revenue to keep the lights on and I can’t begrudge them for running advertisements next to my photos as their service is free, but it still detracts from the aesthetic experience in my opinion. I’m not sure what the answer here is. Would I pay $ 25/year for an ad-free version of Facebook like I do with Flickr? I think I would.

More on the new Facebook photos page from The Verge.

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

When you’re using layers in Photoshop for photo editing and composting you can speed up the process of working with them if you know these cool layer tricks.

1. Unlock the Background

You will already know the Background of any photo is locked and you can’t do anything much with it until you unlock it. The quickest way to unlock a background layer is from inside the Layers palette. Drag the lock icon to its right and drop it in the Trash and the Background layer will be automatically converted to a regular layer.

2. One click add a Layer

To create a new layer above the current layer click the Add New Layer icon at the foot of the Layer palette. 

To add a new layer directly below the current layer Ctrl or Command Click on that icon. Both options add a layer but without displaying the Layer dialog. 

3. Merge Everything to One Layer but Keep the Layers too

To merge all the current layers in the document to a single layer and at the same time to keep all the layers intact below it, click the topmost layer of the document and press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac). In case you are curious – it’s called Stamp Visible. 

4. Select the Content on the Current Layer

To select everything on the current layer Ctrl + Click on the layer thumbnail in the Layers palette. 

5. Copy a Layer to Another Document

To copy a layer from one document to another drag the layer from the Layers palette in one document and drop it into the other document. If you hold Shift as you drag the layer will be centered in the middle of the second document.

6. Quick Layer Moves

To quickly move a layer up the layer stack press Command + ] and to move it down, press Command + [.

7. Instant Delete a Layer

To instantly delete a layer, click the layer and press Delete. 

Bonus Layer tip

To fill a layer or a selection with the foreground color press Alt + Backspace (Option + Delete on the Mac). Use Control + Backspace (Command + Delete on the Mac to fill the layer or selection with the Background color.

So, over to you now… what are your favorite Layer tips and tricks?

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

7 Cool Photoshop Layer Tricks

Digital Photography School

Six years ago, I wrote on Strobist about how to build a $ 10 macro studio. Since then over a million photographers have seen how they could easily take control of light—any light—to easily produce professional quality product photos.

Four years later while brainstorming with my friend Mohamed Somji about how to light an upcoming photo project, I started thinking about how to reproduce this type of studio on a human-sized scale.

Turns out, it's not so hard. Read more »

Strobist

Photography website templates come in all shapes and sizes.  Each have their own features, styles, colors and functions.  The best way to see which works for you is to sit down and use the demos provided by the developers.

In this article, I am going to share 15 incredible photography website templates worth giving a try.

Click on the title link or the graphics to visit the theme websites for a demo.

Photocrati

• All-in-one photography website template
• Galleries management system
• Sell images with ecommerce galleries!
• Dozens of styles, customize everything.
• Great SEO and social media so you’ll be found!

PhotoEclipse

• AJAX powered Fullscreen-Background theme
• Portfolio custom post type
• Shortcodes
• Page templates
• Sidebars

Zipfolio

• Portfolio custom post type
• Pagination
• Video support
• Contact form
• Testimonials

Catalyst

• Drag n Drop slider
• Shortcodes
• Dynamic resizing
• Slider

Helm

• Responsive
• Google Fonts
• Portfolio custom post type

Precious

• WordPress gallery
• Contact form
• Clean design
• Multiple layouts

Invictus

• Full screen
• Slider
• Flickr integration
• Shortcodes

King Size

• Full screen
• Multiple gallery styles
• Shortcodes

Gleam

• Gallery custom post type
• Full screen
• Ajax loading
• Shortcodes

 Buro

• Responsive
• Slider
• Custom post types
• WooCommerce integration

 Simplicity

• Slider
• Custom post types
• WooCommerce integration

Olya

• Responsive
• Slider
• Custom post types
• WooCommerce integration

Landscape

• Slider
• Genesis Framework
• Portfolio based

Pixel Happy

Manhattan

• Genesis Framework
• Slider

Find More

Interested in seeing more photography website templates?  Check out some of these links:

• Photography Website Templates
• 20 Jaw-Dropping WordPress Photography Themes
• WordPress themes for photographers
• 9 Stunning WordPress Themes for Photographers

dslrBlog

Not long ago I was asked to photograph a special event at a local karate dojo. The event was a very rare occasion as three high ranking karateka were performing the same kata in sequence. In addition, Zoku, who is not often found performing a kata in public, did just that – many times.

To share the experience with the world, I decided to do something special of my own.

Because a big part of karate is the community, sharing and education – I wanted to share the experience on my blog, and the same time, educate my readers. But that isn’t all I did. Zoku has been kind enough to share short descriptions of each photograph. So in the articles, you will experience:

• The karate photographs
• The description of what is happening in the photograph
• How the event & karate description relates to photography

These are some of the photographs in the series, but there are many more to follow.  Please visit the When Photography & Karate Merge series and enjoy.

Thanks for reading and happy shooting,

Scott

dslrBlog

There are millions of things which can spoil your photography. And there is no sense to enumerate all of them, because this list will be almost endless. So we decided to concentrate on several factors that can be minimized or even brought to nothing – they are also known as 7 deadly sins. You can argue that it’s a religious Continue Reading
Photodoto

Today we want you to meet Geoff Powell – a fine art photographer who runs workshops in France and the UK along with online courses. He’s a successful painter, a photographer, a blogger, a businessman and a happy father. Geoff’s day has more than 24 hours and he’s very happy with it. In this interview we tried to show you Continue Reading
Photodoto

We’ve covered the topic of how to use ‘panning’ to photograph moving subjects previously here on dPS in Mastering Panning and The Art of Panning – so today I thought I’d put together a bit of an image collection of some panning images. Enjoy!

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

27 Great Panning Images

Digital Photography School