Hohoho…. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to PixelRaves reader !!!

Recently, our friend in China helped us bought a pop-up flash diffuser and have been using it for few days.

Now is time to write a short review about this little stuff.

Pop-up flash is a small, intense source of light that produces very harsh shadows. If the photographer can enlarge the light source, it will be a significant improvement over direct flash. This Diffuser can enlarges and diffuses the light with the flash in the direct flash position. It’s small in size and easily slot into your pocket.

This is how it looks like while mounted on camera.

Basically, this flash diffuser is compatible with all the DSLR or Pro-sumer camera that have hot shoe. Just slot into the hot shoe.

Below photos are the comparison with (1st) and without (2nd) this diffuser:

Portrait shot:

Product shot:

Portrait shot (close-up):

Product shot (close-up):

Helps to eliminate the shadow of your lens as well:

With this pop-up flash diffuser, you are no need to afraid to use your pop-up flash anymore.

Been doing some research about image licensing. For those who are interested, here’s the summary of it. Please note that this is a general guide on the licensing terms. It may differ from different companies.

Rights-managed (RM)
Rights-managed products are licensed on a use-by-use basis. The factors used to calculate the fees for this kind of image includes size, placement, duration of use and geographic distribution. Buyers and sellers have to be aware that use is restricted and buyers and sellers must stick to the terms of the license agreement which is there to support the value placed on the image.

The concept of “rights managed” comes from copyright, a statute that allows authors and publishers of works to be the sole arbiter of the exploitation of that work, and to set fees associated with that work. The economic incentives afforded by copyright give artists one way to make a living through their creative works.

Royalty-free (RF)
Royalty-free products may be used by you multiple times for multiple projects without incurring additional fees. Royalty-free pricing is based solely on the file size of the product you need and the number of people entitled to use it, not the specific use. You don’t have to pay any additional royalties on a use-by-use basis.

Royalty free has the advantage of being simple to understand for both photographer (who need not worry about policing usage by the buyer) and the buyer who is relieved of the burden of having to monitor use.

If buying a royalty free image then you still need to be careful how you use it. For example, if the image features people who may be recognisable and there is no model release then a buyer should not use such an image for promotional purposes. Also most royalty free images prohibit use of an image on T-Shirts etc.

After “The 300″ movie, we are crazy about the effect. We tried to search the photo tutorial for how to create this effect but no luck However, we finally made it by ourselves. Now, we would like share with you step by step how to create “the 300″ effect in Photoshop.

Original Photo:

Step 1: Add Channel Mixer as layer and set the channel Red, Green & Blue to the value below:
Channel Red:
Red = 80%
Green = 0%
Blue = 0%
Constant = -2%

Channel Green:
Red = 76%
Green = 0%
Blue = 0%
Constant = 0%

Channel Blue:
Red = 65%
Green = 4%
Blue = 8%
Constant = 0%

Step 2: Set the layer mode = Color / Opacity = 70%

Step 3: Duplicate background to a new layer and rename it to “Soft”.

Step 4: Apply Gaussian Blur filter to “Soft” layer. Radius = 2.0 pixels.

Step 5: Set the layer mode = Overlay / Opacity = 85%

Below photo is after applied “The 300″ Effect:

Some of the Photoshop Action websites are selling this action around USD15. Now we have provided the action for you to download for FREE!!!

Another Sample: