ken zirkel

There are several alternatives to Photoshop that nobody seems to know about. Here are a few:

Pixelmator is $59 (OSX only)
Lightzoneis $129 for basic, $199 for full version (OSX and Windows)
Portrait Professional is $119 but at this moment on sale for $60 (Windows only)
Flying Meat Acorn, $50 (OSX only)
Helicon Filter, $0-75, Windows only

Note: I don’t actually […]

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If you have Bridge and Photoshop CS3, why would you want Lightroom?
Lightroom is a complete workflow solution. You can do everything from assign metadata on import to process your photos to manage your printing. Lightroom does everything Bridge does, but easier. Lightroom does a lot of things bridge does not:
1. manage your printing. So if […]

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Somebody on a Listserv asked if there were alternatives to Flickr. I like Flickr, but it was a good question to answer.
1) You can use desktop software like Photoshop, Lightroom, or iView (or others) to make html galleries. Then upload them to a server by hand.
Example: http://www.zirkel.com/galleries/elmer/
2) You can install a gallery program on […]

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I love the new image management software from Adobe called Lightroom. These are feature requests I submitted to Adobe:
1) Backup to external media
Lightroom should enable a smart, organized backup of all images (plus metadata?) to CD or DVD or other external media. This should be executable on request, or automatically according to a regular […]

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An opinionated evaluation
The first and most important observation is that either brand has some very significant strengths, and both brands serve serious professionals the world over each and every day. Either brand offers cameras that are simply marvels of technology.
Generally speaking, however, there are some general differences i can point out:
Nikon generally offers a better […]

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Whenever you’re traveling anywhere, and you want to shoot photos to sell as stock, the advice is always the same: look at the tourist guides and the postcards and see what kind of imagery is used. Make sure to get the free brochures at the info booths (you can often mail away for those in […]

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The portrait photographer Platon did a nice series for the Wall Street Journal. On this promotional site, you can see not only Platon’s photographs, but also some behind-the-scenes video of the shoots. Between the inspirational gobbledygook, you can get a tiny sense of what the photoshoot must have been like. Here’s one:

Looks like a simple […]

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While xmas shopping at the bookstore, I came across Eric Meola’s book of outtakes of Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen from the legendary “Born to Run” photo shoot. It struck me that Meola needed just one photo for the album cover, plus maybe an alternate or two for the inside, yet the book featured over […]

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Somebody asked me about tips for processing online images, and this was my reply:
I follow these “rules”:

Always use sRGB profile for Web display (ie, not Adobe RGB or ProPhoto and definitely not CMYK)
DPI is irrelevant for the web; it’s merely a ratio that is important for printing. Think instead in terms of absolute […]

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I sell stock photos over the internet for low prices. This is a relatively new phenomenon, called “microstock,” is made possible by the internet. Basically, how it works is that photographers all over the world can apply to sell photos through Web sites, without regard to their experience or status. If they can manage to […]

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