4 Keys to Unlocking Your Photography Potential

Cartoon Courtesy of What the Duck

With a few keys under your belt, you can achieve professional photos no matter what camera you use!

Key #1: Great Lighting Matters More Than the Camera

Becoming More Productive with Producteev.com

Do you ever look at your order list and feel overwhelmed and confused? Then you wonder how on earth will you ever get everything done? And, really, what is your wait time right now? Is it two weeks? Three weeks? Maybe even four or five weeks?

How Do You Keep Track of Patterns?

Stacey of Fresh Stitches had a great blog post about how to read PDF files. I would highly recommend her post before reading on. I am a total geek. I loved her post and want to take it a step further into Geekhood.  What I want to talk about is organizing the pdf files, accessing them from anywhere and also keeping track of which patterns you own.

Here is what I will round up for you today:

1. How I keep track of what I own
2. Pattern Storage
3. Accessing Patterns

How to Create a Paintbrush in The Gimp (Part 1 of 2)

You should learn how to create and use Toolbrushes in the Gimp because it will make your life so much easier! Don't believe me? The "Tutorial" image above was created using only two tools and just a couple mouse clicks: Text & Paintbrush. The outline shape is a paintbrush. The owl is a paintbrush. A few mouse clicks and the rest is text. Cool, right?

So, what is a paintbrush? The way that I am using the "paintbrush" tool is like a stamp...click once, release and the image stays. Click through for a demonstration of how to use the paintbrush.

I am going to create a paintbrush (aka stamp) of Fritz.

1. Open the file in The Gimp (Free Download link)
2. Click the "Fuzzy Select Tool":



3. Click on the white area (background).
   TIP: When creating a brush, you should only select the white areas you want to get rid. For example, I do not want to get rid of the skin on Fritz's face:



4. Invert the Selection by clicking on the Select Menu --> Invert:



5. Press the Delete button on your keyboard and the background changes to a gray checkerboard (gray background = transparent background):



6. Save the file as a .gbr file in the brushes folder:
NOTE: If you are a Windows user, it is located here:
C:/Users/YOUR NAME HERE/.gimp-2.6/brushes

Congratulations! You now have a paintbrush. Read the follow-up tutorial on how to use the paint brush.