Archive for the ‘photographs’ Category

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.

After paying a fee for a custom digital design such as a website, multimedia production, logo, or graphics for online or print, most customers will assume they own the contents of that project. In most cases they do not. The intellectual property and creativity to produce your project belongs to the designer with very few exceptions.

For small business clients who use independent contractors to create custom works for online or printed marketing materials, the question of copyright ownership must be understood. Except in instances where your designer is a direct employee, you do not retain the copyright of custom designs created on your behalf unless the designer specifically transfers the right of ownership to you.

Designers who produce creative works such as websites, multimedia, or printed marketing materials, establish copyright ownership the moment the work is created. Customers should consider the consequences of content they provide, also. Here’s an excerpt about copyright from the order page of the Small Business Resource Center:

Customer Provided Content and Copyright

The customer by placing an order for design services unconditionally guarantees that they own the copyright, or have permission from the copyright holder, of any content they furnish including text, graphics, photographs, audio, video, designs, trademarks, or artwork submitted for use in the website, multimedia, or printed marketing materials.

Design services are provided as an independent contractor, and projects are therefore not “work for hire” as would be the case using a direct employee. As the creative design service provider, Jim Degerstrom retains all rights to any original design of graphics, video production, or programming code created on behalf of the customer. Therefore, customer rights of ownership are limited to fair use of designs in the original intended use only, whether in print or online.

Clients using independent contractors have an obligation to provide content that does not violate copyright law. For example, the term royalty free photographs does not imply free and unlimited use of a photograph. Even photographs from sites such as those listed in my Royalty Free Photo Directory that allow free commercial use without a one-time or recurring fee do not transfer ownership rights to you.

In addition, digital works such as websites, multimedia, and designs for print carry further obligations. Once the designer creates your project they naturally deliver the results for your fair use. They still own the design. Changes or further use of that content without written permission from the independent contractor may be a violation of copyright law, also.

While this post discusses general copyright issues, small business owners and other readers must seek professional legal advice for answers to questions about their specific circumstances.

After experimenting with video recently, I decided visitors deserved a more personal introduction and a closer look behind the scenes. The bonus surprise is a series of rare photos of George Bush taken in 1988 when my wife and I met him in San Diego, California.

While watching, consider the value of a website video for your small business. Screencast and video production have been added to my list of services. Show people details of your small business products or services and provide a permanent ad or demo on your website.

Thanks for watching. Please contact me to discuss your small business needs for custom website design, custom blogs, matching artwork for print, or video production.

By popular demand, yesterday’s text tutorial for masking photographs in Xara Xtreme has been recorded as a video, so now visitors can watch and listen to me present the lesson. Play time is 5 minutes and 25 seconds. In that time I mask and clip a photo of my dog to remove the background, and then pull in a sample new background. Yes! Just 5 minutes!

The technique shown in my video tutorial is a fast method for cropping part of a photograph using Xara Xtreme. The amazing part is the effect starts with a rough outline using straight lines. This simple method should be easy for all skill levels including novice graphic designers.

You may view the photo masking tutorial on YouTube, or watch and listen here.

Practical ways to use a cropped photo include business cards and other printed materials, or for website graphics. My previous lesson for techniques using error diffusion to create clean transparent gif graphics may become a video tutorial soon.

After an inquiry from another Xara Xtreme user who needed help cropping the background of a photo, I decided the reply would make a good tutorial. Here’s a lesson for masking and deleting photo backgrounds with Xara Xtreme to use for creating custom graphics for online or in print.

Update: Hate to read? This tutorial is a featured video lesson on YouTube or watch this lesson in masking a photo with Xara Xtreme on my blog.

To summarize the technique, I begin with the Freehand Pen Tool to remove backgrounds and have become quite proficient at tracing complex shapes to create the mask. Next, I use the Shape Editor Tool to drag the straight lines into precise curves going point by point around the border of the mask area. Finally, once traced you select the mask and photo (hold shift+click on each), and then crop what you outlined with the shortcut command CTRL-3. Here are the detailed steps for this tutorial.

For a small photo enlarge it 400% to make it easier to trace. Use the Freehand Pen Tool and hold the ALT key to make a perfectly straight line from two points on a curved shape on the photo. Continue with connected straight lines for each curve to the next point before it begins to curve in another direction. You’ll end up with a lot of straight lines. I usually set a contrasting line color depending on whether I have a dark or light photo.

I don’t use the handles to pull the straight line into the shape of the curve except for minor adjustments. Instead, once all the straight lines are done going around the object I use another tool, the Shape Editor Tool. Here’s more about drawing the straight lines.

Basically you trace the object you want to keep completely with straight lines until you return to your starting point and connect the ends. This fills the traced object with your default fill color to create the mask. The filled shape confirms you have a continuous line without any breaks. Next, and with the filled outline active (selected), find the small white square with diagonal cross lines in the lower left of the work area of the Xara screen. Right click on it and select “Clear Fill Color” so you’re back to just the outline of straight lines that you just drew around the object.

Next, select the Shape Editor Tool which is the next one below the Freehand Pen Tool and use it to form curves out of the straight lines you’ve drawn. With the Shape Editor Tool your cursor turns into a plus symbol until you actually move it over a line, then it turns into the standard pointer cursor. If you left click on a line and release the mouse, it adds a new point. You don’t want that. Instead, press the left mouse button down and hold it onto the first line you want to change to a curve without releasing the mouse button. This allows you to drag the line into a curved shape. Depending on the shape you need to outline, you learn over time the best spot for “connecting” on the line before you drag. If you make a mistake just press CTRL+Z to undo the error.

Once a curve is added to one straight line segment in the outline, continue dragging each straight line segment to fit the shape you want to keep as you move around the object. With experience you can do this quite quickly. Experiment with the point of contact on the straight line where you want to drag. Connect on the straight line close to the curve you just created, try the middle of the straight line, and connect away from the last curve to the opposite end before the next point. In time you will be familiar with the best point to drag for a given curve, and in what direction. Once the outline has been dragged to precisely trace the object, select the line and photo (hold shift+click on each) then use the CTRL-3 key combo to cut the traced object.

Once the object you want to keep is cropped, I usually hold the CTRL button and drag a dark color (usually black) onto a blank place in the work area. The default white background becomes all black and any errors in the tracing jump out at you. You can easily pull and push the outline of the cropped object using the Shape Editor Tool, also. If you see a piece of background that didn’t get cropped properly, you can use the cursor to “push” the offending line in towards the object you intend to keep. With the dark background you can see immediately when you’ve pushed the line just right to remove the unwanted segment.

This may seem complicated at first. The person who inquired about how to mask and delete photo backgrounds in Xara Xtreme initially had problems, but eventually solved it and contacted me again within 24 hours. They successfully created their custom graphic, and it didn’t take weeks to learn. It was done in a day.

A blog post at EzineArticles.com shows the mug illustration from the graphic tutorial I posted on August 17, 2007. After reading the warm comments, I decided to create a custom high resolution version of the mugshot available for download for EzineArticles platinum authors, and others.

View the tutorial and custom photo illustration used for the wallpaper from my previous post, or right click and save target as to download the free EzineArticles mug desktop wallpaper here (250kb JPG zipped folder). Unlike some free downloads, you do not have to register or reveal your email address.

Article writing is a great way to increase backlinks, and the desktop wallpaper is a friendly reminder to keep writing.

Small business website designs that depend on uploading photographs for online stores or sites like real estate will be more effective with photograph optimization. Too often site owners upload original digital photos taken at high resolution, and then the load time is intolerable for visitors on dialup because of the file size. They won’t stick around waiting for pix to load.

Fact: More than 50% of USA internet users are on dialup. This number dwindles as high speed options become more affordable. Why disappoint half your visitors with slow loading photographs and increase the chance of losing a potential sale?

For this tutorial you may want to read the IrfanView photo edit freeware review previously posted on this blog. The owner of the recently launched e-commerce website for Mainstream Memorabilia downloaded IrfanView and learned this lesson in about 15 minutes total, and was very pleased with the ease of use. The online store is easier to manage, and IrfanView will be used on the Mainstream Memorabilia advice blog, also.

You should consider downloading the free software for this photograph optimization tutorial from IrfanView if you don’t already own it.

Once installed, go to any large photo in My Documents and right click on the file name and select “Open with…” and then select “IrfanView” from the menu list. Here’s a sample photo and screenshot of the open window.

In the main window menu (see top arrow) select “Image” and then “Resize/Resample” or use the shortcut keys by holding the CTRL button and pressing the letter R. The next window as shown below summarizes the file information, shows the current photo width in pixels, and the resolution in dots per inch, or dpi. Enter the desired width to match what you want on your site, and then select “OK”.

When you select “File” and then “Save as” a new window appears as shown below. The sliding bar controls the quality of the final photo, and may be adjusted from lowest to best with 100 being the highest quality. Experiment with the bar in this last step until you have the smallest file size which still displays well on your screen and use that on your website.

To summarize, the steps are as easy as 1-2-3 within IrfanView. Select image-resize/resample, enter the width before doing save-as jpg, and then experiment with the slide bar until the file size is reasonable. Anything less than 50Kb file size will display well on your small business website, so taking your 1 meg photos and reducing them may keep visitors on your site longer and help make more sales.

The directory of royalty free stock photographs at the Small Business Resource Center has been updated to add four additional websites. Our directory rates sites from 5 star down to 1 star, and we now feature links to 22 sites. More than 150 websites were reviewed to save visitors time finding stock photos with limited restrictions for commercial use.

While many stock photo directories use “free” to describe their photographs, caution must be used. There is a subtle yet important difference between copyright, publicity rights, and privacy rights. The US Library of Congress provides an excellent comparison of rights: copyright, publicity, and privacy here.

A photo of a person, famous or otherwise, requires a model release to avoid infringement or violation of fair use. Photographs of famous places or product logos may be in violation of the law, also, even if you took the photograph.

Some stock photo sites may not explain copyright versus publicity or privacy rights, so please read the license of any photograph you are considering from these websites and then for reference review the Library of Congress legal notice to avoid violations.

Visit the Small Business Resource Center free stock photo directory here.