Have you ever tried taking a color photograph and converting it to black and white? A lot of programs do this for you automatically, but they simply desaturate (take away all the color data) and leave a limp grayscale image with no contrast. The leading quality of black and white photography is contrast. In order to take your photo from good to great, you need to add contrast and possibly some synthetic grain to your image. I’ve created a quick tutorial to show you how to easily make your photo go from Ooooo to Ahhhhh.

If you don’t have Photoshop, try downloading GIMP which is a free alternative to Photoshop.

Mosaic Photos

If you’ve ever wanted to create a mosaic photo out of hundreds of other photos, it’s free and easy to do. Download the free Foto Mosaik software (Windows only, sorry guys). Here are a couple mosaic photos I’ve created.

Kayaking Photo

This is a compilation photo of about 300 photos I took while kayaking to a small island near our house in Titusville, Florida.

Wedding Photo

This made a great poster, and was composed of over 500 images I took at Eric and Natasha’s wedding.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a database of photos to use in a mosaic.
• Select a base photo, then select your database
• WHAM! It’s done in a minute.

You can create high resolution posters for printing as well. A creative use for this would be to take a photo of your church building and make a large poster mosaic of photos from a church event. You could also make a mosaic globe with photos of missions trips.

Go to Foto Mosaik

Text Photos

ASCGEN is a great little program that converts your photos to text. It’s a pretty awesome effect that can add some interesting elements to your designs. Here’s a self-portrait I took and converted to text, then overlayed it on the original in Photoshop.

Download ASCGEN

I took some photos of a fire near my house out in the Canaveral Marshes yesterday.  I came up with some cool texture photos I wanted to share with everyone.  Feel free to use these in your designs to add some extra umph!   You could use some of these textures when talking about burnout or topics similar.  Overlay boring solid boxes with texture by adjusting the opacity and layer blend modes in Photoshop.  You can get the original files by right-clicking on the thumbs and saving the link, or you can click through and save the original image once it displays.  Enjoy!

Mister Nifty Exclusive!

I created this production set for churches.  You may use it free-of-charge for any church-related production.  You do not have to give a credit link.  You may not use this artwork for any commercial or personal purposes without contacting me first.  Let me know what you think!

Download Files

• HD Video Collage (Quicktime)
• HD Video Collage (MPEG)
• 4:3 Video Collage  (Quicktime)
• 4:3 Video Collage (MPEG)
• High Resolution Images Set

Congratulations to Dickie Adams and Goa Observer for being the lucky winners of a brand new shiny Flickr Pro account for Christmas.

Check out Freelance Switch where Dickie Adams is a contributing editor:  http://www.freelanceswitch.com

Check out Goa Observer’s Flickr page at: http://flickr.com/photos/goaobserverstream/

For Christmas this year I am giving two blessed Mister Nifty readers a free Flickr Pro account.  This means unlimited uploads and intense photo sharing awesomeness.  Flickr is a great way to centralize and host your church event photos, building tours, and much more.  To enter, simply post a comment with your name, email (kept private) and either your church or personal website and your favorite web application combos you use at your church (Gmail, Toodledo, Twitter, etc…).  On December 25th, my highly complex, personally programmed algorithm will choose two names.  Just kidding, my lovely wife will draw two names out of a recycled paper bag and viola, someone will have happy Flickr goodness for Christmas.

I came up with this illustrative concept a few years ago and I’ve used it teach the basics of photography to my students.  This is a short abbreviated version that will help you visualize the process of how a good photograph is made.  Hopefully it will challenge up-and-coming photographers to switch to the manual mode on their SLR rather than the program settings.