• Panasonic - DMC-LX1, DMC-FZ30
• Hasselblad - H2D (DNG)
• Konica Minolta - Alpha Sweet Digital (Japan), Alpha-5 Digital (China), Maxxum 5D (USA), Dynax 5D (Europe)
• Leaf - Valeo 17, Aptus 22
• Leica - D-Lux 2, Digital-Modul-R (DNG)
• Nikon - D2Hs, D70s, D50, Coolpix 8400, Coolpix 8800

For more info visit Adobe Camera RAW 3.2.

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THURSDAY - SEPTEMBER 22 2005

10 Places To Sell Your Digital Photographs & 4 Places To Find Great Web Design Resources

Darren Hester - a full-time web developer and amateur photographer living in Macon, Georgia - has a network of websites that are wonderful design resources. One of my favorites is Pixel Perfect Stock, where you can get some high quality stock photos at a very reasonable price.

Darren tells us that he also plans on publishing articles on a regular basis, with most focusing on stock photography. For starters have a look at 10 Places To Sell Your Digital Photographs. In this article Darren's written a nice roundup of sites that are accepting submissions from photographers. Here are Darren's other sites:

Pixel Perfect Digital - free high resolution images, textures, backgrounds, illustrations, digital art and stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects.

Designs By Darren - free Photoshop Web Design Templates including HTML template with sliced/optimized images, external CSS (style sheet) and layered PSD file. Flexible Creative Commons licensing.

Design Packs - Free high quality image collections for both personal and commercial web design projects. Each collection features a group of 15 images that share a common theme.

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Photoshop Tip: Change the Font Preview Size

Font Preview is a great new feature. However, the preview size may be too small or too large for you. To change this setting, go into Photoshop's Preferences (Mac: Command-K; PC: Control-K) and choose Type from the pop-up menu. Make sure the checkbox for Font Preview size is selected, and then choose Small, Medium, or Large in the pop-up menu.

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WEDNESDAY - SEPTEMBER 21 2005

Digital Photography How-To: The Pros and Cons of Lens Flare

(From creativepro.com) Lens flare - whether it's in the form of bright streaks, random polygons, or an overall washed-out look - is a hazard when you're shooting photos near a bright light source. Learn how to avoid it, and even how to exploit it to make stunning imagery, in this article by Sean T. McHugh of Cambridge in Colour.

From the intro: "Lens flare is created when non-image-forming light enters the lens and subsequently hits the camera's film or digital sensor. This often appears as a characteristic polygonal shape, with sides that depend on the shape of the lens diaphragm. Lens flare can lower the overall contrast of a photograph significantly and is often an undesired artifact; however, some types of flare may actually enhance the artistic meaning of a photo. Understanding lens flare can help you use it - or avoid it - in a way that best suits how you wish to portray the final image."

Read "The Pros and Cons of Lens Flare" by Sean T. McHugh of Cambridge in Colour.

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Mini-Interview With Photoshop Guru Bert Monroy

Mirko Zorz from visualfood.net sends this in: "I thought that the visitors of your Blog would be interested in reading my interview with Photoshop Guru Bert Monroy."

It's a mini-interview, which means you can jump over there and get some good Photoshop advice from a well-respected pro and be done in no time at all. Sometimes mini-interviews are just the thing. Thanks Mirko! (And look for our reprint of his interview with David Biedny in early October.)

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Curvemeister Plugin For Easy Color Correcting In LAB

Mike Russell from Curvemeister sends this in: "If you're intrigued by the idea's in the book Photoshop LAB Color, check out the curvemeister demo. This is a Windows plugin with a number of features that make color correcting in Lab easier."

From the site: "Curvemeister is curves on steroids, packed with features designed to make your images look better, and accomplish this with less effort and more fun. Dan Margulis is the godfather of Curvemeister, and his ideas form the bedrock on which the features and philosophy of Curvemeister are built. Curvemeister also offers a beginner's class that covers some of the ideas in the first several chapters of the Canyon Conundrum book."

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TUESDAY - SEPTEMBER 20 2005

How To Remove Dust From A Digital SLR

Creativepro.com is running another excellent article by Ben Long. In this one Ben tells you how to remove dust from your digital SLR, and how to avoid it in the first place.

From the intro: "If you've spent much time scanning film, you know that managing dust and scratches can be a hassle. You'd think that shooting digital would free you from this dusty chore, but not if you use a digital SLR. Because you can remove the lens, dust can worm its way inside the camera body, around the mirror, and stick to the sensor. Once there, the dust can show up in your images as dark specks or smudges.

"Some SLRs seem to be more prone to dust than others. I've heard speculation that it's because certain sensors require more of an electrical charge than others, which creates more static electricity on the sensor's surface, which attracts more dust. Other cameras take an offensive position: The Olympus Evolt E300, for example, automatically shakes its sensor every time you power up the camera in an effort to dislodge any dust or particulate matter that may have landed on the sensor surface."

Read "Framed and Exposed: Out, Damn Spot!"

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Photoshop Tip: Formatting Special Type Features

A host of special type tweaking features (such as superscript, subscript, underline, etc.) now have their own keyboard shortcuts, which are similar to the shortcuts used in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator (no big surprise there, eh?). For example, to superscript a number (or a symbol), you highlight the character and then press Shift-Command-+ (PC: Shift-Control-+). For a list of these new shortcuts, just bring up the Character palette, type in some text, then look at the palette's pop-down menu and the new shortcuts will appear beside the type features.

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MONDAY - SEPTEMBER 19 2005

Another Free Photoshop Video Tutorial From Franklin McMahon - Layout

Franklin McMahon has posted another free video tutorial to his site. Here's the link:

Free Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorial - Layout
"In this tutorial video I go over Photoshop layout design techniques such as color schemes, fonts and alignment. This is Part 3 of the 3 part Design Secrets series."

In case you missed it, you can also read an interview I conducted with Franklin.

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New Photoshop Brushes From Kirsty - The Vintage Radio Brush Set

Kirsty sends this in: "There's a new brushset: Radio sets (vintage). Don't forget to also check out the Stock photography gallery once in a while, a textures album has been added which might be of some interest to some of you :) - just go to the usual address: http://brushes.500ml.org. I hope you enjoy the new content!"

The Radio Set contains 7 brushes of vintage radios, some are from Kirsty's own stock and others are from Stock.XCHNG. The set also includes detail brushes.

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Photoshop Tip: Tile Vertically And Horizontally

Back in Photoshop CS, if you had two photos open, they overlapped each other on screen. If you choose Tile (from the Window menu), it stacked them above the other (which was better, because you could see at least part of each photo), but it wasn't the side-by-side review that we always wanted. Well, now you can get side-by-side reviews (perfect for vertical shots) by going to Window> Arrange> Tile Vertically. Note: there is also a Tile Horizontally option as well.

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FRIDAY - SEPTEMBER 16 2005

Interview With Franklin McMahon Of Media Artist Secrets

As promised, we've done an in-depth interview with Franklin McMahon, commercial photographer and producer of the podcast "Media Artist Secrets." Inspired by the epiphany that many talented people were not "schooled in the business of being creative," McMahon has formatted his podcast programming to address this gap.

In the interview, McMahon speaks candidly about his show's success, his TV business background, and discusses why he feels Photoshop is relevant to everyone working as a creative media artist. I aksed him 8 questions. To give you a taste here are snips from 2 of them:

Does your podcast 'Media Artist Secrets' address Photoshop directly?
Actually I have multiple thousands of listeners who use Photoshop! The podcast does not go over Photoshop specifically as far as tips, however a lot of the techniques addressed in the show (design, promotion, marketing, etc.) all obviously tie in to Photoshop and the CS2 suite. As for Photoshop techniques, I feel that they are best seen in video, so that is why the blog for the podcast has a lot of video tutorials covering a wide range of Photoshop lessons.

For someone starting out in design and learning Photoshop, what quick advice would you give them?
Learn design, then Photoshop. A lot of people reverse this. Once you have mastered the basics of design (color schemes, invisible grids, typography, alignment, etc.) your Photoshop work will then go from good to amazing. And then also really learn Photoshop. Many noodle around and figure it out, but there are hundreds of features in Photoshop and many will take your work to really excellent levels if you put in the time to learn them. Books, or classes, or even my videos, whatever it takes, don't just know the tool... focus on mastering it.

Read the complete interview with Franklin McMahon Of Media Artist Secrets.

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New Wacom Graphire4 Pen Tablet Is Released

Wacom’s new Graphire4 pen tablets include a cordless, battery-free pen and mouse, a tablet and five software applications. Using the natural control of the pen and the included software, you can enhance photos and create artwork for scrapbooks, craft projects and slide shows. It’s also easy to use these pen tablets to digitally jot notes, annotate documents and sketch quick diagrams.

Graphire4 pen tablets are available in a choice of three colors (Silver, White and Metallic Blue) and two sizes (4x5 and 6x8) which are priced at $99 and $199.

Read the full Wacom Graphire4 Pen Tablet Press Release (and see a much larger photo).

For the inside story on what it's like working with a Wacom tablet, read Jennifer Borton's "How I Learned To Love The Tablet."

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THURSDAY - SEPTEMBER 15 2005

Photoshop Tutorials From Webdogpro

Feeling experimental? The Webdogpro site has some fairly easy to follow recipes for creating your own abstract brushes. For those of you beginning your Photoshop career, these instructions give you a good initiation to the fundamentals and you'll walk away from the experience with tangible results.

If you're already familiar with the way things work, a cursory glance in the direction of the site may give you some worthwhile ideas to add to your collection. And as a bonus, you'll learn how to quickly transform a photo of a parked car into one racing through space. Who could ask for more?

Visit Webdogpro.

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Photoshop Tip: Mask The Masks

Can you mask a Layer Mask? You can if it's in a group. If you have several layers with Layer Masks and you want to hide portions of all those layers with another layer mask, put the layers into a group by selecting Group Layers from the Layers drop-down menu. Then click the Add a Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to mask the group. .

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WEDNESDAY - SEPTEMBER 14 2005

Welcome To The Wide World Of Photoshop Podcasts!

With the ever-growing number of programs that are becoming available for download, we've been inspired to provide a small Podcast Guide.

Inside you'll find a brief history of the medium, some instructions about how to access the shows, and a changing menu of reviews of some of the latest in the Photoshop podcasting world. There's also a link to a sample chapter from "Secrets Of Podcasting," which is a just released podcasting book, and there will be more links added soon. So visit regularly!

Visit the Photoshop Podcast Guide.

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Photoshop Tips: Burning Questions Answered

(From creativepro.com) Learn how to export layers to individual files, create an image with a transparent background, and remove red eye painlessly.

Excerpted from the upcoming book Adobe Creative Suite 2 Workflow by Jen Alspach (O'Reilly, 2005). It will be for sale later this year.

Each chapter in Adobe Creative Suite 2 Workflow features the top 15 questions designers ask about each application in Adobe's Creative Suite 2. The article has three of the top 15 questions about Photoshop, with their step-by-step answers. The questions are: How do I export layers to individual files? How do I create an image with a transparent background? How do I remove red eye?

Read Burning Questions Answered.

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New Pantone Color Cue2 Measures And Captures Color On Any Surface, Anywhere

(Press release) Pantone, Inc. today introduced PANTONE Color Cue2, the next generation of its award-winning handheld colorimeter. Designers gather inspiration everywhere they look, from flower petals and seashells to fabric and plastic. Now with the click of a button, the new Color Cue2 lets them capture their color inspiration for later use in designs of all kinds.

Color Cue2 empowers designers across multiple industries including graphic arts, architecture, interiors, fashion and home with broad color matching capability.

"Color Cue expedites the entire design process by greatly reducing the amount of time it takes to find the right color," said Prabal Gurung, a designer at Bill Blass. "This frees me to focus my time and energy on my ultimate goal: making beautiful clothes."

(I like it because it frees up my time to buy beautiful clothes. - JA)

Read the full press release.

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TUESDAY - SEPTEMBER 13 2005

Creative Thinking in Photoshop: Using NeatImage to Remove Noise in Digital Photos

(From creativepro.com) Noise artifacts are an all-too-common side effect of shooting photos in low-light and other challenging situations. If your images are plagued with noise, you may want to check out the NeatImage Photoshop filter for removing noise. Sharon Steuer did. Here's what she found...

"In an ideal world, we all would replace our digital necessities and toys at least once a year. Digital cameras should be updated annually, of course, if only to keep up with the technology. But unfortunately, some of us fall behind by a year or more, and as a result are stuck with yesterday's cutting-edge technology, which can be today's handicap.

"I have a digital camera that I love in most respects. It's an Olympus C-750 10x Optical Zoom camera. The framing is accurate through the LCD, and the manual controls allow me to control most everything including aperture, speed, and white balance. What this camera lacks is high resolution (it has only 4+ megapixels, relatively low by today's standards) and camera RAW compatibility with Photoshop. What that means is noise can be too easily introduced into the photos, especially in low-light situations.

"But because I haven't wanted to invest in a new camera, I had to work around these limitations. Here's one lesson learned."

Read Using NeatImage to Remove Noise in Digital Photos.

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Get Your Free 'Shadow Factor' Table

After reading about the Shadow Tip in yesterday's post, reader Gordon McKinney sent this in:

"I have a photo cheat sheet that has a 'Shadow Factor' table. It gives the angle of the Sun with matching shadow length — i.e. if the Sun (or light source) is 20 degrees above the horizon then shadows will be 2.7 times the length of the subject."

You can download it for free at Gordon's site. It will help in making perfectly realistic shadows. Sweet. Thanks Gordon!

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New Book Focuses On Photoshop LAB Color

There's a new book by Dan Margulis that I'm been hearing and reading a lot of good things about called Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace. From the press release:

With a mantra like "There are no bad originals, only bad Photoshop operators," you know best-selling author Dan Margulis is serious about exposing people to the magic of Photoshop. Nowhere is that magic more apparent than in its LAB color processing capabilities, which can make even the subtle canyon colors of rock, sand, and dirt come to vivid life. However, you may be wary of taming the complex beast. Here's your guide!

In these pages, Dan shows that you can derive enormous benefits from just a few simple tools and techniques. He also demonstrates that you can take these techniques as far as you wish, employing the power-user features he describes in later chapters.

Starting with canyons and progressing to faces, you will see just how quickly you can begin improving your images by following the"recipe" included here. Each chapter includes a sidebar with review questions and exercises as well as a "Closer Look" section that examines some of the principles behind the techniques. A CD includes exercise files.

Dan Marguilis is known as "the experts' expert" on the logical and effective ways to make any image look its best" (Design Tools Monthly) and "the father of digital prepress" (Scott Kelby). In 2001, he was on of the first three individuals - and the only writer - to be named as a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame. In announcing his election, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals said, "Dan's ability to reduce complicated concepts to words that users can understand and his insistence on dealing with real-world relevance has made him today's most influential voice in color reproduction."

Available at Amazon.com (37% off).

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MONDAY - SEPTEMBER 12 2005

Photoshop Tips From James Dempsey

You'll find some good Photoshop tips from James Dempsey at the CreativeGuy site. In Don't Crop, Trim! you'll learn a useful trimming tip, in Drop Shadow Positioning you'll learn how to easily re-position your shadows, and in Selections Made Easy you'll learn how to use an adjustment layer to help in making accurate selections.

In a longer tip, almost a tutorial, called Color Shifting, James explores the power of the Color Replacement Tool.

From the intro: "The Color Replacement Tool is often overlooked by many designers... mostly because it's a relatively new tool, and partly because it's somewhat hidden where you wouldn't expect to find it. It's not a terribly difficult tool to master, and using it once will show you how often you *could* use it."

Have a look at this tutorial, it could really save you some time — and we can all use that!

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Photoshop Tip: Determining The Length Of A Cast Shadow

One of the most commonly asked questions about cast shadows is, "How long or short do I make them?" We could get into a long and involved explanation, describing different lighting situations, such as single or multiple light sources, and viewing the subject from a bird's-eye perspective, blah, blah, blah... but we won't get into all that.

What it comes down to is this: The length of the shadow is determined by the vertical position of the light source. For example, if the light source is directly above an object, it would hardly cast any shadow at all, but if it was closer to the horizon line, it would cast a longer shadow. In layman's terms: the higher the light source, the shorter the shadow; the lower the light source, the longer the shadow.

reprinted by permission and sponsored by the NAPP
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FRIDAY - SEPTEMBER 09 2005

2 More Free Photoshop Video Tutorials From Franklin McMahon - Layer Styles, And Fonts

The ever-prolific Franklin McMahon has posted 2 more video tutorials to his site. The links are below. Next week I'll be posting an interview I conducted with the graphics master in which he talks about his very popular podcast.

Free Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorial - Layer Styles
"In this video I go over gradient and color overlay styles, and how to use them to make very dramatic photos."

Free Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorial - Fonts
"Here is a tutorial on Photoshop CS2 on how to make your text look great with kerning, double bold, faux and styles."

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Proxy Volume 1, Number 4 Now Available

Adobe's quarterly online magazine covers software tips, troubleshooting advice, design trends, and more. In this issue there are tutorials on using Adobe Bridge and Adobe Stock Photos in Adobe Creative Suite 2, and in the Downloads Section there are some links to Photoshop freebies at Adobe Studio Exchange, including a Lith Print Photoshop action, a Chrome Titanium Photoshop style, and some flames and fire Photoshop brushes.

To view this issue you'll have to signup at the Proxy site. At the signup page you'll find the three previous issues that you can download instantly.
Signup at the Proxy site.

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Creativepro.com Offers InDesign CS2 Giveaway

One more thing you might be interested in... Creativepro.com is giving away a free copy of InDesign CS2. All you have to do to have a chance at winning is to join as a member. Why become a member? Active members can enter drawings for cool stuff like high performance systems, digital tools, software, gift certificates, and more. Members also have access to an array of online services including a stock photography search that sifts through multiple stock catalogs at once, browser-based services for framing and enhancing photos, checking PDF files for errors, and much more.

Read all the details on the contest page.

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Photoshop Tip: Change One Preference, Save A Bundle

If you're creating Web graphics with Photoshop and you're not using the Save for Web feature (which is perfectly fine not to do), make sure you go under the Photoshop menu (in Mac OS X), under Preferences, and choose File Handling (in Windows, Preferences can be found under the Edit menu). In the Image Previews pop-up, change the setting from Always Save to Never Save.

Image Previews are those tiny thumbnail icons that are visible on your system. They look cute, but they take up big space - often accounting for 70% of your file size. Turn them off, and you'll save file size big time. (Save for Web does this automatically, so if you're using that feature don't sweat it.)

reprinted by permission and sponsored by the NAPP
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THURSDAY - SEPTEMBER 08 2005

Photoshop Plugin Reviews From Jay Nelson

Here are the latest Photoshop plugin reviews by Jay Nelson, the editor-in-chief of Design Tools Monthly, via creativepro.com:

Intuitive Color Correction
PhotoTune's 20/20 Color MD ($50) is a remarkably easy to use color-correction plug-in for Photoshop. To use 20/20 Color MD, you look at a series of side-by-side images, each time clicking on the one you think looks best. After you complete this 15-second process, the plug-in applies the minimum number of adjustments to make your image look like your final choice. Professionals can use the advanced controls to adjust exposure in half f-stops and to separately balance color in highlights and shadows. You can also save "snapshots" of your adjustments at any point in the process.

Realistic Surfaces and Textures
Human Software's PhotoSurface 3.0 ($70) is a plug-in for Photoshop 7, CS, and CS2 that creates more than 300 realistic textures and surfaces, including metal, wood, masonry, fabrics, carpet, and many kinds of leather. It can also distress an image. The company's Web site shows examples of many of the effects.

With PhotoSurface 3.0, you can take an original image (top left) and apply such effects as Straw (top right), Watery (bottom left) and the oddly named Toad skin (bottom right).

Faster Photoshop Masking
Vertus' Fluid Mask ($399) is a plug-in that helps you mask images in Photoshop. Vertus says that, when used on difficult images, the masking process is three to six times faster using its plug-in than other products because it mimics the way the eye and brain recognize complex shapes and colors in images. To test these claims for yourself, download the free trial version. (See our Fluid Mask spotlight page.)

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New Genuine Fractals 4.0 From onOne Software

[Press release] Independent software developer onOne Software, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of Genuine Fractals 4.0, a premiere digital image scaling solution. The new versions of Genuine Fractals and Genuine Fractals Print Pro offer users an improved scaling workflow within Adobe Photoshop. Users are no longer required to save files out in the .STN file format first before being allowed to scale them using Genuine Fractals. Users can now open images in Adobe Photoshop and quickly access the Genuine Fractals plug-in from the Automate menu.

onOne Software will be demonstrating their Photoshop plug-ins at Photoshop World Boston this week. Special, discounted tradeshow pricing will also be in effect for all onOne Software products during Photoshop World Boston from the 7th to the 12th. Users will be able to purchase any full version (upgrades excluded) onOne Software product at a 25% discount. Users who wish to take advantage of the 25% discount should visit the onOne Software website before 9/12/05.

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Photoshop Tip: Editing Multiple Type Layers

Editing multiple type layers at once is even easier in Photoshop CS2. Just Command-click (PC: Control-click) or Shift-click to select the type layers you'd like to change. Then adjust any type settings in the Options bar and all targeted type layers will change accordingly.

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WEDNESDAY - SEPTEMBER 07 2005

3 New Tutorials From Lunacore

The Lunacore site offers a small treasure trove of tutorials for professionals and aficionados alike, and is one of the best tutorial sites you will find. You actually are able to reproduce the same effects that are shown in the previews.

The tutorials helpfully include sample images to work with, making it easier to follow along. Snapshots of the necessary adjustments in the Photoshop menu are also provided, and the instructions are amply detailed and a breeze to follow. Here are three in-depth tutorials which were recently posted:

Smooth Skin
This tutorial shows you how to make skin look smooth. The technique itself is not complicated, but does require you to be patient and work slowly and accurately to achieve the best results.

Beautify A Face
A very in-depth tutorial (7 pages) that shows you how to remove wrinkles and blemishes, how to fix hair, eyes, eyebrows and teeth, and how to color clothes, as well as crop and sharpen with natural looking results.

General Navigation
Learn how to quickly zoom in and out, move the canvas, and compare the retouched part of an image with the original. All the techniques and the tools are explained in great detail.

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AKVIS LLC Releases Chameleon V. 3

[press release mashup] AKVIS LLC have announced the release of AKVIS Chameleon V. 3.0 for Macintosh and Windows, a photo collage creation plug-in.

The name of the program reveals its main feature - the plug-in allows inserting a copied object into a picture in such a way that it adapts to the new color range and blends with the background. Designers will especially appreciate this tool as it allows them to combine images with entirely different color ranges, to create the effect of drawing on a texture surface (crumpled paper, wood, etc), and all that with only a mouse-click.

Two modes of collage creation are available, Standard and Snapshot. With just the press of a button in Standard Mode, AKVIS Chameleon automatically adjusts an inserted object to the background The Snapshot mode adds dimension to a collage, layering the blended components so that the texture and relief of the primary image can be seen through.
Demonstrations of AKVIS Chameleon features are available at the Akvis website.
The new version of AKVIS Chameleon supports 16 bits per channel and allows processing images in color modes RGB, CMYK, Lab and Grayscale. It gives you the opportunity to process images without losses in quality. With 16 bit you get more in-between colors and tones and the result is smoother. It is especially important if you prepare photos for printing.

More details are available at the Akvis website.

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Photoshop Tip: Copy Those Layer Styles The Easy Way

Copying layer styles onto other layers was a sore point for many Photoshop users. Now, in CS2 you can do just that by clicking the "f" icon and dragging it to another layer. Hold down the Option key (PC: Alt) to copy the style to another layer instead of just moving it.

reprinted by permission and sponsored by the NAPP
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TUESDAY - SEPTEMBER 06 2005

Adobe Blogs & Help A Displaced Designer

On August 15, 2005, Adobe launched Adobe Blogs, where some of the Adobe staff are now starting to post. Of special interest to Photoshoppers will be Scott Byer's blog Living Photoshop, which will provide - according to the about page - tips, tricks, and other interesting Photoshop items from an engineering perspective.

Also make sure to read the blog from John Nack, who is the product manager for Adobe Photoshop, called John Nack on Adobe. On Saturday he posted "Katrina: Help a displaced designer" which reports that the people who run The Chopping Block have started DisplacedDesigner.com, which will try and help out displaced individuals by matching them with anyone who has any extra studio or office space. Spread the word.

Also note that AIGA, the professional association for design, has mounted a relief effort to aid designers in the Gulf Coast region devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

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Tutorial For Working With Layers In Photoshop CS2

Despite the whirlwind blowing through my life these days, I've written a new page of layers tips and tricks for the tutorials section. Keeping with their proclivity for the sometimes infuriating rearrangements of menus and hotkeys from version to version, Adobe has made some changes to the Photoshop layers palette in CS2.

As I found myself running into a few walls while working on a job, I decided to share my little discoveries with everyone. Hopefully this will prevent some unnecessary headaches! Sorry folks, but they're for CS2 only.

Read the Tips For Working With Layers In Photoshop CS2 tutorial.

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Spirit Photography At The NYC Metropolitan

[From Boing Boing] Today's New York Times (Sunday, September 4, 2005) previews "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult," opening September 27 at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It sounds spectacular. Seen here, "The Ghost of Bernadette Soubirous" (unknown, c.1890). From the article: