Posts made in May, 2009

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This tutorial will show you how, in a few easy steps, to turn a simple photo into a “pure glamor”, just as in most of the commercial shots. Of course, here we used a good photo already, but using this technique you can take the most ordinary picture and turn it into a professional shot.

This is what we will do:

Start of by taking a good quality photo of a face. Don’t use blurred pictures, or ones that were taken from a big distance, else your result wont be sharp enough.

Multiple the amount of existing layers, just in case you do something wrong, u will have a few spare.

Using the Magic Wand tool, select the hair, using the “Add to selection mode”

Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Hue / Saturation and apply these settings, making the photo truly dark and brownish

Press Shft + Ctrl + I to invert the selection, and using the Eraser tool with soft edge, remove everything (only the deselected hair will remain)

Select the Burn Tool, 5 px size, with a soft edge, and enlarge your image on the screen (only zoom it for the view, leave the image size intact).

Make sure you work with the layer that is underneath the “hair” layer. Go over the edges of the eye… this will be easier to women, as they know exactly where to draw a line under and above the eye, but guys can also give this a try.. just try not to over do it and not to turn the picture of a woman into a vampire (unless this is your purpose, of course).

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There is a lot of trail and error ahead of you and since I also learnt the hard way how to make proper macro images with digital camera, I am happy to share with you 10 tips that will hopefully make your macro shots much, much better!

1. Go Steady
Camera shake can be a real problem at high magnifications due to longer exposures and shallow depth of field. Use a tripod or assume a sturdy position. Have the mirror lockup mode activated and preferably use a cable release.

2. Windy Conditions
Shooting macros of delicate subjects is impossible on a windy day so go equipped with a makeshift windbreak. A small clamp and stand may be enough to steady flowers and plants.

3. Props
Add impact to the shot and create an early morning feel with a water spray to imitate dew or rain. You can use a droplet and simply lay a few drops on the leaf or flower, or simply spray with water. If you then take photos at sun light, it will sparkle and give your photo a nice unique touch.

4. Sharp as Possible
Maximize the depth of field by using an aperture of f/11 – f/22 and keeping your camera parallel to the subject. Use your depth of field preview button to see the result and if the preview is too dark, take a test shot and check the shot on your LCD.

5. Get Close
Ordinary lenses won’t let you get close to a subject. There is no substitute for a macro lens that can reproduce 1:1 or life-size reproduction. A focal length of 100 or 200mm will give a good distance to work from.

6. Manual Focus
Auto focus is a wonderful time saving addition to

It’s been a long time since I came up with a truly original tutorial and this evening I finally had muse to make something that will stand out. I can already see how this tutorial is going to become a classic masterpiece once it gains popularity, so just sit back and read, don’t forget to bookmark this website and subscribe to our feed, to make sure you never miss any of our future tutorials and freebies.

Inspiration: Although today’s horror movies are all quite cheesy, very predictable and always disappointing,  I drew my inspiration from one of the infamous and unpopular movies – “Long Distance“, starring the beautiful Monica Keena. Don’t be surprised if it does not ring a bell, I’d be surprised if it did. I myself however love the cover / poster of this movie, the original plot and I decided to make my own little scenery with my own little plot, which is more or less reflected in the film’s poster.

So, let’s get started. The canvas size is really your choice, you may want to make it slightly longer or even bigger, because we initially work wit ha small image here.

Paint your canvas in dark color, we used #211f1f.

Take one of the grungy backgrounds you like to use, make sure it’s pale enough and not too dark. We used a great image from here.

You don’t need to use a stained old paper, like I used here. You can also use bricks surface, old wood or any other old-looking texture because this is not going to be your leitmotif, we just need something to be on the background.

Now, once you have downloaded the texture you want to use, let’s move to the next step.

Paste the background you downloaded unto the dark canvas you are working with. You will need to either resize or de-size it. I didn’t bother downloading the full version of this background, so I just took the small image and stretched it across the canvas, because in this case, we don’t mind to lose a bit of quality.

Once pasted and resized, set the lending options of the background to “Overlay“. You should have it looking like this..

Once this background has been blended, let’s add some more horror – grunge effects. If the hue of your canvas turns to be different — don’t worry, eventually we will overwrite it all with black and white so the colors are irrelevant at the moment.

Next, we took this nice finger prints image, called “Tint black 2″. Again, paste it onto your canvas, resize, position slightly above the middle…

Set the blending options to “Darker Color” and Opacity to 80%.

This is more or less how it should look.

Next thing we need is a model for our main character in the movie. Here I really can’t advice you, feel free to use any photo you really like, if you want — use your own and then print it up as a poster, this could be a great idea for your bedroom! So… Choose a picture of a girl. We wanted to go with a dramatic look so we chose a fantastic photo taken by Zsolt Dreher of a woman under the rain. You can download it here.

After there were a few complaints about the previous action we released where people could not get the colors to work right, we decided to fix this bug with out new “PSWISH Action 4 pro”, which works on fixed colors defined in the action itself. You are going to love this one, really. Any boring, dull, lifeless shot you have can be turned into a vivid, professionally retouched photo, just like you sometimes see in photography showcase galleries but have no idea how they have done that. So what does this action actually do? First of all, it fixes contrast, so dark photo become vibrantly yet naturally bright, however, we don’t use any mask layers to fix the dark fields. Next, it adds light rainbow overlay of colors that blend in perfectly with the content of your original photo. lastly, it adds very mild grain / sand effect, which as you know is very popular among professional photographers.

If you want to share this action, please link to this page, and not to the direct download. Also, needless to remind not to sell, offer free or redistribute this action under your own credits. All credits for this action creation are reserved to LoreleiWebDesign.com. Photos used below are stock photos are are used for demonstration purposes ONLY.

Click on the following examples, to full view. As always, downloading is 100% free.