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Tuesday 30 August 2011

Shutterstock's reCAPTCHA Conundrum

Although Shutterstock is my best-selling site, it doesn't want to remember my log-in details, which is rather annoying as it means I have to key my details in on every visit. That's bad enough, but the reCAPTCHA section is a serious piece of nonsense. As proved here...

I couldn't even guess what the second word here is...





Here's another... this time upside down! Do I put 'ploj' as the second word or should it be 'fold'?

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Tilt-Shift Photoshop Experiment

I love tilt-shift photography. Perhaps it reminds me of all those Airfix models I used to make as a kid. Whatever it is I thought I'd have a go at creating some in Photoshop. Here's my first effort.

Swimming pool at Pueto de Mogan, Gran Canaria

What I did... (It's quite easy actually)...

1. Opened image in Photoshop CS2
2. Selected Quick Mask Mode
3. Selected Gradient Tool with Reflected Gradient option
4. Drew gradient from approx. person in pool straight down to pool edge
5. Returned to Standard Edit Mode so that I could see the selection edges
6. Used Filter > Blur > Lens Blur and experimented until I was happy with the result
7. Upped the Contrast and Saturation
8. That's it! Job done.
9. Told all my friends it's a scale model which took me four years to complete...

Here's another...
Chew Valley, Somerset, England


Wednesday 10 August 2011

Tezzstock's Top Selling Stock Image

Pictured above is 'Digital Camera' my my top selling stock image across all sites. It has made well over 2000 sales and appeared a few times in both Fotolia and Shutterstock's top seller lists.

It seems that buyer's like the fact that they can add their own image within the camera's screen and as I included a clipping path they can use it on different backgrounds.

It was taken in the studio on a Nikon D300 using flash lighting. I had to Photoshop out the camera manufacturer's logo but other than that it required very little post-production.

The image received a surge in sales after featuring in 43rd place on the Shutterstock top 50 sellers list.

You can view or purchase this image at the following stock sites:

Dreamstime
Fotolia