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Here's my own Digital Workflow............

[STEPS]
#1. Crop to desired size
Cropping is one of the most destructive things you can do on your digital image enhancement tasks. Especially if you do both cropping & increase resolution at the same time, as most do. It takes away pixels and if you are increasing resolution, it has to resample the image (add pixels) thru interpolation.

Cropping is an art in itself. (maybe i'll do a separate article on this.) It makes
compositions stronger. The most common use is to cut away clutter and distractions in order to focus on what really matters.

So, the best tip I can give you is to make this your first step in your workflow.

#2. Check Histogram for Tonal range (ctr+L in Photoshop)
it helps me decide what color enhancements to do next, if necessary.

#3. Decide to use Auto Color, Auto Levels, Manual Levels and or Curves.
Auto Color was great on PS7. I try auto color/levels first (ctr+shift+B/ctr+shift+L) because it's fast and in CS, you can dock the Histogram and instantly see the changes. Then, if I'm not satisfied w/ it, I'd go to Manual Levels or Curves.

I would recommend using curves. Levels also allows you to adjust the tonal range of an image But with it, you have much greater control.

#4. Decide for needed (specific) enhancements (Heal,stamp,soften,etc)
Do your specific enhancements here, be it red eye correction, complexion ehancements, wrinkle reduction, special effects/toning, etc.

#5. Soften if needed
I consider myself to be more of a people shooter. So this is my most often used digital enhancements effect (plus the fact that I don't use a lens filters on my digicam).
This is more of a personal workflow step for me. It's also maybe because of my camera. :P

#6. USM
...And the last step in almost everyone's digital image enhancement workflow,...USM or the UnSharp Mask.

Tip: If ur purpose is to contrast, you should sharpen first bec. sharpening always increases contrast.

Movie stuffs again....

Hot off the press, read it here http://www.darkhorizons.com/news04/041016c.php

(going off-topic from technology for now.....)
Just watched the premiere at Mega Mall last night.

What can I say, nice effects and.......nice effects, and it's obviously 'computer generated'. (I take back that off-topic remark)

Anybody remembered Nick Fury: Agent of Shield during the film, eh? :)

Nice to see a different role for Giovanni Ribisi.

Also seems like an Asimov rip-off to me.

overall,... good thing the tickets were free and there's Angelina Jolie :)

How to Secure your file transfers on a Windows FTP Server from network sniffing?

Well, short of using 3rd-party components, the only alternative that I can think of right now is using VPN, if we are only after the security of FTP usage against network sniffing.

yeah-yeah, why not simply use HTTP file transfers (like posting acceptor,webdav,web folders,web services,WSE 1.0/2.0)? because that was not the question :) (and it's slower. especially SOAP)

oh how easy it is on unix boxes (ssh)

ah got me 6 gmail invites. If anyone wants one, just post a comment and send me an email at umbertoeklat@yahoo. Preferably, don't post your email addresses. (I wouldn't want email harvesters getting yours for spamming purposes.)

Whew....just came from a Windows XP SP2 training......