For the portfolio, which I was doing for ELSE Galley (a store in Georgetown), I need a few images of the tailor and the services the store offers to its customers. One day I visited the store and while the tailor was working I took a few images. Not all of them are here, but some nice ones and edited for a somewhat "fine art" finish are presented here.

During my latest hike in Shenandoah mountains I took this photograph (above). By looking at the image you may think that I had to do a lot of manipulations in post-processing. Strangely, not at all. The main effect (bluish background with the fall) is achieved in Camera Raw. I simply played with the image in the Camera Raw tool before actually opening it in Photoshop. You want to find out how?

Read more!

This another website to bookmark. On this website you will find several good articles on various aspects of photography, such as:

• Producing a Photography Website That Works
• Firing your studio flash without frying your camera
• Using a single light for portraits
• Getting Started in Professional Photography
• Wedding Photography - Calling the Shots
• and more tips...

Is your image crooked? Not a problem, there is a quick fix for that. Switch to Measure tool - under the droplet (Shift-I) and draw the line along your lines in the picture, which should be vertical or horizontal. It could be the horizon line or a wall of a building - simply mark the line that should be straight. And the go to the main menu - Image, Rotate Canvas, Arbitratry. The angle will be already there. Press OK and here it is - your image is straight, you just have to crop off the unwanted areas.

Have you ever tried to precisely crop an image when there are just a few pixels that you want to get rid of? The crop tool just snaps to the document border or to the layer border. Sometimes I just zoom in to make the difference much larger and then adjust the crop area.
But there is a better way - Hold Ctrl key (or Command on Mac) and adjust the crop area to precisely crop your image - down to a pixel.
As well when you use your crop tool you can easily move the crop area with the arrow keys and zoom in/out with Ctrl/Command "+/-" keys.