Photographing Projects and Collections: Some Links

• Photographing Auto Instruments: chrome gauges in specially cut particle board, light tent, one light;
• Building an In-House Photo Studio: small products, PVC backdrop stand, where to buy nice background paper (at less cost than a photo store), using a light tent to control reflections;
• Desktop Digital Photography: with Dennis Curtin (Short Courses series of photo books). Some overall basics, such as lens choice, DOF, lighting, and so forth;

  
  

Free Digital Pastel Background and Photoshop Tutorial

Each month, Wetzel and Company offers a free download of one of their hand-crafted backgrounds, patterns & photographic textures. These freebies are high-resolution JPGs, copyright free, culled from the company’s various themed CD collections. There are also quite a number of tutorials on the site to give you some ideas on how to work with these backgrounds and textures. This month’s tutorial is about how to use Photoshop’s Layer Adjustments to create an artistic background effect with the free digital pastels background from its Digital Pastels CD. Go to Wetzel’s site and sign up for its newsletter to receive notice when new free sample downloads are available. The newsletter also features one of Wetzel’s CDs, and an occasional tutorial.