Pixiq

Photo Paint Visual FX HDR……… Tilt Shift and more…

A Paint FX Gallery The images in this gallery, are derived from various photographic techniques including HDR, Tilt Shift, Zoerk, Pinhole HDR. The paint software I used to create these paint effects was Studio Artist. In the near future, I will be adding new [...]

My Daily Rag: Day 3 and the Rat Trap

GALLERY — 5 Pairs & 1 Pear

  The PEAR's shadow shoots dramatically across the counter and out of the frame, creating compositional tension. NIGHT BLOOMING CEREUS cacti need to be photographed just after dawn, before the flowers collapse and shrivel in the dry desert climate. Mating [...]

1-2-3…+4 HDR

 Red Convertible -  © John Neel The photograph above was created from a single exposure and is what I call an SS HDR image for single shot high dynamic range. I always try to use as few exposures as possible to create my HDR images. However, [...]

Portrait Retouching / Removing Unwanted Facial Hair

Camouflaging Unwanted Facial Hair / Jane Conner-ziser Good portrait retouching has more to do with backgrounds, bodies, clothing, hair and enhancements than smoothing skin and removing wrinkles. As people age, they know what their faces and bodies look like. [...]

Portrait Retouching / Tools for Removing Spots

Portrait Retouching / Removing Spots from Skin  Jane Conner-ziser Retouching Skin isn’t a global operation. Some things need to be removed, other things should be softened and reshaped, but other things should be left alone. Take wrinkles, for [...]

The 5 Lights of Nature

Aloha! We are interjecting in our retouching series this article on lighting. It's an important but simple tutorial that will help you create depth, drama and polish to your photography, retouching and painting. The Five Lights of Nature are values that [...]

Portrait Retouching / Analyzing the Face

Portrait Retouching / Facial Analysis Every face is different and requires unique approaches to retouching in order for the work to be appropriate for the face, the style of photography and the end goal for the image. Faces are retouched differently depending [...]

Book Review: The Digital Photography Workflow Handbook

The Digital Photography Workflow Handbook [Amazon] by Juergen Gulbins and Uwe Steinmueller, Rocky Nook 1 edition (October 28, 2010)   About the Book Photography is a wonderful and rewarding hobby for millions of people. However, for a photographer's work [...]

Portrait Retouching / Wacom Tablet and Pen Exercises

Mastering the Wacom Pen The Wacom tablet is a MUST HAVE for anyone who seriously wants to do retouching or digital painting. It’s the difference between creating art with a pen or a potato and I am serious when I say that if I didn’t have my tablet [...]

Five ways to speed up Lightroom

It seems many people are finding Lightroom to be a bit slow, which I find rather curious since I have had the opposite experience, especially when I compare my current Lightroom workflow to my older Adobe Camera Raw workflow which seemed glacial by comparison. [...]

Fine Art Digital Workflow

Fine Art Digital Printing Workflow It's been a month since my last posting. I am product manager for Pixel Genius Photokit Sharpener 2.0 and have been burning the midnight oil completing the user's manual. We released the plugin last week to rave reviews. For [...]

Portrait Retouching Guidelines

  These retouching guidelines are by no means written in stone. They are just things to consider while you are retouching different age groups. Look for these things and then decide what you should or should not do about them. It’s easy to overlook [...]

Editing images in Adobe Lightroom

Lightroom’s raison d’etre is editing and processing images quickly and easily. It does this in my experience much faster and more painlessly than any other photo software I have ever used. To start off with I’ll give you some background. In [...]

Foundational Adjustments in Photoshop

FOUNDATIONAL ADJUSTMENTS IN PHOTOSHOP In last weeks post I outlined the steps I take in Lightroom/ACR as part of my Fine Art Digital Workflow. With the “heavy lifting” done in RAW format the image is exported to Photoshop as a 16 bit, ProPhoto [...]