This giveaway is now closed. Thank you to all who entered.

The winners are #32 Lolli from Better in Bulk, #5 Scott from Bald is Beautiful and #101 Rene (whom I cannot find a way to contact). If you are winner and have not heard from me, please contact me.

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:
32    5    101
Timestamp: 2010-08-27 17:05:43 UTC

Lightroom and Photoshop lovers are in for a treat! I am so excited to be hosting a wonderfully generous giveaway by Pretty Presets! Laura, the amazing preset designer at Pretty Presets is allowing me to giveaway THREE $25 gift cards to her shop. THREE! I am so psyched!! Those who follow my Facebook fan page for Everyday Elements can tell you I love to give stuff away and having three prizes is thrice the fun!

Laura was sweet to provide me with some previews of her collections since I’m not all that savvy with tweaking presets yet (remember, I eat-sleep-breathe Photoshop Elements), but if you scroll to the bottom,  you will see my try with a couple of presets.

Sweet Brown Collection

Sweet Summer Collection

Bold and Beautiful Collection

Sweet Summer Collection

In addition to a large number of Lightroom and ACR presets, Laura has also come created a handy tool, called “Just Starting Out,” for new photographers who are just starting out. This PDF will cut down on your hunting for many things over the Internet and save you loads of time. I am all for things like this!!

Now, onto the giveaway. To enter, simply leave a comment letting me know (if you should win) what you would use the $25 gift card for – Lightroom presets or ACR presets or for her new photographer’s PDF.

To earn additional entries, you can do one or more of the following (make sure to leave a comment for each one):

1. “Like” Pretty Presets on Facebook
2. Follow Pretty Presets on Twitter
3. Follow me (@AmandaPadgett) on Twitter

The giveaway will end on Thursday, August 26th, at 11:00 PM EST. The winners will be chosen using Random.org and announced in this post.

I love, love, love Gradient Map and Gradient adjustment layers in Photoshop Elements (and regular PS)! You can create subtle or dramatic color and temperature changes with them, and I often use them in my actions and general work flow. So I thought I would share how to create your own gradients and how to save them for future use.

Okay, start with an image, preferably a nice, clean edit.

Step 1: Create a gradient map adjustment layer. Quickest way in both PS and PSE is to just click on the half black/half white icon in your Layers palette. A box will pop up and simply click on ‘gradient map.’

Step 2: Click on the gradient that comes up, no matter what it looks like. We are going to change it, so don’t worry, even if it is red and yellow.

Step 3: Double click on the color box in the left. Choose a color you think you would like. Click okay. Then, do the same for the color box on the right.

Step 4: If you want to save this gradient for future use, type in a name for it in the ‘Name’ box and click ‘Save.’ You will need to name it again when the file opens up. Note: this saves all the gradients in this set. Whenever you want to load this one gradient, it will reload all the gradients in the set again, so you will have duplicates. I’ll share how to save a set at the bottom of this post.

Step 5: This is what your gradient will look like in the Layers palette. Change the blend mode to Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light (sometimes Vivid Light can produce neat results too). Lower the layer opacity to suit.

Final Image:

This gradient added a subtle creamy coolness to the image, but you can do all kinds of things with gradient layers. Have fun playing around and if you come up with something really cool and want to share, please post it to my Everyday Elements fan page. I promise to “ooh and aww” over it!

*****************************************************

Okay, to create a custom set, meaning set of gradients that you decide on, you need only those gradients to be in the window before saving. So, to get rid of the others ones, right click on it and choose ‘delete gradient.’ Don’t worry, this does not delete if from your gradients altogether, just from this set. Once you clean up all the unwanted ones and include the ones you do want, choose save. Then, rename the set whatever you want. In the example below I renamed it “FavoriteGradients.grd.”

Now, when I open a new image and create a gradient map, I can choose to use the sets PSE has or I can load my Favorite Gradients set and choose from there. Clear as mud?

This giveaway is now CLOSED. Thank you to all who entered!

Congratulations to “CanadaCole” from Superfluous Fluff. She was comment #104.

A tip for everyone who enters a giveaway – add a way for people to contact you, either via your blog or in your entry for the giveaway.

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random integers, generated with replacement:
104
Timestamp: 2010-08-11 12:50:38 UTC

Are you still building your photography business and not sure about what business documents you need? Have you started creating them but not sure they fit the bill? I am personally at that point in my business and the documents at Beyond the Shot are exactly what we need!

Beyond the Shot is a new business started by Amy at Ten Tiny Toes Photography, where she provides her awesome business documents for sale to other photographers. And, I am very excited to be hosting a giveaway for her new Price and Product Guide this week!

The Guide features sections for:

* Session fees & descriptions
* Baby Plans
* Print Collections
* Digital Collections
* A la carte Gift & Wall Prints
* A la carte boutique products

You will also receive links to the various vendors that she uses for the products listed in the Guide along with comprehensive descriptions and verbiage for each of them. This Guide is ready to have your prices added into the pre-populated list of popular sizes and is completely customizable to include all your product offerings beyond what they have included.

All Beyond the Shot products are currently in Microsoft Word format.

Now for the giveaway part! To enter simply leave a comment telling me how long you have had a photography business (or if you are just starting out).

Extra entries can be earned by doing any or all of the following. You must leave a new comment for each additional entry.

• Like Beyond the Shot at their Facebook fan page.
• Share it on a post at your blog or Twitter (leave your blog address or Twitter handle in your comment).

Giveaway ends on Tuesday, August 10th at 10:00 PM EST. Winner will be chosen via Random.org.

Do you have trouble getting rid of those pesky circles or bags under the eyes of your subjects? Well, I wrote a guest post for Rita at Coffeeshop, showing two different techniques to help lessen those under-eye circles. I also created a video tutorial as a companion to the written tutorial and am sharing the video here for my Photography Haven friends.

The first technique in the tutorials uses the handy clone stamp tool. The second technique uses a soft brush to paint skin color over the under-eye circles.

The video is done using PSE but the steps can be used in CS5 or other PS versions, however, PS users also have the handy patch tool to attack those nasty circles too.

To see the written tutorial, keep on eye out at Coffeeshop (it will likely post today or tomorrow). To view the video, click HERE.

And, because no post is complete without a picture or two, here are the before and afters of the shot I used in the tutorial.

Straight-out-of-the-camera:

After using the above techniques and giving it a good clean edit:

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.

Thank you to all who entered. Remember that Pamela has a $5 off coupon code for Photography Haven readers. Simple put in photohaven when checking out.

The winner of this giveaway is Victoria Morris. Congratulations, Victoria!
Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:
40
Timestamp: 2010-07-22 15:02:34 UTC

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users – here is a giveaway for you! Pamela Topping is a talented photographer who has started to make some of her often-used actions available for purchase and she has graciously allowed me to give a way two sets here at Photography Haven to one lucky winner!

The two sets she is giving away are her iEnhance and Blonde actions. I’ve been playing with both and think they are delightful.

Below are some quick examples from her Blonde set.

I particularly enjoyed the Golden Pop, Blonde Boost and the Platinum Pop! These actions would be awesome on flowers too!

The iEnhance actions are for sharpening, contrast and lightening and are highly effective!

Pamela has some gorgeous examples on her site, so head over there and browse around. She also had a few free actions which look divine; grab them while you’re there.

Here is how to enter the giveaway:

• Leave a comment telling me the freebie action you use the most (PSE or PS).
• Earn one additional entry by “liking” Pamela Topping Photography on FB. Make sure to come back and leave another comment when you do.
• Giveaway will end Thursday, July 22nd at 11:00 PM EST.
• Winner will be picked via Random.org

Extra good news!! Pamela is giving Photography Haven readers $5 of any purchase. Just put in the coupon code PHOTOHAVEN when checking out. Thank  you, Pamela!!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED TOMORROW MORNING.

Congratulations to the winner, Amy from Joy of my Heart! Thank you to all who entered. If you would like to purchase the photo veils, go to Love That Shot. You can get them for 50% off if you sign up for a month’s access to Love That Shot, which also gives  you free tutorials, textures, 50% off the Blossom workshop and more. It’s really worth it!

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:
120
Timestamp: 2010-07-16 16:33:36 UTC

Veils….what? Is that what you are thinking? Yep, I said photo veils. They are gorgeous overlays that work similarly to textures, but instead of adding texture, they add hues and depth. I personally have the set and adore using them! There have been many times when I sat and looked at an image, thinking it needed something, added a veil or two and it hit the spot!

To help you see the difference they can make on a picture, here are some before and after shots from Michelle, one of the creators of the veils.

Misti and Michelle, from Love That Shot, created the veils and have them for purchase and download. The Simplicity Collection, which has 30 gorgeous veils, is just $35. If you are a member of Love That Shot, you get 50% off.

On to the giveaway! Love That Shot is giving away one Simplicity Collection set to a lucky Photography Haven reader and here are the giveaway details:

• To enter leave a comment telling me if you have ever used textures or overlays before
• Giveaway ends on Thursday, July 15th at 11:00 PM EST
• Winner will be chose via Random.org

Extra entries can be earned by:

• Signing up for Love That Shot’s free monthly newsletter (and you get free textures for doing that!)
• “Like” either of their Facebook fan pages:  My Two Seasons (Michelle) or Misti Tracy

Please leave additional comments for the extra entries.

Now, with all the business stuff done, I thought I’d share a couple of my recent pictures that I used the veils on. I love them!

I use PSE8, that should come as no surprise to most people who read this blog. I have a few different plug-ins for it which provide me some of the missing components from the big-dog Photoshop. The one I love playing with the most is SmartCurves. It’s a free plug-in (for PC’s only, sorry Macs) and it allows me to play with the red, green and blue colors separately and to save curve “formulas” as presets of sorts.

Anyway, the point of that information is that I was playing with my SmartCurves one day, creating some neat, ultra creamy curve settings and then played with the blend modes. Well, I happened upon something I really liked. It lightened and creamed the skin in such a way that made other skin tweaking unnecessary. I have a copy of old PS7, so I opened it up and duplicated the steps, creating the Makeover action.

Below is a Before and After example, using only the Makeover action – no other editing done (except eye sharpening).

I had someone at Clickin Moms test it for me and after a few changes, I posted it as a freebie on the “Pay It Forward” board (if you aren’t on Clickin Moms, that board alone is worth joining). Many people have raved over it, sharing their pictures edited with it. So, I thought I’d share it here for my Photography Haven friends.

Let me tell you first, it is not perfect, but it is useful. You may want to invert the two creamy layers and brush on the effect, instead of brushing it off of everything else. To do that, press “control” and “i” (or “command” and “i” on a Mac) to invert those layers, then brush on with a soft, white brush set to like 60% opacity.

This action is best for Caucasian women and girls, and babies of both sex.

You can download Makeover HERE.

PSE users, don’t worry, a post about SmartCurves and the presets/action for Makeover coming soon. Too much to mix the two in one post.

I know you have to have been told this before, so why am I preaching it here? Well, because it is advice that is so often ignored. Everyday I read about someone upgrading their camera or editing software because their old ones did not give them the pictures they wanted. I am here to tell you, that it probably was not the camera or the editing program, it was probably the user.

For example, take Ruthanne from Eclectic Whatnot, who made me stop short when I saw her pictures. I first found her blog, via My3Boybarian’s Sweet Shot Tuesday link party, and immediately looked at her About page to see what camera she uses. Boy was I surprised when I saw she uses a Nikon D60! I used to have a D60 and MY pictures never looked like that! I sold my D60 to my sister and upgraded to the D90 and now realize I did not use it nearly like I should have. It was the user, not the camera, who had limitations.

To prove my point, below are a couple of Ruthanne’s gorgeous pictures. I know some photographers who have higher grade Nikon and Canon bodies who do not have pictures nearly as good as these.

There are several others I know who really rock the cameras they have, which others have left behind for cameras in greener fields. Two of those are Cheryl from TidyMom, and Morgan from Morgan Kervin Photography, both whom use D40’s, a Nikon “entry level” camera. Morgan has a professional photography business, taking amazing pictures with that camera! She blows me away with what she can do using a D40x! Cheryl take incredible food shots with no external flash and only one prime lens!

What do these ladies have in common? They have learned enough about photography and their cameras to do some serious picture taking! They understand exposure, aperture and shutter speed and how the three work together. They understand about composition and perspective and capture shots that grab the viewers eye and hold them there.

Now, a little quip about editing programs and I’ll get off my soapbox. You do NOT need the big dog CS5 to be able to properly edit your pictures. I promise, you don’t! To prove my point, head over the I Heart Faces and find their most recent Fix It Friday post. Look at a few who edited with CS5, 4 or other PS versions, then look at a few who used PSE8, 7 or older versions. I guarantee you that most who used a full Photoshop version didn’t do any better than those who used PSE. And, I love that usually one or two of the contributors will have edited the image with PSE, and their edits will be fantastic!

Photoshop Elements is a powerful, highly useful editing program and 95% of people who get it never use it to it’s full potential. Instead, they see all the professional photogs using CS5 and think that to get pictures like the pros, they need the Big Daddy of Photoshop. Not true! What you really need in order to get shots like the pros are better pictures coming out of the camera! Sorry, but it’s true. No amount of editing is going to make a so-so picture amazing.

Alright, here is what I recommend: Before buying a bigger and better camera, or a bigger, more expensive editing program, learn to really use what you have. If you have money you are itching to spend, take a photography workshop so that you are taking better pictures. Or, maybe get a new lens that will help you capture shots you couldn’t get before (primes, macro, wide angle, zoom). Investments in lenses are always more lasting than investments  in camera bodies. After doing those things, if you have Photoshop Elements, take a workshop to learn to make the most of it.

Photography is an expensive hobby to start with, don’t make it worse by getting things you do not really have to have. That is it, climbing down now.

Editing to add that there are times to upgrade, and Robin brought that up in a comment. Some cameras have limitations in mega pixels which can limit the size you can print. Some have limitations in ISO, which limits the lighting conditions you can shoot in. I’m not saying don’t ever upgrade, just make sure you’ve pushed your current body as far as you can first.

Need help learning how to use  your DSLR? Can’t figure out your CS5 or PSE8 editing software? Have no idea how the heck aperture and ISO effect your pictures? I recommend joining Clicking Moms. It is an amazing message board started to help mom photographers, professional and amateurs alike. I joined back in January and wonder what I did without it.

This is not one big massive message board, no, it is a message board with many separate boards for different topics such as:

• Beginners, both in photography and editing
• General post processing
• General photography chit chat
• Written and video tutorials in both photography and editing
• Hard core critique where you can offer a picture up for constructive criticism
• Photography business where you can get or give helpful tips and advice about photography as a business
• Pay it forward, where you share neat, free things such as templates and actions that you’ve found around the Net
• Used equipment board, where you can sell and buy lenses, bags, cameras, flashes and more (I bought my macro there)
• Group buy and discount board where vendors offer products and services at a special group rate (this board is dangerous, enter with caution )

Those are not the only things you’ll find there, just the ones I frequent the most. I have learned so much about photography and editing since joining and only wish I had bought the year pass ($50) instead of the six month pass ($30).

If you are interested in my Everyday Elements workshops, or have taken one in the past and plan to take another, you would receive another perk because I offer Clickin Moms a special rate on my workshops.

Now, I want to be very transparent here… Clickin Moms is having a little contest right now to grow their membership. They have offered some prizes for those who bring in a certain number of new members. If you click through my link (or click on image above or in sidebar) then I get a little return “love” from Clickin Moms. To thank you, I will show “love” to you by sending you an exclusive file with five of my actions, which will work in both PSE and PS. Just email me after you sign up, letting me know your username so that I can verify it on my affiliate page, then I will email you the zip folder with the actions.

Joining right now is a win/win for you because they have a special discount active during the contest too. If you enter FRIEND  in the coupon box at checkout you get 10% off any subscription. And, if you’re sure you will love it like I do, you can sign up for a lifetime membership, meaning a one time fee, and get 20% off by entering LOVECM in the coupon box.

If you are already a member (and you’ve made it this far in the post), leave me a comment with your user name and I’ll “befriend” you. My user name is unique and hard to remember, so you may want to write it down: amandapadgett. Sorry, just had to add that.

p.s. Reading back over this I see that I got a little happy. Sorry. Heehee

Those new to digital photography may be asking “Defog? What the heck is defogging?” Well, many digital images come out of the camera with a bit of a haze on them. Sometimes that is from incorrect exposure settings, sometimes because of the sun hitting your sensor and other times just because.

Many actions created include a “defogging” layer, which is usually a duplicate layer with an Unsharp Mask filter run on it. I do it a bit differently and thought I’d share it with you: I defog my pictures by simply using a Levels adjustment layer and tweaking the sliders. I am not saying one way is better than the other, but this way will lead to a smaller file size because you are not duplicating the image.

Step 1: Open up your image in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Here is my before picture:

Step 2: Create a Levels adjustment layer by clicking on the half black, half white circle in your Layers palette. A drop down (or up ) menu will appear; click on Levels.

Step 3: The Levels adjustment box will either pop out onto your screen or fold out below/above your Layers palette. It will look like this:

Step 4: Now for the “defogging,” which I usually just call a “Levels Bump” in the actions I’ve created. Move black slider to meet the histogram “mountain.” Then do the same with the white slider. Then, if your image is a portrait and the person’s face needs a little brightening, slide the middle slider, the gray one, to the left a little.

Step 5: Your image will have more definition and be a little brighter as well. Here is what my image looks like after only moving my sliders to meet the sides of the “mountain” and moving the midtone slider to the left some.

Here is a side-by-side comparison:

See what a difference just one little step can do? I hope this little tip helps you along in your own editing journey.

Here is the image from above cleaned up and with a cooling action I created. Looking at it now, I think he’s a little bright. I edited it late last night and my eyes must have been seeing things. I’ll fix it soon.