How I Did That - "Thanksgiving"

This is one of my older images, taken in 1997 on Thanksgiving and so titled "Thanksgiving". A couple of unique features to this that are uncommon in my work. First of it is a landscape, I usually am more interested in images of people. This is one of my most contrasty photographs but in the darkroom I used selectol soft for two minutes and Dektol for one minute along with on the enlarger I used a filter to reduce the amount of contrast. I knew there was detail in the dark areas. This scan doesn't show the real subtlety of the light areas and dark areas though. In art shows this is the image that gets the best response from people that don't normally go to art shows. They usually rip on the other artwork but say this is one of the best works in the show. In actuality I would think people that have a deep respect for black and white photography would love this with it's great tonal range. After the print was created I used selenium toner that really expanded the tonal range of the photograph. It is the most peaceful art I have ever made and really relaxes me when I look at it and it really seems to stick out like a sore thumb with the rest of my art.

I used a Fugi 35mm camera with tripod, about 30 second exposure, with Agfa 100 black and white film.

Cheers,
Mike

Send Out Cards

Send Out Cards -

A concept and service that is changing people's lives.

You can send a printed greeting card with your message in Less than 60 Seconds.

Choose your card
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SendOutCards prints it, stuffs it and mails it, all for less than a greeting card at the store.

Send Out Cards is a great way for individuals and businesses to keep in touch with people, while keeping you organized and maximizing your free time. To find out more visit our page about Send Out Cards and find out how to get started today.

Digital Photos on Canvas is a distributor for Send Out Cards so feel free to ask us any questions you may have.

Mike

How to Save Custom Brush Variants in Corel Painter

Among the many questions new Corel Painter users ask is:

"How can I save brushes?"

Below is an edited version of my response to a new Painter user who asked this question recently:


With the brush variant you want to save selected:

1. Go to the Brush Selector menu and choose Save Variant.

2. Type a unique name not already used by Painter.

3. Click the OK button. Now your custom brush variant is saved.


With the original brush variant selected (the one to which you made brush control adjustments):

Go to the Brush Selector menu and choose Restore Default Variant.

Now the original brush variant is returned to its default state.


Suggestion:

Go to the Help menu and choose Help Topics. Then read the chapters listed on the Contents tab, starting at the top and progressing down the list of chapters. Read them in this order because they're arranged so the most basic information for newcomers to Painter is listed first.

Use the Favorites tab to bookmark pages you'll want to return to later.

Make a habit of reading Help Topics at least a few minutes each day.

This will help you feel more comfortable and confident with Painter faster than waiting for answers to questions posted in forums or newsgroups.

Sometimes you may either have trouble finding something in Help Topics or not understand the information provided. When that happens, post a question in the forum or newsgroup you visit and be very specific about what it is you want to know, what you want to do, the brush category and brush variant you're using (by exact names), provide a description of your image, and any other details that will help us to help you.

Corel Painter and Photoshop

Let’s first look at Photoshop and the CS package and what it has to offer on advantages.

The CS Advantage..

The new Adobe Creative Suite combines Adobe's graphics applications and an efficient workflow that answers the needs of nearly every creative professional, from conceptualization to implementation, from print to Web. Whats great about this pack of programs is that not only do designers get one program at a time; rather, a whole suite of the latest versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive software.

The Creative Suite is Adobe's attempt to bind the applications together. Now, Adobe's creative products use not only the same graphics engine but also the same type and color-management engines. Files that are created in one application can open easily in others with all their features intact. With a consistent user interface, moving from one application to another is easy.

And holding it all together is the new file-management and version-tracking technology Version Cue. The Version Cue lets you create and publish content for print and the Web faster, more easily, and more affordably. That's why Adobe is introducing this one whole package as "the complete design environment for print and Web publishing".

Adobe Photoshop for image editing- easily manage your images with the improved File Browser, quickly share design variations with Layer Comps, and instantly improve contrast with Shadow/Highlight correction; perform more precise editing and retouching with expanded support for 16-bit images and monitor changes to your image in the Histogram palette, which dynamically updates as you make adjustments.

Adobe Illustrator for drawing and vector graphics- with powerful new 3D features, advanced typographical controls, and a host of groundbreaking new design tools, this powerful upgrade from Illustrator 10 delivers the performance you need to make the most of your creativity; import Photoshop image compositions directly to Illustrator- or create drawings in Illustrator and import them directly into Photoshop; create native Adobe Portable Document Format files using settings and options consistent with Adobe Acrobat Distiller software and get fast, consistent print results with features like Fit to Page, Print Preview, and support for Print Settings.

Adobe InDesign for page layout and design, and Adobe GoLive for Web layout- import your native vector and bitmap artwork directly into InDesign CS software for sophisticated print layouts or into Adobe GoLive CS software for powerful web pages. With the support of Adobe PDF and XML, you can easily output your pages to both print and the Web.

The Corel Advantage…

With the introduction of Corel Painter IX, commercial designers, photographers, and professional artists are able to use their natural talents and techniques to create breathtaking works of art. Corel ensures that the new program is a must-have software for creative professionals, whether they're in film making, game development, commercial design, illustration, photography, or even fine arts.

With regards to performance and productivity, the Corel Painter IX boasts of significantly improved speed, new and enhanced Brush Control Palettes, Frames-per-Second Control, and Customizable Shortcut Keys. Professional users can extend their creative possibilities with new enhancements that include Artists' Oils Painting System, Snap-to-Path Painting, improved Digital Watercolor, and Quick Clone.

What is exciting about this new software is that the Corel Painter IX is more compatible with other professional technologies, providing enhanced support to Adobe Photoshop, Wacom (including the Wacom Intuos3), and Color Management.

What's more, getting started is easier than ever. Corel has provided various support guides to help end-users control their fear of tackling a seemingly intricate world of softwares and programs. Corel has provided a revitalized User Guide, the Painter IX Handbook that includes tutorials from leading creative professionals, access to free training videos, and academic courseware specifically designed for educators.

With powerful applications such as the Adobe CS and Corel, artists and designers alike can now combine both worlds of traditional art and sophisticated technology. The intricate tones of traditional art skills and techniques they've developed during their formation years as artists can be integrated with the incredible benefits that digital media can provide. Every creation can now be worthy of the exaltations and awe reserved for those found in galleries and exhibits. In addition, these art forms are now made at a faster and quicker rate than their original counterparts.

Customizing Corel Painter: Shortcut Keys

Corel Painter offers creative professionals an unprecedented level of control over their workflow by enabling complete customization of shortcut keys. You can save time by assigning your favorite commands to keys on your keyboard for immediate access. Along with character, numeric, function, and modifier keys, you can also use Tab, Backspace (Windows®), Delete, Insert, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Left Arrow, Right Arrow, and Spacebar. When assigning a command, you can over-write keys already used for other shortcuts.

You can also create a collection of keyboard shortcuts, or key sets, based on changes to the default key set. For easy reference, you can generate and print an HTML summary of a key set.

The Customize Keys dialog box lets you assign your favorite commands to shortcut keys.

To assign commands to keys
1. Do one of the following:

* (Mac OS) Choose Corel Painter IX menu > Preferences > Customize Keys.
* (Windows) Choose Edit menu > Preferences > Customize Keys.


2. Choose a key set from the Key Set pop-up menu.
The default key set is named "Default" and is not editable. When you change any shortcut in the Default key set, another set is created and named "Custom."

3. Choose one of the following from the Shortcuts menu:

* Application Menus to create or modify menu bar command shortcuts
* Palette Menus to create or modify palette menu command shortcuts
* Tools to create or modify tools shortcuts
* Other to create or modify non-menu, non-palette menu or non-tool command shortcuts


4. Choose a command from the Application Commands list, and type the shortcut keys you want to assign.

If the shortcut you assigned is already in use, a message appears below the Application Commands list.

5. Do one of the following:

* Click Accept to assign the shortcut to the command. The conflicting command that previously had the keyboard shortcut now has no keyboard shortcut assigned to it.
* Click Accept and Go To Conflict to assign the shortcut to the new command, and to assign another keyboard shortcut to the conflicting.


Key Set Reference
For your convenience, Corel Painter IX provides a handy HTML summary of any active key set which you can print to use as a reference.

To create an HTML Summary of a Key Set

1. In the Customize Keys dialog box, click the Create HTML Summary button.
2. In the Save Summary dialog box, type a name in the Filename box, and click Save.

Customizing Corel Painter window background color

Corel Painter lets you set the window background color to either the current main color or some other color of your choice. The window background color is displayed when you use full-screen mode to view your document. Full-screen mode hides your computer's desktop and lets you view the document window without scroll bars.
To change the window background color

1. Do one of the following:
* (Mac OS) Choose Corel Painter IX menu > Preferences > Palettes and UI.
* (Windows) Choose Edit menu > Preferences > Palettes and UI.


2. Do one of the following:
* To use the current main color, click Use Current Color.
* To choose another color, click Custom Color, select a color in the Color dialog box, and click OK.

Digital Photos on Canvas Shipping

Often we are asked how long it takes to receive your canvas. There are many factors involved in how long it will take. If you order from our main website: Digital Photos on Canvas and you order a canvas with painterly effect, collage, or image manipulation we send a proof and depending on how quickly we receive approval to print will decide how quickly you will receive your order.
If you order Rush service from either of our websites it will still take atleast two days before we can ship the order because it takes one day for the inks to cure and one day for the two layers of varnish to dry. If you order the standard service this process could take up to four business days.
Depending on Rush or standard service your order will take between 2-4 business day to print and package. Below is a map that shows depending on where in the United States of America you live how long UPS will take to deliver your photo canvas order. Add the days UPS will take plus the amount of time it takes us and it should be their by then.






Also, we usually ship orders that are Rush service Second Day Air to areas that would take four or more days to get to with UPS.

Thanks,
Mike

Square pegs don't fit in round openings and other great info on proportions.

Square pegs don't fit in round openings and other great info on proportions.

Once you understand photo proportions it seems easy to understand but to people that don't understand the concept this is actually hard to understand.

There are traditional photographic print sizes. That is what we offer for our photo canvas sizes. Most 35mm camera take photos that are proportional to a 12x18, and 24x36. That means if your photo was proportional to a 4x6 it would not be proportional to a 11x14 or 16x20 and some cropping would be necessary to have your image fill all of the 16x20 or 11x14.

We complicate matters more by having deep stretcher bars (at our website www.digitalphotosoncanvas.com not our express site) that look great but from the front you lose an additional 1.5" on each side. Below are examples of what a painting by Van Gogh would look like reproduced in different options.





For more information on proportions.

Cheers,
Mike

Understanding Pixel Resolution

Pixel resolution

The term resolution is often used as a pixel count in digital imaging, even though American, Japanese, and international standards specify that it should not be so used, at least in the digital camera field. An image of N pixels high by M pixels wide can have any resolution less than N lines per picture height, or N TV lines. But when the pixel counts are referred to as resolution, the convention is to describe the pixel resolution with the set of two positive integer numbers, where the first number is the number of pixel columns (width) and the second is the number of pixel rows (height), for example as 640 by 480. Another popular convention is to cite resolution as the total number of pixels in the image, typically given as number of megapixels, which can be calculated by multiplying pixel columns by pixel rows and dividing by one million. Other conventions include describing pixels per length unit or pixels per area unit, such as pixels per inch or per square inch. None of these pixel resolutions are true resolutions, but they are widely referred to as such; they serve as upper bounds on image resolution..............

Below is an illustration of how the same image might appear at different pixel resolutions, if the pixels were poorly rendered as sharp squares (normally, a smooth image reconstruction from pixels would be preferred, but for illustration of pixels, the sharp squares make the point better).



An image that is 2048 pixels in width and 1536 pixels in height has a total of 2048×1536 = 3,145,728 pixels or 3.1 megapixels. One could refer to it as 2048 by 1536 or a 3.1-megapixel image. As the megapixels of a camera increase so does the ability of a camera to produce a larger image; a 5 megapixel camera is capable of capturing a larger image than a 3 megapixel camera.

Larger monitor screens usually have higher screen resolution, measured in pixels.

Image Resolution

Image resolution describes the detail an image holds. The term applies equally to digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail.

Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Basically, resolution quantifies how close lines can be to each other and still be visibly resolved. Resolution units can be tied to physical sizes (e.g. lines per mm, lines per inch) or to the overall size of a picture (lines per picture height, also known simply as lines, or TV lines). Furthermore, line pairs are often used instead of lines. A line pair is a pair of adjacent dark and light lines, while lines counts both dark lines and light lines. A resolution of 10 lines per millimeter means 5 dark lines alternating with 5 light lines, or 5 line pairs per millimeter. Photographic lens and film resolution are most often quoted in line pairs per millimeter.

Curves for Adobe Photoshop

This is a little more complex. This is better if you have an image with bright highlights and want to bring up the shadows in exchange for flattening the highlights a little.
Deliberately underexposing a digital camera in contrasty light and then doing this actually improves the image over a conventional exposure, because it gives you the ability to create a shoulder for the highlights that's missing in digital cameras.

Call up curves by IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > CURVES or simply command + M.

Put the cursor on the lower middle of the diagonal line. Click and hold it and drag it up.

-Mike

Adobe Photoshop Levels Command

LEVELS COMMAND

Go to the LEVELS adjustment either by IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS or simply command + L.

You'll see a histogram; which is a graph charting the relative amounts of light and dark in your image. You'll see that it doesn't make it all the way to the right of the space in which it sits. Click and drag the little white slider on the far right of the histogram to the left, just enough to meet the rightmost edge of the histogram. As you drag it make sure PREVIEW is checked and you can see what you're doing. Hit OK and you're DONE!

Hold the OPTION key on Mac while doing this and the image will go to super-high contrast. Drag the white slider left until some points just start to sparkle out of the black background. Take your finger off the Option key to see how the image really looks.

-Mike

Adobe Photoshop Tool Palette

This is a quick summary of Adobe Photoshop Tools palette with a description of each tools functions and shortcuts. Great for those brand new to Photoshop.

For those people who just got a copy of Adobe Photoshop and have no idea what to do with it. The keyboard shortcut is in ( ).

Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)
Use this tool to make selections on your image, in a rectangular shape. This changes the area of your image that is affected by other tools or actions to be within the defined shape. Holding the [Shift] key while dragging your selection, restricts the shape to a perfect square. Holding the [Alt] key while dragging sets the center of the rectangle to where your cursor started.

Move Tool (V)
Use this tool to, well, move things. Usually you use it to move a Layer around after it has been placed. Hold the [Shift] key to limit the movements to vertical/horizontal.

Polygon Lasso Tool (L)
Ok, this should be the Lasso Tool, but I use the Polygon Lasso a lot more often. Use this to draw selections in whatever shape you would like. To close the selection, either click on the beginning point (you will see the cursor change when you are on it), or just double-click. When holding the [Ctrl] key, you’ll see the cursor change, and the next time you click, it will close your selection.

Magic Wand Tool (W)
Use this to select a color range. It will select the block of color, or transparency, based on wherever you click. In the Options Bar at the top, you can change the Tolerance to make your selections more/less precise.

Crop Tool (C)
The Crop Tool works similarly to the Rectangular Marquee tool (see above if you have no short-term memory). The difference is when you press the [Enter/Return] key, it crops your image to the size of the box. Any information that was on the outside of the box is now gone. Not permanently, you can still undo.

Slice Tool (K)
This is used mostly for building websites, or splitting up one image into smaller ones when saving out.

Healing Brush Tool
This is a really useful tool. Mildly advanced. You can use this tool to repair scratches and specs and stuff like that on images. It works like the Brush tool (see below). You choose your cursor size, then holding the [Alt] key, you select a nice/clean area of your image. Let go of the [Alt] key and paint over the bad area. It basically copies the info from the first area to the second, in the form of the Brush tool. Only, at the end, it averages the information, so it blends.

Brush Tool (B)
This is one of the first tools ever. It is what Photoshop is based off of. Well, not really, but it is pretty basic. It paints one your image, in whatever color you have selected, and whatever size you have selected.

Make Screenshot

This article will teach you how to make a screenshot of any web page or capture any screen event. Step by step instructions are given for Photoshop.

1. Open the web page in the web browser. On Windows, press the Print Screen or Prnt Scrn key on your keyboard, found at the upper right of the keyboard. This key will capture the entire screen. If your monitor resolution is set to 640x480, that's the size of the screen capture. If your monitor resolution is set to 600x800, that will be the size of the screen capture, etc.

To capture only the active window, press Alt + Print Screen.

On the Mac, press Command + Shift + 3.

2. Next, open up Photoshop.

3. In Adobe Photoshop, select File/New, then Edit/Paste. Your screen capture is now ready to be cropped or scaled. opposite direction.

-Mike

How I Did That - "Legacy"

The title of this photograph is "Legacy". This was taken with a 6x7 Pentax camera with Agfa 100 film. I used a fisheye lens but attached a macro adapter that wasn't supposed to work with the fisheye. This is my son Finnegan at age two months. When I took the photograph the fisheye lens was 1/4 of an inch away from his nose. The camera was on a tripod and I had a flash I held about two feet away. Of course those glasses are mine and I imagine he will be doomed to have to wear glasses when he is older. The print was done in the darkroom on 8x10 forte fiber based paper, I did a small amount of dodging to his left eye that in this scan doesn't show the fine detail work of that dodging but that was all I needed to do to this print. I did make one huge print of this that was three feet by four feet - it gave a crazy feeling standing in front of this image 3x4 feet. This print has won a couple of awards the last was 1st place in the Waupaca art show. It is always great to combine a quality print with humorous subject matter.

-Mike