One Step Closer to the Goal.

Scott and Jerri Menual of Menaul Fine Art regularly host informative demos at their Studio and Gallery in Largo. Last night's presenter was David Rogers from Lightroom Tampa Bay, who gave a very helpful tour of Adobe Lightroom 3. For me, this had been for some time one of those mysterious "so what does it actually do?" programs. I suppose you could say that my mindset is "one program for one purpose" because I do tend to lump software together into neat little categories to better wrap my mind around them...  Microsoft Word for Word Processing, Photoshop for image editing, etcetera, etcetera... But Lightroom is a veritable swiss-army-knife of helpful applications - a database to better track photos, a slideshow generator (that meshs beautifully with the SlideshowPro account I already have), a print studio and so much more. It was a no-brainer that I would need this eventually as my art career opens up, but Adobe tends to be a pricey brandname, so, expecting a six hundred dollar price tag, I was surprised to hear from Mr. Rogers that B and H photography, an online resaler, was selling it for seventy dollars online... Sold. Add that to my stock of handy software and thanks all around.

Visit David Roger's Lightroom Forum at http://www.lightroomtampabay.com/

Learn more about Menauls Fine Art at http://menaul-art.com/ and http://www.menaulprinting.com/

Thanks for reading!

(2 C more art go to www.themindscapeartfoundry.com or www.artoflylepolyak.com)

New software is a thing of beauty

I do make a habit to glean advise from my friends, customers, associates and the like. This tidbit of helpful information came from a blog presentation hosted by Mr and Mrs. Menaul of Menaul Printing - Simply the best place to get your photos and sketches printed large scale on canvas or other medium. Their presenter, professional wedding photographer, Carrie Wildes (www.carriewildes.com), suggested to the attendees a variety of online means to make our art businesses pop with blogs, web design and slide shows. It was this advice that prompted me to subscribe to the blog that you are reading now. The same advice lead me to become a member of Professional Photographers of America and also inspired my latest venture... Slide shows. If you've visited the website recently you will notice that the tired old grid of thumbnails has been aptly replaced by FLASH slide shows produced by SlideShowPro.

This is an online subscription firm that I upload my sample photos to, and they engineer Flash Presentations for me to upload to my website. It's so fast and easy I couldn't believe it! Just a few clicks to decide the options I want and I had a slide show that was visually stunning and ready to go. The same slide shows include a pop-up/drop down text box that "materializes" with info on the photograph currently displayed, and control buttons to quickly jump to desired images. You can subscribe to this service to for just $30 for 6 months of slide show hosting. just go to www.slideshowpro.net. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

(2 C More Art go to www.themindscapeartfoundry.com)