We recommend you manually white-balance your digital cameras in the field every time the light changes. A custom white balance has several advantages over the automatic white-balance feature in your camera:

• It helps you correct for over or under exposure.
• It makes it easier to shoot the full dynamic range of white to black without muddiness or hot spots.
• It makes it easier to achieve good skin tones.
• It allows you to shoot JPG instead of RAW, so you can save smaller images on your camera’s PC card.

If you don’t know how to manually white-balance, you can start by reviewing the instructions on our website or the instructions in your camera’s manual.

However, since you’re going to need a calibration target anyway, I recommend the one from Photovision. Each target comes with Ed Pierce’s free Instructional DVD. The information on the DVD is worth more than the price of the calibration target – it’s like getting a private training class for free!

From the DVD you learn – step-by-step – how to insure that you have consistent color and density on every photograph, regardless of camera, lighting conditions, or type of photography.

You can order the popular 24″ target with instructional DVD directly from the lab at the same price they charge at Photovision. We’ll drop it in your next shipment of photographs and bill your lab account.

With the huge growth in high-speed Internet connections, there are now virtually thousands of free on-line tutorials to teach Photoshop. After having reviewed several of them, below are some recommendations:

-If you are brand new to Photoshop, you should start with a class that starts with the basics like menu options and keyboard shortcuts and builds step-by-step into using Photoshop for everyday tasks. A good example of this training can be found at www.lynda.com. They have hundreds of Photoshop training videos broken into 5-7 minute downloads. Many of the basic videos are free – if you want to see videos that are more advanced, a membership ($25 per month) is required.

-A slightly more expensive alternative is to use Adobe’s official online training at adobe.elementk.com. For $129 you get a year’s worth of access to over 30 courses in Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive. Adobe has partnered with ElementK (the top supplier of online education to Fortune 500 companies) to produce these videos, so you can be assured of their quality.

-If you already know your way around Photoshop and are looking for a specific advanced technique, go to www.tutorialized.com or www.pslover.com. Both of these sites are collections of thousands of free tutorials submitted by Photoshop professionals. These sites assume you have a good working knowledge of Photoshop and are just looking for a “trick” to accomplish a specific special effect.

UPDATE: Siyab over at listfied.com created a list of 75+ advanced techniques for Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator. Check them out. If their is anything here you’ve always wanted to do, click on the technique an in 5 minutes you’ll have a new skill.