This Photoshop video tutorial that shows you how assemble batches of keywords using Image Info Toolkit’s Keyword Catalog and then add these batch keywords (keyword strings where each term or phrase is separated by commas) to the IPTC metadata fields of several different image programs

One of the Professional Photographer Magazine December 2005 bonus contents is this good Photoshop tutorial on correcting color balance taken from Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One book.

Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned Photoshopper, without expert guidance you might never get further than sliding your mouse across the surface of Photoshop’s true capability. “Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One,” the number-one selling Photoshop tutorial book updated for CS2, can help you master this most powerful-and daunting-of graphic tools. A straightforward, step-by-step user’s guide to Photoshop and the new features of CS2, Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One will show you how to take full advantage of all that Photoshop offers.

>> Donwload the Correcting Color Balance tutorial (PDF - 4.3 MB)
>> Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One Latest Price
>> Source: PPMag

David Chartier has recently posted his first impression review on Adobe Lightroom, the latest program from Adobe which will help digital photographers to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images.

“it’s fantastic. I’m running it on the latest version of the 15″ PowerBook G4, with a hi-res screen, 1.67 GHz G4 and 1.5 GB RAM, and it runs quick. App startup time is virtually nil, and the whole thing just feels zippy. It offers a great array of features centered around this image comparison/organization paradigm, and some of them are the type of tools where, upon using them, I never even realized I was missing. Some of the toolsets are simply a sort of remixing of the tools and palettes found in Photoshop, offering a very different and handy UI for accomplishing the same kinds of editing, touching up, print preparation and comparison tasks”

In this tutorial we will show you how you can control highlights and shadows in your photograph using Adobe Photoshop’s shadow/highlight tool which is a really good tool for showing detail that’s been hidden by too much darkness or brightness.

Step1: After opening your photo with photoshop, you will need to copy the background by choosing duplicate layer (layer>duplicate layer) or by dragging your background layer to ‘create new layer’ button in your layer pallete

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Veit Irtenkauf has posted a review on Portfolio 8, the latest version of the image management software from Extensis.

Donwload free Portfolio 8 (30-days trial)

“Extensis Portfolio 8 remains a best-in-class cataloguing and archival program. At $199, it is not inexpensive, but its features and workflow flexibility certainly make it worth the money. If you are in the market for image archival software today, you should definitely give it serious consideration.
If you are an existing Portfolio user, should you upgrade? Only you can decide, but the flexibility that the improved FolderSync and the new Smart Gallery features provide to my workflow are worth the upgrade to me. And if Categories were fully implemented, it would make the upgrade essential to every Portfolio user. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED”

Kodak is giving away the standard version (a $50 value) of one of their three Photoshop plugins. You can choose between Digital GEM, Digital ROC and Digital SHO. You have to provide your name and email address to receive one of the mentioned plugins. This offer expires at the end of January.

You can visit this link to choose your country of origin, and fill up the registration form

Digital ROC is nice for color correcting scanned photos, but less useful for digital photos. Digital SHO lets you tweak exposure, and resembles a Shadow/Highlight tool. Digital GEM is an effective noise reduction utility.

Kelly Turner has recently posted her first look review on iPhoto6,the latest update to Apple’s consumer-level photo management and editing software, at Macworld and wrote:

“It’s far too easy to just let your photos languish on your computer. With the latest version of iPhoto, Apple appears to be making concerted effort to help users find new ways to share their favorite photos with the world—whether through photo gifts such as calendars and cards or online publishing through iWeb integration and photocasting (though you’ll need a .Mac account to take advantage of the latter.)

But even if you’re not interested in these types of photos projects, the new full-screen mode may be enough to make the upgrade worthwhile for people who spend time editing photos in iPhoto. It’s a beautiful way to work. “

Most digital photographers are using level adjustments and/or curve adjustments to adjust and improve their images, but how are curves different from levels, and when should you use them ? This tutorial will help you understand a bit more about curve adjustments in photoshop.

If you’re comparing the curve adjustments with level adjustments, level adjustments are more straightforward. You use it to give your images the maximum possible contrast by making sure that the darkest parts correspond to dense black, and the lightest parts correspond to brilliant white.

What about Curve Adjustments?

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Apple has just updated their imaging software which addresses a number of issues related to reliability and performance. It also delivers improved image export quality and metadata handling. Some improvements are including white balance adjustment accuracy and performance, image export quality, book and print ordering reliability, auto-stacking performance, and custom paper size handling

Download Apple Aperture Version 1.0.1

October 25, 2005 - The Plugin Site (www.thepluginsite.com) is pleased to announce Version 2.0c of ColorWasher for MacOS X, a plugin for correcting the colors, contrast, exposure and saturation of 8bit and 16bit photos. It works with various graphics applications, e.g. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Illustrator, Fireworks, Painter, Canvas, Photoline and GraphicConverter. ColorWasher takes photo correction to a new level of accuracy and speed. With its help even beginners are capable of doing photo corrections within seconds that only experts were able to produce in the past.

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