Another great piece of equipment that I highly recommend is a Wacom Tablet. Got no idea what I'm talking about? Well a Wacom is kind of a digital sketch pad. You use a stylus to direct your screen curser to do very accurate, detailed work in Photoshop (or other graphic programs). I use my Wacom to do retouching and most importantly, to isolate objects.
Dropping the background out from a photo, isolating the object on a white background is a great advantage in microstock photograpy. Many webdesigners opt for a "clean" look. This technique is ideal for that.
The before and after photos in this post show a pretty bland image on the left. Using my Wacom Tablet and stylus, I isolated my pile of stones and dropped out the background. I then added a gray background with a center backlight. (Other Photoshop touches to this image include flipping the photo and using an omni light on the stones themselve.)
If you take a look at Tip #10 (the previous post), you can see a Christmas image that shows the same technique of isolating an object, keeping the background white.
I also use my Wacom to do graphic images (illustrations) which I sell at Dreamstime. I've been using a Wacom Tablet for about eight years and can't imagine doing photographs without it.
Labels: graphics, microstock photography, Wacom tablet
