Photoshop

When we talk 3D printing to friends, a common question is "What do you make with a 3D printer?!" While some people have experimented with fashion, lamps, and toys, the future of 3D printing could be as ubiquitous as your used-everyday key chain. Everyone needs one, after all!

Pixil 3D, a Florida-based 3D printing company run by two brothers, creates goods using its MakerBot printers with the design-savvy in mind. Yes, creative minds, these Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator key chains ($16 each) were made just for you, with an extra dose of hi-tech from its 3D construction. It's a clever keepsake for designers who seem to spend more time with the Adobe Creative Suite of programs than, well, anyone else.

Now that you've polished up your photography skills, it's time to take your photos to the next level by having some fun with Photoshop. Editing and tweaking your pics isn't considered cheating — it helps bring out the beauty in your images, and keeps things interesting. Here, I'll cover ten fun and useful Photoshop tips and effects that you can use every day, or when you want to add some pizzaz to your pics.

• Get Photoshop for free — Don't have Photoshop? No prob! Get Photoshop Express for free!
• Take in some free tutorials — Get the low down on Photoshop basics free of charge.
• Get rid of blemishes — Who doesn't want clear skin? Make it a reality with this tip that ditches the zits.

See the rest of the tips, and learn about some sweet and simple effects you can add to your images after the break.

At first glance, the above video seems like any other beauty commercial: beautiful women, a flashy soundtrack, and promises of perfection. Keep watching, though, and you'll find that the key "product" is Fotoshop by Adobé. Filmmaker Jesse Rosten created the faux commercial as commentary on the prevalence of Photoshop, and we're betting his video will reach a million views by the week's end. We caught up with him to find out why he created the spot, what he hopes people will take away from it, and whether he's a Photoshop user himself.

BellaSugar: The idea for Fotoshop came to you while watching an infomercial with before-and-after pictures that looked identical, just Photoshopped. What moved you from watching the commercial to do a project about the subject?
Jesse Rosten: I suppose I just like to make things. They say when you have a song stuck in your head the remedy is to listen to the actual song. It's like that with me and ideas. If I get an idea that I'm passionate about, I tend to obsess over them. The only cure is to go produce the idea. The beauty of modern filmmaking tools and internet distribution is that one doesn't need permission anymore to go make something. This required a lot of work, but was relatively inexpensive to put together. Plus, it was a lot of fun!

BS: I have to confess — I actually expected you to be a woman when I saw the video, but I'm glad to see a man tackle the issue. Why do you think men should care if women have their wrinkles airbrushed away?
JR: I thought it would be funny to have a men's version of the product, putting one's head on a herculean body, etc. But I opted to keep it simple and focused on women since they suffer the most with societal expectations of beauty. This is a complex issue and I don't pretend to have the answer, but as the incidents of eating disorders and anorexia among American women continue to rise, I think it's important to keep the discussion alive.

Read the full Q&A.

Is showing your blog more love among your top resolutions for 2012? Start a new year of blog dedication by learning some important basics to make photos and collages stand out on the page.

Pugly Pixel's Photoshop tutorial on image background extractions and how to use layers may sound intimidating, but the how-to is so carefully explained that even Photoshop newbies can get a handle on this more creative side of photo editing. Removing the background of a photo is necessary when you want to create collages of multiple small images, or to layer an image on top of another. Pugly Pixel's technique, pictured here, to layer the ribbon on the Instagram photo is also perfect for a "look of the day"-type post to showcase multiple objects with one base image.

Photoshop is a powerful tool that can inject amazing effects into your images, but going beyond the basics can be frustrating if you're experimenting on your own. Which Photoshop tips and tricks would you like to learn this year? We'd love to help you become a photo editing ninja!

Looking at a rack of magazines, it's hard to find a cover that hasn't been photoshopped in to perfection. Now PhD computer science students at the University of Dartmouth have developed a software tool to rate photographs based on how much digital alterations were made.

The tool, which is part of recently released research in the National Academy of Sciences is intended to bring a level of truth to media and advertising and create awareness for natural beauty, without Photoshop. “The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children,” the paper said. “In response, several countries have considered legislating the labeling of retouched photos.”

The researchers hope the tool will one day be used to put warning labels on altered images, describing how much the photos have been changed. Would you support labels on heavily photoshopped images within media content and advertisement?

Get ready for the barrage of Kodak moments and impromptu family portrait sessions during the coming holiday season. The joy of technology lets us change even less-than-flattering pictures into a worthy keepsake. There's a simple tool you can use in Photoshop to make your face look clear and bright in your own photos, even when person behind the camera forgets to adjust the lens to ideal settings.

Sure, while excessive airbrushing in order to sell products is bad, zapping that zit from a nice family photo is totally legit. If you have basic knowledge of Photoshop, this tutorial should be easy to follow. Check out my steps to using the clone tool after the break.

For the photographer that's a part-time gadget fiend, Adobe has launched a cloud-based service called Carousel, which lets users view, edit, and store photos across various devices. The $60-a-year subscription service will be available for Mac and iOS devices later this month.

Any photos imported into Carousel's photo library or added directly through an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch are automatically saved to the cloud-server ready for quick access on any other supported device. Same goes for editing; after using the embedded Photoshop Lightroom software to edit pictures the new images are saved to the Carousel account — no syncing required. The unusual part of Carousel is the ability to have friends contribute to and view a photo library free of charge as long as they're using a compatible device.

Windows and Android-compatible version of Carousel are planned for the first half of 2012. Naturally, the photos can be shared directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and email.

These are hard financial times we're living in, which leaves little room for extravagant $700 purchases of software like Photoshop. But if you're a budding photographer, you'll need an awesome editor to make your portraits pop. Good news is, you have an alternative to buying a lesser-featured software suite: rent Photoshop by the month for just $49.

This is great for students who are learning how to use Photoshop, beginners who aren't sure if Photoshop is for them, or for those who dabble instead of obsess over editing tweaks. But rentals aren't just limited to Photoshop — you can rent After Effects, Dreamweaver, and more. Plus, the rates get even cheaper if you agree to pay a monthly fee for a year.

The large amounts of Photoshop used in makeup advertisements has long been a hot-button issue in the UK, and this week the nation's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) handed down a strict judgment against two L'Oréal foundation ads. "If advertisers go too far in using airbrushing and other post-production techniques to alter the appearance of models and it's likely to mislead people, then that's wrong and we'll stop the ads," said Guy Parker, the ASA's chief executive.

The ASA ruled that both ads depicted the models (Julia Roberts for Lancôme and Christy Turlington for Maybelline) with skin altered in a way that the products could never actually achieve. But do you think airbrushing like this is really harmful? Refer to Julia Roberts's ad up top, and keep reading to see the banned Christy Turlington ad.