Friday, April 17, 2015

Ultimate Guide to Creating Visually Appealing Content [Infographic]

Why is visually appealing content so important? Our answer would be that the social media engagement, backlinks, and increased views keep our website continually higher ranked on search engine as well as increased overall readership. Key pieces to keeping the website (and our business) running.

Want to learn how to create more visually appealing content? Then check out this great infographic put together by the folks over at QuickSprout.

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Visually Appealing Content

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

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by Richard S - Dakota Visions Photography, LLC

Monday, April 13, 2015

New! Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 Update Available Today

New! Perfect Photo Suite Version 9.5 Upgrade Now Available for Download - Technical Details and New Features List

For a list of the technical details and new feature list, see below:

Browse Enhancements


  • Persistent Thumbnail Cache: Stores thumbnails are previews on disk so that when you go back to folder a second time it loads much faster. You can control the size and location in the preferences.
  • Improved Detail View: Our goal was to reduce or eliminate seeing pixelated previews in Detail View. It now generates a larger preview up front so you will see less pixelated previews. It also reads ahead and behind so that when you move between images there is no pixelation. It also continues to process thumbnails and previews in the background.
  • Improved Grid View: The thumbnail grid has been rewritten. It should be faster changing folders. You can also scroll through large folders with no detail.
  • Albums: Create and manage lists of photos that can live anywhere, similar to a collection in Lightroom. Watch Videos


Crash Logger: Automatically logs crashes and hangs and reports them back to on1.


Scratch Disk: You can now configure where you scratch disk is located. This is handy if your boot volume is a small SSD. Adjust this in the preferences.


Mask Enhancements


  • Line Mask Tool: Create or edit masks with a point-to-point polygon tool. Click around the shape you want to mask, then click in the middle to mask that area.
  • Double-click on Blur and Chisel: You can now (or finally again) apply the Blur Mask and Chisel Mask tools to the entire mask by double-clicking on the tool icons.
  • Luminosity Mask: You create a luminosity mask or copy the luminosity to paste it as a mask onto other layers. The commands live in the Layer and or Mask menus.
  • Mask Contextual Menu: When you right click on a mask thumbnail in Layers or Effects there is now a contextual menu with the same options as the Mask menu.
  • Feather in or out with Blur Mask tool: There is now a mode option in the tool options bar for the Blur Mask tool. When it blurs it can either lighten or darken so that the blur goes inside or outside the current mask instead of just along the edge. Handy finishing touch for hair.
  • “O” key now toggles the mask preview on and off like Lightroom.

Portrait improvements


  • Faster Loading, like three seconds instead of 12!
  • Faster Control Point Adjustments. You can still get it to beep occasionally. We will continue to improve this for Suite 10.
  • Updated Control Point Overlay.

GPU Processing for Perfect Effects: We are in the process of converting everything in Perfect Effects to process in the GPU (video card). This make it much faster to adjust the sliders and use tools. For Suite 9.5 the following filters have been updated.


  • Blending Options
  • Antique
  • Color Enhancer
  • Cross Process
  • Lens Flare
  • Photo Filter
  • Split Tone
  • Vintage
  • Vignette

Misc Enhancements


  • Hold down command and option when you launch to delete preferences.
  • Colorize and Invert options added to the Borders and Textures panes in Effects. This gives you more control over what color you want for basic borders like Simple and Emulsion.
  • Crop settings now sticky across sessions and modules.
  • 100% Actual Size option is now available in the Print dialog.
  • Brushes should now behave more like Photoshop. They feather equally in and out instead of just in. The brush profile has also been modified to act more like Photoshop.
  • Color Temp control has been adjusted to be more yellow, less orange. It now tracks closer to Lightroom when you are working on a raw file
  • Suppress Edit What dialog (coming soon). When you use the Suite as a standalone you will not be prompted for your file handling options every time you open a file. These options are being moved to the preferences instead.

Information and image credits: on1 - Focused on Photography®

Join us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ , Twitter, or sneak a peek at our photography on Dakota Visions Photography, LLC. Until next time, we'll see you behind the lens...



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by Richard S - Dakota Visions Photography, LLC

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Quote of the Day: A Mind Stretched...

A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Quote of the Day: A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions. #QOTD


Join us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ , Twitter, or sneak a peek at our photography on Dakota Visions Photography, LLC. Until next time, we'll see you behind the lens...


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by Richard S - Dakota Visions Photography, LLC