But I had to mention DadLabs!  Especially considering that it’s almost Father’s Day and DadLabs is an inspirational site for all the Dads out there, or for anyone who knows a Dad.

These guys decided to put aside high paying jobs in order to focus on being excellent Dads.  Their company, DadLabs, enables other dads to “Take Back Paternity” through advice on practical parenting matters.  This advice is presented humorously, even hliariously, via books, videos, podcasts and blog posts.

The video about assembling a bicycle in the wee hours of Christmas Eve still cracks us up in this house.   It was rap-music-inspired and involved beer.  Let’s just say you wouldn’t want your kids to watch it but I bet a lot of you can relate to the Christmas Eve Santa gig!

Some of the current features on their website are:

• Princess Parenting:  Father Daughter Solution
• Five Things Not to Say During Labor and Delivery
• Baby is a Repo Man Starring Baby Oscar

Daddy Brad and his family are friends of mine, so I just couldn’t resist bragging a bit about their success!   BabyBjorn sponsors them and USA Today featured them on the front page of its Lifestyle section this week.

Not to mention that any of us who make their kids such a high priority in life deserve a shout-out and support.  Especially when they are Daddies!

Back to the photography front, the tutorial about creating a dark and rounded vignette is coming up this weekend.  Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS so that you don’t miss it.  And Happy Friday everyone!

It seems like Mozy is almost always offering a 10% discount on their backup packages, but for the month of June, you can get a 15% discount.  I’ve never seen this offer before!

To take advantage of this 15% discount, click on the link above and enter code JUNE15 at checkout.

This means that you can purchase two full years of unlimited backup for less than $90!  That really is a great deal.  Especially when you consider that you are saving not just photos but everything on your computer!

And, as always with Mozy, if you’d like to try before you buy, you can get 2GB Totally Free Online Backup! Compliments of Mozy.

I’ll repeat the same caveat I always do regarding affordable unlimited home data backup.  Your first backup is going to be slow.  Not quite as slow as Christmas, but it just might seem like it.  After that first time, however, your incremental backups will be quick.  And you’ll feel good knowing you’ve finally silenced that nagging voice in your head reminding you to backup!

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS.

There are two exciting events happening right now in the world of Moms’ Photography. Both WILL improve your photography. And one might earn you a little extra money in the process.  EDIT:  Click on the picture above to learn how you could win $150 by joining Clickin’ Moms!

Clickin’ Moms Sale

Clickin’ Moms is running a 10% off sale from now through June 30.  Use discount code FRIEND at checkout and you will pay $5.40 per month, $27 for 6 months, or $45 for a year.  What a deal!

Why should you do this?  Clickin’ Moms is a fabulous source of photographic inspiration and education geared specifically towards moms.  Some of you have already discovered what a great place this is.

The website has been beauifully updated since I first posted about it back in February.

When you join Clickin’ Moms, you will have access to a secure member gallery and an amazingly active forum where you can feel safe posting pictures of you kids and even using their real names.  The forum has more information than I could ever digest in a lifetime of reading!  It’s full of tutorials, constructive criticism, help with cameras, Photoshop, you name it.  Memebers post free Photoshop actions from time to time too, for you action junkies out there!

There is information geared to everyone from beginners to professional photographers.  And lots of info for moms who are thinking about easing in to professional photography to earn a little extra money.

Here’s how to earn a bit of money right now:

And aside from the information and the beautiful member galleries, the Clickin’ Moms affiliate program is fabulous!  If you have a blog or website and register as a Clickin’ Mom affiliate, you will earn a 20% commission on each new member you refer.  You will earn this commission for as long as the person you refer is a member of Clickin’ Moms.  At that rate, it doesn’t take much to earn back your membership fees.

Clickin’ Moms earns more for me than any other affiliate relationship I have on this blog!  Along with their 10% discount offered through the end of June, Clickin’ Moms is holding a contest for their affiliates.  The top prize (for referring 500 new members) is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera.  OH YEAH.

Prizes start for referrers of 5 new members and go up from there.  Plus you get the 20%  commission on each member you refer.  So sign up and put those affiliate banners on your blog.  You’ll be glad you did!

Pixel Fairy Princess Dallas Workshop Discount

I am looking forward to meeting at least one of you in the Pixel Fairy Princess Dallas workshop this weekend.  It would be delightful to meet (and learn from)  more of you!  I fully expect that Debbie will work wonders with my photography and that I will be a changed woman, photographically speaking, next week.  That’s not too much to hope for, right?

If you register today by emailing Launa at PixelFairyPrincess2 at gmail.com, you can get a $50 discount.  I hope to see you there!  EDIT:  You have to ask for the Digital Photography For Moms discount to get the special rate.  And let me know if you’re interested!

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS.

I love blogging and participating in photography and Photoshop Elements forums because there is such a sense of community and helpfulness.  In the same spirit, PIF Photography does nothing except to pass along templates, textures, actions and tips.

Look at this beautiful Joy St. Claire texture I found last week on PIF Photography.  Now, this image is the low res, super small version.  So if you want to use it, you should head over to this post to download it.

How gorgeous is that?

The PIF Photo blog is so sophisticated and the info is fabulous.  It has earned a spot on my Best Resources page. 

By the way, thanks to Corinne for pointing out to me that I forgot to add a navigation link to that Best Resources page when I redid my blog.  So I put a link in the sidebar on the right.  I’ll get a real page button for it one of these days!

Have a good day!  And, if you haven’t already, subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS.

Backing up your images is, without a doubt, the most important thing you can do to them.  Believe me, I lost some wonderful pictures and don’t ever want to go through that again!

Mozy is running a 10% off sale during March on the annual and biennial unlimited backup packages. 

That’s less than $50 for unlimited backup for one year, or less than $95 for two years.  If you want to try it out before you buy, Mozy will give you 2 gigabytes of FREE backup space.

To get the discount, enter the promotional code MARCH into the referral box when you sign up.

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms so that you don’t miss any upcoming free actions or tutorials for Photoshop Elements!

Most camera give you several options for the format in which to record your images.  The most common are JPEG and Raw.  Here are the differences between the two:

JPEGs definitely require less work. If your camera is set to record images in JPEG, it will make certain on-camera processing adjustments, such as:

• Sharpening
• White balance
• Color processing
• Contrast adjustments

Most cameras will let you set the amount of these adjustments that will be applied on camera before you shoot.  For instance, when I do shoot in JPEG, my camera will let me specify whether to make the colors more vivid or more natural.  That’s a handy setting.  Same for sharpness, contrast and white balance.

However, sometimes you don’t know which adjustments you want to apply to a photo until after the fact.  Sometimes cameras make incorrect assumptions about the shooting conditions.  If you shoot in Raw, no on-camera processing happens to your images, and you guide all these adjustments yourself in Adobe Camera Raw.

Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), by the way, comes with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  No new software to purchase to use the great features included!  Now, if you want to purchase Lightroom, it does everything that Raw does and much more.

But that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Are there any downsides to shooting in Raw?  Only two that I can think of.  First off, processing your images requires an extra step.  But you might find that after you do the work in ACR, you won’t need to do any Levels, Curves, or Color Correction in Photoshop.

Also, Raw files are HUGE.  They take up massive amounts of hard drive space.  Like 8 mb per picture or more.  So you definitely need to make sure that your computer can handle that before you switch over.

When you try to open a picture recorded in Raw from Photoshop Elements, ACR will open over your normal PSE workspace.  It looks something like this:

I know it’s a small picture, but can you read all the sliders on the right?  Those are all the different adjustments you can make.  Sharpening adjustments are on the next tab.  Many of these adjustments can’t be made in Photoshop or Elements.

Now, of course ACR won’t be able to fix a terrible picture.  If the highlights are blown out, for instance, there is nothing you can do to recover them.

My next post in this series on shooting in Raw will cover how to use those sliders to adjust your photo and make it great.

Until then, I’m curious.  How many of you shoot in Raw currently?  I’ve used Raw almost exclusively for maybe a year now, and I find it to be not much extra work at all.

Have a good day!  And thanks for reading.

Erin

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms.

I also took pictures at BigGirl’s class Valentine’s Party.  Lots of pictures.  And I found myself with a huge backlog of pictures to process in Photoshop. 

That was all the convincing I needed to make the move to Lightroom, which processes batches of photos much more efficiently than Photoshop Elements.  While I was at it, I upgraded to CS4 as well.

At first I was a bit sheepish about upgrading my software.  It’s not very frugal, I know.  But holy kazoles.  I have to tell you that Lightroom is one of the most amazing software packages I have ever seen.  Even with the economy in such bad shape, I am so glad I bought it.  CS4 looks awesome too, but I haven’t played with it as much.

Here is what I love about Lightroom:

• Apply edits like white balance and levels to multiple photos at once.  This is a super feature for a series of pictures that you took at the same time in the same conditions.
• A before & after view where you can compare the unedited image next to the image you’re applying changes too.  This is so much better than using the history palette to undo & redo to compare.
• Lightroom has a great process for sorting through shots, separating great ones from good ones, and getting rid of the bad.  I used to scroll through my pictures in Windows Explorer, open one in PSE and ACR, go back to Windows Explorer, open another in PSE, open the wrong one in PSE, go back to . . . . You get it, right?  In Lightroom, you can scroll through your images at full-screen size, mark some as picks, delete others, and compare a series of similar poses to narrow down the best one.
• You know how when you’re adjusting Levels and the picture is not right, but you don’t know if you need to change the Highlights, Midtones or Darks?  In Lightroom, you can hover your mouse of the part of your picture that looks off and it will tell you whether that section is a highlight, a midtone or a dark.
• Colors adjustments are similar.  You need to adjust a color – maybe skin has too much red or orange or magenta, but you don’t know which.  Or maybe those eyes need a bit more blue or green or aqua.  Put your mouse over the part of the image you want to change, and Lightroom will tell you which color to adjust.  How foolproof is that?
• Lightroom has countless print layouts and makes printing much easier than PSE.

And these are only the features that I’ve discovered so far.

Now, I wouldn’t have been able to buy these software packages if Adobe weren’t running big sales right now.  And I want to pass the sale information along in case you are interested in upgrading too. You can also get free shipping if you upgrade to Photoshop Elements 7 right now!

• Save up to $200 on eligible upgrades to CS4
• 30% off Lightroom 2, along with a full or upgrade version of Photoshop CS4
• Free shipping! Extraordinary photos. Amazing stories.
• Find all current special offers on Adobe products.

And don’t worry.  I will still write mostly about Photoshop Elements here and add some Lightroom tips in from time to time also, if anyone is interested.  And, if Rita of CoffeeShop doesn’t mind me hopping into the Free Actions realm, I have some some ideas for actions that I just might post here one of these days!

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Momsand be among the first to know when I enter the Photoshop Elements free action arena!

Take care,

Erin

As a source of inspiration for taking pictures of kids, the place is invaluable.  Many of the members are professional photographers.  Looking at their Clickin’ Moms galleries is always a font of ideas for poses, styles and Photoshopping techniques.  And many of these women blog – I subscribe to their blogs just to learn from their beautiful photography.

And just as important as the galleries are the forums.  There are always many active discussions going on where people answer questions promptly and nicely.  The amount of photography and Photoshop knowledge here is amazing.  And while many members are experienced photographers, many are amateurs and hobbyists.  No question is too basic to ask.

Do you want to know multiple Photoshop methods for getting beautiful, flawless and perfect skin tone in kids?  Look here.  Did you know that the best way to improve the color of grass is to add yellow?  I wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years, but learned it from a Clickin’ Moms tutorial.  

Other features available in this community?  Discounts on photography supplies like equipment or actions.  Product reviews and help.  Buy or sell used photography equipment.  You can solicit critiques and help on your photos, read advice on starting a photography business and find free actions and templates.

The membership fee is $50 for one year, $30 for 6 months or $6 per month.  One benefit of paying a membership fee, on top of everything I mentioned above, is that the registration with both Clickin’ Moms and PayPal contributes to making Clickin’ Moms a safe community.  Many members feel perfectly safe using their kids’ names and talking about where they live.  There aren’t many places on the internet where people feel comfortable doing that.  But always use your best judgment!

And people form friendships here.  A sense of comaraderie is apparent in almost every conversation.  Having someone to share the photography bug with when you’re up late at night just might be the biggest benefit of all!

With something like 20 different photography contributors, there are daily articles with instructional techniques or artistic ideas for your photography.  Plus, it features some great images to look at.

And, there are rumors afoot that my favorite creator of free actions for Photoshop Elements might make an appearance or two there.  What could she be up to now?

My article was about the best books for folks who got new cameras or Photoshop Elements for Christmas. 

Rather than spending lots of time experimenting and learning on your own, cut to the chase and get one of these books to jump start your photographic journey!  Last time I checked, all but the last one were available in my local library.

The first is The Digital Photography Book (volume 1) by Scott Kelby.  It’s geared towards beginners and has easy-to-follow recipes for getting specific types of shots without having to absorb a lot of complicated photographic theory.

Kelby also wrote The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2, for those that are ready to take the next step with their photography.  The book is still easy to understand - no Ph.D. in photography required!

One question I hear all the time is “What is the best resource for someone  using Photoshop Elements for the first time?”  Without a doubt, it’s the Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers.  It’s a broad introduction to PSE’s features and how to use them and teaches the basics of making photos and layouts look great.

And finally, when you’ve got the basics of PSE down and you’re ready for every last detail of every last thing you can do with the software, get Photoshop Elements 7:  The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage.  This book is amazing not only for the amount of info it contains, but for the readable and understandable format in which that info is presented.

In the next week or so, I’m going to begin a serious of posts covering a basic workflow for all pictures in Photoshop Elements.  It will cover:

• Lighting and exposure correction
• Defog/Noise Reduction
• Blemish Removal
• Actions
• Skin Tone Correction
• Sharpening

Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms so that you don’t miss any of that oh-so-important information!

Tye of DurbinDigital and MomShots suggested the following method for sharpening:  duplicate your original layer, apply the unsharp mask at an extreme sharpness, and adjust layer blend modes and opacity until the picture looks right.

Randa suggested this prop for taking pictures of of little boy:  starting at one year old, take a picture of the baby in one of Dad’s button-up Oxford shirts.  Repeat every year to track the baby’s growth.  How cute is that?  Might work with one of Mom’s purses or a pair of shoes also, for a baby girl!

Callie C of Chinefam and Rebecca K reminded me of Elements’ built-in Vignette feature under Filters/Correct Camera Distortion.  Move the Vignette slider to the left.  Thanks to both of you!

And, to end on a, ummm, lighter note, DiXymiss’ response to the post about using a lamp as a DIY tripod:  “Lamp as tripod?  What a bright idea (pun intended)!”  TeeHee!

Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks so much for all your comments and for visiting Digital Photography For Moms all month!  Keep up the visits!  Next year, I’ll have a tutorial on CoffeeShop Vivd, plus I’m working on a post about on camera sharpening.  Wouldn’t it be great if the shots were sharp straight off the camera?

For your final entry in the giveaway, all you have to do is to post a comment affirming that you ARE SMART about photography and Photoshop.  You must be, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog!

My little one was up sick all night last night, so I’m typing up this post later than I expected.  For that reason, I’m going to extend the deadline for entering comments to noon EST on Monday, December 22.  I’ll draw the winner and announce it tomorrow afternoon!

Subscribe via email or RSS.

Other posts you can comment on: