Category: Post Production

Convert any photo into an illustration

By John Watson
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Here’s something we’ve never tried before here at Photodoto.com: a tutorial screencast. This screencast shows a fast, fun, and easy way to convert any photo into an illustration. Please let us know if you had any problems viewing it. Also, leave a comment if you like the screencast format and would like to see more posts like this one. Thanks for watching!

Click To Play

Links in this screencast:

  • Inkscape – free vector graphics application similar to Illustrator, Freehand, Corel Draw
  • Click here to view a higher quality Quicktime version of this screencast.

Here are the before and after photos shown in this screencast:

Before

After

… Continue reading Convert any photo into an illustration

Google adds facial recognition to image search

By John Watson
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Ars Technica is reporting that Google has quietly added basic facial recognition features to their image search. There is no user-interface for it yet and it can currently only be accessed by appending &imgType=face to an image search. Here’s an example (I’m on page 2): John Watson

Still in the experimental stages, this would obviously be a killer feature to add to Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, Google’s photo management application. It would be huge to be able to identify people in just a few photos in your collection and then be able to search for all photos with those same people. Riya.com has had something like this for a while with its “People” tab.

Google’s addition of this feature is a shot across the bow of every other photo sharing service out there. I can only speculate that Flickr, Smug Mug, and other photo sharing services are working on similar features. They’d better be because this is the sort of thing that will make sorting through thousands of photos of people much easier than it has ever been before. I for one would love to be able to sort out pictures of just my kids,

… Continue reading Google adds facial recognition to image search

Do a DoubleTake on Your Photos

By Michael Fletcher
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How would you like to turn your 6 megapixel D100 into a 17 megapixel super D100 for less than $20? You can if you use a Macintosh running OS X. Well, maybe it really won’t actually turn a D100 into a 17 megapixel camera, but you’ll be able to create images of 17 megapixels or even larger relatively painlessly.

Enter a progrom called DoubleTake for Mac OS X. It’s a handy little shareware gem that does a stellar job of stitching images together to form a huge photograph that’s ideal for printing at up to poster sizes with incredible detail.

… Continue reading Do a DoubleTake on Your Photos

Exposure Blending Tutorial

By John Watson
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After posting Getting the Exposure Right, I received a quite a few questions about how I achieved the HDR (High Dynamic Range) version of the mailbox photo (last photo in that article). This tutorial will walk you through the basics of creating the same look by hand. All you need is camera and photo editing software that supports layer masking (you can follow these steps in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and The GIMP, among others).

… Continue reading Exposure Blending Tutorial

How to Preserve Your Photo’s Colors on the Web

By Michael Fletcher
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Have you ever uploaded a photograph from your computer to a photo hosting site or your blog and find the colors seem less or more vibrant and just generally not as impressive as you see on your monitor?

When I first started posting my photographs on the web to sites like Flickr, I noticed that often the colors would look less vibrant and subdued when I viewed them on my browser. Somehow they seemed to lack the pizazz and zip they have when viewing them in Photoshop.

… Continue reading How to Preserve Your Photo’s Colors on the Web

REVIEW: Picnik.com online photo editor

By Elizabeth West
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Picasa was the first online editing software that I heard people rave about, but I was left out of the fun; I couldn’t use it from my Mac. I still can’t, because I haven’t upgraded to 10.4, so I’ll never know what all the fuss was about. However, now I can play with Picnik.com, so I’m a happy camper.

… Continue reading REVIEW: Picnik.com online photo editor

Creating a 3D effect with image editing software

By John Watson
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Instructables 3D effectInstructables, a site that lets you share “what you make and how others can make it,” has a neat tutorial by Andrew546 describing how to create a 3D effect (pictured right) with your own photos. I’d say this tutorial is for anyone who knows the basics of layer masking (or who really wants to learn more about it). The 8-step tutorial is easy to follow with pictures describing each step.

Creating a 3D effect with image editing software [Instructables]

[via Lifehacker]

… Continue reading Creating a 3D effect with image editing software

How to process a photo for “mood”

By John Watson
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I was going through the tremendous Photodoto photo pool over at Flickr and found a great photo by photographer Remco Douma:

Gloomy

What makes this photo really neat though, is how he modified it from the original to create a specific mood. The processing steps he took are simple to do, yet create a powerful new image with a completely different feel from the original. It’s a great example of how learning to “develop” photos in the digital darkroom can really pay off.

… Continue reading How to process a photo for “mood”

How to crop a photo for better composition

By Elizabeth West
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In an ideal world, every photo you take would be perfectly composed. However, in real life, many pictures could use some improvement. Often, thoughtful cropping can make the difference between a mediocre image and a better one. Cropping a picture just means eliminating or trimming off edges.

… Continue reading How to crop a photo for better composition

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