The Digital Photo Guy

FREE Topaz Labs Webinar

Eric Yang, Marketing Manager for Topaz Labs will present a free webinar on April 7 at Noon CDT (Central Daylight Time). Eric will demonstrate how to use several Topaz plug-ins and answer questions. There will also be some cool give-aways so be sure to register ASAP. There’s limited seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Click HERE to reserve your spot. You can have as people as you want on one computer so invite your whole camera club, neighborhood or synagogue and project the webinar for all to see.

Using One Tool To Clone Over an Object

When first learning photo editing, students often learn one tool at a time and tend to use that tool for everything. Sometimes, that’s not a bad approach. For example, some use the Marquee Tool to select everything but quickly discover that perfect rectangles and ovals rarely exist in real life.

Today’s Video MMT hopes to speed up your “Ah-ha!” moment by demonstrating how the Marquee Tool can be used to remove an object from a complex background. The first photo below is the original, the second is a close up of the area we want to fix and the last is the final result. View the video in the Archived MMT area (free registration required).

Russian Traffic

I’ve noticed a huge surge in traffic from Russian IP addresses. I don’t believe my charm and skills are that appreciated by Russians so I can only conclude that there’s a big push to hack and scam US sites. I’m going to block all Russian and Chinese traffic but, before I do that, if there are Russian or Chinese readers who actually visit my site for benign purposes, please let me know.

UPDATE: Just heard from Roger at LensRentals.com (see end of MMT) that they have a 5% discount going on right now. Sounds like a great excuse to rent a wide angle or macro or both and join me at the Anza-Borrego Desert Wildflower Workshop next weekend (3/13 & 14) or the following weekend (3/20 & 21). If you rent a lens from LensRentals.com and e-mail a copy of your invoice to me, I’ll take 5% off the price of the workshop. (Cannot be combined with other offers or discounts).

Duh! forgot to include the discount code: PIXEL5. Somedays, it’s better to stay in bed. I don’t know when the discount promo ends. Send LensRentals an e-mail if you think you’ll use it in the near future.

Yeah, yeah! I know today is Friday and this is a Monday Morning Tip but I won’t have time this weekend so it gets posted today. If it bothers you, just wait until Monday to read it. Sheesh!

Topaz Labs releases Adjust 4

Until recently, I pretty much used plug-ins to make specific adjustments, not create a final result. When I bought the Topaz Labs bundle at Photoshop World, I was more interested in using the tools to help me tweak photos, not produce a finished, final image. But, as they say, “Even an old dog can learn new tricks if properly motivated!” (OK, so I just made that up) Maybe it’s just laziness in my old age but I’m beginning to like several presets in the new release of Topaz Labs Adjust 4. Some were available in Adjust 3 but I never really explored them thinking I could do better than some geek engineer who’s probably never seen sunlight, much less a dSLR.

Here are some side-by-side examples of Adjust 4 presets versus my normal workflow:

One photo in each set (I’m not telling which) is my normal workflow. The other is a Topaz Adjust 4 preset where I simply clicked a button and said, “Do it!” There’s no right or wrong but do you have a preference? BTW, one photo is an HDR produced with DP-HDR. Click for more examples

The Digital Photo Guy Blog Gets a Facelift

This is the 6th year for this site. During the first 4 years, it was a static site that was rarely updated because making changes was excruciatingly slow, complex and costly. In 2008, I resolved to fix the problem and commissioned a web developer to develop a new site that I could easily and quickly update myself. He recommended WordPress and the initial implementation took just 6 weeks. As soon as he was done, I started making changes and quickly learned how to do just about everything by myself. I’m no rocket scientist but WordPress makes everything simple and straightforward.

Now, a year after the initial launch, a new static home page has replaced the previous dynamic home page. A dynamic home page was fine in the beginning but, now, with so many articles and posts, it was quickly becoming unwieldly. Readers couldn’t easily find the information they sought. A static home page can act as ”street signs” to help point readers in the right direction. As you can see, some of the signs are still not working. That’s because all the MMTs, posts and articles weren’t always correctly or fully tagged.

Tagging the material at this time would be counter productive because each update would generate an e-mail notification of an update and readers wuld be innundated with e-mails.

Starting in 2010, I’ll be more careful about tagging each MMT, post and article so readers can quickly find all material pertaining to Cameras/Lenses/Gear, Photo Editing and Photography.

In the meantime, the existing tags (right side of main blog) can help you find specific articles or MMTs. You can also use the Seach box along the right side of the main blog.

A website is a never-ending process. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment here. Good light, good memories and good luck in 2010.

Monday Morning Tip – 12/07/09

If you’ve ever tried to cut a person or pet out of a photo and found it to be an exercise in frustration, you need to watch today’s Video MMT. Topaz Labs has released ReMask2 and it is an order of magnitude improved over the first version. Here’s a quick example of what ReMask2 can do for you.

The initial pass took about 3 minutes and I spent another 3 minutes cleaning up the edges. It’s still not perfect but much, much better and faster than previous manual methods. Click here to read the rest of this MMT

Last week’s Photohop Elements webinar with Rob Sheppard was a huge success. For those who were unable to attend the live webinar, the videos are available as high resolution DVD files for just $19.95 plus $2.00 S&H (see below).

Here’s a short clip to give you a taste of Rob’s easy-going personality and clear, concise teaching style. Rob is so smooth and good that I was able to edit the videos in near record time.

Five Minutes Out of Four Hours

Check out more of Rob’s lessons, techniques and workshops at his site. You can also keep up with Rob’s immediate activities on his blog.

I hope to have Rob back early next year after Adobe Lightroom 3 is released to tell us why Lightroom and Photoshop Elements are the best combination for digital photographers. Stay tuned.

Buy the 4 hour DVD here: