Wondering how on Earth can your favorite photograph be laser-tech onto a flatter piece of crystal to make a 2D photo crystal or even a beautiful 3D Laser crystal?

Watch the videos below and see how the experts turns a simple photograph into Crystal Art!

The best part in this cristal art process, is that you can personalize and custom-made your gifts, tailoring them to suit any occasions.

…whether it’s Graduation, Father’s Day, birthdays, National Dog Day, funerals, Christmas, or Chanukah. There is literally no occasion for which a 3D photo crystal would not be appropriate, since you choose precisely how it looks!

3D Laser Gifts: solving your gift-giving conundrums one at a time

In the article excerpted below, 3DLaserGifts explains in more details the easy steps you must take to make it happen.

They say that at some point, technology is indistinguishable from magic. How else could we perform the miracle of etching a beautiful, 3-dimensional image deep inside the hide of fine crystal? I mean, the crystal, even with the 3D photo inside of it, is flawless and unmarred. This begs explanation.

The answer, of course, isn’t magic—not quite. You don’t need magic to create a 3D photo crystal, you need a lasers. Let me explain how the process works.

 First, choose your photograph.

The ideal photograph will have a nice contrast with a small number of subjects: whether they’re faces, cars, beautiful brides, or pets. Less is more.

The more in focus your subject is, the happier you’ll be with the result. In fact, we try to limit the number of faces to 3 so that you will be able to fully appreciate the 3D effect of the laser-etched image inside the crystal.

Upload the image to our site.

We read the image.

Our expert colleagues run your image through some powerful software in order to use the light and shadows to create a 3D model from your 2-dimensional photograph.

Again, the higher the contrast, the more striking the 3D effect will be.

The software then plots the points of illumination; meaning that it reads where the light hits the subject in the photograph.

The laser etches your image in 3D.

Photo crystals are made using a special laser that focuses its concentrated beams of light to a precise point below the surface of the crystal.

Each bright point in the image is plotted in the final crystal piece. The laser then focuses a high-powered beam on each three-dimensional coordinate.

Once the beam reaches the focal point, the powerful laser pulse makes a tiny void or inclusion inside the crystal.

Then the laser moves to the next coordinate and makes another etched point.

Finally, enough points are created to reproduce the design deep within the crystal.

As laser beams are non-invasive, no marks or blemishes are left on the surface of the crystal.

When viewed from any angle, the intricate design is much like a three dimensional sculpture, its ghostly image floating deep in the heart of the crystal.

Is your imagination generating some great ideas?

Mine is! And I see many occasions were I could offer a 3D Crystal Art Laser Gift .

Gotta go write-up my list to ensure I do not forget someone. I sense it will be a Crystal Christmas this year

Have fun and talk soon,

Janice

Ever thought of turning your own photos into real postage stamps? Well, if not, keep reading as this exciting new product will trigger your creativity and produce unique work of art in miniature from your photography.

And it is really easy!

All you need to do is upload a photo, customize it with easy-to-use interface and place your order. Voila!

Zoom, move, rotate your image and select from 10 different border colors. It’s so cool… Have a marriage to announce, a new born baby, your favorite pet or any other subject that you would like to showcase to family and friends? Use PhotoStamps and have them rave at your unique prespective on creating photostamps.

Here are answers to some questions you might ask yourself:

Are these real?
Yes, PhotoStamps from Stamps.com are valid U.S. Postage, based on a technology called PC Postage. Stamps.com, the company behind PhotoStamps, has been a United States Postal Service approved provider of PC postage since 1999. When PhotoStamps first launched in 2004, it was the first ever customized postage product in the United States. To date, over 45 million PhotoStamps have been sold!

How much do they cost?
The total cost of your order will depend on the postage value of your PhotoStamps and the number of sheets you order. Each sheet contains 20 PhotoStamps postage labels, and the minimum order is one sheet.

How big are PhotoStamps?
PhotoStamps try to achieve the largest possible image display area while also making the overall stamp dimensions reasonable for most applications. Each individual PhotoStamps postage label measures 1.9 inches in width and 1.4 inches in height, and the image area is 1.1 inches in width and 1.1 inches in height.

Are PhotoStamps available for large mailings?
Yes. PhotoStamps are available in production rolls (custom quantities; up to 10,000 PhotoStamps per roll).

How long does it take to receive them?
When ordering PhotoStamps, customers may choose from one of three order handling options: Normal, Expedited or Rush. Normal orders typically ship in 3-5 business days, while Rush handling is processed in 1-2 business days. After processing, orders ship via USPS Standard, USPS Priority or USPS Express.

What is the return policy?
At PhotoStamps, your satisfaction is our number one concern. If you are not satisfied with the quality of your order, you may return your item(s) within 30 days for your money back. Certain restrictions on retail gift code purchases apply.

Now, things are getting even better…

Win a trip to Washington DC to see your PhotoStamp on display at the Smithsonian National Postal Musuem if you are the winner of the PhotoStamps of The Year – Smithsonian Contest 2010!

Get those gorgeous photos of yours off your hard disk and upload them to PhotoStamps today. They will look much better

A truly fun activity that will illuminate your “snail mail” frankings with a very personal touch.

Enjoy and talk soon,

As mentioned inside Shelton Muller’s photography tutorial video that I’m sharing with you today, ‘ depth of field is a powerful tool for telling the viewer that which you consider to be significant in the image and highlighting the subject.’

Depth of field picture comparison (Shelton Muller)

Click on the arrow below to watch the video (more than 411,000 views so far).

For more great resources and popular photography tutorials, I recommend you take time to hop over to => Total Image .You’ll be in for some great moments inside the wonderful art of photography.

Want to know more about Shelton Muller? Click on this image. It is worth the trip

And if you have some photography tips that you would like to share, do leave a comment below, as we would love to hear about it.

Until next, happy shooting.

Janice

The subject might disgress from the main topic but I would like to share with you today a book written by Stuart Turnbull that teaches how to find and rescue advertisements pages in old books and sell them on Ebay. 

What prompted Stuart to write his book “Prints Make Profits” was when : “(…) quite by accident, I stumbled upon an auction for a mounted/matted vintage art print that had 23 bids and over 200 hits!

That item sold for over $160…(….) as I continued my research I realized that I could dip into an almost inexhaustible supply of similar prints which were easily purchased for a few dollars each..”

The introduction caught my attention, so I scrolled down his promotion page and found screen shots of some of his findings sold on Ebay. Here’s an example:

Old Vintage Ads- Ebay Sales

Wow..indeed… quite impressive results!

In this very well written instructional guide, we gain access to 3 years of experience from the author of selling prints on eBay. Finding it hard to profit from selling other items on eBay, Stuart Turnbull finally mastered his own system of selling prints and makes up to $160 for every item sold on eBay, easily and systematically.

With just 2 hours per day you can start a vintage ad prints selling business and furthermore, it does not require any expensive equipment, which makes it very easy to get started with.

Old photogravures are also in demand and it reminded me of a book I bought last year at McGill’s University Annual Book Fair titled:  ”The Goupil Gallery of Photogravures from Great Modern Painters with Biographical and Descriptive Text.” published by Estes and Lauriat, Boston, 1888.

The Goupil Gallery of Photogravures From Great Modern Painters, Estes & Lauriat, 1888

Goupil Gallery of Photogravures - List of Illustrations Waiting, by Ulysse Butin

Waiting by Ulysse Butin-Goupil Gallery Photogravures - Publisher: Estes and Lauriat, Boston 1888

Hum… it would break my heart to unbind this book to sell the photogravures on Ebay!  I will instead, go browse inside bookshops selling old books and see if I can find some specimens.

Meanwhile, I uploaded the following Scottish related vintage ads in my Ebay store for topical Art print collectors.

Old Vintage Ads - Source: The Scottish Annual and The Braemar Gathering Book

These vintage prints are not as old though as the one’s Stuart illustrates on his Prints Make Profits promotion page.

If you feel like testing out these products on Ebay, then the best definitive guide on the subject is Stuart’s. With a 60 day 100% money back guarantee – you have plenty of time to try out his strategy and make back your investment!

To your success,

Looking for fantastic ideas to generate some money from your photos?

Got a hard drive full of pictures?

If you’ve got good photos, you’ve got an opportunity to make some useful extra money.

Here are 52 ways to monetize your images.

It’s truly fun to read about stimulating and creative digital photography projects and I am sure to try out a couple of them!

99 Ways To Make Money From Your Photos

The Succesful Flickr Photographer

Wedding Photographer

Enjoy and talk soon!

.

.

PS: Do not hesitate to come back and leave a comment on this post about ideas that catched your fancy or others you would like to add to the list .

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In my Inbox this morning was an email promoting the The Helicon Focus Software. I do get many promotional emails but this one grabbed my attention.

Anything relating to digital photography catches my fancy but moreover with this product because it addresses a problem I have of getting ultra sharp close focus with macrophotography shooting.

The topic hit me right on…and..believe me..you gotta check this out !

Helicon Focus Digital Imaging Processing Software

Helicon Focus interpolation technique makes it possible to create one completely focused image from a stack of partially focused images by combining all the focused areas together.

Searching for more information on the product, I found a video on YouTube where Peter Bargh from ephotozine.tv explains how to shoot the images and then use the software to combine all the shots to get ultra sharp close focus.

Let’s watch it together. Just click on the arrow in the middle of the player and the video will start:

The software is designed for  macrophotography (camera + optical microscope), microphotography (camera + macro lenses) and hyperfocal landscape photography ( infinite depth of field) as well.

Seems to be  a great and easy way to manage the shallow depth-of-field (DOF) problem. Don’t you think ?

If you are already using the software do not hesitate to share your experience by leaving a comment below. Also, if any of you are using any other different techniques, I would be delighted to hear your feedback.

Gotta go try out this technique.

Talk soon,

.

Custom Search

Canon PowerShot Pro Series S3 IS 6MP with 12x Image Stabilized Zoom

Took Photo below with my Canon PowerShot 3S IS

While researching stock photography sites on the Internet, I landed on ShutterFarm’s website and started reading their submission guidelines.

Inside the Image Requirements section it is said:

* All images must be a minimum 1.92 mega pixels (the height x width of your image in pixels)

* Maximum file size allowed is 100MB * You should always provide the largest size possible

* You may submit photographs and other digital images

* All images must be in .jpg format (vector graphics will be accepted at a later date)

* All work must be owned by you. Adding text or an effect to an existing stock photo does not constitute ownership of an image

(etc…)

Source: http://www.shutterfarm.com

Sounds great to me!  I logged onto my hard disk and retrieved some food related shots taken recently while visiting my friends house in Bordeaux, France, to see if I had some that would meet the submission criteria.

By the way, this juicy cantelope was served as an appetizer with lemon liquor poured in the scooped out receptacle, and then shaped back into a stylized sailing ship. Delicious! That being said.. back to the calculation process.

Here’s a screenshot of Photoshop metadata for the image:

( my software is in french, sorry about that…)

To calculate the size of my image, I multiply the height (2112) x the width (2816), to get 5,947,392 pixels, or approximately 5,9 megapixels of resolution.

It makes sense since I used a “6 megapixel” camera for this shot.

I can therefore submit this image to ShutterFarm as I meet the minimum requirement of 1.92 megapixels.

Do notice that we are talking megapixels here, not megabytes…

Now, let’s try to understand the relation betwen megapixels and megabytes, since Photoshop metadata tells me also that the picture I’m viewing on my screen  weighs 3.01 Megabytes,  (because Photoshop compressed it ) while the original image weight is 17.0 megabytes.

The  original picture I took has 5.9 megapixels and weighs 17.0 megabytes.

How do megapixels relate to megabytes?

1 megapixel = how many (mega) bytes ?

The size in bytes (or megabytes => a millions of bytes) defines how much space (storage) the image takes on your hard disk and it depends on many factors, but to name just a few:  mainly the bit depth of the image and the file format.

So, to avoid confusion, stock agencies use megapixels when specifying file size needed not megabytes.

Hope this short explanation will help clear up the confusion!

Talk soon.

Following my post about inserting photos in emails, I received the following question from reader Hope H.:

I was just reading your article on inserting photos into email. I use either Yahoo or Hotmail, and have none of those features. I can’t change to another email. I created a newsletter and it includes 2 small photos and a little clip art, none of which show up when I send them. All I get is white boxes with red xs. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! And, btw, your advice was great and well written. I just wish it worked in my case!

Thanks for your good words Hope. They are greatly appreciated and  I am happy to share with you a way to resolve your problem.

Here’s an easy 3-steps method to insert images in your Yahoo mail:

Step #1. Upload your image to a web server

If you do not have your own hosting service or access to a web server to which you can upload your image, you can use any free image hosting web services such as:

FreeImageHosting.net
PhotoBucket.com

Just google the phrase “free image hosting” if you want to check out more websites offering same  service.

Step #2. Configure your Yahoo email account to “Rich Text”.

To the right of the subject line ( see screenshot below ) set your email composition to “Rich Text”. It is probably by default set up to that format, but in case it is not, just click on the word and it will toggle it between “Plain Text” and “Rich Text”.

Step #3. Copy & Paste from the web-server page to the body of your text.

Go back to the web page where you uploaded your image in Step#1, click on it to shadow same, then “copy [CTRL-C] and paste [CTRL-V]” with your keyboard commands directly into the body of your mail at the exact position where you want it to display.

Et voilà!

You are good to go.

Try it out and do not hesitate to come back and let me know if everything worked out perfectly by leaving a comment below.

Cheers.

Having purchased products from Dan Feildman, I receive from him several articles about digital photography and would like to share this great one with you today.

I took the liberty to add some of my photos into his text,  to support his saying and for the pleasure of the eyes. 

Enjoy!

Feature Article by: Dan Feildman

Photography is both about knowing how to use a camera and also knowing how to make decisions. Today’s media projects images that can be difficult to understand, and learning photography can help you to understand what you’re being showed every day on television, on the internet, and in movies.

My camera: a Canon PowerShot 3S IS

Photography is a good way to occupy your time, especially if you are a teenager, as it is fun and harmless. Besides that, it’s a great way to bring a community together for a project, such as photographing activities and gatherings.

When you buy a digital camera, you have to know how to take care of it to keep it in its best condition. In order to have the clearest photos possible, you must make sure to regularly clean your optic lens and keep from leaving fingerprints on it. If this happens, parts of your pictures will be blurry, and dirt can build up over time. Not all cleaning products are suitable for a camera lens, so make sure that you don’t use tissue paper, any household cleaning solutions, and definitely not saliva. Instead, you should buy the proper products at a camera store, in order to keep your camera at its best.

Bird on branch - Photo Janice Dugas

Understanding how your camera focuses will help you get better pictures. Just about all digital cameras these days have autofocus with two-step shutter release.

In dark lighting, you will notice that when you press the button halfway down, a red light appears for a moment, but not in areas that are lighter. Then, when you press the button down fully, there is a flash.

When you hold down the button halfway, that focuses the image, and when you depress it fully, the camera takes the focused image. If you want the subject of your photograph not to be in the center but still focused, first center them in the middle of the picture and focus the frame by pressing down halfway. Without removing your finger, reframe the picture with your subject in the right position, and take the picture. Your subject will still be focused.

One aspect of taking a pleasing photograph is depth of field. When you look at a picture, you will notice that all the area surrounding the focused subject is also focused. This area is called depth of field. In order to change the way the depth of field in a picture is seen, focused, and lit, you must change the width of your lens. The wider the lens is, the smaller the depth of field will be. To decrease the depth of field you can also move closer to your subject. To increase it, you can use a smaller lens or move further away from your subject.

Loch Carron Viewpoint - Scotland - Photo Janice Dugas

A great technique that helps photographers create eye-catching pictures is the rule of thirds.

 This is a composition technique, create a pleasing balance between the different objects in a photograph.

In order to use the rule, divide your screen into six different parts: three horizontal sections, and three vertical.

The focal points, where the eye is attracted when it first looks at a picture, are where the lines intersect. Placing the subjects of your pictures at or near the focal points can help create a balanced and attractive picture.

Landscape photos are very popular and can be very nice-looking. The whole photograph will need to be in focus, unlike some pictures where only a certain part is in focus. In order to have the picture completely focused, you’ll need to have a short focal length.

Near Old Man Of Storr-Scotland-Photo Janice Dugas

This will create a larger depth of field, and everything will be focused.

In order to creating a pleasing balance between land and sky, or water and sky, you can use the rule of thirds.

Furthermore, if you want a sense of three dimensions, you can have a subject in the foreground.

A tripod is a good investment in photography, especially if you want to take panoramic pictures. You’ll have to set your tripod in a place where you can swivel the camera smoothly from left to right, and not up and down.

Camera Tripod Stand

You will have to figure out where you want your pictures to overlap, so that you don’t have huge gaps in your resulting picture. Once you figure that out, you can swivel your camera in one direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, to take the pictures you want. Once you’re done, all you have to do is put them together with a simple graphics program or photo-editing software.

Recommended for More Help

Need to improve your digital photography techniques? Pick up your free digital photography guide for better photos…almost instantly.

A very popular and fun way to display and share your photography with friends and family is to insert them in your emails. Would you like to try it out ? it’s easy…

There is two ways to include a photo into an email: as an attachment or as an insert.

Photo Attachments

I do not recommend using the attachment method because attachments are often being used mischievously to spread virus and some anti-virus programs or firewalls installed on computers may block them . So let’s skip right away to the insertion method.

Photo Inserts

When the recipient opens the email, they can view the photo(s) along with the text.

Here’s the step-by-step procedure to insert photos in emails:

Step 1.

In your email program, open a new message.

On the top navigational toolbar, click on the INSERT command, and then choose IMAGE from the drop-down menu.

Insert - Image

A window will pop-up.

Step 2.

Click on the CHOOSE FILE button to locate on your hard disk  the photograph you want to send.

Once you found it, click on the photo file’s name. Notice the path to it’s location on the hard disk now displays in the location field of the pop-up window.

Insert A Picture From Hard Disk

Step 3.

Click on the OK button.

Your photo now displays into the body of your message! Isn’t that cool ?

Photo Displays In Body Of Email

You can now type your message. Let’s be creative and add a color background to the email.

Step 4.

On the top navigational toolbar, select the FORMAT command, then, from the drop-down menu, click on the PAGE COLORS & BACKGROUND  option.

Select a color of your choice  and then click on OK.

Colored background

Et voilà !  Your mail can now convey much more emotions along with your message.

Don’t we say that a photo is worth 1,000 words ?

CAUTION !

One thing you must take into consideration when emailing photos is the file size of your photos. Keep in mind that many people are still on dial up systems and it might take forever to download
on their computer !

They won’t stay your friends very long if you bog down their system or fill up their inbox storage capacity.

So, with the help of a photo editing software, be sure to compress your photos before you include them in your emails, otherwise the photos will be so large that the only way to view them on the recipient computer screen will be to scroll up and down and side to side. Not very convenient.

As a guideline, the size of your photos should be around 600 x 400 and the file format extension should be .JPG or .GIF

No matter where they live, make someone’s day by sharing treasured memories through pictures inserted into your emails.