Creating a epic spotlight effect does not have to be the job of Photoshop nor an expensive undertaking. All you need is some creative flair and a little bit of time.

The idea here is to create the spotlight using your flash gun. As we all know, covers for the flash cost the equivalent of your right arm and your first born. To get around that issue all you need is a quick hack. Thankfully this can be done on the cheap and the LightMods blog has a awesome two part article about exactly this!

You can read the Do It Yourself Black Straw Snoot Part 1 and Part 2 on LightMods blog (thanks Lifehacker for the info!)

This is something I will be sure to try out soon!

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Via a Lifehacker post, I was introduced to this great free search site. If you have had trouble finding free (as in beer) search engine called Sprixi.

All you do is type in a topic, click search and boom! You’ll have plenty of results of images that are under the Creative Commons License or some other version of free.

Sprixi.com search from sources like Flickr, OpenClipArt.org and images that you upload directly to Sprixi.com.

I think it’s a great place to search for relevant images that you need for work or your posts. Since it is all automatically generated not all images will fit, but they have a huge selection (since they pick from Flickr) so you have plenty of images to look through.

If you want more pictures, simply scroll down and wait for more previews to load. It also creates categories on the fly. For example, I created the group “Wroclaw” since it didn’t exist before (Wroclaw is a city in Poland).

What categories can you come up with that are new?

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Out of ideas of what to photograph or how to? Let this be an inspiration! The idea is called “Camera Toss” and it’s really simple.

All you do is take your camera and toss is! And make sure to catch it, of course. Sounds insane? Yeah, probably is. But the idea gets some amazing results! Don’t think it’s real? Check out all the camera toss images on Flicker!

If you’re thinking how to actually do ‘Camera Toss’, it really is as simple as tossing it in the air (and catch it). What you do is put your camera on BULB exposure. What is Bulb exposure? All that means is that the shutter stays open, and thus the camera keep recording, until you press the shutter button again.

So you get to set how long the exposure time is (also great for fireworks shots). If you do not have a Bulb mode, just set your camera to it’s longest exposure time (Tv – Time value).

Info from: Create Abstract Light Art via LifeHacker.com

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Photography and design go hand in hand a lot. Sometimes they are very separate and other times they are inseparable like peanut butter and jelly. After searching around on the net for a lot of photo editing information, I came across these purely amazing tutorials.

These tutorials are rather well detailed. For example, there is a great tutorial on how to clean up skin, great for making yourself (or your mate) look better. There are a few tutorials on how to increase her bust size (here and here for example). There are plenty of tutorials for fixing up your general photography (usually with models) at this link. Other sites are packed full of tutorials for the average person to try and some seriously intense graphics design work.

Either path you walk, photographer or designer, there is plenty of information to learn from these links. Many will help you create awesome images to show off to your friends. Check out all the sites for some of the best and stunning photography and you’ll ever see.

There are approximately 5 websites I want to share with you with a special bonus at the end of the post.

SmashingApps.com has some amazing posts, so I details only a few of them here to give some diversity. So, without further delay, I present a list of great tutorial resources and site:

55 Angry, Mad And Soft Landscapes Captured By Photographers @ SmashingApps.com: This post is divided into two general areas of photography. Soft landscapes and ‘Angry, Mad’ shots. These aren’t tutorials persay; they are more of inspirational photography. Photographs to research and learn from. If anything else, they are fun to look at.

70 Beauty Retouching Photoshop Tutorials @ SmashingMagazine.com: This is a list of very extremely useful full featured tutorials. Some include breast augmentation, skin retouching, hair line fixing, color enhancement and lots more. This one is definitely a link to bookmark and keep for reference.

45 Photo Editing Tutorials @ VanDelayDesign.com:

Want to make you photographs extremely interesting? This is a place to look. There are tutorials on how to add dynamic lighting to boring flat photos, how to make photographs generally more stunning. Most tips and tricks are rather easy once you understand them and they can be applied to a lot of photographs that you take. All the tutorials here are very professional and the outcomes are even better. Worth a look and a bookmark.

Any photograph you take and apply the tutorials from VanDelay, can easily turn out as stunning as this picture of a bride on the right.

30 Nicest Photoshop Photo Effects Part II @ HongKiat.com:

This site specialized in post-processing digital effects on a photograph. Many of the effects are too complicated, but almost all are rather work intensive. So be prepared to spend a good bunch of time trying to make similar effects. There are plenty of tutorials here including one for giving yourself a realistic twin, retro and urban effects (very heavy work intensive … to make the cutouts and paths), and a cool mafia style one. Check them out and have fun!

30 Beautiful Vintage-Retro Photoshop Tutorials @ SmashingMagazine.com: Like retro and vintage? This is the link for you. Not much more to say.

Bonus Links!

Photo.TutsPlus.com @ TutsPlus.com: TutsPlus is a amazing servive/blog/website. They started small and now are very large and doing extremely well. Why do they do so well? Because they give a huge service to the users. At Photo.Tutsplus.com you get new (mostly) fully featured tutorials with step by step detailed instructions for a whole plethora of photography subjects. Some content is by paid membership only, but there is SOOO much information for free it’s almost ridiculous. One of my favorite sites to get information and resources. They have new information up weekly, if not daily so it should be one of those resources that you visit a lot.

Tutorials At freeonlineclasses.net @ TutorialOutpost.com: I admit, this site is a bit new to me, but when I saw the amount of great information they had I knew I had to keep it bookmarked. They post new information a few times a month, but the information they have it simply great. Good place to learn a heck of a lot of things. Mostly Photoshop oriented though.

Thats it for the information. Let all of us know in the comments about any other great resources that you might know of!

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Photography is an amazing profession, one to awe, please and amaze the world. Today, we bring you a website which sports 60 purely amazing HDR and panoramic images.

Near the bottom of the page there are several ‘interactive’ images which you can pan through. They are 360 degree images, ‘mini-world’ images, and some things which are a bit abstract. Overall, we believe that the HDR images uptop are the best.

Many of the HDR’s are very well taken and edited. A top pick for us would be “Peggy’s Light”. Be sure to check it out.

For those of you who do not know, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Since a normal camera sensor (or film) cannot capture the same amount of light (meaning the same range) as the human eye, a HDR image can be created. A HDR image is created by combining several images (with different light ranges) into one single image. For example, you can combine a dark image, normal image and a bright image to help you capture all the correct lights and shadows of the scene. Wikipedia has this to say about HDR imaging:

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to represent more accurately the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.^[1]

A panoramic is several consecutive images stitched together to create a larger image (can be used to give the appearance of a wide angle lens). This can be an images going left to right, or up and down (and both sometimes). Great for capturing large nature areas (think: Grand Canyon), urban city spots and the like.

Check out all the great photographs at: 60 Dazzling Panorama And Vertorama Photos

note: the photograph is a sample picture from the site.

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Cyclo.ps is an amazing little search engine. I cannot say it is revolutionary or anything, but it does bring a much needed tool to the design world. We all know of the big stock photo websites such as iStockPhoto, StockXchange, Flickr (yes, it can be considered a place to search for stock photos) and the like. Though there was no real easy to way search through all of them.

Cyclo.ps helps with that. It’s a little search engine which allows you to search multiple sites at once! Pretty cool if you ask me. Not only that, it comes with a pretty good interface that was professionally (and comically) designed with the user in mind. The searches are very fast, giving you a list of files with previews within a second or two.

The main screen (below) is a simple with options for which other services you wish to search. Type in your keyword, for example “money computer” (as seen in the title image here to the left) and you will taken to a page with a plethora of results, showing the results from one service at a time (which I find a bit annoying, though it does make sense).

You can sign up for a free account on Cyclo.ps. It’s free, really. All you have to do is provide your e-mail address (and give it a password … twice).  To find the sign up link you can click on the “Lightbox” link on the top right hand corner, then click “Sign up” on the login page that shows up … or you can click this link to the Cyclo.ps sign up page.

There is one thing I REALLY like about it, ok … so there are a few of those. But, as a geek I love it when systems work the way they should AND they are simple! Way too many things are over complicated! … anyway…. Sign up is a sinch. What I LOVE is that you can use the Gmail e-mail tracking hack there! Simple, this means you can put: youremail+Cyclops@gmail.com and all your e-mail will still go to  “youremail@gmail.com”; thus letting you track where you mail comes from.

Now there are some things that need clarifying about this search, it does NOT find images to use for free. It find Royalty free images. It is made to help designers search for images easier, which they can use for layout and design and then buy them for the final proofing! As user “TheOtherHalf” on Lifehacker pointed out:

Royalty-free does not mean that the photo is free to use, you may still have to pay a one-time licensing fee for unlimited use, it just means that you don’t have to pay additional royalties to the content owner, models in the photo, or the like.

While I’m at it, when using photos of people, make sure that they are Model-Release photos or be very careful how you use them.

………

When using Flickr photos make sure you are following the license terms of each photo. What I usually do is an advanced search and check the Creative Commons options for items that can be altered and used commercially… but even then, you may need to credit the content owner in accordance with the license.

I hope that clarifies this all a bit. Good luck and happy designing.
Cyclo.ps [via Lifehacker]

edit: forgot to add homepage screen shot, here it is:

Cyclo.PS homepage

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Bali is a wonderful country with more to offer than a person can experience in a lifetime. Though we can try. In Bali you will experience an ancient culture deeply embedded into the lives of everyone around you. No matter where you go, you will feel like you are on another planet. The people are wonderful, the air in great, the sunsets are to die for … a simply amazing country.

Today I bring you about 20 high resolution photographs I took in Bali. I hope you enjoy them. More to come soon.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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Stock photography is a interesting niche. It requires special care as these all have to be ‘usable’ photographs. Photographs which designers can use for ads, designs, posters and just about anything. So it must have some meaning and be useful.

Selling stock photography is not too easy though. The problem isn’t the amount of resources or finding where to do it, the problem is the competition. Stock photography is probably one of the most populated niches in the world and it is by no means small. You’re competting against not only professional photographers, but also the average Joe so has any ol’ digital camera on his (or her’s) vacation trip.

Once you’ve decided to sell some of your photographs, how do you go about it? Simple, you should sign up for several of the stock photo websites. I’ll list a few of the major ones here. The rest and extra explanations can be found in an article on Web Designer Depot.

First step is first. Stock photo sites to sign up for.

Stock Photo Sites:

• iStockPhoto : This is a huge player in the stock image world. They are very organized and professional level. To sign up as a contributor, you will have to sign up for a istock photo account, then go through a whole “application process”. This process takes several minutes. There is a small training course (very informative actually), take a quick quiz, and then send them several sample photographs you have. They get back to you within a few days.
• Dreamstime : Big player, easy setup. Easy to use. Requires java plugin to upload anything to their site.
• Stockxpert : Another big contender. Their sign up process is a big annoying. You have to sign up for a normal account first. Once you have activated your account through the e-mail link, click on the ‘home’ button in the menu; you will be presented with a choice to apply for either a contributor or a buyer. Select contributor. All you need to do is upload 5 sample photographs. Thier process takes several days.
• fotolia : I have seen a lot of images from them. A LOT. I know they are big, though … I have also seen them to have very high standards, so you’ll have very high quality competion here. Didn’t personally use them yet.

There are also other sites, but these should be good to get you started. Once you sign up for the websites, all you have to do is upload your stock photos. They review boards will look over your pictures and accept or reject them. If they are accepted, all you have to do is sit back and relax.

Don’t except riches though. Money doesn’t come in easy or quickly from them. So make sure you upload many images, often and make sure they are good images! Good STOCK images.

What makes a good stock image and how does it all work? You can read Part 1 and Part 2 of the WebDesignDepot blog articles on Stock Photos and learn all about it. Though the information I gave you here should set you on the right path. A good place to start

Now get going, stop procrastinating and upload your photos! Remember, upload plenty of images and often! Make sure they are high quality as well.

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