Photoshop Tutorial – Getting Rid of Wrinkles from Todd on Vimeo.

A quick and painless demonstration of wrinkle removal using some tools in Photoshop. I apologize for the fact that it sounds like the mic was inside of my mouth…

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Do you ever feel like your work is never good enough?  Do you get praise from others about your creations, but deep down inside you don’t feel the same way?  Maybe you feel like you just served up a pile of trash.  To be honest, I feel this way about my own work a lot.  I recently did a few photoshoots and nothing I shot really wow-ed me.  This type of thing happens other creatives I have spoken to, as well.

I Am My Own Worst Critic
I’m definitely my own worst enemy when it comes to criticism. I see the flaws in my work.  Even if they are minor, almost untraceable to others, I still manage to find them.  Am I just being over critical?  Am I bored with what I’m doing?  Is it just because I’m being overly anal?  What’s wrong with me?  I want to be happy with what I’m doing.  I am definitely enjoying it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% proud of where I’m at creatively.  I think we all want to have our own “style” but this is easier said than done.  I’m still trying to figure out what it is, and probably will continue to do so for a very long time. 

Transform
Last year Atlanta Georgia based editorial photographer Zack Arias made a video like no other.  It described a personal struggle that a creative has and lives through.  I don’t care if you’re a graphic designer, a hairdresser, a chef, a contractor, a sculptor, or even a basket weaver… if you create on a daily basis, watch this video.  It’s a must see, and I am pretty sure you will be able to highly relate to it.  Any creative professional should see this.

Getting In and Out of Creative Rutts
We all get in the same creative patterns sometimes, and many times we might not even notice it.  As a designer I would find myself using a lot of the same typefaces, or laying thing out with the same compositions all the time.  In photography, I might find myself framing a lot of headshots in the same way.  Or, I might continue shooting the same themes and subjects with different models.  What do you do when you realize you’re in a rutt?  You do whatever you can to get the heck out of it.  Don’t wait around for someone else to tell you what to do.  Mess around and get crazy the next time you get to work.  Change things up surprisingly.  Look elsewhere for inspiration, if you need some.  Try something new (maybe a different subject, theme, or style) that you might have passed up before.  I personally find that when I get out of my comfort zone and try something new, I get a lot more satisfaction out of my successes.  You will also realize whether or not your new experiments are for you or not, and just might step back into your comfort zone.  Even still, you’re going to be a lot more well rounded of a creative than before.

It’s Okay…
Being your own worst creative enemy is not necessarily a bad thing… be worried when the opposite is true.  Then, you might have a problem.  Heck, maybe it’s healthy.  It’s nice to have a constant semi-dissatisfaction with your work, in a way, so that you can use that to drive you onward to the next level.  I talked to my mom about this topic recently (she’s a hairdresser that’s been in the business for over 30 years).  We agreed that sometimes you just have to keep doing what you know you have to to please your clients and pay the bills.  Feeling completely satisfied with where you are as an artist or craftsman might be a lifelong quest… just try not to beat yourself up so much along the way.

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3. Photoshop Tutorial – Basic Clone Stamp & Patch Tools

Here is a recent photo edit I did on a photo of my dog, using the clone stamp and patch tools in Adobe Photoshop. This video illustrates a pretty simple yet effective way of removing some unwanted elements from the image – all in under 4 minutes.  These are the types of edits I do on a daily basis to each and every one of my photos, when it comes to removing logos, flaws, zits, etc.  Once you master these tools there’s very little you can’t fix. Be sure to click full screen and watch the video in HD.

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1. Photoshop Tutorial – Getting Rid of Pesky Wrinkles
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Here Bob “The Miz” Mizerek shows us how we can create vignettes in two different styles using Adobe Photoshop.  Vignetting is an effect that is also very easy to add to your images using Adobe Lightroom.

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Here Bob “The Miz” Mizerek shows us how we can simulate shallow depth of field in Photoshop.

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We made it to the park to bring the dogs for a walk on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  The daffodils were out in full bloom.  There are tons of them over at Hubbard Park in Meriden, Connecticut right now.  What a great location for Spring Photoshoots, especially for those “shorter subjects” (kids and pets).  Just thought I’d share a few of our snapshots.  Here is the before and after of our Yorkie Beagle mix – we didn’t like how the leash looked, so a little bit of Photoshop took care of that.

You have to love the clone and patch tools… they are a life saver.  Click here for a video tutorial on how I did it.

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Ever take a nice outdoor photo or landscape and wonder, “Gee what happened to that nice blue sky there was on that day?”  Well, a lot of time depending on the direction of the light and your exposure, the sky will become blown out.  You might lose a lot of cloud detail, and a lot of the deep blue color you remembered from that day.  Check out this quick and easy Photoshop technique using simple selections and an addition sky images, for “digital Photoshoptic surgery”.

Blown out skies ruin a lot of good photos – don’t worry, they’re very easy to fix in Photoshop in under 5 minutes.

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The dodge tool set to “highlights” is mind blowingly helpful when it comes to shooting white seamless, or objects over white.  It’s always better to get it right in the camera or in the studio, but sometimes that doesn’t always happen. Here is an older Photoshop tutorial I thought I’d resurrect from the dead today.  It shows you how you can quickly and easily clean up your photos shot over white or light gray by using the dodge tool in Adobe Photoshop. This allows you to avoid having to tweak levels, make an actual selection or use masking.

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3. Adobe Photoshop CS4 Hand Tool Flick Panning

Here the Miz shows us how to conduct “Photoshoptic Surgery” on an image of a tractor with some dull/flat colors. Here we learn how to use curves and the photo filter option to really bring out the colors and saturation in Photoshop.

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Here’s my first impression on flick panning, a new feature added to CS4.  When you click, drag, and release, the image glides and slides all over the place.  ME NO LIKEY OKAY!?

I found the answer already, after I recorded the screencast, of course. It’s so easy – just go to: Edit->Preferences->General and then uncheck “Enable Flick Panning”

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A great video tutorial by Deke McClelland on how to use the reset and purge functions in Photoshop CS4 to increase the performance.  Clean out Photoshop’s plumbing when things get clogged up: Reset and purge.

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When you’re making a quick selection in Photoshop, a lot of times you will realize that because you were feeling so lazy the selection really came out like crap.  The edges are jagged and fringed, and basically look like crap compared to if you had actually used the pen tool and done it the right way in the first place   Either way, sometimes you just feel like being lazy.  This method show how to defringe a fringy edged image.  The Miz’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

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I came across a great Photoshop video tutorial today demonstrating how to properly use the liquify filter to enhance images of people.  This guy does a great job of showing a little about what each tool does, and how simple it is to use it.  I’ve stuck to the basics up until now, but this tut has helped me learn a lot.  You really can do anything to people with this tool…make their butt larger or smaller, their boobs, their arms and legs, eyes, face, twist their head, even.  Yes you can become a digital plastic surgeon!  Now, obviously we don’t all have this much time to invest into perfecting every single image.  In stock, buyers want what’s real as well, not just perfection.  Keep that in mind, but have fun playing with this sweet tool.

Video by imaging expert and award-winning author Deke McClelland

Below are a few other videos demonstrating how far you can go with the liquify filter.

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A fast and simple video tutorial by Robert Mizerek on how to create an action in Photoshop.  Here you will learn how to create an action for saturation and lab color conversion.  Bob’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.

Author: Robert Mizerek

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Another Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek.   This is a good one for this time of year.  Here Bob illustrates how to use an adjustment layer to turn a green tree into a “fall” looking tree with bright autumn foliage.  Right now in New England the trees have all peaked, and the leaves are falling.  If you have shots of trees or landscapes from the summer, you can still make them look bright and amazing.   The Miz’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.

Author: Robert Mizerek

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A quick Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek on how to creative a retro photo frame (polaroid style) 3d effect.  Bob’s photoshop video tutorials are always a great resource to all photographers, graphic designers, and Photoshop users alike.

A treat for Friday (TGIF)
Author: Robert Mizerek

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Today I went to use the address bar to search for something, and some stupid MyPoints search results showed up.  That’s just wacked, because I wanted it to use google like it always has.  Here’s how I fixed it:

Type about:config in Firefox location bar and press Enter
Type keyword in Filter textbox and you will see only the preference keyword.URL
Double-click on keyword.URL and change the value to: http://www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

Done.  Hope that helps!

If you want to change the default search engine in the search bar, at the upper right, just do this:

1. In your address bar, type in: about:config
2. Inside the filter search box, type in: browser.search.defaultenginename
3. Double click that entry and then type in the name of the search engine you wish to have as thedefault search engine. It must be one that you already have installed and also make sure you type in the name correctly.  Now if you type in Google - restart Firefox, and when your browser comes back up you will have Google as your default search engine.

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Ever wish you could rename a whole bunch of files or folders at once, so that you don’t have to go and do it manually?  Well, you can.  You just need this:

http://download.cnet.com/File-Renamer-Basic/3000-2248_4-10306538.html

File Renamer Basic is simple to use and does an excellent job.  A must have utility for your Windows PC. The best part – it’s free.

(screenshot via download.com)

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If you’re like me, you have a lot of mp3s – many of which are very old.  Maybe your musical tastes have changed a lot since you downloaded or ripped them.  I personally wanted to make iTunes for PC work for me.  The problem?  No matter what, you can’t delete the songs in iTunes straight off the hard drive, like you can on a mac.  If you’re a PC user you’re pretty much out of luck in that department.

Windows Media Player works better in a lot of ways, while lacking a few of the unnecessary iTunes features.  One area is with album cover artwork.  It seems to find it easier.  Also, when you delete a song, it actually gives you the option of sending it to the recycle bin (deleting it altogether).  The problem?  It’s a huge pain in the behind to delete the current playing song.  Usually you have to click now playing under now playing mode, then right click it to go to “find in library”.  THEN you can hit the delete key and delete it.  Guess what?  That’s waaaay too much work.  I knew there had to be a way to easily delete the current song that is playing.  I thought, “There’s got to be a plugin for this.  I can’t be the first person to want or need this feature.”  Sure enough, I found it.

A very wise man named Ahmet Sacan created an incredibly helpful plugin for Windows Media Player called MediaPlayer Controller. He had lots of songs on his computer, and didn’t really want to go through the songs to filter out the majority that he didn’t like. It’s annoying to bring the MediaPlayer to front, select the song, and delete it every time a song that you don’t like is playing. So, Ahmet wrote the MediaPlayerController program that would delete the currentlyplaying song, with minimal distraction to what I’m working on. Other features include play/pause, next/previous song, volume up/down, and fast forward operations, which are useful especially if you don’t have media shortcut keys on your keyboard.

There reall is nothing like listening to music of all sorts while you’re designing, creating, editing, or anything else.  You’re stuck at a desk, stuck working, you might as well make your workday more enjoyable

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PicNiche Contributor Toolbar

Today I discovered something that is going to greatly improve my workflow.  This toolbar for firefox has a slew of features, the greatest of which (I feel) are the workflow functionalities.  When you submit images to certain stock agencies, you always have to go through and check off boxes or click certain buttons before pushing through the submission.  I always referred to this part of the job as “pushing” as many other microstockers do.  Well, pushing just got a whole lot easier for Fotolia, Shutterstock, and Dreamstime.  More features are sure to come, as the toolbar gets developed further as time goes on.  Thanks so much to Rob Davies (follow him on twitter: @bobbigmac) for all of his hard work on this excellent tool.

You can also enter in your username for FT, SS, IS, DT, BS, SX, and 123 so that it will instantly alert you of any new sales, as well as your current total earnings.  It reads all of this stuff from cookies, once you’ve logged into each specific website.

The bar does way more things than I even have time to mention.  Read the full instructions here:  http://www.picniche.com/toolbar/help.aspx

TIP: to hide the toolbar for more screen space, simply middle click on the P icon that shows up at the lower right hand corner of your screen.

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