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…

When it comes to searching for the right stock photos, I know from personal experience as a past image buyer that it can be a huge hassle.  You can many times get lost or even sidetracked very easily when browsing through the ocean of stock photos and graphics.  The sooner you find what you need, the sooner you will get your work done, nailing those time sensitive deadlines.  Searching for stock photos can be pretty annoying if you’re not going about it the right way.  Here are some tips and advice I can offer that might just make your next “hunt” a little more successful, or at least maybe a little less time consuming.

Be Specific
Let’s face it, there is a sea of images out there for royalty free licensing.  You can sometimes search for “cat” and get “dog”.  Unfortunately, image keywords are prone to mistakes, spamming, and more.  You don’t want to have to dig through a sea of crap before finding the types of images you’re looking for.  How can you avoid this?  By being specific.  If you’re looking for a photo of a cat, go as far as describing what breed, color, and even what pose.  You just might be pleasantly surprised in your results.  Don’t be so specific that your search string is more than 5 words long, as you might miss a lot of pretty good results.  But, at the same time you don’t want to use simple one word searches and have to sift through hundreds of pages of images.  An exception to this, of course, would be if you were searching something very rare or a rarely covered subject.

Narrow Results With Additional Secret Words
These words aren’t anything super top-secret, but many image buyers might not be aware of them.  They are widely used by stock photographers.  Try them in your upcoming searches and be blown away by how this trims down your results to a more reasonable size.

isolated: A cut-out image or person object with a solid color background.  These types of images make it easy to pop into solid colored backgrounds or layouts, even easily add or remove negative space.  Be sure to include whichever color you would want it isolated over; ie: black, white, red, etc. Other variation: cutout, cut out

clipping path: sick of making selections to isolate images?  Search for this phrase and find images that have a preset clipping path already embedded in the jpeg.

copy space: Use this when you want images with negative space, or a little bit of room to breath.  Every good deigner knows what negative space is, but not many remember to search with the term copy space. Other variations: copyspace or copy-space

seamless: If you’re looking for a texture that tiles seamlessly as a pattern in any direction, include this one.  Also don’t forget about: seamlessly, tiling, tiles

studio: If you’re looking specifically for photos captured in a studio environment, try this word.

vector: If you want just vectors, use the word.  The word illustration also works, but unless you want a lot of jpeg graphic results included, use vector.

Employ the Special Modifiers
There usually are different modifiers you can check off on each website.  These usually are site specific, but are incredibly helpful.  For instance, let’s say you don’t want to see anything but vector illustrations.  Usually you will have the option to choose only vectors, and this will allow you to avoid having to use the word vector in your keyword search string.  Maybe they opposite is true, and all you want to see are photos – not illustrations.  Then you would do the opposite and tick off the “photos only” box.  Some agencies go even further.  If you searched for the word girl on istockphoto.com, for instance, you could then check off whether you meant: Women (Female), Teenage Girls (Female), Little Girls (Female), or Baby Girls (Female). Many of my personal friends say they don’t even bother with doing that, and they simple keep on scrolling through pages upon pages of stuff before they find what they need.  Why would you want to make it harder on yourself?  Make sure you employ these additional features created to help you out.

Restrict Certain Words
Certain stock agencies (the better search engines) will also allow you to restrict certain words from coming up in the image results.  That has helped me tremendously in the past.  For example, you might want a photo of two brothers playing outdoors.  For this search you could start with the keywords boys and brothers.  If that yields too many results, you could also try adding the word two.  You probably might find a bunch of images that have boys or brothers in them, but also have other children or girls in them.  You will probably also get a bunch of family portraits.  This is when you would restrict words like mother, father, girl, etc to narrow down what you need.

Search For Specific Artists
On most stock photography websites you will also see the artist’s name beside every image with a hyperlink.  Yeah, that’s right – you can click it and see all of that artists specific images.  If you like what you see, or are maybe looking for more images from a similar shoot, many times you can search within that person’s portfolio.  Maybe you like one specific shoot theme that artist has done, but only found a few results from the main site’s search engine.  A lot of times you can find similar shots with different angles or with other different variations by searching through that photographer or artist’s personal portfolio.  You can also search from scratch for a certain artist.  For example, if you search username “arenacreative” you might just find my stuff (shameless self promotion, sorry…)

Change the Search Type
By default, most websites employ results by the newest or most downloaded.  Don’t forget, however, that you are able to easily change that search method.  You can usually sort the results by most views, download, popularity (usually that is a mix of views and download), newest, oldest, or random (if you feel like living dangerously).

Spend Less by Shopping Around
Shop around – don’t just stick to one agency just because it’s the same one you’ve been using for 5 years.  It takes only a minute to register an account on a different agency.  Some websites require a minimum credit package purchase, while others are a better deal by getting a monthly subscription (especially if you need a bulk number of images).  If you’re spending company dollars, you boss will probably appreciate how much you’ve saved for the company by purchase (many times the same) images somewhere else for up to 25-50% less.  Prices and selection vary from agency to agency.  Guess what – most microstock contributors sell their work under the same user name.  If you find an image at Pricier Site A try looking that photographer up at Cheaper Site B and you might just be pleasantly surprised to find it there at a much lower cost.  You might even be able to score an XXL high resolution version for the same price as the medium size price at Pricier Site A.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…
…keep on trying different keyword combinations.  You will find what you’re looking for!  Be persistent and enjoy your “hunt”   There’s nothing like the feeling of finding an incredible image that fulfills the exact idea you had in your head.

Don’t let bad photography cause you to lose precious sales commissions.

Let’s face it.  Realtors and Real Estate Agents are extremely busy people.  They sacrifice a lot of their lives away from their families just to be in the business.  With the blackberry or iphone constantly ringing off the hook, emails, house showings, and client meetings, a career in real estate is a pretty hectic job.  So what about one of the most important features of showcasing the “product”?  Does the quality of real estate photography often get neglected?  From what I’ve personally seen on a local level, I think it does. I’ve searched hundreds and thousands of real estate listings over the past several years, and the majority look pretty scary.  Sure, these are tiny thumbnails sized images most of the time, but even those have drastic room for improvement. The majority of home buyers are browsing these online websites first, so you need to make sure you make a good impression.

Here are some quick tips you might be able to use as a realtor in order to improve the quality of your photos in your online listings (no matter what camera you have).

1. Don’t shoot the exterior mid-day when the sun is highest in the sky.  Early morning or later in the afternoon is much more visually pleasing.   Save mid-day for shooting the interior, so that the light is more even.

2. Keep the sun to your back.  Yeah, we’ve all heard this one… it’s a rule that is meant to be broken.  But when it comes to shooting houses it’s a pretty good one to stick by.  The sun rises in the East, and sets in the West, so figure out which direction the front of the home is facing before you plan your shoot.

3. Take a look up at the sky.  Is it overcast?  Unless you’re a photoshop whiz you might want to wait until the weather gives you a nice blue sky, even if it is partly cloudy.  Anything is better than looking at a hideous blown out white or “doom and gloom” dark sky.  A bright overcast day is excellent if you’re taking features of the building where the sky isn’t showing.  It will give you shadows that are less harsh, and a nice diffused style of light.

4. Stop down your lens and place your camera on a tripod.  If you have some sort of manual control like Av mode, set your f-stop (aperture) to the highest number possible.  Make sure you use a tripod, otherwise the shutter speed will be way too slow, causing blur from camera shake.   There are full height basic tripods at the local department stores priced as low as $10.  If you have one – landscape mode might also allow your camera to get the smallest aperture possible, allowing for the largest depth of field while shooting handheld.  This will ensure that you get the most of the home and property in focus (not just one or the other).

5. Try to remove distracting elements beforehand.  Does the homeowner have their kids toys laying all over the front yard?  This is just common sense.

6. Keep your listings updated!  We’ve established that you’re busy, but if you have a listing that still has snow in the yard when it’s June… I mean come on, do I really need to even explain?

7. Make sure you show enough images, but not too many.  You want to leave a little to the imagination while featuring the property’s best features or highlights. 8-12 images is a good number.  It’s enough to give a nice overview, but not enough to cause the potential buyer to neglect wanting to check it out in person.

8. Don’t forget to capture the home along with part of its surroundings.  Step back… possibly even further than you normally would.  Capture the home from across the street, or even further if you think it would help a potential buyer envision its situation or property size.  This just may help your property stand out from the crowd in the sea of listings.

All of the above tips will work for commercial or industrial properties as well.  With lots of practice and learning your camera, you’re going to figure out what works the best for you.  If it’s not working out as well for you, maybe photography just isn’t your cup of tea.  You can always consider getting some help from a professional.  Higher end listings might be worth the extra cost of hiring a professional, while most mid-range priced houses won’t.  Maybe you just don’t feel like being a “jack of all trades” type, because you’re focused enough on selling real estate.  It really is a lot of work.  To any realtors with listings in the Connecticut area that would like to have me help them out, contact me at the link at the top of the page.  I would be willing to work on a free trade basis as long as it is a property with a nice curb appeal and the owner signs a release form.  No blown out white skies or crummy lighting, just clean images of the beautiful property you are showcasing so that you can get the maximum return for all of your efforts.  Contact me for more details.

Ever heard the term “viral marketing” but wasn’t 100% sure on the entire process, or what it means? Well, if you are still curious, this video will clear it up nicely for you.

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.

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.

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

I got a chuckle out of this…

I just realized you can’t assign Windows hotkeys to custom functions in the Logitech Setpoint tool. That really stinks, if you’re using a logitech mouse with all of these extra buttons, bells, and whistles. I’m currently using the MX1000 wireless laser mouse, which is pretty old but still my favorite. With Windows 7 I would love to be able to show the desktop with a click of the center mouse wheel, similar to how you can assign expose on a Mac in OS X. There is a “Show Desktop” button at the lower right hand corner of your screen, but it’s a lot faster to simply assign a mouse button. It took a little bit of searching, but here’s the hack / fix found here: http://www.lupusoru.com/hackery.html

Instructions: (I had to right click on Notepad and choose “Run as Administrator” for it to work – without doing that it might not allow you to save the changes you make to the default.xml file)

1. Quit Setpoint.

2. Go into your Setpoint directory (in my case, it is: C:\Program Files\Logitech\SetPoint)

3. Edit default.xml

4. Find this line: <HandlerSetGroup Name=”OthersGenericMiceGroup” HandlerSetNames=”CloseApplication,Copy,Cut,QuickSwitch,Do Nothing,DoubleClick,StartMenu,DragLock,GenericMouseButton,
LeftMouseButton,Maximize,MiddleMouseButton,Minimize,
PageDown,PageUp,Paste,Redo,Unassigned,Undo” />

5. Insert “ShowDesktop” option so that the line shows this: <HandlerSetGroup Name=”OthersGenericMiceGroup” HandlerSetNames=”CloseApplication,Copy,Cut,QuickSwitch,Do Nothing,DoubleClick,StartMenu,DragLock,GenericMouseButton,
LeftMouseButton,Maximize,MiddleMouseButton,Minimize,
PageDown,PageUp,Paste,Redo,ShowDesktop,Unassigned,Undo” />

6. Save the file.

7. Restart your Setpoint application which will be in the same directory.

8. Voila, now using your Setpoint application you can add the Show Desktop functionality to your side buttons.

If you want to use the keyboard command, it’s simply Windows Key + D

A special thanks to Razvan Lupusoru for this cool trick.

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.