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These great machines allows you to edit your photography on the computer using Adobe Photoshop. They allow editing whether it be taking out the background and adding a black n white themed effect.

 

Personally I find them a very useful tool and defiantly any photographer should have without a doubt, as they are becoming far more accessible as the price becomes lower.

Well, that's not exactly what they do. They basically replace your computer's mouse with something shaped like a pen and paper, making it simpler to do artist work on the computer for people who prefer traditional methods.

My parents gave me one in my early teenage years but I was an idiot at the time and it got broken somehow (don't remember how). What sucks is that I now want one so that I can do proper illustrations and stuff on the computer because I love drawing freehand (basically the only way I can draw).

As for editing photos, I probably wouldn't use one for that. I'm too used to using my mouse!

I wonder if the iPad will replace traditional graphics tablets in the future. There's already lots of iPad-made art out there, and just recently I remember reading about new styluses coming out that would make it even easier to draw on an iPad.

Not yet, the iPad screens aren't sensitive or precise enough to replace a Wacom / graphics tablet. However, the Samsung Galaxy Note phones and I *think* the Samsung Galaxy Tabs both use Wacom screens, so they are effectively graphics tablets themselves.

I think an Apple Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme with a USB hard drive would make an excellent gift. It basically creates a shared network drive that you can access from any computer on the network.

Solid state storage is still limited in capacity on newer laptops and it's an extra step to always plug in a drive to work on photos, and the Time Capsule / AirPort Express takes care of those problems.

I normally have at least four or five layers in Photoshop of the same item. It honestly depends on what I'm working on though, since some projects are fairly short while others may take quite a bit longer.

My quick Photoshop ventures usually include adding a bit of depth or contrast to an image, so I'll have three or four layers that I work on, each using a different method of editing. Some I'll overlay, some I'll stylize, and so on. Many times I use the simple technique of cropping the object or person of the image, creating a new layer for that, and then filtering the background a bit to bring the subject to the foreground of the image. Most of my ventures, actually, tend to be really simple but effective.

Hello, the name is Eclipse. You might notice me around the internet because I do join many forums I've been a webmaster for a total of 5 years, starting off with Forumotion and making my way to Paid Hosting and Paid Software.

When I'm offline, I enjoy watching movies, especially with friends. I just watched "Lone Survivor" tonight and loved it. I usually play Basketball and Video Games when I'm not on the internet lurking around on forums.

That's basically all I can say, I'm not an interesting type of person

The battery grip makes is so you don't have to worry about swapping out batteries, this is very useful if you can't afford to miss a second of the action or if the situation makes it impossible to swap out batteries (when I photographed at a color-throwing festival, I had my entire camera wrapped in zip-lock bags with only the front of the lens exposed, and at an event like this with color dust flying everywhere it would be a horrible idea to swap batteries).

A grip also makes it a lot easier to shoot in portrait orientation with the dedicated shutter release and function keys.

If one is photographing a long event, it may make sense to have a charger that simultaneously charges two batteries, so two can be in the grip while two are on the charger, this makes it much more efficient to shoot at long events.

Lastly, battery grips will sometimes come with cartridges to use AA batteries in them instead of rechargeable camera batteries, which gives you more freedom with your power as you could swap a cartridge of camera batteries with a cartridge of AAs.