Skin smoothing

I found some instructions on smoothing skin in paint shop pro. Ok so technically its a cheat but I really don't care if people don't feel comfortable in there own skin and want to do a little post-processing. Here's how to do it:

Christmas is nearly upon us and I have sooooo much to do before the family turn up on Christmas Day. Not much can be prepared beforehand really so I did the one thing I could do in advance - putting up the tree. Hope you enjoy the pics.

The tree - ok fake some surprise - you didn't know it was a tree did you

My tin foil star - couldn't afford a new star. Blue Peter would be proud.

I love these glitzy baubles

And I love these birds nest ones as well :)

I really struggled to get these photos. If I used flash then the colours (even adjusting the white balance) looked terrible but if I didn't use flash they were blurred. I didn't know how to get round that although I've since found something that explains how to photograph Christmas trees and lights. Check out the links below.

Webshots blog
Strobist - how to photograph Christmas lights
How to photography Christmas lights and other holiday events

Shoot the moon

I've often thought it would be great to get a nice photo of the moon. But every time I try all I end up with is a white blob dominating the frame. I've just never managed to find the right settings. But fear not people because I have tracked down a blog which explains how to take good shots of the moon. Check out Pioneer Woman Photography.

Watermarks and the watermark debate

There seems to be many differing opinions on the use of watermarks in photography. Some say they like to include them to prevent people using the photo and calling it there own work and some people like to use it to say where a particular photo came from (what website etc). But they can be ugly and distracting and it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to remove it. For better looking results some people say to put the watermark on the fram of the image and keep it small or better still leave it out all together. I'll leave it to you to decide what to do. At the moment I have some kind of copyright prevention in that I only post medium sized low resolution images so they'd be hard to reproduce at any usable size anyway.

You can buy programs such as iWatermark to create watermarks but you can also create them in Paint Shop Pro. Here's how....

1. Select the text tool and click on the image where you want to place the text.
2. In the text entry dialog, type the copyright symbol or any other text you want to use for a watermark.
3. Still in the text entry dialog, highlight the text by dragging across it and set the font, text size and formatting as desired.
4. With the text still highlighted, click the color swatch and set the text color to 50% gray (RGB values 128-128-128).
5. Still in the text entry dialog, make sure create as vector is selected, then click OK to place the text.
6. Scale and position the text if necessary.
7. After positioning the text go to Layers > Convert to Raster. You will not be able to edit the text after this step.
8. Go to Image > Effects > Inner Bevel.
9. In the inner bevel options, set the Bevel to the second choice, width=2, smoothness=30, depth=15, ambience=0, shininess=10, light color=white, angle=315, intensity=50, elevation=30.
10. Click OK to apply the inner bevel.
11. Go to Layers > Properties and set the Blend Mode to Hard Light.