Video Tutorials to come soon.

Including tutorials for some of my previous tips and tricks. I can’t leave those out just because I already blogged them. (Many still get frequent hits from referring sites.)

On that note, i did find a fantastic program for the Mac to record videos of the screen with audio and even a webcam feed if I wanted to scare the world with my ugly mug. It is called ScreenFlow from Telestream Inc. Two thumbs up for this gem of a program! (It’s a little pricey to register, which is why I will be using the demo until I can come up with the $100 fee to unlock the full version. Donations anyone?)

That is all for now.

Who wants video tutorials?

Place your votes! I’ve decided that I may start making some videos to go along with my tutorials to both make it easier to follow along and to help explain some of the more complex steps in more detail.

Contrast Gone Wild

You may have seen it from other photographers and wondered “just how did they do that?” Although their are plug-in filters and no doubt other ways to do it, here is a nice easy free way to do it with only Photoshop and starting with any file, even it if it is a boring, slightly underexposed JPEG.

Contrast Gone Wild

Lighting Videos from Profoto

Thanks to the folks over at Profoto, Tony Corbell has created these great videos on 1, 2, 3 and 4 light portraiture that can apply to pretty much any studio gear you may already own.

These are short but absolutely worth watching for a few quick tips and tricks that might open up some creativity with lights.

Too many Photoshop brushes?

If you are anything like me and have collected WAY too many custom brush sets for Photoshop, there is hope for us yet! Brush Pilot is the answer!

Brush Pilot is an affordable (currently only $15) application brought to us from the fine people over at BittBox.com. It is a compact, stand alone program that lets you quickly and easily preview 8bit and 16bit .abr files outside of Photoshop.

More info on Einstein 640.

A very detailed list of features can be seen over at Rob Galbraith’s blog here:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-10044-10303

I am currently trying to get my hands on one for my own testing along with some of the other new Paul C Buff Inc products. Wish me luck!

PCB announces Einstein 640.

Although Paul C Buff Inc. announced and then quietly pulled the then upcoming Alien Bees “MAX” model that was to be released this summer, they decided to go back to the drawing boards and came back a few months later with a more feature packed “Einstein 640″. The Einstein 640 is a true 640 WS monolight that supports “world power”, meaning it can be plugged in any outlet from 95 volts to 260 volts, 50-60Hz. (A very nice feature for traveling shooters!) This also allows it to play nicely with pure sine wave DC to AC power supplies such as the Vagabond portable power supply also from PCB.

RSS Feed

A few people have requested an RSS for the blog for easier reading so I’ve added it for all to use.

The link is in the upper right hand corner of the menu just below the Search box.

I have also added a link at the bottom of the same menu to the top posts (by hits).

Camera setup for HDR shooting.

The best camera setup for shooting photos to be used in HDR conversions is roughly the same as a careful setup for landscape or just any other type of carefully planned photograph. However, in order to get the best captures we can to work with, following a few quick steps first before shooting a series of images intended for HDR will give you a much better end result and less work on your part in editing.

What’s to come…

I’m currently working on the third installment of the HDR tutorial. (wow, yea it’s a lot of work) I will also be writing a tutorial on how to properly set up your camera for effective HDR shooting to get the best results.

I am planning a little comparison of devices and tools for making a custom white balance in camera. (After all, starting with better files and better color means better results and less work for you!)

I hope to pick up one of the nifty new X-Rite ColorChecker Passport and do a post on that and share some results. I still haven’t ordered mine (yep, i’m kinda broke) but I hope to come into some spare change as soon as a client decides to pay their balance. (This may actually become part of the white balance comparison as well.)

I am a big fan of Lightroom presets and hope to share some information on how to make your own and how to use them as well as the possibility of a download of a few of my own custom presets.

And lastly, I’m working on a fun little retouching guide for a quick business portrait session. (White collar workers want to look good on their business cards!)

You don’t want to miss out so stay tuned!