Here I list my 10 tips to improve your skills in Photoshop, but they can be applied to other tools as well

1 - Start with something

2 - Don’t be dissappointed

3 - Try to recreate the effects you like.

4 - Read tutorials before start doing your design.

pixel2life.com good-tutorials.com psdtuts.com veerle 100 Photoshop Tutorials

5 - Learn how to use Masks.

6 - Play around with filters

7 - Spend some time learning the Layer Styles

8 - Brush Engine

Very good video explaining how the Brush Engine works

9 - Listen and watch podcasts

Pixel Perfect with Bert Monroy

Adobe Photoshop Quicktips - Video Podcast

List of Photoshop Podcasts

10 - Share what you have learned with everybody

Your Design Forums PSDTUTS - They pay you for tutorials Flickr Deviantart Read more at abduzeedo.com

Today I logged into the back end of DPS and in passing noticed that our last post was the 1000th post on DPS. I also noticed that this week was the 3rd anniversary of starting the site!

To celebrate I thought that it might be fun to post a list of the 10 Ten Posts from our 1000 posts from the last 3 years.

1. 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

Viewed by 700,000+ readers this set of tips for budding portrait photographers has been a big hit. We followed this one up with 10 MORE Ways to Take Stunning Portraits (which came in at #12 on our most popular posts list)

2. Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples

This post has been on the ‘popular page’ of most social media sites and has also been viewed by well over half a million visitors.

3. How to Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography

4. 15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement

5. 4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop!

Another of our earliest photoshop posts with some good age old techniques. Read more at digital-photography-school.com

On the next to the last day of Gulf Photo Plus I was informed by GPP organizer, Mohamed Somji, that I had the “privilege” of shooting the group shot of all the GPP staff and photographers. I would be given 15 minutes to set up and execute the shot with 25 to 40 people.

I have done countless group shots in my young career but never one that had folks like Joe McNally, Drew Gardner, David Hobby, Chase Jarvis, David Nightingale, and on and on and on. No pressure.

This is what each individual shot looked like…

This is what the group shot looks like without the auditorium showing through…

Here is the auditorium. I would use this image to mask parts of the ambient back into the group shot.

The final shot was 34 layers tall. 28 layers of people and 6 layers of ambient light and details like the the strobe painting on the back wall panels.

See more at www.zarias.com

It’s “Guest Blog Wednesday” featuring Justin Paguia!

First and foremost, thank you to Mr. Scott Kelby for letting me steal some of the spotlight this week and also to Douglas Sonders.  If you do not remember or have not seen Doug’s guest blog, check it out here.  With that being said, let’s begin.

For this session, I’m going to break down the steps and go through the methodology of how I created the S.W.A.T. piece below:

Untouched developed image

See more at www.scottkelby.com