*I thought my way was easy… Hair Masking made ridiculously simple, and remarkably effective.

topaz remark does it again!

I get a lot of email trying to promote, or sell me stuff daily.  Deals on this, or sales on that.  Discounts on memory cards, or steep cuts on camera kit prices.  Normally, I quickly scan them and toss them as my time and energy is pretty minimal these days.

As any readers will know, my enjoyment of the Topaz plugins run deep, and although I only started to use ReMask last year, it has been a revelation for me, especially when it comes to meticulous selection tasks, like hair.

Imagine my surprise when up pops an even simpler hair masking tutorial from our friends at Topaz Labs showing that you can turn a task that without ReMask has taken me up to an hour or more into an even more remarkably time saving step of about 3-5 minutes at the most.

Seriously.  If you use photoshop, and you ever have had to select something like hair, you’ll know how tedious it can be even with the best techniques in Photoshop.

Oh yeah, and on top of this killer tutorial, they’re offering ReMask for 20% off (click HERE to download the free trial, or buy ReMask on Sale using code: “hairmask20”)!!!  It’s a little, unofficial sale that I didn’t see coming.

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*Topaz – Simplify 4, quick and easy digital painting filters with a click!

simplifyblog

Topaz continues to improve they’re line of valuable plugins with the new release of Simplify 4.  Currently on sale through the end of this month for $19.99 (50% off!) when using the code “febsimplify” during checkout, Simplify 4 provides a quick, easy and very controllable plugin for a variety of painting and line drawing effects.  You can see it on Topazlabs.com HERE, or come on in to see a screen shot and read my ramblings on why I think this is a pretty amazing plugin for $20.

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*All Alien Skin Plugins are 50% off until the end of the month!

birthday-special

 

If you’ve been waiting for an Alien Skin software sale, now may very well be the time.  I’ve not ever seen them offer any more than 50% (I don’t even remember seeing a half off sale in the past!) so it is as good as I’ve seen it!

I like the AS plugins a lot, and have been absolutely loving the new Exposure 5.  You can read my take on some of their plugins via the links below, and you can buy any of these directly from AlienSkin.com (click here). I get no kickbacks from Alien Skin, and have no monetary incentive to sell their plugins, I just really enjoy using them and for those who may also be interested, it won’t get much cheaper than this.  Go get you some.

Exposure 5, the best gets better

Bokeh 2, blur it out

Snap Art 3, release your inner artist

*FotoMagico4, slick slideshows made easy.

I was asked to review FotoMagico4 recently.  Knowing nothing about the software, I found it an interesting task when I read up on what FotoMagico was.  Being a parent to two young kids, I’m always looking for fun ways to document our events or outings for family and the sake of familial posterity.  Being a photographer, I’m always on the lookout for ways to present a streamlined visual product.  Coming at it from either of my personal directions, FotoMagico seems to tick all the boxes.  Learning a software program from the ground up can be daunting, so I put my head down and got to work learning this new version from Boinx Software.  Luckily, it proved to be pretty intuitive once I got going.  Read on for my experiences and opinions…

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