Photo tricks: Depth of Field

Add Depth of Field to Perk up Dull Photos... 

Perk up Dull Photos...

The life of a designer is often complicated by customer supplied photos. Many times there's little you can do to save them. One rule you can always count on is. . .

Isolation

One of the tricks I've always depended on is isolation. You can almost always add drama or focus the readers' attention by isolating the subject of an image. While there are many ways to do this, in some cases the best way is through depth of field.

 

Photoshop: Crop with Aspect Ratio

PHOTOSHOP PHOTO CROPPING is an essential part of preparation of most photos. Photoshop's cropping tool helps you refine the impact and message of your photos by cropping them to the task. Using the Crop Tool, you can crop your photos to specific photo sizes like 4x6, 5x7 or 8x10 by entering the width and height values into the Options Bar before dragging out your cropping border. You can also select a preset crop size from the Preset picker. However, you need a shortcut for cropping while keeping the width-to-height ratio the same as the original.

Without even looking at the size of this image, we wanted to zero in on the girl and the boat while trimming out most of the unnecessary background. How???

 

GOOGLE Gotcha

All those who wanted to monetize their web sites had a big boost a couple of years ago when Google rolled out their AdSense program. I jumped on board, just like I jumped on the new upstart named "Amazon" when they first appeared on the scene. Amazon has cut its affiliates commissions back to near-oblivion, in the interest of their profits -- why did we think Google wouldn't do the same?

But, as it goes on the web, most players weren't content with running an honest web site with honest content. I've complained and complained to deft ears about how so many sites are 'cheating' by stacking their links and all manner of other tricks to increase their clicks. Google finally caught on.

AOL Gone Bad... when to cut and run?

Herein is the long and sad story of how spam and online crime have driven some ISPs to blind, extreme measures which threaten the very usability of the internet. AOL, one of the world's longest trusted providers can no longer be trusted. Their overzealous quest to sell accounts by offering "spam blocking" is having the effect of isolating their user base from other web users. The following is a saga I've followed first hand -- so I know it's sad but true.

Drastic measures to shore up user base

According to news sources, America Online is considering offering its services, including e-mail, free to customers who already have a high-speed internet connection. Now we can understand why.

 

Net Neutrality... or, The Bandwidth Wars

BIG CHANGES ARE AFOOT IN THE WAY THE INTERNET WORKS and 'net neutrality' is a conundrum with so much misinformation, confusion and media lip service floating around that no one seems to really know what's going on. Two things are for sure: it is NOT going away, and it IS going to be a media feeding frenzy.

Upside-down pros and cons

This is going to be a long, miserable, and potentially damaging struggle; primarily because the two sides of the argument have gotten themselves upside-down. Those in favor of neutrality are crying: please don't regulate so the 'little guy' and everyone else can be free to do as they please. Yet those are the ones currently exploiting and profiteering off 'the little guy.'