So in the spirit of sharing, the following are some ideas  for those of you who haven’t got out with your camera in a while and made some photographs. Your challenge of sorts is to shoot take 10 different photos in the next month or so. These ideas and photos don’t take a professional camera, nor do they require you to travel to some exotic place to take better photographs. As you will see, these photos are the kind that can be taken nearly anywhere.

Start At Home

Start at home with everyday objects. Shoot something simple, but capture it as aesthetically as possible. As always, don’t settle for one shot. You’re shooting in the digital age, so taking several shots, from different angles and in different lighting conditions is simply not an expensive problem.

This photo represents a part of my morning routine. A cup of black coffee. Nothing special. But what captured my attention were repeated circles of the white cup and saucer, and the black coffee inside. The light coming from the kitchen window was overcast, so I was OK in that area. I took a few shots from above the cup, moved the spoon over some, and settled upon this photo.

Look around your house or apartment. Maybe there’s an interesting clock, bookcase, or musical instrument that you can photograph from an interesting perspective. Don’t let the ordinariness of the subject keep you from shooting it.

Capture Rain Drops

I must have shot photos for like five years before I realized the beauty of shooting rain drops. I’m not the kind of person who likes getting out in the rain. I don’t like the itchy feeling you get from wet clothes. But with this image, when that rain settled I took out my Canon Powershot G9, set it to macro mode and tried to hold the camera as still as possible. I was too lazy to get a tripod, which would have worked better. But since the shutter speed was 1/125th of a second, I was OK. I of course increased the sharpness using Aperture 2.0 software.

Shoot An Out-Of-Focus Shot

Following up on the rain idea, try another shot from your car window. But in this shot, don’t focus the shot.  Just raise your point-and-shoot or 35mm camera and take several shots. Look for some color or shapes to seep through the blur. If your camera’s automatic focus won’t let you take an out-of-focused shot, then turn that feature off. Don’t let your camera boss you around and keep you from getting the shot you want.

Shoot Some Art

Some critics say that photographing art is not really photography. It’s like you’re cheating by making an image out of an image. But that’s not so. You can capture art in context. Or you can ignore the critics and just shoot art for arts sake, plain and simple. Don’t shy away from using one artistic medium to capture another one. I took this shot while at a stoplight. My camera was on the car seat; I saw the photo in my mind before I raised the camera and fired off several shots.

Street Portraits

Okay, this one is for truly brave shooters. For a year, I committed to a self-project of photographing 100 strangers. That’s right, people I didn’t know and would probably never meet again. I discovered the project through a Flickr 100 Strangers group. It is the most challenging photo project I have ever done. It got me out of my comfort zone when it comes to people. Stranger portraits are not candid streets photos in which you take photos of people when they’re not aware of you doing so.  Street portraits are about photographing individuals you find interesting. To get these shots, strike up a conversation before you ask to take a photo. Tell the person about your project and politely ask to take their photograph. If they reject you, don’t take it personally. Just move on and find someone else. The best places to do these type of shots is in busy downtown areas or crowded outdoor events.

Go To The Zoo

Having a hard time finding good subjects to take that better photograph? Go to the zoo. Take your kid or significant other along and see what you can capture. If your city zoo is anything like mine, the animals aren’t going anywhere, and most of the time they can care less about about how many photographs you take of them. So bring along a long range lens of a minimum of 105mm, and see what you can capture in the “wilds” of the zoo.

Old Buildings

One the things I most dislike about where I live is that so much public space has been given over to commercial interests. Old buildings have been torn down, and there are few places that have survived from the demands of modernity. So when I’m out and about, I try to capture interesting old buildings, especially old churches and cathedrals. I’m not religious or anything, but I like capturing the architecture of these buildings.

I captured this photo by driving up to the top of a high-rise parking lot, which gave me a parallel view of the religious crosses. That little extra effort in driving made a difference in the image.

Shoot Slow

Sometimes photos should show the motion of something moving.  If you put your camera on what’s called Shutter Priority, you can set its shutter speed to like 1/25th of a second to capture the motion of a moving subject.

Try this out on moving cars or trains, kids playing, or at a sports event. This is a great way to learn about shutter speeds and an equally interesting way to capture motion.

Shoot Fast

In the same vein as the idea above, shoot to freeze action. Again, use your Shutter Priority, but this time raise the shutter speed to 1/400th of second or faster. If you need to, raise the ISO so that you get more light into the camera. See if you can free action of a moving subject. This shot is another one of my street portraits where I asked the skateboard rider if I could photograph him doing his thing. After I showed him some of the shots I took, he asked me to take a few more.

Paint With The Shutter

Okay, this is the last one in regards to Shutter Priority. I got this idea from reading Understanding Shutter Speed, by Bryan Peterson. This shot is about lowering instead of raising the shutter speed to say 1/5th of second, in a well lit area. Raise the ISO to about 400-600 if you need to, to let in more light. As you take the shot, you, as Peterson says, “twirl, arch, jiggle, or jerk the camera in an up-and-down or side-to-side or round-and round motion.” In other words, paint with your camera. Because the shutter speed is slow, the lens opening will not close up so quickly. Do this several times and you’ll really learn something about slow shutter speeds, plus make some great art.

Faceless Shot

People shots don’t always have to include faces of the people you photograph. Take some shots of someone’s legs, a hand or arm, or a person’s back. Get the face out of the picture and take on the challenge of shooting a faceless photo. This photo was taken very quickly as I crossed a downtown street. I saw these two bikes roll by and took the shot.

Mix Black-and-White With Color

This one involves doing a little Photoshop work after the photo is taken. Select a photo in which you convert it to black-and-white  and then brush back in some of the color. The process in Photoshop is fairly easy: Open the photo in Photoshop. Click on the adjustment layer at the bottom of the Layers palette. Select the Black & White adjustment. Make adjustments to your liking.

Next, set the foreground color to black, and then select the Brush tool. Re-size  the brush tool enough to paint back some color on the image. If you make a mistake, simply change the foreground color to white and paint back in the black-and-white part. This photo is of a dance class in which students a public performance.

Hope these ideas for taking better photographs are helpful. If you decide to try a few out, shoot me a link to your posted image results.  Or perhaps you know some more methods to shoot some really great photos?  Let us know what they are in the comments.

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There are many ways you can lighten dark photos in Photoshop. In fact, there are usually many ways to achieve a particular results when working with Photoshop. The one you eventually choose, would depend on the photo and your level of expertise in Photoshop. It involves a bit of trial and error and some experimentation. Here are some techniques that I use often when brightening a dark photograph.

As an example this is the image we will be working with. Our objective is to lighten the background and bring back some details in the foreground as well.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Brightness and Contrast

The name says it all. To use brightness and contrast:

• Open up the photo in Photoshop.
• I always like to duplicate the layer before applying any adjustments, just in case I go too far and make a mistake, the original image isn’t affected. Press Ctrl + J or Cmd +J to duplicate the layer
• Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness and Contrast and play with the sliders a bit, till you get the desired result.

New users would be tempted to use brightness slider to lighten their dark photographs. While it is easy to use, it only does what I would call a fairly good job of lightening your photos. Any time you are find yourself pushing the brightness slider too far, you are better off using any of the other mentioned ways or else it would be evident that you brightened your photo in post processing.

Levels

Complexity moves up a notch when you use Levels for this kind of work. You can summon the levels dialog box by going to Image > Adjustments > Levels or hitting (Ctrl/Cmd + L). Immediately, you are greeted by a histogram. Histograms in image processing and digital cameras let you know how many pixels or each brightness value are distributed in your image. Having graph lean towards towards the black slider means your photo is predominantly dark; if the graph leans towards the white marker, that means your photo is predominantly bright. (Things get a little more complex when we move into individual color channels, so you can leave that part out for the moment!)

You can use Levels to lighten photographs as follows:

• As always, feel free to duplicate the layer before you apply any adjustments. (Ctrl/Cmd + J)
• With the duplicate layer selected, hit Ctrl + L and you will see the Levels dialog with the histogram.
• Start moving the white slider under Input levels towards the center. As previously mentioned, if you are having to move the slider too far in to get what you want, perhaps you are better off with one of the advanced methods.

  

• If you looking for a drastic change you can play with the Output Levels slider, but note that this time you would have to move the black slider inwards to brighten.

Tip: Hold down the Alt Key while dragging and Photoshop will show you the overexposed areas in the photo. You want to keep this area to a minimum!

Curves

Curves gives you the greatest control when doing a job like this. It is just a bit complicated and not as intuitive as the brightness/contrast sliders, but it also gives you finer control. I would suggest using one of the presets when working with curves for the first time. There is even a preset to lighten your photos. Go ahead and try it out:

• Duplicate the layer and select the duplicate layer you just created
• Hit Ctrl/Cmd + M to show the curves dialog. Choose “Lighter(RGB)” from the Presets drop down.
• You will notice slight brightening in your photo, if that is a little less and you need to lighten more, just click on the square that appears on the curve and while holding the click down, drag upwards.
• As you move further from the baseline you would see your photo lighten even further.

  

• Choose the sweet spot and click OK

Some Pro Tricks

While those are the conventional ways you would lighten a dark photograph, there would be tens of other ways to achieve the same inside Photoshop. As you play around, you will discover new tricks of your own. Here are some I find useful in similar situations:

Screen Blend Mode

• Duplicate the layer, select the duplicate layer and change its blend mode to screen.

  

• Incase the effect is too intense you can lower the opacity of the duplicated layer.

Soft Light Blend Mode

• Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) or by clicking the new
• layer icon on layer’s palette.
• Hit the D key and press Ctrl + Backspace to fill the new layer with white.
• Now change the blend mode of the new layer to “Soft Light”

  

• If the effect is too intense, you can lower the opacity, if its is a little subdued you can duplicate the white layer to intensify it.

So there you go, five ways to lighten your dark photographs in Photoshop. Actually, there are many more but you are pretty much covered with these five. If you have any other creative way to achieve similar results, we would love to know about them. Let us know via comments!

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If we make a grave error at MakeUseOf, we can post an update or correct ourselves in the comments section. When you’re working with print the problem isn’t that easily solved. Those mistakes cannot be erased.

Written errors aren’t the worst of it – they are glanced at and forgotten.

Bad photoshop mistakes are the absolute worst-case scenario – photo editing gone very wrong. We all suspect most glamor magazines touch up their pictures. That suspicion becomes very real if the model suddenly misses her leg or belly button.

It’s even worse when we’re not talking about modelling. How about an ad for children’s toys or – if worse comes to worst – a charity campaign. It’s ridiculous if you know how much has been paid for these ads. Although these errors are usually due to lazy and inattentive designers, everyone should have noticed these errs in passing – and stopped them.

There are blogs that gather these Photoshop mistakes – often dubbed Photoshop disasters by the 2.0 point-and-laugh blogs. Read on if you would like to have a laugh at what gets past the print editors these days.

Photoshop Disasters

PsD, short for Photoshop Disasters, is the leading blog in Photoshop errors. Since print is one of the only ways to make sure it really is an accidental occurring, they specialize in print covers, ads and overall article pictures. Ads make up the big majority of them – which is one of the only sectors where image editing is actually accepted.

You can expect uploading periods with relatively frequent updates, interchanged with some more quiet periods. But highly laughable quality material is always at hand. Browse the ‘Photoshop disasters’ chronically and dig into the not inconsiderable archive, or use the tags to browse similar errs.

If you’re a frequent magazine or newspaper reader and have encountered a Photoshop mistake in the past – or if you ever do in the future – you can send them into these sites. They’ll more than appreciate the extra content.

Photoshop Mistakes

Photoshop Mistakes makes for a decent second place. It isn’t as popular as the previously mentioned Photoshop Disasters, but does provide quality and a little change in content.

The content of the two sites is very similar and often recurring. After all, printed photo editing disasters don’t occur that often.

Like the former blog, you can browse the site chronologically, or by using the tags. Alternatively, they also offer a Twitter feed. If you’re an avid Twitter user, you can follow them to stay on top of any future updates. You certainly won’t be the only one.

What do you think of these image editing mistakes? A sad mistake or an opportunity for a good laugh? If you know any other sites, or twitter and meme feeds to keep an eye on future Photoshop disasters, drop a comment below.

Want to avoid disasters like these? You can start out by reading our Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop!

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The app is a multimedia magazine, featuring professional images and how-to articles by and about professional photographers. It doesn’t replace a well designed magazine or photography book, but it’s a handy resource on your mobile device.

When you first open the open the app, the home screen dissolves to a browser of high quality Nikon images, including portraits, travel, wildlife, and numerous scenic photos. Each photo includes “Info” and an article interview with the photographer of the selected image.

The one sentence “Info” for each images is very skimpy. It might include the name of the Nikon camera and a brief public relations type comment, nothing more. Here’s an example:

The extended interviews include a little background about the photographers, their work, the Nikon camera(s) they use, and a link to their website. Since this is a “learn and explore” app, it would better if the “Info”  includes things such as the camera settings used and how the photographer went about making the photograph, both using the camera and in post-processing.

The Learn section of the app includes so far about 22 different lessons, ranging from shooting techniques about close-up photography, the value of zoom lenses, and getting candid urban photos. Unfortunately, these “learn” articles are very underdeveloped. Some “how-tos” include videos of the photographer explaining his work. The two videos I watched were much more informative than the accompanying articles. I realize that videos are much more time consuming and expensive to produce, but they would be tremendously useful on a mobile app, even if users had to pay a small subscription fee.

The next section of the app includes articles taken from Nikon World, the company’s quarterly print magazine. These articles include much more detail about the process photographers took to make their photos or complete certain projects.  As you may guess, much of the articles begin with or center on the use of a particular Nikon camera.

The application also includes a glossary of photography and Nikon related terms. For example, this is how “Aperture” is defined: “The circular opening inside the lens that can change in diameter to control the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor or film”. Unfortunately, this definition doesn’t include an illustration or an example to further explain the definition.

Finally, you can star any article, image, or definition to add to your “favorites” list. This is a handy feature because the company says that the app will be updated with new information and articles, so a favorites list will make it easy to locate bookmarked resources.

Overall, Nikon: Learn and Explore is a great idea for an iPhone/iPod touch application. The company might consider offering an a simpler online option instead requiring future updates of the application itself. I could also foresee it making iPhone/iPod touch-formatted manuals for each of its major cameras.

I’m not a Nikon shooter, but I‘m looking forward to similar applications for us Canon photographers.

So what features would you like to see in an application like Nikon: Learn and Explore?

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I think this might sound convenient to some of you who have suddenly shown up on Facebook on that photo some kid made at a party where you tried to set the world record for beer bong drinking. Ouch. As you know there are too many examples of people getting busted calling in sick for work. But Flickr has implemented this well and it could be a really nice tool. Both for organizing your own photos and the people who are in them and finding other people’s photos you are in.

So how does this work? The new feature is called People in Photos and it lets you add any Flickr member to a photo. But it’s also possible to highlight people who are not registered on Flickr, although they have to give their permission by email. You tag someone on the photo by typing in their name, just like you would with a Flickr tag for the photo. For Flickr users who are familiar with notes, it should be easy to draw a face boundary on the photo.

People in photos is hooked up to Your Activity, so you’ll always know who has tagged you in other photos or when other people have added faces to your photos. The Flickr team has done a lot of work on all the privacy preferences. You can allow certain people to add you to photos or add other people to your photos. You can even decide per photo if you want to be on it, so that’s good news for that one embarrassing surprise photo when you were just waking up.

Of course many people use Flickr as their photo storage or at least have a Yahoo account which you can use for Flickr. But even when they’re not a member but appear on your photos they can be invited by e-mail. They then have the same level of control as Flickr members have over on what photos they want to show up.

To learn more about People in Photos have a look at FAQs provided by Flickr:

• What is People in Photos?
• How do I add a person to a photo?
• Who can add me to a photo?
• How can I remove myself from a photo?
• How will I know when I’m added to a photo?

The complete People in Photos FAQs are available here.

Up until now Flickr is mostly used for more professional arty photos, while Facebook or a Twitter service like Twitpic is used for quick snapshots, perhaps made with a camera phone. Do you think this new feature will change this? Have you been waiting for this or do you use it on Facebook?

For more information on a way to use Flickr more for sharing on Twitter read this article on Twitpic and Flickr2Twitter. More Flickr tips and tricks can be found here.

Image credit: allyaubry

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I’ve spent most of my free time last week in front of iPhoto. Aside from tagging faces with their names, I also have a lot of fun tagging photos with their location. This iPhoto feature is called Places, and it’s the ability to organize photos based on where they’re taken. Places is a nice example of integrating Google Map to an application.

Let’s go Places

I’m not much of a traveller myself – yet – so I could only imagine how cool this feature will be for those travelling photographers. I don’t own a GPS-enabled camera either, so imagine again, if I did because Places supports geotagged photos.

I could, however, tag my existing photo collection. All I need are some free time and a decent internet connection.

Photos are usually grouped by events, and every photo in each event is usually taken at the same location. So, to start tagging photos with their location, the best place to start is “Events” under the “Library” menu.

Select an event and click the small “i” sign on the bottom right corner of the event box. It will appear when you hover your mouse near the corner. Alternatively, you could select the event and go to “File –> Get Info” or hit “Control + I”.

An info box with some basic information about the event will appear. You could edit the event’s description and location here.

Every time you edit the place, iPhoto will offer you to find that location on a map.

After few seconds of searching, a map will automatically appear. The location that you’ve searched will be pointed with a pin. Click “Assign to event” button and all the photos in the event will be tagged with that location.

If you are not sure whether the pin really pointed to the correct location, you could zoom in the map by double clicking on it or by clicking on the “plus” (+) button on the bottom left of the screen. You could also choose to view the map by Terrain, Satellite, or Hybrid (combination of both).

If there are several locations within one event, you could tag individual photos with different places. All you have to do is select pictures with similar location, and repeat the above process.

Finding the missing places

One of the (dis)advantages of living in an “unknown” part of the world is that, most of the times, the location you’ve entered can not be found by the map search.

If this is the case, you have to locate the places yourself. Rediscovering places in the map is fun. Drag the map to center the position of the approximate location and click “Drop Pin” button.

To place the pin in the exact point, zoom in on the map and drag the head of the pin to the desired position. You could also set the size of the area by sliding the arrows that appear by the sides of the circle.

The final step is writing down the name of that place.

Organizing by Places

After the fun part is done, we can continue with even more fun: enjoying the photos based on the places. Zoom in on the area that you want to explore and click “Show Photos”. All the photos taken within the range of that map will be shown on the screen.

Or, instead of “Map” view, you could also choose “Thumbnail” view where you’re given the option of narrowing down the on the location.

Surely, with a GPS-enabled camera, all the geotagging would be done automatically. And those adventurers who travel a lot will have their map filled with pins. How exciting!

Do you go places and take pictures? Do geotag your photos to organize them? Share your adventures using the comments below.

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With today’s limit set at terabytes, you can literary store millions of photos. Our problem now is not choosing what to shoot, but how to organize the photos afterward.

For most amateur photographers, the term “organizing photos” goes as far as collecting them into albums based on events, or maybe by the people in the images. While grouping photos chronologically by events is often done easily and automatically every time you move the photos from the camera to computer, sorting photos based on the people in each picture is not as easy as it sounds. Especially if you have to do it manually.

Recognizing the faces

The mundane task of how to organize photos can now be done easily and almost automatically using iPhoto. This photo management application that comes with iLife suite offers its users the ability to assign names to faces and organize the pictures based on the person in the photos.

This feature is called Faces. And using it, users can click and open every photo that contain a specific person in all of them.

The first step to enable Faces is to choose a picture with a person in it.

Then click the “Name” icon located on the bottom left of iPhoto’s window.

The chosen picture will be enlarged to fill the window. Click the “Add Missing Face” button that replaced the “Name” icon.

You’ll see that iPhoto will try its best to locate faces inside the picture. A square will appear around the faces with the tag “unnamed” below it.

All you have to do is double-click the tag and replace “unnamed” with that person’s name.

Repeat the process for other “unnamed” tags, and you can continue to do the same for other pictures with faces of different people.

From here on, things will get easier because iPhoto will help you by trying to recognize the same faces that have been tagged before. If you choose a photo with a previously tagged person in it, iPhoto will ask you to confirm the name.

Click the check mark to confirm or the cross to tell iPhoto that the name is incorrect.

However, no machine can replace the human ability to recognize faces. The Faces feature of iPhoto is amazing indeed, but it still makes stupid mistakes here and there. Once it thought that my little daughter’s dress was a face.

Mass naming the faces

If you have thousands of pictures, it’s possible that you’d be wiping off cold sweat right now thinking about renaming faces thousands of times. But you don’t have to be afraid, because iPhoto provides you with a way to do it almost automatically. Almost, but still better than having do it manually one photo at a time.

Click “Faces” on the left pane and choose one of the faces appear on the right.

While you are at it, you can edit the person’s full name and add email address to each face by choosing “File –> Get Info” menu or Command + I or by clicking the small “i” icon at the right bottom of the image.

After choosing a person, the screen will show you all the photos with that person in them. If you scroll down a little bit, you will see the second half of the screen labelled “So-and-so may also be in the photos below”.

Choose a close up view and “Confirm Name” from the bottom menu.

All the photos will focus on the possible faces of the chosen person. Your job is to click on every frame with the correct image to confirm the name to the faces. You could minimize or enlarge the size of the box by moving the slider, located at the bottom right of the screen.

There are other cool iPhoto abilities but we’ll save them for another time.

Do you use iPhoto to manage your photos? Do you know of other alternative photo management applications for Mac? Share using the comments below.

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This feature has been a part of most point-and-shoot cameras for quite some time, but many camera users don’t use the feature to its fullest extent. Also, in the last few years, Live View has been built into 35mm DSLR cameras. Latest models of both the Canon and Nikon 35mm cameras feature Live View.

How it Works

With traditional digital cameras, you look through the optical viewfinder at the top of the camera, and compose and take your shot. Then you look on the back of the LCD screen to see how the photo came out. But with Live View, you don’t use the small optical viewfinder. You use the actual LCD screen to frame your photo while at the same time getting a simulated preview of your exposure settings before you take the shot. Many users, however, basically use Live View as the viewfinder and but not for previewing exposure settings. That’s because many users don’t shoot beyond the automatic mode of their camera. The following tips for taking digital photography will guide you through the process of using Live View to it’s fullest capacity.

Live View on Non-35mm Cameras

Live View works best on point-and-shoot and compact cameras because there’s no mirror inside that needs to pop-up to reveal the sensor. So in Live View, if you change any of the exposure settings, including ISO, aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation or White Balance settings, you get a simulation of your settings on the LCD screen when you press the shutter halfway down. It works similar to automatic focus when you press the shutter halfway, you see the subject of your camera come into focus.

With larger monitors on the back of digital cameras, you can actually compose shots better using the screen as the viewfinder. The Canon Powershot series, especially the last three models (G9, G10, and G11) each sport a 3-inch screen that makes the traditional tiny viewfinder nearly useless. You can simply see more and compose better with the larger size screen.

The G9, for example, comes with the option to use Grid Guidelines that appears when you’re in live shooting mode. The grid is divided into 9 parts so you can use the traditional Rules of Thirds in photography to compose shots or just line up a subject.

Exposure Settings

Here are a few illustrations of Live View in action. In the first example, Live View mode is engaged and the shutter priority speed is 1/60 of a second, at f/2.8, which means there’s less light coming into the camera. In the second example, I changed the shutter priority to ⅙ of a second, and as you can see more light is allowed into the camera. Before the advent of Live View technology there as no way you could preview exposure in this way.

In another example, I’ve changed the White Balance settings to demonstrate another exposure simulation in Live View. With feature, you now can see if your White Balance is correct or what type of color cast you will have on the lighting before you take the photo. This takes a lot guessing on out the process, and makes for more accurate settings.

Live View on 35mm SLRs

Live View technology works best on point-and-shoot and compact cameras, but not as well on 35mm cameras.  Why is this? Well, Ben Long explains it best in his book, The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion Book: “To create an image on LCD screen, the image sensor needs to be able to see out the lens. But in an SLR [35mm single reflection camera], there’s a shutter and mirror between the sensor and lens, so the sensor is effectively, blind. This means there’s no way for it…to show you an image on the LCD screen. The XS, though, provides a special feature called Live View that does let you use the LCD screen as the viewfinder.”

With Live View on 35mm cameras, the auto focus is slower and there’s a slight lag in the capture of the photo. Even Canon points out the disadvantages with Live View: “The disadvantage of the Quick Mode AF is that to perform it, the camera has to momentarily lower the mirror and Live Viewing will “black-out” for a moment, as you press the button to activate the AF. Once you remove your thumb from the button, when focusing is completed, Live Viewing instantly returns.”

I use Live View on my Canon 50D for difficult-to-reach shots such as at a dance recital, concert, or even sometimes for group photography photos using a tripod. On the Canon cameras, Live View also features silent mode shooting, which comes in handy in places like churches or wildlife photography.

Also, many Live View features include facial detection which helps improve image focus faces. Of course, this feature is best used for group portraits instead of candid shots where subjects are moving around or are not directly facing the camera.

Though Live View is being added to both consumer and top of the line professional 35mm cameras, I would strongly suggest not purchasing such a camera for that feature. If you want the full of advantage of Live View, you’re better off purchasing a compact camera with that feature.

Finally, I recommend Live View as an effective teaching tool for digital photography. I use the feature on my Canon Powershot G9 in workshops to show how exposure settings work in the camera. And because of the live simulation, students are able to grasp the concepts a little faster. The ability to view, compose, and evaluate exposure settings in the LCD monitor is another breakthrough piece technology that makes taking digital photos easier and better.

So is Live View a feature on your camera? Which camera do you use and how well does the feature work?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Technology Explained: How Does A Digital Camera Work? (32)
• How to Recover Deleted Pictures from a Digicam Memory Card (4)
• How To Easily Manage Photos from Multiple Cameras [Mac] (5)
• 12 Ideas On How To Take Better Photographs (7)
• 10 Features You Should Know About Your Digicamera (26)

The following tips may be best understood if you take out your camera and its manual and try out the suggestions as you read this article. If you don’t have or can’t find your camera’s manual, you can go online and download a PDF copy of it from the manufacture’s site.

The illustrations used in this article are based on the Canon Powershot G9, but I will point out features that are typically found in most point-and-shoot and compact cameras.

Basic Settings

1. Setup Menu: First off, know how to find the setup menu on your camera. Most cameras come with default settings that you can customize for your particular needs or the way you shoot. Look in your manual to find out how to access your camera’s setup menu. Notice what kind of menu changes can be made with the control dials on your camera and the menu settings that you can bring up and select through your camera’s LCD screen. Some cameras, for example, will allow you to change the exposure mode of the camera with a dial on the top or on the back of the camera, while smaller pocket-size cameras will require you to open a menu setting to make those changes.

2. Date and Time Stamp: Most cameras come with quick instructions for how to set the date and time stamp in your camera. If you haven’t already done so, be sure your camera is stamping the correct date and time on your image files. This bit of information (or what is called metadata in the digital photography world) can be very useful for archiving and managing your photos.

3. Review Time: One of the best features about digital photography is the ability to review photos after they are taken. The default time for reviewing an image may be only a couple of seconds, but you typically can change that time, making it longer or shorter. Look up the word “review” or “play menu” in your manual to find out how to change the review time. I have my photos display for 6-8 seconds. This gives me enough time to consider if I need to retake the shot.

4. Picture Count: If you never want to miss a good shot, you should know where to find the picture count for your camera. Typically it can be seen on your camera‘s LCD screen when you review the images stored on your image card. Based the size of your card and the resolution settings you’re shooting in, the camera will display the number of photos you have shot. When you set the camera to take a photo, the number of captures you have remaining that your media card can hold should be displayed on the LCD screen.

5. Format Your Media Card: When you fill up a media card, it’s best to reformat it instead of erasing the image files. Avoid filling up your card completely. Change the card when you only have 5-10 captures remaining that you can put on the card. Also, don’t allow your computer or software application to erase images for you. Reformat your card on the camera itself after you have securely imported and backed up your photos to your computer. Look up the word “format” in the index of your manual for specific instructions.

Advanced Tips

6. Turn the Flash On/Off: Most with cameras come with a built-in flash. Your camera‘s automatic features may cause your flash to fire when you don’t want it to; for example when you’re shooting in a shaded area. So learn how to manually shut off and turn on your camera built-in flash. If you’re shooting in Automatic mode, you most likely will not have the option to turn off the flash, and in that case you’ll need to choose another shooting mode (like Program, discussed later) in order to shut off the flash.

Likewise, if your photos are coming out a little blurred, it means that you may need the use the flash or increase the shutter speed on your camera. If you can’t do the latter, it’s best the turn on the flash for that will automatically increase your shutter speed to 1/60th of a second, which is a better speed for holding a camera than at say 1/10th of a second. (I will discuss flash later in a longer article in this series.)

7. Shooting Beyond A: Most beginning photographers shoot in automatic mode. There’s typically a dial on your camera with a green Auto icon indicating that mode of shooting. When you shoot in automatic mode you’re telling your camera to make all the decisions about exposure settings when you take pictures. Your camera will read the amount and type of light coming into the lens and hitting the sensor and it will make the best guess for setting the exposure.

But if you learn how to shoot beyond the automatic made, you can have more control about those settings. Even you don’t understand what aperture and shutter speed means, you can more easily learn how to use Program mode, which is discussed in the next step. But in order to do this, you need to know how to change the shooting modes of your camera.

8. Program Mode: The first step to getting beyond Automatic mode is to use Program or P mode. This mode is similar to automatic in that it sets the exposure settings for the picture you’re taking; however,  in this mode, you can control better how much light is allowed to enter the camera. If you shoot a photo in Automatic and then shoot the same subject in the same lighting condition in Program mode at their default settings, they should look pretty much alike. But in Program mode, you can use what is called Exposure Compensation to adjust for lighting. Look up in your camera’s manual how to change the shooting mode to P or program.

9. Exposure Compensation: Okay, here’s the hardest feature you’ll learn in this series of tips, but it can make a big difference in the quality of photos you take. If you noticed that some of your photos come out too dark or too light, or that they just seem flat, you can use exposure compensation to adjust for lighting. To adjust for lighting, you can use what is called Exposure Compensation. You can only use this feature in Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Manual Mode. It is typically deactivated in Automatic mode because, remember, you’re telling the camera to make all the decisions for you.

Look up the term, exposure compensation, in your manual and find out how to use it on your particular camera. It is typically a meter with a plus/minus scale for increasing and decreasing the amount of light coming into your camera.

In these two photos (both un-edited), the top one is shot in Automatic mode, and the bottom one in Program mode. In the first one, the image is slightly under exposed. With the second photo, using exposure compensation, I was able to allow more light in thus getting more detail on the subject (my daughter.)

Even if you don’t understand aperture and shutter speed, if you learn how to use exposure compensation then you can have more control over the lighting exposure of your camera. So right after you read this article, find a subject and practice with the exposure compensation feature. With digital photography, you’re not wasting film, so you can practice, practice, practice, and not have to spend a penny extra.

10. Self-Timer: Often times if you’re the main photographer in your family, you most likely don’t get yourself included in many of the photos you take. So learn to use the self-timer and a tripod so that you can take photos that include you, the photographer.

Also, the self-timer is a good way to shoot close-up shots of say, a flower or Ebay product shots. By using the self-timer and a tripod, you will get less camera shake in your macro shots and thus, less blurry photos.

In the next few articles on digital photography, I will share some advanced tips for taking pictures. But it will useful to hear back from readers what questions you have about using your camera and the art of taking photos. What problems do you encounter when taking photos?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Technology Explained: How Does A Digital Camera Work? (32)
• How To Easily Manage Photos from Multiple Cameras [Mac] (5)
• Tips For Taking Digital Photography Using Live View (24)
• How To Remove MetaData From Photos (Windows) (20)
• How to Recover Deleted Pictures from a Digicam Memory Card (4)

Flickr offers both free and paid subscriptions, and after you open your account and start building your own photostream, you’ll want to sign up for several of the tens of thousands of groups on the popular photo sharing site.

The following is a suggested list of the various types of Flickr discussion groups you might consider joining.

1. Your Camera Model Flickr Group

One of the first groups you should search for and join is one based on the camera you use. Nearly all popular digital 35mm and compact cameras have at least one Flickr group dedicated to it. If you’re a Canon user, for example, there’s the Canon DSLR User Group.

But more specifically there’s groups based on different models of Canon cameras, such as the Canon Powershot G9 group with well over 3,000 members. There’s groups for Nikon and Kodak camera users, as well as for Sonys and Panasonics.

2. Your Town or City

If you’re the kind of photographer who likes to get out and take photographs, search for a group based on the town or city you live in. If such a group doesn’t exist, create one. These Flickr groups can be a great places for discovering nearby shutterbugs, as well public locations for photo shoots. For example there’s one group called San Francisco Graffiti with 900 members. This niche groups shares some awesome finds.

3. Black-and-White Photography

If you like black-and-white photography, there are hundreds of groups on the subject that not only includes awesome monochromatic photographs, but also great discussions about lighting, post-processing, and film related issues related to black-and-white photography. One such Flickr group has nearly 85,000 members, and it’s name is simply, B&W.

4. iPhoneography

If you’re an iPhone camera shooter, you’ll want to join one or more of the growing Flickr groups on this subject. One such group, iPhoneography has over 600 members, while another group, iPhone Camera Shots has well over 2,000 members.

There are even smaller groups based on different and popular iPhone camera applications, such the Best Camera app group.  There’s not a lot of discussion in this group, but they share really awesome photos, and you can share yours as well.

5. Photography Tips

Beginning photographers will want to find a newbie Flickr group. One such group is Your Photo Tips and another was created by author/photographer Derrick Story, and it is called  The Digital Story Group . Derrick’s group, of about 1,000 members, includes discussions about all kinds of camera features, accessories and photography strategies.

Digital Photography School is also a group for both beginning and advanced photographers, as well as Amateurs which includes long discussion threads of favorite photos and camera tips.

6. Project 365

The best way to build and improve your photography skills is to take photos every day, or as often as you can. There are over 11,000 members of the popular Project 365 group that have or are attempting to complete a photo-per-day project. Even if you don’t reach the goal, you’ll improve your photography trying to.  There are several other smaller and similar project groups that you should also query using the keyword, 365.

7. Strobist.com

If you’re wanting to learn about using external flashes and lighting equipment, the must-join group is Strobist.com, started by 20 year-old veteran photographer, David Hobby. The group, with well over 62,000 members, is an outgrowth of his popular blog site of the same name.

8. Nature Photography

If nature photography is your hobby, check out this wild nature group of 22,000 members. The discussions are little sparse for a group of that size, but there’s lots of great photos of plants, animals, fungi, landscapes and flowers.

One popular thread in the group is “the best flower shot.” These “best of” topics are common in groups where you simply share your own favorite photos based on a discussion topic.

9. Artistic Photo Group

If you approach photography from a artistic perspective you might check out a popular and respected group called UTATA: Tribal Photography. Its 17,000+ members are made up of both professionals and serious shutterbugs. It has over 8,000 discussion threads with weekly photo projects for its members.

10. Photoshop Support Group

If you’re serious about photography, you’ll no doubt spend lots of time in Photoshop. Flickr’s Photoshop Support Group has over 92,000 members, with over 5,000 discussion threads about all aspects of the popular image processing program.

When you join a group, look for the typical “introduce yourself” discussion thread and add a few sentences about you as a photographer and why you joined the group. From there, add your own photos to the group, being careful to follow the posting rules of the groups.

If none of the above groups interest you, you might want to check out what Flickr staff members suggest. Each time you reload the Groups page you’ll get a list of three or four suggested groups. While writing this article and checking the Groups page, for example, a group called Cloudporn popped up. What a great idea. I love taking photos of clouds, so I immediately joined. There’s currently no discussions in this group, but its 5,000+ members are sharing some great images of spectacular cloud formations and lighting.

This list of groups is mainly based on my five years of being a Flickr member, and thus it’s partially subjective. So what groups do you suggest be on the list? Please include a URL to the group and maybe a line or two about why you think the group is worth joining.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Have you ever seen an image with only one portion or one object in color and everything else is in black and white?

That is the effect we are going for here – to make an item, object or person stand out by black and whiting (is that a real phrase?) the rest of the image.

You can see a good example of what I am talking about in the shot below or in the article’s header graphic above:

The girl and her clothes are in color and everything else is not. What do your eyes fixate on?

You can find more example photos prepared using the application, or filter tintii, on their Flickr photostream. If you’re on Flickr yourself, tag your photos with “tintii” to have them included in the stream – more views for you!

Tintii is offered as a plugin for Photoshop and Corel’s Photo application but it does also come with a standalone application to make your color manipulation a little easier (and free for those of us who cannot afford Photoshop!)

Download and install the correct version for your PC, Mac or Linux box as you can see below:

Then select what you want to install:

The first object is un-uncheckable as it is the main application and the standalone application we are covering. The plugins for Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro are able to be unchecked.

When the application is fully installed, launch it from your start menu and you will see this screen:

From this screen you can open your image by hitting the open button on the top left hand portion of the screen.

I choose a picture of me lying out in Aruba (before the baby). It takes me back to a calmer much more relaxing time…

The above shot is using the defaults just opening the image, Next up I will select each of the four images on the left side. They each activate another color or layer in your image. Click them and check it out. Here is the first item selected:

You can see I hit the greenish yellow button on the top and that activated the grass behind me. You can either uncheck the item after you use it or combine multiple effects. I will run through each of them unselecting the last.

The dark blue icon is selected and just my dark blue swim trunks are colorized.

The light blue icon activates the light blue color of the beach chair’s cushions. You can see it activates the chair I am sitting on and the one to my left. It activates anything the same color.

That last icon makes my tanned body show up. This looks very cool with me colored and everything else being in black and white.

Here I selected the grass and both blues together effectively coloring everything except for my body.

Now if these options are not enough for you feel free to tweak and tinker with the slides on the left. If you figure out how to use them effectively leave us a comment below. If you get the itch to register and install the plugins let us know how that goes as well!

Do you know of any other similar apps that achieve the same thing?

Download: Tintii

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Except me. I have to know how things work. No good reason for that. Sometimes I have to read a bunch of technical jargon, ask a lot of questions and then relate the information to something else I understand, before I can truly understand what’s going on. That makes me a slow, but tenacious, learner. And really annoying when Jeopardy! is on.

The underlying technology of the digital camera is a light sensor and  a program. The light sensor is most often a Charge Coupled Device  (CCD) and the program is firmware that is embedded right into the circuit board of the camera. Kind of like the programs that help make your microwave oven or iPod work.

I’ll focus on the CCD first. Yes, there is another kind of light sensor that can be used and that’s the Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) type. The mechanics of how they do what they do differ, but the principles are the same.

Think of the CCD as being a grid of millions of little squares, each one kind of like a solar cell. You know that a solar cell takes light energy and converts it to electrical energy right? And you probably figured that the more light there is the more energy it makes and vice versa right? So you can see where we’re going with this whole CCD thing.

Each of those little squares on the CCD takes light energy and converts it to electrical energy. Each condition of the light – like brightness and intensity – generates a very specific electrical charge. Those charges for each little square are then transported through an array of electronics to where it can be interpreted by the firmware. The firmware knows what each specific charge means and translates it to information that includes the colour and other qualities of the light that the CCD picked up.

This process is done for each of the squares in the grid of the CCD – so now you can see the miracle that it really is! Now picture (pun intended) a million little squares, each one different as though they were puzzle pieces. The firmware puts those puzzle pieces together to form an image that is recognizable to the human eye.

The process of putting it together is very much akin to what happens with your television or monitor. It does this using pixels. Each pixel is comprised of three basic colours – red, green and blue. By varying the intensity of each colour within a pixel, the variety of colours that can be produced is amazing indeed. This is known as a Bayer filter.

Get up close with your monitor – to the point where you can see the pixels individually. Don’t worry, that whole thing about going blind from sitting too close to the TV is an old wives’ tale. Except when it comes to my kids.  You might need a magnifying glass. Neat, huh? Did you see how there were more green pixels than red or blue? That’s because somebody figured out that the eye is not as sensitive to green as it is to red or blue.

I digressed. The next step is for the firmware to record the information it saw into digital code. That code can be used to accurately reproduce the picture time and time again. Call it a recipe for that specific moment in time that you captured. Now, that code can be passed to the view screen on the camera, or to a monitor or printer to be reproduced.

And now you know how that all works. Hopefully taking the mystery away hasn’t ruined the experience for you. I hope you enjoyed this high level overview of how these things work.

Are you a digital photo enthusiast? Did this article help you to understand the process better? Share your questions with us in the comments, and I’ll try to answer them.

Photo Credit: ralphbijker

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Easily Manage Photos from Multiple Cameras [Mac] (5)
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If you want to attain some order, editing those pictures is necessary. If you’ve got a somewhat decent collection, this can be a long and tedious task – unless you use a batch processing application.

These ‘batch applications’ can process your pictures automatically, editing an incredibly big batch of files with the click of a mouse. These kind of editing macros can save you a lot of effort, and makes the (practically) impossible possible.

Batch Renaming – Rename Master

A batch renaming application will append the same naming structure on all of your files. This is one of the most prominent reasons for batch processing; to change those damn ugly and incompatible filenames into something useful.

Rename Master is the king of the (freeware) rename applications. Not only can it create new nametags for whole folders at once, more flexible naming schemes can be composed to reuse previous parts of the filenames, or even use metadata like the dates those pictures were taken. Too fancy? Just jot down a fancy name with a numbering prefix or suffix.

As a surplus, Rename Master can also be used to rename other types of files.

You might also want to check out Saikat’s post on Renaming Pictures with the Date They Were Shot.

Batch Resizing – Photosizer

Fotosizer will – as the name implies – resize all of your pictures. You can do this by defining a percentage, or by supplying maximum width and height dimensions. Alternatively, you can also use a preset size, to prep your images for custom displays, like a PSP or iPod. A tool like this is especially handy if you’re working with extremely high resolution photography, and want to create some lighter, screen-friendly duplicates.

Fotosizer is nice on the eye, and has an easy to use interface. If you want, you can also use Fotosizer to rename your pictures, although I find it less advanced and more complicated to use than Rename Master.

You can also take a look at Jimmy’s post on Batch Editing Your Images with GIMP.

Mac fanatics might want to check out Jackson’s post on Pixer.

Batch Convert (+ Resize) – PicSizer

PicSizer is actually a resizing application (who would guess?). Nevertheless, It doesn’t offer any advantages over Fotosize – except conversion functionality. In this article, I will regard solely PicSizer as such – a tool to lift images from one filetype to another, because to be honest, it does this better than most other freeware batch conversion applications.

PicSizer supports a few file formats, including about all the popular ones; JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, TGA and PNG. The application can also convert images between these formats. If you choose JPG or PNG – which I advise – you can even choose your compression ratio.

With these three tools, you should have pretty much all of the batch image manipulations covered. Note that not all of these applications are excessively present in the freeware world, and we had to look at a resizing app to get decent conversion functionality. If you know of any other – perhaps better? – batch processing tools, you can tell us in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Well that is about to change. I downloaded a little 15MB application called PhotoFilmStrip (actually they send you to Sourceforge to grab the installer.)

Install the application and allow it to associate PFS files with itself and you are on your way to creating your first picture slideshow filmstrip! This application does render the pictures and transitions into video (which you can choose the quality of) so it does take some time to render. My 15 picture set took about 7 minutes to work so you can figure around 45 seconds per picture in a environment like mine.

You can start by either dragging and dropping your pictures onto the top left portion of the screen which you can see in the screenshot below:

You can also hit Tools – Import Pictures

While the photos are loading into PhotoFilmStrip you will see a standard status bar letting you know where you stand (and how long you will wait!)

Then finally after all your images are in the program you will see them appear in chronological order on the time line at the bottom of the interface… Kind of like a film strip. (Hindsight: after ruining the first render I realized I need to resize that box to cover my subject. Simply manipulate it with your mouse for each one. This will get the focus and not the floor or ceiling! Hopefully this will save you some time!)

Now we can take a look at our options for creating them into a hot picture slideshow video. I did not go this far with my experiments but you can add an audio track or subtitles to your new piece de’resistance!

When you are all done hit F9 or the Tools menu option and then Render Filmstrip. This is the magic that makes your video out of the still images and anything else you imported.

After starting the process you will see your options for creating your video. Among them are the quality of the video profile. There is VCD all the way up to HD video. Obviously the better the quality the longer it will take to render and the larger the final output file will be.

You can set the length of the video and if you are going that route you can set up an audio file to play along with the video. This can be music or synced up video – either which way it is as simple as pointing it to the right file. You can play and test the audio file using the play and pause buttons.

On the bottom of the screen is the output settings. You can change the MPG2 video to be Xvid and you can choose your output directory. Hit start or batch job to run multiple projects. And you are off to waiting. Be prepared to wait a while depending on the amount of pictures and the size of them -you know go smoke em if you got em!

After outputting my video I realized that I needed to go back to the beginning and mark the center of the images where the subject is instead of just leaving them alone. Some of my shots then only focused on the top of the pictures.

We would love to see what you created – hit us with some youTube links in the comments!

Download: PhotoFilmStrip

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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This will work for most people, but then there are the determined thieves who target the prized works of well known photographers without giving the poor schmuck a dime.

You see, watermarks aren’t 100% fool-proof; there are programs that some unscrupulous characters use to digitally remove the watermarks or to minimize them so they’re barely visible. Thus defeating the purpose of trying to protect images by using what is now a primitive method – not to mention crude and unattractive.

In this article I’m going to show you three great ways to protect your web images without breaking the bank on complex encryption programs.

Splicing

One method to protect web images is to cut them up into several different images and put them all side by side to form one whole image. Then, anyone who tries to save the image will only get a small segment of it. The result is that they have to tediously click around the image, guessing where the cuts have been made and then paste them all together. Big images such as the ones found on photographers’ and artists’ blogs can be cut up into over 20 or 30 pieces.

This acts as a deterrent to most copies and they’ll look elsewhere.

Probably the best program for the novice user to automatically splice images before they go live on your site is Super Simple Image Tiles.

All you have to do to activate it on a particular image, once you have installed it on your web directory using the instructions included in the download, is to slightly alter the image’s HTML. Most blogging platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger offer HTML editors alongside the text editor. Simply enter ‘Protect’ in the image HTML as I did in the screenshot above.

J-Query Plug-in

The way most people steal an image is to simply right-click on it and select ‘Save As’.

The tried and tested method, if you will. However, you can nip the problem in the bud by taking away the ‘Save’ function when someone right-clicks on your image.

The plug in for this is available right here to download for free, along with the instructions. It will also disable any kind of image saving toolbar or add-on in a browser which a user may utilise instead of right clicking.

The plug-in is as lightweight as possible and as such shouldn’t effect the speed or functionality of your pages, all the while keeping your images safe.

Again, this program simply needs to be installed onto your web directory as a plug-in which the big names offer on their dashboards.

Embed as Flash

The final option to protect web images is to upload your images as a flash file instead of as an image. This will disable right clicking as well but it also gives you more options about what to do with your images in terms of web-design which would be hindered if you were using a plug-in which may conflict with Flash design. Basically, you can style your images using CSS properties.

SWF–IR (the SWF originating from Flash’s file extension and the IR standing for ‘Image Replacement’) is available here. Upload it to your web directory.

Then, to put it to work on your post, place this HTML in the <head> section of your post:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”swfir.js”></script>

So there you have it webmasters and photographers. Protect your images the best way you can for free by using the above methods. Remember, images are never 100% secure online but these methods will stop 99% of thieves from stealing your high-resolution originals.

BONUS: To see whether people have already copied your image(s) online, use Google’s ‘Similar Images’ app here.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (6)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Master The Special Effects In Picasa (16)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Wordpress Exploit Scanner Helps Administrators Scan Their Database For Malicious Files (10)
• Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them (51)

We’re lucky to be Photoshop friendly, unlike Lil Wayne (I’d put him in Top Ten Ugliest Tats Ever list).  And history has lots of examples of “unfortunate” tattoos. Like Johnny Depp’s “Winona Forever” tattoo. He had to change it to “Wino Forever” after their break-up. Or like the Game’s famous “star” tat on his face – he had a teardrop before, then changed to a star and now he has an “LA” I guess. Looks so weird.

So think twice before making a tattoo, it’s permanent. And removing a tattoo is a painful procedure leaving ugly scars on your skin. So before you decide on one, why not design a tattoo first and than add that tattoo to your photos in Photoshop, and see what it will look like?

I’ll give our beautiful R&B diva Beyonce a nice music tattoo. Hope she likes it.

1. Open your photo in Photoshop (Ctrl+O or File->Open…)

2. Open your tattoo image as well.

3. Now Select all (Ctrl+A) on your tattoo image and Copy (Ctrl+C):

4. Now go to your photo workspace and paste it there (Ctrl+V):

5. Select the tattoo layer by left-clicking on it:

Now we need to remove all the white from the tattoo image.

6. Select the Magic Wand tool by pressing W on your keyboard or select from Tools menu:

7. Just below the Main menu you will see options for the Magic Wand Tool. Set as below:

8. Now left-click on the white area on your tattoo image:

9. Press Delete. Here’s the result:

10. Now deselect (Ctrl+D) and with the Move Tool (M) place the tattoo where you want it.

If the tattoo is too large, you’ll need to resize it.

11. Select the tattoo layer. Press Ctrl+T. Now you’re in Free Transform mode. Resize and rotate it:

12. While still in Free Transform mode, right-click on the tattoo and select Warp:

13. Stretch it and distort it just enough to make it look like it’s really on your skin:

14. Apply changes by pressing Enter. You should come up with this:

15. Now in the Layers window set properties of your tattoo layer as below:

Here’s the result:

Cool huh? You can add some text as well using almost the same technique. The only different step will be rasterizing your text layer before Free Transforming it:

I hope you found this tutorial on how to design and add tattoos to your photos in Photoshop useful. If you have any thoughts or comments, please leave them here. Maybe you have some interesting ideas for the next Photoshop tutorial? Just let me know. I want to feed you guys with really useful and interesting tutorials and for that I need to know what you really want.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 5 Easy Ways to Lighten Dark Underexposed Photos in Photoshop (5)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (21)
• Photoshop Mobile – A Freeware Image Editor for Your Mobile (10)
• How to Morph Into Your Favorite Celebrity Lookalike (8)

There are things that Google does well and some things they do really well. Picasa is one of the ones they do really well and if you do a lot of image viewing and editing on your computer then you should use Picasa by default. It takes image viewing and editing to a completely new level and offers a lot of other features apart from letting you look at your photos.

Here’s five Google Picasa tricks and tips, the ones I found really good and ones which I am likely to use often.

Resize Images Properly For Frames

I am in the habit of framing a lot of my good pictures for the walls but other image editing programs can’t seem to get the photo resized properly. Even if you specify the exact size you want, the picture still seems to be too big or too small. Then you have to start cutting it down (if it’s too big) or having big gaps in the frame (if it’s too small).

But with Picasa, you don’t have this issue. When you resize an image, it gets the new measurements exactly right, straight away.

Just go to the photo then press the print button. It will then give you a variety of sizes available.

They give you the opportunity to add a border to the picture, under “Border and Text Options“. Choose how many copies of the picture you want and it tries to put them all on the same page (depending on the size). Then choose your desired size and off it goes to the printer. Very easy.

Turn Your Photos Into An Instant HTML Webpage

This one is extremely useful if you would like to upload your photos to a website but you are not too sure about your HTML skills. This is even easier than the Web Album Generator which I wrote about in December 2007.

Choose the pictures you would like on your page by clicking on the first one then using your left and right arrow keys to choose the rest. Then go to Folder–>Export As A HTML Page and you will then be asked some options:

Make your choices and then you will be asked what type of page you would like :

After making your choices, Picasa then very quickly makes the page and opens it in your browser. If you like what you see, save the page to your computer by going to File–>Save Page As in the browser menu :

Send The Photos Directly To Blogger

Now that I have started using Blogger again, this one will become especially useful for when I quickly want to send my snaps to my blog.

Just double-click on the photo you want to send to your blog and press the BlogThis! button at the bottom.

This opens up a window to log into Blogger (if you’re not already logged in).  Log in with your Google account and when you are in, you will get size options and then the opportunity to write some text next to your picture.

Then press “Publish Post” as you would do in any normal Blogger post.  The image will then instantly appear on your blog page. No waiting required.

Turn Your Images Into A Collage – Then Into A Desktop Wallpaper

This one is really cool. We have already covered how to make a collage on computer before but the Picasa method is really quite easy.

Again, highlight the photos with your mouse then go to Create–>Picture Collage. Your images will then appear as one of the collage styles and you will have options to try out other ones.

Once the collage has been made, there is an option to then make your creation into a desktop wallpaper.

This will make my girlfriend jump hen she comes home and finds me on the desktop!

Turn photos into movie slideshows with music then upload to YouTube

I was at a wedding on Saturday and the bride & groom’s friends wanted to show a slideshow of the bride and groom at various stages of their relationship. But the software program they were using to play the show from their laptop constantly stopped working. Looking at how Picasa easily makes movie slideshows with music, they could have used this instead.

Granted, this is not going to make anything Oscar-worthy but if you are just looking for a way to show photos along with a bit of music (or no music if you prefer) then this works perfectly well.

Put all the photos you want in the slideshow into its own folder. Then in Picasa, there are options at the top of every folder.  One of them is Create Movie Presentation. Make sure the pictures are in the correct order in the folder as you want them to appear in the slideshow (just name them picture1.jpg, picture2.jpg…..or something similar)

Clicking the “Create Movie Presentation” button puts the pictures in the folder into a straight line with a screen above it so you can view what you have created.

On the top left hand side, you also have the option to add music. Just navigate to the music file’s location in your computer and choose it. Then underneath, choose your “transition style” which is how you want the images to change on the screen. Do you want them to fade out? Or cut from one to the other? Pan and Zoom? There are quite a few choices there for you to choose from.

You can then press the green “play” button for your slideshow to start. Go full screen for maximum effect. At the end, if you are really pleased with your slideshow, Picasa even gives you the ability to upload your creation to YouTube so everyone else can see it.

So those are the five features that jumped out at me. I did want to do the geotagging of my photos from Picasa to Google Earth but for some reason it didn’t work for me. Picasa told me to download Google Earth first but I already had it! So perhaps when I finally get that feature to work, I may write about it in a separate article.

We have done quite a few Picasa articles on MakeUseOf in the past. Here are a few to get your Picasa fix :

• Jim’s Five Part Introductory Series To Picasa – Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five.
• Ten Tips To Manage Photos Better Using Google Picasa – Shankar
• Send Your Photos To Your Picasa Web Album With An Email – Saikat
• How To Use Facial Recognition In Picasa Web Albums – Tim

Which features of Picasa do you like the best? Let us know in the comments.

Picasa

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Superimpose Your Face into Other Photos with Photo505 (10)
• How to Make Items or People Stand out in Black & White Photos (25)
• 6 Quick Ways to JAZZ-UP your Photos (23)
• 5 Ways to Create Beautiful Slideshows of your Digital Pictures (15)
• 10 Tips to Manage Photos Better using Google Picasa (13)

Now I have found a website that will let you do just that! Check out Photo505 .

Once you get there you will see what we are talking about. After all a picture is worth a thousand words right? There are lots of pictures on the home page. Each of these images is a template. Your picture can replace the one shown in each template. In other words you will be putting yourself (or someone else) into the picture…

So upon arrival you will see a screen similar to this:

Each of those pictures has the same person’s face imbedded into it. Now the site lets you upload an image and superimpose your face over the one that is there.  Are you following me? Let me show you how it works. Simply select one of the squares with a picture in it.

I choose the Andy Warhol-like tomato soupesque shot and was ready to rock and roll. After selecting your template you will need a image to upload. I suggest cutting up a digital picture of yourself and saving it as a PNG 8 or another small format meant for the web.

Hit that big orange browse button and if you want to show your finished image to the world do not uncheck the show my photo in gallery button. On the other hand if you are a fugitive from the law or are in hiding, UNCHECK this box to NOT make your image PUBLIC. If you are unsure of what you want UNCHECK the box just to be on the safe side.

I browsed on over to my picture. This is what I used:

Photo505 worked for a minute and then spit back my compiled new image. This is what I got back:

How cool is that? And very simple too! When it is done you will get links to socialize your link, save it to your local machine and hotlink as well as direct links so you can plaster your new found favorite image every where!

I was hooked. So now how about a Grand Theft Auto wanted poster with my face on it? Well that is what I tried next. Lets go and have a looksie at what that produced:

Are you loving this yet? I am so I continued on… next up was Russian President Medvedev. How would I look when I superimpose my face on his picture? Well guess what – we are going to find out shortly!

This one had me select my face from my image with a picking tool. I sesized it by moving the arrow into the bottom right corner and dragging. Once I was done I continued on…

Then the web site spit back my image:

Not the best one but very funny! Check out 505Photo for your own private photo placing web site.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to Make Items or People Stand out in Black & White Photos (25)
• 5 Cool Google Picasa Tips to Make Use Of your Photos (10)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (21)
• Remove Unwanted Photo Elements With Photowipe (12)
• JetPhoto – Photo Management App with Tons of Great Features (10)

Flickroom is the new Adobe AIR kid on the block that will change the way you interact with Flickr.  Flickroom lets you browse Flickr in a beautiful charcoal colored interface that is soothing to the eyes, allows easy photo uploads and downloads, gives you real-time notifications for comments and faves on your photostream, and more. The app is still in beta and new features are being added at a rapid pace.

Flickroom Setup

Download and install Flickroom from here. When launched, it will allow you to connect with your Flickr account or create a new one. The application requires a simple one-time authorization process via Flickr so that it can work with your account. Your credentials are cached locally so you don’t need to login again in the future.

Browse Flickr with Flickroom

Users of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom will feel right at home since the interface to browse Flickr is very similar. The bottom filmstrip shows your (or your contact’s) photographs. The center area is where you view photos, edit photo data, and chat with other Flickroom users.

You can choose the display size and background color of the photo viewer, and click Details to view photo information like description, comments, tags, and EXIF data.

At the top right, you can navigate between your photostream, contacts, groups, etc. The application commands are in a toolbar at the top-right of the window. From here, you can view the latest photos from your contacts, upload, chat, search and set default settings. Hover your mouse for a popup description since it may get some time to get used to the command buttons.

Viewing recent uploads from your contacts is very easy. You can see the recent photos in the right sidebar or launch a separate filmstrip view. In this separate window, you can flip between your contacts to see their recent uploads in a filmstrip.

Upload Photos

There are three ways to upload photos using Flickroom:

• When your photostream is visible, drag and drop any photo into the app to add it to your photostream.
• When viewing one of your sets, drag and drop any photo to add it to the set.
• For powerful upload functions, use the Upload Manager accessed from the top-right toolbar.

I was very impressed with the simple yet powerful Upload Manager. You can select a batch of multiple photos, choose privacy settings, use tags and existing sets, create new sets, and add to groups, before the actual upload.

Download Photos

At present, you can download only one photo that is selected and displayed. For batch downloading, do checkout the two different apps we have previously covered on MakeUseOf.

Edit Photos, Add Comments and Notes

For any photo you are viewing, the action buttons below the photo on the right allow you to edit information, make comments, add notes, mark as favorite and so on.

Search Users and Photos

Flickroom allows basic searching for photos and users at present. You can search for users by email address or username. The photo search searches tags to find matches. Though the search is basic, the best part is that you can add users as your contact from within the application.

Preferences

The application preferences allow you to set the default photo size (useful for slower connections to use smaller display size), background color, initial view, and a ‘signature’ for all new photos.

Live Feed, Chat and Tweeting

The most unique feature of this app is the ability to get real-time notifications for any activity such as comments and favorites on your photostream. You can tweet about a photo from right within the application.

If you’re in a social mood, you can jump right into the Chat room, where you can chat with other Flickroom users currently logged in.

Do you like Flickroom’s interface to browse Flickr? Does it make your photos come alive? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Tonido: Cloudless Computing On Your Desktop (19)
• Stay In Touch With Your Old Flickr Photos With Photojojo’s Time Capsule (3)
• Manage your iPhoto with these plugins (11)
• How To Tag Your Friends In Photos On Flickr (0)
• DestroyFlickr – An Amazing Flickr AIR App (13)

Now, with digital SLRs readily available and even the world’s first ever 3D camera now on the scene, the hobby (and indeed profession for many) keeps growing and growing in an era where still images and print was predicted to be obsolete.

The web is the greatest place for photographers to share photos and socialise, with Flickr undoubtedly being the biggest site for photographers to show off their snaps. But how about when it comes to editing their snaps or indeed just getting solid advice?

I have whittled down a list of many photography websites that I found into the five best sites for the amateur and semi-pro photographer.

Photoshop Express

This is a web app owned and run by the well-known Photoshop company – Adobe. It is a watered down version of their software and it allows the user to make basic editing to their photographs online before sharing them.

It’s really easy to use. Down the left hand side of the editing screen you have your basic tools such as ‘Auto-Correct’, ‘Crop’, ‘Touch up’, and ‘Remove Redeye’. These can all be used by clicking and dragging the mouse, which your average PC user, who has used MS Paint once or twice, should have no trouble with.

The list continues with some more advanced tools such as ‘Colour Saturation’, ‘Highlighting’, ‘Tint’ and ‘Focus’. All of these can transform a good shot into something memorable where the eye washes over the picture numerous times taking in all the attention to detail.

Across the top there are some upload tools and a link to your gallery. Photoshop Express lets you have up to 2GB of online storage – more than enough to upload a days worth of photographs waiting to be given a tweak here and there.

You also get you own gallery page under the Photoshop domain, for example, Mygallerypage.photoshop.com.

For more on Photoshop Express visit the MakeUseOf Directory.

PicResize

Pic Resize is a photography website that does pretty much what it says on the domain; it resizes pictures. This is an easy to use tool with some extra features thrown in.

When you get to the home page simply select the file you want by clicking ‘Browse’ and upload it. This will bring you to section two as seen in the screenshot. Here you can crop your picture, select what size you want to make it and add special affects such as ‘Sharpen’, ‘Greyscale’, ‘Rotate’ and ‘Blur’. You can do one or all of these options. Then click ‘Resize’ at the end of the page.

The final page gives you four options to choose from. You can preview the image, save it, publish it to the web or use the ‘Advanced Edit’ tool.

The advanced edit tool doesn’t give much more options but it is good for just giving it that final touch-up after the resize. You can crop, add text, blur, explode, and add a frame along with a few other small options.

Golden Hour

Golden Hour is a web app that tells you the best times to go out on the hunt for a mean shot in a certain area. Any photographer will tell you that they always go snapping at the ‘Golden Hour’ (or ‘Magic Hour’ as it’s sometimes known) because the sun is at the right angle of elevation relevant to the particular landmass selected.

All you have to do is click on where it is on the map that you plan on shooting and the app will tell you what times are the best to go. The hour is highlighted on a chart below the map and when you roll over it gives you some information as to why this is the golden hour for this location. The app will also tell you when there is a full moon coming up for those who want some good night time pictures.

Watermark

So after spending the day snapping like crazy, the photographer comes up against a new problem – copyright. As a freelance writer, I discovered my work stolen by two websites on two separate occasions when playing with CopyScape. The feeling of anger and to be honest, helplessness is awful.

What can you do? It’s the internet and tracking down someone is like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, with photographs the creators can protect them by adding in a watermark that will stop people from stealing their work.

A great (and free) online tool I found that can do this is a photography website called Watermark. This has a good free account option with the ability to upgrade to the premium account if you so wish. The free account does all you would really need. You can mark multiple photos at once and you can customise the watermark with different text, colours, size and effects as seen in the screenshot.

The only bad parts to the free account that you would notice is that a picture cannot be any larger than 0.5Mb which shouldn’t obstruct you much if you’re only posting them online. Also, it doesn’t save your watermark for when you come back later.

Both Karl and Jim have discussed watermarking alternatives here and here.

Fotopedia

Finally when the photograph has been taken, edited, resized and protected there comes the time to publish it. Sure, one could indeed use Flickr or perhaps a personal blog but for me, Fotopedia stands out from the rest.

With Fotopedia, photographs are organised and even voted upon by users as one of the main features to determine which ones should represent each category. Many of the photographs actually come from other web services such as Flickr as seen under them in the photographer’s credit area. You’re assured that you’re getting the best of the best however, as irrelevant or low quality photos are removed from the categories via the user vote system.

Fellow MakeUseOf writer Jim Henderson has done lots of photography-related articles here on MakeUseOf.   To see what he has done so far, check out his MakeUseOf writers page.

So what web tools and services do MakeUseOf readers use for their photographs?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (21)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (6)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Master The Special Effects In Picasa (16)
• The Top 3 Apps to Batch Rename, Convert & Resize Photos (Windows only) (16)

What the heck do you do with that many photos? Watch them endlessly? Burn them to various formats? Mash them up?

Well all of that does get a little boring after a while.

I do print a lot of them but hey I just want something a little different…

Enter Shape Collage – a free program that lets you create a photo collage on your computer out of pictures or folders of pictures. You can download the free version from Shapecollage and the free version lets you do everything but watermark and save high resolution collages but for me this is awesome for print or web images. If you’ve ever wondered how to make a collage on your computer, this software is the answer.

After you download and install the application you will need to have Java on your machine. If yours is not up to snuff you will be prompted to download it on the first run. Note I did have a newer version of Java installed and it still prompted me to grab another version. It would not work until I complied.

Once you satisfy the Java requirement you are ready to rock and roll. The screen should look like the one below. You can drag and drop pictures right to the box on the left.

If you are working with a lot of files you should use the File – add photos menu item or the File – Add Folder. You can also add photos from the web. This means you can point to a URL with an image or multiple images. But we will be using local files for our run through. I hit File – Add Folder from the file menu.

I picked a folder within my My Pictures folder and it queued up the images in the left pane. You can add more by hitting the plus sign or the same way as before.

If you look over on the right you will see options. They are pretty rudimentary but you can choose the shape of your collage which is awesome. You have the option to choose a rectangle, heart, circle or in the shape of a letter. But you can also load custom shapes if you are feeling adventurous.  You choose how many pictures to use as well as the collage size, spacing and individual picture sizes.

You can hit the preview button in the center to give you an idea of what your collage will look like. Go ahead and try it out – don’t worry we will wait!

Once you are happy with your collage hit Create and choose your JPG quality.

Then you can go check out your image in the same directory as your images (unless you changed it in the settings). This is what mine looks like! I love it and so does my wife.

How do you create collages? Do you have a free favorite tool? Maybe a Photoshop plug in? Or maybe you create photo collage online using one of the online apps, i.e. Hockneyizer or Fotonea. Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – View, Folders, Toolbars (18)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Master The Special Effects In Picasa (16)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them (51)
• Use Geographical Info To Organize Photos in iPhoto [Mac] (1)

The second scenario will work you up even more. Imagine the commonness of having more than one camera in the house. Each, lending to the graphical stew of your pictures folder. Of course, your exasperation can be easily cured by the timely habit of renaming photos when you transfer them. Arranging photos chronologically (according to dates) also makes retrieval a snap.

Today, most digital cameras have an internal clock which tags the photos with the exact time when it was clicked. This information is embedded as meta-data (meta-data is data about the data) in the photo itself.

The EXIF (Exchangeable image file format) and DCF (Design rule for Camera File system) standards are specifications for this meta-data. EXIF, in simple terms, defines the camera and image information in the files. DCF defines standards which ensure compatibility between different recording media like a camera and a printer.

It is this photo information that software programs tap into when they read the pictures. And using this information makes arranging photos by timestamps as easy as clicking them.

Automatically Batch Rename Photos With the Date They Were Shot with Namexif

When we say ‘Namexif’ aloud, it sounds like a blend of ‘name’ with ‘fix’ and also ‘exif’ (a portmanteau). The free software does exactly that. Namexif batch renames photos with the dates they were shot. This helps to ease the chronological assortment within your pictures folder. Of course, photos compulsorily must have the EXIF data.

Namexif is a lithe 700MB batch renamer with a simple interface. The timestamp software is a standalone executable. It runs on Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Vista. Namexif works snappily in three steps –

• Run the program – select and add the individual files or the folder where the photos are stored. Click Next.



• On the next screen choose the date format you want from the three pre-sets given. In case of high speed shooting mode, where the times may differ by sub-secs, the format adds dashes (-) to tell filenames apart.



• You have the option of keeping the original name or adding your own name as a describer. In case the camera (or photo) does not support EXIF standards, then the original name is kept intact.

Namexif is a simple no frills app for a necessary task. It does not require an install and can be carried around like a portable app. My only other demand would have been an option for a custom timestamp and a way to edit a photo’s embedded date. If you like lightweight, self running simple software then you can give this a shot.

Automatically timestamp photos with Stamp

Stamp is another free software which batch renames image and video files chronologically. It can also batch process entire folders and add a timestamp to the beginning of each filename. Stamp is an improvement over Namexif on several fronts. It can directly transfer photos from most cameras. It batch renames audio/video files too.

Also, unlike Namexif, Stamp saves the renamed image files in a different folder (gives an option of copy or move) thus preserving the originals. Some of the other power features include -

• Stamp gives the choice between five different file formats which fall across – DCF convention, History Data formatsCustom format.



• Custom format is handy for generating long or short filenames with descriptive information like location of shoot.



• Stamp comes with various filters which lets the user control the processing by including certain files and excluding others.



• Stamp features extra options for file handling like preview function which displays a summary of predicted results and an error reporting log.

The Stamp user guide is exhaustively detailed in its help with the software feature set. The 2MB free software is supported by 95, 98, 2000 and XP.

Of course, there is a tool like Picasa which in itself is a complete photo management application. It also automatically renames photos by date. Renaming photos by date is quick and simple with these two little file renamer alternatives. After a few gigabytes of photos we will find that arranging photos chronologically rather than by name is easier for instant recall.

You can also try out the cross platform JetPhoto which Jeffry has written about in a previous post.

Let us know how easy (or difficult) it has been for you after spring cleaning your pictures folder…

Image Credit: Viernest

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (6)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
• Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (37)
• Stitch Panoramic Photos Together with CleVR (21)
• Remove Unwanted Photo Elements With Photowipe (12)

• For converting a digital photo for an enlarged hard print.
• For flipping a photo from vertical to horizontal and stretching it.
• For making an obscure image area more clear.

And here’s a simple reason why we should not –

Pixels are the smallest units of an image. The number of pixels in an image is called the resolution.  Imagine an image composed of thousands of little squares or dots. Each little square (or pixel) has its own color information. Enlarging an image using any program means increasing the pixel size or separating the pixels and this results loss in image information and lowers quality.

Upsizing an image also means that the program needs to figure out how to compensate the increase in image area. At best, an image editing program approximates how to represent the extra information.
Image manipulation involves a lot of mathematical rules called algorithms.

For those interested in more background, a Google search gives a lot of info. For instance, here are a couple of resources –

- A tutorial on image interpolation and digital photo enlargement.
- Increasing Image Resolution – from About.com

So casting aside the overtly theoretical stuff (important nonetheless!) let’s dive into two useful photo tips to resize images without too much of a drop in quality.

FIRST METHOD: The Re-sampling by 10% Technique

Here’s a brief but brisk way to digitally increase picture size. This old photo tip involves using an image editor to resample an image by gradual 10% increments. Photoshop easily handles this using the Image Size commands.

1. Open your image in Photoshop. (Screenshots are of Photoshop CS2)
2. Click on Image – Image Size from the menu. Alternatively, right click on the image title bar and select Image Size.
3. Choose Bicubic Smoother in the Resample Image dropdown.
4. In the Pixel Dimensions setting, use the dropdown to select Percent instead of Pixels. Make sure the little chain link is set…else check the Constrain Proportions setting.
5. To resize the image by 10%, change the width/height to 110 from the earlier 100 percent. Click OK to resize the image by 10%.
6. You can continue to resize by increments by 10% till an optimum size where you can see that the visual quality hasn’t degraded by much. To undo a previous action, click on Edit – Undo Image Size or use the History palette to select an earlier state.

The snapshot below shows a section of an image taken through five increments of 10%. From an initial size of 500 X 369 to an enlarged size of nearly 800 X 600.

If you need to resize images more often, creating a Photoshop Action which does the job automatically is always better.

1. In the Actions palette, click on the New Action icon.
2. Give it a descriptive name like Resize By 10. You can also assign a shortcut key from the Function Key dropdown. Click on Record and start following through the steps mentioned earlier (Step 2 to Step 5). The actions get recorded and can be replayed again and again with a click of the play button (or the function key) for any selected image.
3. After each increment, visually assess the image quality. After a certain percentage, image loss with blurring will be perceptible.

The resize by resampling can be achieved by any good photo editor. If you do not have Photoshop, you can resize similarly with the free IrfanView. The commands and there location might differ, but the technique is nearly the same

IrfanView

If you don’t have an image editor close at hand, then there’s an online option too.

SECOND METHOD: The Reshade Method

The second photo tip is to "reshade." Reshade.com offers a standalone image enlargement software package for Windows. The photo enlarger though is a paid download. As an alternative there is an online image resizer which is free and does the job equally well.  The free online service though limited offers some notable features…

• You can use it directly from your browser (via a URL or an upload).
• You can resize images for free to any standard monitor resolution (max 1920×1200px).
• You can zoom to 2X of your original image size i.e. maximum 200% of the original resolution.
• You can crop part of an image, remove noise and improve its quality.
• You can upload images without a login which imposes certain restrictions like your images won’t be stored (that’s good in a way!), only allowed 3 uploads a day and you won’t be able to crop an image.

Browse to a locally stored image or submit it through a URL. The Submit button takes you to the image resize settings (as shown in the screenshot). Along with the resize settings, Reshade gives you five image enhancements checkboxes to play with – Center crop, Stretch, Denoise, Smooth and Crop.

You can then proceed to download it to your computer or post it to forums or social networking sites with the links provided. Do keep in mind that if you intend to post it, then it’s better to login and keep it in your online account.

Enlarging an image from its native resolution is paid for by lower quality. The best advice that goes around is to take a picture with the highest resolution possible and then downsize it. But in situations which ask for image upsize, these two solutions can prove helpful.

Do you have a tried and tested method to resize an image? Do you have any photo tips of your own? Let us know…

Image Credit: Cartel Soviet

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Remove Unwanted Photo Elements With Photowipe (12)
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Step 1 – Show off your best

No one is ever going to know what sorts of photos you are interested in unless you get some of them online. If you take photographs regularly, upload regularly. Really, what excuses do you have?

Second only to getting the images online is making sure they can be found. I’ve spoken about tagging before, but perhaps an example might help?

If you want other folk to find your photos, you need to take some good guesses as to what they might search for, and add those word or phrases to your photo as tags.

Some people like to look at photos of roller coasters. I think this is the only one I have, so I’m not one of those people, but I’m not immune to wanting people to like it. So I’ve tagged the image with the search phrases I think people might use to find it.

Needless to say, your list would differ from mine. I posted this a few years ago as well, and these days I’d probably add ‘roller’ and ‘coaster’ separately as well.

But the focus here is to find other people’s images, so let’s move on.

Step 2 – Join groups

Aside from searching for images in Flickr, you can search for groups. Just in case there is any confusion, a group is like a set, except that it’s designed for multiple people to use. Most groups are public, but you can also restrict the membership of a group.

Search for groups that contain things you are interested in. That could be objects (like roller coasters), colours (careful with your spelling), techniques, moods… I’ll be surprised if you can’t find at least one Flickr group on any reasonably broad subject, and you’ll generally find hundreds.

Join groups. Add images. Comment on other images you find there. Go on.

Step 3 – Create your own group.

Eventually, you might find that you’re searching for something that’s too specific for a group to already exist, and you’ll need to create one of your own. That’s going to take a little more work, so decide if you’re up for it first.

Just as an example, I like to take photographs of rusty things. Peculiar I know, but I’ve even exhibited on the subject, so I’m definitely not alone. Anyway, I became interested specifically in images that were rusty, and also blue. At this point, feel free to substitute your own obsession.

I’m going to cheat anyway, as this group already exists. I’ll create a similar one for yellow rust pictures.

Creation

After checking that a group doesn’t already exist on the subject, create a new one here.

You can see that various types of groups are possible. Given that we’re looking to find people, let’s make it public.

Supply a name for the group, and add some idea of what it’s all about. Make a decision about whether there’s anything that might be in the group that kids shouldn’t see. Click Next.

Decide what non-members of the group should be able to see.

Decide what to call the administrators and moderators.

You can make a whole set of choices about administration, addresses, moderation etc. Just remember you want people to join. Which leads me to the next part…

Invitations

You can use all the means at your disposal to invite folk to your new group. You can email them, send them a text from your phone, put an advertisement on national television. Whatever you like. Flickr has its own method as well, so you can easily invite your contacts.

Go to the main page for your group and look at the top menu.

Click the invite Friends link, and invite anyone you think might be interested.

Of course for this to be useful it assumes you already know the people who might want to join. If you don’t, you need to locate some images that might fit in the group, and invite them instead.  Let’s switch back to my real group of blue + rust to see how this works.

Basically, other than images I stumble across in Flickr, I want to know about images which are tagged with both blue and rust. You see why it’s important to correctly tag your images?

Click the search link on the main Flickr page, and then click on advanced search. You want something like this:

Run the search, and depending on what you’re looking for you’ll almost certainly get back a stack of images.

Click on one that’s of interest (such as my friend Kate’s wheel), and fill in the boxes…

Hit Post Comment, and you’re all set. Take a look at Kate’s image to see how it comes out.

Maintenance

One of the toughest parts of running a group is keeping things moving. You always want new members, more images, interesting competitions and discussions.

Assign some other folk admin privileges so things don’t stall if you’re busy. Start conversations.

The query process above is great for getting things started, but it’s not great for ongoing invitations. You need a way to be automatically told when new images arrive that might suit the group.

That’s where we add a little more technology…

The Flickr API is able to generate RSS feeds on the fly, based on a query string. Then you sign up for the RSS feed, and every few hours you get some more images to invite. How this looks depends on both your browser and your feed reader, but the way it works is fairly clear in the link.

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=blue,rust&tagmode=all&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Take a look at the query. Just replace blue and rust with whatever you want to search for, separating any additional terms with commas.

And that’s it. Now you have a group, some members, some images, and a way to build on it.

I’d love to know if you’ve used any of this and if you have any other tips or tricks. Let me know in the comments. Oh, and… any chance you might want to join my group?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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However, the downside is that all those photos are going to cost you. It’s important to understand the term “royalty-free” (RF) for those websites. RF images are not in the public domain, nor are they free to use without purchasing a license.

Luckily, there are plenty of websites for copyright free photos that won’t require you to dig into your pockets.  Here’s 5 of them.

Freerange

Once you register for a free membership at Freerange, thousands of high-resolution stock photos will be at your fingertips at no cost. All of the website’s images can be used for personal or commercial projects.

For photographers, Freerange also offers Google AdSense revenue sharing when you contribute. Check out this list for more of the top websites to sell your stock photos.

Stockvault

With over 13,000 free copyright free photos, Stockvault connects designers and photographers. The photo sharing website offers all of its images for absolutely free personal or non-commercial use.

Check out more about Stockvault in MakeUseOf’s Directory.

FreeDigitalPhotos

FreeDigitalPhotos neatly organizes its thousands of photos into easy-to-find categories and sub-categories. Every image is available for free download but if you want a larger version or a high-resolution version, they’re priced at $5 and $10, respectively.

stock.xchng

SXC.hu has over 400,000 photos to choose from by more than 30,000 photographers. The website maintains that all images are free, but you must abide by its image license agreement.

Some of the site’s artists may also need to be notified about using some images, and in most cases, you’ll need to give credit to them.

Flickr

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, you may want to actually try Flickr. The popular image hosting website has millions of images from its users who have offered their work under a Creative Commons (CC) License. All you have to do is simply pay close attention to the type of licenses each image falls under to use it appropriately.

Keep in mind that Flickr photos offered under the CC Attribution License requires you to give credit to the photographer.

Want more? MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has got details on MorgueFile, yet another website database for free high-resolution digital stock photos. If you’re still having trouble looking, try out PicFindr, a stock photography search engine.

If you know of any other good sites, let us know in the comments.

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In Picasa Web Albums, Google has integrated a newer technology that I think you’ll be amazed with at how well it works.  In choosing which website to use to host my photographs, this feature may be a game-ender. Watch how it works, try it for yourself, and see if the facial recognition feature doesn’t turn your head too!

I would like to introduce you to what facial recognition is, show you its benefits within Picasa Web Albums, and give a quick tutorial on how to use it with your own photo albums.

What is facial recognition?

You may have seen facial recognition used on your favorite cop or investigative television show.  They may have used it to identify some suspect from a huge file of photographs.  You may be wondering, what is it and how does this work?

Well, Wikipedia defines facial recognition this way: “A facial recognition system is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source.”  Well done with another good definition!

Basically, facial recognition technology attempts to identify people’s faces by comparing facial features in photographs.  As we will be seeing in this article, Google has put this technology to use in Picasa in order to make tagging people in your albums a lot easier.

How does it help me with my Picasa web album?

How many pictures do you post in your Google Picasa Web Album?  For those who have many hundreds of photos, tagging people in each photo can be a real chore.  However, if you want to be able to quickly find specific photographs containing specific people, tagging becomes very necessary.

So how exactly does facial recognition help in this endeavour?  Google’s Picasa Web Albums can scan your photos of what it believes are faces, allow you to identify a person you know in the photographs, and scan the rest of your photographs for the same person allowing you to quickly tag them also.  Basically it saves you from having to tag each individual photo by hand by suggesting other photos with the same people in them.

Cool!  So how do I get started then?

It’s an easy, two step process!

1. Enable “name tags” in settings:

Click the “settings” link on the top-right menu of Picasa Web Albums, click the “Privacy and Permissions” tab, check the box labeled “Use name tags to name people in my photos” (you’re faced with a few viewing options once you check the box), and click “save changes.”

2. Apply the name tags

Choose which album you want to apply name tags to then click the “add name tags” button:

Then begin applying the names!  The technology guesses which faces belong to the same people but make sure it guesses right.  It gives you several suggestions:

But you can also choose from the list of already used names if the suggestions are wrong:

There you have it!  The cool technology we see on those cop shows has come to help us organize our photos!  Try it!  You may actually come to finally enjoy the process of tagging your photographs!  Who would have known?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Watermarking is the process of adding an identifying tag to your image – it can either be text or an image.WaterMarkLib makes this process easy for you. WaterMarkLib is a small download weighing in at 2.7MB. We have shown you online watermarkers before and Jim has even gone out of his way to show you 4 ways to watermark your images online.

This one however, resides on YOUR machine.

Once you extract the installer you will have to run through the basic setup clicks. You know, hit next, next, finish.

When you launch the application you will get a screen that looks similar to this. For some reason, it seems to only open in full screen but that aside, this is a great utility and very easy to use. Start by clicking File – Open and open an image. It seems to recognize all the formats I threw at it including: JPG, GIF and PNG.

Let’s start watermarking. You can either hit the Tool menu or there is also an icon on the tool bar that will allow you to add a text or image watermark. We will start by walking you through creating a text watermark.

After you hit the Text Watermark button or icon, you will get a screen that looks like the one below. You get to choose your font, size, opacity, color, drop shadow and even rotation. Opacity simply means the level of transparency i.e. how much of it can been seen through. So by putting the opacity around 20 or 30%, you can still see through your watermark onto your image. Go ahead and add some text and options. Then hit OK.

Then you will see your image with the watermark in the center. You can just grab the text with your mouse and place it where you would like to. I like to put my watermarks in the bottom right hand corner of the image like so:

Next, if you want to save your image, you should setup the output directory – this is so you do not overwrite your original image. After selecting a directory, you can simply hit the Save button and your watermarked image will be saved to your output directory and won’t affect the original image.

Next up, let’s take a look at adding an image as a watermark. It is almost the same as adding text – but with image options as you can see in the shot below:

Once your image is on the screen, you can move it with your mouse just like the text.

I could not figure out how to use the batch feature to apply a watermark onto several images at once. The tutorial on their website returned a 404 so if you do figure it out let us know!

Do you have another method to create a watermark for your images? Do you or don’t you watermark? We would love to hear from you in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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I didn’t have to look far: we covered FlauntR, a free photo editing download, here at MakeUseOf when it was in its Alpha stage. Register with FlauntR, and see how you can use its picasR function in 3 easy steps to quickly give your pictures that million-dollar painting look!

After logging in, click the picasR button in the top left row to get to the painting effects functionality.

If this is your first time using flauntR, the interface might seem complex at first, but I assure you that it’s not. The upper left box holds your source picture, the lower left box holds the painting you would like to use as a reference. Results of your magic appear in the center. Simple!

Step 1: Get Your Photo

From the bottom section, you can upload a picture from your computer, or directly import a picture from Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, etc. The flauntR tab shows your pictures saved in flauntR albums.

If you upload a new picture from your computer, switch to the flauntR tab to access your album and drag your picture to the workspace. I selected a simple photograph of a bunch of trees on a hill as an example.

Step 2: Select Famous Painting

From the famous paintings gallery on the right, select any painting. You can choose a subject that matches your picture (portrait, landscape, etc.) or you can get creative by blending anything you fancy. If you have a particular painting in mind that is not listed in the gallery, you can get its image from the Internet and use that as your reference image.

For example, let us select Arnold Böcklin’s The Sacred Wood in the symbolist style. Your desired reference image appears in your workspace below your original picture.

You can get help, zoom into the picture, or select a portion of the picture, using the icons at the top of both your picture and the reference image. If you wish to selectively apply the desired effect to only a part of your photo, use the selection icon. I liked the simple one-click process, but you can get creative if you want to apply effects of different paintings to different parts of your picture!

Step 3: Abracadabra!

Click Apply! Here are the results of my quick experiment as compared to my original picture:

The ‘Editing Tools’ drop-down toolbox lets you save your image, reset it back to original, and more. Once you’ve saved your new picture, you can easily download it, or share your ‘artwork’ with your friends on Flickr, Facebook, and other networks.

The painting color effect works best with outdoor pictures, but you can also use famous portrait paintings as your reference images. I found that I could work with large image sizes with no restrictions on file size. The ability to apply special effects, save, download, and share, are all free with no strings attached.

Which paintings did you use for your pictures? Share your results with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)
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Let’s see how it works in 3 easy steps.

Step 1: Upload Photo

In order to save and share your cool morph creations, you do need to register at the site. With 30 million+ registered members and a clearly defined ‘no spam, no sharing’ privacy policy, I had no qualms registering with MyHeritage.com.

To begin, rather than using my photo for the morph, I decided to use MJ since that was how the whole idea started in the first place. Clicking on the ‘Celebrity Morph’ tab takes you to the following screen where you upload your photo.

After you upload your photo, it runs its face recognition magic, and you are presented with the best matching celebrity lookalike.

With over 4000 celebrities in its database, the site is sure to find someone you like and look alike! You can browse between a few matching celebrities for your target using the little green arrows. I usually found at least 6-10 choices when experimenting with photographs of different people. I chose another influential African American celebrity idol whose interview of MJ is fondly remembered by many people:

Step 2: Prepare Morph

Click Next to go to the next step, where we prepare the morph. Celebrity Morph automatically sets reference points on the eyes. All you have to do is add a few, so that the morph becomes realistic. Click the ‘+’ button to add points, and the hand icon to position them correctly. For best results, choose the borders of the face, the corners of the mouth, and the tip of the nose, like this:

You can choose the kind of output you want using the slider at the bottom: a still photo, a brief video, or a long video up to 150 frames. Click Preview to view the video:

Step 3: Publish Morph

Without an easy way to save and share this with friends, this exercise would almost be pointless. Fortunately, the guys at Celebrity Heritage seem to know this as well, since they’ve made it very simple to share your morph video on various social networks.

If your preferred network is not there, or you wish to embed it in your own site, the ‘Other’ tab gives you the HTML code to embed it wherever you wish. I checked out posting to Facebook, and after the usual authorization process, it was very simple and worked flawlessly. Of course, even if you do not publish it anywhere, the site saves your morphs under your profile. You can create and play with as many morphs as you like.

This can be a cool gift for your friends: take their photos, morph them into a celebrity, and surprise them! You can also use the site to create a Celebrity Collage. Simply upload your photo, select from various collage layouts, and share it. Other features are a look-alike meter to find out which parent your child resembles more, and auto-tagging people in photographs using face recognition.

You might also want to check out these previously featured sites on MakeUseOf:

• Celebrity Match Up: Find your celebrity lookalike
• MorphThing: Morph any two photos together into one
• Yearbook Yourself: Give your photos a retro look

So who did you morph yourself into? Share with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The Mac and the cameras

So I connect my digital camera to my Mac almost all the time; saving those precious moments to the hard drive.

There are two applications that I use to manage my photos: iPhoto (which always opens automatically), and the camera picture transfer software from my camera manufacturer – just for the sake of backup.

But the source of photos is not only my own camera. My wife has a pocket digital camera. My kids are still babies, but soon they too will start taking pictures. And I believe that there are folks who have several cameras for each of their family members. Over time, managing all of the devices and all the pictures taken by them could be mundane tasks.

Luckily, there’s Cameras – a little Mac app to help you manage all of your cameras including your iPhone’s camera.

Shoot, Cameras, Manage!

This camera picture transfer software from Flexibits is less than 1MB in size. So downloading it wouldn’t be a problem. The installation process is also a snap; you just double-click on the “Cameras.prefPane”. Cameras will then reside in your Mac’s System Preferences.

You will have a blank “Cameras” Preferences Pane window. Make sure to check “Enable Cameras” and choose “Ask what to do” in the options of “When you connect new cameras”. These option allow Cameras to always run in the background and ask you what to do if you connect new camera(s).

After doing that little setting, I connect my camera to my Mac and… a pop-up window appears and asks what to do every time that specific camera is connected. The options are: do nothing, open iPhoto, open Image Capture, open other application, and automatically download. Choose one according to your preferences.

The nice thing about Cameras is that you can set different things to do for each different camera. If you want to, you can choose to simply download all images from all of your cameras automatically.

But if you are a professional photographer who wants to edit the shots from your dSLR with Aperture while manage images from other cameras with iPhoto, you can do so. Just set your preference in Cameras and you won’t be bothered again.

With a little help from Image Capture

My personal preferences is to manage all my pictures with iPhoto and keep a copy of each for backup. To achieve this objective, I ask Cameras to open Image Capture.

In Image Capture, I set the option to download the image from my camera to a folder (as the back up) and set it to automatically opens iPhoto after the downloading process has finished.

I also dug a little bit deeper into Image Capture’s options and choose to

• delete items from camera after downloading
• automatically download all items from camera
• set the camera’s date and time

With everything is set, all that’s left for me to do is to continue taking pictures and connect my cameras to my Mac. No more manually opening several apps and downloading the images.

Final Note and Wish List

As the ’s’ behind the name suggested plural form, Cameras is indeed a useful little app for those who have multiple cameras.

But I need to point out that if you have only one camera, Image Capture could do a better job in automatic camera management.

So, I think Cameras would turn into a much better app if the developer adds the ability to:

• do several task for each device, for example: first downloads the pictures, then renames them, then opens iPhoto, and continues with the task of creating copies of the images in folder X.
• manage other cellphone’s cameras other than iPhone. Almost everybody has cellphones these days, and almost all cellphones have camera built in. iPhone might be very popular, but not everybody owns it.

Do you enjoy photography? Do you have multiple cameras? Have you tried Cameras? Or do you know better alternative application? Share using the comment below.

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