Free Brushes of Branches for spring

Free Branches Photoshop Brushes

BrushPortfolio.com has just released a new set of free Photoshop brushes titled Branches.

There are 16 brushes in the set featuring leaves, branches and buds in the spirit of Spring. The design elements are perfect for scrap booking and card making. Each brush was made using Adobe Illustrator and exported to Photoshop at 300 dpi. Happy Creating!

POSTCARD CONTEST 2009

POSTCARD CONTEST 2009: Win one of up to 45 prices by sending a postcard to us
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The Postcard Contest 2009 asks you to write a postcard and send it to us. The postcard can be purchased or created by yourself. The 20 best participants can win prizes consisting of a total of 57 software products and 5 books worth more than USD $3500. The contest runs until August 31, 2009.

Here is a list of the prizes:

Photo Tools 2: http://www.ononesoftware.com/
Exposure, Bokeh : http://www.alienskin.com/
nik Viveza: http://www.niksoftware.com/viveza/
IPX Paint Engine: http://fantasticmachines.com/
Curl Pro + Puzzle Pro: http://www.avbros.com/
DFT Light, Ozone and Power Stroke: http://www.digitalfilmtools.com/
PhotoMagic, PhotoZoom Pro 2, PhotoArtist: http://www.benvista.com/
FilterForge Standard: http://www.filterforge.com/
ContrastMaster, Plugin Galaxy: http://www.thepluginsite.com/
Fantastic Frames, Borders & Frames CDs: http://www.photoshopgraphics.co.uk/
Quasar, MetaGrad, Refiner and Conditioner: http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/
Neat Image Pro: http://www.neatimage.com/
Namesuppressed Plugins: http://www.namesuppressed.com/
DOF PRO: http://www.dofpro.com/
Fractalius: http://www.redfieldplugins.com/
FilterMeister: http://www.filtermeister.com/
SF Maskerade + SF ColorMixer Pro: http://www.simpelfilter.de/en/
recolorST: http://foksmarx.com/
Andrews Plugins, Custom Shapes & Patterns Collection: http://www.graphicxtras.com/
Photo Purify: http://www.photopurify.com/ O'Reilly Books: http://oreilly.com/

For more details on the contest see
http://www.thepluginsite.com/gallery/postcard/

New $199 Netbook (Very) Personal Computer Coming in March

New $199 Netbook (Very) Personal Computer Coming in March

Fidelity Electronics Introduces The Fidelity Netbook VPC (Very Personal Computer)

Very Portable, Very Functional, Very Affordable

TORONTO, CANADA (February 16, 2009) – Fidelity Electronics this week announced the launch of the VPC - Very Personal Computer: a fully preloaded, Wifi portable netbook computer at a very affordable price.

The VPC weighs only 1.5lbs and measures just 8.4” x 5.5” x 1”

Very functional: The VPC has both wifi and ethernet connections and a full function keyboard to connect, work and play

Very affordable: All programs and applications are preloaded and ready to use.

“At a $199 SRP, the VPC is perfect for students and people on the go,” says Richard Kizner, Director of Marketing for Fidelity Electronics. “Preloaded programs include internet browser, spreadsheet, word processor, a media player for movies, music and pictures, e-book reader, dictionary, calendar, PDF reader, email, chat, calculator, file manager and much more.

VPC comes with a full function keyboard, touchpad, 7” TFT display with 800 x 480 WVGA resolution, 802.11g Wifi, 100 MHz internet browser, 2 GB internal storage, 3 hour rechargeable battery, microphone and a headphone jack. It has onboard USB, SD and Ethernet ports that make the VPC an incredibly affordable yet versatile device,” he adds.

The VPC is expected to retail at $199.99 USD

For details go to the Fedelity Electronics website.

BOOK REVIEW-the Wedding Season

BOOK REVIEW
Get ready for wedding photography

In this all-new book review shootout, we put three books to the test.
Read on to learn how
100 Techniques for Professional Wedding Photographers by Bill Hurter,
Power Marketing, Selling, and Pricing: A Business Guide for Wedding and Portrait Photographers by Mitche Graf, and
Step-by-Step Wedding Photography: Techniques for Professional Photographers by Damon Tucci

stand up to our editorial review.

To read the full article, click here.

Free Fonts

Font Bros Site Offers A Beautiful Selection Of Amazing Free Fonts

The Font Bros Site has just great looking fonts for sale at great prices, but if you like your fonts to be free, you'll also find an amazing assortment of top fonts right there for the taking.

Just go to the front page and look at the menu on top — and the third item in from the left is a Free Fonts button. Click and go wild! These are really nice free fonts so browse and download. Here are a few samples from the Font Bros Free Fonts Collection.

WARNING

*************WARNING************

If a company called USA SEO Pro’s calls you with a great offer to optimize your web site, DON’T DO IT!! One of the PPSV members agreed to have them optimize their photography web site and what was put online instead was a link to a cheesy site that was thrown together with very little effort and also contained links to porn!

It used the member’s company name which was on the first page of many search engine searches, but linked to this awful page which if anything would have lost business!

After disputing the charge on the credit card, there were many threats and a small claims suit filed by the member, which ended up being settled, but at a cost to the member of $1400!

This company is a sham and takes advantage of small businesses promising the world and providing nothing good. It is not known where this member’s telephone number was obtained, but you could also be on their call list.

If USA SEO Pros (also called Business Development Institute) calls you, don’t fall for it! USA SEO Pros is an unethical, fraudulent business!!

A Little Behind

Ok, so I am a little on the tardy side getting to my blog. Sorry. I will try to get to it more often. I have been concentrating on making sure my orders were filled. Customers always come FIRST!!!

COMPACT FLASH - ALMOST FREE!

ALMOST FREE!

2 GB Reg. $32.95 One week only $2.95 after $30 mail-in rebate+ FREE shipping

4 GB Reg. $44.95 One week only $4.95 after $40 mail-in rebate+ FREE shipping

8 GB Reg. $89.95 One week only $9.95 after $80 mail-in rebate+ FREE shipping

They're speed rated at 133x, which means a minimum sustained write speed of - fasten your seatbelt - 20MB/second.

And they're loaded with image recovery and browsing software too.

We're talking the amazing Lexar 133x Pro Compact Flash here, and it's a dream for photographer's workflow, and just what you need in a pro DSLR. N

ow priced at 'virtually free' thanks to Lexar rebates that are truly INSANE, not to mention FREE shipping.

CLICK HERE

AKVIS MAGNIFIER

AKVIS has announced the release of AKVIS Magnifier v.2.0, an efficient tool to increase image resolution.

Featuring advanced photo resizing algorithms, AKVIS Magnifier enlarges digital pictures to super-high resolution producing stunning enlargements and poster-size prints.
Featuring advanced enlargement algorithms, Magnifier enlarges digital pictures to super-high resolution for producing stunning poster-size prints. The algorithm keeps edges smooth, sharp and clearly defined, while improving image appearance by removing unwanted noise and compression artifacts.

Whether creating poster-size images or adding resolution for printing an enlargement, AKVIS Magnifier will make your prints look sharper and better defined. For a free trial, AKVIS offers 10 days of fully functional use. http://akvis.com/en/magnifier/index.php
AKVIS Magnifier Home License (plug-in or standalone) sells for $129 USD or 99 Euro, downloadable from http://www.akvis.com/.

Free Brushes

250 Hi Res Splatter, Spray, & Watercolor Photoshop Brushes

Don’t have the time to buy the right materials and create your own traditional-style-painting Photoshop Brushes? Maybe you just don’t know where to start? No worries - we’ve found nearly 250 of the best Splatter, Paint, Spray, and Watercolor brushes that we think you’ll love!

Check this one out for a sample

Hi-Res Grunge Ink Splatter Brushes

Download 9 Hi-Resolution Grunge Ink Splatter Brushes, hand splattered by Dominik Lenk for the entire design community.

Have fun... Enjoy

PPC Announces Travel Site

PPC ANNOUNCES LATEST MEMBER BENEFIT!

The Professional Photographers of California have done it again!!! PPC has partnered with one of the world's largest travel agencies, YTB Travel, to assist you with your travel reservations. This is a win-win partnership with you and PPC.

Everytime you book your travel through TravelPPC, PPC will be allocated 60% of the commission generated through the reservations engine. There is NO additional cost to you! The cost will be the same as if you booked with any of the other agencies such as Travelocity, Orbitz etc. Somone gets commission wherever you book, so why not PPC? Making online reservations through www.travelppc.com is as easy as any other online travel agency. So. when you need to make travel resaervations, help yourself and PPC at the same time and use www.travelppc.com .

Tell your friends, family and clients, they can all use our site as this is not just for PPC members, it is open to the public. But you are the first to know. Check it out.

GigaPan

Sweeping Panoramas, Courtesy of a Robot

ROBOTS already cut the grass and vacuum rugs. Now they are helping with a more artistic job: creating vast photographic panoramas with ordinary cameras.

A new, inexpensive robotic device from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University attaches snugly to almost any standard digital camera, tilting and panning it to fashion highly detailed panoramic vistas -- whether of the Grand Canyon, a rain forest or a backyard Easter egg hunt.

The robot is called GigaPan, named "giga" for the billion or more pixels it can marshal for a typical panorama. It creates the huge, high-resolution vista by extending its robotic finger and repeatedly clicking the camera shutter, taking tens, hundreds or even thousands of overlapping images, each at a slightly different angle, that are then stitched together by software to create one gigapixel shot.

Read more here

Distressed and Vintage photo effects

From Jonathan Penney: I feel like digital images are often too perfect, too sterile, devoid of the "character" that was inherent to the look of the early photographic processes.

I also like the idea of reaching back through the history of photography to find inspiration for the craft.

Most of these border effects are scanned from actual vintage images from my own personal collection of glass plates, daguerreotypes, tintypes, etc.

Click here to see his tutorial part I

Free Painter Tutorial from Karen Sperling

Artistry Tips and Tricks is a monthly e-zine available through the Artistry Online web site

Each issue is 30-40 pages long and contains information for painting from photos in Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop.

Check out this excerpt from the July 2008 issue, where Karen Sperling explains how she painted from a photo by Phillip Stewart Charis.

See it here

Samsung Launches 14.7-Megapixel Point & Shoot

Samsung TL34HD Digital Camera Introduction: 14.7-Megapixel and HD Video Output

Samsung Launches Its Second Point-And-Shoot Digital Camera
Featuring High-Definition Video Capability

New TL34HD Stands Out With Broad Range of Impressive Features and Resolution

The Samsung TL34HD will be available in September 2008 at an MSRP of $329.95

Read the full scoop

Five Tips For Great Sunset Photos

Five Tips For Great Sunset Photos

Sunsets and sunrises are an inspirational subject for any photographer.

In fact, a good sunset photo is often the reason many people become interested in nature photography.

You don't need to have a great camera or professional training; almost anyone with a camera can take great sunset photos.

Read more

Photography Tutorials

Rick Rosen, one of PPC's many talented members, is now offering tutorials on his website at

July FREE “firecracker” Promo

http://www.rickrosen.com/tutorials/july_promo

You can also link to it on his blog which also has an Opt in function.

http://photographicpassion.blogspot.com

Clouds Volume 2 Photoshop Brushes - Free Photoshop Brushes

Clouds Volume 2 Photoshop Brushes - Free Photoshop Brushes

Stephanie has created her Clouds II Photoshop Brushes set. Wispy edges and all. She says: These are some of the most realistic looking clouds brushes I’ve ever been able to produce, so I hope you all can find some use for them and enjoy them!

Download them here

THANK YOU

I have just finished my year as President of the Professional Photographers of California and I want to say thank you for the honor of being your leader for this last year. It has been an experience that I shall never forget. If you are new to PPC or even if you have been around for a long time, giving back to the organization is the most beneficial thing you can do. You will love meeting new friends and seeing old ones. Again, thank you for the great year.

Michael Collins, Past-President
Professional Photographers of California.

Free Photoshop Brushes

Makeup And Face Sketches Photoshop Brushes - Free Photoshop Brushes

Bottles and tubes of various types of makeup, like lipstick, lip gloss, concealer, foundation, eyeliner, nail polish, a pencil, etc.

All sketched / drawn by hand.

Should be a fun set to play around with, even if you just play around with the face parts!

Enjoy, and have a great week!

Go now download Makeup & Face Sketches Photoshop Brushes.