So its been awhile, almost a year since I have gotten creative on deviantArt. I'm hoping to change that. Its now summer and while I don't have all that much free time as I work during the days as a web designer for a firm, I do want to do more design work. So this summer I plan to make a new art piece at least once a month, if not more. Wish me luck.

A lot of people have commented about the style of photos in my gallery. I wish I could give credit to a high end camera or uber photography skills but the truth of photography is everyone has a secret or trick to their style. Many of my pictures have an almost glow to them that really makes them bright and stand out. My dirty little secret is actually quite a common one, I photoshop every picture I ever post. Now this doesn't seem like a surprise, after all we are on a artist site. Well I don't just use photoshop, I have some favorite plugins that add in some very cool effects.

My secret is a company called Red Paw Media. [link] This company has a series of free plugins that I think are one of the best out there.

Beautifier [link]
This is my absolute favorite plugin, this is the one that creates the glowing effect on my pictures. The technical explanation is that it first diffuses the picture, and saturates it with color (or it can desaturate for another artistic style). I wish I could tell you that I create the glow myself in photoshop with carefully selected values but to be honest with you, just run Beautifier once with the default settings and you will be hooked.

Hot Pixel [link]
Whenever you take a picture at high ISO speeds, you tend to get white "hot pixels" and they are a pain to remove them from the picture. You often go in with a blur or clone brush and have to go around to hundreds of 1x1 pixel dots to remove them. This tool is amazing because it will remove those 1x1 pixel dots for you, almost instantly. Don't ever worry again about shooting at high ISO late at night without a flash.

I hope you check this out and download RedPaw Media Plugins today.
~steve

For my last birthday, I got a Fuji S3100 Digitial Camera to replace my well aged HP Photosmart 210. When buying my new fuji, I wanted a serious camera for a extremely low price and the fuji S3100 was just that.

The fuji s3100 is a "mini-slr" camera, meaning that it is in the shape of a high-end single reflex len camera but is smaller and has less features. The camera has 4.0 megapixels, but seriously 1-2 megapixels is all that you will need and a 6.0x optical zoom. The camera also uses XD memory, which is just about the fastest, but most expensive memory out there. The camera shoots great, but I have a list of problems with it.

1) the flash does not come out high enough if you have a long lens attached.
2) you can't put an additional flash because there is no hotshoe or pc cable connection for a slave flash.
3) no image stablizer (dark shoots blur easy on this one)
4) no manual focus (again dark shoots blur)
5) no shutter speed control (again dark shoots blur)

Now I won't go on and bore you with a list of what it can do, its a very nice camera to say the least and I have so many amazing shoots from it. Now for the reason I made this post, I got this camera not for its retail price of $299 but rather for $171.00. (42% off) And that is for a brand new, still in orginal packaging. Where did I find it? My new favorite place to buy cameras, [link]

Now for those that want a camera like this, but don't want those 5 downfalls of the s3100, try for a s5100 or s5200 (the new one) which gets you out of the silver prosumer line into the black professional line at a price of $295 from bigdig. But I would go on yahoo shopping and see if you can get that any lower.

Hope this helps anyone looking to buy a serious digital camera.
~steve