Nov. 18 Sunday Sampler

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope you have a wonderful holiday with family and friends. Let the shopping sales begin!

This week’s Sunday Sampler consists of a patterned sidewalk that I edited 3 ways in Topaz! You can further edit as desired and/or change colors with hue/saturation or Topaz ReStyle (which changes the color palette of the image).

eBook 2 is in Process

Pre-Order to save 40%!

My second eBook is under way! This will be a continuation of Book 1, with more projects than ever; more textures; and more brushes! 

In Book 1 I showed you the basics of working with textures – how to find them, photograph them, and create your own in Photoshop with brushes. You learned how blending modes make our textures work with our images and turn them into your own “Work of Art”.

In Book Two, we will delve further into projects that incorporate many textures and brush overlays (sometimes as many as 6 or more!). You will learn to composite several images and how to make them blend seamlessly. I promised in Book One that I would show you how I created the cover art “Vultures & Cosmos” – that is one of many projects you will do (minimum of ten projects). 

As in Book One, you get a PDF file of the actual eBook plus all the textures, brushes and photos to follow along with the projects. There will be several extra bonus sets of textures and brushes as well (I’m still adding to this group).

THIS PRE-ORDER IS AVAILABLE ONLY UNTIL MIDNIGHT EST, SUNDAY, NOV. 25th! SAVE 40% off the list price of $25 – Just $15!

It is available both as an electronic version or an actual CD. Shipping for CD’s in the U.S. is $5, outside the U.S. it’s $15.

Click HERE to go to the Peacock Studio store!

~ ~ ~

Also new in the Peacock Studio are 3 new texture sets!

Just added today – 3 new computer-created texture sets – “Inky Leaks 1”; “Procreate 1”; and “Watercolor Designs 1”. 

These 3 sets as well as all of my texture sets and the first eBook are now 25% off until Sunday, Nov. 25th at midnight EST. 

These 3 texture sets are the first in 3 new series – more to be added soon!

These 3 sets are regular $6 – just $4.50 with the 25% sale. USE CODE HOLIDAY2018 AT CHECKOUT!

Click Peacock Studio to see all of our textures and products.

REMINDER…Early Bird Pricing for the 2019 Creative Photography Conference ends on Nov. 30th!

Save $61 and register for our great 2019 line up! No other discounts will be offered, so don’t miss the savings! CLICK HERE to read all the details and to register.

Registration includes all Sat. & Sun. seminars; photo-ops; lunch both days; coffee/tea & refreshments in the mornings; speaker notes on a flash drive; LOTS of door prizes; and a goody bag with discounts & freebies. There will also be vendor tables for your shopping pleasure!

New in 2019 are 2 pre-conference workshops on Friday afternoon (additional fee), as well as optional dinner buffet (save waiting!).  

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND REGISTRATION!

The Black Friday Sales will be in full swing this week from many of the vendors I do business with! I’ll be sending another post or two this week to keep you up-to-date with the best deals!

Topaz’s sale will run Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday (I can’t reveal what it is yet!).

StudioMagic is having a FABULOUS sale on all of their products (they have over 60 of them! You DON’T want to miss this one for sure!

And many of the companies that do “bundles” of products will be releasing info soon — stay tuned!

Gobble! Gobble!

Nov. 11 Sunday Sampler

Happy Sunday! And a huge thank you to all of our Veteran’s who have served our Country on this Veteran’s Day. My Dad and my husband both served in the Navy, and we have many other family members and friends who have served as well. Thank you to all.

 

I was playing around with an image to create some textures for this week’s Sunday Sampler. I took a cropped portion of a hot air balloon and started layering effects in Topaz Studio. The first image is one effect (Impression – Chalk Smudge). Then I got a little crazy and ended up with SIX presets layered!! THEN…I used ReStyle and Texture Effects to create two other versions of that one in B&W and Sepia!

I’m going to ask Heath if we can do this one either in a blog post for Topaz or a webinar. Stay tuned!!

 

REMINDER…the Early Bird Pricing for the Creative Photography Conference ends on November 30th! Don’t miss out on the special pricing and save $61 off your registration. There will not be any other discounts offered on the Conference! A great idea for a holiday gift for yourself or a creative friend!

I will be posting more speaker bios soon here in the blog and also creating pages for each of them under the Creative Photography Conference page on our website, https://www.meredithimages.com/creative-photography-conference/

 

WebDesignDev.com has “20+ Free Design Goodies You Will Want to Download”. There are all kinds of things in this one – from fonts to textures to mock-ups and much more.

If you are into iPhoneography, here’s a good article on TheAppWhisperer.com “The iPhone Photography Apps You Need by Paul Brown”. I have some of these, but others are new to me and I’ll be checking them out! One of my favorites that is mentioned is DistressedFx – great textures!

And on iDesignNow.com, “25 Photoshop Surreal & Fantasy Photo Manipulation Tutorials”. Some very cool stuff!

 

And…a great deal from Pixelo – Get ready to add some magic to your design projects. Buy 1 Get 1 Free! Buy The Mighty Design Bundle for just $39 & Get The 2000+ Backgrounds Master Collection FREE. This offer includes their extended license, making it even more valuable for you. You’re able to use these resources in original designs for personal and commercial projects.

 

Here are the Q&A for a few more questions asked during my webinar on Oct. 30th.

Q: I can’t see how she drags images in Topaz Studio!

A: I work with two monitors, so during a webinar, I have all of my images open in a folder on the 2nd monitor. I just grab (click and hold) and drag the image into Studio on the other monitor. It makes it quicker during the webinars. If you are working on just one monitor, you can go to the top toolbar in Studio and click File > Open Image or Project > the just go to the folder you have your image saved in, click and open.

Q: How many layers does Studio permit?

A: There is no limit! you can add as many as you need.

Q: Can the original Topaz plug-ins be used in Studio (or accessed from Studio)?

A: YES! If you are working in Studio, you can access all of the plug-ins that you own right there. That’s what I love about Studio – you can do everything in one space. To access any of the plug-ins that are NOT “Studio Plug-ins”, go to the top toolbar and click Plug-Ins – a drop-down list will appear with all of the plug-ins that you own.

The six plug-ins that have Studio versions are Clarity, Detail, Glow, Impression, Simplify and Texture Effects. Those will be available in the left panel of Studio.

Q: Does Hazel hand-hold her camera for most of her photos or does she shoot more on a tripod. Also, does she use camera functions or shoot mostly in manual?

A: I have mostly tended to hand-hold when shooting, however, I do “force” myself to use a tripod more often these days when I know I should, especially in low-light situations. I do often hand-hold though when photographing birds in flight with my 150-500mm Sigma! Does get tiring, but it’s much easier than on a tripod.

And probably at least 75% of the time I shoot on manual. I will choose my desired f-stop and then just move the wheel to get the exposure where needed. The rest of the time I’ll most likely be on aperture priority if I don’t feel I’ll need to change the f-stop much. It generally depends on the lighting conditions.

 

THE 25% OFF MY E-BOOK AND TEXTURES EXPIRES AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (EST). Add to your texture library or grab the eBook to learn the basics of texturing! Use code TOPAZ25 at checkout. And…don’t forget to grab your copy of my webinar notes for just $5! All available in the Peacock Studio Shop at: https://www.meredithimages.com/products/

Have a great week!

TOPAZ NEWS – A.I. ReMix Updated TODAY!

Hi there!

I couldn’t wait until Sunday to share the news! Topaz released an update to A.I. ReMix this afternoon. 

“The A.I. ReMix update is HERE! With additional styles, a new category system and speed improvements, A.I. ReMix is a great way to artistically reinvigorate your creative forces.

New Features include:
• 28 Newer High-Resolution Styles: With the latest update we’ve added 28 new styles to the application, bringing our styles total to 102!
• Massive Speed Increase on new styles: We’ve increased the speed of these new styles using the latest GPU implementation of our engine
• New Style Categories: A.I. Clear now provides a way to sort styles to make them easier to find (see screenshot below):

AI ReMix is one of the first desktop applications that uses the power of Artificial Intelligence to transform your image’s style to recreate contemporary and classic artistic styles with the click of a button. More than the typical use of AI, it’s the first of Topaz Studio’s ‘Artistic Intelligence’ adjustments.

Use AI ReMix to quickly change the direction a piece of art is headed. Don’t like the color palette or the overall style of your image? Apply one dose of AI ReMix, and the possibilities will start opening up again. AI ReMix will quickly match shadows, highlights, and various feature sizes in your image with the data contained in our Artistic Intelligence models, and transfer the style in our model to your image.”

Here are a couple I just did:

ORIGINAL IMAGE:

AI Remix – Ink Blot preset:

Added a 2nd preset – Coal Relic:

Definitely a different take on the original image!

If you don’t have A.I. ReMix yet, click HERE and then save 15% with the code MeredithImages (regular price is $69.99). A.I. ReMix is a Pro Adjustment in Studio.

If you already own A.I. ReMix, the update is free! Just open Studio – you will get a pop-up asking if you want to load the update! You will then be on Studio Version 1.13.0 and have the latest updates. If, for some reason you don’t get the pop-up, just click on Help on the top toolbar of Studio, and then click Check for Software Updates.

 

Nov. 4 – Sunday Sampler

Happy Sunday and a warm welcome to all of the new subscribers! Thank you for watching my Topaz webinar this past week. It was fun doing some Halloween-themed images! We had lots of great questions as well. I printed out the chat so I can answer more of the questions here in the Topaz Corner (see below). We try to cover a LOT of information during the webinars – I know for some people it seemed to go too fast – but that’s why they record the webinars so you can go back and watch again!

The “edited” webinar is not posted yet, but you can get to the unedited copy by clicking HERE. And if you haven’t gotten them yet, I have the notes for this webinar for sale in my online store for just $5! This gives you all of the images that I worked on during the webinar, the notes with the settings that I used, AND a bonus set of textures (these textures are not available anywhere else – they will be part of some upcoming sets in the store). Click HERE to go to the web store and then select “Topaz Notes” (the notes for my last webinar are also still available).

 

This week’s Sunday Sampler started with a shot of tree bark that I took on my jaunt this week to Southford Falls State Park in Southford, CT. I then did a couple of variations using AI ReMix in Studio.

The recent rains and pretty fall color made for some nice images:

After editing these leaves, I added a preset in Topaz Studio to give them some added “punch”.

I’ve been totally amazed with the quality of AI Clear. It really makes my images look great! I did mask it off of the water a little so that they wouldn’t be overly sharp.

NEW WEBINAR NOTE!

If you’d like to see some more of “What’s New with Topaz Labs”, I will be doing a webinar tonight at 7:00 pm Eastern Time, for NPEG (the National Photography Enthusiasts Group). They have allowed me to open up registration to you as well! Click HERE to sign up! I’ll be covering Topaz Studio and some of the Pro Adjustments that have been added since the Summer when I did my last webinar for them.

 

So as I mentioned above, I printed the chat log from Tuesday’s webinar so that I could answer questions we couldn’t get to during the presentation. I love reading all the “hello’s” when people log on and seeing where everyone is from (all over the world!).

A couple questions from the first project, the “haunted” house and graffiti overlay.

Q. How did she unlock the ratio?

A. After adding the 2nd image layer, you will see a “Lock Aspect Ratio  Yes  No” under the image – click on NO and you will be able to resize the image without maintaining the original aspect (see screen shot below)

 

Q. Where did she get the clip art? Where did she get the lightning?

A. The graffiti shot I used was from Layer Cake’s “Epic Location Sets” (Urban Chic set) and the lightning was from their Studio Magic plug-in program.

I recently did a webinar for them utilizing these new Location Sets. They are also the makers of Studio Magic, an awesome plug-in to Photoshop (I have done a webinar on this as well). You can save 90% and get Studio Magic, free sky overlays and the 1200 Epic Location Sets for just $125 HERE. Or just the 1200 Location Sets and Skies for $99 HERE.

The other clip art I showed (spider web, pumpkin, ghost), I downloaded from Brusheezy.com. They have TONS of free brushes, clip art and more (also Vecteezy.com for graphics).

Also watch the blog for “Around the Web” links to other great resources.

Q. How do I import textures into Studio?

A. I put together a tutorial sheet on how to do this with screen shots. Click – How to Add Textures to get the pdf file!

Q. How did she get two different textures to apply? When I do that, the second will override the first!

A. Once you have applied your first texture, you need to then click on Adjustment again and select texture to open a 2nd dialogue box and add a 2nd texture without deleting the first one. So you’re pallette will look like this:

 

I will answer some more questions next week!

 

Just a reminder…the Early Bird pricing for our 3rd Creative Photography Conference ends on November 30th!

Join us May 18-19, 2019 at the Southbridge Hotel & Conference Center in Southbridge, MA, and unleash your creative side!

Our fabulous speakers: John Barclay, Anne Belmont, Mark Bowie, Betty Wiley, Jane Driscoll, Loretta Paul-Goldin, Jan Doyle and me, will show you techniques including Topaz, textures, LensBaby, landscapes, Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar, iPhoneography, creative projects with your photos, YouTube publicity and creating your own textures in PS and with alcohol inks. We’ll also have a photo ops room with set ups to photograph, and much, much more!

Go to our website at: https://www.meredithimages.com/creative-photography-conference/ for all the details and to register!

Have a great week!

Oct. 28 – Sunday Sampler

Happy Sunday! Go Red Sox!

This week’s Sunday Sampler consists of some beautiful clouds from Cape Cod. I judged at the Cape Cod Art Center Camera Club on Thursday evening. Got to visit John Barclay & Rad Drew for breakfast on Friday along with their workshop group, and dinner Friday with friends, Michael & Suz Karchmer. Busy couple of days! I had also hoped to meet up with Betty Wiley (one of our Creative Photography Conference speakers), but she had some computer issues and had to head to the Apple store off-Cape!

The Peacock Studio’s new mascot, Pete the Peacock, went along for the trip! He precariously perched on the fence at Highland Lighthouse (though the breeze knocked him down a few times!). He will be traveling with me and also be featured in my upcoming new travel blog…stay tuned!

 

This coming Tuesday, October 30th, is my next Topaz webinar!

REGISTER HERE!

Join me at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time for all the “spooky” edits! I will have notes available for this webinar for just $5. Includes full notes/settings, the images used so you can follow along when you watch the recording of the webinar, plus some bonuses! The notes will be available immediately after the webinar. (Notes from the previous webinar are also still available in my store).

I will also offer a 25% discount on my eBook and textures in the Peacock Studio with the code TOPAZ25. The 25% off discount expires midnight Nov. 10th Eastern time.

Visit the Peacock Studio HERE!

 

FEATURED SPEAKER – ANNE BELMONT

As a flower photographer, Anne’s greatest passion lies in seeing and capturing the beauty of flowers and other botanical subjects up-close. It is the small, often unnoticed details that draw Anne to her subjects – the patterns, textures, curves and unique personality of each subject. It is her belief that if we slow down and look at nature in a more contemplative way, we will find subjects that convey impact and emotion, causing the eye to linger a little longer. Some of those subjects might even have stories to tell. With a lifelong involvement in the arts and her deep love of nature, photography became a perfect way for Anne to share her vision of the natural world with others. Her first career as an art therapist has shaped the way she views art and the creative process, and has reinforced her belief in the healing power of both art and nature in our lives.

On any given day you will find her at her favorite place to photograph, the Chicago Botanic Garden. She was commissioned by the Garden to do a solo exhibition of her orchid photography, displayed in 20 larger-than-life panels during the 2015 – 2017 Orchid Shows.

Anne is on the Out of Chicago Photography team, organizing and presenting at their conferences. She presents programs and teaches workshops on flower photography at conferences and groups throughout the country. She is a writer for the learning community Visual Wilderness, where she writes about flower and macro photography. Anne partners with Lensbaby, and is passionate about using and promoting their creative lenses to enhance the artistry of photography. She is firmly committed to the idea that we should never stop learning, growing, experimenting and having fun with photography.

 

JOIN ANNE AND THE REST OF OUR CREATIVE LINE-UP AT THE 3RD CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY CONFERENCE, MAY 18-29, 2019 at the Southbridge Hotel & Conference Center, Southbridge, MA. 

Early Bird discount available until Nov. 30th – Don’t miss out!

Find all the details on our website HERE!

 

FREEBIES from MediaLoot – 22 Beautiful and Seamless Rock Textures! There are also additional freebies and for-purchase textures on this page.

For some last-minute Halloween Decorations, check out the freebies from TheHungryJPEG – Spooky Halloween Clipart

Freebies from Pixelo – All kinds of goodies! Check ’em out!

And…from Pexels, 1000+ free Textures! Can be used for personal and commercial use (be sure to read the full license terms). 1000+ Beautiful Textures

 

Have a great week!

AI Clear Update!

A.I. Clear Update Now Live!

We’re so excited to share with you the latest update of A.I. Clear. We’ve made some great new improvements to the noise reduction and A.I. models in A.I. Clear, added some new items to the GUI to give users even more control over the Noise reduction and detail enhancement performance.

New Features include:
• Auto Button: This feature will analyze your image to automatically pick a noise reduction model for your image.
• 200%-300% Speed Increase: We’ve further improved our processing and Neural Network to give you even better quality up to 3 times faster than with the previous version.
• New Sharpness Selector: A.I. Clear now provides even more control over the amount of sharpening applied to your image with a selector for low or high sharpness.
• New Detail Synthesis: This latest update to the A.I. models in A.I. Clear not allows the model to not only enhance existing details but actually replicate missing detail in your images that may have been completely obscured by noise or artifacts. Now you actually can create missing pixel data with the power of deep learning neural networks in the new A.I. Clear.
• Various bug fixes.

About A.I. Clear:
AI Clear is the first desktop application that uses a custom AI noise model to quickly remove image noise and enhance image details. Other AI implementations require you to upload your image to an external server for cloud processing, taking control of your images out of your hands and wasting minutes or hours to get you a processed result. AI Clear uses your machine to process and enhance your images locally without costing you time, bandwidth, and control.

CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE DETAILS!

 

AND…Reminder…next Tuesday, October 30th at 5:00 pm Eastern is my next Topaz Webinar! Registration should be live on the Topaz website in the next day or so at: http://blog.topazlabs.com/webinars/

 

Oct. 21 – Sunday Sampler

Happy Sunday! Holidays are fast approaching!! Yikes! Quite blustery today in CT after a nice Fall day yesterday.

This week’s Sunday Sampler consists of cracked paint on old train cars at the New England Railway Museum where we did a night shoot last weekend. Enjoy!

FEATURED SPEAKER – JOHN BARCLAY

Registration is under way for our 2019 Conference! We have an awesome line up of speakers for you this year. I’ll be featuring them here on the blog as well as on the website.

Our first featured speaker is John Barclay, an amazing photographer, fellow Topaz speaker (John recommended me to Topaz as a webinar presenter), inspiring and a nice guy!

“John is an award winning freelance photographer based in Bucks County PA. He is a passionate photographer and enthusiastic workshop leader. John is also an inspirational speaker sharing his program ‘Dream – Believe – Create’ to audiences around the Country.

John was personally selected by Dewitt Jones to participate in his www.healingimages.org project. John’s work has been published in a number of magazines and books and has been used by Nik Software, Topaz Labs and Lensbaby in their advertising campaigns.

Recently, John was the recipient of an excellence award from B&W Magazine.”

John will be presenting his “Dream-Believe-Create” program at the Creative Photography Conference, as well as doing a session on creating with Topaz. He will also be one of the two Pre-Conference presenters with a hands-on Topaz class.

Check out all the details at https://www.meredithimages.com/creative-photography-conference/.

And don’t miss out on the “Early Bird” registration – now through Nov. 30th!

 

 

Exciting – although unexpected – as of Friday I no longer have my full-time job! Layoffs throughout the company (I’d been there almost 17 years!). Sad to miss my co-workers, but relieved as well. I won’t miss being micro-managed!

So…this gives me more time to pursue more photography projects for my own business! Stay tuned…I WILL be finishing my second textures eBook (that I’ve been trying to do for over a year); I will be offering more training – in-person and by webinars; adding some new products to the Peacock Studio; and some other things as well! I’ll probably be even busier than when I was working full-time.

I will be heading to Cape Cod on Thursday to judge as the Cape Cod Art Center Camera Club, then spending some time Friday photographing with Betty Wiley (who will also be a speaker at our Creative Photography Conference).

Next up will be my 11th Topaz Webinar on Tuesday, Oct. 30th at 5:00 Eastern Time. Sign ups should start soon on the Topaz site – keep an eye on THIS PAGE.

Check out my list of upcoming seminars and webinars HERE.

And if you missed the webinar this past week with StudioMagic, catch it here: http://www.photoeffects.biz/webinaroct/webinaroct.mp4

And you can still get in on the webinar specials (ending in 48 hours). Get 90% off in this special Webinar special deal, you also receive the Framing actions and the Portrait/Wedding actions.

REVIEW the Epic Location sets and StudioMagic plugins below

https://store.layercakeelements.com/gav/moviesets.html

Get the location sets and StudioMagic plugins for only $125.00 here: https://www.layercakeelements.net/product/epic-location-sets-web-deal-1/

OR…You can purchase ONLY the 1,200 location sets for only $99.00 (80%) off here: https://www.layercakeelements.net/product/epic-location-sets-web-deal-2/

 

 

The folks at Design Cuts have another great font bundle now available – the Supreme Quality Font Bundle. Sixteen font families with 271 individual fonts! Full commercial use license. Value $1174 for just $29. Check it out – click here and then go to “Current Bundle”

And, more new from Topaz – expecting an update to AI Clear this week. Stay tuned! I’ll send a post when it’s available.

 

Have a good Sunday!

 

 

Join Me for a Webinar TONIGHT!

TONIGHT is my webinar with the guys at LayerCake, makers of Studio Magic for a webinar showcasing their new “Epic Location Sets”! This is a set of over 1200 backgrounds divided into 7 categories: Africa on Location; America on Location – Route 66; Scenic America; Wild West; Doorways to the World; Scenic Europe; and Urban Chic.

Take your subject and place them into a location – no backdrops or studio set ups needed!

Check the webpage for some great examples – HERE! And register for the webinar on Oct. 18th at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t watch live, sign up anyway, get some freebies and get a link to the recording after the webinar ends.

Now these may have been created with portrait photographers in mind, but you know I like to be different! I’m not a portrait or wedding photographer, but I can still use these great backdrops for other subjects. I photographed this car with a busy background, but put it into one of the Epic Locations, used StudioMagic for a little more creativity, and created a whole new scene! Also watch to see how I use a background as a creative overlay!

Oct. 14 Sunday Sampler

Welcome to New England weather – 80 degrees and humid last week – 40’s this morning and the heat came on! I love Fall – just hope it lasts a little while!

 

This week’s SUNDAY SAMPLER consists of some “mossy” tree bark. Lots of texture in these! Enjoy!

 

REMINDER…

…this coming Thursday is my webinar with the guys at LayerCake, makers of Studio Magic for a webinar showcasing their new “Epic Location Sets”! This is a set of over 1200 backgrounds divided into 7 categories: Africa on Location; America on Location – Route 66; Scenic America; Wild West; Doorways to the World; Scenic Europe; and Urban Chic.

Take your subject and place them into a location – no backdrops or studio set ups needed!

Check the webpage for some great examples – HERE! And register for the webinar on Oct. 18th at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t watch live, sign up anyway, get some freebies and get a link to the recording after the webinar ends.

Now these may have been created with portrait photographers in mind, but you know I like to be different! I’m not a portrait or wedding photographer, but I can still use these great backdrops for other subjects. I photographed this car with a busy background, but put it into one of the Epic Locations, used StudioMagic for a little more creativity, and created a whole new scene! Also watch to see how I use a background as a creative overlay!

 

And speaking of webinars, my next TOPAZ webinar will be Tuesday, October 30th at 5:00 pm Eastern time. It was a blast to meet Heath, Rose, Joe, and the rest of the crew at Topaz when I was in Texas last month!

Sign up will be open soon on the Topaz website at: http://blog.topazlabs.com/webinars/. They usually start sign ups the week before the webinar.

Watch for some Halloween-themed creative editing!

 

Just two days left to grab the

Birthday Deals over at Design Cuts!

Design Cuts is 5 years old!! One of the first companies to do “bundles” of products, they are still one of the best and biggest!

Expiring on 10/15, they are offering 100 products for just $5 each! They consists of Fonts, Graphics (including textures), Add-Ons, Templates and more! Click HERE to head to the Graphics page – to get to the others, just click the tabs at the top!

FREEBIE from CSS Author – “High Resolution Photoshop Splatter Brushes”

And from Creative Nerds – “20 Best Free Graffiti Fonts”

 

Have a great week!

Oct. 7 – Sunday Sampler

Happy October! Finally starting to feel a bit like Fall here in CT – though it is supposed to get back to 80 this week! Welcome to New England!

This week’s Sunday Sampler contains some rocks! I love the grittiness of rock textures – from subtle to grungy! Remember to play around with blending modes and opacity to get it just how you want it! Enjoy!

 

I’m teaming up with Alan & Gavin at LayerCake, makers of Studio Magic for a webinar showcasing their new “Epic Location Sets”! This is a set of over 1200 backgrounds divided into 7 categories: Africa on Location; America on Location – Route 66; Scenic America; Wild West; Doorways to the World; Scenic Europe; and Urban Chic.

Take your subject and place them into a location – no backdrops or studio set ups needed!

Check the webpage for some great examples – HERE! And register for the webinar on Oct. 18th at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t watch live, sign up anyway, get some freebies and get a link to the recording after the webinar ends.

Now these may have been created with portrait photographers in mind, you know I like to be different! I’m not a portrait or wedding photographer, but I can still use these great backdrops for other subjects. Here are a few of mine with a car and train I photographed – I then put them into one of the Epic Locations, used StudioMagic for a little more creativity, and created a whole new scene!

Train taken in Pennsylvania during the day!

Car taken on one of our workshops in RI with Motel Epic Location

Same car with Desert Epic Location – Studio Magic grunge, star field and moon

Same car with Desert Epic Location – Studio Magic Sunset

 

There is no end to the creativity with these backdrops! Join us for the webinar and find out how you can create your own Epic images!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE WEBSITE & REGISTER

 

Last week I told you about the updated A.I. Gigapixel 2.0. It’s faster than ever – here’s a clip from Topaz that demonstrates:

https://topazlabs.com/ai-gigapixel-20-speed-increase/

You can download a free trial – purchase is $99.99. Use my link HERE and then the code MeredithImages at checkout to save 15%.

And…stay tuned for an update to another Topaz product soon!

 

GREAT BUNDLE DEALS GOING ON AT SEVERAL SITES!

My friends at Design Cuts are 5 years old!! One of the first companies to do “bundles” of products, they are still one of the best and biggest!

For 2 weeks only (expires 10/15), they are offering 100 products for just $5 each! They consists of Fonts, Graphics (including textures), Add-Ons, Templates and more! Click HERE to head to the Graphics page – to get to the others, just click the tabs at the top!

 

And over at Inky Deals, they have a bundle of “Amazing Artistic PhotoFX” for just $29. Check it out HERE!

And…my friends at Pixel Surplus have two great font bundles currently available:

The Textured Font Bundle: This is Vol. 3 of the Textured Fonts Collection – 29 Fonts for just $29. Comes with full commercial use license. Expires 10/15/18.

The Luxe Font Bundle:  Contains 95 fonts for the same low $29! Commercial license included. Expires 10/30/18

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE WEBSITE AND GRAB THESE DEALS!

 

Whew….lots of info this week! Enjoy!