How I Cut a Mat

I haven't had a chance to try this myself and it does talk about buying a "real" mat cutter to get the beveled edges.

When sharpening an image for presentation the easiest thing to do would be to choose Filter-->Sharpen-->Sharpen. However, there's no control over the results and generally your photo will be over-sharpened to the point of looking jaggy. You can "fade" the Sharpen effect here by choosing Edit-->Fade Sharpen but you have to guess at the percentage you want to change the sharpening, and this might take awhile to decide.

I don't pretend to know the capabilities of all the Sharpening tools in the Filter dropdown menu; there's Sharpen Edges, which seems to choose the highlights to sharpen; Sharpen More, which is even more extreme than just Sharpen; and Smart Sharpen, which can do wonderful work on an image and is worth its own tutorial by some enterprise-minded Photoshop fiend.

My tool of choice is File-->Sharpen-->Unsharp Mask. It seems to be the easiest way to find the right balance between crispness and softness in an image. Try it on an image of yours. When you choose it, you'll be confronted with a dialogue box. Type in these settings and see what you think: Amount: 50%. Radius: 1.0 pixels. Threshold: 0. You can experiment as much as you like, of course, to get the most pleasing result.

I just discovered (via PhotoshopTV) a great addendum to this hint. Open your image, which is more than likely in RGB mode. Convert it to Lab Color by choosing Image-->Mode-->Lab Color. Then, in the Channels Window (activated via Window-->Channels) click on Lightness and then apply the Unsharp Mask filter. Convert back to RGB, and you'll see a difference in the quality of the sharpness. By choosing to work just on the light parts of the image, it really sets it off against the darker.

Here's an image where I've applied the Unsharp Mask filter at the settings mentioned above: RGB.
And here's the same image opened in Lab Color and then the same Unsharp Mask settings: Lab Color. What do you think?

If you have your own methods for sharpening an image for presentation I'd love it if you shared them in the comments below. Please focus on sharpening, though--save other hints for future posts!

I'm going to make one of these. Looks simple enough for someone like me to do.

http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/BEFDA1F002CB102985CB001143E7E506/?ALLSTEPS

Put the object you are shooting in a tent. It works wonders. No direct light = no hot spots.

The size of the tent you need depends on the size of the objects you will be shooting and how much room you have. The one I built is about 3' X 3'. Bigger than most will need but if you have the room, go for it. If you have a folding table like a card table, make it to fit on it.

You will need:

1. 10' lengths of 1/2 inch plastic pipe (sch 40) is fine
   
   
2. T fittings
   
   
3. 90º elbows
   
   
4. End caps
   
   

Cut 2 pieces 24" (for the legs) and 2 pieces 34 1/2" from each 10' length. You should have a 3" piece left. Cut it in half. What you are looking to end up with is this when you are done. Dry fit it before gluing and work on a flat surface. Here is a close up of one of the corners so you can see how it goes together. Note the one do not glue joint. This will let you pull the legs off so it will store flat.

This shot shows the  white paper background and floor in place. Use one long sheet and let it curve at the bend to give you a seamless look. Don't fold it. Now get your material and make your tent. I ended up a bit short on the sides. You really want it all the way to the bottom, across the top and down the back leaving the front only open. Place your lights to  the side or from the top depending on how you want the shadows to fall. You do NOT want them shining in from the front. Remember.... we don't want direct light on the subject. You don't have to use strobe. Good old Home depot type shop lights will work fine but remember.. not too close. You don't want to burn down the house.

If you saw the violin post I made you saw what can be done in the tent. Here are a few more I took using it. Put a sheet of clear plexi glass in the bottom and play with reflections. Leave the plexi out for a more "normal" look. I ever mention that I like hats?

That should keep you playing and in where it's warm for a while. Feel free to ask questions.

Here's a site to show you how to make a cheap light box for taking pictures.

http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/light_box_light_tent

I bought a full size tan sheet (poly/cotton blend) and a large bottle of dark brown Rit dye.  

I folded my sheet in half and half again.

I held the sheet by the corner (so the sheet looked like a ghost).  

I then tied off every 4 inches with a shoe string (I opted not to use rubberbands, because I didn't want too much distinction between the two colors).

I filled a small cooler 3/4 full of cold water and 1 cup of sal, then added the dye.  I put in the sheet and soaked for 20-30 minutes.

I dumped the water (in the yard!) and rinsed the sheet with a water hose for about 10 minutes.  

Without untie-ing the sheet, I left it to dry outside for about an hour.  

I then wrapped the sheet in an old towel and dried in the dryer for two cycles.

Here are the results:
Brown Backdrop

If you need help on doing this and you're using a Mac, I figure you're not into Photoshop in a big way, so I'm going to tell you how to do it in iPhoto.  I've used screen captures to show you how to do this.

First you want to select photo(s) that you want to export and then choose the Export command from the Share menu.  A dialog box pops up. Make sure that the File Export button is selected at the top.  Select "JPG" from the Format dropdown menu.  Click the radio button that says "Scale images no larger than:" and then set the width at something like 800 or 900 pixels.  The height will scale automatically.  Hit the Export button.  Next you'll see the Save As window. All you need to do there is name the file and choose where you want it saved.  After that you can upload the image to Photographica in whatever method you use (Web or FTP).  One thing to be sure of is to select the option that says Do not resize these images automatically. Otherwise your picture may come out fuzzy once uploaded.

So here is the resulting resized photo.

I will say one thing about jpeg files.  To get their smaller size, a lossy compression formula is used, which means that information is thrown away.  Everytime you edit and save a jpeg file information is tossed.  If you do it too many times you wind up with weird jpeg artifacts, which look like splotches of color.  The trick is to always make a copy of the original if you're going to edit a file, jpeg or not.  Then you've always got the original to go back to.  Another trick is that if you've done a lot of editing on a jpeg file, save it as a TIFF file, which does not use lossy compression.

austinspace (John)
codepoit (Chris)
kwsNI (Aaron)
kikker (Shmuli)

Private Message is the best way to make this type of request. PM links for each of us can be found on the Contact page (link at the top of every Photographica page). You are more than welcome to send a PM to any other Editor, but the 4 of us listed above are around a lot more often than the others.

Creating a Gallery is very easy, and incorporating a Gallery into a Story is no more difficult than adding photos... except that you have to manually type the code.

Here are the steps.

1. Upload photos as you would for any other purpose.

2. Click "Create New Gallery", and you'll be transported to a screen that looks LIKE THIS

3. Give your Gallery a Title and a Keyword
   REMEMBER THIS KEYWORD... IT WILL NOT SHOW ANYWHERE LATER

4. Change the colors of the background and text in the boxes shown
   (default is white text on black background)

5. In the left column, select the keyword of each photo you want to include in the Gallery.

   NOTE:  Photos can be no more than 750px wide, or 560 high, or they won't show up in the pulldown  
   (This is about as large as you'd want to go for most images on this site anyway)

   note that the keyword pulldown may appear "lower" on the screen than the corresponding number and description fields..  don't worry about this.

6. In the right-hand column, enter a brief description, which will appear below the photo.

7. Continue as above to add up to 20 photos to the gallery

8. <Click "Submit">, and you've created the gallery.
   

Of course until you plug your gallery into a story, it won't be visible anywhere.  

--------------------------------------

Now, create a new story:

1. Click "Post New Story"

2. write your story text

3. Insert your gallery as you would for a popup, but change the tag "[popup] to [Gallery], and using the Gallery's keyword you memorized in step 3 above.

   So,  for example, this demo gallery uses the syntax:
   
   [gallery keyword="GalleryDemo"] demo gallery [/gallery]
   
   (where brackets [  and ] are really < and > symbols, respectively)

4. preview your story by clicking "preview", and when ready,

5. click "Submit"... and your story is posted to the site.
   

I hope this helps.... let's see some amazing galleries.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Step One
I took four panoramic photos of my room using a tripod.  tripod room panorama I used the post of the stairwell as a starting point.

Step Two
Leaving the tripod in the same location, I took pictures of myself in the room using the self-timer.  I made sure to use the same lever on the tripod.
one jo of many

Step Three
I took a picture of the pitcher using a piece of black cardboard paper as a background.  pitcher and water

LAYERING
Step One
I created a new project in Microsoft Picture It (which came with my computer).  I added each room picture by copy/paste and began layering them on top of each other.
layered room Leave this as a .png file (not jpeg) until complete.  Better use for layers in Picture It.

Step Two
By using the "Create A Cut-Out" tool in Picture It, I cut myself out of each of the seven pictures of myself.  
cut out one of many Each cut-out is placed in a new project.  I then copy/paste this new project picture onto the Layered Room photo.  
(Tip:  When resizing the pasted image be sure to use ONLY the corners to maintain proportions.)
(Tip:  Where applicable, I copied the shadow as well.  I had to copy the couch cushion I was sitting on, also, to create a more realistic end result.)
I started in the back of the room, and repeated this step six more times to get all of the Jo's in the room together.

Step Three
Using the same method above, I cut out the water from the pitcher and created in a new project.  
pitcher cut out I then flipped and used Adjust Tint to make the liquid green.  flip and greenNext I placed the "margarita" in the layered room photo.  I did have to adjust the tilt to make it look more realistic.  margaritas

Step Four
After all layers are in place, save as a copy.  Save the copy as a JPG file.  Leave the original in the PNG format.  When you save in JPG, you will be flattening your image and unable to return to "tweak" as necessary.  Crop photo, and use options in save to preferred width/height.

Please note:  I did this for fun, therefore did not spend any quality time creating my cut outs.  I also found the lighting structure (windows and morning sun) created a large problem even though I used the same camera setting on each photo.  With more time, this picture could be considerably better.

EXAMPLE 2:Michelle Triplets Using the same methods as above, I made this Triplet picture for a friend.