There was a gap in my postings. I am sorry for that. The reason was that I had to quickly create a portfolio for a store. The assignment included photographs of the store and a design of several pages (PDF format).
So far I just made a draft of the portfolio, but the client (Pierre Lupesco, the owner of ELSE Gallery) is already happy to see the current progress. The image above shows the second page of the portfolio.
The previous portfolio of the store was too busy; and it was hard to digest what it presented. So in my version I tried to retain simplicity with the business style. The left margin hopefuly creates the base for the page and has the facade of the store. More like a constant reminder of what it is about. The rest of the page is quite standard, except the shadows to the text and the images. I like that floating effect. The shadows somewhat separate the content from the page layout and create a lighter feel (in my opinion).
When I was taking the photographs, my goal was to interestingly present the prodcuts (clothing and accesories) and give the overal sense of the store. Two major conditions I kept in mind: (1) keep the walls straight up and (2) find better angles to draw the eye into the photograph and make it not that boring.

Have you seen "The Russell Brown Show"? No, it's not on TV. It's on the Internet. Russel performs various tricks with Photoshop, but he doesn't hold any secrets from you. He gives them away in Tips & Techniques section of his website. And it's an instant bookmark in my browser, which is Firefox by the way .

Sometimes we encounter situations when simple masking/selection doesn't work or is too time consuming to do it right. That's why professionals like to have a whole arsenal of tools to make that perfect selection. Here is another trick to tuck under the belt - Masking with Calculations (PDF).

It very well be that you already know about this website, but silly me, I just found it.
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You probably noticed that images in the blog posts have rounded borders and shadows. I know that some people don't know how to do it, so here I am going to cast some light on this subject. To create such a crop of the image you can use any shape or just simply paint with brush. And the shadow here is just an optional effect, which you can replace with your own.

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