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Project Educate: The Art of PhotomanipulationHello, deviantART! How are you?

I’m back to tell you a little bit about my very favorite form of art here on dA: photomanipulation, often referenced simply as, manipulation or manips. Hope you enjoy!

What is photomanipulation?

The general consensus in our community seems to be that photomanipulation involves taking elements from at least two photographs (and/or, by some definitions, other sources like 3D work or brushes) and fitting them together to create something that is seamless and distinct from the original sources. Some people argue that a photomanipulation can be made with one photograph as long as the final piece of art is drastically different from the picture from which it originated. If it is not dramatically different—i.e., if the final product is similar to the original photograph but perhaps a bit cleaned up or minor edits are added without including any new elements—we might call it a retouch<

A Brief dA WalkthroughI know you probably all have a fairly decent idea of all that you can do on dA, but you can't go wrong doing a bit of a refresher course!
When you first log in (or when you click the "deviantART" link in the top left corner of any dA page), you get taken to the front page of dA. This is where you can search deviations, or just browse to see what's there. The "Popular" browse feature was just revamped to give fairer exposure to all popular art, not just the overall popular on dA. Use the popular browse to see what's popular in all the galleries. Don't want to look at all that? Refine the galleries to something that more suits your preference in the left-hand side bar. Want to see what's new, not just what's hot? Change your browse to "Newest" and you'll see everything that's just been submitted. Because of the way "Newest" works, it can be frustrating to browse, here are a

Project Educate: People and Portraits IntroductionPortrait or Portraiture Photography is about a person or a group of people arranged in a certain way to convey the mood, emotions and possibly even a story. On DeviantART there are many sub-categories within the People & Portraits Gallery and some of those are self explanatory whilst others take a little bit more planning and thinking about to achieve. Throughout this week, we'll be working to hopefully clean up misconceptions and straighten out parts of the People & Portrait Galleries. So here's what's happening...

Shoot Yourself - Photography Contest

Open Forum - Throw your questions to the photography CVs and expect the answers (as much as possible) by the end of the week!

Getting your Emotive on - Definition

Community Voices: What is a Daily Deviation?DDs: The deviantART definition
So, as the title says, What in the world IS a Daily Deviation (DD), anyway?
You know what deviantART says about it, right? Under :faq61: it says:
A small assortment of submissions are chosen each day by a select group of staff/volunteer members who wish to showcase an image which they found impressive or otherwise interesting enough to deserve being brought to the attention of the community-at-large.
That says nothing about a DD being a perfect specimen of art-- in fact, it doesn't even use the word "art" at all.

Basically, as CVs, when we are giving a DD, we are doing so because we think the image is interesting and well-done and deserves your attention. It may be technically exquisite. It may be technically quite good but exceptionally thought-provoking. It may be exceedingly creative. It may be all of these things! Above all else, it should stand out in some way from others in that medium or gallery.

PE Daily Deviations: What if...?
Hello everyone!

After news articles explaining 'The Myth and the Legend' of the Daily Deviations, how to suggest them, tolerance towards Daily Deviations, the negativity, the focus on the notes and what it actually is, this article tackle the 'What if...?' scenarios t

PE Article: Tips and Advice 'Crediting Resources'One issue that we need to stress on deviantART is to credit your resources you use in your artwork. Crediting is a problem because a lot of people aren't doing the above.Most Stock Artists have individually tailored rules to suit their own personal level.
You must abide by these rules!
Often they include that they want full credit to be given to their use of stock. This is really simple!
All you need to do is..
Include a link/thumb of the stock used. People want to see what the stock has become!
If you don't know how to get the [link] or :thumbxxxxxx: It's simple.
Just copy and paste the URL of the Resource you used and the [link] will appear! For the thumb code, each deviation has one which is listed at the bottom right of the deviation itself or by pressing the small arrow upper right hand corner which gives you some options to share said deviation or to get the thumb code.
next..
Give the Stock Ar

Share Your Skills! Tutorials & Resources.We all know about the power of critique and comments, the wonderful resource that Groups can be and the great exposure that art features in journals can bring to new or lesser known artists but there are other, less obvious, ways in which we can use our skills to help and inspire other artists. Here are just a few...
Writing Tutorials
Are you an expert in your field with years of training and education? Or are you self-taught with knowledge that comes from the experience of learning and doing? You might take for granted the techniques that you employ every day in your art but don't forget - your skills are valuable, especially to people who aspire to creating the kind of art you create. Whether you can demonstrate how to draw hands in every conceivable pose or show step-by-step how to process a photographic portrait to perfection, someone out there can benefit from your experience.
You can submit your tutorials to

Resources & Stock Images > Tutorials
:bu

Digital Photography and White Balance Introduction
Back in the day of color film, we used to screw filters onto our lenses to correct unusual color casting. A handy color temperature meter would be used to find the temperature of the light. If the temp was too warm (yellow/orange'ish) , we screwed on a cooling filter (blue'ish filter). If it was too cool (to blueish), we screwed on a warming filter (yellow/ orange'ish). There were varying degrees of filters with different hues and opacities.
Thankfully, digital photography has not only made white balance (WB) easier and quicker, it's also made it forgiving. If you shoot RAW, you have the ability to change the WB in post processing. This is good news if you made a mistake with your in-camera technique.
How do you WB?
In-Camera Correction
Most digital cameras have presets for lighting situations. For example, incadescent/tungsten light is a warm yellow orange.
Exercise : Grab a piece of white paper at home and really study it. Try to ign

PE Daily Deviations- Presentation of your workHello all!

Well we’ve had a fascinating week so far; a week which hopefully has provided some insight not only to the process of DD selection but helped you understand what we look for in DDs as CVs. As we draw to the end of this week, I bring you an article which will whet your Saturday with thoughts that don’t just apply to the DD feature, but something which should be a consideration to everything you submit to dA. I am talking about deviation presentation.
Why is Presentation important?
Art isn’t always about just being “creative”. There are techniques and skills which develop over time which contribute to the quality of the work you produce and alongside this comes a developed understanding of good presentation.
Good presentation could be anything from cropping a photograph, to spell checking your literature. These are common sense things that in the rush of wanting to show off your creativity can sometimes be

The Pixel Art CommunityWelcome to Pixel Art’s PE week! Firstly, I’d like to begin by discussing where we are in the Pixel Art community, where we came from and where we might head in the future.

Why discuss the definition of Pixel Art?
Why is it so important to discuss the definition of Pixel Art? It becomes important not only when it comes time to update the category’s description for the sake of organisation and clarity, but also when confusion and misconceptions become increasingly common among those in the community itself. As Pixel Art grew from being primarily used for old computer and gaming systems, that could not handle much data and therefore not too many colours per palette, into something used with more contemporary technologies like Photoshop and MSPaint, Pixel Art itself was bound to reflect those changes. This change has become apparent in new styles, new techniques and questions around the need for the “old rules” of past

Project Educate: Traditional Tutorials!As part of Project Educate, I present to thee TUTORIAL MANIA (if you can't hear the epic echo, you're not imagining hard enough.)
Here we have a collection of fantastic deviant composed tutorials in the various areas of traditional artistry.
Feasts your peepers on these!
PREP AND SUPPLIES

OILS, WATERCOLORS AND ACRYLICS

PENCILS, MARKERS, AND OTHER DRAWING

GENERAL TECHNIQUE

PE: Daily Deviations - The Myth and the LegendDaily Deviations, or DDs . . . for some deviants, receiving one is the epitome of awesomesauce in the deviantART world. For others, they are a nice way to show off the work of lesser-known artists. Still others treat them as a special way to bring attention to great art that exemplifies works being done by a particular gallery or community.
Perhaps because there are so many different ways of conceptualizing DDs, there are also many myths and misconceptions. I would like to address some of those myths by responding to the ones most frequently heard. Please note that these opinions are mine and reflect my experiences with the photomanipulation community, but perhaps they will be informative nevertheless.
Myth 1: DDs should always be perfect.
To many of us, the ideal Daily Deviation goes to an artist with amazing talent whose work draws you in and makes you think, "Wow, everyone needs to see this!" A DD should move you, inspire you, and provoke you to think, b

Project Educate: About TypefacesProject Educate: About Typefaces
Today I would like to introduce the world of Typeface Classification. Since the beginning of Typeface Design, there have evolved many different types of fonts, which can be sorted according to certain rules. I want to give you a short breakdown of the most famous categories and introduce some terminology as well.
The most wide spread system is the Vox-ATypI classification. This system was started in 1957 and finalised under this name in 1967. It is probably not a perfect system, as it was out for ciriticism quite a lot. Especially for people that are not very familiar with the terminology or history of Typefaces, this system proves to be hard to understand and confusing.
A second is the Thibaudeau classif

Accepting Feedback Positively55%
of how we feel about words comes from body language.
38%
comes from the voice.
7%
comes from the actual words.
Whether or not you're willing to take Dr Mehrabian's research at face value, it's undeniable that a lot of what we feel comes from what we see. A friend can say something that would be totally mean, but if they're giggling halfway through the words it's not hard to tell it's a joke. If someone's telling you they had a great day and their voice is quavering the whole time, you can be suspicious.
Languages aren't universal, but most facial expressions translate well across completely unrelated cultures. Is it surprising that we're better able to recognize facial expressions and vocal tones rather than focusing entirely on the words?
So how does th

Project Educate: Typography TerminologyTypography Terminology
This article is here to highlight some of the most important terms when it comes to working with Typography. The terminology in this article is very basic, but it's not only for beginners! Knowing the proper terms for whatever you do avoids confusion and makes it easier for people to be on the same line of thought.
Please note: these terms all refer to the technical work with Typography. They do not cover the Anatomy of Typefaces (f.e. baseline, x-height or serif) or stylistic elements used in Typography (f.e. page layout or white space).
Typeface
A Typeface is the compilation of a set of characters, which share a certain appearance. There are stylistic elements to each Typeface that also find relation to their classification.
While a Font traditionally only describes a set o

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Submitted: February 14, 2012

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Project Educate: Photographing Your Crafts...

Tue Feb 14, 2012, 3:27 AM by ^Kaz-D

Photographing crafts is not as daunting as it seems. For those of you out there with amazing creative streaks in you, it isn't actually that difficult to take it one step further and put the effort into snapping your wonderful creations. It just takes a little planning, a camera and some creativity.

The Don'ts...

Rule Number One

Never ever ever ever ever Photograph something on your bed. Ever. I mean it! Your bed is for sleeping, and er, other things. But definitely not for placing your well constructed craft item upon, pointing your camera at, and pressing the button.

You might think I'm stating the obvious but seriously, the amount of people who think they'll just pop their item on the bed and take a picture...is..well..I don't have the statistics but there are many of Us!

Rule Number Two

Stay away from your cluttered up shelves and bits and pieces. Put your craft in a clear, refreshed area and then bring in the backdrops and small items you want to photograph it with. Start with a blank canvas, it's easier then to see where you want to progress to.

Rule Number Three

Yup! Do NOT photograph your items in the dark.* The dark is for night time things and shadows. You rarely want your product looking all blurry and lacking in lighting. You want it to stand out!

_{*If you've made candles you are permitted to carefully disregard this rule. Sometimes}

Rule Number Four

Remove the timestamps from your images. Rookie tip? Sure, but people still do it! Take the timestamps off and you'll look a lot less amateur and a whole lot more professional.

The Do's

Rule Number One

Make use of light. Wherever light is, you go! Be careful on Sunny days though. Make the use of the grey sky so many of us moan about and head outside with your craft to photograph it in more natural surroundings.

Rule Number Two

Look at your background. Try and photograph your craft with a background that compliments rather than works against the tones in the item.

Rule Number Three

Please please please resize your image! There is nothing worse than an amazing piece of craft just waiting to be viewed and the page is just constantly loading because you've uploaded the full resolution. Resizing is really easy, you can do it in batch using a Script in Photoshop or you can do it one by one by opening up your picture. Resizing for Web - Small - usually does the trick.

Rule Number Four

Do get rid of the shadows. They will only create problems for you when people are trying to view your Craft. You can create light boxes really easy these days and there are plenty of tutorials online to help you channel the lighting if you're lacking.

And finally...consider scale - show of your craft but show it as truthfully as you can by giving a sense of scale!