Hunt wrote:
In article ,
says…
Hunt wrote:
In article ,
says…
wrote:
[SNIP]
Isn’t Photoshop User Magazine the one published by the Photoshop Users Group, or whatever? I’ve heard good things about it but I’ve never
read
it.
Close. It’s done by NAPP (National Association of Photoshop
Professionals) and
is always a good read. Of all the magazines that I get, this is the
one that I
open first and carry around with me until the next edition arrives.
It’s got a
bunch of NAPP organizational stuff in it, but is mostly Photoshop
tips and
tricks. It is worth the NAPP membership fee alone. I’ve cleaned out
all of my
other design mags, and have almost never kept any of the photo mags
(digital
or analog) for very long. PUM stays in my library for reference.
I am also a digital photographer and I have gotten a lot out of ShutterBug, as well. Their articles are all written by actual photographers speaking from experience, rather than by journalists struggling to understand the field. The reviews of equipment are
fairly
neutral IMO, and certainly help me to keep up-to-date with all of the equipment I can’t afford to buy 🙂
I have not see ShutterBug in decades. It used to be mostly a classified tabloid for equipment, but has probably changed greatly.
Well, if you can overlook the fact that B&H buys about 14 consecutive pages and that Adorama buys about 8 consecutive pages in each issue, and the entire back section is full of full-page ads for other shops… Then I guess it isn’t a classified tabloid…
Seriously, though, the articles are good, you just have to wade through a bunch of related ads to find them. It’s actually sometimes very interesting to compare prices among the ads in ShutterBug alone, and I have discovered new products in those ads that I might not have otherwise. At least they’re ads for things that (presumably) interest you.
It’s only a bit worse than Wired in that way.
—
Aaron
And PUM is not free of ads either, though far fewer. However, one big complaint that I have is with the ads, usually for printing supplers,
that are
just plain bad – garish colors, poor choice of type, and if they have photographs, they are usually very bad ones. I cannot imagine how
they sell
anything to Photoshop users, especially the ones who actually make
money with
their work. That said, some of the worst photography that I have seen
has been
in photography magazines. Oh well, either I do not understand, or
they don’t.
I’ll have to pick up a recent copy of Shutterbug and have a read.
Hunt
In fact, in the last issue of ShutterBug, they did an article about some small company out in Salt Lake City that got started by building Olympics propaganda for Olympic sponsors when the games came to Salt Lake City. The example image they had was an ad for Delta, which consisted of some sunset photo of a Delta plane in the background with the Olympics rings emblazoned across the tail. In the foreground was a smiling guy in a suit looking very corny with a LENS FLARE shooting across.
Setting aside how terrible the ad was on its own, I followed the jump at the end of that page to the remainder of the article in the back of the magazine and there was another ad for something else with the SAME STUPID GUY in it. Now, unless you take a stock photo and say "This dude is going to be our mascot," you probably shouldn’t re-use stock photos in different ads. That’s just cheap.
So yeah, Shutterbug is not without its completely tasteless content, either. I guess it’s a matter of opinion, though; a lot of people make a lot of money demonstrating poor taste 🙂
—
Aaron
"Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." — John Stuart Mill
