More powerful points http://www.sliderocket.com/ It’s a pretty reasonable bet that there were one or two long faces among Microsoft’s …

 

More powerful points
http://www.sliderocket.com/
It’s a pretty reasonable bet that there were one or two long faces among Microsoft’s PowerPoint development team when news of sliderocket.com came in. Although still an invitation-only beta site at this writing, the demo on Sliderocket.com is well worth five minutes of your time – particularly if you find yourself sharing your photography via presentation software. The tools and effects are dazzling.

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How many slides?
http://280slides.com/
Like sliderocket, 280Slides is still in beta, but unlike the former, it is open for users to play with. The toolkit is pretty basic, but it is very easy to use. If you’re not a power PowerPoint user (as it were) and you just need to put together a simple presentation without all the groovy effects, 280slides could come in handy. Finished presentations can be stored on the site, emailed to others and, importantly, downloaded to your own computer in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 format.

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Free schooling
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/
Digital Photography School is not really a school as such, but it is an ever-growing, collection of how-tos for beginners through to enthusiasts. The tips section is divided into areas such as composition, cameras and gear, portraiture, post-production and beginners’ tips. The writing and advice are of a high standard too. (Check out ‘What the Mona Lisa Can Teach You About Taking Great Portraits’ for instance.) Because the site is a blog, it’s easy to stay up-to-date with changes via your favourite feedreader.

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Get classical
http://unfocusedbrain.com/projects/match_color/
Ok, this isn’t really a website that you need to add to your toolbox collection, but this tutorial is so cool we defy those of you with a recent copy of Adobe Photoshop to resist trying it out. The basic concept is simple: use the ‘Match Color’ tool to map the colour palette of an old master painting to one of your own images. And, as the author points out, it doesn’t have to just be a painting, you could use the colours from an old movie poster, slide, or snapshot just as easily. Fans of the Gimp open source photo editing software have devised a similar procedure here: http://tinyurl.com/5oq3pn

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Shifting view

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Tilt-shift photography example from tiltshiftphotography.net
Tilt-shift minature faking is one of those fun techniques that are good to have in your repetoire of photo tricks. These pictures have a very distinctive and intriguing diorama-like quality. The key characteristics are a very shallow depth of field (as happens in macro photography) and slightly unreal colour saturation. Done well, tilt-shift faking can make a real life scene look as though it is a close-up shot of an exceedingly detailed, but obviously artificial model. Cars and buildings look like toys and people are given a figurine quality. To get you started, here are a few useful links:
http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/ is a barebones basic blog site, but it offers both examples of the approach and one of the better tilt-shift tutorials for Photoshop we’ve come across.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/59319377@N00/ will take you to the very active tilt-shift miniature fakes group on Flickr.
http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=774 will give you the tilt-shift rundown for the Gimp.
http://digital-artist-toolbox.com/?p=24 is a great collection of tilt-shift miniature shots