There's a lot you can do these days with a photo in Photoshop, or any other photo editing program (Lightroom, Aperture, Etc.) There's HDR processing, textures, cross-processing and tons of other ways to heavily manipulate an image. But sometimes knowing how to tweak an image just a bit, to give it that edge over a straight out of the camera shot is all it takes to impress your viewer. In my daily editing I use a variety of techniques, and listed below are 2 standbys!

First up:

Lighten and Brighten!
(It's all about the Curves)

Curve Tool:
Keyboard Shortcut - Apple+M (Mac) or Control+M (PC)
or
Menu Selection - Image -> Adjustments -> Curves
or
Black and White Cookie on Layers Pallette (see below)

Starting Image:

Huh? There are no women in web design? But—scratches head—am not I a woman? Well, that would be a yes, however, if you attend one of the many web conferences or read about the "rock star" web designers—Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, Dan Cederholm—often women aren't mentioned or included. If they are, it is one of the same handful always mentioned—Veerle Pieters, Molly E. Holzschlag (Molly) or Larissa Meek anyone? I don't begrudge Veerle, Molly or Larissa their due but I would love to see a few more names become common-place because there are some wonderful women out there shaping the web. I work with some of them.

I guess I could ask the typical questions of why there seems to be some invisible boundary women can't cross in web design. Is it because women are afraid of the "technical aspects" of it? Is it because women tend to be the caregivers in a family, so they don't have time to speak at conferences? Are we not being asked to speak at conferences? Are we too scared or meek to toot our own horns? Is it because the "man" is trying to keep us down (the was a joke by the way)?

I could pose many more questions and could even speculate about why this seems to be an issue but…I won't. I no more have the answers to these questions than anyone else, I only have opinions and opinions aren't facts—as much as some people would want you to believe they are. What I do know is that every generation—no matter the gender—needs someone of their own gender to look up to. Young women need to see that they too can become successful in their field if they chose web design as that field.

All that said, there is good news, despite the numbers, web conference events are attempting to be more inclusive and we're seeing at least one or two women as guest speakers at a majority of them. So I figured in celebration of Paper Clip Day (I know it was in May but I missed it), I would like to steer you towards some female web designers who are doing good work.

Divas of Web design

Jina Bolton | Sushi & Robots

Twitter is 140-character chunks of immediacy written by people that matter to you. Your friends, famous web designers, favorite directors and actors, or even childhood heroes. The oldest content on Twitter's homepage for me, right now, is one hour old. The oldest. The most recent tweet was written two minutes ago by some designer I've never met who lives in Canada. It reads:

Rethinking the whole "giant burrito before client meeting" idea.

Did news about this Canadian's gastrointestinal situation make my life better? YES. Just the fact that it occurred right as I was eating my own lunch, for one thing, made it relevant. I also sympathize acutely with having the vulgar details of bodily functions make client meetings uncomfortable. We spend so much of our time acting like perfectly running professional machines: it's pleasurable to have a moment of sympathy with the inescapable biological humanity of another designer.

This is why I get so impatient when I see lists like Matthew Inman's Ten Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About, which advises against tweeting about what you're eating, your workout, out-of-context thoughts, or your kid-dog-cat-goat-or whatever else. These rules prohibit many things that are patently good, and don't even touch what's really at work in making some tweets more interesting than others.