Wordle.net Accents for Your Photos

I love words, always have. I love quotations, and just label type words added to everything from walls to canisters to photos - whatever. I think words add a cool graphic element to nearly anything. That's why I loved Matt Kloskowski's NAPP tutorial that appeared this week on how to generate words on Wordle.net to use with your photo. Matt actually used sport oriented words to "push" a photo through, but I thought the same thing would make a cool background or texture for an image. This morning I tried Wordle.net out for the first time and here's what I made... very simple, but fun:

If you're a member of NAPP you can watch Matt's tutorial on the NAPP website... and if you aren't a member, you can join - just click on the link to the right! Or, you can just do the trial and error method - just go to Wordle.net to generate your words! (Hint - "Print" it out as a .PDF)

BTW, the above image with the words is available on iStockPhoto:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=14119969

I've been busy editing photos of my favorite model that I shot in August, and I'm finally getting the last of them through the inspection process at iStock. Here is one of my favorites:

HDR Pro Screen Cut Off!

I have been busy adding to my iStockPhoto portfolio, so I haven't posted anything in forever. Tonight I was playing around with Photoshop for fun (non-iStock fun) and wanted to try HDR Pro in CS5 with an image or two I had taken at the beach last week, when I encountered a problem. In case anyone else has encountered this same problem, I thought I'd post able it so there was one more place on the web with a solution.

I'm running CS5 on a less than one year old MacBook Pro, with the latest OS at this writing (10.6.4). I selected my images in Bridge and chose "Merge to HDR Pro" to process them (under: Tools > Photoshop). When I got to the HDR Pro dialog I noticed that my thumbnails of the various exposures were not completely visible at the bottom of the screen. Worse yet, the buttons to continue or cancel where not there! I was stuff in HDR Pro and couldn't get out. Force Quit was not an available option shown, so I had to Force Quit HDR Pro by doing COMMAND - SHIFT - ESC.

I began to research the problem on the web and found a couple suggested solutions on the Adobe Forum. One was to move the Dock to the side... after quitting Bridge, I moved the Dock to the left and that worked - I could now see the buttons in HDR Pro. Another option suggested was to delete the Photoshop CS5 Preferences file and rebuild it by starting up without one. Tried that... didn't work. Finally I found a Tech Note on the Adobe site:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/843/cpsid_84349.html

This said to turn "Hiding On" for the Dock if you have it on the bottom... Voila! That worked and was a quick and easy fix. I still see this as a bug Adobe should fix, but turning hiding ON or OFF by right clicking on the Dock size adjustment slider it easy enough, so I'll go with that whenever I want to play with HDR Pro.

So, not a masterpiece by any means, but this is my first play with HDR... I basically used the Surrealistic preset for this... thought it looked kinda spooky but cool!

CS5 Coming Soon!

Well, I called Adobe and ordered my upgrade to Photoshop CS5 yesterday! I can't wait! They said it will be shipping on April 30th.

There are so many improvements from CS4 to CS5 that I just had to have the latest and greatest. Since I started to do stock photography for iStockPhoto, the greatly improved noise reduction is one of the features I'm most excited about. But... after watching so many videos and podcasts on HDR, I would like to play with that! I view the addition of HDR Pro purely as a toy for myself, but since Photomatix is $99 and my upgrade to CS5 is costing me $159 with my NAPP discount, I can argue that the HDR Pro almost covers most of the cost of the upgrade to CS5. Then there is the Content Aware Fill (SO COOL), and Mini Bridge is CUTE! And the new improved selection tool... well that is sure to come in handy when my daughter and son's hair is sticking up and I'm trying to isolate them on a white background! There are lots of other little improvements to CS5 from Adobe's JDI (Just Do It) initiative too numerous to mention! I've never been so excited about a piece of software... well, at least not since I got my first real Photoshop (not Elements) last November!

If you'd like to know more about the improvements and additions to Photoshop in CS5, I highly recommend http://www.photoshopuser.com/cs5.

If you have CS2 or later you can upgrade to CS5. AND, if you'd like to save 20% on your upgrade cost, just join NAPP before upgrading and then give Adobe a call with your NAPP member number in hand. Join NAPP here! The discount on your upgrade saves you at least $40 - covering nearly half of your NAPP membership fee - and there are so many other discounts and other great benefits to joining NAPP - you won't be sorry you did!

Stepping into Stock

Well, I haven't posted anything in forever... so I thought I'd just give a update on one of the things I've been doing photography wise.

I learned of stock photography at one of the first get togethers of the Shutterbug Excursions that I attended... I didn't even know that such thing existed. The thought of taking photos that could possibly earn me a few dollars without any pressure to perform (i.e. doing portraits) really appeals to me, so I became to pursue the stock photography route. Being a total neophyte to the stock photography business I applied to the biggest and most well known on-line stock photography agency, iStockPhoto. Well, that was a rocky ride for a long while! It took me several months to get approved as a contributor. After finally being approved, then came the roller coaster ride of elation and frustration every time I got an email with the subject line either "iStockphoto: acceptance notice for file #12124..." or "iStockphoto: Notice for File #12102...". When it doesn't say "acceptance" as the second word - it isn't good news! I'm happy to say that six months after my first photo was accepted into the iStock collection, that roller coaster has smoothed out considerably. I now have over 100 files accepted to the iStock collection and over 60 downloads. I still have a lot of learning and room for improvement - but there is hope!

If you would like to learn more about the stock photography business, Yuri Arcurs blog (http://www.arcurs.com/microstock-agencies-an-overview-for-beginners) is an excellent resource. I wish I would have found it back in April of 2009 instead of just a week ago! Also, check out his YouTube video of his studio! It's AWESOME! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYkNKP96b84)

If you'd like to see my iStockPhoto portfolio, you'll find it here: http://www.istockphoto.com/1morephoto