Don’t have a real macro lens but want to get really close? Grab a lens in the 100mm range and also your 50mm standard lens and stack them together for a 1:1 magnification. Or try different lens combinations to get in even closer.

quick video 4, extreme macro photography trick from Jim Talkington on Vimeo.

“I went to a little book store over the weekend that you can’t even find on Google Maps, bought a book that is about 50 yrs old, dissected it (literally), and scanned all the parts. It took a while, but I have a very cool free high resolution texture pack for everyone to download”.

I’ve featured textures from bittbox.com on this blog before, and this time they are sharing 12 high resolution textures which can be used for both personal and commercial usage.

Bittbox.com has also recently redesigned their website, nice job guys!

“This is the second set of fractal brushes I made for Photoshop, the brushes are a higher resolution this time. The same licensing rules apply as the last set i made. Let me know if you use them, I’d love to see some of the works made using these.”

An excellent Photoshop brush-set by ekamanganese.
Download it here.

Additional brushes that you can’t miss:
- 36 Texture Brushes by Spiritcoda
- Smudge Brush by Son-Baby
- Painting Hair brushes by AngelinaResource
- Will-o’-the-wisp brushes by m0nica
- Grunge Brushes by Talei-stock
- Spraypaint Brushes by FormFieber

Also check out Brusheezy.com and psbrushes.net for a lot more.

“One of the hardest thing for me when I was new to lighting, was seeing the possibilities in a location. When I first started in photography, I was lucky to have worked with a very talented photographer in Houston, TX. When I went to work for Joe, I had never been in a studio before, seen or used strobes let alone realize that you could actually make a living taking pictures. It would just blow my mind to watch Joe walk into a drab location and absolutely transform it using light.”

A great post/tutorial from David Tejada on how you can see the different possibilities on locations.
Click here to read the rest.

“The advent of high quality and inexpensive digital cameras has made it easier than ever to learn the basics of photography. The immediate feedback you get by being able to preview your images (via the LCD screen) in relationship to your exposure settings is invaluable. In the film days (not that long ago!), photographers had to take notes while in the field so that they could compare the results after the images were processed. It could take days or weeks before a film-photographer could process their images and examine their work. This could be sped up slightly if you had your own lab. Mistakes in exposure and lighting were expensive. New photographers breaking into the field faced these same challenges. Learning photography was usually a tedious and expensive endeavor.”

An interesting article Written by Steve Paxton

We all love Photoshop and its effects, but sometimes it’s great to get your hands dirty when creating elements for your graphics. Ink drops can add a creative and energetic element to your designs. This tutorial demonstrates techniques to creatively work ink drops into your compositions.

This tutorial by PSDtuts.com is a great example on how to create manipulations using stock photos and the raw power of Photoshop’s layermasks and effects. The end result is very cool as well.

“Colorburned.com is giving away a handful of textures at their website. They are all high quality and can be downloaded for free. Each set contains around 20-35 images.”

Free Texture sets from Colorburn.com:
37 Dry Sand textures, Wet Sand Part 1, Wet Sand Part 2, Wet Sand Part 3, Wet Sand Part 4, Rocks and Pebbles, Waves Part 1 and 2, Waves Part 3 and 4, Waterfalls Part 1

“When it comes to learning, everyone has their own preference, whether it’s through images, words or … by watching! That’s why I’m happy to announce that we’ve opened a Photoshop Video Channel at the very cool Vimeo video site for anyone and everyone to contribute to!”

If you prefer watching videos rather than reading tutorials, check out the (already 30) Photoshop videos posted in the group.