JD After- Lomo Preset
Originally uploaded by PixelPapa

As per my project guidelines this weekly image was shot at 50mm and f/2. The last two were with my Pentax K100D and an old manual focus 50/1.4 lens. This one was with my Nikon D700 and 50/1.8 (what a bargain of a lens!). My Lomo preset was applied in Lightroom.

Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on…

Someone from a photography forum I occasionally visit mentioned a Canadian photo magazine called Photo News, and pointed out that I can sign up for a free subscription. If I remember correctly, that person had submitted a photo of theirs that got chosen, won a prize, or was featured in the magazine at some point. I really like photography magazines, so I signed up and eventually started receiving my free copy in the mail. I noticed each issue shows a cover price of $6.98, so I wasn’t sure if the free thing was a limited time offer to maybe get readers hooked in hopes they’ll continue with a paid subscription. But I was quite content. It looked, smelled, and tasted like any other photography magazine. At least at first.   

Read the rest of this entry »

These are very basic and very well known tricks you can do in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to tweak images in one way or another.

1. Easy colour and contrast pop:

Mouse over image to see results

Duplicate background layer, from top menu select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, set amount to about 20, click OK. Go to blending mode drop down list in the layers palette and select overlay. Finally adjust opacity of this overlaid blur layer down until the effect looks tame enough to just add some pop to the colours and contrast in the image. If you would like to go further and confine the effect only to certain parts of your image, you can use the eraser tool (try playing with the opacity settings for the tool if you want a more subtle touch) and “paint” over the areas in which you want to remove or selectively tone down the effect. Just make sure you have the effect layer selected when you do this, not the background/original layer.

Read the rest of this entry »