25 Ways to Spice Up Blog Post Photos
Images enhance the visual impact of a blog and make it more likely a post will be read. One good photo can grab a reader's attention and drive them to the article.
A post without any graphs, drawing, or photos can look daunting. Even if it's well written, the wall of text might not appeal to anyone. A good image is often a must-have for a great post.
But sometimes the images available for publishing are poor quality, or just don't suit quite right.
With the tricks below, you can use Photoshop to fix up your images in minutes. Instead of a dull photo, you can liven it up to an image that might actually appeal to someone.
Strong Focus for Killer Portraits
Create A Photo Within A Photo using Photoshop
Enhance Your Image with Selective Color Adjustments
The effect of Tilt-shift camera lens
Easily Smooth And Soften Skin In A Photo
Add A Realistic Water Reflection
How to Create a Fantastically Formal Photo Effect
Photo Retouch using Photoshop Techniques
Turn A Photo Into A Collage Of Polaroids
Easy "Whitening Teeth & Eyes" in Photoshop
Photoshop Lovely Fog Overlay
Turn A New Photo Into An Old Photo
Superb Skin Airbrush Technique
Enhance Eyes and Make Them Stand Out
Photoshop tutorial Changing Heads
Vintage Clouds Effect in Photoshop
Adding Rain Effect To A Photo in Photoshop
Turn Your Photo Into a Movie Like Effect
Trendy Neutral Photo Effect
Beautiful Lighting Effect
Easiest Way To Change Hair Color
Ultimate Makeup Using Photoshop
Adding Reflections To Sunglasses
How to Replace Faces on Movie Posters using Photoshop
Quick Way to Enhance Image Color
Now there's no excuse for a boring photo in your post. It only takes a minute to fix up that image you found and the effect can be profound.
What are your favorite tricks to improve an image?
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About the Author - Narendra Sakibanda loves web contests and blogs at his tech blog Tech Treak.
Written on 29th September 2008.
Other posts tagged with Images, Photography, Photoshop, Post Formatting, Post Images.
29th September, 5:50 pm GMT
Excellent collection of photo tutorials! I'm definitely going to file this post away for future reference. I started using photos in posts a year ago, but my edits were sadly limited to cropping the photos.
29th September, 7:24 pm GMT
Great collection of tutorials. I will be sure to come back when I need to use one. I really really like that movie one I've never seen that before it's a cool effect.
29th September, 8:43 pm GMT
Awesome list. One that will put me to work no doubt. I especially like the Vintage Clouds Effect.. or maybe it's the girl
29th September, 9:58 pm GMT
excellent list. am checking out a few of the tuts right now. Thanks!
29th September, 10:11 pm GMT
Excellent list. Thanks!
29th September, 11:40 pm GMT
Thank YOU. I've only recently begun teaching myself how to interact with the big scary beast that is Photoshop. It will probably take me 6 hours to achieve anything you've listed (beyond teeth whitening and blemish removal).
I've taught myself via YouTube tutorials until now... but yours look really user-friendly. Bookmarking this page right now!
PS: Any good suggestions for free image resources, besides Flickr and stock.xchng?
29th September, 11:42 pm GMT
Ehh, this post end up giving me more ideas on post-processing / what to do with my photos instead of using it for my blog.
Generally if I ever need photos for articles that don't have photo (my hardware / games review come with photos and screen shots) - I'll just get them at istockphoto and use it, they're usually just perfect.
To me, I just don't see the purpose PPing the images used for blog as they're just decorations as they're usually great already, unless of course maybe the effect above helps in bring an emphasis to your points.
Nevertheless, I like this post of yours for the links to the tutorials.:D Now it's just a matter of finding time to pickup those I've yet know.
30th September, 12:01 am GMT
Wow! Thank you so much for this collection i will be definitely coming back here to see all of your other posts!
30th September, 12:09 am GMT
This is an awesome list of tutorials to spice up blog post photos. Although I know how to do a lot of them I went through them anyways and found that other people were using different techniques than what I'm using myself. It's always nice to see different ways of doing things because you never know when you might have to use one way instead of the other.
30th September, 6:51 am GMT
Amazing collection man !!!!!!!!!!!!
30th September, 11:59 am GMT
Nice collection, that face swap isnt very good though. Check out my version of the same technique, much more in depth.
No offence to the author, but its not very user friendly or accurate.
http://dewaldhein.com/joomla/p.....e-off.html
30th September, 5:41 pm GMT
Very nice collection of lessons. I try to study Photoshop and it is the easy way to do this, using examples like these. Thank you.
30th September, 5:46 pm GMT
STUMBLED!
the collage one is very nice, have bookmarked for future use.
30th September, 5:50 pm GMT
photoshop is the best, i could stay on that all day
1st October, 7:36 am GMT
Amazing list, this is very usefull.
1st October, 7:38 am GMT
Hey Micheal!
Great list... I'm looking for a tut on perspective. Like seeing a thing from the bottom up or left to right, kinda like that. [swooshing effect]. Any recommendations?
1st October, 11:51 am GMT
Awesome collection thanks for sharing!
1st October, 6:24 pm GMT
an awesome post with some great photoshop tutorials for photo s to make them look more professional for your blog
2nd October, 3:59 am GMT
Nice collection of tutorials..I photoshopped (just the basics) almost every image for every post, it's quite time consuming. If I were to enhance the images using techniques above, it would take me ages to post a new entry!
Maybe I'll use them for selected feature posts..thanks for the list! Love the polaroid collage technique..
2nd October, 2:27 pm GMT
"Add A Realistic Water Reflection" - liked it very much! thx!!
2nd October, 3:37 pm GMT
I am going to try the photo within Photo for my next blog post
Very useful for my photoshop and blogging skills.
2nd October, 3:59 pm GMT
This is a fantastic list, I just forwarded this to my graphic artist... THANK YOU!!!!
2nd October, 3:59 pm GMT
I really liked this article. Very interesting and very informative. Thanks for sharing this mate. Cheers.
2nd October, 4:22 pm GMT
really helpful tips i was aware of many of them but something like that of the realistic water reflcetion is something which i was not aware of and yet they are very intresting...
3rd October, 7:10 am GMT
I like the formal bit.
4th October, 5:14 pm GMT
I love the effects i need to grab photoshop for the mac since i have recently switched. Great list of resources though
5th October, 10:34 am GMT
thanks for these photoshop tutorials
5th October, 10:50 am GMT
The first one (focus on the person) looks really nice - I think I could make use of it on more than one occasion. Awesome list, Michael - stumbled it (too bad I wasn't the first, ie. discovered it).
PS: Perhaps you should remove the 'external' tag to comment author links (remove that tag from comments-template in /wp-includes), perhaps it reduces the value of the link?
I'd comment here any way
6th October, 8:24 am GMT
Woah. That's a huge list of great tutorials! Stumbled for reference!
6th October, 9:19 am GMT
Hey thanks for the long list. I've been using psdtuts to learn a lot of crazy photoshop stuff lately.
I really like the rain, vintage cloud and water reflection effects.
6th October, 9:49 pm GMT
Michael,
This is such a great resource. You already know that I included it on my weekly list but I thought I would stop by and let you know again how much I appreciate this post.
6th October, 11:02 pm GMT
Great list! I haven’t really gotten into anything other than stock and borrowed photos, but when I start to have my own, I will keep this in mind!
7th October, 7:44 am GMT
These were so cool, I bookmarked your page. Thanks!
7th October, 1:37 pm GMT
Gah, I still have ways to go with Photoshop! Thank you for the tips. Very helpful!
8th October, 10:05 am GMT
I just bought photoshop and your post came at the best possible moment! Also going to study some HDR, in case you want to write about something like that too...
13th October, 12:40 pm GMT
great tips.. thank you
13th October, 12:55 pm GMT
Nice post. Obviously a lot of thought has gone into acquiring all of the links for these tutorials. I find another effective method of spicing up blog photos is to use photos with violence in them, and photos with blood and gore in them.
13th October, 11:39 pm GMT
Pretty cool collection of photos, and effective ways of using photoshop. Good Job!
14th October, 6:36 pm GMT
This is great stuff - thanks for the tutorials too.
15th October, 3:39 pm GMT
Wow I love it! Some fab suggestions there and I'll definitely take them away and apply them to my blog!
Thanks for the awesome tips!
17th October, 7:53 pm GMT
Great collection of effects for the image enhancement! I bet photographers will like to use these too.
18th October, 2:06 pm GMT
Great tips and tutorials, keep up the great job.
22nd October, 5:22 pm GMT
To say that it was good - would be an understatement! Superb collection - stumbled and twittered.
Alex
25th October, 2:54 am GMT
Great post. Just in time too, I've been running out of ideas to the point where I've started buying photos online to use.
29th October, 7:13 pm GMT
Found you through Liz's party-- and all I can say is-- where has this post been all my blogging life?!!!!!! I have been afraid to try to learn photoshop ... but now I'll dive in. inspiring! cvh
2nd November, 5:24 pm GMT
Oh my gosh, I had no clue you could do all that with pictures. I am going to have to print this out and read it a few times there is a lot to grasp.
3rd November, 9:56 pm GMT
You have a great series of how-to's here. Now, if I only spent more time on my images for my blogs, I would use all of these (I know, I should!). Found your post after going to Liz Strauss's birthday party, so wanted to say hello and offer my thanks for your tips.
18th November, 1:27 am GMT
Great photos really clean and clear. I think I will add a few on my blog.
It sort of looks like a bill board and the photos might brihten it up.
Kim Dion