Kevin Pack Photography

New Software

I visited Focus at the Birmingham NEC this weekend. Which was a very interesting experience.

I watched a few demonstrations and talks as well as attending a Royal Photographic Society awards assessment.

I left with a bag full of leaflets, a monopod and a couple of new pieces of digital manipulation software for my PC.

I've just loaded the first of the programs onto my computer. PhotoTools Professional is a selection of 250 actions for Adobe Photoshop. I thought I would try it out on a portrait photograph I took at a C3 Stockport portrait session. The resulting image is something I could have achieved directly in Photoshop, but it would have taken me quite a long time. Whereas with my new software it only took a few clicks to boost the colours, smooth the skin slightly, but also apply a little sharpening.

Working on a project

I haven't been uploading many photographs recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy working on my images.

In December I tried out printing some of my favourite photographs of the year in a book using Blurb. I had used the Apple photobook service a few years ago, but although the results were very good they were also very expensive. However quite a few people on Flickr had recommended Blurb's services, so I thought I would give them a go.