fixed on photos
HDfx 360 today announced they have released a super-premium line of auxiliary smartphone lenses that bring professional image quality to today’s Smartphone Cameras.
Three ultra-high quality German designed Precision lenses – Fisheye, Macro, and Wide-Angle fit all phones and mobile devices.
An old paradigm goes: you need to spend money to make money. No matter how tight your budget is, you can’t do without spending on marketing to achieve growth. The trick is to spend wisely.
Let’s say you sell beauty products, you’ll need a simple but elegant website, printed flyers, probably a catalog, a blogs, e-mail campaigns, sales presentations, brochures, ads. Which means you’ll need beautiful pictures so hat your brand is perceived correctly.
Hiring a photographer costs $80-150 an hour and many small business owners have taken this matter into their own hands by figuring out how to use their digital cameras as we reported some time ago. See our post on how to set up the lighting for a home product shoot.
Now, there is a new trend that we have observed among our customers: small business owners purchase stock photography at $1/shot and then send them to PhotoHand for alterations and merging with other images – mostly home made photos – to produce editorial-level ads for products or services.
I this example a professionally-shot image purchased from a stock photography website was altered several times to present different variations of a beauty product. These images were further combined with amateur shots of the branded containers. The total cost with the volume discount – $5.95 per ad.
In another example, a stock photo was converted into an illustration to the company’s business model by changing the background, adding some graphic elements and incorporating the company’s product pictures. The total cost of the ad production – $16.95.
To create such ads the agency way would have cost at least $300: You would have to pay a photographer, a model, a stylist and still use a photo retoucher. Be smart! A penny saved is a penny earned.
According to Associated Press, the official engagement photos of Prince William and Kate Middleton got retouched.
“William’s office says the couple’s two official portraits underwent “minimal” retouching before they were released. The palace said Tuesday that the couple’s appearance was not altered, but adjustments made were to light balance and contrast because “the final portraits are works of art,” like the painted portraits made of previous royal generations.”
Still it looks like some flash glare should have been removed.
Looking good is not important, it’s everything! At least it must be to two thirds of women, as the Hewlett Packard survey showed, who are “deeply embarrassed” by many of their photos. The same research shows that if you are a man under 35, you are probably happy with every photo of yourself, including the ones that should appear embarrassing.
Why women hate their photos? Because we want our photos to present us the way we’d like to be and they usually don’t. We want our true self to be captured in a flattering light, from a favorable angle and preferably by a genius from Photography. This doesn’t happen often and this is why we delete our photos before anyone had a chance to see them and plead with our friends to remove our photos from their Facebook galleries. Even those women who are majorly satisfied with their reflection in the mirror can and do develop photophobia.
Professional models are never happy with their photos till they have been edited. PhotoHand artists know this because we work with models.
Your photo might be far from perfect, but with the help of the photoshop retouching service, you can make any picture perfect and outstanding.
Suppose someone snapped a decent photo of you that you decided to use a your professional photo (a.k.a. “executive portrait”) on your marketing materials. With a little help from Photoshop, your casual amateur photo will be turned into a “studio portrait”.
Another lucky shot doctored with the glamorizing effects will give your image a touch of Hollywood turning it into a photo gift to your loved ones.
Boudoir photography is a growing trend. Brides are looking for something unique and sexy to give their husbands as a wedding gift. But ladies in their 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s are wanting boudoir photo shoots even more. When asked about their motivations, the general response is that they are still feeling young at heart and want to capture themselves in some beautiful sensual images.
Needless to say, boudoir photography always needs a hand from photo retouchers. We also recommend applying various art effect like soft focus, Rembrandt-like light and shade contrast, Hollywood affects, etc. Then your photo will be poetry. Plus, that the experience of having a make-over and photo session can give women a feeling of liberation and empowerment. Now beauty salons started hosting boudoir photo sessions for groups of women.
From 1991, when pregnant Demi Moore appeared nude on the cover of Vanity Fair, pregnancy stopped being something to be hidden, but something to be celebrated in all its glory. Maternity photos are always a challenge but with skillful retouching they become a celebrated memento in moving forward. We at PhotoHand are noticing a growing trend of sending our pregnancy announcement photo cards just like it is with baby arrival cards.
Wedding photos have been family treasures since the beginning of photography. They must be perfect, especially the bride’s gala portrait shot before the wedding. All the tiny photo flaws must be fixed. But what if you don’t even have that portrait. Well, it can be created in all its splendor.
A less than perfect photos shouldn’t bring you down. First, not everybody is a model – it’s natural to get uncomfortable in front of the camera. And that hair gets out of control because there is no stylist around to assist you. And the makeup artist is not on hand to fix the smudges. Remember, all these annoying flaws can be easily fixed after the image capture.
Photo retouching, a.k.a. photo editing or airbrushing, is as old as photography itself. But only with the advent of the digital revolution that overturned a lot of concepts in the Photography industry since the beginning of this century, photo retouching became commonplace, extending to family photography – professionally taken as well as amateur shots.
Photo retouching services became affordable to any budget ($3.50/photo at PhotoHand.com) and easily accessible over the web. You can order it 24/7 just like you order books or clothes.
Just decide what you don’t like about the photo, check the pricing schedule and go to the order form to upload your shots and type in your instructions. You will get your images back in the same resolution without any marks claiming the copyright over your photos.
Photo retouching (“photoshopping”) does not mean altering the photos completely, rather it simply modifies the images and removes the flaws originating from technical and non-technical faults.
Besides the lighting that you normally don’t have control of outside the studio, there are a lot of mishaps that can ruin the view: exit signs spoil the mood in the wedding pictures and so do slight wardrobe malfunctions like skin overflowing the edge of a sleeveless wedding dress (happens even to the skinniest brides), twisted tense smiles resulting from prolonged posing, electrified hairs crossing faces… There is no reason now to put up with these imperfections that spoil otherwise a perfect memento.
Of course, it takes skill, experience and artistic perspective to improve and sometimes rescue the photo without affecting the originality of the image. Luckily, now the magazine-quality photo editing services are available to every mom, newlywed, serial dater, actor, musician, aspiring model, pageant contestant, starting out fashion designer, beauty professional, life coach… everyone.
PhotoHand.com Weblog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.