You don’t need to rent a studio, look for a big room, or own expensive equipment. You can work your way into product photography by photographing small objects. It will also give you a chance to practice your work with light. You just need a few common props that you probably already own.

Today we’ll take a look at how to improve a photo where the subject lacks emphasis. We’ll do it using basic tools in Zoner Photo Studio 17. We hope you’ll download the starting picture and follow along!

We see many product photos daily in our consumeristic society. They call out to us in all their perfection on the Internet, in flyers, in department stores... but for us as photographers, they raise the question: can they be even better? Of course they can! Read on for tips on how to excel in product photography and make sure your product photos live their lives in public, not just on your disk.

Depending on the visual culture where you live, the genre called naked portraiture may be an occasional part of the “advertising environment” around you. It also turns up in beauty contests and in the marketing materials for cosmetics, hairstyles, and various other products. It combines nakedness and portraiture, though not necessarily in an erotic, unfit-for-television, or offensive way. After all, if it did, it would not be as widely used in advertising—at least in Europe—as it is. If you’re curious about this subgenre, how to photograph it, and what to avoid, read on.

Just one snap, and I’m moving on. That’s how most photos’ stories end. Before they start, really. It’s a shame that most of us (including yours truly) don’t usually think about what we’re photographing. So I’d like inspire your thoughts on composing and more today by sharing some of mine—by telling how an idea became a photo.

Dogs are faithful, selfless, and very sincere. Every dog owner can confirm it. So it’s no wonder that dogs are a part of many photo albums. Today we’ll show you how to photograph these furry family members right. Photographing dogs is much like photographing children.

They’re heavy and they have no zoom, but because of their image quality, some professionals use only these lenses. Why are ultra-fast lenses so highly valued?

Facebook is definitely a great friend to every photographer. But also at the same time it’s also their enemy, censoring photos and lowering their quality. Today we’ll explain a few tricks for working with the largest social network—Facebook—and for getting top quality for the photos you upload there.

Every week, we select interesting photos from the Zonerama web galleries and show them off in this magazine’s Editor’s Choice feature. The Zonerama galleries are free, and you can upload your pictures to them at full size, either over the Web or using the Zoner Photo Studio photo software. But what about when you want to show off your albums elsewhere on the Web? Don’t worry, it’s simple!

Power users view keyboard shortcuts as a necessity. Maybe that’s putting it too strongly, but the shortcuts below will save you time and make you more efficient. We’ll focus on shortcuts that you’ll appreciate practically every time you go to edit a picture.