Today I discovered Z-list. That sounds very interesting way to boost your traffic rates. With that list, you basically share blogs that you find interesting or a worth to visit. But you have to remember that it is against good manners to add your own blog address to your Z-list. You only have to hope that someone from Z-list visits your blog and sends a link back to your blog.

Here are the exact steps you need to follow in order to join the Z-list.

1. Create a new post on your blog.
2. Copy and Paste the entire list of blog links below.
3. Add any blogs that you want to include near the top of the list. (This isn’t compulsory, so you can either add as many blogs as you want or none at all.)
4. Include the blog where you first got the list from, on the list in your post.
5. Do not include your own blog links on the list in your post.
6. Make sure that all links point to each blog’s homepage.
7. Publish the Post.

Do note that you can join the Z-List even if your blog isn’t listed below. Just copy and paste any or both of the lists below, add something about everything… (my blog) and any other blogs you want to share on the list and publish it as a post in your blog.

My Additions
Make Money Online with Dosh Dosh
Make Money Online Blog
How to earn money online?
ScottPot
Embed My Video
How to blog for money
Secrets to Making Infinite Money Online
Maximizing Revenue Tips
Extra Ordinary Things

Dosh Dosh’s Z List (site where I found z-list):
Connected Internet
Blog-Op
Can I Make Big Money Online
Blogtrepreneur
Flee the Cube
Blogging to Fame
Million Dollar Experiment heads Down Under
Make Money Online at Kumiko´s Cash Quest
Calico Monkey
Internet Bazaar
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes!
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
Two Hat Marketing
darrenbarefoot.com
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Einstein Stats is a WordPress plugin that will display your total completed Work Units, average credit and team name of Einstein@Home Stats.

Jon’s Showoff Rankings Plugin provides a simple and elegant representation of your blog’s rankings. Currently supports Alexa Ranking, Google PageRank and Technorati Ranking.

Set-Permalinks will login to your FTP server and make the necessary modifications to your .htaccess file and set your permalinks.

DeCat hides postings with a specific category from the feeds.

DeIP sets Commenters IP to 127.0.0.1 after a configurable amount of time.

Inline Javascript Plugin inserts inline javascript in Posts/Pages.

Star Rating for Reviews is a WordPress plugin that inserts pretty rating stars based on the score you assign using intuitive, inline [rating:] tags.

NoEmbedder inserts a noembed section into any embedded content (videos, etc.) in your posts. It inserts a customizable message, and for Youtube videos, a thumbnail too.

Gadu Gadu Plugin provides your Gadu-Gadu status and allows people to add you to their list of contacts.

PXS Mail Form is an advanced contact form based on Ryan Duff’s Contact Form, but with several inbuilt checks to prevent spam.

Picasa Web Album widget is a widget designed to visualize a predefined number of random images of your picasa account.

Embedded Stock Data is a WordPress plugin for placing stock data directly into posts. Data comes from Yahoo Quote Server, and is refreshed when browser is refreshed.

Kaccordion Multipack is an implementation of jQuery, interface, jReflection and Accordion.

ScoreRender renders inline sheet music fragments inside posts and comments into images. It supports ABC, GUIDO, Lilypond and Mup music notations.

TruBar 3.0 (Lessen) is a plugin that asks anonymous users to click on a link before posting a comment or registering on a weblog.

Downloads Suite lets you manage downloads on your wordpress site. Files can be uploaded and organized into groups, linked to specific pages. Their access can be restricted to registered users with a specific user level. Manages both uploaded files and external resources (link via URL).

Alternate Comments Form allows you to add an extra contact form to your websites.

EasyBan will allow you to ban people from your site temporarily or permanently.

Rank allows you to create a “ranking” system for your regular blog commenters.

7 Social Services Plus is really simple plugin that will add bookmark links of Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Google, Socialogs, and Socialposter

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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AJAX Activity Indicator Tutorial

CakeTimer – An Ajax File Uploads Progress Bar
This is a demonstration of an AJAX powered progress bar to monitor file uploads with (Cake)PHP.

AJAX Bookmarklets Tutorial

Creating Huge Bookmarklets
A bookmarklet is a special piece of JavaScript code that can be dragged into a user’s link toolbar, and which later can be clicked on to implement cross-site behavior. People have done all sorts of cool stuff with it.

AJAX Chat Tutorials

Lace – Ajax Chat
Lace is a free, lightweight Ajaxian communications engine suitable for a shoutbox, chat room or similar. Version 0.1.3 brings with it several bug fixes, a tiny bit of code reorganization and most importantly, an oft-requested User List.

Most Simple Ajax Chat Ever
Very easy to use AJAX chat demo.

AJAX Client-Server Communication Tutorials

Implementing simple AJAX interaction in your Web Application using XMLHttpRequest object
Everybody till now must have at least heard about AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). This example will give you an idea about how you can implement simple AJAX interaction in your web application.

Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
In this article, you’ll begin with the most fundamental and basic of all Ajax-related objects and programming approaches: The XMLHttpRequest object. This object is really the only common thread across all Ajax applications and — as you might expect — you will want to understand it thoroughly to take your programming to the limits of what’s possible.

AJAX
In this tutorial, you’ll be introduced to Ajax, a technology that allows you to send these requests through small JavaScript calls, meaning the user doesn’t have to wait for the page to refresh.

All Request, All The Time
Let’s build a simple application that accepts input from the user, passes it to some PHP on the server that checks it against a database, and returns the result to the browser. It comes in three parts.

AJAX Drag and Drop Tutorial

Drag and Drop Tutorial (with a cool video)
Adding items to a shopping cart in common e-commerce applications isn’t very close to the actual “add to cart” metaphor, since it requires clicking an “add to cart” button, watch a new page (the shopping cart), and then go back to the shop or checkout with buttons. Ajax allows to get closer to the cart metaphor, by enabling drag-and-drop interactions and giving immediate visual feedback, without leaving the shop.

AJAX Dynamically Content Loading Tutorials

Dynamically loaded articles
This is a basic example showing you how to use AJAX. In this script, you have a list of article titles at the right side. When you click on one of them, AJAX will be used to request the content of the article from an external file and show it in the main DIV.

Ajax – Dynamic Content
This small generic script makes it easy for you to load content of external files into HTML elements on your page.

AJAX Forms and Autocomplete Tutorials

Scriptaculous Lists with PHP
The drag-and-drop effects, most notably the sortables, caught my eye because the look great, they are so easy to implement, and they’re just so much nicer than the standard listbox with up/down arrows that we see in most of today’s applications and administration tools.

Alter data with Ajax forms
Displaying rich formatted questions and lists, even paginated, is not enough to make an application live. And the heart of the askeet concept is to allow any registered user to ask a new question, and any user to answer an existing one. Isn’t it time we get to it?

Dynamic Client Lookup

This script uses AJAX to autofill a form. Open the demo and type in 1001 in the “client ID” text field. AJAX will when you have done this call a script on the server and auto fill the rest of the form with client data.

Chained Select Boxes
This script uses Ajax to popuplate a select box with cities based on which country you choose.

Ajax Dynamic List
This script shows you a list of options based on what you type into a text input. Example: Type in “A” and Ajax will get you a list of all contries starting with “A”.

AJAX Framework and Toolkit Tutorials

My-BIC – Tutorials and How To’s
A collection of easy to follow tutorials using the My-Bic Framework including a, hello world – getting your ajax setup, posting comments via AJAX and changing views from a drop down. There are beginner and intermediate tutorials here.

New Echo2 Tutorial Series
Part 1 of a multipart Echo2 tutorial series, entitled “Ajax with Echo2 and Eclipse” is now available from our web site. The related archive with the Echo2 distribution plus the EchopointNG library is available here.

AJAX Design Patterns – Using The Dojo Toolkit
Is this tutorial any different from the others? Well yes and no, it is different in being a tutorial on how to design and build a complete site and not just some fancy little details like how to turn caching in AJAX off or how to create a fancy widget.

AJAX General Tutorials

Building a Spy
Step by step instructions on how to build a Digg like spy page.

Building a Shelf in WordPress
Nice tutorial on how to build a sliding shelf in WordPress.

AJAX from Scratch: Implementing Mutual Exclusion in JavaScript
This AJAX from Scratch series of articles describes fundamental techniques needed to develop AJAX Rich Internet Applications in JavaScript from scratch.

Saving Session Across Page Loads Without Cookies, On The Client Side
This is a mini-tutorial on saving state across page loads on the client side, without using cookies so as to save large amounts of data beyond cookies size limits.

A Tale of Two IFrames or, How To Control Your Browsers History
This is a mini-tutorial on the black art of iframes and browser history, known to AJAX experts but rarely presented clearly.

AjaxWorld Special: What Is AJAX?
Learn more about AJAX and ColdFusion

AJAX Using ASP.NET 1.1You’ve heard of it. It is the latest buzz term for web programmers these days. AJAX is an acronym that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX gains its popularity by allowing data on a page to be dynamically updated without having to make the browser reload the page. I will describe more about how AJAX works, and then go into some sample code to try out.

Speed up Your AJAX Based Webapps
It sets the expiry of the JavaScript to years and not days. Once the JavaScript file is downloaded it is never downloaded again, ofcourse unless you force it by removing the file in the cache. If you visit the site often the JavaScript will not be removed from the cache.

Kick-start your Java apps, Part 2
This tutorial guides you through the development of a small human-resources application, first using conventional JavaServer Pages (JSP) based technology, and then migrating it to a highly interactive solution using Ajax.

Create Your Own Ajax Effects
Why let script.aculo.us have all the fun? Start building your own Ajax-driven visual effects today. The basic and prebuilt effects in script.aculo.us are nice, but if you really want to build something great why not investigate doing your own, homegrown, do-it-yourself effects. We’re going to show you how to take basic effects and build on them to create your own.

AJAX Getting Started Tutorials

An Introduction to AJAX
A very nice introduction to AJAX.

Nitty Gritty Ajax
In the course of this tutorial, we’re going to look at what Ajax can do. Then we’ll use a JavaScript class to simplify your first steps toward the ultimate in speedy user interactivity.

A simple AJAX example
Based on Rasmus’s 30 second AJAX tutorial, I’ve cobbled together a very rudimentary example of one approach to AJAX programming. A “Hello, World” AJAX program, if you will. You can view the demo here on my site, and download the source code (document attachment at the bottom of this article).

A List Apart: Articles: Getting Started with Ajax
The start of 2005 saw the rise of a relatively new technology, dubbed “Ajax” by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In a nutshell, it is the use of the nonstandard XMLHttpRequest() object to communicate with server-side scripts.

Ajax Toybox
Justin has put together a nice group of AJAX tutorials including, Hello, World, Dynamic City, State Lookup, Ajax to Clean Your Clock, Ajax Calculator and an RSS News Ticker.

Introduction to Ajax
When it comes to Ajax, the reality is that it involves a lot of technologies — to get beyond the basics, you need to drill down into several different technologies (which is why I’ll spend the first several articles in this series breaking apart each one of them).

Ajax Toolbox / XMLHttpRequest AjaxRequest Library Examples
A great group of AJAX examples.

Rasmus’ 30 second AJAX Tutorial
I find a lot of this AJAX stuff a bit of a hype. Lots of people have been using similar things long before it became “AJAX”. And it really isn’t as complicated as a lot of people make it out to be. Here is a simple example from one of my apps.

An Ajax “Hello World” project to Get You Going
Sometimes we all want something very simple to build a thorough understanding of the mechanics of a new technique before we dive into the deeper water beyond. Now, if you are into ASP.NET and not PHP you might like to take a look at my version of this ultra-simple introduction to Ajax with sincere thanks to the original author.

Ajax Beginners Tutorial
In this tutorial we’ll discuss the basic principles of remote scripting using Ajax, a combination of javascript and XML to allow web pages to be updated with new information from the server, without the user having to wait for a page refresh.

AJAX Image and Gallery Tutorials

Image crop – DHTML user interface
This script gives you an Image crop/resize DHTML user interface. Drag a rectangle around the area you want to crop. Click the “Crop” button and let Ajax send crop data to the server and the cropped image back to you. PHP uses ImageMagick on the server to crop and convert the image.

Prototype Javascript Lightboxes
This class is based on Prototype 1.5. The code is inspired of the powerful script.aculo.us library. You can even use all script.aculo.us effects to show and hide windows if you include effects.js file.

AJAX Sortable List Tutorial

How to Make Sortable Lists
Many web applications need to offer an interface to order items – think about categories in a weblog, articles in a CMS, wishes in an e-commerce website… The old fashion way of doing it is to offer arrows to move one item up or down in the list. The AJAX way of doing it is to allow direct drag-and-drop ordering with server support.

AJAX RSS Tutorials

Simple Ajax RSS ticker script
This very small and simple script reads RSS data from an external source and shows them inside a predefined box DIV or other tag) on your page. What you have to do is to specify the url to the RSS feed, how many items you want to show, and for how many seconds you want the script to display each item.

Dragable RSS boxes
This is is a script that uses Ajax to read data from external RSS sources and display them inside dragable boxes. You can also create new boxes dynamically directly from the page. This is the first version of this script. New functionality will be added to this script during the following weeks and months.

Slide In RSS items
This scripts reads RSS feeds from an external source and displays them on your page. Each items appears after a predefined number of seconds by sliding in from the right side.

RSS Ticker with AJAX
Well, with this powerful RSS ticker script, you can now easily display any RSS content on your site in a ticker fashion! This script uses a simple PHP based RSS parser called LastRSS for retrieving a RSS feed, then Ajax and DHTML to display the feed dynamically and with flare. As a pre-requisite then, your site itself must support PHP, though the page using this ticker can be any regular HTML file.

AJAX Shopping Cart Tutorials

Fly to basket (Shopping cart)
This is a DHTML shopping cart module. The products will fly to the shopping basket when you click on the “Add to basket” button. Ajax is used to dynamically update the content of the basket.

Flexstore on Rails Tutorial
Flexstore is a traditional Shopping Cart application that you can write in Ruby on Rails. Very comprehensive and cool.

AJAX Sorting Tutorial

Sorttable: Make all your tables sortable
While the web design community gradually moves away from using tables to lay out the structure of a page, tables really do have a vital use, their original use; they’re for laying out tabular data.

AJAX Trees Tutorials

Update a tree with AJAX
his scripts adds an AJAX extension to my static folder tree. Open the demo and press down your mouse button on one of the nodes in thee tree. This will make a text box appear which makes it possible for you to rename nodes. AJAX is used to send this value to the server without reloading the page.

Static list based folder tree
This is a list based folder tree. What you have to do is to create a UL LI list. The script will then create the tree based on this list. The script uses cookies to remember state of nodes. It also includes functions for expanding/collapsing all nodes.

AJAX Username Availability Tutorial

AJAX username availability checking
The goal of this AJAX example is to allow a user who is registering for your site to see if the username they want to use is taken already or not, without having to submit a form and reload the page.

AJAX Voting Tutorial

Digg-like AJAX Vote On
This tutorial will show you how to add AJAX-enhanced interactions to askeet. The objective is to allow a registered user to declare its interest about a question.

Ajax Poller
A poller script that uses Ajax to send vote to the server and receives vote results from the server. The results are displayed in some animated graphs.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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modMunch allows you to receive your comment moderation notices via an RSS feed, instead of clogging up your inbox.

Ebay Sales Lister is a plugin that lets you display your (or others) ebay sales on your WordPress blog.

Open Web Analytics is a full featured web analytics framework that provides detailed analysis of site users, click behavior, traffic sources, feed subscriptions and content consumption.

Lycos Mix allows you to embed Lycos Mix video playlists into your WP blog

Trim Usernames trims the usernames to eliminate accidentally entered ( usually during copy/paste) spaces, tabs, colons, and double quotation marks.

Better Comments Manager is an extension of the default WordPress comments manager. It allows you to reply to comments without visiting the post page and view comments based on post.

Impress displays blog stats showing the number of users, posts, pages, comments, categories, words, and more on your blog.

If You Liked That follows the content of a post with links to a user selectable number of other posts in the same category as the main post.

Classic Posts will allow you to select posts from the post manager to be stickied and then randomly displayed.

Ultimate Google Analytics adds Google Analytics JavaScript to each page on your weblog.

Clean Trunks provides SEO Friendly URLs for post and page slugs automatically.

Onlywire Plugin adds a link to allow your posts to be submitted using OnlyWire.com

And, Planet RSS & XML Ajax Feed Checker checks as many feeds as you want, and for each one gives a small report that will help you, at a glance, determining if the feed is still there and still fresh. (not a plugin)

Spotback WordPress plugin enables simple integration of rating component into your blog. By using this tool, all your users can rate your posts.

LouderVoice Plugin allows you to easily insert hReview microformatted LouderVoice reviews into your blog posts, ready to be discovered by the review sharing website LouderVoice.com

Who Said That will inject the comment author’s URL into the comments feed.

Scheduled Post Shift automatically takes your oldest post, and updates its timestamp so that it appears as the latest post on your WordPress site.

Multi column links List generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress links in multiple columns.

Other Posts from Category will show the last X posts from the current category at the bottom of every post, or where you manually specify in each post.

Add Signature displays a custom signature at the bottom of your posts.

Widgetize Anything allows you to create unlimited PHP sidebar widgets to use on your blog.

WP-CAL shows “Comment`s Author Label”. Clicking this label will copy author`s name to comment field.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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If you are looking for stock images then I have posted here the best free stock image sites around. If I have left any out post a comment to let me know and it will be added to the list with credit link for you and your site.

Largest resource for free stock photos. Just be sure to check the license info as some photos need permission before being used. Sxc.hu

(at the moment the site is down but should be back up soon) All free and can be used in commercial projects without permission or credit. (has nothing to do with death) MorgueFile.com

You can download and use any image or texture from this site and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial. ImageAfter.com

Free photo resource with a decent catalog. Really free, no permission or credit needed. FreePhotosBank.com

The Open Photo Project is a moderated photo community with the goal of uniting image consumers and producers through Creative Commons licensing. OpenPhoto.net

The images may be used for commercial or personal use in print, film, TV, Internet or other media. Credit for the images is not necessary. FreeMediaGoo.com

This collection of photos is for anyone to use in just about any way they’d like. Nice Imagery! UnProfound.com

Nice collection of hi quality photos with a very simple terms of use. ImageBase

Nice site, with great stock… you need to sign up for a free membership before downloading photos. FreeRangeStock.com

More Free Stock Photo Sites

Below are sites which offer free photos, but have difficult/confusing licensing terms, smaller galleries, lower quality imagery or are a bit of a pain to navigate through:

gl.microsoft.com – Tons of free photos and clipart to use with your MS Office software.

Geek Philosopher – Lots of free photos, but check the licensing page for information on how they can be used.

Pixel Perfect Digital – Over 40 images in a variety of categories.

Pdphoto.org – Many photos in the public domain, but some are not — be sure to read the licensing info for each photo.

FreeStockMagic.com - Small but nice collection of free photos.

FreeImages – Free imagery but use of photos requires a link back to the site.

FreeFoto.com – Some decent photos available for non-commercial use.

Aarin Free Photo - About 950 free photos, but require credit / backlinks for use.

Free-StockPhotos.com – Free photos, ok selection…a little bit of a pain to navigate.

Notes:

Always remember to read a site’s Terms and Conditions / Licensing info before using a free photo.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Photoshop CS3 was released with a few new and powerful tools. On of which is the Black & White Adjustments Tool. But what is the difference between the previous conversion to black & white by way of the channel mixer and the new tool? Lets weigh out the steps and option for each and have you decide.

First, let’s start with a nice, colorful image to convert.

<a href=”http://designcreatology.com/b/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/tulip.jpg” title=”Pink Tulips”

Image->Mode->Grayscale

This is the most common method of conversion, and yields the result below. While the image looks O.K- it can look much better than it does.

Image->Adjustments->Channel Mixer

The channel mixer should be familiar to you if you spend any time doing color critical work. This is a good way to selectively adjust your colors- giving you a bit more control than some of the other tools. The key to this method is the ‘monochrome’ checkbox on the bottom of the palette.Once you click on the “Monochrome” checkbox, you will see the image convert to black and white in the background. Now you can use the Red, Green and Blue sliders to selectively control the contrast of your image. The example below, I adjusted the image for “pleasing-ness” in the Channel Mixer palette.

There is just one problem with the method- the image does not convert to the grayscale color space when you are done with your adjustments, and hit OK. So just remember, when using this method- CONVERT TO GRAYSCALE WHEN YOU ARE DONE! Otherwise, you printer might get a little annoyed that all of your ‘1-color’ images are actually RGB.

The New Tool: Image->Adjustments->Black and White

This is the newest tool in this bag of tricks, introduced in Photoshop CS3. The control palette looks similar to the channel mixer palette, but has many more sliders- which means more control over your adjustments.

The best part of this tool, is that visually, it is very simple to understand. In the case, the large pile of red lumber on the right hand side of the image can be darkened or lightened by adjusting the Red slider.

I can’t imagine ever converting to grayscale again without it. And if you are tinting photos, you not only get to apply the color cast you want, but you can still control the colors to create the contrast necessary, as well. This is far more useful than the Hue/Saturation techniques to create a CMYK duotone effect. How many of you used to create a true duotone, then convert back to RGB or CMYK? And, of course, there is the Color Overlay of Photoshop’s Layer Effects, but this beats ‘em all.Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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If you are looking to expand your empire by means of hosting your very own store on your website the unless you are going to pay someone to build the store (not always at the most reasonable price) then you will need Shopping Cart Software. With so many versions of Carts out there it can get a little confusing as to which one to choose. So I have posted a few Shopping Carts that are relatively easy to set up and use and best of all free.

Zen Cart is a user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently.

ViArt Shop is an ecommerce package available to install in PHP and offers you one system capable of performing all of the functions needed to run a business online. (limited amount of products to 50)

Commerce.CGI is a Free ecommerce shopping cart program complete with a powerful web based store manager application for managing your online store. Commerce.CGI offers two variations to the CGI Cart; Commerce.SQL and Commerce.HTML all of which are free.

Quick.Cart is a simple e-commerce solution designed for your own web shop administration.

VirtueMart is an Open Source E-Commerce solution to be used together with a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla! (but also works with Mambo). Joomla and VirtueMart are written in PHP and made for easy use in a PHP / MySQL environment.

The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

Please submit any comments if you know of a version that should be on this list as well.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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For many different reasons Color Schemer Studio is a favorite of mine as you might already know if you have read previous entries on this blog. I want to give you a closer look at one of the tools that it has to offer and it is called PhotoSchemer. Use the PhotoSchemer to help create a color scheme based off of the colors in any picture or image.

To find PhotoSchemer go to the Tools menu and select it from the drop down menu choices or press Control+H. Now open any GIF, JPEG, or bitmap image, and the PhotoSchemer will automatically generate a random color scheme taken from your image. The palette that opens in the top-left holds the color swatches taken from your image, and the white circles scattered around the image show the point that each color is taken from. (see below)

Here are some tips for using the PhotoSchemer:

Drag the white circles around the image to fine-tune your photo scheme. You can even drag the transparent palette around if it is covering a portion of your image.
Use the Randomize! toolbar button to generate new scheme ideas, or drag the white circles around the image to change the reference point of the individual color swatches.
If you find that your image is too “busy” to pick out individual colors, press the “Mosiac Mode” toolbar button to switch the PhotoSchemer into Mosaic Mode. This mode converts your image into large blocks of color, making it easy to pick out your favorites.

Once you are set on your photo scheme, you can drag each individual swatch over to your Favorite Colors, or add the entire palette to your Favorite Colors with the “Add to Favs” toolbar button.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Exposure is the amount of light collected by the sensor in your camera during a single picture. If the shot is exposed too long the photograph will be washed out. If the shot is exposed too short the photograph will appear too dark. Almost all cameras today have light meters which measure the light in the given shot and set an ideal exposure automatically. Most people depend on the light meter which is fine, but if you know how to control your exposures you can get some creative and sometimes better pictures.

The two primary controls your camera uses to for exposure are shutter speed (the amount of time the sensor is exposed to light) and aperture (the size of the lens opening that lets light into the camera). Shutter speeds are measured in seconds and more commonly fractions of a second. (1/2000 of a second is very fast and 8′ seconds is extremely slow). Apertures are measured in something called f/stops (a very wide aperture is f/2.8 and a very small aperture is f/19).

You might wonder why there isn’t just a constant shutter speed or a constant aperture so that you would only have to worry about one control. The reason is that even though they both control the amount of light getting to the sensor they also control other aspects of the picture. Shutter speed for example can be used to freeze subjects in midair with a fast speed or it can be used to blur water with a slow speed. Aperture controls the depth-of-field which is what is in focus in the picture. Aperture can be used to draw attention to one subject by blurring the background with a wide aperture (low f/stop). Aperture can also be used to focus everything in a picture with a narrow aperture (high f/stop).

On most digital SLR’s (Single Lens Reflex) cameras today you can even change the sensitivity of the sensor when collecting light which is called the ISO speed. The common span of ISO speed is 100 to 800. The higher the ISO speed the faster the camera collects light but it also adds more noise to the photograph than the lower speeds. For example if your trying to take pictures in dim light without a tripod you might want to raise the ISO speed in order to get a picture that’s not blurry. Most of the time you should keep it at a lower ISO speed if there is enough light, but it makes a big difference when there isn’t.

The best way to learn how to use shutter speed and aperture is to just keep experimenting with them.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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If you look at the sort of shots that get printed in travel magazines and expensive coffee-table books, they tend to share similar attributes. Look for pictures that you admire and try to analyze why you like them. These are some of the features I like:

Include People
Magazines in particular always like people in the shot. It gives the viewer a human connection, a sense of being there, and a sense of scale. Photographs evoke emotion and empathy comes with someone’s face. Avoid crowds and simplify the shot down to one person. The young and old are preferred subjects, with their innocent expressions and weather-worn faces respectively. People make your shots warm, friendly, and personable. Just like you are.

Simple, Clear Layout
A good shot focuses your attention on the subject by using a sparse background and a simple but interesting composition. Always remove clutter for the picture – this is a real skill. Like a musician, it’s always difficult to make things look easy. Zoom in, get close, get to eye level, find a simple backdrop, look for balance.

Bold, Solid Colors
‘Stock-quality’ images make great use of color. Look for solid primary colors: bright ‘sports-car’ red, emerald green, lightning yellow, and ocean blue. Use a polarizer to bring out the colors. Avoid patterns – keep it simple. Bright afternoon sunlight will add warmth. Alternatively, look for ‘color harmony’ – scenes restricted to similar tones and colors, or even a single color. This presents a calm, restful image where the eye plays with the differing shades and intensities. Look for pastels, cream, or delicate shades.

Depth
Always include some pointer about depth. A photograph is two-dimensional but we want it to appear three-dimensional. If you’re shooting a background (mountains) include a strong foreground (people). If you’re shooting people (foreground), add an out-of-focus blur behind them (by using a wide aperture – small f-number).

Use a wide-angle lens for exaggerated depth. With a 20mm to 28mm lens, get just a few feet from your subject and, with a small aperture (large f-number), include an in-focus deep background too. This exaggerated hyperfocal perspective is used in a lot of magazine shots. What impact!

Alternatively you can remove all depth by using a long, telephoto lens. This compresses or compacts the image, making your 3-D subject appear flat.

Dramatic Lighting
Photographs that win competitions are often ones that make interesting use of light. Look out for beams of light shining through clouds, trees or windows, long shadows, and the effect of side- and backlighting. Shoot in the warm golden “magic hours” of early morning and late afternoon.

Preparation
A great shot takes time. Scout out the area, make mental notes of important features, unusual and interesting angles, and changing crowd levels. Take time to prepare the shot. Get there before the best time of day, clean your lenses, set up a tripod or mini-tripod, add a cable release, try out different filters, wait for a good foreground, and talk with people who may be in the shot so that they’re comfortable and will pose well.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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