Textures are so fun to work with when it comes to your photos. Whether you start from scratch in photoshop, use actions, or a texture program….you can get some amazing results!
You can get a free texture action and free textures on the Pink Ink Studios Blog
Here’s a texture tutorial on Flickr…but there’s many tutorials out there, just do a google search and I’m sure you’ll find a lot of information.
Here’s a little texture inspiration from the Flickr Group Textures For Layers (see links at bottom to be taken to each texture’s individual page on flickr where you can choose ‘all sizes’ above the photo and download it):
1. Birch Bark, 2. 2706, 3. * Shattered Scratches Texture *, 4. amber lake, 5. * Australis *, 6. * Scratched Board *, 7. Sordid, 8. Photo Plate, 9. Box Bottom Texture, 10. Vampiric, 11. Painterly Effect2-10-12-09 TOTD # 82, 12. * Rusty Rockface *, 13. * Grunge Rain *, 14. golden paisley, 15. Scratches with vignette, 16. Scratches 1
And a recent textured image by me:
My husband had to get up early this morning and leave the house by 4:30am. That
means, I’m up too. And I can’t go back to sleep. Bah.
I miss those days when I was younger and I could actually sleep in till 9am no matter
who or what woke me up. I could always fall back to sleep, not any more.
So, I figured I’d do a post here on the blog and share with you some
information that some wonderful professional photographers have been sharing lately!
Holly McCaig did a blog post about how she edits her images. Her process is quick,
and gets the results she needs. She even created an action in photoshop for what
she does and you can too. Check out her blog post here. Be sure to scroll through
the rest of her blog, Holly’s style is just lovely, especially her senior images!
I just stumbled upon Melissa Jill’s blog the other day (thanks to a post on Holly’s blog!)
and realized she has a ton of information on starting your business, products,
lenses, and photo tips. I’m always thrilled when a pro shares information like that.
She shares a ton of information in her FAQ section.
Also after reading this post by Melissa Jill, about back button focus from Chris Humphreys, I’ve since gone
in and changed the settings on my 50D, and am so far really liking it! What a difference
it makes in composing scenes….whether you’re doing portraits, pets or even wildlife.
Speaking of Chris Humphreys, he’s got some great sections on his blog about photo
tips and photoshop tips.
The other day on the MCP blog, Jodie Otte posted an article on ‘How Should I Price
My Photography.” And I’ve since bookmarked that, sent it to some fellow photog
friends and have read it several times myself. She talks about starting a photography
business with real numbers.
I love to read Jasmine Star’s blog, especially her FAQ Reader Questions posts she
does, she shares a lot of information that is great for pros and beginners.
Shooting wide open. I’ve always thought that when I do portraits with the 50mm 1.8
that I should be at least at f/3.5, and I’ve since found out that shooting wide open at
f1.8 is the way to go! Jasmine Star recently did a Q&A just for Facebook, check it
out here! The best information on understanding shooting wide open is farther
down in that section when she replies to a question, “actually, the farther from the subject you stand, there’s more room for plane of focus. and by this i mean, if i’m shooting at a f/1.8 three feet from two subjects, the depth of field and focal point will be so much more noticeable. if i stand six feet away, it becomes less noticeable because the focal plane has widened. if i stand 12 feet away, the focal plane became so much greater.”
Since I don’t have any subjects to test shooting wide open on because I don’t have
any sessions set up till next weekend, I figured I’d test it on what was available,
my doggies 
Unfortunately with Duchess (above), she has to stay on a leash when we go outside.
We live on five acres and if she was loose she’d never want to come back inside and
I’d end up spending a half an hour walking around the pastures chasing her while
she; barked at the horses, sampled their poop and looked for bunny rabbits to chase. So, I couldn’t get
as far back from her as I’d like to shoot her wide open at 1.8, but it did work out
nicely with the shot above, especially shooting an all white dog in the mid day sun.
On the other hand, there’s Gunther. My baby. My first Great Dane. He’s seven years
old now, I can’t believe how time has flown since we brought him home at eight
months old. He’s such a good dog, having him from a puppy has helped a lot. He
listens so well, and was easy to train. He can go outside without a leash. He runs
around like an idiot for a bit (in Great Danes this is called the ‘zoomies’), then he’ll
attempt to eat horse poop and look for rabbits till I tell him to stop, then he’ll do
his business and he’s ready to go inside. We adopted Duchess four years ago, as an
adult, and I have no idea what they taught this dog…if anything…but we love them
both so very much. What great dogs! And they are always happy to oblige me and
my camera.
I get asked quite often about how to make a watermark to place on a photo you are going to post online. I personally like to watermark anything I put out there because I took the time, the gas money, the equipment, and the processing (and the mosquito bites, the sunburn, etc. lol) to create the image and I don’t want anyone else to claim my work as their own/steal it. I understand that it’s easy if you know your way around photoshop to remove a watermark from an image, but I figure if someone sees my watermarked image that maybe they’ll move on and try to find something else royalty free online where they won’t have to photoshop out my watermark.
I like to create a transparent .png file of my watermark and save it. I then drag it onto whatever photo I want to watermark and save a copy to upload to flickr.
* Here’s a tutorial that basically shows what I do when I make my watermark. She creates hers a little small in this tutorial, but you’ll get the general idea (it’s always better to make your watermark too big than too small. You can always shrink it, but you’ll lose detail when you try to make it larger). Check it out here.
* Here’s another tutorial on watermarking in photoshop.
* Now, The Coffee Shop has a great tutorial up on their blog today about creating a watermark brush. She shares a ton of good info here (even one of my favorite sites for fonts!), this is another way to go instead of creating a png file. You just create the brush and ’stamp’ your watermark onto any image you need it on! Check out her tutorial here.
These tutorials should start you off in the right direction with creating your own watermark. In the beginning, don’t worry about creating a fancy schmancy logo. Just start out with your name and at least put that on the photo. Then, down the road you can decide if you want to create your own logo.
