Archive for the ‘photographs’ Category

Does your business involve visiting your clients to perform a service, install a product, or perform repair work? Consider your digital camera for WordPress blog ideas. A camera may be the perfect tool for collecting content for your website. From personal experience, many of my clients for custom cms web design with matching blogs need to invest more time in making blog posts. That camera may help.

My advice for creating new WordPress blog content is taking photographs. Before and after shots of the benefits of your product or service will make a great sales tool on your blog. Show prospects what you’ve done for customers. If you have techs or a repair staff, arm them with digital cameras to collect content, too.

Perhaps your business is all service providing intangibles like consultations, so you wonder if using photos makes sense. Consider a photo to illustrate the benefits showing you and the client in a meeting, and perhaps use the graphic for a testimonial. You might consider having them take a photo of you giving a presentation.

Maybe none of this seems appropriate for your business. Instead of photos, carry a notepad or voice recorder and take notes with as little as a simple phrase to remind you of a benefit or success that helped a customer. Use the real situation and write about it to show potential clients what you’ve done for others.

Ask your clients. You may find your happy customer would love to have their story told on your site, and maybe volunteer to have their photo accompany the blog post or testimonial. Make it easier for them. Take your camera for a ride.

Finally, online success does depend on adding original quality content often, so a cms web design or matching WordPress blog allows you to do just that, and easily. Add photos or graphics to keep your site more interesting.

This tutorial about digital photo edit magic explains how an ordinary palm tree being sniffed by my dog was turned into an elephant leg for a humorous effect. The photograph collage below includes 4 photos marked A, B, C, and D that are used to explain the final step D (shown here smaller than actual size) as posted on the Corky the Shelter Dog Blog.

Photo A: The original untouched digital photo of Corky the Shelter Dog sniffing a tree before any edits are done.

Photo B: An elephant leg photo is cropped and superimposed over the palm tree in a rough outline before detailed edits.

Photo C: Details marked 1, 2, and 3 on the elephant leg point out details done as follows:
1. The photo is cropped to fit the tree, lightened, and given transparency.
2. More leg is cropped around Corky’s head to make it appear behind the dog.
3. Additional edits of the foot allow grass blades to show for more realism.

Photo D: The finished illustration and digital effect is ready for Corky’s site, so take a look at the full-size dog photo edit on his blog.

The graphic software for the edit is by Xara. While capable of creating vector graphics artwork similar or equivalent to PhotoShop, the price is around $100 USD and suitable for creating novice to professional results. You may download Xara Xtreme trial software free for 30 days to see how versatile it is for all types of online illustration or artwork for print.

Struggling to add illustrations or graphics to your website design or blog posts? Consider Flickr public domain photographs.

The photos are mostly collections from public archives and as explained on the Flickr usage page http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/ the photos became public domain for one of these reasons:

1. The copyright is in the public domain because it has expired;
2. The copyright was injected into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to adhere to required formalities or conditions;
3. The institution owns the copyright but is not interested in exercising control; or
4. The institution has legal rights sufficient to authorize others to use the work without restrictions.

Free to use does not mean free to package and resell as a collection. Please respect copyright when using content for your projects online or in print other than material you own. The Flickr commons is a great resource for photographs to use in your website design or blog posts, but be warned to watch the clock. It is easy to become engrossed in thousands of options and you could end up spending long hours away from your design.

The illustration below shows the 6 steps used in the avatar photo edit tutorial to create a new graphic for this Life with Corky puppy website and his CorkyStory Twitter account.

The large photo left is the original photo of the dog taken while going for a ride. The large photo right is the new avatar with a more dramatic look including a blurred background and better contrast on the puppy’s face.

Tutorial steps from before (left) and after (right) are included below the illustration:

Tutorial sequence for avatar photo edit in 6 steps marked A through F:

A: Original photo without any edits. Zoomed in to trace the puppy’s head.
B: Photo mask filled form (in red) made by tracing in the previous step.
C: Clipped puppy’s head in vector artwork with all background removed.
D: Original photo (A) cloned with blur applied to the entire photograph.
E: The cropped head from (C) is placed on top of the blurred photo (D).
F: Brightness adjustments of the cropped head creates the final version.

Besides the links above to the home page and the Twitter account, the original photo of Corky the puppy before cropping may be viewed on Corky’s website on page 3 of his Fleet Peeples Dog Park photo gallery at LifeWithCorky.com.

The illustration below is a custom flyer for an insurance company in Florida with a custom map of Kissimmee, space for an address label and stamp, yet appropriate for a handout as well as mailing.

The background image of the company building is actually a collage with significant photo edits for a more attractive presentation. Not seen are utility poles and wires, background signs from nearby businesses, the original sky (replaced), and the card back which is identical except in Spanish.

View additional examples of custom post card and flyer artwork for print in the custom post card gallery, and then email or write about affordable custom flyer artwork and printing options for your small business.

This advanced photo edit tutorial in Xara Xtreme shows an example of how to hide unwanted portions of a photograph for web graphics in custom web design. The process from start to finish took 5 minutes. In this case the web graphic needed to be revised to remove the toddler playing in the hallway. Here’s how the photo edit was done in a series of 6 illustrations marked A to E:

Photo A (below left) shows the original photo taken by the client which displays the toddler to be removed. Viewing the carpet, floor trim, and wall to the right of the baby, I selected a vertical portion taller than the person, and created a rectangular clipping mask as shown in photo B (below right).

Photo C (below left) shows the cropped vertical section of the carpet/trim/wall taken from a cloned duplicate of the photo. The original photo placed in the background has 65% transparency applied in preparation for the next step.

Photo D (below right) shows the carpet/trim/wall clipping stretched horizontally to cover the toddler and part of the background decor. To create a realistic graphic, solving the problem of the clipping covering the planter and leaves will be next.

Photo E (below left) shows less transparency on the background, and some transparency of the carpet/trim/wall for an enhanced view, and then the clipping mask drawn precisely over the planter and leaves without revealing any of the toddler. Select the mask and carpet/trim/wall graphic and use CTRL+2 to crop the masked portion.

Photo F (below right) shows the final web graphic after removing transparency of both pieces to digitally create the new photo. The carpet/trim/wall piece has feathering applied so it blends in better with the background, and now the photo is ready to insert in their custom web design.

Users of Xara Xtreme may use shortcut CTRL+K for cloning and CTRL+B and F to send pix front or back during the edit. Select the mask and photo then use CTRL+3 to crop. The only other feature needed in Xara is the feathering tool. For higher quality work for print rather than in a web design, use the steps in this photo edit tutorial to begin, and then zoom in for more precision.

This site includes a directory of royalty free photo websites for small business owners to use for web design or printed marketing material. Royalty free photographs of people require special consideration. Royalty free does not mean free to use without limitations even when offered for commercial production of websites, print, or multimedia.

Creative works are intellectual property, and if a photographer posts photos on a royalty free website, it does not imply transfer of ownership if you download from their gallery. There are sites who charge a one time fee for use in one application, others who charge recurring royalty fees, and then those in my directory that are truly royalty free. If a photo includes people, each person’s rights cannot be overlooked.

Anything royalty free has restrictions for use, including those without any fee. Always look for and read the license to avoid any legal copyright issues, and be cautious about using pictures from sites without any license information. They may have accumulated photographs without caring about copyright. Sale or redistribution of royalty free photos whether singles or collections is illegal.

It is your duty as a small business owner to stay within the law when downloading content for fair use. A photo that includes real and identifiable persons is especially tricky, and should never be used without that person’s consent including a written model release.

Small business owners on limited budgets often have difficulty acquiring quality photos for in print or online. The small business royalty free stock photo directory lists websites that provide photographs without recurring royalty fees, and was updated today to add another 5 star directory. Here’s the new listing as it appears in the stock photo directory:

Wikimedia.org contains a contributed database of over 2.5 million high resolution media files including photographs, graphics, and multimedia.

The number of 5 star sites is now four. The Wikimedia site contains many photos unrelated to business, yet from over 2 million selections I’m certain small business owners will find this a valuable resource.

In addition, the link action on the directory was revised so photo gallery websites will open in the same window, not a new blank window. Links that launch a new window make accessibility more difficult for diasabled persons, so the design change enhances usability for visitors who prefer the back button function.

Over 3 million photographs and graphics are now searchable from sites in my directory with the addition of this public domain photo site. The Small Business Resource Center royalty free directory resulted from reviewing over 150 websites and selecting 23 websites that offer photographs without a recurring royalty fee. Choices were subjective based on my review of selection, ease of use including terms, and the directory is primarily for the benefit of my small business clients.

Quality photographs for print or online are often a frustration for small business owners. A photo that looks great on an illuminated computer screen may not be suitable for print materials. Let’s compare a photo business card design for print as one example with advice comparing dots per inch (dpi) and pixels per inch (ppi).

Standard US card widths are 3 inches. The preferred camera resolution is 300 dpi for print. At 72 dpi a photo will look great in a website design, but cannot be used for print. Graphic artists will usually tell clients they need a 300 dpi resolution photo, or better. Print shops think in terms of lines per inch or pixels per inch, and again, 300 ppi, or better is necessary. High end printing may require 1200 ppi.

To calculate the resolution of a photograph for a 3 inch wide business card, view the dimensions under the size column in My Documents for the photo you intend to use. Divide the card width in pixels by 3 (for the 3 inch width of the card) to see if you hit the magic number. A 300 pixel wide photo divided by 3 yields 100 pixels per inch, so at 100 ppi it would have to be enlarged to fit the card, and at 100 ppi it is not suitable. The enlarged version would be blurry when printed.

This same calculation works for larger print projects, also. For a 6 inch wide post card you can reverse the math to figure you need 6 x 300, or an 1800 pixel wide photo. That same 300 pixel wide photo that looks great on a computer screen would yield 50 ppi for our 6 x 4 post card flyer test.

So despite requests by your graphic artist for 300 dpi photos for print, a 300 dpi postage stamp size photo just won’t work on a highway billboard sign, let alone a small post card. A bigger photograph is always better when designing printed marketing materials.

Following up on the Monday release of the SolarusUSA integrated blog, my design of their main awning products website launched earlier today featuring a unique 50 photo website gallery. Imagine a visitor viewing 50 large photos as shown below in this post, and being able to view every photo on one page without scrolling down the computer screen.

Each awning photo displays 495 pixels wide by 356 pixels tall, so viewing 50 without moving down the screen may sound unbelievable until you actually see it. The photo above is slightly larger because it includes a border and outline, plus a full text caption at the bottom of the photo. Search engines cannot index graphics, however, the text caption on their website is real text, not a graphic. The search engine optimization, or seo, value of this design is an added benefit of this custom website design technique.

Finally, some photo galleries can come close to this performance, but they depend on a script or flash to present the series of photos in one place, and those techniques have zero seo value. Search engines ignore scripts and they cannot read flash website content. The photo gallery that I developed for SolarusUSA is a breakthrough enhanced technique being offered as part of my custom website design services, and the layout is done completely in XHTML 1.1 and CSS2.

Despite the complexity, the page code complies as valid to W3C standards without errors. View the photo gallery for solid color awning fabrics here, and the striped pattern awning fabrics here.