Peter Bergdahl's Personal Blog

In this 9 minute video i’ll show you how easy it is to correct even severely over or underexposed images using Adobe Camera RAW.

Here’s a condensed checklist of the video

• Set white balance either by selecting one of the pre-sets or by setting the color temperature and the tint manually. Alternatively use the White Balance tool in the upper tool bar (by selecting a neutral gray area)
• Set the white point with the Exposure slider (right tail of the histogram)
• Use the Recovery slider to recover lost highlights (if required)
• Use the Fill Light slider to open up and give details in dark shadows
• Use the Blacks slider to set the black point (left tail of the histogram)
• Use the Brightness slider to change the mid tones (overall brightness)
• Use the contrast slider to set contrast
• Use the Clarity slider to set mid tone contrast
• Use the saturation slider to increase/reduce saturation
• Use the Clarity slider to set saturation (smart saturation)

That’s it, you’ll see how incredibly easy it is to edit and even rescue badly exposed images using adobe camera RAW.

In this short 4 minute video I’ll show you how to improve color contrast and correct color casts using Adobe Photoshop Levels. It’s really fast and easy as you’ll see.

Here’s a condensed checklist to complement the video:

1. Open the image
2. Select Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Levels
3. Give the layer a unique name or accept the proposed name
4. Select the Red channel
5. Position the black triangle directly under the histogram (not the triangle in the “output levels” section) to the start of the curve
6. Position the white triangle directly under the histogram to the end of the curve.
7. Repeat step 6 for the green and blue channel
8. Click OK
9. You’re done

This is a dramatic and hilarious but true story that happened two days ago and my conclusion is that my wife truly loves me.

This is what happened.

I’m currently living in Vietnam and my wife is at the moment in the USA. On Thursday i got a high fever and a cough and my wife was worried that i contracted the swine flu. She insisted that i go to a doctor but i didn’t listen (as usual), just told her not to worry.

Around 7.30pm local Vietnamese time i went to bed and slept like a dead horse. My wife tried to call me at least 50 times but i left my cellphone in another room and didn’t hear it. She panicked and called her brother who lives in Vietnam and told him to immediately go to my home to make sure i was alive and he did.

The problem was that my wife’s brother and the guard at the house didn’t have a key to enter my apartment. They started banging loudly at my door and i woke up after a while.

But i though it was my neighbors making noise or some construction work going on so I tried to fall asleep again. The banging didn’t stop however and I got furious. How can they be so stupid and make this kind of noise at 11.00pm. Meanwhile both my wife and her brother was pretty much sure I was dead because I didn’t open the door (my wife was on her brothers cellphone all the time).

On direct command by cellphone from my wife in the USA, they knocked down the door and came in to the apartment but I didn’t realize it until I heard voices in my living room. I went up from bed, and was surprised to meet a Vietnamese guard and my wife’s brother when I walked in to the living room.

He looked so upset that I asked what was going on and then he told me the whole story.

So while I was first sound asleep and later furious about the noise they made, my wife and her brother was nearly sure i was dead and the noise i was furious about was them knocking down the door to rescue me.

Well, the door is fixed, my fever is nearly gone and in hindsight I can conclude that my wife truly loves me and will do anything for me

Let me know what you think about this story by making a comment.

Just moments ago i discovered by accident a simple trick with Photoshop that makes a photograph look like a glass painting.

Photo edited in Photoshop to look like a glass painting

I used the following steps when i edited this image taken in Da Nang at Furama Resorts.

1. Select background layer, right click and select “Duplicate Layer” to make a copy
2. Select the copy of background layer
3. Select blending mode “Darken”
4. Select “Filter” -> “Blur” -> “Gaussian blur”
5. Change the “Radius” until you get the wanted effect
6. That’s it

A few days ago I posted a couple of videos showing you how to identify the best markets for your stock photography. I mentioned it’s a good idea to study what sells and I’d like to complement these videos with this list of web sites where you can find hot selling images.

• Shutterstock Top 50 Ever
• Shutterstock Top 50 This Week
• BigStockPhoto Most Downloaded
• Dreamstime Popular Images
• Fotolia Top Sales From Beginning of Time
• Fotolia Top Sales Last 30 Days

In addition it’s a good idea to look at the top searches to see what’s in demand.

• Shutterstock Top 100 Image Searches

Here’s links to the videos i mentioned about.

1. Photography: Getting Started in Stock Photography – Part 1
2. Photography: Getting Started in Stock Photography – Part 2: Demo

So keep analyzing hot selling markets and images carefully. Then you select your market and first afterward you start taking photos for this market. Don’t do the mistake to first take images and then try to find a market, what if you find out there are no markets for your images.