OK, give me a minute while I get on my soap box.

I was looking through the threads tonight at the excellent photos. I got to thinking about all the time, patience and expense put into a photo. A while back I tried 'still life.' I thought that since it didn't move focus would be a given and the rest shouldn't be too hard; I mean I have two eyes I can see what I like and what I don't like. If I don't like what I see, change it, how hard could that be? I found out it is very difficult, you have composition and lighting and other things that come into play more so then with other photos. So I moved into portraits. So what do you have to watch for here other then lighting and composition? So I tried it and it became very obvious to me what I was seeing, wasn't what the camera was seeing.
The list goes on with landscape, macro, etc, etc and etc.

So you spend all the time and gain all the experience it takes to create an excellent photo and post on the forum. What happens? You get over a hundred people that look at it and only about ten that say anything at all. To me that's rather disheartening.

Does anyone else feel this way?

OK, I'm getting off my soap box now. Who's next??

Even photos with crappy lighting (pop-up flash?) can make some pretty pictures, if you know this secret.

You could invest hundreds of dollars for PhotoShop software but there's one heck of a learning curve. Instead, try pro portraiture software that's user friendly, like a program I use and love. It's called ArcSoft's Portrait Plus (Google it) and you can learn it in an evening and be making beautiful images in no time at all.

ArcSoft's Portrait Plus doesn't handle RAW files but it does handle TIFF and JPEG. But don't let that stop you.

Try it and you'll be amazed at how professional your people images will look!