Since I already declared myself a complete newbie to the whole photography and therefore stock photography thing I started looking up books on photography, especially digital one.

I found a couple of title that sounded interesting and read a couple encouraging reviews and determined me to buy them eventually. I'll gonna be buying and reading them one by one and I thought I'd make a list of them for anyone else interested.

Digital photography in easy steps by Nick Vandome

The digital photography book by Scott Kelby

The photographer's eye: composition and design by Michael Freeman

Exposure and lighting by Michael Meadhra

Understanding exposure by Brian Peterson

If anyone's got any other themselves at home that they recommend I'm interested in any other titles you ...

Sorry it took so long to start on the third and final part of the paper tutorial but I had exams these days and wasn't on much.

So this part is just a tiny bit more complicated than the other two.

Open your parchment and copy/paste it onto a new blank file, leave some solid margins about 25% of the parchment on both sides so you can edit it freely. Then you can crop it.

Select the bottom part of the page and copy/paste it onto a new layer. Move it to the right (or left).

Flip it vertically, rotate it just a lil bit and then use the spherize filter (filters>distort>spherize). Make sure your image is selected on the layer (you can do that by clicking ctrl+layer selecting on the column in the bottom right side of the screen) or it'll spherize it to your whole document....

If you missed the utorial series Part 1, Torn Edges, visit my blogs page and you'll find it there.

This next step is really easy and it work just fine on any kind of paper texture ;P

Part 2 is about making a page corner turned. As mentioned in the 1st part this requires a minimum knowledge of Photoshop's basic tools.

Open the parchment and place it onto a blank file. Leave a little space for margins. Select a triangle area from the corner you want turned, whichever size works best for you. Copy the selection and paste it onto a new layer. Flip it vertically and horizontally if you need to. If necessary move the selection so its corners reach the paper margins. Now erase the part of the parchment visible on the original layer at the top.

Make the upper edge of the parchment ...

This is a tutorial as some have as for tips on how I make my stocks digitally. So I decided to start with explaining how I do my parchment papers. First part is about making torn edges

As I can't post images to explain every step of the process I'll just do my best to walk you through tools and filters in Photoshop. Please note this requires a minimum knowledge of photoshop and what the main tools do

You can start by applying your paper texture to a blank file. Leave a little space as margins. Do whatever adjustments you think are necessary in terms of color, contrast and so on before proceeding to the next step.

You have several ways of achieving the torn edges look (cropping with pen tool or erasing unnecesary part with a hard brush eraser tool) but I personally prefer ...

I'm not sure what it brings because the future can be pretty unpredictable sometimes but I can only hope it's something good.

I plan on starting it with my first mixed media work that involves besides basic photomanipulation a lot of painting (spent a whole night on it >.< ) and hopefully more appreciation for my art than I got so far. Then my 2nd goal is to maintain my grades and have a good year at University. I'll be graduating next year OMG : We'll there's a lot coming to me after it anyways. Maybe I'll also get a decent job, one where my skills are appreciated at more than 1 euro per image *sigh* Well that ended bad when I hung up on the boss' daughter because she kept yelling at me. I don't take crap from anyone, least of all strangers.

Well enough with the long ...

I recently started shooting stuff around my house but the background of my room is always such a bugger, especially with my blue walls.

If you do have white walls or even a proper professional studio this blog shouldn't be of much interest to you but if you are in the same situation as me I hope this helps.

To achieve a neatly isolated object all you need is a white sheet or paper of preference more thick than the regular one that you can curl behind your image. I got a large 2 square m one from a local bookstore while I was looking from wrapping for my Christmas presents. It worked out pretty well thus far. Make sure you place it near a window or have your ceiling light on when you take your photograph so that you or something other around your "lil studio" doesn't create ...

Well I guess the first thing I should be starting with is the same old boring name + ASL so my name is Andreea C, I'm 20 years old (going to 21 next summer), female (name should be a hint) and I live in a small town in the northern side of Romania. I'm currently a student in the sophomore year at a university in my hometown, studying modern languages. My main preoccupation besides school at the moment is perfecting my skills at Photoshop. I am a digital artist since November 2006 and I am proud to say I have come a long way in just one year.

And since I love creating stuff digitally I soon became fond of creating various resources for others to use and that brought me to Dreamstime in the end.

My other passions asides Photoshop are tv series, books, movies (no matter ...