Besotted with…Holiday Sales 2018!

So many sales so little time (and money) am I right?  Here are some of our faves for Cyber Monday (some extend all week!).  It was hard to choose, but I thought we could focus on things we love like enhancing your skills + creativity, tools to help you grow your business and maybe a little frivolity thrown in for good measure!

I. We couldn’t do this list without letting you know we are doing our BIGGEST sale EVER for Foto Rx Co. We are so grateful for all your support, if you have been eyeing our best selling Product Photography Editing Photoshop actions, or have been lusting for some Lettering Rx to quickly clean + digitize your lettering and illustrations than we have you covered! Of course, we have our professional grade photo editing actions, if you haven’t figured it out I am a bit partial to all of our B+W sets both the Photoshop actions and presets. You can take $25 USD off any order of $50 USD or more at checkout with the code GRATEFUL2018.

II. We are huge fans of Masterclass. If you are unfamiliar it’s as the name implies, classes taught by masters. They aren’t splitting hairs on this one, we are talking photography with Annie Liebovitz, cooking with Gordon Ramsey, documentary filmmaking with Ken Burns, serious masters in their field! They are currently doing a two for one–buy an all access pass for the year as a gift and get one for yourself free!  That means you will get access to ALL the classes on their roster!

III. There are many companies that I enjoy, but cringe when I have to share the name, Creativebug is one of them. I really enjoy this platform, the teachers are great especially Courtney Cerruti. They have started adding more creative business classes, and really elevating their content. I love the Lilla Rogers class (famed artist rep), it’s worth signing up just for that class. You can get 3 months for only $1USD, it’s totally worth it, you can cancel at anytime but for the $1 I’d totally take advantage of their line-up while you can!

IV. Click & Co. have a great round-up of photography classes. Documenting the Unapologetic Life is still one of my favorite classes I’ve taken for documentary style family photos,it’s  a class that has allowed me to just be in the moment instead of worrying about pretty Insta pics. They are doing a 50% off all of their breakout classes, a total steal! Use the code HOLIDAY50 at checkout.

V. One of my fave art supply stores has some crazy deals right now! I love this inexpensive Canson watercolor paper, it’s heavyweight and great for practice and they are practically giving it away, stock up! This vine charcoal is dirt cheap and perfect for all those mark making exercises to get those creative juices flowing.

 

photo by michelle p. edited with foto rx doc style presets

A quirky hand drawn serif font!

Michelle and I are always busy cooking up something at our Creative Studio, yesterday we launched new B + W film inspired presets with Foto Rx Co., which we are quite thrilled about, yesterday was also a milestone, we  celebrated our 1st birthday with our pet project ‘Rare Bird Font Foundry’, oh, my has that little bird flown!  Today we are ecstatic to announce the release of a long awaited new font–Specimen V, a quirky hand drawn serif in collaboration with the talented Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls. The font family comes with 3 variations of the hand-Standard, Perfectly Imperfect, and Smooth. This family also comes with botanical illustrations (in both vector and hi-res pngs.), the illustrations are a first for us and we are really excited to see how they are incorporated in your design work. The font is extremely legible making it work for so many different applications. We think this font would work well on a wedding invite for your favorite eccentric uncle, in your holiday card send out, DIY’s for your blog, etc. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

//RESOURCES//

Rare Bird Font Foundry

Specimen V 

Test Specimen V here

Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls

Documentary Style presets

photo by michelle p.

New Documentary Style Lightroom presets!

 

We are so excited to announce that we have just launched a new set of Lightroom presets in our Foto Rx Co. shop-Documentary Style presets. These new presets are BW film inspired (think Ilford) and have the loveliest fine grain to them that will add a beautifully rich authenticity to your images. We love them for capturing spontaneous family moments, creating artsy still lifes and editing portraits. The best bit is if you have the Adobe Creative cloud you can also use our presets in Adobe Camera Raw, and better still if you have the Lightroom Mobile app downloaded you can use the presets on your phone to edit, what the what?!  We hope you love!

Foto Rx Presets are here!

monstera-after-MM-Muted-Foliage-Preset-1080

After many requests we have finally launched Lightroom Presets for Foto Rx Co.! It has been a long process, but we are glad we waited and refined, because as luck would have it Adobe made some pretty spectacular updates, they have changed the preset file format so you can now use in both Lightroom AND in Photoshop camera Raw, the same presets! Even better still, if you add the presets to Lightroom CC and have the Lightroom mobile app installed they will show up like magic on your phone allowing you to edit your images on your phone with the presets.  This is all brilliant if you ask me!  Our first set was inspired by the Pacific Northwest and has a moody vibe, with muted tones, velvety blacks and special attention given to the greens to create the best green tones around from deep, rich greens to muted silver greens. Each preset has 3 strengths so you can choose a strength to fit your image and not have to worry about the effect being too strong. We also added ‘refinement tool’ presets for basic adjustments like exposure and white balance. We are really excited to be able to finally share these presets with you and hope that you will be able to use them to cut your workflow time in half and develop your own signature style. Let us know if you have any questions, we are also happy to edit a couple of RAW hi-res files so you can see how they would work on your images!

//RESOURCES//

Foto Rx Co.

Modern + Moody presets

Adobe Creative Cloud subscription

Shot with Fuji

photo by michelle p.

Photo prompt :: Inspired by….

flower-gone-to-seed-Karl-1080-cyano-set

Our prompt this week for our Foto Rx 52 (a photo a week project) is ‘inspired by’. We want you to find an artist that inspires you and to try to replicate their style of work. For centuries this is how artists developed their craft and is a a great exercise in finding your own visual voice. The featured image was edited with our Cyanotype set (green tea + black tea and added contrast).  With our editing tools we encourage a healthy dose of experimentation, yes, they can get one click results, but if you dig a little deeper you can create magic! Our inspiration was master botanical photographer Karl Blossfeldt. We have included links below for further study.

It’s not too late to start your Foto Rx 52, shooting consistently will be the fastest way to becoming a better photographer. Follow us on Instagram for more inspo and edit examples. Shoot this week’s prompt and use #fotorx52 so we can find you and cheer you on (also feel free to borrow our hashtags so other people can find you!).

//RESOURCES//

Foto Rx Cyanotype
Shot with Iphone 7 (Yes, this was shot with a mobile phone!)
Loewe (His images were used for modern fragrance packaging)
Karl Blossfeldt Masterworks
Blossfeldt : The Complete Published Works
Karl Blossfeldt: The Alphabet of Plants
Art of photography: Karl Blossfeldt
Reverse engineering lighting in a photo 
A format for looking at photographs

photo by michelle p.