Dan McGinty (see his work on Flickr)- one of our wonderful Forum members – submitted this tutorial on how to create a bubble portrait using Photoshop CS3. Got a tip or tutorial to share? Post it in the tutorials section of our forum.

Upon request I am posting a step by step how to on a recent photo I posted in the share section. I wanted to try something different so I thought of fish eye effects, Well I decided to do the opposite. More of a bubble effect and I loved it for this photo.

Program Used: Photoshop CS3

Difficulty: Easy to Average

Things You Need: A photograph!

Ok, Well here it goes. I will post screen shots along with directions.

Step 1: Open your Image in Photoshop:

Step 2: Draw a box around the part that you would like to put in the bubble.(Hold Shift to keep the rectangle tool as a box.) Remember that you will be losing your corners.

Earlier in the year DPS forum member stevoarnold (on flickr here) shared in the ‘how I took it‘ section how he’d managed to get the following transformation of an image because he shot it in RAW and was able to do significant post production and recover much of the image despite it being under exposed.

See the two images at before and after.

Here’s his description of how he did it:

“I thought I would share with you my latest experience. I went out this evening with the intention of getting some nice dusk shots of the sea shore but left it a little late and it was pitch black when I got there. I took some shots anyway which turned out completely under exposed due to lack of light even at a …

In this video tutorial Kelly Anne Martin shares some tips on selective coloring within Lightroom 2.

Selective coloring is an easy way to make a portion of your image stand out. While it is not the best solution for every photo, selectively coloring a portion of a photo can sometimes lead to amazing results.

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to use Adobe Lightroom 2 to selectively color a photo.

Selective Coloring with Lightroom 2 from Kelly Anne on Vimeo.

Here’s a quick recap/summary:

Guest blogger Helen Bradley (from www.projectwoman.com) shows how to use the LAB color mode in Photoshop to give a punch to your photos.

I like to see lovely saturated color in my photos but sometimes the color I capture just doesn’t do justice to the subject and it isn’t what I remember the scene looked like. Boosting the color can turn a lackluster image into one that totally rocks. So, if you find that the color in your photos is lacking, here’s what I do to make it better. The process is ridiculously simple, it requires no selections to be made, and it can be recorded as a simple action. It’s my kind of fix … quick, easy and very powerful.

A word about LAB

The fix uses the LAB color space. This is not an often used color space and it isn’t available in most other programs so you won’t be able to mimic this effect in, for example, Photoshop Elements. However, LAB has been around in Photoshop for years.

How to store your digital images is an issue that faces every digital photographer at some stage. In this post ChristinaNichole Photography shares some tips on how to do it.

I once met a very talented photographer at a digital photography class. The topic of discussion was digital image organization. Of all the students attending this class, she was extremely distraught. When asked if she needed assistance, her response was, “I never knew how to organize my pictures before, so I kept them all in one file. Where do I start?!?

Not the best-case scenario.

Though not an overwhelmingly fascinating subject, without a doubt digital storage and file handling is one of the most important lessons a photographer can learn. In the digital age, when we have opportunity to store hundreds of thousands of images on one laptop or hard drive, things can get pretty complicated to go back and try to find “that one picture of Aunt Helen at Johnny’s 6th birthday party”. Especially if you don’t have an established workflow and file handling system.

Organizing your images will be one of the most time intensive and equally time saving tasks you can perform as a photographer. You don’t want to spend hours looking for that one picture if you can simply search your catalogue for it by a single keyword or date.

Various photo organizing programs can assist you in your organizing. You can customize this organization with most programs if you import directly into the program. This list of programs would include Picasa by Google, Aperture by Apple, and Lightroom2 by Adobe. Though these programs will help you exponentially, it’s helpful to begin with these general starting points: