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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Free Transform to Resize and Locate

February 22, 2012

Free Transform is a Photoshop Elements command that lets you size and locate design elements in your photo or graphic file. You’ll most often see it in one of the following situations: Adding a texture to an image (locate and size the texture to fit the image) Watermarking an image (place the watermark and size [...]

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Camera Tutorial: My Menu Settings, Part 2

February 17, 2012

Yesterday, I wrote about the Quick Menu settings that I shoot with on my Canon 7D and 5DMII. Today, I’ll be going through the big menus on both cameras! And you thought yesterday’s post was wordy…. A few notes before we begin. I’m only going to address the settings that I’ve changed – if I [...]

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Camera Tutorial: Want to Know What My Camera Settings Are?

February 16, 2012

My blog post a few weeks ago about changing a setting on your camera to improve focus generated some questions about my other menu settings. What a fabulous idea for a tutorial! Camera configuration is a work in progress – as you learn new techniques, tweak your style or learn about your camera, you can [...]

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Lightroom Tutorial: Make This Your First Step Every Time You Edit a Raw Photo

February 15, 2012

You know how you load your photos into Lightroom, and the first time you look at a photo it looks great for just a second, and then it becomes dull and less vibrant? What you are seeing for that split second is a JPG. The diference between Raw and JPG photos is that cameras add [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: How to Move Actions When You Upgrade PSE

February 14, 2012

As if it’s not hard enough to install actions into Photoshop Elements, what happens to your actions when you decide to upgrade to the latest version of PSE? The unfortunate answer is that you have to re-install the suckers. Luckily, you can, in most cases, just copy the files from your old version of Elements [...]

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The Difference Between the Canon 7D and 5D Mark II, in Plain English

February 10, 2012

My Canon 7D has been an incredible friend for the past 2 years. And I’m looking forward to the same type of relationship with my new 5D Mark II. (Thanks again, Photovision.) As I’ve been getting to know this new camera, I’ve paid special attention to what’s different about it compared to the 7D. Since [...]

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Do You Need Photoshop Elements AND Lightroom?

February 9, 2012

Lightroom vs. Photoshop Elements. I am asked a lot which one to buy – this is a tough question! Personally, I couldn’t live without either. And I would rather have LR+PSE any day over full Photoshop by itself. So here is how I answer that question when I’m asked: If you are professional photographer or [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: The Best Way to Soften Skin

February 8, 2012

Each time I teach a Photoshop Elements class, the top thing that people want to know how to do is to smooth and soften skin. There are about 46,000,000 ways to do this in PSE. Here are 3 of them, along with a comparison. The first thing I can say is that the softening methods [...]

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Ready, Set, Actions! Free Download for You

February 7, 2012

Did you know that you can read the first 2 and a half chapters of my eBook, Ready, Set, Actions! for free, just by liking my Facebook page? You will learn: What actions will do and what they won’t do An overview of the two ways to install actions into PSE What to do before [...]

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What to Do When You Get a New Camera (Do This For Your Old Camera Too)

February 3, 2012

Do you want to hit the ground running with your new camera? Or what if you don’t have a new camera? I suspect that most of us haven’t done all this anyway on the cameras we’ve had for a while, so these are good tips for everyone. Read the manual. Read all of it, cover [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Top 10 Eye Fixes

February 2, 2012

When using Photoshop Elements to edit portraits or family photos, just about everyone wants to know how to make the eyes pop. Here are my favorite tricks for PSE (but they work in full Photoshop as well). Lots of them even have Lightroom equivalents. Pin It The most important tip for editing eyes is to [...]

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Thank You Photovision!

January 31, 2012

You guys have heard me talk about Photovision before, right? This is my favorite photography video series. Every other month, I receive a DVD from them with 3 or more hours of content. Several professional photographers are featured on each DVD, doing things like: setting up shoots and posing clients post-processing their images describing various [...]

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Photoshop Elements Tutorial: Modify Textures to Suit Your Photos

January 27, 2012

Textures and overlays are a great tool for adding oomph to a photo, hiding distractions, and even adding atmospheric effects. You can get much more out of your textures if you know how to modify them to suit your needs. My daughter was being a real champ at posing a couple of weeks ago, and [...]

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Photography Tutorial: Change This Setting on Your Camera NOW!

January 26, 2012

Pin It Consistently good focus in my photography is something I’m always working on. When I take photos, I look at the back of my camera for feedback on focus as well as exposure. Some (rude) people call this chimping. Of course, you have to zoom way in to verify that focus is good on [...]

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