Imagekind Gallery Art

I have just opened a gallery at Imagekind to sell some of my work to customers in the USA. You can see the available art prints at my Imagekind Art Gallery where you can purchase prints as canvases or framed posters. Currently at Fotoviva Art Prints we do not offer framed prints so this is a bonus to buyers, especially from the USA.

I'm just testing this online gallery out first to see how sales go so for now there is only one gallery with the allowed images uploaded.

New Photo blog coming

If you're a regular visitor here and are wondering why it has been a little quiet lately, that's because we are working on a lot of 'stuff' behind the scenes. There are big expansion plans for the main Fotoviva Photography site but also we have been busy applying the final touches to a new blog which will be finished next week.

We will post the new blog link here when it's done and hopefully we'll have a big announcement when the new blog goes live.

Until then, keep shooting and please visit the site!

Free Desktop Wallpaper!

On Fotoviva we now have a monthly wallpaper you can download for free to pimp your computer screen! Different pictures will be made available every month so you can choose as you like and bring a bit of beauty to that dull old PC!

Come and have a look at this month's free wallpaper and check out our new photo uploads while you're there. We have some nice snow pictures and a wonderfully atmospheric straw hay bale image in our landscape photography section.

Create a soft focus effect

Here's an easy way to create the effect of a soft focus filter on your camera using Adobe Photoshop. You may have to adjust the settings to suit your photograph and the resolution but it gives you the general idea.

1. Open your photo in Photoshop.
2. Duplicate the layer by going to the LAYER menu and selecting DUPLICATE LAYER.
3. From the FILTER menu go to BLUR>GAUSSIAN BLUR and apply a setting of 15-25. This is based on a 6MP image. Use a little less for smaller images or more for 8-10MP pictures. This will apply the blur to the duplicated top layer.
4. From the layer pallete, reduce the opacity of the top blurred layer to around 10-40%. Play with the opacity until you are happy with the result. This allows the sharpness of the original layer to show through whilst creating the soft focus effect on the top layer.
5. Go to LAYER>FLATTEN IMAGE to make the photo just one layer and save.

You can play with the layer effects in the layer pallete before flattening to create some special effects. From the blurred layer select OVERLAY or SOFT LIGHT and see how it effects the image. You can create some really interesting effects by choosing how the top layer blends with the original. Play with the opacity again if you choose another blend mode.

Here's an example of the soft focus effect as seen on one of my dogs...click for larger photograph

Shoot in RAW

One of the best things I have come across to help perfect your photos is to shoot in the RAW format rather than JPG. Some photographers would disagree and say you should get the shot right first time in camera without post processing on the computer, but I disagree. With RAW you can either make minor adjustments to make it perfect or drastic changes to give your image a different 'feel'. Most of the pictures on fotoviva are taken in RAW mode.

If you have a point and click camera, chances are you won't have the RAW option, but if you have a DSLR or bridge camera you should find it under your settings. You will also need a program such as Adobe Photoshop or some other image software that supports RAW files. Photoshop is one of the best and has some great features in the program.

So what is so good about RAW?
When shooting in standard JPG format your camera takes the settings and creates a jpg with them. With RAW your camera takes the settings but does not embed them into a file. It simply says "these are the settings you used, but feel free to change them to suit before finalising to jpg.

You can change the white balance, exposure, contrast, and many more settings. It's well worth it to get that perfect result. But remember, it's always best to try and get it as near to perfect as you can in the first place, rather than relying on with RAW settings.

You can find a great tutorial by Adobe here.