Nobody’s perfect.  We say that a lot, and we really mean it too.  Yet when we take a look at some celebrity in a magazine or on a billboard, they sure do look perfect.  The truth is though, they’re not.  They’re like you and me.  They’ve got freckles, a dying zit, a hump in the nose, chapped lips and splotchy skin.  I’ve seen in the Enquirer at the grocery store some of those “who’s this?” articles, where they take “red carpet” photos and juxtapose them with the “just got up and am running to starbucks” snap shots.  I’m amazed at how “normal” (read rough) these amazingly beautiful celebrities and models really are.

We’ve heard people talk for years about touching up or airbrushing photos to make them “perfect”, but what do they really do?  What’s the decision process?  How do they do it?  How much is too much?

There are many techniques and sometimes it can take a fine hand, but I’m convinced that anyone with a little Photoshop experience, can easily master the skills needed to touch up a photo to get that “magazine cover” look.

Here are Five Professional Photoshop Facial Retouching Tutorials that are sure to open your eyes to the “perfection” options at your disposal. Be sure to leave a comment and show us what you’ve done.  We’d love to see your before and after work.

Simple Facial Photo Retouching

How To Get a Perfect Skin

Remove Freckles

Fast Facial Retouching

Super Fast and Easy Retouching

 

You’ve seen it just about everywhere.  You’ve been seeing it for most of your life, and you didn’t even know it.  It’s called Stock Photography.  Over the years, I’ve really become aware of just how much stock imagery is all around us.  There have been times when I’ve bought an image from iStockPhoto.com used it, and then later, seen it used in a magazine ad by one company and a billboard ad my another.

The ideal is to always take your own photos, but, there are many circumstances when it’s not practical.  Weather, scheduling conflicts, sick talent, lack of any real money to hire talent….. can all be limiting factors when trying to take your own photos.  However, there’s tons of professional photographers out there that have taken amazing photos and are more than willing to have you use them.  Sites like iStockPhoto.com have really made stock photographs affordable for bloggers and micro-publishers.

Once again, our friends over at WebDesignBooth.com have compiled a list of 30 Websites to Download Free Stock Photos.  After going over this list, I realized that there are a few of them on there that actually charge for the photos, so don’t freak out if the aren’t ALL free.

Quality and selection vary on these sites.  Be sure you check to make sure that your usage follows their licensing guidelines. Read the full article…

Let me start off by saying that I’ve been using Photoshop since 1994.  I’ve taught myself everything I know (tutorials helped), and I literally love that application.  Photoshop is always running in my task bar.  Without Photoshop, I’d have never developed the skills that aid me in all areas of production.

With that understood there are tons of free Photoshop alternatives out there.  Over the years I’ve played with a few of them.  Mostly I’m familiar with The Gimp and Paint.net.  When discussing The Gimp, I tend to refer people to GimpShop, it’s a fork of The Gimp that gives the user interface a more Photoshop-like feel.  I’ve found The Gimp, to be a little odd to work with, simply because I’m so steeped in Photshop usage.  That being said, all these apps seem to really do a good job.  A lot of work has gone in to these apps, some of them have a VERY long history and have really refined the tools and UI.

Dicky over at WebDesignBooth.com has compiled a nice list of 15 Free and Great Photoshop Alternatives.  If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to work with photographs, create works of art or simply make a cool icon for your website, one or several of these are worth taking a look at. Read the full post here…

If it feels good…. PRINT IT!  Rasterbation rocks!  Don’t let the name fool you.  The Rasterbator is an amazing little app / web app that allows you to create some amazing large format artwork.

What the Rasterbator does is lets you take a regular photo / snap shot and blow it up as large as 20 meters.  The file is rasterized, converted into a multi-page pdf document and prints on standard 8.5 x 11 paper, color or greyscale as you’d like.  The results are amazing.

A couple of years ago, when this first came to my attention, I printed a Clone Trooper from Star Wars.  The image ended up being 6 feet tall, and was a GREAT addition to my office.  Quality is based on your print settings and printer’s abilities or limitations.

Depending on your printer and settings, you can print either borderless or with a border, which yields a great artistic look.

I highly suggest that you give this as shot.  The cool thing is that you can rasterbate with someone you love… 

I love fonts.  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use unique typefaces near as much as I should, but man I love a good looking font.  I’m constantly trying to find out what this great font is, or what that one is.  What’s font used on Vimeo?  What’s the flickr font?  A proper and well designed logo can really make a huge difference.  And the perfect font, can make a perfect logo.

What font is that?  Sam Dunn over at BuildInternet.com came up with a great list of some of the most popular sites and the font that graces their logos.

I’m always on the lookout for great, free stock artwork and elements for my designs. (Why reinvent the wheel??) Silhouettes are all the rage recently.  Past ipod ads were loaded with them. True, you can create your own and sometimes that’s the only way you’re going to get the look you’re project needs, but when you have access to this much free stock, why not take a look?

Action Silhouettes Pack (13 shapes)

People in Group (117 shapes)

Hongkiat.com has compiled a useful list of 85 Free High Quality Silhouette Sets.  With these, you should have a rather extensive set of stock silhouettes for all sorts of design projects.  Read the full story…

Webforms are EVERYWHERE! It’s not just for registering anymore.  Web forms are the basis for getting any data into your database, web page or even your online application.  I’ve always used a very simple approach to web forms.  Gather the information you need, do it clearly and don’t be evil with the users information.

Creating an effective web form requires that we take a look at a few things that we may not consciously be aware of.  Sometimes the effectiveness of a form can be completely shot because of the aesthetics of the form itself, or worse, the lack-there-of.

Martin Ludwig over at Webpage Design for Designers, has come up with Eight Rules for Effective Web Forms.   Step number five is one of those that most of us probably don’t think much about when creating a web form, yet, when brought to our attention, just makes plain sense.

5. Be the First to Communicate

Make sure the wording in your form is friendly and user oriented. Here’s a simple trick for writing conversational copy: Pretend you’re actually talking with your user.

If you want to know someone’s name, you aren’t going to stare them in the eyes with a rigid expression and demand, “Full name.” That would just be creepy. If you were looking to garner a positive response from this person, you would instead open with a smile and say, “Hi, what’s your name?”

Keeping this in mind, instead of prompting your user with the label “Full Name,” try something a little more personable, like, “What’s your name?”

I know that I’m going to be more concious now when creating my forms.  Read the full article….

Whether I’m designing a website, creating a piece of graphic art or even a video production, coming up with the color pallet is one of the toughest steps I run into.  I took art my senior year in high school and I remember the color wheel and all the complimentary color stuff, but sometimes, nothing looks right and I’m just flat blocked.  Coloring will convey everything to the viewer / user.  So it’s critical to the project, that the proper color pallet is chosen.

A good color combination has the tendency to communicate with the users and let them perceive the design in the correct way. That is the basic reason why you need to pick the right color for your design.

Smashing Apps has compiled a great list of the 50 Best Free Tools To Create Perfect Color Combinations. Over the years I’ve found several of these and made use of them.  This list is quite extensive though.  Read the full article…

OH YEAH!  Photoshop has this great feature called Actions.  Basically, you can record a series of steps, provide for some user input, and save it as a little program.  A macro if you will.  I’ve been using Actions in Photoshop for years and years.  One of my favorite uses for them is to prepare images for use in video.  When I’m doing a video slide show and have say, 100+ images to import, it’s far easier to record an action that sizes them all appropriately, does a little increase in the saturation and sharpens a bit, instead of having to open each image and do it by hand. Actions are part of my Photoshop arsenal that I’d never want to be without.  (Be looking for a tutorial on using actions in the near future )

Steven Snell over at Designm.ag has composed this list of 66 Actions that are sure to help you turn your ordinary photos and snap shots into amazing works of art.  For example:

Photo Colouring 11.2

300 Action

 

 

These actions return amazing results.  I’m going to be playing with them shortly and will post you my results.  Lets try something.  Why don’t you try some and post your results in the comment section.  I’d love to see how your work turns out.   You can read the full article and get all 66 Actions right here…