The gradient tool in Photoshop is so fun. When I was trying to learn to how to use the gradient tool I couldn’t figure it out, I thought this is so dumb! Well, a lot of tutorials forget one basic step that makes all the difference and I’m going to include it.
1. Open your image and evaluate it. If the skin looks dark and grey I will do my brightness/contrast and/or levels adjustments here.
2. For Speed, I ran my Reveal action on this image so now we have this.
3. We are going to add a gradient map by going to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. And what do you get? Devil Baby! Oops! this is why for so long the gradient thing eluded me.
4. You can fix this by clicking on the box on the bottom and hit reverse to change the effect so it looks right (but you don’t want to that every time).
5. While I have nothing bad to say about devil babies or pagan babies in general (all religions are wlecomed here). I don’t want a devil baby today. To get rid of this adjustment Edit at the top and then Step Backward.
So to fix this we are going to first a) change our color boxes (foreground and background) on the bottom of the tool bar to black on top and white on the bottom. Next, select your gradient tool (with the red arrow in the middle) and third click on the top left little black to white box (the next red arrow). Here you can choose what kind of gradient you want. Choose the third background to foreground. This will give more options than just choosing black and white.
4. Now we are going to step 3 again and look no Devil-Baby!
5. You can be creative and pick your own colors for a gradient map. so say you’re Irish and you want to celebrate the Ides of March. Walloa! (I didn’t say it would look good). Obviously you’ll need to do some experimenting on your own.
6. My Pro Black and White action uses a graident tool and after using it, it would look like this. You can purchase this action and others like it in the Store. Good luck and have fun!
OH MY HECK! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO PHOTOS! WHAT DID YOU DO?
I moved about 10 feet. Well, Laura did.
One of the most important things you can learn to do when taking your pictures is learning to find the light. Look at these two photos. I was at a family shindig with one of my fabulous cousins doing the camera talk thing. As the sun was setting the light changed positions and in a matter of minutes where there was beautiful light, there was none to be found. So I said to Laura, let me show you a cool trick. I’m going to hold up my hand to find good light. I learned from Rodger Newbold, from the Salt Lake Arts Center Salt Lake Arts Center. In one direction the light was bluish becuase of the shadows in another it area it was golden. Look at the two examples. Crazy! Why spend time editing if you don’t have to. Simple tricks like this can make your pictures look good in the camera, which will save you work.
Thes shots are straight out of Laura’s camera. Didn’t she do a great job? Light reflects off all sorts of surfaces. In this case, it was the metal roof of the pavillon, often it’s sidewalks. Audrey Woulard is famous for working with natural alighting so she’s an expert at finding the light. You can do this too. Put out your hand and see where the light is the most even and warm. People may think you’re crazy, they may think you know what you’re doing. It doesn’t matter what people think, find the light and it will make a world of difference in your pictures.
Our storefront will be open by Friday. Actions (my downloadable recipes for your pictures) will be available for sale. I’ve worked long and hard making sure they are simple to use with brillant results.
Animoto offers a unque, easy, and beautiful way to present your photos and videos of your family and friends. Jordon Brough, CEO from Animoto was in town last week and I met him! OK, so he’s really not a CEO but he is a Senior Web Developer and that sounds smart, probably smarter then his CEO. He is super nice. He made this little video for a Smug Mug Party hosted at Zuma Photo and sent it back to me so I could make sure and share it with the world. Thank you Director Jordon. It’s got a professional production team behind it so I guess I can say it’s my first professional debut. I was in a Science Fiction commercial for my friend Brady Anderton’s company, FueldFilms, but I didn’t get the coverage like I get in this one. Other staring actors are photographers, Torsten Bangeter, who is loving his pizza, and Logan Walker of Zuma Photo with Blake the Lepercaun. I’m the one who has a flower in her hair. I’m thinking maybe I need some headshots.
I really do love Animoto. Jordon did not pay me any money, but using Animoto just did win me a thousand dollar prize package. Pretty cool! Here’s the great news, you can use Animoto too! FUR REALS!!!! Here’s a short video I did for my son. Some of these shots are from family and friends and we put them together last minute in this video. It was his FAVORITE birthday gift. So starting at $5, you make your kids best birthday gift and preserve your memories in a unique and beautiful way. Does it get any better than that?
Here at My Photographica, I will be offering a number of ways for you to make your memories look the best they can. The fastest way to make your pictures sing will be to use actions (my recipes) that I use as a professional photographer in my own line of work as a photographer.
What is an action?
In Photoshop an action is a command that you can use that will perform a series of steps on your image. So you can run an action and have it convert your image to black and white, add brightness and contrast, sharpen and add a vignette all in one click.
Professional photographers use them all the time. Actions are fabulous fast ways to instantly transform your image. If you use the desaturate feature in Elements to make your picture black and white the skin tends to look grey and lifeless and the image looks flat and weak. With my Dreamy Black and White action, the skin glows and the darks are deep and rich.
Who can use these downloads? Anyonewho has Photoshop Elements 6.0 or above.
What makes your downloads different?
First, with a fine arts background my actions are designed to preserve the beauty of your image. While many actions are for Photoshop CS users, mine are specifically designed for Photoshop Elements 6.0 and above. Second, they are diverse. For this price bracket, my deluxe action pack is the most diverse on the market. I’m not going to give six different ways to do black and white but rather a fabulous mix of ways to make your memories to look fabulous. You will want to experiment with all the varieties and see what action best suits the effect you want. I want you to have choices so I’ll offering special effect actions as well. In the future, I will also will be offering my actions individually as well as in packages. Here’s a sneak preview of some actions to come.
And here are some more:)
I’ve heard I can get actions for free, is that true?
First of all, I’m a mom and I love a good freebie. So I will make to have some actions free on a regular basis. But a WARNING with downloading free things, if you have a pc you can also get a lovely virus that may disable your computer (I had that happen twice myself this month). My actions will be delieved from a site that specializes in digital e-commerce. These actions were programmed after years of experience with Photoshop. Professional photographers will pay up to a thousand dollars for the the top of the line set of actions photographers. At My Photographica starting at just eight dollars you can get for a virus free kick butt action that you know will do the job you want. You want to spend countless hours on the web finding the best recipes, good luck. but here there are. These actions were designed to save you will save you time, money, and your memories will never have looked so good.
For some women, their camera scares them more than this image does. Here is one of the very most important things I can say to you about photography, there is no room for fear.
Fear is a beautiful thing. It can save your life when the scary bear comes tramping into your campsite and it tells you, “GET UP AND RUN”. Actually, that’s probably the worst thing to do when a crazy bear comes roaring into your camp, but it is a very powerful visual so let’s just stick with it for now. OK, how about you go out of town for ten days and your four teenage children have the house to themselves….How’s that for scary? This picture d-o-c-u-m-e-n-t-a-r-y material here. I am not going to say where or when this shot occurred, but you kids down the street know what I”m talking about. But your camera? Not scary.
In photography there is no room for fear. By having fear you only deny yourself the opportunity to learn and grow. There are no scary bears here. Sometimes my hair gets a big and crazy, but I am no bear unless it’s 3am and I can’t get my computer to cooperate. Moving on from bears, you camera is not a mystery that can not be unsolved. Your manual, on the other hand, was probably written by somebody with Asperger’s in Silicon valley who is ten times smarter than you and can’t relate sub genius intelligence. Being sub genius myself, I can relate to you and if I can figure it out so can you. I’m here to help translate. Photoshop is magical, but unlike Harry Potter, you don’t have to be born with something special, you can learn magic without being special, no wand needed.
In photography I love the philosophy of Smug Mug, “We Are All Peers.” That means we’re all learning together! In fact there is a song I could start singing right now, but you can’t hear me, maybe I’ll just sign it for you. Welcome to the the no fear zone.
My posts will often contain poor spelling, consistently awkwardgrammar and sentence structure with fabulously long sentences (my favorite kind) packed great information. I can’t be afraid of making those mistakes because having wacked my head pretty good and hard and sometimes writing after I’ve taken my Ambien, I simply can’t guarantee anything other than information I wished I had when I started out. If Pam Baumeister, editor from Wasatch Woman reads it, she might cry, but hopefully her desire for further enlightenment will ease her pain. Suffice it say, this will be a great place to overcome issues period. So let’s get started:)
Here are a few great links for camera lovers of all levels.
Welcome to my first blog entry for My Photographica.
In the video we announce the winner from the Start Up Princess Conference. Janice Croze from www.fiveminutesformom.com totally inspired me to make a video. Thank you luv! Our winner will receiving a Deluxe Action Pack (worth $125 of software solutions) for your photos. It will be available next week for download. Joy from www.joyinthekitchen.com also contributed to the prize package and ladies make sure and watch it because Winner, she wants your business. Yes my friends, I went to a Princess Conference. Really it was more about dumping Wendy and being The Pan than it was about wearing a dress. If you didn’t go, you missed out!
I will posting 3 times a week starting next week; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Our store will be open next week as well. I look forward to geting to know you and sharing my passion of photography and preserving your memories with you.
Here’s a few great things I learned this week that I wanted to pass on. It’s not about still cameras but moving ones. I wish I had known this all ahead of time, If you have a DV video on tape and you want to download it to the computer from your camera you will need to make sure your computer has a fire wire cable. You will also need a 4 pin to 4 pin fire wire cable. After you upload the file to your computer you can use Windows Movie Maker (a free download for PCs), or imovie for Apple which often comes installed or is available for a low fee. imovie is far superior and if you google it, you can find a free windows version (not sure how Apple feels about that).
After you’ve downloaded your movie and edited your movie, you will need to save it as an .avi or .MP4 format. Windows is stinky and sometimes won’t let you do this. You can go to Any Video Converter and convert your video. (http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/). This place will also convert your file to flash so if you want to run it as a stand alone on Word Press or your Website you can. Here’s a review of the top 10 video plug-ins for wordpress (http://wpfeed.com/2008/12/top-wordpress-video-plugins-available/). One of them includes editing capabilities online! You can then code your video into your html. Pretty awesome! If you need a host and player for your video on a webites or blog, youtube YouTube is a popular solution but even better is Vimeo, Vimeo, awesome! Vimeo has commercial restrictions for commercial use but it’s so much better than youtube. A lovely creative community of artists have made a platform for high quality video hosting and converting available. Thank you Vimeo. If you have pictures you like to produce into a video, Animotohas it hands down. You can now even do pictures and video together. The opening video on this site is an Animoto creation. Jordan Borugh, a lead engineer for Animoto was in town this last week and I was lucky enough to meet him at a Smug Mug party that Zuma Photo hosted. I was very fortunate to be able to be apart of a promotional video there at there at Zuma Photo which I will feature next week. I can’t believe I was in a movie! You can be in a movie too now that you know all this.
This is great information that I wanted to pass along to help you preserve your memories.
