The title just about says it all. There are a multitude of free and cheap apps for smart phones nowadays and they can be more useful than just uploading dozens of pictures of your late night goings on directly to facebook. Read on for downloadable freebies, suggested apps and a little instruction on how to best utilize these tools to come up with fun final images in photoshop…
Officially announced and available immediately for $95usd (still image plugin) or $195usd (video plugin) this new offering from Digital Film Tools gives you the same amazing layer based control as Tiffen Dfx v.3, for 288 different film stock replications. Read on for examples and more info…
With my blog’s second anniversary coming up, I wanted to thank everyone that has stopped by, commented and added to the content. It’s been a fun couple of years and has been far more educational for me than I’d ever thought it would have been. I wanted to make a list of my more popular posts as well as some that can help some of us who may be just stumbling into the fold. Any of us who have recently acquired a new camera and may be wanting to learn how to use it to its potential, or are looking to build up a few post processing techniques, I’ve compiled some of the more useful and popular posts below…
There are no shortages of plugins to help photographers and digital artists streamline their workflow and help fine tune their look. Tiffen Dfx-3 offers an amazing amount of digital filters and user manipulatable options in one plugin. Is it useful to have this many options in one plugin, or is it too much? Well, depending on your needs and budget, this may be the only photoshop plugin you’d ever require. Read on for examples and my tip of the iceberg review on this amazingly filter packed plugin…
Just released, B&W Effects is a new black and white conversion plugin from Topaz. One thing I have to say about the Topaz products are that they’re really a great value. While so many plugins available can run as much or more than the software programs running them, Topaz has created a variety of affordable plugins with compelling skill sets.
At first glance, Topaz Clean 3 seems like a simple, straightforward plugin. A few presets give you distinct looks which blur detail anywhere from slight to cartoony. If utilized properly, it can provide a great skin softening plugin, or an abstract, artistic pixel obliterator. Coming in at under thirty bucks, it might just be the plugin you didn’t know you were looking for.
This is a quick and easy action which I use often. While so many photographers (myself included) spend time and money in software to correct for light falloff, I like to go the other direction and introduce it sometimes. Of course, there are times and places where a darkened vignette doesn’t make sense, and that time, and cost spent to correct it come into play, but for the times you’d like to delicately direct attention to a specified area, this action can help that happen. Also, you can completely determine the “shape” of the vignette to suit the frame. C’mon in and see the difference a vignette can make.
Anyone familiar with my blog knows I’m a fan of artistic, digital image file manipulation. Be that through actions, plugins or standalone software, I like to use my pictures in a variety of different ways. One thing I’ve always wanted to be better at, but was never able to hone my skill, is painting. So, into my life fell digital photography, but there was that tactile, artistic void left behind. I have tried Corel’s Painter, which is an amazing program, but one that requires just short of a masters degree to fully understand, and is in my opinion much better utilized by those who are already decent actual painters. Well, I’ve always wanted to be able to finely tune, and offer digital painting as a conversion for a digital picture file both personally and professionally, and until I tried my hand at Alien Skin’s Snap Art 3, I had resigned myself to putting it on the bucket list. A plugin for either Photoshop or Lightroom, the seamless and intuitive interface can help you produce digital paintings and drawings with a variety of media in a matter of seconds. Read on for initial feelings and examples…
Bleach Bypassed
Bleach Bypass is a fun way to add contrast and moodiness to an image. Because of the way it renders luminance, it tends to flatter skin tones in that it will push the highlights a bit which, if controlled, can produce nice, smooth skin.
Used in color film processing where the bleach portion was skipped, resulting in the emulsion retaining the silver and color dye in the process, it produces high contrast images with muted colors. Digitally, it can be reproduced by layering a black and white duplicate over the color image and adjusting the blend mode in photoshop…
1 photo, 15 actions for 15 different looks. (click on all pics for larger view)
With all the Lensbaby fun of late, I went in search of ways to enhance the Lensbaby experience and stumbled across the Kubota Lensbaby Action Pak! For those not familiar with Kubota actions, they’re purchasable groups of photoshop actions (very popular with studio, event and wedding shooters) which provide you with quick, easy and repeatable adjustments with the click of a button. Based in Bend, Oregon, they’re just down the way from me so I decided to get in touch with them and they were very gracious to let me play around with their Lensbaby Action Pak which includes 15 actions tuned for image files taken with various Lensbaby optics. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and while I never have a problem rambling on and on, I will let the image examples show off what these actions do. Starting with the original image taken with a GF1 and the Lensbaby TT + Composer / double glass optic and on through each of the included 15 Kubota Filters:
Tyson Robichaud Photo-blography 