Category: Video

Whitening Teeth

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While it’s not the most glamorous thing in the world, when we do portrait work, a lot of the post process focuses on minimizing flaws and maximizing peoples assets. Part of this process can include giving a little more polished look to people’s teeth. Today, I walk you through the process of how to do this in Photoshop. It’s pretty straightforward, but a very useful skill to have regardless. Anyway, give it a try after watching the tutorial, and in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on the podcasts thus far either via email or the comments section. I’ve also published an article in m previous post that explains various settings for apertures and shutters to achieve the best composition in your photography, so check that out too.

Fair warning on the tutorial this go around – I think I have the format issue figured out for those on Macs and to increase the portability factor, but these files are pretty big (.mov format), so it may take a while for you to get these downloaded. I will still have the flash as an option for web viewing, so feel free to view online and download for playback later at your convenience. Since iTunes picks up the first uploaded attachment, the Quicktime version will appear first. The flash-based version is right below that though, so pick your poison. Let me know if either of these doesn’t work for you. Thanks and looking forward to the feedback on this one! Have a good night and happy shooting!

Link to Quicktime format for downloading: Whitening Teeth

Creating re-sizing actions in Photoshop

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For those who like to create actions for their own work flows in Photoshop, I’ve created a set of re-sizing actions that I use pretty regularly to resize image from their camera raw settings to either 800px or 600px on the longest side. It took a bit of manual, but simple math, and then some tedious manual size adjustments, but the results are far better than anything you would get from a one-stop adjustment tool (unless of course it’s another action). If you’d like to see the completed action, just drop me a line and I will be happy to share the action on an as-requested basis. Thanks again for tuning in, and enjoy the podcast!

Watching paint dry…creating worlds

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Today as I entered the final stages of my home projects (2nd coats of paint), I proceeded to enjoy some Sunday football as the paint dried. Not being one to sit around much lately, I kept the TV on in the background and looked around for something else to do on the project list. Since I was waiting on the last coat of paint to dry, I was left to either watch football, watch paint dry, or create a new tutorial. Creativity won out, so here’s the latest installment for the video tutorial series…creating globes via special effects in the program we all know and love – Photoshop! Enjoy, and I’ll post back later this week with the series of home improvement projects I’ve been working on so much lately.

Special Effects Globes

Weekly Video tip is finished

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The regular video tutorial for this week has finished production and is ready for viewing here at Canon Blogger. This week’s subject: Using path selections to define your workspace. This is a great technique for adding text in a non-linear path (horizontal or vertical). You can use any of the pre-set marquee shapes and sizes, or make a custom one for your needs. Today, I used this technique to create an alternate logo for Canon Blogger. Other outputs could include posters, stationery, web graphics, designs, templates or pretty much anything that needs some graphical influence.

Shots of the completed housework should be forthcoming within another day or two as well. It’s been a week-long process, but I am almost done (just as well after all the electrical, plumbing, painting, and drywall work)… more news on that later. For now, just enjoy the vid, and as always feel free to leave feedback here or via email: jason <at> canonblogger <dot> com :

Path Selection Tool

News lag

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It’s been a quiet few days as some home tasks have been taking up a lot of my time.  Over the course of the weekend, I began an electrical project (replacing outlets with GFCI), a plumbing project (replacing faucets in bat), and construction (drywall patching, and accessoy replacements in bath and shelving downstairs).  All that on top of the usual family routine of dinner and dog walks has put a bit of a crimp on my posts.  Having said that, the day off on Monday allowed me to put a video podcast in the can for release on Friday, so that should be forthcoming in 48 hours.

In Photo news, I was reading Scott Kelby’s blog the other day when he mentioned the website Pixel Perfect where Bert Monroy demonstrates various techniques using Photoshop.  The production quality is professional and just goes to show how far I have to go to gain that kind of quality in delivery and recording.  Such is the difference of an amateur tutorial versus an established and professional photo professional and Adobe evangelist.  Perhaps some day…

Anyway, Bert Monroy did a fantastic tutorial on how to create a smoking gun entirely inside of Photoshop.  Great technique and it’s a highly recommended 5 minutes toward learning PS techniqes.  Check it out here.

A special “Thanks”…

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Today we honor all veterans of the Armed Forces of the U.S.A. I would like to take a moment to thank each and every one of those that have and those who continue to serve to protect our country. Our freedom and way of life was paved by your predecessors and continues to find new outlets in the world thanks to the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. To all those who serve – we salute you!

One of the side effects of honoring our veterans is that I got an extra day off work today. So…lucky viewers and listeners, I was able to get another podcast out, which means there will likely be two this week (I may even get an extra “in the can” for next week”!) So…first up is a technique for creating reflections of objects or selections inside of Photoshop. Great for making web graphics, outputting to holiday greeting cards, and for presentations in many venues. Check it out at the link or the embedded version to the blog:

Visit here: Reflections in Photoshop

or watch below:

Selections tutorial is finished

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Just under the wire…the selections tutorial production has been completed and has been posted for viewing. At a total of just over 8 minutes, it shows three different selection techniques, that when used in concert with one another, can select exact selections with professionally feathered borders for transitions into other graphics. This is particularly useful if you are porting images taken into web designed graphic backgrounds for things like headers and banners.

ETA: The closing audio was positioned incorrectly, so a correction had to be made in post production. I ran that overnight and am uploading the replacement now…it should be functional within about an hour. (6:30 or thereabouts)…apologies for the technical mishap.

Flash Version is here

Windows Version is here

Or, stay on the blog and view the WMV file natively! Any way you like it…enjoy!

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Creative Presentations

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The aforementioned tutorial is now recorded and up for your viewing pleasure. Lots of content here including multiple layers, layer masks, gradients, keyboard shortcuts, and marquee selections in place, so hopefully a helpful tutorial all around. In the interests of providing a web-based version and a downloadable version, I am going to embed the flash one with this post, and provide a link to download either a WMV version or a Quicktime version. Fair warning, but the Quicktime version has a short feedback issue from when I re-recorded the intro vocals…will attend to that today (hopefully), but if you skip over the first ten seconds, a new musical intro is also in place (yup, I’ve been busy…new vocals, new musicals, and new tutorials!) So, without further ado, here’s today’s tutorial:

Mac Version

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Centering Objects

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Just a quick video podcast today, I ahd a few ideas on what to do, but the hours in the day ran short on me yet again, so, in time for the weekend, here is one on how to center objects inside of Photoshop. I used text here, but it really would work with any object you want to have completely centered across an entire image area. Check it out – it’s only 3 minutes total! Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to tune in next week when my new audio equipment will finally be up and running – microphones, cables, phantom power supplies, wall mounts and all!

Life Lessons (and a tutorial)

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The last week has been an interesting one… I got a call at work saying that my wife was at the doctor’s office and they were transferring her to the hospital as a precautionary measure for some elevated blood pressure levels. Needless to say, the next few days I was not thinking much about getting a new podcast tutorial out. After getting every test known to mankind done, the good news is that she is fine and will be sticking around for a while. The bad news is that she needs to go on some blood pressure medication and she has now joined the ranks of Vytorin membership (although her dosage is lower than mine).

That was Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday was pretty much a “recovery day” and I attended to the typical daily minutia that was not taken care of on Wednesday and Thursday.

Saturday, I had a photo assignment for a real estate agency, so I headed out to Daniel Island and shot the property from every angle you could think of. On the way back, I stopped off to get some pumpkins for carving today at one of the local farmer’s market vendors. The pumpkins and flowers made for such vibrant colors I couldn’t help but take some pictures there too.

So, now it’s Sunday and I’ve settled down in to do the post processing from my shoot yesterday, look at my fantasy football setup for the day, and record a tutorial for the blog!

It’s a quickie today, but something that has a lot of uses, and is so easy once you know how to do it, you’ll find yourself playing with Photoshop more and more as a result. The subject is creating backgrounds, and it’s pretty cool. Check it out: Creating Backgrounds in Photoshop

In the meantime, here’s one of the better shots that came from the pumpkin outing:

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