Shozam Announces Web Gallery Generator

Three months after its beta launch, “anti”-photo sharing website Shozam has announced the release of the Shozam Web Gallery Generator, which creates Web galleries for users to showcase digital media. The generator is released in conjunction with Komotion Inc.

“If a service goes out of business, the gallery - and the work and time that went into it - can disappear. Even worse, precious photos can be lost,” said Razvan Neagu, President and CEO of Komotion, in a press release. “With Shozam, users create their own photo Web sites and stay in control of their media.”

Content is imported and can be customized by the user with captions, audio, and themes. The generator allows for seven different page layouts that can be uploaded to any Web host.

“Why would anyone give up ownership of their images, and let others take control and make money from them?“ Neagu said. “Shozam eliminates the need for online photo sites which can over-compress photos, clutter the site with ads, impose restrictions, or require minimum purchases of add-ons like prints and calendars.”

The Shozam Web Gallery Generator is available in five editions, starting at $50. A Business Plus edition has been added to the site, which previous only hosted a Business edition. The Business Plus edition allows for the removal of the Shozam credit line. A lite edition is available for free, but does not allow for audio, video or text.

Shozam is compatible with Microsoft Windows and offers a free trial on its website.

Text Effects Tutorials for Photoshop

For those like me that love text effects and have the courage to admit it, here’s a thorough guide to the best 80 text effects available on the web.

This guide includes 78 Photoshop tutorials and 2 impressive collections of Photoshop Actions, plus 3 books on the subject.

These text effects are the most creative, unique, complex, wild and fun of all effects I’ve ever seen. These actions were created for Photoshop 5 and 6 but they should work in newer versions. There are a lot of actions to download!

Read more about Photoshop

Wedding Photography

One of the most common photography topics that the guys over at DigitalPhotographySchool are asked about is Wedding Photography.
Here are a few tips that they have compiled.

These are awesome tips. I have been asked to shoot weddings, but have declined all due to the “panic factor” as well as the “amateur factor”! I think it is a great idea to step in as a back-up to gain some portfolio shots, but I think you have to be careful as to not step on the pro’s toes. These are all very helpful tips and offer wonderful insight, as do so many of the DPS posts, so thanks everyone who posted. I am learning SOOO much, it’s very exciting. Maybe someday I will be comfortable enough to shoot a wedding, but as for now, I’m not ready to deal w/ the wrath of bridezilla’s mom either!

Ten Common Photographic Mistakes

Here is a quick rundown of the most common mistakes people make that mess up a good photo or prevent us from taking a good photo. This article is meant for novice photographers to inspire the process of thinking and is the first in a series over at Andrew Gunther Photography. So far Andrew has focused his writing mainly on tool tips and technology. Nevertheless, we are all first and foremost trying to improve our skills as photographers and artists.

Macro Photography How-to Video

Here is a nice video tutorial of how you can do Macro Photography, producing wild and amazing imagery. If you learn how to take great pictures up close, you can have a lot of fun with it. The possibilities are endless. Macro photography refers to close-up photography; the classical definition that the image projected on the "film plane" (i.e film or a digital sensor) is close to the same size as the subject.

Woven Shadows 7 contains several ideas to help you improve your techniques in this area.

10 Beach Photography Tips

Here are 10 tips for when you head to the beach with your digital camera, brought to you by Digital Photography School.

I have the listed the points here but you'll have to visit the link to read the full article.

1. Look for focal points
2. Timing is important
3. Watch the Horizon
4. Head to the Beach When Others Avoid it
5. Exposure Bracketing
6. Spot Metering
7. Fill Flash
8. UV Filters
9. Polarizing Filters
10. Black and White


All good points except number 8. UV filters do nothing to improve photos in my opinion.

PhotoMapper Free Software Download

Free downloads of Copik's PhotoMapper are available now to download from their website.

Press Release:

Copiks Software Ltd's PhotoMapper is a program which will assist in organising your photographic memories by adding a geographic position to the EXIF-data that is already present in your files, so called geotagging.

The PhotoMapper is completely free to download and has no demo limitations.

Software to tag your photographs with geographical positions utilizing either GPS data or entering coordinates manually. Positions can be exported, and viewed, in Google Earth.

For more information and for a free download of the Copix software. please go to the Copiks website.