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• Dodging and Burning
  by Alison Johnston

  For some reason, people go a funny shade of green when one starts talking about Dodging and Burning …. nothing to fear at all. I’ve ju…

  For some reason, people go a funny shade of green when one starts talking about Dodging and Burning …. nothing to fear at all. I’ve just realised that I haven’t got any little images to insert in this tutorial …. I’ll make them later. Dodging and Burning is not difficult at all, when you realise that 20 low opacity strokes are better than one huge Dodge or Burn stroke. D&B is used to create precise shadow/highlight and can certainly add enormous amounts of lift/punch to an image. Most people would duplicate the layer to do some D&B on, and this is fine until you are working on a 10/15/20mb file and everytime you duplicate the layer the image size doubles. Unless you have a huge amount of RAM, your computer will slow down and sometimes even freeze. Is there a solution …. of course there is, its photoshop. So you’ve been working on an image, and naturally taken snapshots along the way. Now you decide that you would like to do some D&B. Click on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette. Go to Edit>Fill>50%gray>click ok and that’s it LOL, nah, only kidding. Change the blend mode of this layer to soft light. Go grab the Burn tool (example), select whether you want to burn the highlights, midtones or shadows from the top menu and I would suggest quite strongly that you use a very low opacity – around 10% to start out with. I usually use a very soft brush for this and set the size according to what I’m going to be doing. The sheer beauty of using the 50% gray layer set to soft light is that you can simply turn the layer on and off to view your progress – don’t like what you’ve done … trash it and start again. Use exactly the same principle for the Dodge tool. Yet another way to D&B. Click on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette, change the blend mode to soft light (without filling it with 50% gray), select your brush tool and make sure the foreground colour is set to black. Lower your brush opacity in the top menu bar to round about 10% again and start brushing where you want to Burn (darken) the area. Do exactly the same thing, only with white as the foreground colour to do some Dodging (lighten). Yet another interesting take on the above is that you can D&B with colours. Try it … grab your f/ground colour as red (example), check the opacity is down and Dodge or Burn away with that colour. Perhaps even pick a dark red (example) from the image itself to use as the Burn colour. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. The sheer joy of photoshop is all the fun you can have with it.

• Seascapes Group
  by Mel Brackstone

  I’m very pleased to announce the new group Seascapes I’m looking forward to viewing wat…

  I’m very pleased to announce the new group Seascapes I’m looking forward to viewing waterscapes from around the world. I’d like to think that we can upload just our very very best, so please, limit your uploads to just ONE a day, and we’ll see how things go. One upload a day only Five photos per member only If you’d like critique, please ask. If you’d like information on how different techniques have been produced, please ask If you think you have a question that I haven’t mentioned, please ask. Thanks for sharing your photos with us! Mel

• Grunge Text/Type
  by Alison Johnston

  So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we ar…

  So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we are going to be using today, but you will need the larger file, so clicky on THIS link. Copyright is mine – yada, yada. Open Photoshop and create a new file 800px X 600px, background set to white. Open the larger image (which you will have saved to your computer) and with your move tool selected and the shift key held down, drag the tree image over to your new file. Holding down the shift key will centre the image for you. Working on the trees layer Go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and I want you to take the slider to the left until it reaches 80 (see image below). We’re aiming to get a lot of white in the image. Next we’re going to add the type. Select a foreground colour, I used Red. Grab your type tool and select Horizontal type – then go ahead and type something, I used RedBubble. (Arial Black > Regular>100pt>Sharp – for those who may be interested) Move your text to where you would like it to be, you can place it similar to where I placed, but it will need to be over some of the black. Once you’ve played around with this a couple times you’ll get a general idea of where the text should go. Before we go any further, we have to rasterize the text. You can either right click on the text layer and choose rasterize type or go to Layer>Rasterize>Type. Now the fun begins :-) click on the trees layer, the one you did the threshold adjustment on and select your magic wand tool, check that the contiguous box on the top menu bar is unchecked and select some of the black. Because you have the contiguous box unchecked, the magic wand tool will select all of the black areas. Now, hide the trees layer by clicking the little eye icon and click on the type layer, then press the delete key. Go to Select>deselect or press ctrl D on the keyboard. And there you have it, some grungey type text. Use your move tool to position the text wherever you want and you can drag the trees layer to the little garbage bin icon … cos you don’t need it anymore. I’ve cropped my final image. Larger file is HERE Enjoy playing, and if I haven’t made anything clear just ask me.

• Tutorial: Photographing the Milky Way with a standard DSLR camera
  by Cain Doherty

  Due to the home page feature and requests to understand how I developed my image Milky Way from Apollo Bay...

  Due to the home page feature and requests to understand how I developed my image Milky Way from Apollo Bay with a Canon 350D and a wide angle lens, I’ve decided to put together a basic tutorial. For this to be repeatable you must be shooting with clear dark skies, free from light pollution. The settings I used on my camera are detailed with the image. A shutter release cable is also a great tool and can keep your camera clicking as it sits on the tripod. The more images taken, the better for the final result, because this will improve the signal to noise ratio that plagues digital sensors during long exposures. A tracking mount is not necessary with a 20 second shutter speed because the rotation of the night sky is undetectable at such a wide angle. Please read the following steps for more information. All images are hyperlinked to larger sizes. 1) Save unaligned images to drive 2) Load them into hugin_0.7_beta_4 which is available here. 3) Manually align images with control points – don’t automatically align. I aligned three images to a common one. Click the screenshot for details. 4) Click Edit – fine tune all points 5) Click View – preview window 6) Click Center and Fit buttons to achieve this view 7) Click Edit – Optimise 8) Click Stitcher – image format – multiple tiff . Final screen before clicking Stitch Now . 9) Prealigned images available here 10) Load each image onto a new layer in photoshop adjusting the blend mode to screen which is good at lightening images without lightening the darkest areas 11) Add a medium contrast curves layer 12) Add colour balance layer: shadows (-90,-25,-10), midtones (-15,-5,-20), highlights (0,-5,30) 13) The final result For comparison’s sake, shown below is a typical accompanying jpeg to a raw file I began with for one of the individual images. I used Adobe Camera Raw to extract the jpegs provided in step 1 for processing. In closing, I’d like to point out this is not the only way an image like this can be captured; there is myriads of possibilities. I have developed this simple and inexpensive method by just experimenting with the tools at my disposal. Comments are welcomed. If you haven’t done so already, please check out another tutorial I have written: Layer Masks and Transparency Gradients for The Heart.

• The Smudge Tool
  by Alison Johnston

  The smudge tool doesn’t sound like a terribly exciting tool, something that you could have some fun with – but it can be and we’re going …

  The smudge tool doesn’t sound like a terribly exciting tool, something that you could have some fun with – but it can be and we’re going to look at one way in this tutorial. This tutorial is going to involve the use of the pen tool, but it will be painless :-) The first thing that you will need to do is create a new document, I have used 800×600 with a black background. Next you will need to create a new layer above the background layer by clicking on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and then select your elliptical marquee tool and draw out a small circle similar to the one below, holding down the alt + shift keys. Before deselecting the marching ants, go to the gradient tool and pick a gradient from the drop down menu, I’ve used the ‘copper’ gradient. Make sure you are using a linear gradient, and hold down your shift key while dragging from the top to the bottom of the circle – you can deselect the marching ants. You can go ahead and duplicate the small circle by selecting your move tool then holding down the Alt + Ctrl keys (this will copy and drop the copy onto a new layer), drag a little way then hold down your shift key as well and this will constrain the down movement. Next you’re going to grab the pen tool, and, starting from the centre of the top most circle, click a point then move across and click and drag another point. You will have to reduce the size of your image for this, but keep the canvas larger because you will have to click the final part of the path outside of the image. Go to your paths palette, which should be default with your layers and channels palette, if it isn’t go to Window>Paths – and at the bottom on that palette click on the ‘create new path’ icon. Go back to your tools palette and choose your pen tool again, click on the centre of the next circle and do something similar to the above, but change the direction a little. Repeat this for the other 2 remaining circles. The original path will be called ‘work path’ and then the rest will be called ‘1, 2, 3’ – you will need to line up the corresponding layer in the layers palette in one of the future steps, but first we have to go and choose a hard edge tip for the smudge tool. Click on the smudge tool and get a size similar to the one in the image below. I’ve made the circles and brush size bigger than I normally would for the sake of visibility. Depending on what you were going to do with this technique, all things can be changed. With the smudge tool selected, click on the first layer in the layers palette, then go to the paths palette and click on the ‘work path’ layer, then right click on this choose ‘stroke path’ from the fly out menu – a small dialogue will appear and ‘smudge’ should already be selected, but if it isn’t choose ‘smudge’ from the drop down menu. Click OK and you should have something similar to the next image. You can go to your paths palette now and drag the path you just stroked to the little bin icon at the bottom of the palette. Go to the next layer up the stack in your layers palette, make sure the smudge tool is still selected (it should be), go to your paths palette and click on the corresponding path in there, then at the bottom of the paths palette click on the small ‘stroke path with brush’ icon (second from the left) Continue to do this until the remaining paths are completed. Depending on the gradient you used and the size of the circles and brush size, your image might look something similar to the one below. Go ahead now and merge the 4 stroked layers in your layers palette to 1 layer. Next, press Ctrl + T on your keyboard to bring up the Transform tool, right click inside this and select ‘distort’. You can do something similar to the image below if you like, but I would suggest that you go to Layer>Matting>Defringe after you distort the selection – I used a 10 pixel radius on this particular image. From here you can go ahead and do a multitude of different things. Change the background and experiment with blend modes. Use the plastic wrap filter, or give the image a drop shadow then place the drop shadow on its own layer and blur it. You don’t even have to use 4 of these pipe effects. On the image below I changed the b/ground to blue with a radial gradient, and changed the blend mode to overlay. I then used the FX to give the pipes an outer glow by changing the glow colour to white, a blend mode of ‘Linear Dodge (Add) with an opacity of 50% Technique set to softer and a spread of 90%. Try out different things and see what you can come up with, but most of all – have fun!

• Making a selection using the colour channels in Photoshop.
  by Alison Johnston

  I haven’t done a tutorial in a while and thought this might be something you find handy for replacing a sky, or perhaps selecting fly awa…

  I haven’t done a tutorial in a while and thought this might be something you find handy for replacing a sky, or perhaps selecting fly away hair etc., Photoshop has lots of tools for making selections, the magic wand, the highly under / rated quick selection tool in PS3, the lasso, the magnetic lasso, the polygonal, / the pen tool, the extract tool etc., but for some reason when making a selection in / channels is mentioned, folks become a little more nervous. Probably one of the better ways to make accurate selections is in the colour channels, but be warned that it doesn’t always work, so checking the colour channels is one thing that is worth doing straight off the bat. What we will be looking for is the channel with the most contrast, in this case between the sky and the trees. As it happens, the blue channel is the one we will be using, but do check through them on other images you try this on. We’ll be using the paint brush tool and the dodge and burn tools for this exercise, so as long as the program you use has channels, a paint brush, dodge and burn tools you should be able to complete this in programs other than Photoshop. I have uploaded 2 large images to my flickr account, so you can see what you are doing :-) MAIN IMAGE and SKY IMAGE The copyright is mine .. yada, yada … Start Image. Completed Image. I have been building a library of sky images for quite a while, and it is a useful thing / to do. If you find yourself lost for something to take a photo of, start building yourself / a library of skies, textures etc., they can come in very handy. So, we’re going to replace the sky in the first image, with the sky in the 2nd image / because, people often change reasonable blue skies with other blue skies :) Here we go … open the main image and duplicate the layer by dragging it the new layer icon, pressing Ctrl J, or going to Layer>Duplicate Layer in the top toolbar. Next, I want you to click on the channels tab, which should be next to your layers tab. Next, click on the blue channel … you should now see something similar to the image below. I want you to duplicate the blue channel by dragging it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the palette, and you can go ahead and name this if you like .. I left it as blue copy. You’ll notice that we don’t have access to our adjustment layers from the bottom toolbar like we do in the layers palette, we have to select from the top toolbar. So go to the top toolbar and select Image>Adjustment>Levels and making sure that you are working on the duplicate blue layer (blue layer copy) you can punch in the same settings as I have on the image below. I’ve tried to hide the sand with the dialogue box because we aren’t really interested in that just yet, What you’re looking at is the sky area and the trees and that they are pretty much black and white. You can go and grab your paintbrush now, and with the foreground set to black, paint over the sand at the bottom of the image. Don’t be afraid to zoom in to make sure that it is completely covered. Paint over the bush on the right of the image as well, just be a bit careful as you get nearer the top, remember that we can burn any stray areas with the burn tool. With the foreground set to white, go over the white areas in the sky top left. Stay away from the tree line with the brush tool, we are going to get closer to the trees with the dodge tool in just a second. Don’t forget to zoom in for the sky area as well. You can see in the image below that we are trying to achieve a black and white version of the image for the mask Shall we dodge or burn first ? Lets dodge :-) Select your dodge tool, select highlights from the top menu bar and keep your opacity down to 10%, or perhaps even less. Go along the top tree line .. zoom in for this … and see if there are any stray black pixels, if there is just dodge over them. You can also check around the other white areas, inside the trees for example. When you’re happy with what you have, switch to the burn tool, and choose shadows from the top menu and leave that at about 10% as well. Do the same as you did with the dodge tool, except to the darker areas i.e. burn out any remaining white areas that shouldn’t be there. To Toggle back and forth between your original image click on the RGB channel to check that you have all the areas you want dodged or burned. Like the image below. I went to filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and gave this a blur of 1 – that would obviously be different if you had a higher res image. Before going back to your layers palette by clicking on the layers tab make sure that you click on the RGB layer in the channels palette and then bring in the sky image. Sandwich that between the background and duplicated background layer. Click on the background copy and switch back to the channels palette. Select the blue copy layer (or whatever you called it) and then you can do a couple of things – you can either press the first icon at the bottom of the channels palette which will load the channel as a selection, or you can press Ctrl and then click on the blue copy layer, / and that will load the selection. Click on the RGB channel and then return to the layers palette. Your selection should now show up on your image in the layers palette. Go to Edit>Cut and the new sky image should show through. To further refine the selection, add a mask to the layer and proceed as you normally would to mask away any stray bits that may be left. Select the new sky layer, and use the move tool to position it wherever you want in the image. I know that probably sounds like a lot of messing around, but once you have done it a couple of times you will get the hand of it. And this is one of the easiest ways to select stray hair,fly away hair etc., Taking the time to get a mask as accurate as possible in the colour channels will save you loads of time later on. Hope this has been helpful to you. If you don’t understand any of my ramblings, feel free to ask questions, or BM me.

• Adding Colour Back to a B&W Image
  by Alison Johnston

  For some strange reason you’ve found yourself with a B&W image that you want to add some colour back into. Perhaps the bride holding the…

  For some strange reason you’ve found yourself with a B&W image that you want to add some colour back into. Perhaps the bride holding the bouquet would look really nice if the roses were red and the stems were green but the rest of the image was left in B&W. There are several ways that you can go about this in Photoshop but what we’re looking for is the most flexible, one that we can edit later without having to bin a couple of layers because the colours weren’t quite right. You know the scene, spend a few precious hours doing the roses in the bouquet and then you find out that the darn things were pink, not red …... arghh! The question is, is there something within Photoshop that can help us ….. indeed there is. Anyone who has restored some old photos will know all about hand colouring and basically, that is what we are going to do. Open a B&W image, or just desat a colour one, or convert to grayscale (not that you would normally do that) but we’re just going to have a play and we don’t want any colour in the image, we don’t want it in RGB mode. So what adjustment would give us the most flexibilty to change the colour if we chose too. You guessed didn’t you :-) We’re going to be working with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and we’re going to check the colorize box. At this point the whole image is going to be whatever colour you choose, that’s okay, we’re going to fix that. Choose a colour with the Hue slider – Adjust the Saturation slider and the Lightness slider until you are happy with the colour. Now you’ve got this great big mess but we’re gonna fix it. Go down to the little mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette and click on it. You will now have a white box next to the hu/sat adjustment layer – and you’ll notice that you image still looks awful. So lets fix it. Click on the mask (white box) to make sure that it is active and press ctrl i on the keyboard (cmd i for the Mac) The mask should now have turned black, and the image should look exactly like it did when we first started. Grab your brush, and making sure that the f/ground colour is set to white (cos on a black mask, white reveals) and simply paint the area that you want the colour to show through. Change the layer blend mode to soft light, or if you don’t like that try overlay or one of the other blend modes. Don’t forget that you can also use the opacity slider to take down the intensity of the colour. So yeah! how am I going to change the red roses to pink ? – double click on the hue/sat adjustment layer (not the layer mask), and the hue/sat dialogue box will appear. Change the hue/sat/lightness sliders till you get a whole other colour …. magic, you don’t have to trash layers and with them all you’re hard work. You can do this as often as is needed to add various colours back into the image. Do a red adjustment layer for the roses and then a green one for the stems and leaves (example). Heck, do various shades of red and green if you want. It’s flexible and relatively simple to master. Do gradients as well if you like and have that effect on a single rose and another gradient effect on a different rose. Make sure your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to what colours you want to use in your gradient. Click the little adjustment icon at the bottom of the layers palette and click gradient. From the dialogue box pick your f/ground b/ground gradient choose linear (or one of the other gradients available) click okay, add a layer mask, invert the layer mask, grab the brush tool, making sure that it is set to white – and paint in your gradient. This is limited to a certain degree but you can get some really nice effects going on and best of all it is editable. Here are a couple of sample shots. I’m not a flower photographer, so this is about the only image with a flower in it, but it will give you an idea of what you can do. Disclaimer – All spelling mistakes are deliberate :-)

• Are you from southern NSW? Want to be famous?
  by RedBubble

  Bay FM wants to do an phone interview with a RedBubble artist from southern NSW. If you’re interested drop us an e-mail at earswideopen@...

  Bay FM wants to do an phone interview with a RedBubble artist from southern NSW. If you’re interested drop us an e-mail at earswideopen@redbubble.com

• I Won Stuff Again!!!
  by Naomi Frost

  I’ve another two great wins…. Firstly, my picture Nirvana i…

  I’ve another two great wins…. Firstly, my picture Nirvana is being displayed in a Photographic Print Shop here in Newcastle (Oz)...the one all the professionals use. It’s called ProAm. It’s on display to represent their 20×30” enlargement size. My bussiness card is right next to it and apparently it is getting quite a bit of attention from customers. It should be on display for a couple of months. I also got a copy of the print (worth $80) so I’m off to frame that one…..and maybe sell! Secondly, I entered a comp in the local paper. You had to take the paper away with you on holiday and get a photo with it. I didn’t exactly go on holiday (but it was a day out with the boys…if that counts). I snapped Harrison reading it on a jetty and there was a public vote and I won…Get a load of the prize…. 2 nights accomodation in a Poolview Room at the Shoal Bay Resort and Spa Full hot and cold buffet breakfast both mornings Dinner to the value of $150. at one of the Resturants (there are 5) Buffet dinner on the other night A Silver Tailored Spa Experience Full use of the Aqua Spa Thalassotherapy Facilities / and Secure undercover parking (the deal clincher) This was the pic / Can’t wait to use it.

• Lets make it rain with Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Perhaps you want to composite some images together to make a scarey, stormy image. Or maybe you have an image that has storm clouds, is …

  Perhaps you want to composite some images together to make a scarey, stormy image. Or maybe you have an image that has storm clouds, is dark and overcast and would benefit with some rain added to it – or maybe some snow for that winters scene. Start and Finish Images Using a couple of filters and a blend mode in PS you can create away to your hearts content. The image I’ve used in the tutorial is 800×600 @ 72 dpi You will have to adjust some of the settings that I am going to use to compensate for a larger image and dpi, but I know you like to play in Photoshop :-) Firstly, open your chosen image, duplicate it and close the original. If you just want an image to practice on, you will find the start file HERE I’m using PS3, so my next step was to use a B&W adjustment layer to convert this particular image to B&W, I then used a Curves adjustment layer and then a Levels adjustment layer. You don’t have to convert to B&W, I just chose to do so because the original image sucks :-) How you want your image to be is fine, it is not going to affect what we are going to do next. So, whatever it is that you have done make sure that the top most layer is selected then I want you to create a new layer above. You can click on the new layer icon in the layers palette, or you can press shift+ctrl+n to bring up the new layer dialogue box and name the new layer. Now I want you to fill the new layer with black. If your f/ground and b/ground colour are set to the default you can press alt+backspace on your keyboard for window users and I’m not sure for mac users LOL probably option backspace. Now is starts to get fun. Making sure that you new black layer is active, I want you to go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise – below are the settings that I have used on this image, so punch in the same settings if you like. Go straight to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and you can apply the settings that I have by punching in the same figures as the image below. If you want the rain to go straight down, or from a different angle altogether, just rotate the little angle wheel around till you get want you want. Next I want you to go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. In the image below you can see what the starting point will be for this particular image. I have made no adjustments as of yet. By bringing in the black slider toward the middle of the bar we start to creat the rain. The rain will be the white lines that you see in the image. You can see in the image below that I have taken the black slider in toward the middle and I have also moved the white slider in toward the middle slightly. How much you move each slider is entirely up to you. It will depend on how much rain you want in the image etc., So that’s the part where you get to play around because each image will require slightly modified settings. Right, so thats a mess LOL But, here comes the great part. Go to the Blending Mode option at the top of the layers palette and I want you to change it to Screen ….. look at that ….. magic! :-) Screen mode knocks out any black pixels and the multiply blend mode is the exact opposite to Screen if you want to knock out white pixels. All that is left to do now is change the opacity slider if you want. I’ve changed the opacity to 50% in the image below. And here is our completed image. View large file HERE

• Another Type Effect in Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  This is one of the easiest ways to create a different type effect in Photoshop. This may well work with other software programs as well….

  This is one of the easiest ways to create a different type effect in Photoshop. This may well work with other software programs as well. I’ve created a new file 500×300 @72dpi with a white b/ground. Go ahead a grab your type tool and type something – My font was Impact – Regular – 88pt – Sharp You are going to use the filter gallery to add an effect to the type, but if you click on the type thumbnail and then go to the filter gallery Photoshop will ask you to rasterize the type ….. and that isn’t what you want to be happening, you still need the type to be editable in case you want to change the text. If you were to change the text, you would have to delete the layer mask and select the transparency again … but you’ll get the idea of how that would work as you read through the tutorial. So here’s one of the easiest ways to have the best of both worlds. Keep in mind that this isn’t limited to type. Holding down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, click on the type thumbnail- your cursor should change to have a small rectangle over the top of it and the marching ants will appear around the type – you have successfully loaded the transparency. You can now add a layer mask to the type layer by clicking on the ‘Add Layer Mask’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. You should have a similar file to the one below. Now the fun can begin – you can go ahead and try out various things inside the Filter Gallery, I’m just going to run you through what I did to give you an idea of what you can achieve. You have the transparency selected, marching ants showing and you have clicked on the layer mask to make it active – now go to Filter>Filter Gallery to bring up the (rather large) dialogue box. You can copy along with the same settings that I punched in, or go check out all the effects that you can come up by using some of the other effects inside the Filter Gallery. Below is what your image will look like once you click OK to accept the settings you chose in the filter gallery. Go and ahead and add a drop shadow or bevel emboss to the type by using the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Now how simple was that :-) If you have any questions, just ask.

• Making Fog/Mist in Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  You may want to add some atmosphere to an image in the form of fog/mist and we can do this quite easily in Photoshop. First I’d like t…

  You may want to add some atmosphere to an image in the form of fog/mist and we can do this quite easily in Photoshop. First I’d like to thank MARK GERMAN for letting me use his Silence Lane image in this tutorial. If you don’t have an image to try this tutorial out on, you will have to contact Mark to ask his permission to use it. Here is our start image Our image with one application of fog/mist And I added another layer of fo/mist because I wanted to cover the bottom right of the image a little more. A larger view of the finished image is available HERE So lets get started. Open your image, duplicate and close the original. I want you to click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or you can go to the top menu bar and go Layer>New>Layer, or press Ctrl+Shift+n. Making sure the new layer is active and that your foreground/background colours are set to the default of black/white (press d on the keyboard if they aren’t, or if white is the f/ground and black the b/ground, press x on the keyboard) go to the filter menu in the top tool bar and choose Render>Clouds. In this tutorial I have applied Render>Clouds once, if you would like some variation on this press Ctrl+f on the keyboard to repeat but you will also notice that the clouds appear differently each time. To get some rather different effects, instead of pressing Ctrl+f – press Ctrl+Alt+f ....... try it and see :-) So now we’re going to give the clouds a little blur. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and you can set the same amounts as I have in the image below. Most of what you do from now on will vary according to each image, and what it is you are trying to achieve. At the bottom of the layers palette you will see a little icon with FX on it, 2nd from left, I want you to click on that and choose Blending Options from the menu – alternatively you can go to the top menu bar and choose Layer>LayerStyle>Blending Options – and a dialogue box will appear like the one in the image below, I’ve highlighted the part of the dialogue box that we will be using next – ‘Blend If’ Make sure that ‘Blend If’ in the highlighted red area is set to gray. You’ll notice that the sliders have a triangle at each end (black and white) we will be concentrating on the black end, so don’t worry about the white slider. You’ll also notice that the triangle shape has a small white area in the middle of the slider, this is so that we can split the slider, which we are going to do now. Hold down the alt key (option for mac) and put your cursor to the right of the white area then click and drag the slider, it should now have split into a half triangle. Looking at the image below, move this half of the traingle to 125, then come back and move the left part of the half triangle to 25. When you’ve done that, click ok. Now I want you to press Ctrl+t on the keyboard to bring up the Transform tool, or you can go to Edit>Transform>Scale – you will have to decide at this point where you want the fog/mist to be and bring the top down accordingly, as I’ve done in the next image. What you will have to do next is throw in a gradient to take away the harsh transition. Making sure your f/ground and b/ground are set to the default, select the gradient tool and on the top menu bar make sure that black to transparent is selected. You need to do the gradient from the top to the bottom, BUT not from the top of the image, from above the harsh line of the clouds layer. You may have to do this more than once, just keep trying until you get a nice transition. In the image below I did the gradient 4 times till I got it how I wanted it. I then took the opacity of the layer down to 70%. I then duplicated the clouds layer by dragging it to the create a new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and with that layer selected I grabbed my move tool from the side menu bar and moved it up until it was were I wanted it. Now I have a harsh transition at the bottom of this clouds layer, so do the same as above except start at the bottom of the harsh line and work upwards with your gradient. A bit of practice will make this a very simple task. I changed the opacity of this clouds layer to 60%. The image below shows the final work, which btw is different from the image at the top of this tutorial because I couldn’t remember what I had done LOL :-) And the larger image HERE Remember that all of these steps can be used in various ways on different images, not just to create fog/mist and they can be adapted to create the type of fog/mist you want – it is the process that is important.

• Working Smarter Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – makin…

  Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – making sure that you don’t have to lose any of the work you have done by undoing steps to correct an error. Another positive about adjustment layers is that they add very little size to your file, which is a bonus if you don’t have 8 gigs of RAM at your disposal :-) I’m going to give you a kind of example here using a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to add colour back into an image. What you need to bear in mind is that it applies to all of the adjustments that are available under adjustment layers. Adjustment layers can also be useful when using blending modes on a single image without having to duplicate the image and add to the file size. Try this one yourself. Open an image, duplicate it of course :-) and close the original – now go to the little ying yang looking symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and click on it to bring up the menu – click on levels for now. When the dialogue box opens, click OK without making any adjustments, then pick a blend mode …. lets say multiply …. your image will now have used itself, to darken itself …. or you could say that you have used the image to darken the image without having to duplicate the background and then apply a blend mode. Take a look at your file size ….. You can also turn the adjustment layer on and off, reduce the opacity, add a mask to darken certain areas, use a gradient to edit the mask or perhaps a brush. There are several ways that you can do just about anything in Photoshop, and bringing back colour into an image is no exception. By default photoshop has the history set at 20 states of undo, so if you reach 21 states any previous work will not be available to go back and edit without losing all of the work you have done. You can change the amount of history states available to you by going to Edit>Preferences>Performance and at the top right hand side you will see History States | Cache Levels – just change the history states to a higher amount if you like. Using adjustment layers, rather than permanent adjustments, will give you much more flexibility in your editing capabilities. Getting into the habit of saving your image as a .psd file right from the outset and then remembering to ‘save’ along the way … press Ctrl + S or go to the top menu bar and press ‘save’, will make sure that you are never disappointed if PS freezes or your computer has a hissy fit and dies. Lets get back to the tut :-) I’m going to add some colour back into an image that I have used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to desaturate. Why not just go to the top menu bar and use Image>Adjustment>Desaturate you might be asking – because it is a permanent adjustment – one that I may decide that I don’t want there in the future and doing this change with an adjustment layer gives me the option of turning it on and off using the little eye icon, going back in and adding some saturation back into the image etc., If I try to do that 25states later using the permanent adjustment I will lose all of my later work. There are also several ways to add colour back into an image. You can start with your B&W image, place a new layer above that, choose a colour and fill the layer, change the blend mode to colour, soft light etc., add a mask, invert the mask, and then start adding back in the colour – but what if you decide that you don’t like that colour ? You then have to choose another colour, lock the transparent pixels of the layer, then fill with the new colour. You can also create a new blank layer, choose a colour to paint with, change the blend mode of the brush from the top menu bar and paint away – but still, if you decide you don’t like the colour then you will have to go through the process for the first method. What if you could just move a slider to create a different colour ? Now wouldn’t that be a whole lot simpler ? Here is our start image, just click through for the larger image. The first adjustment layer we are going to use is a hue/sat and we are going to desaturate the image. What you’ll notice in the below image is that I forgot to take a screenshot of the desaturated image and had to go back and take one after I had made several adjustments. Its as simple as turning off the adjustment layers. Next you are going to use a hue/sat adjustment layer again, but this time you are going to check the colorize button when the dialogue box comes up. Then go and adjust the sliders till you get a colour that you like. This is probably the most time consuming part of this adjustment until you become familiar with where the colours lie, and using the saturation and lightness adjustments. I chose a blue colour that was similar to the original image, you can choose whatever colour you like. Obviously that isn’t quite what we want to happen here :-) Adjustment layers come with a mask – that’s the little white box on the right hand side of the adjustment box – click on the mask to make it active and then press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert the mask to black (hide all) white is reveal all. You could also go to Image>Adjustments>Invert – just make sure that the mask is active. Grab your paintbrush and start painting back in the pants. You should now have something similar to the image below. I haven’t painted back in all of the pants, I’m just showing you how to achieve the adjustments. Just say that you had taken this image in B&W originally, and I pop over to your place and notice what you’re doing and say ….. the pants on that scarecrow weren’t blue :-) The easy way to choose another colour is to double click on the adjustment box itself – not the layer mask – and the dialogue box will open and you can adjust the colour to something new. What I would normally do when re-colouring an image is duplicate the blue layer, turn off the visibility of the original blue layer and then make the adjustment to the copy. This way you will still have the choice of reverting to the blue copy if you decide you want that one instead. In fact, you could make as many different coloured trousers/pants adjustment layers as you wanted. When doing something like this it is wise to get into the habit of naming the adjustment layers. You can do this by double clicking on the text next to the mask and renaming this what you want. You can see in the image below that I have carried on with a few more adjustment layers and named them. I’ve also done 3 different shades of red for the jacket, shoes and pocket on the pants. I would then do a different red for the scarf. I’ve also done the hair and the flowers, both of these more need more refining to make them look realisitic but I would do the refinements on adjustment layers. I’ve highlighted the file size at the bottom of the image. You may also notice as you progress with your design, composite, colourising etc., that the adjustment layers can start to get out of hand. This is where Grouping layers together can come in very handy. Select which adjustment layer you would like grouped together i.e. in this particular image you might group together the clothing as I have done – although I accidently added the hair and shoes to the group and couldn’t be bothered going back and grabbing another screenshot – so just ignore those 2 layers :-) Click on an adjustment layer then hold down your Ctrl key to select the next one etc., If your layers are one above the other you can click on the top one, then shift click on the bottom one to select them. Next go to the little downward triangle near the top right hand side of your layers palette, and from the menu select the option ‘New Group From Layers’ Each of the layers you chose will now be in a folder which you can name, I used Clothing in the example below. All you have to do now is open that folder using the little arrow to the left of the folder to have access to the adjustment layers, but more importantly you can still edit each of those adjustment layers. And that’s it really. Remember to save often while you are working on a file, as I said at the beginning of this.

• Sharpening With The High Pass Filter
  by Alison Johnston

  The High Pass Filter in Photoshop seems to have been around forever, and you can find it located under Filter>Other>High Pass. Think of …

  The High Pass Filter in Photoshop seems to have been around forever, and you can find it located under Filter>Other>High Pass. Think of it as one of The Others and listen to the Twlight Zone music start playing …... First of all lets take a few seconds to see how the sharpening process works in image editing software. All sharpening methods are edge detection processes, wherever an edge is found it is exaggerated by making the darks, darker and the lights, lighter. The trick is to get this just right so as not to produce haloing effects which are the result of over sharpening. Another thing to consider when sharpening, is not just sharpening but perhaps throwing what you don’t want sharp out of focus. Say for instance that you want to use a radius of 10 on an image, why not use a radius of 5 to sharpen and gaussian blur/lens blur with a radius of 5 to throw the rest of the image out of focus. sharpening isn’t always about sharpening. Then we can simply selectively sharpen something in our image, a person, an animal, eyes etc., to draw more attention to that particular part of an image and add more impact. What we’re going to look at today is sharpening with the High Pass Filter. There are a couple of other sharpening processes available in PS, the USM (Unsharp Mask) has been around for quite a while now, and the new Smart Sharpen Filter appeared in CS2 and is terrific. I used to have an old technique for adjusting motion blur with the Emboss Filter, which is yet another way to sharpen in PS. But lets concentrate on one filter at a time. Sharpening is usually the very last thing that you do to an image, so go ahead an do what needs to be done with your chosen image, flatten your image, and then duplicate the layer by dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or press ctrl J on the keyboard, cmd J for the mac. If you are working with CS3 you can turn the duplicate layer into a smart filter, which will then make the high pass filter editable. This is my start image, a horrible bird shot :-) So you’ve got your duplicate layer, make sure that it is selected by clicking on it then I want you to change the blend mode to overlay (ignore the fact that the image will look awful at this stage), I also want you to make sure that the image is at 100% and go to Filter>Other>High Pass. An easy way to figure out the radius you will need to use to sharpen is the actual size of your image. My bird shot is less than 1m, but the first image will show that I used a radius of 1. If you have a 10m image, set the radius to 10. You can adjust this with the opacity slider later if you feel that it is a little too much. 5m file use 5, 20m file use 20 etc., What you are looking for is to have a similar look in your preview window as I have in the above image. The next image shows you what you don’t want the preview window to look like. You’ll notice I’ve used a radius of 5. That is the basis of High Pass sharpening really. You can adjust the effect by taking the opacity slider down in the layer palette or if you feel that it isn’t enough you can trash the layer and start again, or you can go to Filter and at the very top of that box will be the name of your last filter, in this case High Pass, just click on that or press ctrl + F to repeat and then use the opacity slider to take the effect down. What you don’t want to see appearing on the image, is haloing. This is where the image starts to get a glow going on … which is a result of over sharpening as seen in the image below. If you want some selective sharpening rather than the entire image to be sharp – go ahead and do the sharpening with High Pass then add a layer mask to that layer by clicking on the mask icon in the layers palette. Make the mask active by clicking on it, then press ctrl i on your keyboard to invert it (should be black). Grab your brush and make sure the f/ground colour is to white, then simply paint back in the area/s that you want to be sharp. In the image below I’ve sharpened the birds head, although I’m not sure that it will be very noticeable with this size image. You can also try the blend mode at soft light or leave it at normal, just play around a little bit because different blend modes will produce different effects and they might just be useful for the image you are working on. If you want to know what your image will look like on the web (computer monitors) view your image at 100%, if you want to get an idea of what it will look like printed, view it at 50%. Have fun :-)

• Thanks everyone for all the comments on "Fog On The Bay 2"
  by Kathryn Potempski

  I have never been featured anywhere since joining red bubble ,I was so happy to see that “Fog On The Bay 2” was chosen as a feature for t…

  I have never been featured anywhere since joining red bubble ,I was so happy to see that “Fog On The Bay 2” was chosen as a feature for the Melbourne and Victoria group.thank you so much for all you suport. /

• oh, it's such a mystery to me.........
  by Karin Taylor

  _helllooooo to all my bubbly buddies!! :D / I would like to apologise for my short little replies today on your work / I am having a little…

  helllooooo to all my bubbly buddies!! :D / I would like to apologise for my short little replies today on your work / I am having a little trouble with my internet connection after all the rain I have had a number of sales lately, but I never take it for granted and / am always genuinely thrilled, just as if it was the first sale, each and / every single time, the wonder and the amazement that my work is / going out into spaces and places I’ve never even visited is surreal / and exciting! thank you to that one who is my mystery buyer today, buying six of my / cards in a row :D 1. asia blue / 2. asian spice / 3. little green teapot / 4. i’m a little teapot 1. minstral fairy / 2. razzamattazz fairy

• Save the humpback whales
  by Darren Stones

  By Darren Stones Please note: Updated January 22, 2008 Note: *Please click on im…

  By Darren Stones Please note: Updated January 22, 2008 Note: Please click on images for more details. Each August, the whale watching season begins in earnest on Australia’s picturesque eastern seaboard. As a result of my journey to Hervey Bay during August 2006, I had the pleasure to record the magnificent humpbacks as they frolicked in the calm waters of Hervey Bay. I’d like to extend an invitation to you to view my whale watching slideshow. The slideshow is a culmination of work which was undertaken by me with the kind assistance of the staff and crew of Spirit of Hervey Bay. As most are aware, the humpbacks are still being slaughtered for what can be loosely claimed as research reasons. Bearing that in mind, please give your support the best way you can to help “Save the whales”. The link to my slideshow will take you to the Photodex web site. The slideshow has been produced using the ProShow Gold software package. Upon reaching the site, you may be required to download a tiny bit of software to view the show. Many photographers may already have this software installed on their system. I cordially invite you to experience one of our greatest animals in action from onboard the whale watching vessel ‘Spirit’ of Hervey Bay. Please copy and paste web link below into your browser Load Photodex software if required (a minor detail) Wait for show to load Click whale tail to commence show http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=2690585&alb=0 Humpback whale photographs for sale Humpback Whale Calendar 2008 – AUD $34.95 Subscribe to journals via RSS/Atom

• Photo to Lineart
  by Alison Johnston

  Lets have a look at changing a photograph to lineart. Some photos are going to be easier to convert to lineart than others. For example…

  Lets have a look at changing a photograph to lineart. Some photos are going to be easier to convert to lineart than others. For example, the simpliest would be anything with straight, definate lines … like buildings, walls, furniture etc., Some images are going to convert well straight away, others may need a little more manipulation. You are going to have a couple of different filters that can be used and a couple of adjustments to tweak …... like we would expect anything else from Photoshop :-) Grab my birdie image below to practise on if you like …. no larger images than this, so just right click and save as. Once you have the image open in Photoshop, double click on the b/ground and accept the default Layer 0 …. or rename it. Then duplicate the layer and from the top menu bar go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+U The Find Edges filter, found under Filter>Stylize>Find Edges doesn’t give us a dialogue box to tweak, but go ahead and use that filter now on the desaturated layer if you like. You can see that it hasn’t done that bad a job, especially with this image. Go to the top menu bar and use Image>Adjustments>Levels and you can punch in the same numbers that I have below, or use some of your own. Lets back up and try the Poster Edges Filter. In your History Palette click back on Desaturate. If your history palette isn’t open go to Window>History. Open the Filter Gallery by going to Filter>Filter Gallery and then open the Artistic Folder, then click on Find Edges. I don’t know if you can see the numbers I punched in, but they were Thickness 1 – Intensity 1 – Posterization 6. Click OK. So that looks awful :-) Go to the top menu bar and choose Image>Adjustments>Levels to bring up the levels dialogue box. You can see in the image below, that I’ve really had to push the numbers to get a reasonable effect. I think the eyes have turned out better in this version than the find edges version. In the final image below I have blended together the Find Edges and the Poster Edges layers. I filled the b/ground (birdie) with white and used the eraser tool on both of the other layers to take away what I didn’t want. I could have gone in and dodged some of the darker lines to make them less prominent, but overall this hasn’t turned out too bad for a rather complicated image. Try doing a building yourself and you’ll see how much easier it is :-) You can also use Curves and Brightness/Contrast from the top menu bar instead of Levels. You can also leave the b/ground bird as it was and take the opacity of your lineart down to bring some colour back in to the bird.

• Displacement Maps in Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Just what are Displacement Maps ? Displacement maps allow you to warp and distort images by moving pixels / according to the guidelin…

  Just what are Displacement Maps ? Displacement maps allow you to warp and distort images by moving pixels / according to the guidelines set out by a predefined “map.” It’s a bit like creating a 3D effect (for want of a better word). How do they work ? A Displacement Map is always a B&W image. Black moves pixels to the right and/or down. White moves pixels left and/or up. Think of them in terms of valleys and peaks – the valleys are black and the peaks are white. Need to know stuff Displacement maps MUST be grayscale. Displacement maps MUST be saved in the native photoshop format – .PSD – or if your software has displacement maps available in their native format. Displacement maps MUST have some kind of blur applied to them. Blurring smooths out the pixels as they wrap around or displace the object. Be warned though, too much blurring will lose the effect you are trying to create. The settings I have used here are for a 800×521@72dpi image, they will be different if you are working on a higher res image. Most tutorials are done on flags …. and this one will be no different :-) So you can either borrow my flag below, or be patriotic and grab your own. Click through for the larger image. You’re going to be do a very simple displacement map here, using the Render>Clouds filter. So lets get started. Open the flag image, in the layers palette double click on it, when the dialogue box appears either accept the default Layer 0 or give it a deep and meaningful name like ….. flag :-) Hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, then click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, this will force the new layer below the flag layer. Making sure that the new layer is active (by clicking on it) go ahead and fill it with white. What we need to do is expand the canvas a little bit. Click on the white layer and go to Image>Canvas Size and you can punch in the same settings that I have in the image below. With the same layer selected go to Edit>Fill and fill with white. You should now have something that looks similar to the image below. You can set that image aside for the moment while we create the Displacement map. Create a new file the same size as the flag image i.e. 800×521@72dpi white b/ground. Make sure that your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to B&W, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. What you need to do at this point is make the blacks black and the whites white. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels to bring up the Level dialogue box and you can punch in the same numbers as I have below. Next you are going to make sure that the Move Tool is selected and holding down the shift key, drag the render clouds layer over to the flag image. Place the clouds layer on the top of the layers stack and change the blend mode to multiply and take the opacity down to about 35% (you can adjust this later to suit) You will notice that I have ‘clipped’ the clouds layer with the flag layer. You can do this by making sure the clouds layer is active, right click, then choose ‘Create Clipping Mask’ Go back to the Clouds file and you are going to apply a Gaussian Blur to it. If you are following along, just punch in the numbers that I have below. You might want to try the blur at a lower amount as well on this file. On a larger file you would probably have to crank up the blur to 4 or 5, perhaps more. Now you can go to Image>Mode and click on grayscale, when the little dialogue box comes up click Discard. You are going to save the file now, so go to File>Save As and choose .PSD from the drop down menu. Save the displacement map to a location that you are going to remember :-) I usually just drop mine on the desktop. Return to the flag file and click on the layer with the flag on it. Go to Filter>Distort>Displace and you can use the same settings that I have. Don’t forget to experiment with these settings on different res images. As soon as you click OK in the dialogue box below, you will be presented with another dialogue box to pick the displacement map …. find it and click OK. What you’ll notice right away, is that the edges have pulled in a bit. One way to keep this from happening, is make the displacement map a little smaller than the image you are displacing. You should have something similar to the image below. Lets go and give this some FX. Click on the flag layer to make it active and then click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then click on Blending Options. Click on Bevel and Emboss and you can punch in the settings I have. Then click on texture and choose Satin … last on the top row, and choose the settings I have below. Lets give it a bit of a drop shadow. You can punch in the same settings as I have below. Now you could use a levels adjustment layer if you like. ““ And here is the final image. It would probably have been useful to start with a better image than this one, but don’t just think flags when you think of Displacement Maps. How about making crumpled paper ? Make your own displacement map using diagonal stripes B&W to make a waving flag. Use one image to displace another image, all you have to remember are these points :- Need to know stuff Displacement maps MUST be grayscale. Displacement maps MUST be saved in the native photoshop format – .PSD – or if your software has displacement maps available in their native format. Displacement maps MUST have some kind of blur applied to them. Blurring smooths out the pixels as they wrap around or displace the object. Be warned though, too much blurring will lose the effect you are trying to create. If there are any questions just ask me.

• 48 Hours In Hervey Bay
  by Darren Stones

  By Darren Stones – Freelance Photojournalist / Subscribe via RSS/Atom...

  By Darren Stones – Freelance Photojournalist / Subscribe via RSS/Atom World release Humpback whale photographs for sale Endless sandy beaches, a pier from here to forever and its very own whale festival; Qld’s Hervey Bay is a resort town growing faster than you can say “tail slap”. Humpback Whale Breach – Photograph For Sale > STAY HERE Great Sandy Straits Marina Resort – A popular resort with a 25 metre pool, two tennis courts and one, two and three bedroom apartments. Each has a private balcony where you can keep watch as boats come and go while you sip on a glass. www.greatsandystraits.com.au Peppers Pier Resort – The new kid on the block offers luxurious lodgings for couples, groups and families. Fives stars, with unrestricted views of the glorious bay, pier and World Heritage-Listed Fraser Island. http://www.peppers.com.au/Pier-Resort Delfinos Resort – Opposite the main swimming beach, Delfinos is family friendly and offers motel rooms through to spacious three bedroom apartments. A little easier on the purse strings and an excellent booking service provided. www.delfinos.com.au Delfinos Resort – Hervey Bay > PLAY HERE Hervey Bay Boat Club – Superbly appointed and overlooking the marina, it’s a top spot to spend a few hours. Built in a nautical theme, the club provides a beaut dining and entertainment experience. Excellent gourmet coffee shop. www.boatclub.com.au Torquay Hotel – An inviting pub right on the Esplanade, this place is abuzz each evening with outdoor dining a specialty. Laidback and welcoming. Nice outdoor heaters, too. Ph: 07 4125 2266 Torquay Hotel – Hervey Bay Hoolihans Irish Restaurant & Bar – With traditional Irish fare and a mix of Aussie tucker thrown in for good measure, this place prides itself on being open 11am till late 8 days a week. Live music Friday & Saturday nights. Ph: 07 4194 0099 > DON’T MISS Whale Watching – The yellow catamaran Spirit of Hervey Bay is the ideal platform to eyeball migrating humpback whales as they frolic in the protected waters of Hervey Bay. An entertaining half-day adventure cruise will leave you mesmerised and euphoric. Highly recommended. www.spiritofherveybay.com Spirit of Hervey Bay Celebrate The Whales – The Hervey Bay Whale Festival marks the return of the whales with the flavours, sights and sounds of the Food, Wine and Jazz Fiesta and Hot August Night Fire Event being major highlights. Kicks off in August. www.herveybaywhalefestival.com.au Illuminated Street Parade – Hervey Bay Whale Festival 720 Metre Stroll – A hand-in-hand stroll with your mate along the Urangan Pier at sunset is bound to soothe the soul. Have your camera at the ready and snap a few memorable shots as the sky lights up. Great spot to wet a line. Urangan Pier – 720 Metres – Photograph For Sale

• The stunning Sapphire Coast
  by Darren Stones

  By Darren Stones – Freelance Photojournalist / Subscribe via RSS/Atom...

  By Darren Stones – Freelance Photojournalist / Subscribe via RSS/Atom Australia is blessed with pristine beaches and coastal scenery that is to die for. My Sapphire Coast slideshow on YouTube can be found here The Sapphire Coast, located south of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia remains virtually untouched from development. Bermagui – Horseshoe Bay If you enjoy investigating national parks, love to wet a line, want to improve your suntan, sip a coffee by the sea, or catch a wave, then the Sapphire Coast is for you. Tathra Wharf Witness the unloading of the catch-of-the-day, visit a winery, taste award-winning cheeses, grab a bargain at a market, attend a festival, indulge in delectable oysters, go whale watching and take in some of the local history. Merimbula – Long Point The towns of Bermagui, Tathra, Bega, Merimbula, Pambula and Eden all have that bit of sapphire magic. Eden – Seaside Pool If you are looking for that get-away-from-it-all experience then let yourself go. Merimbula Wharf For more information log on to; http://www.sapphirecoast.com.au/ My portfolio of Sapphire Coast photographs can be viewed and purchased at RedBubble.com Subscribe via RSS/Atom

• EARTHQUAKE!!!!!!!
  by S.I. Sheehan and T.H. Repasky

  There has just been an earthquake here in the Bay Area. It was above a 5, so there has been some damage. Will update later.

  There has just been an earthquake here in the Bay Area. It was above a 5, so there has been some damage. Will update later.

• The senseless slaughter of humpback whales
  by Darren Stones

  A Japanese whale fleet is embarking on another ‘research’ mission in the waters of the Antarctic, and part of their operation is to sla…

  A Japanese whale fleet is embarking on another ‘research’ mission in the waters of the Antarctic, and part of their operation is to slaughter 50 humpback whales. The Greenpeace campaign ship, Esperanza, will be shadowing the fleet and the group is planning a non-violent protest. Having been fortunate to witness humpbacks up close, it totally astounds me as to reason why this meaningless hunt on the species continues. I, and thousands of others, signed petitions in Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia during August-October 2006, which were specifically aimed at seeing this practice foiled. Unfortunately, it seems efforts have failed and the Japanese Government has won the day. Are they a heartless bunch of bastards?

• "PLEASE HELP SAVE OUR BAY"
  by MattTworkowski

  TELL GARRETT HE IS WRONG. SAY NO WAY TO DREDGING. The Port of Melbourne Corporation wants to start dredging on 1st February, I…

  TELL GARRETT HE IS WRONG. SAY NO WAY TO DREDGING. The Port of Melbourne Corporation wants to start dredging on 1st February, It doesn’t think it should wait to hear what the Federal Court has to say! The Bay needs you now. Here’s what to do. Please Cut & Paste the letter below into an email to Federal Environment Minister Mr. Garrett. Please forward this request to all your friends and also forward copies of your email to: 1. Prime Minister Rudd via via PM’s website at: here 2. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard at:Julia.Gillard.MP@aph.gov.au 3. Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Maxine McKew at: maxine.mckew@alp.org.au Her new parliamentary address Maxine.McKew.MP@aph.gov.au appears not to be working. 4. c.c. to contact@bluewedges.org would also be appreciated Mr. Garrett’s decision and Media release of 20th December shows he didn’t listen and he relied on old inaccurate information which he seems to have gleaned from reading superseded PoMC promotional material. See Mr. Garrett’s Media Release at: http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2007/pubs/mr20071220.pdf Of course Mr. Garrett, Minister for the Environment should have assessed the project independently rather than relying only on information assembled by the PoMC and its consultants. But – it looks like he didn’t bother even finding out where Port Phillip Bay is before condoning this act of environmental vandalism. If you really want to stop the now “jumbo-ised” Queen of the Netherlands from taking up residence in our Bay this is your big chance. The QoN is now 50 metres longer and 50% bigger capacity than when she last ran amok in our Bay, so she shouldn’t be let loose again to do even more damage. Let’s give Mr. Garrett one more chance. Let’s send him and his colleagues hundreds of emails telling them a few good reasons why Mr. Garrett should never have approved channel deepening, and why it must be stopped NOW. See news items on our website www.bluewedges.org for a history of Royal Boskalis, their worldwide activities and our campaign so far. Especially check out: Super-size me PoMC at: http://www.bluewedges.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=54&cntnt01returnid=66 and Boskalis sinks some stinkers at: http://www.bluewedges.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=76&cntnt01returnid=66 Cheers and thanks, Cut here The Hon. Peter Garrett Minister for Environment Heritage and the Arts Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 Peter.Garrett.MP@aph.gov.au Dear Minister, Save Port Phillip Bay You have made a grave error in approving the Port Phillip Bay Channel deepening proposal and have committed the Bay to much damage. You do not have enough information to have made a proper decision and the health of the Bay and all who rely on it will suffer as a consequence. Your Media Release of 20th December relies on promotional material from the Port of Melbourne Corporation rather than facts. I believed you would protect the environment, not be swayed by “developer’s marketing”. You say you will safeguard the “Western Port Ramsar site”. You have confused Western Port and Port Phillip Bay. Western Port is a separate, unique and different ecosystem, in a completely different location. Here are some facts about Port Phillip Bay and channel deepening: - Over 100 species of sponges at The Heads occur nowhere else on earth and could be lost FOREVER if this project proceeds. Unique and beautiful sponges, corals and seagrasses would be ripped out and remaining colonies smothered. Benthic organisms responsible for maintaining the Nitrogen balance in the Bay would be smothered, increasing risks of toxic algal blooms. - Penguins, dolphins, seals, sharks, whales and thousands of marine plant and animal species interactively rely on Port Phillip Bay for habitat. This delicate balance IS under threat. - Wetlands and coastline are at greater risk from the interaction of global warming and project related sea-level rise. You have not adequately considered this. - You claim 80,000 jobs rely on the Port. This was proven wrong during the 2004 EES Panel Hearing. The 2007 SEES claims 13,748 jobs rely on the Port. There is NO evidence that ANY of these jobs are threatened. PriceWaterhouse Coopers 2007 study of the Port predicts that trade will quadruple by 2035 regardless of whether channel deepening occurs. There should be plenty MORE jobs, not less! - Industrial contaminants and toxicants trapped in Yarra silt would be released into the water and then dumped in the Bay. Heavy metals such as Cadmium, Mercury, Zinc, Lead and Arsenic and Ammonia would re-enter the food chain. PoMC did not provide adequate data on toxicant risk. Risks to HUMAN HEALTH from swimming and consuming fish from the Bay have been underestimated and you have not considered this. - Many thousands of jobs in tourism, fishing and diving and their support industries ARE threatened by this sustained assault on the health of the Bay. Recreational fishing in Port Phillip Bay contributes approximately $1 billion per annum to our economy. That’s over 10 times what the PoMC hopes channel deepening would contribute to the economy annually! PoMC admits that fish stocks will be affected for a number of years so this WILL impact on jobs in recreational and commercial fishing, diving and eco-tourism sectors. Bay related tourism provides around $1 billion benefits per annum in a growing and sustainable industry – and that’s just the Mornington Peninsula! You have just approved an outright assault on all sustainable recreational and commercial diving, fishing and Bay wide tourism. - PoMC data on future deep draught ship arrivals needs proper analysis. In approving this complex and risky project you have relied on the PoMC marketing material instead of independent research into future trends in shipping. - PoMC says channel deepening would provide approximately $1.9 billion benefits by 2035. That’s its BEST estimate and that’s ONLY around $70 million per annum! That’s similar to the annual value of JUST the Dive Industry in Port Phillip Bay. Benefits that channel deepening MIGHT provide over 27 years are substantially less than our current sustainable Bay related industries ALREADY DO provide every year! Your decision to approve channel deepening reflects very badly on the environmental and economic credentials of the Rudd government. You have committed our Bay to a huge assault from which it may never recover. I hope Blue Wedges is successful in the Federal Court and stops this project but it is outrageous that they have to do what you should be doing. Port Phillip Bay is as important to Australia’s natural history as Lake Pedder. Please do not commit our wondrous, unique and living Port Philip Bay to the same fate as Lake Pedder – lost for ever. As a distinguished environmental campaigner and now Minister elected to protect Australia’s unique environment, how could you have that on your conscience? Please provide me with a response and explanation as to how you made your decision to approve the channel deepening project. Yours sincerely, Name: Address: Ph: Peter Garrett