Tag: Editing

by David Burgess on May 31, 2018 0

FREE Horse and Pony Clip Art

Horse Clip Art for Web Sites, Crafts and More

This site features the best resources for FREE horse and pony themed clip art. What’s even better is that all of the clip art listed below have no terms of use restrictions. You can use them for websites, online scrapbooks and other great projects.

The horse clip art images used on this page are from the sites listed below and available for you to use. I also created a few dividers have made them available near the end of this page. To use any of the horse clip art images on this site just right click and save to your computer. Take a look and enjoy!

Millermark Creations

Free Horse and Pony Clip Art

While putting this clip art site together I found Millermark Creations free horse and pony clip art. It has quickly become my favorite. They offer an amazing variety of images. You will find funny cartoons, colored art, decorative art, instruction art, realistic images and vintage clip art.

Free Horse Clipart from Millermark Creations
As of 3/05/13, there are no restrictions for using these images. It is a good idea to verify that this information is still valid.

Open Clip Art Library

Free Horse and Pony Clip Art

Open Clip Art Library has a nice collection of horse and pony clip art images. This collection consists of both color and black and white images. They also provide an online editing tool.

Open Clip Art Library Horse Clip Art
As of 4/29/12 all images have been released into the public domain and can be used for both private and commercial use without any restrictions. If using an image It is a good idea to verify that this information is still valid.

WP Horse Clip Art

Free Horse and Pony Clip Art

WPClipart has many horse and pony public domain images. The collection has a variety of both color and black and white realistic drawings, cartoon images and a few photographs.

WPClipart – Horses and Ponies Clip Art and Images
As of 3/05/13, all images have been released into the public domain and can be used for both private and commercial use without any restrictions. However, it is a good idea to verify that this information is still valid.

Karen’s Whimsy Clip Art

Karen’s Whimsy Clip Art has a small selection of horse clip art images. They are from an old Spanish dictionary and in the Public Domain. The images are all black and white. Most of which are pieces from the clip art image pictured here.

Karen’s Whimsy Horse Clip Art
As of 3/05/13, all images have been released into the public domain and can be used for both private and commercial use without any restrictions. It is a good idea to verify that this information is still valid.

Share on Read Full Story

by David Burgess on May 24, 2018 0

Portrait Photography Tips ~ Use A Canon Rebel T3i For Portraits

How To Take Portraits (For Beginners)

GREAT NEWS!!
You do not need a professional digital SLR camera to take awesome portraits.
You can get super portraits with an inexpensive (cheap even) DSLR camera. In fact, if you own a Canon Rebel T3i, you have in your hands an excellent tool for portrait photography.

The technology that Canon has built into its newest Rebel cameras is improved by leaps and bounds over what was available even a couple of years ago. Combine this inexpensive digital SLR with a even a so-so Canon Portrait Lens, and you have a combination that will get you some great portrait shots as well as lots of happy feedback from those you photograph.

Getting Ready To Take A Portrait

Begin with the basics.
Portrait Mode The first thing you MUST do is take your Canon Rebel T3i off the Auto setting (a gasp is heard from the crowd)..

Really! You might get lucky and get a decent portrait in auto mode, but if you want the best results, you will have to take drastic steps.

There are two choices here. First, you can use the Portrait Mode supplied by the camera, or you can use Aperture Priority (Av).

Since the simplest way to get started is to use the Portrait mode setting, let’s start with that.

Set your camera on Portrait Mode. See the picture on the right. When you do this, your Rebel will automatically use the largest aperture available for the lens you have attached to the camera.

Photo by RebelT3iOwner

Say What?? (I am psychic; I know what you are thinking.)

Don’t worry. You don’t even have to know what an aperture is if you use the portrait mode.

The next thing to do is compose and take the shot. When you review your shot, you should see that the background is blurry. That is the sign of a good portrait.

So what if your background is not blurry? Well, here is how to make the background blurry.

First, use a lens with a longer focal length and step away from your subject (you can also accomplish this by using the zoom on your lens at its highest setting – on the kit lens, zoom to 55mm).
The second way to help out your background is to move the subject of your photo farther away from the background. In other words, put more space between the person you are photographing and the background. Do not have them standing with their back against a wall, for instance.

Using a tripod
If there is plenty of light, you can usually have good success with hand-holding your T3i, as long as you use good camera technique. However, using a tripod is never a bad idea for a regular portrait.

Tip For Getting Great Shots
Take shots when your subject is not expecting it. Most of us announce the timing with “Say cheese.” But if you want natural expressions, try taking spontaneous shots. Or, take several shots in succession after you do the “say cheese” thing. One feature that is enabled when you use Portrait Mode is Continuous Shooting. So, if you just hold down the shutter button, you will be taking up to 3.7 shots every second. Try it. You will get some surprisingly good shots that way.

Portraits Using Aperture Priority

Feeling adventurous? Try this.

Using Aperture Priority for Portraits When you take a portrait shot with you Canon Rebel T3i in Portrait Mode, the camera does all the thinking for you, including aperture, shutter speed, ISO.. all of it. That’s why the settings on “that side” of the dial are called Basic settings. The camera does all the thinking; all the photographer has to do is select the basic setting.

The settings on the “other side” of the dial are called Creative settings. This simply means that the photographer can take more control of what the camera does on a particular shot.

Taking portraits works very well when you choose the Av, or Aperture Priority, setting. Once in that position, simply select the “f-stop” you want to use (f-stop basically means Aperture setting). The one thing you have to remember here is that larger numbers mean smaller apertures and smaller numbers mean larger apertures.

Basically, you want to set your f-stop at the smallest number you can for the lens you are using. If you are using the kit lens (18-55mm), and you zoom to the 55mm length, you will choose f/5.6. Your Rebel will not let you choose a number any smaller than that. If you are shooting with your zoom lens at the 18mm length, you can choose f/3.5. This is because the lens has a variable aperture (the smallest aperture changes as the lens zooms to higher focal lengths).

OK, enough of the geeky stuff. Why would someone want to use Aperture Priority rather than Portrait Mode?

The simple answer is that there are those of us who believe that having as much control of the camera as possible gives us better final results (pictures). In aperture priority, you can set your own ISO in order to increase the shutter speed. You can also change the exposure compensation to add more or less contrast to the image.

Finally, and this is a real control thing, you can shoot in RAW rather than JPEG. If you choose to do this, you will definitely have to do some post-processing of every image in some photo editing program like Photoshop.

The intent of this article is not to be an entire photography course, so, let’s suffice it to say that if you want to venture into the realm of learning more about photography, use Aperture Priority. At least use it when the stakes are not too high. You can possibly mess up a photo op and not get the picture, so maybe save your experimenting for times when you can patiently learn how Aperture Priority works.

The photo above was taken using Aperture Priority. The light coming from the window gave some interesting effects. Using Portrait Mode gave would not allow me to take this without a flash, another reason to try Aperture Priority.

Photos by WRasku

Portrait Lenses For Canon

These lenses will go a long way toward making your pictures look GREAT!

Recommended focal length for portraits is about 75mm (plus or minus), but on a Rebel a 50mm lens is roughly equivalent to that because of something called the “crop factor.” So, any one of these lenses will qualify as an excellent choice for your future portraits.

Portraits With Props

Add Interest to portraits by adding unexpected items.

Canon Rebel T3i Portrait Sometimes you can get a great shot that grabs lots of attention by simply adding a hat or scarf. Simple things add so much interest if used in a way that develops a story along with the excellent quality of the Canon Rebel and the portrait lens you choose.

Recently, we were browsing in a downtown gift shop that had lots of hats, scarves, jewelry, and other great photo props. We ended up with some pictures that we normally would not have even thought to shoot.

..don’t stop after you get one shot. It sometimes takes a little time for the subject to start to relax..
Let your subject use her imagination when it comes to props like this. She will know what looks good on her (and, more importantly, she will know what she does not want to be seen in). The subject will also feel more at ease if he or she has some input into the setup of the shot. This can work very well with children as well as adults.

And don’t stop after you get one shot. It sometimes takes a

little time for the subject to start to relax and get into the mood. Also, don’t hesitate to show her (or him) the photos you are shooting. When she sees how good the pictures are turning out, she will be much more enthusiastic about the idea.

Another excellent way to generate excitement in this type of situation is to bring together two or three people who are friends. They will feed on each others excitement and enthusiasm.

You can even get good portraits in public places. In fact, this type of photo can add much more interest than using a standard photography background. Photographers use this quite often in senior portraits when the take their subject to stand by a tree or a covered bridge, but you can do the same thing at a restaurant or public square.

Photos by WRasku

Pet Portraits

Love taking pictures of your best friends?

Pet Portrait With Canon Rebel T3i Pets could be one of the most popular portrait subjects. After all, don’t we all love our dogs, cats, turtles, parakeets, etc, etc?

Yes we do!

The problem is, sometimes our beloved friends do not know how to cooperate.

In situations where getting the pet to look in the right direction, or just stay in one place long enough for you to get the shot, you will need a couple of things.

First, you need patience. Chances are you will have to take quite a few pictures before you get The One.
Someone to help you would also be helpful. You can enlist the help of another person who in intimate with the pet. (This is especially true if you are doing this for a friend, and the pet is not your own.)
This is where a good, fast lens comes in handy. Point and shoot cameras may get some good pet photos, but your Canon Rebel will shoot rings around a point and shoot in this situation, simply because you can choose the right lens for the shot.

Some other things that can help here are treats and toys. Most animals (even cats) respond to goodies. They also show interest in their favorite toys.. see the picture of Colby here.. he was looking intently at a treat.

Photo by WRasku

A Nifty Trick For Pet Photos

Pet wide angle portrait

Take a pet photo with a wide-angle lens.

This is Colby again. He is not the best model – hates to have his picture taken when he knows it’s going on the Internet. He’s so vain.

I did this with the kit lens at the widest focal length – 18mm. I got up really close – as you can see, his nose is out of focus, but the eyes are sharp. Sharp eyes are what separates an OK picture from one that has the possibility of being a WOW picture.

What happens in a picture like this is something called distortion. The lens distorts the actual image so that it looks a bit wonky. It will not make your wife (or husband) look like a super-model, but it’s fun for animals.

This one is not in the WOW category, but I was dealing with a moving target. You can take this technique and use it with your own pet. Farm animals like pigs and cows work perfectly with this method. Your fans, friends, and family will love it.

Using Your Canon Rebel T3i for Self-Portraits

Getting a bit lazy here. Rather than write about self portraits, I made a video.

With the Canon Rebel T3i’s articulating LCD, you can see yourself before you take the photo. All you need is a cheap remote shutter button.

Portraits That Tell A Story

The Canon Rebel T3i can capture the action.
Action Portraits With A Canon Rebel T3i Great portraits are not always a result of someone sitting on a stool in front of a photography backdrop with the camera man saying, “Cheese.” You can use a good digital SLR like the Canon Rebel T3i to capture some nice candid portraits like this one of the guitar player.

The truth is that your subjects will love the pictures when you are able to capture the personality of the moment. As the viewer looks at the photo, there is a story that emanates from the picture, or maybe it will be a question. But in either case, the picture gets the viewer involved, and that is one of the signs of a good photo.

Photo by WRasku

Use A Fast Canon Portrait Lens

Wide apertures help to blur the background.

Use A Fast Canon Portrait Lens Notice how the background is blurred in the photo above. The way that was accomplished was to use a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens set on Aperture Priority with the aperture set to f/2.8. This not only guarantees a blurry background, but it also gives you the fastest shutter speed possible in an indoor situation.

Nothing is worse than taking a killer picture of a great subject and having it totally messed up by some distracting background item that you didn’t even know was there.

Sometimes you can’t avoid background clutter, but you can blur it out using a wide aperture lens. One desirable feature of a Canon Portrait lens is a wide aperture.

Of course, it may also depend on the focal length of the lens to know whether an f/4.0 lens is wide enough to get that blurred background. If you can secure a lens with f/2.8 as its widest aperture, you will pretty much guarantee a nice blurred background.

Photo by WRasku

Edit Your Canon Rebel Portraits

Post processing adds punch to a photo.

Canon Rebel T3i Portrait Cropped Almost all digital photos can be “helped” with a little post-processing. You don’t need the most expensive photo-editing software to do this either. You can even use free online photo editing sites like GIMP or PICNIC to get your portraits looking good.

Sometimes all it takes is changing to black and white or a bit of cropping to make your portrait a real show-stopper.

Photo by WRasku

Keep Your Canon Rebel T3i In Plain Sight

Don’t be shy!
Don’t be shy with your Rebel T3i When you are at special events, you are in prime territory for portrait shots.

This shot was taken at a Civil War Re-enactment. These guys love interacting with their audience and having their photo taken. They will also give you all the details of their costume. It is very enlightening and rewarding.

The thing that will hinder you is your shyness. Even if they say “no,” which they won’t do, the worst thing that can happen is you don’t get to take their picture.

On the other hand, it is always a good gesture to ask if you can make their picture. Asking permission will not only get you the great photo, but you can also use it online when you have their consent. As a gesture of gratitude, you might even offer to send them a copy.

Group Portraits are awesome when there is a theme. At the Civil War demonstration, these gentlemen were very cooperative for the photographers. Then I took the picture into my editing software to add a vintage look to the photo. So much fun!

Photos by WRasku

Take Family Portraits

Family photos with Canon Rebel Every year, I use my Rebel for family photos that end up on or in Christmas cards.

This is one of the ones that was chosen.

Here is the data for this picture:
Camera lens: Tamrom 28-75 f/2.8
Mode setting: Av (Aperture Priority)
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter speed: 1/320sec
ISO: 400
Focal length: 42mm
Flash: off

In-camera Effects

Edit Your Photos Without Expensive Software

There are several Canon T3i in-camera editing effects that you can use right in the camera. Once you select an effect, the software will generate a separate file so you don’t lose the original. Essentially, you can create many photos from a single shot.. without a computer!

The effects are:

Grainy Black and White
Soft focus
Fish-eye effect
Toy camera effect
Miniature effect

Example of Grainy Black and White

Example of Fish-eye Effect

Share on Read Full Story

by David Burgess on May 9, 2018 0

Free Art Tools Online

Art Resources

Who has time for art? While I love art, it’s inconvenient to take out all my supplies, paint, and clean up. Not to mention, my kids want to participate too. I spend so much time teaching them how to create things that I don’t get to fully enjoy my own work or time. It just leaves me frustrated.

There is an easier way to find your inner artist

Free Resources
Several places online offer a variety of ways to create graphic art with just the click of a mouse. Most programs load right into your web browser and are easy to pick up. Other, more complex, programs need to be downloaded, installed, and learned.

Convenient
Art is at the tip of your fingers. A few minutes of art every day spent creating art is entrancing. Don’t you deserve a few minutes each day?

Harmony

Harmony Harmony is one of my favorite programs online.

*Free to Use and Save
*No Registration Required
*Several Drawing Styles
*Simple Layout (uses most of the page to draw on)

PsykoPaint

PsykoPaint PsykoPaint is a site that you can create paintings from your own photographs even if you don’t know how to paint.

*Register is Required for many features
*Able to use with Wacom or digital tablets
*Send a postcard with your art
*Send a digital card by email

Flash Paint

Flash Paint Flash Paint is an online paint tool that uses Flash in your web browser

*No Sign Up Requirements
*Save your images
*Share images in the Gallery
*Simple Tool Set

OdoSketch

OdoSketch OdoSketch is a unique online Flash drawing application.

*Paper Background
*Easy tool system
*Account Required to save images

Bomomo

the Bomomo One of the simplest web browser art generators out there is Bomomo

*Works only with Firefox and Safari
*18 drawing tools to experiment with
*Save finished work to your hard drive
*Nothing to sign up for or download

My Oats Draw Tool

My Oats My Oats is an online, web browser art generator.

*Advanced Editing Tools
*Share with the community if you want
*Save your images (must make an account)
Great Art Resources on Amazon

ToonDoo – Make Comic Strips

ToonDoo ToonDoo is the fastest way to create comic strips online.

*Registration Required
*Draw Characters – Create different looks for each character
*Choose Comic Layout
*Use the DoodleR to add personal touches
*Create Books of your comics
*Print your creations on T-shirts, posters, cloth, mugs, mousepads, keychains and more!

Sketchpad

SketchPad SketchPad is a more complex drawing tool that offers a variety of patterns, brush options, and shapes to create with.

*A little more difficult to learn than some of the others
*Easy to save
*No Sign-up Required

Draw.To

Draw To Draw.To lets you draw anything you like and share it instantly via email, instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook and more!

*No Registration Required
*Embed drawings in your blog or website
*Add to existing drawings
*Works in your web browser, no downloads required
*Also works on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

The Image Mixer

Image Mixer If you love abstract art, try experimenting with the Image Mixer. It’s a web based generator. Unfortunately, you can’t add your own photographs. There are a lot of great patterns that you can create as well as a gallery from other users.

Generate abstract images in your web browser
Generate as many images as you desire
Customize the size, color, patterns, shape, opacity and scattering

Modern Art Generator

Modern Art Generator The Modern Art Generator

*Create abstract drawings online in your web browser
*Experiment with different color palettes
*Adjust opacity and image size
*Save your images

Brushter

Brushter Brushter is an online painting machine for all ages. This Shockwave interactive includes more than forty brushes and customizable size, transparency, texture, and stroke options. A rainbow palette, along with a toolbox of special effects that blur, ripple, smudge, blend, and fragment your designs help make BRUSHster a full-feature painting program.

*No Registration Required
*Save work to your computer
*Auto Draw Mode
*Requires Shockwave Payer (Free Download)

Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint Sumo Paint is an online image editor and digital paint program.

*No Sign up required
*Several Tools to choose from
*Extensive “How To” section
*Filters to create effects on your work
*Browse other community art for inspiration

Sketch Swap

Sketch Swap With Sketch Swap, you can draw images online and trade it with another person. It’s all anonymous, so there’s nothing embarrassing to worry about.

*Runs in your web browser
*Nothing to download
*Simple pen tool
*Redraws another person’s art after you submit yours

FlockDraw

FlockDraw Flockdraw is a free to use online whiteboard based painting & drawing tool.

*Draw online free with multiple people for fun or business
*Have unlimited people in a room
*See drawing changes in real time
*Use different colors, shapes and text
*Signup Required

ScribLink

ScribLink Scriblink is a free digital whiteboard that users can share online in real-time. Sorta like pen and paper, minus the dead trees, plastic, and the inconvenience of being at the same place at the same time.

*No Registration required
*Privacy: the board is all yours, open only to the people you choose to invite
*Dynamic Tools: use shapes, hundreds of colors, a size bar, a text feature, and a grid to help guide your drawings
*File Options: gives you the ability to print, save, and email your work
*Image Uploader: upload an image onto the whiteboard as the background, allowing you to share it, mark it, deface it, or highlight key elements
*In-Screen Chat: when working with others, no need to sign in to third party software, simply use our in-screen chat
*VOIP Conferencing: if you have a mic for your computer, you can automatically connect with your collaborators (no software necessary) and talk for free for as long as you like
*File transfer: when emailing is too much of a hassle, simply transfer files directly to anyone you’re working with

Online Color Palette Generator

Color Palette Generator The Color Palette Generator is an amazing tool for any digital artist.

How many times have you needed to pick up the colors on your images to create a color pallets? The color dropper tool is effective, but it’s slow. Also, if you’ve used the dropper you’ve noticed how each pixel can be slightly different. This generator find the number of colors you need for an image. Just upload a sample image under 100KB and select your color palette grid size.

You can use .png, .gif, .jpg, and .jpeg formats
No Limits on the amount of palettes you generate
Create precise or average color palettes.

Gaffiti Playdo

Graffiti Playdo Graffiti Playdo uses adobe flash player and allows you to paint on a wall with cans of spray paint. Draw graffiti together with your friends! Save your art to your album and share with your friends. With multiplayer functions so you can paint together in real time.

*No Registration Required
*Connect with Facebook to save, share, and draw with friends

ArtisanCam – Graffiti Art Board

ArtisanCam ArtisanCam provides an insight into the lives of contemporary artists. Using a mixture of video and interactive activities, we introduce children to the world of contemporary visual art before encouraging them to have a go themselves in fun and exciting ways.

*No Registration Required
*Much more art content than the graffiti paint program”

Kerpoof

Kerpoof Kerpoof is a fun program for both children and adults. It’s simple enough for the young users but versatile enough for adults to fully enjoy. The website is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company.

*Flash and Java browser
*Free to use and to download JPEGs
*Must have an account to save unfinished work
*Make artwork (even if you aren’t good at drawing!)
*Make an animated movie (really! it’s easy!)
*Earn Koins which you can trade for fun things in the Kerpoof Store
*Make a printed card, t-shirt, or mug
*Tell a story
*Make a drawing
*Vote on the movies, stories, and drawings that other people have made

Draw Here

Draw Here Draw Here allows you to draw on any web page. If you save your drawing, other Draw Here users will be able to see what you’ve drawn. Use it to share your artwork, comment on web pages, or just doodle while you are browsing.

*Free to Join
*Free to use
*Highlight parts of a webpage
*Doodle while you read
*Write notes right on the screen
*Deface your photos just for the fun of it

Draw Island

Draw Island Draw Island was just launched early Feb. 2012

*Iphone version , Minimalist version
*Draw online : change sizes, colors and use shapes like rectangle, round,…. and save result
*Generate animations (see button) with your drawings…(max size 400×400 pixels with 10 frames max)
*Video Tutorial

**Updates Coming :
– new options(Import Image)

Favicon Icon Drawing

Favicon Favicon is a drawing program to create a 16×16 pixel icon in 16 colors with optional transparency.

*No Registration Required
*Generate Icon button to save the icon to your hard disk
*The icons you generate are not recorded anywhere

Scribbls

Scribbls Scribbls – Bees plus flowers gives you honey. Pie and rat together make “pirate.” Putting any two things together is bound to have an interesting, even hilarious, effect-or outcome. At Scribbls, you can combine thousands of different drawings to create an infinite number of outcomes.

*Registration Required (Free Sign Up)
*Collaborative drawing community
*Uses Flash Player
*Occasional Contests

The Scribbler

The Scribbler The Scribbler takes simple vector based input (in the case of the online toy, your drawing) and creates its own drawing on top of it based on a number of simple rules. When a new scribble line is created it chooses a few numbers at random that eventually determine what sort of line it will draw.

*No Registration Required
*No Save Option (Take a screenshot)
*Experiment with different colors and line thicknesses
*Change colors during the scribble process

Deviant Art Muro

Deviant Art Muro Deviant Art Muro is a free online painting tool that offers both a pro version (layers) and basic version.

*No Registration Required
*Wacom Tablet Usability
*Purchase additional brushes
SketchPAN SketchPAN is an online drawing community where anyone can participate and share their art.

*Use Drawing PAN to record your drawing process
*Animation PAN lets you create flip books
*Together PAN lets you create something with others
*Shop PAN lets you start with something more than blank paper

Queeky

Queeky Queeky is an online drawing community.

*Save your work either on Queeky.com, or on your local computer
*Publish your work to the galleries
*Vote and Comment on other art
*Import photos, Blur Tool, Select Tool, custom gradient fills, multiple windows, layer effects and many more
*Premium Version Option
*Share your work and comments on Facebook
*Study the technics and workflow of your favorite artists

Pencil Maddness

Pencil Maddness Pencil Madness a free online sketching tool. PencilMadness is a Flash application that lets you draw and publish images in our gallery.

*Save images as jpg or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) directly to your computer
*Sign Up is Not Required

Penolo

Penolo Penolo is a simple sketching tool where you can post results to Twitter if you want.

*No Registration Required (Unless using Twitter)
*Simple Tools
*Tons of Color Choices
*Easy enough for kids to use

Pixlr – Online Photo Editor

Pixlr Pixlr enables web developers to use Pixlr applications on their own site. Everything that is done on this site can be done on yours. Added advanced image editing capabilities is very easy.

*Completely free
*Uses Flash
*3 applications in our suite: Pixlr Editor, Pixlr Express, and Pixlr-o-Matic
*Uses Layers
*Color Effects

FREE Digital Image Editing and Painting Programs

There are a variety of 2D graphics software products useful for creating art, manipulating photographic images, or to just experimenting with for the purpose of gaining insight. Most of these programs need to be downloaded and installed to your computer. All have free versions.

Free Programs Include:

Gimp
GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package. GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window. Pressing the tab key will toggle them hidden.

My Paint
MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you need it.

mtPaint
Easily create pixel art and manipulate digital photos.

Pencil
Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

Helios Paint
HeliosPaint is a feature-rich, easy-to-use and powerful paint program for editing photos, drawings and icons. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux and Unix. Helios Paint utilizes Java. While it’s a simple program, it does offer a lot of tool options.

Real World Paint
Draw, Retouch Photos, and Animate Gifs with this program. You won’t have to leave your old projects behind. Real World Paint can import and export native image files of other popular image editors. Images are imported or exported with layers. Real World Paint installs or requires NO additional packages on your computer.

Dia
Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

Inkscape
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

Project Dogwaffle
It’s a light, yet powerful tool for artistic expression. It’s a fully functional version with some new features too. It is not save-disabled, there’s no time-limit, no need to register, and there’s no spyware or adware coming with it.

Twisted Brush
The free edition of TwistedBrush with most of the great features of TwistedBrush except for brush editing and with a just handful of very fine brushes with the option to add additional collections of brushes. layers, realistic media, photo cloning, tracing, masks, particles, filters, script recording, scripts to AVI, drawing tablet support, brush shapes, patterns, textures, Adobe compatible plug-in support, integrated scanner support, image brushes, drawing guides, reference image views, dirty brushes, scratch layer, dynamic palettes and a whole lot more.

Free 3D Editing Programs

Sketchup

You can build models from scratch, or you can download what you need. People all over the world share what they’ve made on the Google 3D Warehouse. Redecorate your living room. Invent a new piece of furniture. Model your city for Google Earth. There’s no limit to what you can create with SketchUp.

DAZ

DAZ|Studio is a free software application that allows you to easily create beautiful digital art. You can use this software to load in people, animals, vehicles, buildings, props, and accessories to create digital scenes. DAZ|Studio includes two pre-configured scenes ready for you to Load & Render within DAZ|Studio. Just double-click on the scene thumbnails inside of DAZ|Studio, and everything will come on screen posed, lit, and ready for you to create a stunning digital image. Click here to view a sample scene render from DAZ|Studio using the included content. With DAZ|Studio, you can turn your 3d dreams into reality.

Bryce

Bryce 7 gives you the ability to work faster and create more realistic environments than ever before. From the new Instancing Lab and totally redesigned bridge to DAZ Studio, to the improved skies and clouds, updated HDRI and advanced lighting, Bryce 7 will breathe new life into both your future and existing Bryce scenes. Whether you are a professional designer, or a recent 3D graphics enthusiast, Bryce provides you with the tools to literally create a world of your own.

Share on Read Full Story

by David Burgess on April 27, 2018 0

Things to Do With Pictures

What Fun Stuff Can You Do with All of Those Pictures?

You’ve made the step and gone to digital photos. You can view them on your computer, e-mail them to friends, and take them to the store to get prints or maybe even print them at home. But after that you think, what can I do with these images that would be fun or interesting? How else can I enjoy them?

Well, let’s talk about that. There are a lot of great products, activities, services and more that will allow you to use those digital images in so many ways. Read on to learn more.

Photo Sharing Sites That Offer More

Photo sharing sites give you a place to keep your photos, a place to share them. However, some photo sharing sites offer more things to do with pictures. Shutterfly.com for instance also allows you to make a variety of things using your photos. Photo books, cards, calendars, coasters, tote bags, mouse pads, stickers, canvas prints, mugs, key rings, ornaments, puzzles, keepsake boxes, address labels, and notebooks are just some of the options.

Scrapbooking and collages are another creative way of dealing with your photos. Photomix, Google’s Picasa, Snapfish, and ScrapBlog are just a few that offer this ability.

Get Some Motion from Your Pictures

If you remember the little books you made as a kid by drawing a series of pictures in sequence, stapling them together, and then flipping through them to simulate motion, then you understand this concept.

This is another one of those fun things to do with pictures; make your own, more adult, version of these flip books. There are a number of sites that can produce some pretty nice flip books either from a series of digital photos or the still images grabbed from your camera’s video recordings. Flippies, Glitterfy, and FlipClips are just three of the options.

Of course there are also a number of tutorials out there to help you if you want to go it on your own. Two of the most useful that can be found are at a blog called The Curious and another called Short Courses.

If you’d like to make a 3-D movie from your images you can try Make3D but if you want to make a movie with some great music added you can try Animoto or even Google Picasa.

Wacky Things to Do With Pictures

Your pictures may be sentimental, they may be precious, but they should also be fun. At CaptionBubble you can make a joke of almost any picture by adding captions just like you see in cartoons.

There are a number of fun services at Flickr based BigHugeLabs. You can make a magazine cover, add captions, or make motivational posters among other things with your images.

If you want to really get silly, you can also use a number of sites to distort photos to create that “house of mirrors” effect. Sites like Gooifier allow you to do this without having to even download anything. Or perhaps you would rather insert your face, or the face of someone you know, into a well known picture, on the body of another person, or somewhere else where it doesn’t belong at FaceinHole. However, if you want a lifesized cutout of someone you’ll need to go to PhotoCutOuts or to get a caricature, visit osoq.

If you have kids, another kind of cool project can be found at FlattenMe where you can use your kids pictures to insert them into existing books. Suddenly your son or daughter can be the main character in the storyline.

Getting Artsy with Your Photos

There are a number of more artistic things to do with pictures. Various sites will allow you to change your favorite photos into works of art. PhotoWow can give you some great looking pop art of your favorites, while PhotoFiddle gives you even more options for the style of art you prefer; oil paintings, watercolor paintings, abstract collages, and so forth.

A site called ReColored allows you to colorize your black and white photos. On the other hand, if you just want a photo enlarged and placed on canvas to hang on the wall, you can try CanvasRUs.

For those who prefer a line drawing, there are a number of tools to help get the job done. Here is a Photoshop tutorial for doing just that.

Be Sure You Put Your Photos Best Face On

Digital photo frames have become more interesting and more affordable in the past few years. They offer larger screens with higher resolution in many instances, allowing you to enjoy your photos in their most vibrant splendor. These modern frames are capable of storing more images and can be set up to display slideshows so that you can enjoy more of your photos.

In addition, some frames offer filters for special effects, the ability to add music for a full presentation, and remote controls for convenience. Digital photo frames really are the best way to capitalize on the digital nature of your photos. Because fading won’t occur with the digital file and those images will always be at their best, this is one of the smart things to do with pictures.

Portable Digital Devices That Let You Enjoy Your Pictures Everywhere

A digital camera gives you that potential connection with the other modern devices you may own. Clearly, uploading those photos to a media player or other portable device allows you to take those images with you to share with others or to enjoy while you’re out and about.

On the other hand, some of the traditional ways of enjoying printed images aren’t lost just because you’ve gone digital. In fact many of these just got better because you can tote along more images with less bulk when your photos are in the digital format. For instance, an old picture wallet could hold a handful of 2×3 photos before it became an unwanted bulk. A digital photo wallet on the other hand allows you store many times more pictures and it’s size doesn’t change. Aside from true wallets, there are also wallet sized digital photo albums that are easy to take along; they’re definitely a much lighter load than a traditional photo album which is three or four times the size.

Another item to keep your pictures close at hand is a digital photo keychain. These are affordable little devices and they don’t require much technical knowledge to use. They do best in displaying up close, portrait type shots due to the small screen size but they’re definitely a fun little gadget.

Editing: Making Those Photos Look The Way You Want

Many of us don’t go out and buy the more sophisticated editing tools that are available but instead use whatever came with our camera. However, editing is among the best things to do with pictures if you want to enjoy them.

There are some sites out there than can help you do things with pictures that are a bit fun. Picnik is one of those sites. It allows you to do some editing, which includes adding interesting borders, effects, shapes, and fonts to spice up your images. Of course, one of the best things is that you don’t have to download anything to your computer or take a course to understand it.

Of course there are other online photo editing tools such as FotoFlexer and SplashUp.

Another possibility is to study up a bit and consider some photo editing software to really get the most from your pictures.

Share on Read Full Story

by David Burgess on April 26, 2018 0

My Summer Fashion Photo Shoot

Capturing the Beauty of Summer Through Photography

“An Ode to Summer” is my latest photo shoot I did in May 2013. The idea of this photo shoot was to show the warmth of the summer. I wanted to juxtapose the warm sunlight, the beauty of nature, and a pretty girl. There is no complicated or philosophical theme as it can be found in my previous photo shoots. I just wanted to present the beauty through the pictures, and let the viewers enjoy the picture as they are, without having to think hard about the meanings behind them. I have to admit that doing this type of photography work is refreshing, as I found that this type of photo shoot was more like to be an activity to have fun. Thus, I would like to share some of the photos through this lens, and hopefully you like them.

The Preparation

I didn’t prepare too much for the concept of the photo shoot, as I just want to create beautiful photos without any complicated story or themes. I just went online and browsed some references from professional photographers. I also met the model, Sunny, two days before the shoot. She is a very nice and smart Chinese girl. Sunny studies B.Com in my undergraduate college and I know her through my Bhutanese friends, whom I worked in previous photo shoots.

The idea of the photo shoot and the name of the model (Sunny) suited very well. Somehow, working with Sunny was very fun. I told her about my plan and she gave a lot of idea for the photo shoot. She acted not only as a model, but also as a director, style designer, and she tried to see the concept from the photographer’s point of view. If you find a model who is able to do this kind of things, then you are very lucky as working with the model would be more fun.

An early morning summer day

I departed from my apartment at 4 o’clock in the morning and we started the photo shoot exactly at 5 AM. The location of the photo shoot is at Hussain Sagar Lake, the biggest and most beautiful artificial lake in Hyderabad. We decided to do it in the southern park of the lake, where there is a beautiful park with pretty trees and flower.

Unfortunately, we missed the sunrise. However, the sun rays was perfect for photography. It was very soft and made everything looked shiny. I took some photos near the beautiful tree, with the beautiful lake in the background. The model seemed to enjoy the photo shoot very much, and it made me feel comfortable to work with her. We took about one hundred photos in two hours, then decided to take a break. We worked for another one more hour, then decided to call it a day because the temperature started to raise and made us sweating.

After the photo shoot, we had breakfast at McDonald (we had to wait for about an hour because it was still closed) and decided to watch Iron Man 3. I reached home right in the afternoon, and had some three hours sleep before editing the photos. This work was indeed one of the most enjoyable photo shoot I have ever done.

Photo Shoot Tips from Me

Some more tips I learned after doing this project

If you live in tropical country early morning is the best time for photo shoot
I realized this fact just after I did this photo shoot. In the morning, the weather is very cool and relaxing. The natural light from the sun is also very beautiful and soft, and it is not too harsh so you may not even need a reflector. Moreover, the fresh air will increase the mood of you and your model, so both of you can perform better. Just be sure to have a nice sleep if you want to do photo shoot in early morning.

Be friendly with the model
Of course, without crossing the boundary of professionalism. Plan a meeting two or three days before you work together, just to understand better about her. If you think that you are good at making friends, try to be friendly with her. Believe me, it won’t hurt, and even will make you perform better in the photo shoot.

Explain the model about your concept and idea
And don’t forget to ask for her feedback. She might have some brilliant idea that you didn’t even think. If it is possible, discuss also about the wardrobe that she is going to wear, the accessories, and how you want her to pose for the photos.

Enjoy your work
The most important thing in photography (and any other arts) is to enjoy what you are doing. By enjoying the process of the photo shoot, you will realize that your photos will appear to be more “lively” and there is “soul” inside the photos. Thus, people will love your photos more.

Share on Read Full Story

by David Burgess on April 26, 2018 0

My Photography Assignment, Close-Up Portrait

My Photography Assignment Project

In this lens, I want to share some of my earlier project as a photography student. I joined a short course in this field about a year ago. My first assignment was to create a set of photos mainly focus on the close-up face of the subject. I found that it was quite interesting and fun assignment. I spent only about two hours for the photoshoot and another two hours for the editing part.

For this project, I submitted around twenty photos and I decided to share some of them in this article. I remember that my teacher gave me compliment for some of my works. Some of them were even also exhibited in the annual college exhibition. Please let me know your comments and opinions related to my work, as I believe it would help me to take much better pictures in future.

The concept and ideas

As this is one of my earliest assignment in photography class, I was instructed to focus on the technical aspect. My teacher wanted me to learn the basic concept of portrait photography. Thus, he asked all of the student to really pay attention to the focus. The focus must be on the eyes. The composition should be interesting, and we could use any post-processing software that we love.

I decided to create something more surrealist. I decided that for this assignment, there will be only three dominant color: black, white, and red. I was greatly inspired by Natalia Varzina’s works during working on this assignment and somehow she influenced me in a lot of aspects of this photographs.

My teacher told me that there should be at least two different expressions captured in this project. I decided that two of them are confusion and anger. I also experimented with different angles and perspective before finally being able to find the best angle that I wanted to capture. The process of the photoshoot was quite fun. It was considerably quick compared to my other shoot, as it took only about two hours, including the tea break time.

At that time, I was very inexperienced in working with model. I just instructed her to do the basic expressions such as smiling and frowning. During the two hours of work, I managed to capture around one hundred images. Among those, I selected the best twenty and edited in Adobe Lightroom.

The editing process was also quite fun. I was pretty relieved that I got the focus well. I decided to use manual focus, and since it was my first work where I fully used manual focus, I was kinda afraid that the result would be disappointing. As I mentioned before, I only included three major color in the final result of the images. All images should be in black and white, with little addition of red to make it more surrealist.

I submitted the work right after I finished the editing process. Although this assignment was not my best work, I feel pretty happy about them. I managed to get “pass” mark, and my teacher even complimented some of my photos. Somehow, working on this assignment gave me great spirit boost to create better photography works in future.

Some tips

I have several tips that might be useful for you, based on my experience:

Enjoy every moment of your work
This is the first principle that is applicable for any kind of work. In photography, you need to have passion and sincerity towards your concept. You should be able to enjoy every moment you work with your subject. By enjoying your time, you would be able to create some photos that is not only technically good, but also has strong emotional value in it.

Learn from the expert
My teacher told his students that we should spend at least a good one hour per day to take a look at the best works of professional photographers. By doing that, we would be able to learn the technical aspects as well as improving our eyes sensitivity. One most important thing, you should enjoy the learning process so that it has maximum effects in improving your skills.

Manual focus
From this photoshoot, I learned that manual focus works best for portrait photography. It may be difficult to adjust the focus at the first time, but once you are getting used to it, everything would be easier. Manual focus is always better than auto focus, as I believe that human eyes is much better than the artificial focus points in the most expensive camera in the world.

Share on Read Full Story