I was reading other members' articles here and an idea came to my mind: how all of you began working with stocks? I know that many of us are not professional photographers or illustrators, and we have various kinds of education and professions. What was the starting point for you to come to a stock with your works? Who told you about them? When was it? And what were your first images uploaded? I'll be very glad if you tell me your interesting stories =).

Well, if I start this topic, I have to begin with myself.

As you can read in my Bio, actually I'm a Teacher of English and French. I graduated from a Teacher Training Institute, and worked at school teaching children the English language. Afterwards I worked at college and taught students the same subject. I liked my job though it wasn'...

I don't understand this system. I've read about credits for blogging, and I supposed I'll be credited for every useful article or comment. But it turns out that I receive credits only for my own articles.

The question is: why read and comment the other people's articles if you don't get credits for it?

And I'm sure people will mostly spam in their own blogs in order to get more credits, notwithstanding the fact their "articles" will be removed, the credits are already received.

Could anyone explain to me the situation or simply give me the link to where I can read all about it?

Thank you beforehand!

OK, I promised to tell how I use Pen Tool for isolation of objects. Indeed, there are some small tricks which I use in every type of isolation, and I'd like to share them with you.

First thing you should remember about Pen Tool is: don't make too many points trying to repeat the contour of the object. It's better to curve the lines in order to get smooth selection without sharp angles.

Let's take this example.

see here

The color of the background is very close to the color of the hammer, so it'll be difficult to use Magic Wand Tool in this case. In order to make a selection with Pen Tool, we should click to create a starting point in the bottom, then one more point above it. Now we have a straight line, Let's make one more ...

I work in 3 magazines as a retoucher, and every day I have tons of photos and pictures to be proсessed, retouched, isolated and so on. When I started working, I didn't know how to isolate objects correctly and accurately. I had to read a lot of articles - some of them were useful, others not. But even if you read all the articles in the world about isolation and don't try even once to do it yourself, you won't know what it is.

I differentiate between several types of pictures to be isolated.

1. Objects / people shot on a white or monochromatic background.

In this case you can use a Magic Wand Tool to isolate such objects. Be sure not to select some areas you don't want to be selected. Use Lasso Tool to add/subtract to/from ...