Thursday Tip: Compose Your Photos

There are a number of ways that we can improve photos once they come into the computer. But to really improve the pictures, you need to do better when taking the pictures. Before you push the button, stop and think a bit about what would make the best image.

For example, you should compose your photos. If you are taking pictures of children, kneel down so the camera is on the same level as the subjects. In fact, you'll often want to try shooting the pictures from a different angle than just standing and shooting. Also look at what is surrounding the subjects of your photos. Is there a big sign growing out of the back of someone's head? Move everyone around so that doesn't happen. Are you shooting into the sun? If so, the picture will probably look pretty bad. Just a little bit of thinking before you push the button can yield much better photos.

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Sunday Stock: stock.xchng

It is hard to keep track of all the sites on the Web offering stock photography. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Most of those sites charge for the photos you use.

Today we're going to look at stock.xchng, a site that offers mostly free images. Before you download and use an image, make sure you look at the usage rights. Some of them have no restrictions, others require you to notify the photographer or provide mention of the photographer.

I've found some excellent, high-resolution photos and I've certainly found some that are fairly low quality. The fact that you can find some good photos at no cost, it is a place that I'll always look before I check the for-pay sites. You will be offered a few images that have a cost to them but they are always listed below the free images. Give the site a visit and I think you'll find it has some great images that you can use in your projects.

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Do Your Photos Look Fake?

I just read a very interesting story from the folks at Scientific American. It is titled the five ways to spot a fake photo.

Since many of you are in the business of editing photos, I thought I'd pass along the five ways along with a link to the story with all the details. The five ways listed are lighting, eyes and positions, specular highlights, clones and camera fingerprints. For each of the ways listed, the article has examples and diagrams which explain the problem and potentially ways to avoid the problem.

A related article on the site has a slide show showing photo tampering throughout history.

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Photos Included in CorelDRAW X4 Greatly Improved

You looked over the feature list of the CorelDRAW X4 Graphics Suite and there were some things that probably caught your eye. As you got to the end of the list, some of the "extras" were listed.

In this post I'll specifically address the line reading "1,000 professional, high-resolution digital photos". Just to check, I looked at the press release for CorelDRAW X3 and the photos were simply lumped in with the clip art. How many of you saw this and jumped for joy? Probably not many and that's too bad because this is one of those hidden improvements.

The photos included with CorelDRAW X3 were stored in the JPEG 2000 format and their size in pixels was 768 x 512. They might be usable for a Web site, but there just wasn't enough detail there to use them in a print project.

Now we jump to CorelDRAW X4 and there is a huge improvement. Photos now are stored as JPEG files with minimal compression. Even better is that they are of a size that is usable for a lot more types of projects. All of them are 3000 pixels in the longest dimension. Also I feel there is a better selection of photos. This batch was licensed from the online stock agency, iStockphoto where you would pay $6-$10 each for the pictures Corel includes for free. Now obviously you aren't going to have a need for every one of these photos. Let's just assume that you have a need for even 50 of the 1000. That's a minimum of $300 you've saved by Corel including them for you.

One other cool feature in the installer is that you can have it "install" the "extra" content for you. This includes clip art, photos, tiles, patterns, fonts and all the other cool stuff that is normally hidden on the "other" discs. Now that Corel has shipped CorelDRAW X4 on a DVD, they can pack it with great content and make it easier to use.

Read the CorelDRAW X4 press release and see what else is new. When you are ready to order a copy, check out our CorelDRAW X4 page. We certainly appreciate your support in buying CorelDRAW X4 from our site.

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