Guest Post --- Deer in a Bottle

Hi everyone! I'm happy to share with you an easy tutorial for making your product photographs beautiful! I use this for all my jewelry in my etsy shop.

First take a photo that obviously needs some retouching. I used my nikon with a lightbox set up for this photo, but it still could use a little work.

Step 1: Create a new layer fill for Brightness/Contrast.



Step 2: Boost the brightness up until your photo is more vivid. Don't worry about getting it completely white yet.



Step 3: Choose a dodge brush and select midtones.




Step 4: Start brushing the background of your photo. The gray background soon becomes a lighter white.




Step 5: Now select your burn brush to darken your product. For this necklace, dodge creates a deeper color.



Here is your finished product!



I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial! And I hope your product photos become beautiful and amazing!

Deer in a Bottle Blog

Deer in a Bottle Designs

Pressing and Drawing

I am and herb and California native plant enthusiast. To learn about these herbs and plants I have read books, gone on nature walks, photographed plants, eaten things I foraged for in the wild, taken classes, and grown specimens, but I have not drawn. Drawing is a fantastic way to learn about pretty much anything because you have to take time when looking at something and observing every interconnecting detail.

I love details, but I'm not so great at the drawing part. I have been practicing and starting out with easy to draw plants that are mainly long, thing, and have little to no flowers or leaves on them. My friends that draw or paint say to me that it takes practice (though after seeing their beautiful work it is hard to imagine the practicing part). But they're right. I wasn't always a good cook, but then I practiced and got better. I can make some decent Jewelry now, and I practice that. But for some reason drawing has never been something I thought to practice at. I always assumed people who could draw were born with the gift. I'm not sure how I came about that assumption, but I decided that I would draw to learn plants, and in doing so eventually become better at drawing.

The chives went to seed, so I tried to draw a chive flower. The other two flowers were two I picked from the garden because I wanted to press them in my notebook. I just thought they might look nice pressed.


And lastly here is some lovely Lavender that is making my notebook smell fantastic. I took the most time on this drawing, and am pretty happy with how it came out.

I'm curious; there are a lot of crafters out there in the blogging world and I was wondering what it is that you have been trying to learn or practice lately?