Well I am enjoying my istockphoto vista gadget so much I am beginning work on a shutterstock gadget. I have the code working in php using curl to screen scrape the stats, but for security reason’s I need to change that into javascript, instead of using ajax to call my site to get the stats. S0 stay tuned, I should have something in the next couple of weeks or months 
For those photographers out there that use istockphoto to sell your images and Windows Vista for your operating system you may find this gadget helpful. It is a ticker that will show you your stats for the day, month and your balance. Feel free to make suggestions via istockphoto messaging. My username is jswinborne.
In this article I will attempt to walk you through a short tutorial using Photoshop CS3 to show how you can age your photo by adding an burnt paper layer. Please be forgiving, as I am no writer, and this is my first stab at this.
First download the two images below and open the barn photo in photoshop.
Once you have the barn open you should see a screen similar to the following:
Now open the paper overlay image file, and copy the contents to a new layer on your barn picture. Once this is complete set the layer style to “multiply as seen in the screenshot below:
Now we need to adjust the contrast and brightness of the image. First duplicate the barn layer (right click the layer and choose duplicate layer.) Drag this image to the top and go to image->adustments->brightness/contrast and bump the contrast all the way up and the brightness half way up. You should now have an image like this:
Now change the new barn layer style to multiply. Now to soften the distressed paper overlay, duplicate the paper layer and move it to the top. choose filter->blur->gaussian blur. I blured the layer by a radius of 2. Now set the layer style to multiply. You should now have a screen like this:
Finally I thought it would be nice to make the barn a little more visible. To do this I made the first paper layer have a little less opacity over the vicinity of the barn. To do this I added a layer mask and selected an oval using the marquee tool feathered to 20px. I then filled this with a medium gray color (#828282). You should have a screen that looks like this:
Your finished. Not to bad huh? If you are new to Photoshop, sorry I skipped over some of the basics. (layer masks etc…) If all went well you should have an image like the one below.
I hope you found this article helpful. If you would like to have a full res version of the paper overlay you can find it in my portfolio on shutterstock, as well as stockxpert and dreamstime. (sorry istockphoto fans, they denied it.)
Welcome to Microstocker.com. Last night I started dreaming of using this site for something and finally, I decided to devote this site to sharing some of my knowledge on photography and photo editing using Adobe’s Photoshop CS3. I am no professional in either of these fields but I have been working in both for several years now, and have learned many helpful tricks I hope to share.
I currently sell stock photography on many microstock websites. (istockphoto.com. dreamstime.com, shutterstock.com, stockxpert.com, and bigstockphoto.com) My portfolio is just getting off the ground. I plan on referring to several of theses images in my portfolio and showing step by step how I edited these images to be acceptable for the stock photo market.
Also please forgive my I am a software engineer at heart, and not an editor. You will undoubtedly find typos and grammatical errors through out my posts. Avert your eyes, and keep reading, hopefully there won’t be too many.
