News

FOTOLIA ACQUIRES CLIENTS OF MICROSTOCK AGENCY POLYLOOKS

Polylooks Ceases Operations and Transitions Customers

to Europe’s Leading Microstock Agency

New York / Berlin, November 30, 2010 – In the wake of Deutsche Telekom’s decision to shutdown their online microstock photo agency Polylooks, Europe’s leading Microstock-Agency Fotolia is offering clients of Polylooks a way to seamlessly transition their accounts. From December 1st to 15th, all active clients of Polylooks can convert their accounts, including all credits, into a Fotolia account. This partnership agreement was made in consideration of Polylooks’ decision to discontinue their services as of December 31st, 2010.

Commencing January 1st, 2011, visitors of the Polylooks website will be redirected to Fotolia.co.uk Image buyers have the opportunity to switch their accounts in a smooth and straightforward fashion from Polylooks to Fotolia, to transfer their credits without any loss or charge, and to continue image buying without interruption. As clients of Fotolia, they will be able to access over 11 million royalty free photos, vectors and videos.

“We want our clients to enjoy the best possible continuity and quality when buying images – even after we discontinue our service. That is why we’re recommending Fotolia”, says Norbert Weber, head of Polylooks.

“We are very excited to offer this to the Polylooks community” adds Oleg Tscheltzoff, CEO, Fotolia LLC. “Not only does it strengthen our position as the leading stock photography marketplace in Europe, but we are convinced that all new clients will be thrilled by our service and our unparalleled selection of high quality images and videos.”

About Fotolia
Over 2 million people prefer Fotolia, LLC for affordable, royalty-free images, graphics and HD videos. With the introduction of the Infinite Collection, Fotolia became the first worldwide microstock organization to offer both crowd-sourced and professional images on one site. Founded in New York City in 2004, Fotolia spans the globe with websites in 11 languages and offices in 13 countries. With over 11,000,000 files to choose from, find it on Fotolia. www.fotolia.co.uk

Media Contact:
Daniela Reissmann
Director of Operations
UK and Europe
Fotolia, LLC
Direct: 020.8816-7284
Daniela@fotolia.com
http://ru.fotolia.com/partner/201366199

Fotolia exclusive and silver ranking contributor Eléonore Horiot uploaded the 10th million image (24933024) to fotolia.com

With several expansion projects and partnerships already announced this year, including one with Microsoft, Fotolia is celebrating two more major milestones: ten million images and two million members.

Since entering the market five years ago, Fotolia has quickly emerged as one of the leading global providers of affordable HD photos, vectors, and videos. Co-founder and CEO Oleg Tscheltzoff credits Fotolia’s success to key competitive advantages. He explains, “localized and custom sites provide our customers with content and styles relevant to their regions. Usability also sets us apart. We’re one of the only major microstock sites to offer a royalty-free license that allows images to be used without limits on print quantities, geographical placement, or length of use.”

Developing innovative solutions for contributors and buyers quickly shot Fotolia’s membership to two-million. The company was the first to partner with Microsoft on a free image plug-in for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and just rolled out a Fotolia Desktop AIR application that supports one-click image downloading, along with drag and drop lightboxes.

With ten million images and two million members, the Fotolia team remains focused. “This is a very competitive market. We are determined to keep expanding and localizing. Fotolia will be a household name when it comes to downloading images,” says Tscheltzoff.

Fotolia exclusive and silver ranking contributor Eléonore Horiot uploaded the 10th million image (24933024) to fotolia.com

JORDI CUBELLS: INTERVIEW

Jordi Cubells is a Barcelona based fashion and advertising photographer. He also carries out work for editorial magazines and many brands hire him to shoot their products.
His main subjects are catalogues and advertising for many well known brands, and he also works a lot with beauty, models and portraits.

Q-"What do you like most working as a photographer?

I like the process of making a picture with the help of the model, makeup artist, hairdresser and stylist. The whole team participating in the meeting is what motivates me most of the time during the creative process. When I know I have got the image I was searching for, this is the moment of maximum personal satisfaction and more rewarding for me.

A-Shoot or tweak?

Shooting without a doubt, taking photos is the most important part, but we also need to remember that nowadays retouching is 50% of the picture.

What cameras and equipment do you use most often?

I use a Canon EOS 10D digital photography and Canon A-1 and F-1 analog photography, along with a Hasselblad 500C / M medium format. In studio lighting torches and generators use a Bowens and Profoto Pro-7b generator and a torch Profoto.

What do you think about technological developments affecting the stock image business?

Photography is the art of capturing a moment to perpetuate and transmit a message through it, that in the purist sense of photography. The technologies are helping to undermine the purity and craftsmanship that was achieved with analog photography, but new technologies open up different paths and more innovative techniques that extend the field of creativity.

How would you describe your style as a photographer?

I am a professional photographer doing a lot of advertising, product and portrait images, so my style has to be commercial.

We can see you use many models in your photos. Do you always use professional models or amateur ones? How do you find them?.

Amateur models often contact me to make a book to start in the profession and I contact professionals through modeling agencies, and increasingly through websites that interact with models and photographers.

What advice would you give to photographers who are new to Fotolia?.

Patience, and adapting the content they upload to market needs, or create images that can be generic solutions for designers, publishers, etc.

How have you seen the evolution of the market for stock photography on Fotolia?

Amazing. I think Fotolia’s development in the market, has been the fastest expansion in the promotion, distribution and sales. I am personally very satisfied with Fotolia, thanks.

See Cubells´s portfolio at
http://ru.fotolia.com/p/201366199/partner/201366199
www.jordicubells.com

Technorati Tags : jordi_cubells |

Posted by Daniela on 14:55, September 16 2010

VECTOR TUTORIAL - 1950 FORD "WOODY" STATION WAGON

1 - For this tutorial, the artist chose an A4 canvas with a horizontal orientation. The Color Mode of the new document is set to CMYK, and the Raster Effects setting is 'High 300 ppi'.

Figure 1: Document Setup

2 - Place the photograph on which the vector illustration is based.

3 - Holding the Shift button to maintain the image proportions, scale the image down until the vehicle fits on the landscape format A4 drawing area. (Fig. 2) This first layer of the document only contains the placed source photograph and is named after the Fotolia image number for convenience.

Figure 2: Image Placement

4 - In the Layers palette add a new layer. This layer is for the front and rear wheels, so it is named ac-cordingly. Clicking on the ruler at the top of the work area, drag a horizontal guide down to the lower edge of the front tire. From the ruler on the left, drag a vertical guide to the left edge of the front tire.

Using the Ellipse tool, hold down “Shift” and click where the two guides meet. Drag the circle up and right to represent the circumference of the tire. Copy this circle, and use 'Paste in Front' to create a du-plicate.

While the new instance of the circle is still selected, in the Transform Palette click the square in the mid-dle of the 'Reference Point' grid. Having made certain that the horizontal and vertical axis are propor-tionally 'linked' by checking the Chain icon, reduce the size of the new instance of the circle to the outer edge of the tire whitewall. Repeat the process until you have also marked the inner edge of the white-wall, the outer and inner edges of the chrome trim ring, and the outer edge of the chrome hubcap.

5 - Momentarily hide the placed image layer and you'll see that the six circles, all centered around the same point, have decreasing stroke widths. Select them all, and set the stroke width to 1pt. (Fig. 3).
Duplicate this layer. Then, lock and hide the layer in the Layers Palette. In the original wheel layer, select the 2nd and 3rd circles, and swap the stroke and fill color around. Then 'punch out' the smaller hole from the larger circle using the function 'Exclude overlapping shape areas' in the Pathfinder Palette.
Click 'Expand' and then fill the whitewall with white.

Figure 3: Building the Wheels

6 - Copy and paste the fifth circle. Also select the first circle, and repeat as per the whitewall, this time filling this new tire shape with black.

In the Object Menu under Arrange use the command 'Send to back'. Click the overlying 5th circle and fill the wheel with the same color as the car bodywork. Make the underlying layer visible and select a color from out of the photo using the Eyedropper tool. The wheel is now dark blue.

Fill the innermost circle, the hubcap, with a pale grey. You should now have a blue wheel with a pale grey hubcap, with a black tire with a white sidewall.

7 - Unlock the duplicate wheel layer and make it visible. Lock the original wheel layer for a moment.
Select the 3rd and 4th circles and using the Pathfinder Palette knock out a chrome trim ring. Fill it with the same grey as the hubcap. Unlock the underlying Wheels layer, and whilst the trim ring in the copy layer is selected, drag the colored square from the copy layer to the original wheel layer below. The se-lected trim ring is moved down the layer stack to the original wheels layer. (Fig. 4)

Delete the duplicate wheels layer. Select every component of the front wheel and Group them together. Copy the grouped object, and paste another instance in front. Holding Shift to constrain the movement of the item to the horizontal axis, drag the new wheel instance to the right to make a back wheel for your illustration.

Figure 4: Trimming Things Down

8 - The next thing to be redrawn here is the car's bodywork. Using the Zoom tool, enlarge the view of the area around front wheel arch. Drag a guide down to the height of the lower sill.

9 - Using the pen tool, select a dark stroke color and no fill. Draw around the shape of the bodywork, defining the silhouette of the car bodywork but not yet drawing the chrome bumpers, front grille and headlamp surrounds. It is easier to see the image that you are drawing from if you use a stroke color but no fill. Toggle the stroke and fill around occasionally to see how the color 'fills' the shape as you draw.

When using the Pen tool, each mouse click creates a new vector point. Clicking and dragging with the mouse will reveal a pair of 'handles' which can be used to exactly define the line 'drawn' between that vector point and the next. When redrawing the outline of the station wagon, the artist 'closes' the silhouette shape, joining the vector outline by finally clicking back on the starting point. As a general rule of thumb, all paths in a vector image should be closed in this manner.

If it is difficult to discern the edges of the body panels, unlock the bottom layer, select the placed image and reduce the transparency to 75%, making the background image lighter. When the silhouette of the painted bodywork is complete, and the outline path has been closed, fill the bodywork with a dark blue color.

10 - In a third layer, appropriately named 'woodwork', draw the wooden framework and paneling, and change the outline color from a dark blue to a dark brown.

Use the Eyedropper tool to select a color from the underlining photograph. Firstly delineate the outer edge of the wooden side panels, then draw the side windows. Make a copy of the side windows, and hide them in a new layer.

Back in the woodwork layer, fill the woodwork area with a pale brown color, and 'knock out' the win-dows in the same way you drew and colored the tire and whitewall earlier. Now drag the copy of the side windows down into the bodywork layer, and 'knock out' the side windows from the blue bodywork in the same way as previously detailed. (Fig. 5)

Figure 5: Bodywork Outline

11 - In another new layer draw the darker wooden paneling and the edges of the pale wooden frame-work. Name this layer 'woodwork 2'. Now the illustration is really taking shape. (Fig. 6)

Figure 6: Bodywork

Time to draw the chrome work, in a new layer thus named. Make the underlying photo layer visible.
In the bodywork layer swap the blue fill for the transparent outline. Make a duplicate and paste it in the chrome work layer. Hide the underlying photo layer. Using the Scissors tool, cut the path at the top of the front wing just above the headlight and at the bottom. Retain only the line defining the front edge of the front wing.

Delete the remainder of the bodywork silhouette. Duplicate this line and hide the duplicate in another layer. Use this line to define the right hand edge of the chrome work elements. Draw the grille frame, the central grille sections, the bumper and the over rider. (Fig. 7)

Figure 7: Chrome!

Finally draw the front headlamp bezel and lens, the door handle and the bright work strip along the waistline above the woodwork. At the tail of the car add the rear bumper and over rider. Add the front turn signal.

12 - In a separate layer entitled 'spare wheel and tail light', add the 'continental kit' wheel cover and the tail light pod.

Return to your bodywork layer and define the upper edge of the front wing, plus the rear edge of the bonnet panel. Duplicate the wheel arch shapes from the bodywork layer, paste them in place in a new underlying layer entitled 'wheel arch fill', and fill the two apertures with a dark grey color. Add a couple more points to close both paths, and extend the fill downwards to simulate the silhouette of the engine and rear axle.

Without these elements the bodywork appears to 'float' above the wheels and doesn't look quite right. (Fig. 8)

Figure 8: Wheel Arch

13 - To make the vehicle look a realistic, create another layer for the window area, including a pale grey silhouette of the windows on the far side of the car. This helps to create the illusion of depth.

Add a soft blurred shadow underneath to give the image dimension. Chose any bodywork color.
By selecting the bodywork, and then selecting all objects 'with the same fill color', you can change the color of the paintwork on the body, wheel trims, spare wheel cover and taillight, all with one click of the mouse in the color palette. Locking the wheel layer, activate every other layer and lower the entire body shell for a cool 'low-rider' stance.

You could even tilt the whole body down at the front end, for a wicked 'hot rod' look. (Fig. 9)

Figure 9: Finished

http://ru.fotolia.com/p/201366199/partner/201366199

Technorati Tags : Vector Tutorial 1950 Ford Woody station wagon |

Posted by marcus on 11:45, September 8 2010

MILLIONS OF FOTOLIA IMAGES AVAILABLE THROUGH FREE CORELDRAW® GRAPHICS SUITE X5 UPDATE

Corel Image.jpg

The acclaimed CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5 features direct access to Fotolia’s royalty-free collection of over nine-million images. Customers using the latest version of Corel’s award-winning graphic design software can receive this new functionality via a free update from www.corel.com/updates.

“The professionals using Fotolia and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 have instant access to fresh content by using the search and download feature,” explains Oleg Tscheltzoff. “As a leading global provider of stock images, we are very pleased to team up with Corel on this initiative.” Visitors to Fotolia will find over 10,000 images comprised of photos, vectors, illustrations, and videos added to the collection each day.

Corel and CorelDRAW are registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries.

“Working with Fotolia will give our users more options to create with impact by providing them with the opportunity to connect with even more content," said John Falsetto, Senior Product Manager, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. "Having integrated access to a high-quality stock image source like Fotolia is extremely valuable to today's graphics professional."

Known for its high-quality and affordable collection, Fotolia’s images start at less than $1 USD. All downloads come with flexible licensing options that include unlimited copy runs. Over two-million creative professionals, artists, and contributors have signed-up for a free account on www.fotolia.com

For more information about CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5, to purchase an ESD or download a free 30-day trial, please visit www.corel.com/coreldraw . To learn more about how CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is used worldwide, please visit the product's community site at http://coreldraw.com.

Technorati Tags : corel draw | fotolia corporation |

http://ru.fotolia.com/p/201366199/partner/201366199

Posted by Daniela on 14:39, September 14 2010

JOSE-PAULO REIS - TUTORIAL

This month, in this tutorial by José-Paulo Reis, find out how to create an impressive effect on a portrait, using Illustrator and Photoshop CS5. This tutorial comes from the magazine .PSD Photoshop.

Distractions

medium | 45 min
Photoshop CS5 | Illustrator

In this tutorial I will show you how to acheieve an interesting effect using vectors

1. To begin, create a new document as shown below.

2. Fill the background layer with black colour (ALT + Backspace)

3. Next,choose the image that you think would be the best for this tutorial. You can choose anything but I think the result is better when you use a photo of a model's face. Next select the picture for this tutorial. Any picture will do, but the photo of a face or a portrait will be the most suitable here.

4. Once you've chosen your image you have to cut it. I think the best way to do it is to use the Pen Tool because it allows you to acheive a better effect. Now you must go to Paths palette and click with [Ctrl] and the mouse button on the thumbnail you created. Than click [Ctrl] + [C] to copy and [Ctrl] + [V] to paste. Now you need to cut the face out of the picture. In this scenario we used Pen Tool since it provided the best result.

5. In Paths panel click left mouse button on the thumbnail you created. Next press [CTRL] +[C] to copy and [CTRL]+[V] to paste it.

6. Once you cut your image, you must give a little contrast to the colors, using
Image>Adjustments>Selective color and set the values you can see onn the image below. Now we will adjust contrast of the cut out image. Go to Layer > New Adjustments Layer > Selective colour and set the values as you see in the picture below.

7. Duplicate the model's layer and desaturate it using [Shift] + [Ctrl] + [U]. In the Layers panel select desaturated copy of the model and go to Filter>Blur>Lens Blur and use the settings below.

8. Now save the document as PSD file (File>Save as).

9. In this step you need to make sure that you have chosen or made the right vectors to be used in the image you are creating. As soon as you have it done, drag into Photoshop and choose Smart object. To do that, highlight your Vector in Layers panel, right click mouse button and from the drop down menu select Convert to smart object.

10. Now put your vectors in your file. Choose the first one and go to Filter>Distort> Displace. Use the settings shown below. You have to do it for all the vector layers.

Choose the file you have saved before in PSD format to complete the displace filter.
Next, duplicate the face image as many times as the number of vectors you add to your file. We need the original copy of the image you cut on top of any smart object you create. Once you have the images on top of the vector layers you have to create Clipping masks. Right-click on each copy of the image layer in the Layers palette and select Create Clipping Mask.

11. Once you have done all the clipping masks, you must give some layer properties to the vector layers. Click on fx below the Layers panel, select drop shadow and use the settings below.

12.
You can modify the settings of each smart object layer just the way you want.

I hope you enjoy the result !

By José-Paulo Reis

http://ru.fotolia.com/p/201366199/partner/201366199
Technorati Tags : jose-paulo_reis |

Posted by Daniela on 17:33, October 21 2010

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