We're proud to announce our new California Photography Organizations section which is a new twist on our typical forum content that you've been accustomed to. This section is for any photography based organizations such as Photo Clubs, Meetup Groups and/or a Professional Guilds throughout California that want to push the envelope and take their group to the next level on the web.

This benefit will allow those organizations that might not have a very active web presence among their current members to sign up for our Organization Sponsorship Program and within minutes have the presence they need! This program will give them their own dedicated section, events calendar, social group and other great features on CPF which will give the organization a very usable, well established platform to help communicate and interact with their current member base.

Why bother trying to buy a forum software, learn how to install it and formulate it so that it best works for your group when you can become a part of the state's largest photographic community in a matter of minutes and not have to hassle with the admin learning curve. We've already done all of the hard work so what are you waiting for!?

Did I mention it was FREE!!

For details about our Organization Sponsorship Program Click Here.

 

In order to help members spread the word about the CaliforniaPhotoForum, I've designed and printed a ton of CPF Referral Cards which is a business card that displays important benefits about our great community. These cards are to be handed out to photographers that you may come across while out shooting or at various photographer meetups and get togethers.

I've added a "Referred By:" line on the back of the card in order to help member gain their referral credits. This really comes in handy now that we're having our CPF Referral Contest which is discussed further in this newsletter. Members can simply fill out a form and I will mail out 15 CPF Referral cards to you FREE of charge.

In order to sign up for FREE CPF Referral Cards Click Here.

 

The CPF Referral Contest:
Members have from now until May 31st @11:59 PST to gain 5 legitimate California based Photographer Referrals. A Referral is simply a person who you referred to come and check out our forum and subsequently registers using your name as "Referred By". At their time of registration they will be prompted to enter in a username of the person that referred them to CPF. At this time if the new user enters in your screen name then you will receive 1 Referral Credit. A total of 5 Referrals are required in order to be eligible to be entered into a random drawing held on June 2nd which will determine the top 3 winners of the contest!

The Prizes:
Prizes will be Gift Certificates to Samy's Camera as listed below.

1st Place - $250 Gift Certificate
2nd Place - $125 Gift Certificate
3rd Place - $75 Gift Certififcate

The Gift Certificate can be applied towards anything available on their site and if you're like me then you will have no problem whatsoever finding an item to apply the prize towards. For instance, say you’ve had your eye on a Canon 15mm Fisheye lens, and you've won the $250 Gift Certificate, it can be applied to your purchase and you can walk away with a $610 lens for only $360 out of pocket plus shipping (if needed). No bad huh?!

The Deadline:
Members have until May 31st @ 11:59pm PST in order to gain 5 California based photographer referrals. That's a total of a little over 4 weeks with the Winners being announced on June 2nd.

In order to get more information about our CPF Referral Contest Click Here.

 

Vignetting is a reduction of an image's brightness and/or saturation at the photograph's corners/edges compared to the center of the photograph itself. Adding a Vignette (vin-yet) to a photograph is often done as an artistic addition to a photograph which in turn will help drive a viewer's eye to the center of the image.

Adding a Vignette to an image can be done in a number of different ways and one way that I have found to work best for me in Photoshop CS3 is detailed below. The main reason I prefer this method is because it's non-destructive meaning that no actual pixels/color information of the edited image itself are altered. This allows me to turn the vignette layer on or off and/or delete it entirely and recreate a new one long after the layered PSD has been closed.

1. Create a New Layer so that it's the top most layer of your document.
2. Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the new layer with plain White.
3. Highlight the layer and change it's Blend Mode to Multiply.
4. Go to the Filter pulldown menu then Distort then Lens Correction.
5. In the Lens Correction window that opens you will see a Vignette section with two sliders marked as Amount and Midpoint. I usually use an Amount setting of -100 and a Midpoint setting of +30 but you can adjust them to find a value that works well for your liking then click OK.
6. The filter will apply those settings to the new layer we created and will have an effect on your image because of the Blend Mode we had set it to earlier.

If that vignette process is not strong enough for your liking you can always make it stronger by using one of the two methods listed below, be sure to try them both and see which you prefer.:

A. Duplicate the vignette layer on top of the layer order so that now there are two instances of the vignette layer and that will make the effect much stronger.
B. Simply rerun the Lens Correction filter on the existing vignette layer and this will allow you to add another vignette effect on top of the existing vignette.

The original pixels and color information of the image's original layers have been completely left intact which makes this a true non-destructive method for applying a vignette to your photograph. That's all there is to it! As I mentioned earlier, this method may not be for everyone but I have been happy with the results thus far.

 

What is EXIF Data you ask? EXIF Data stands for Exchangeable Image Format which is data that is embedded into an image file when you take a photograph using your digital camera. This EXIF Data will include a ton of important information pertaining to that single photograph such as the basic date & time the photo was taken as well other photo related info like camera model, focal length, aperture setting, shutter speed setting, ISO setting just to name a few. This data is embedded into all digital photos but is often lost during post processing because photographers are stripping the EXIF Data without even knowing it.

This EXIF Data can be viewed as your viewing the photos online very easily by simply using a FREE browser plug-in such as Opanda's EXIF Viewer. This plug-in will allow you to simply Right-Click on an image online and if the EXIF Data is still intact a dialog box will appear displaying all of the information about the photo. This really helps photographers understand what settings were used in order to create a particular photograph and I know I myself often times check the EXIF in order to help learn more about photography.

The trick to retaining this EXIF Data in your photographs even after you've edited the file in Photoshop is to be sure that when your doing your final save into JPG format is that you opt for the SAVE AS option and NOT the SAVE FOR WEB option. The Save For Web option will strip all data that is not needed in the photo in order to keep the file size as minimal as possible which will strip the EXIF Data, not good. Always use the SAVE AS option in order to retain all the EXIF Data in the photos since this information can prove to be very valuable for yourself and others viewing your photos online.

 

Here's a listing of upcoming workshops that are featured on the forum: 

Los Angeles: Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers II - May 6th

Los Angeles: Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers I - May 9th

Venice Beach: The Big Picture - Editorial Photography - May 9th

Venice Beach: Advanced Techniques in Studio Lighting - May 9th

Venice Beach: The Fine Art of Travel Photography - May 10th

San Francisco: Digital WakeUp Call - May 11th

San Francisco: GGSPP 3 Day Workshop - May 11th - 13th

Sacramento: Digital WakeUp Call - May 12th

San Jose: Digital WakeUp Call - May 13th

Fresno: Digital WakeUp Call - May 14th

Los Angeles: Understanding Your Digital Camera - May 17th

Atascadero: Beginning Photoshop & Elements - May 17th

Atascadero: Beginning Elements - May 17th

Azusa: Guerrilla Lighting Workshop (So Cal) - May 17th

Los Angeles: Digital WakeUp Call - May 18th

Los Angeles: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 - May 19th

Ontario: Digital WakeUp Call - May 19th

Irvine: Digital WakeUp Call - May 20th

Los Angeles: Why Film Still Matters - May 21st

San Diego: Digital WakeUp Call - May 21st

Culver City: Understanding Your Digital Camera - May 30th

Venice Beach: The Crash Flash Course - May 30th

Los Angeles: Glamour Photography Workshop - May 31st

Long Beach: Blacklight Photography Workshop - May 31st

To visit the Workshop Section Click Here.