Quick Digital Matte

Using an inner shadow to create a matte for your prints

One of my favorite sayings has come back to haunt me this week: "Reality is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

I'm having a tough time returning to the aforementioned reality because last week I had the pleasure of teaching in the high desert at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Tons of fun was had by all! Santa Fe is hands-down one of the friendliest towns I've ever visited. There was jewelry EVERYWHERE, the night-life was incredible, the food extra-spicy, and the margaritas stout. Needless to say, I met some amazing people that I hope to have... more

Spotlight: KelbyTraining.com

"Practical Photoshop Elements" training video now available!

Whee! My first Photoshop Elements training class just went live over at KelbyTraining.com called Practical Photoshop Elements. It features 23, short QuickTime movies on some of the most practical techniques you could ever learn like partial color, rounded photo edges, colorizing grayscales, color tints, the truth about resolution (a funny little movie called Brown sugar featuring me in a chef's getup!), and much more. I hope you enjoy it! There's more to come :)

Burn baby burn!

How to set your text on fire

So many filters, so little time. Oh sure, you may have perused The Almighty Filter Menu from time to time, but do you really understand their power and the plethora of special effects they unlock? Of course you don't. Nobody really does. Aside from texturizing text and creating cool edge effects, you can use filters to create realistic fire (it takes three of them to be exact).

This technique is actually from a feature article I wrote for Elements Techniques magazine last year; a fantastic tutorial-based publication on all things Elements-related. If you're an Elements fan, run--don't walk!--on over to ElementsUser.com to get a subscription. And though this here tutorial uses screen shots from Elements (version 4 on the Mac), the steps are... more