PPS

Well since we here at PPS are cool with some occasional self promotion we’re gonna throw a last plug for the biggest sale yet over at our sister site seimeffects.com. If you want to add some Photoshop actions, or Lightroom presets to your collection you can save 20% on Gavin’s great effects thru today (Dec 31st)

Just enter promo code pps2007 at checkout and you’ll get the discount off your entire order.

On a free note, if you haven’t already you can still download Gavin’s free Christmas Glow Action. It’s a great general purpose glow effect made just for you guys as a Christmas thank you.

The 20% sale is over, but stragglers can still save 10% thru the first

Engadget today posted an image the the Pentax K200D. Who knows how soon this is coming out, and it’s also possible it’s a fake pictures.

The real question is that while it looks nice do most pro’s really care. Competition is good, and we don’t mind rooting a bit for Pentax but they are way behind in what most serious photographers want. Lenses are more important than bodies too, and Nikon and Canon londa got it cornered.

Times change though and Pentax seems dedicated to increasing it’s dslr market share. More power to em we say!

Listener Ben pointed us to a good article over at the Epic Edits Weblog. It’s a list of seven things that we should always keep in mind in or photography, but that nearly all of us have failed to do at some point.

One that I saw on here that I deal with is checking the ISO. I’ll set it at 3200 for something, and then I’ll start shooting and realize I’m getting noisy shots. Thankfully as cameras get better this gets to be less of a problem but we need to watch it.

One that they forgot on this list that’s a biggie is checking your quality setting. Occasionally I’ll lower down to a low setting like 1 megapixel or less to take a few quick web shots for ebay or somethin (Yep I ebay too) The disaster has never happened to me, but can you imagine if I forgot, and shot a whole wedding at 1600×1200 resolution… I don’t even want to think about it, but I need to, so I always remember to kick it back up when I’m done. I don’t lower it very often for that very reason.

Bottom line is no matter how much experience we have we need to always think like newbee’s in the area of making mistakes. We can all do it, and the more experience we have the easier it is to do. Pride comes before a fall!

Engadget reported today about this neat little gps device. There are various tools available the connect to the camera and tag your images with coordinates using gps.

The way we understand this neat little gadget however is that you carry it with you and it records where you are at what time. It then matches this to the times on the images you took and tags them with the correct location coordinates.

We don’t have a lot of details but it’s coming out next year and look pretty interesting.

Merry Christmas PPS World!

We here at PPS would like to give a big shout out to all our listeners and readers all over the world. You’ve all been so great since we started about a year and a half ago, and this continually growing community means a lot. If enjoy PPS you can always let us know if the comments, or shor your appreciation by linking to us, voting on podcast alley, or rating us on itunes.

You are appreciated, and we just wanted to say thanks. To do this I thought PPS should give you a small gift, so Gavin made a special Photoshop Action just for the occasion called Christmas Glow. It’s a nice effect that will make that Christmas tree photo look great, along with anything else that you want a nice smooth effect on. It’s great for portraits, even for a landscape effect, or just about anything else.

It’s not a big gift, but I know most of our PPS’ers have Photoshop, and it’s something we could give to you all. It should work on CS2, and CS3. For earlier versions just try it and see, it’s free after all!

• Download Christmas Glow Free Photoshop Action

Next… We have a special discount for those of you who want more Photoshop Actions, or Lightroom Presets You can get 20% off anything over at Seim Effects by using promo code pps2007 at checkout. It’s the biggest discount we’ve offered over there, and it’s an exclusive for PPS readers. You can save you quite a bit off the normal price. It’ll be good thru Dec 31st, so if you’ve been on the fence about getting some great effects now is the time.

Here’s to another great year of photography, ideas, collaberation and fun… Gav and the whole PPS team

Update… I updated the action to V1.1. I added a comp layer into it that will help keep things balanced when adjusting the glow effect, and made some other minor changes to make it a tad better for you. Feel free to download the updated version.. Gav

I found an article recently over at L7Photo.com written by Kerry Garrison who is a also PPS’er. Anyways it’s all about shooting in manual mode. It talks about the things to consider when shooting manual, and how to get the most out of it.

It might surprise you to know how many pro’s stay away from manual modes. While I find automatic, or semi auto shooting modes are great for a most shots, I have also found that sometimes manual will get you just where you need to be. Check it out for some good manual shooting tips.