I have been using Mpix for years and could not be happier with their products. A collegue of mine uses Nations Photo Lab and swears by them. If you want high quality printed on canvas and mounted then Canvas People. Unbelievable quality for the price.

Though setting the diopter on the eyepiece and then shooting without glasses will work for some, you have to be careful. Anyone with any astigmatism is in for trouble since the astigmatism cannot be set at the eyepiece. No matter what you set the diopter at the image is still blurry because of the astigmatism. Would be nice if you could get eyepiece lenses with sphere, but alas they aren't available.
have a friend who had a custom eyepiece made to his exact prescription, but then he is rolling in dough......cost him over $500

The bottom line is that you should only post photos to the WEB that you don't mind ending up in the public domain. I have even found some of my photos on other websites where I had watermarked them. Photoshop clone stamp tool can very easily remove the watermark to the point where you don't even know that it was there.

It will mask out anything from any photo. If you go to the website you will see a lot of examples of just what you were talking about, removing buildings, new skies.....In fact you can cut out anything and replace it with anything. What is really nice, by creating multiple masks for multiple houses, for example, and then drop them into an entirely different scene. Doesn't do anything that you can't already do in photoshop, just does it more accurately and quicker. They claim that a simple cut out takes 9.2 seconds.

Remax takes about 2-3 minutes to completely eliminate a background...any background. Quick and extremely effective. The basic reason that I like remask is that it can take ANY photo and remove the background, not just photos shot in a studio condition with a green screen background. The photo I uploaded from their website shows quite dramatically what I'm talking about. This photo was shot against a brick wall......yet the recomposition shows it as if it were photograped outside.
Since most of what I have is weddings where the subjects were shot against an drab outside landscape or in an unattractive indoor background, the changes are dramatic and result in additional high dollar sales. Unfortunately, here in Missouri, these photographs are not owned by me, and I can't upload any of them without the written permission of the contract owner. Wish the contract could say that I own them, but not in this state.
I'll look through my catalog to see If I can find a coulple that aren't covered by contract.
To see just how powerful Remask is, go onto the Topazlabs website and navigate to the plugin Remask. There are some great tutorials that show what it can do.

Not a good thing......maybe the moderators should look at his even being here. Maybe a small copyright watermark containing your name is needed.

Hmmm talk about a controversy. If someone is really posting you photos as there own, then it says a lot about them.
Too bad that most of us post jpeg photos here for the ease of uploading, and jpeg doesn't contain all of the metadata that would show someone who was plagerizing the photos.
Maybe I will have to conisder embedding watermarks in anything that I post here. I really don't want to, but then copyright laws are still the law and are respected by the vast majority of us, but mabe not by all!!!!

Had a good friend who used GSW, a watching him set up for the shoot was mind blowing.....green screen? His results though were pretty good, and for someone who didn't have much software for post processing, I could say they were great results. My problems with GSW are two fold. 1 all of the setup and the requirement for an indoor shoot, and 2 it really does a lousy job with things like blowing hair, veils or gauzy clothing where the shoot backgrouns actually shows throug.
I do a lot of the same kind of things, but without the green screen or GSW. I take any shot (inside, outside, any background - even the city dump) and post process it for any needed corrections. I then use Topaz Remask to cut the background completely away (whatever the backgroud is) and then overlay it on the background of my choice. Does a remarkable job on Bridal veils (where the new background actually shows through the veil), smoke, unruly hair where strands stick out) and other things that GSW just cannot handle.
You could do the same thing in Photoshop using a black mask, but it would be very time consuming. I just love what I can accomplish in recomposing photos, but then I have all the fancy bells and whistles to do it with. (grin)
Here is an example of recomposing with Remask taken from the Topaz website. I don't think they would mind since i'M plugging their product (Grin)

weddingad

LOL Didn't mean to start a controversy. Lightroom has become more powerful since ver 1, especially now that Topaz and NIK plug ins (at least some of them) can be used within Lightroom 3 and 4. But Lightroom is still a cataloging program with some minimal post production capability. Nothing like what can be done in Elements and especially what can be done in Photoshop. Although now being embraced by a lot of amateurs, it was still designed as a cataloging program for professionalswith only a small number of the post processing features contained in Photoshop. In fact, what is available in Lightroom is almost identical to what is contained in Photoshop Camera Raw, which also is designed for rudimentary post production. For a lot of amateurs this is more than enough, but for most professionals it isn't. There definitely is a heirarchy.

Lightroom and Camera Raw provide some of the most used post production functions, but no where near all of them.

photoshop Elements provides quite a bit more post production capability, but its name says it all.....Elements. Nice marketing decision by Adobe, who could have called it Photoshop Light.

Photoshop which has all of the bells and whistles to really delve into the world of creative post processing.

Topaz and NIK that take it even a step further, by making a lot of the functions contained within Photoshop even easier and more thorough than Photoshop itself.

What you need depends on what you are going to accomplish. If you are an amateur who just wants to make your photos a little better, correct color balance, exposure, etc., then Lightroom may be enough and in addition give you a great cataloging program. If you are an advanced amateur who wants to take it a step further, maybe Elements is the way to go. If you are a fanatic, dedicated professional, or want to turn photos into works of art, then Photoshop, especially with Topaz or NIK is the only way to go.

What you should buy is what you need for what you want to accomplish, and what you can afford. For an amateur who only wants to do corrections (color balance, esposure correction, etc., then why would you ever spend the big bucks for CS6 and all of the plug ins? But if you are a photographic artist, then you can't do what you want to do with Elements or Lightroom. Many of the shoots that I do have requirements placed on the photos by the buyer, and I have to be able to give them exactly what they want. If I was only retouching photos, and doing some minor changes, then Elements would be enough. Just don't say that Lightroom or Elements is wonderful and all powerful, they aren't.

Red Iris...Lightroom was never designed for post processing in the first place. It was not designed for what Adobe thought "photographers needed." Lightroom is a professional storage and cataloging program designed for professional photographers to store, manipulate, catalog and find photographs in the vast ibrary of pictures that they take, and easilly retrieve the exact picture that they want from their vast library. The post processing functions within lightroom were placed within it on the request of professionals who liked the idea of doing MINIMAL post processing without having to leave Lightroom, or permanently altering the original photo. Although the compatability of Topaz and NIK plugins have greatly increased the post processing capability within Lightroom it is still designed primarily as a cataloging program. Professionals will do some basic post processing in Lightroom and then move the photo into Photoshop to really complete their post processing. I feel that elements is a great starting point for amateur photographers, but that is exactly what it is, a starting point. It is very limited compared to Photoshop, especially CS4 and beyond and doesn't have the ability to really, finally post process.

Ahhhhh!!! Just like me. As an "old f*art" from the days of film, I really didn't see the need for any post processing when I started with digital. Got a really cheap program that I won't name so that I could do some dodging, burning, and slight exposure correction like I could do with film. What did I need an expensive program for...I never did before.
Then my son (a graphic artist) sat me down and showed me some of the things that could be done with Photoshop (then CS4). For the first time, I was able to take a photography that was "alright" and turn it into something I could really be proud of, something that was in my minds eye when I took the photo. And then I realized that I could take it a lot further, turning a bland photo into something that I could never have dreamed of when I took the photo.
Now I own Photoshop CS6 and all of the topaz plug ins as well as lightroom 4, and many of the Nic plug ins and HDR effects, and have a new passion for photography. Bottom line is, buy elements, it is a great place to start. You will be amazed how you ever did without it.

Glad to see this thread. I keep getting p*ssed at those idiots that think that just having the newest and latest equipment will have them automatically outputing better pictures. Kinda like the "wine snobs" of the camera world. I have had a D300 since they were first introduced and still use it as my primary body. Sure, there are newer bodies with larger CMOS and more bells and whistles, but I'm still taking great photographs with the D300 and when I ask myself if I need the newer bodies, the answer is always no, so I pat 300 a couple of time, and shoot another 500 pics.

The other major advantage of tiff over jpeg is that if a file is edited with layers present, masks, etc. the tiff file can be saved with the layers still distinct and intact, jpeg merges the layers so that they are never again recoverable. That is why so many houses that don't accept psd or other proprietary formats require tiff instead of jpeg. If they need to tweak the layers, they can.

I often use the watermark brush, especially if I am processing a number of photos and want the same copyright info on all of them. But I often use another way, which is much more elegant, and I think that by her mention of "signature" is what BlueHawk might have had in mind.
I often do artistic photoreproduction, even sometimes in BW, and, like any other artist was looking for a way to "sign" my photos for printing, just like a brush artist would. I use my signature, just as they would.
First sign a piece of white paper with the signature exactly the way you want it, then scan it (usually as a jpeg or even better as a tif,) with a transparent background. This can also be done using any graphic that you want to include (including the copyright marc.) This only has to be done once...now you have it saved as your signature, graphic, or however you want it, and never have to do it again.)
When the photo post processing is complete to the way that I want to print....I import it as a new layer,place that layer on top, and then I can change the size, position, transparency, color, etc. of the signature depending on the photo that is being signed it.s colors, etc;.
Takes just a little work getting the signature and/or graphic scanned, but once you have it, it is only one click to place it onto your photo.
I'm no Rembrandt, but it is really great to actually see the photo signed by me, just the way he did with his paintings.

Some later XP and all Windows 7 systems have ownership and security options that were placed in the operating system to be able to thwart outsiders (read hackers) to get into and change files. These settings can cause some real problems if you don't understand them and only leave the defaults in place when trying to modify, copey, etc., but are easy to modify. There is no need tomodify them on a single computer, but sometimes they must be reset in a network environment.
Right click on the file that you wish to see or change the security options, and click on the properties option and then on the security tab.. Then click on the advanced tab to see ownership (ability to change settings.) The ownership should include users as well as administrators for the best control. Here you can edit the ownership...note will ask you about all subfolders.
Once that is complete, go back to the security tab and ensure that full control is allowed under the permissions tab, or edit it to ensure full control. You can set this differently for each of the users. This should eliminate any problems on the Windows side. For the MAC...who knows, they don't document their OS very well.