Photography Blog

Brandi Gore asked:




You finally purchased the  Cricut Design Studio software. Most likely your next question is, “Now what do I do?” Here are seven things you need to know  to jump start your learning of the program.

You can design with all of the cartridges, but you can only cut with the ones you have. Cricut Design Studio has every available cartridge loaded into the program. You can create all kinds of cutting files with any cartridge they offer. While that is fun for experimenting, just remember that when you go to cut the Cricut will ask you to load the specific cartridge used.

You can use more than one cartridge in a cutting. The options are endless. Bring letters and images from any cartridge into the cutting you are designing. When you are ready to cut, the Cricut will ask you to load each cartridge you used.

Connecting letters together to form one cutting is reffered to as welding. In order to weld letters together it is important to remember to check the welding box for each individual letter or image. Another interesting tidbit about welding is that it removes any scorelines on the image.

You can use other people’s cut  files. If you are low on creativity or time, your best solution is to use a file designed by someone else. There are Cricut Design Studio users that freely share their designs and ideas. The best starting point would be the Cricut.com message boards. There you will find links you can follow to cut  files all over the web. Simply download the file to your computer and the open it in the Design Studio.

You need to get updates to the Cricut Design Studio at Cricut.com. The updates not only fix any bugs in the program, they also add the latest cartridge releases for you to design  with.

When previewing a cut, if it is welded together, the cutting lines will be in a bold line. If an image previews as a solid color then it is not welded. It is easy to miss checking the welding box on a letter as you are creating, and this is a sure-fire way to make sure that none of them are missing.

You can use several layers when creating a design.  For example, If you are creating a shadow for an image you need to open a new layer just for the shadow. Otherwise, when you go to cut it will cut the image and the shadow at the same time using the same paper. When previewing, the user has the option as to whether or not other layers show through to the one they are working on.

 

omes to Asian weddings, such important events should not be left in the hands of amateur photographers! Even if your cousin or your aunt takes excellent photographs, a wedding is just too important to ask someone you know and love to take pictures for you. It is very necessary to turn to the services of a qualified, trained, and professional asain wedding photographer if a soon to be married couple wants any assurance that the wedding photos will be nothing short of excellent. Friends and family should be enjoying the wedding, not taking photos of the ceremony and events. You don’t want one or two people left out of your wedding pictures because those one or two people were taking photos the entire course of the wedding and reception! UK asain wedding photographers offer superlative services for couples who intend to wed in the near future. When it comes time to locate one or more UK wedding photographers, the couple needs to examine the credentials of the photographers, the years of experience that the photographers have, the UK wedding photographers’ photographic portfolios, the packages supplied by the photographers, and the overall level of professionalism that the photographers exude. While it is only necessary to choose one photographer or one team of photographers out of all the UK wedding photographers considered, the weighted significance on a couple’s selection cannot be over emphasized. Since a wedding is a once in a lifetime experience which will be cherished for many years to come, the couple will want to hire the best of the best when it comes time to choose one of many UK wedding photographers. UK wedding photographers are certainly in abundance but that does not mean that every single photographer delivers the types of services a couple might expect. The bride and groom will need to clearly locate UK wedding photographers that are intimately familiar with the type of traditions one will maintain in a wedding and reception so that such traditions and moments of incredible importance can be properly captured in beautiful photographs. Here the style used by the UK wedding photographers will need to be thoroughly examined and questioned; a couple will want to know what type of photographic approach that the UK wedding photographers utilise when taking photographs at the wedding and reception. Understanding the significance behind tradition and familial values is part of being a good wedding photographer. For example, if the couple is having an Indian wedding ceremony, the photographer will need to be able to recognize some of the typical traditions and events that occur in Indian weddings worthy of photographic attention. Thus attention to the type of wedding ceremony being held is crucial for the photographer, and the couple will want to question the photographer’s experience when it comes to various wedding traditions and ceremonies. UK wedding photographers will vary in terms of the packages offered to couples, so what is included in packages will need to be carefully reviewed. In addition to formal photographs of the bride, groom, the in-laws and the wedding party, the couple might also have an interest in outdoor photos, photos of the wedding location, and the reception area, and of friends and family enjoying the ceremony and reception. Posed photos are sometimes desired by couples in addition to spontaneous or candid captures of the wedding. The UK wedding photographers’ portfolios will reveal the exact style that a photographer or studio leans toward and the couple can even suggest that they would like similar poses or captures identified in the portfolios they view. Couples may want to spend a bit of time on the Internet browsing different UK wedding photographers websites too. The web presence established by professional UK wedding photographers makes it truly convenient for couples to seek out qualified wedding photographers while relaxing in the home environment. This step should, however, not exclude the act of making sure you go to visit the studio of a photographer; a meeting should be had with the photographer in person so that portfolios can be viewed, packaging options can be discussed, and so the photographer can provide the couple with information about his or her services. At this meeting, the couple can then determine if the UK wedding photographer has the type of personality that is conducive to the wedding: one that will come across as warm, professional, friendly, and approachable. The couple will have a chance to review the images captured by the UK wedding photographers hired and to choose the images that are most appealing. Some UK wedding photographers offer wedding album compilations services as well; the images are all placed into a pre-selected wedding book for the bride and groom. This saves the bride and groom an extra step after the wedding of having to place all of the photographic captures into a protective wedding album. It also ensures that the photos will be in an album suitable to photographs: one that will look after the longevity of the images captured on the couple’s wedding day.

By: Mandy Chagger

About the Author:

Chris Marshall asked:




Digital photos are stored as files on memory cards and computer hard disks. They can be stored in different file formats (each format has a unique file extension). Most of the formats are compressed to save space and each has its own pros and cons.

The need for standard file formats

Digital photos are saved as digital files on electronic media. These digital photo files are a collection of bytes. If each manufacturer and camera would have used a proprietary file format then you would have needed proprietary software that could read, print and display those formats. Using a standard format allows any camera to save photos while any other software can read, display and print them.

What is compression and why it is needed

A digital photo is a collection of pixels each pixel is stored as a value that represents its color and intensity. Usually each pixel is represented by an RGB value (three numbers one byte each with values 0 to 255 representing the intensity of Red, Green and Blue that combined together create the pixel’s color). An RGB value occupies 3 bytes. So how big is a digital photo file? It depends on the number of pixels in the photo. For example if you shoot a photo using an 8 mega pixels digital camera the photo will have 8000000 pixels each one occupying 3 bytes. The total file size would be 8000000*3=24000000 or 24Mbytes. This is a very big file. Big files are harder to manipulate they take a long time to send by email, they occupy large storage space and they take longer to load.

In any digital photo there is data that is either redundant or that if removed the viewer would not be able to notice the difference. In addition representing pixels as RGB values is not efficient in terms of storage space. The process of compression takes advantage of these facts. When you compress a digital photo the compression software represents pixels in a more efficient way, removes redundant data and removes data that is “not important”. The result is a significantly smaller file. For example the above 24Mbytes file could easily be compressed to about 3Mbytes with hardly any noticeable quality degradation.

Before compressed digital photo files can be viewed or printed they need to be decompressed. Decompression is the reverse process of compression – a compressed file is converted to its original format usually a simple RGB pixel file. Using standard compression file formats allows one software to compress a digital photo file and another software to decompress it and process it.

Lossy or Lossless compression?

There are two main types of compression software: lossy and lossless. Here are the differences:

Lossless compression: Lossless compression means that if you take a file compress it and then decompress it the decompressed file would be the exact copy of the original file. With lossless compression no data is lost in the compression process the compression software uses better representation of the data in the file but it does not remove any data from it.

Lossy compression: Lossy compression means that if you take a file, compress it and then decompress it the decompressed file would be slightly different than the original one. The compression software not only represents the file’s data more efficiently but it also removes data that it considers minor or not important. Such data can be removed without hardly any noticeable degradation in the file quality. The differences between the original file and the decompressed file are minor and should be negligible to the user.

Lossless compression is usually applied to text and other data where all data is equally important. For example when compressing the text in this article and later on decompressing it you would want to get the exact original article without any words or sentences dropped by the compression software that decided they were not important.

Lossy compression is usually applied to digital photos and graphic files. Such files include data that the viewer would not be able to notice if removed. For example small changes to color in a photo might not be noticeable. The decompressed file is not exactly the same as the original one but when viewing both the original and decompressed photos side by side the viewer can not tell the difference. Lossy compression software can be set to different compression levels based on how much data is allowed to be lost. At some point losing too much data is noticeable and degrades the digital photo quality. Many digital cameras allow you to set the level of compression from low to high where high compression means smaller files but less quality and low compression means bigger files but no noticeable quality degradation.

Common digital photo file formats

You can know what a digital photo file format is by checking its extension. Usually the extension is three letters representing a specific format. Here is a list of the common extensions and formats:

BMP Windows Bitmap: this is a basic raw format. The photo is stored as a pixel raster and is not compressed. While this format is very easy to use and is supported by practically all software it is not efficient as there is no compression applied.

GIF Graphics Interchange Format: An old file format initiated by CompuServe. It uses a lossless LZW compression and is thus more efficient than BMP files. GIF files are very efficient for storing basic graphics (that include lines, circles and other graphical shapes) and also efficient for storing small digital photos but are rarely used to store large digital photos as there are more efficient formats for that purpose. GIF files can also include multiple “frames” and support basic animation.

PNG Portable Network Graphics: This relatively new format was designed to be used in online applications such as web pages. It uses a lossless compression. The original goal of the PNG format was to replace GIF (due to some licensing complications associated with the GIF format). PNG is commonly used now by online web sites to represent small digital photos or graphics replacing the GIF format.

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group: Also known as JPG this file format was designed by a special industry group and became an ISO standard. The design goal of the format was the efficient storage of digital photographic files. Although JPG files can support lossless compression they are almost always used in lossy compression mode. JPG files are very efficient in compressing digital photos. The JPG compression software can be set to different compression levels with higher compression levels the photo files can get very small but they can also get distorted. JPG files are the most common ones used by digital cameras to store compressed digital photos on memory cards and computer hard disks as they result in small file sizes and hardly any noticeable photo quality degradation.

Ziv Haparnas asked:




Digital photography revolutionized the way in which we take, view and share photos and also the way in which we print them. Many digital photos never get printed but there are still many of us who prefer tangible paper prints. Photos can be printed using a professional service (in-store or online) or at home. In this article we will give you tips for getting quality prints at home.

A few years ago getting high quality prints at home was an expensive task that was only suitable for semi-professionals who could afford it and who had the know-how. Today low cost printers can generate amazing quality prints and sophisticated software can do most of the processing work behind the scenes. The result is that even amateur photographers can generate very high quality prints by pressing a single Print button.

There are a few simple tips to follow that can help in getting higher quality prints:

Edit your photos: make sure that you print exactly the photo that you want printed. Using simple photo editing tools (such as Photoshop or even Windows built-in Paint application) you can crop a photo to include just the area you are interested in or crop out parts which you do not want in the print. For example you took a photo of a group of friends but on the left corner of the photo there is a bystander that just happened to be there. You can crop the photo to include only your friends and thus effectively eliminate the unwanted object from the print.

When cropping photos always remember aspect-ratio – depending on the paper and the printer you’re using sometimes you’re limited to a certain photo size. For example if you print on a special 4X6 photo paper any source photo that is not in a 4X6 aspect ratio will have to be either stretched, cropped or parts of the print will be left blank. Make sure that you crop your photo to fit a specific aspect ratio if you’re printing on a specific aspect-ratio paper.

More photo processing can be done in order to enhance your prints. It can include red-eye removal (many software packages will do it for you automatically) contrast enhancement and more. For example if a portion of the photo that is important to you is a bit dark – you can “stretch” the color palette in a way that this section will look more lit and detailed. This will usually be on the expense of “overexposing” other portions of the photo that you care less about.

Always remember photo resolution: Every photo is built out of pixels. The more pixels in a photo the higher the photo resolution is. We will not get into details here about the correlation between mega pixels and print quality but a general rule of thumb is that to get good print quality you need 300 pixels per inch or more. This means for example that the biggest paper size a 2 mega pixels photo can be printed on is 4X6 while an 8 mega pixels photo can be printed on an 8X10.

Pick the right printer and paper: there are many different printing each with its advantages and disadvantages. They range in quality and cost. To get the best print quality you should use photo paper in conjunction with a printer that supports such paper. Photo paper and photo printers are more expensive than document oriented A4 Inkjet printers. Choose the printer by evaluating how many prints you will make and how important quality is to you. If you print occasionally for fun an Inkjet printer with normal or photo paper is probably good enough for you. If you print a lot and quality is very important photo paper with a photo printer is the way to go. As a rule of thumb glossy photo paper provides the best quality for color photo prints while matte photo paper provides the best quality for black and white prints.

Printer ink and maintenance: printers need to be setup and maintained. It is extremely important to follow the instructions and to use compatible ink cartridges. High quality compatible ink can make the difference between low and high quality prints. It is usually recommended to buy ink from the same brand as the printer. Some calibration is usually needed when replacing ink and sometimes every few months of use. Follow the instructions for such procedures carefully as a calibrated printer results in much better quality prints than a printer that is not aligned and is poorly maintained.

In conclusion it is very easy to print your photos at home. Just buying a mid-range printer and hitting the “Print” button in your photo viewing software will probably result in good prints that are satisfactory for most consumers. Following some simple tips can enhance those prints to professional quality. As technology advances and prices go down experimenting at home with various photo processing tools, paper sizes, paper types and inks becomes affordable and is probably the best way to find what combination yields the best print quality for you.

Humberto Cortes asked:




During your next store trip head over to the periodicals. Observe as you approach the immediate thing that leaps out is not the bold titles or the properly fronted article highlights but the bright and vivid photos. All the wording and catchy titles become hidden behind the power and focus of a well taken photo. The art of photography does not come from years of schooling and experience but from being the right person in the right place at the right time.

Visual imagery is the new universal language as countries and individuals move towards the global market. A photograph can display a product, capture a moment in time or entice the imaginations of the viewers without a need for translation or explanation. The new global market offers a fantastic opportunity for any photographer, experienced or inexperienced. Photographers looking to improve their skills without years of educational expenses can take advantage of photography workshops where they can pick up new skills and various photo tips such as landscape photography tips.

Following simple guidelines can improve any photographer, increasing their odds of capturing the perfect shot they desire. The idea of using a tripod for photography may seem outdated, however, a tripod can provide a sturdy structure to assist in maximizing the opportunity to take a clear and detailed photo with minimal to no image distortion. If you are taking landscape photographs remember to include a focal point in your photo. A photo without a focal point will leave the observer lost in a photograph where as a point of focus can draw in the viewers focus and assist them in appreciating the smaller features within the big picture. While these tips primarily relate to landscape photography tips, they can increase any photographer’s skills regardless of their desired photos effect.

Many people see the photographers life as a never ending adventure visiting far off lands and exciting venues. The fact is, it’s true. When a photographer becomes well established they are commissioned by the entertainment community, travel industry, news industry and many more. While this may seem out of reach, every photographer has had a beginning where they took their own photographs and marketed them to the world. The illusion that the opportunity of the photography Cashcow is outside your grasp is just that, an illusion. Any individual with the desire to make money and the skill of taking a photo can prosper from the photography market.

The first step to taking advantage of photography is to make an honest assessment of your skills by studying your previously taken photos. Joining photography workshops and giving samples of your photos can allow yourself and others in the field to critique your photographs and identify your areas of improvement. With your new skills you can begin to make your move towards the photographers life and take advantage of the photography cashcow.

Alex W.K. asked:




This article focuses on choosing a qualified photography school. One way to learn about photography is go to school. There are quite a few photography schools around the country that offering quality lesson. Some ranges from low to very expensive. But you need to ask yourself what is the photography skill that you want to learn. Obviously, you need to begin with the basic of photography before moving up or if you are experienced photographer you can learn new tips and tricks. But how can you find a qualified photography school that meet up to the standard?

A professional photography with a course that designed by a real photographer. You might want to consider how the mentors contribute to their students, will you receive much support after enrollment? You have to ask some several questions to the course owner before you decide to enroll.

The other way is to check out their forum or blog to see what other students are talking about the course? As for an online class, there is no faculty to attend. Online courses usually are done interactively through a home computer. Online courses are usually offer lower fee compare to a physical school.

As mentioned above, check out the course outlined, subjects and creator to make sure the photography school is offering a quality course and more importantly has a refund policy. It is not hard to find these information, you can do the research online. Nowadays, not many photography schools are offering high quality courses, some are run by photography amateur only know a few things about photography, then trying to rip some money from innocent users.

Firoj Khan asked:




Canvas photo printing is just a picture on a canvas based on a traditional photo print, digital image photography or scanned image. By taking a photo and printing on canvas you allow yourself to see the original photo in much greater detail the way a really special photo is meant to be seen. If you have photos that you want to highlight and showcase, turning them into pieces of art instead of burying in a photo album, printing on canvas is the best option.

Canvas photo printing is the material of choice for artists since it will last for decades – think about all the famous paintings on canvas that have been done for centuries that you have seen in any big museum. Printing your canvas photo could give your photos lasting quality to share with future generations. There is no need to go out and buy fancy and expensive wall art, you already own the best art and that has a more personal connection to you. Imagine, a 36×48 master piece of your own photo printed on canvas to enjoy for many years to come. Your special canvas photo.

Using a digital camera that is 3 mega pixel or higher with the picture taken at the highest setting will give the best results for canvas printing. For printing a canvas photo, there are many sizes to choose from and framing techniques. You can have your canvas photo printed on canvas in many style choices and techniques like Sepia or Light Brush strokes – so whether you like the modern or the classic look, it’s up to you to decide how your photos are printed on canvas. Older images can even be restored or touched up before they are put on canvas to help restore them to their original quality.

Here are some special occasions that canvas photos would make a great gift for

The new baby or other family member canvas photo

A family reunion or family tree canvas photo

Weddings or Wedding anniversary canvas photo

That unforgettable trip canvas photo

Sporting events canvas photo

Beloved pet or pets canvas photo

Graduations or dedication ceremonies canvas photo

Any other memory that you want to live on canvas photo