Andrea Joki is without a doubt the best child portrait photographer I’ve ever seen. She is located in Helsinki Finland, so you may have a way to travel to meet with her.  She does take occasional assignments in the United States and Australia.Read More...

The Guide To Art Schools has published a list of free photo editing software at The 11 Best Free Photo Editing Programs.  The list includes:

1. Gimp
2. Photoscape
3. Paint.NET
4. ArtWeaver
5. Serif PhotoPlus SE
6. Pixia
7. VC VicMan's Photo Editor
8. Ultimate Paint
9. Magix Xtreme Photo Designer 6
10. PhotoFiltre
11. Lightbox Image Editor

The Web list includes:

1. Picnik
2. SplashUp
3. FlauntR
4. Adobe Photoshop Express
5. Sumo Paint

via Keith Cushner.

They left off one of my favorite desktop photo editing tools, Picassa.

Before you spend nearly $2000 for a fantastic lens, you may want to rent it to see if it’s really worth it.  If you rent this for a week, you can rent this Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 for almost $10 / day. If you can’t afford to own all the Best High End Nikon Lenses, you can still borrow them for a few days for those special occasions when you need the perfect lens. Read More...

Cnet has an article comparing 15 online photo editors.  The best part is most of them are free. Read More...

There are several hawks that hunt near the house.   In the spring we often see the young hawks getting a few lessons from the parents.  This weekend this one landed on a tree right off the living room.  He looked intently to and fro for some time, turning his head at every subtle noise in search of a later afternoon meal.  When a flock of crows flew over, they quickly spotted him and called out to one another warning of the predator. Read More...

Which remote works with which Nikon? Most new Nikon cameras don't come with a remote control.  Some camera bodies will work with multiple remotes (wired and wireless), but unlike the legendary Nikon interchangeable lenses, the remotes don't switch between camera bodies so easily.  Here's a quick guide on which remotes work with which cameras and what's the best Nikon remote for your camera. Read More...

Windows Live Writer provides a handful of helpful image enhancement features.  It's not Photoshop by any means, but it's quick.

Drop Shadow

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Word in Microsoft Office2007 provides the ability to post entries to websites and has outstanding image manipulation features. I love image manipulation in Word the drop shadow and reflection effects are simple, and quick.

Word does make the images fuzzy and grainy.

Shadow

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A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it me takes about the same time or longer to edit images as it does to type.  Snagit by TechSmith helps me a great deal. 

Snagit is not a full photo editor by any means, but it does help provide some useful embellishments to images or screen shots without requiring a lot of work.

I love Snagit for three reasons.

1. To capture  scrolling windows (for web designs)
2. To add annotation, drawing, and markup on the image
3. The quick drop shadow effect

Key features I use:

1. Edges- Drop shadow, fade, torn, wave, saw, shark tooth, beveled
2. Watermark, resize, flip
3. Image types: jpg, png, gif

Drop Shadow

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Mister Retro has a great set of Photoshop plug-in's that will save a significant amount of time and effort when manipulating files in Photoshop for creating those textured and stunning artistic effects. Prices start at $49.95.

Machine wash CD 3 - Abusive Filter:

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