Archive for the ‘photographs’ Category

The artwork in this custom door tag photo edit tutorial was created using Xara Xtreme, and illustrates how combining techniques allows designers to get some interesting special effects for printed marketing materials.

For this client a plain photograph of their truck and trailer was received after I designed their custom logo, and before the new logo was added to their fleet.

The vehicle is typical for their business which is lawn service, power washing, and landscaping. They were anxious to order a custom door tag immediately, and I suggested using this photo and letting me add the logo digitally.

Here’s how the finished photo for the ad was designed with the final look displayed in the photo of the last step.

Step 1 – Original photo received from the client. A duplicate clone was created so I had two copies in Xara Xtreme.

Step 2 – Using one copy of the photo I precisely traced the truck and trailer to create a clipping mask, and removed all the background leaving the truck/trailer only.

Step 3 – Using the second original photo I applied a 20% blur so it would fade into the background when the clipped truck and trailer were added later.

Step 4 – Next, the logo vector art was imported and placed on the clipped art along with the phone number in several areas, and then the Xara handles were used to warp the perspective to match the photo for a more realistic look.

Step 5 – A 55 pixel wide portion of the entire left side of the blurred version of the photograph was removed to create an illusion and add a 3D effect when the final step was completed.

Step 6 – The clipped truck and trailer were placed precisely over the blurred version of the truck/trailer in the photo so the truck front protruded off the photo to the left and appears to be driving out of the photograph and onto the page.

The effect was a success and used immediately for the printed custom door tag, and will be incorporated into the custom website design next for a consistent look in print and online. Designing with Xara vector graphics software makes creating professional results so easy that I’ve been using their programs for almost 4 years.

Novice designers looking for a cost effective alternative to the $500 to $1000 software packages will appreciate the price of Xara Xtreme starting at just under $100USD. Download and try Xara Xtreme free for 30 days, and you’re welcome to send me samples of your work, too!

You may want to view the complete custom door tag here to see how the photo was integrated into the advertising piece.

This lesson in photo edits and creating custom graphics using Xara Xtreme includes a bonus item. First let me explain how the first photo below was created from two photographs. The zoom function and tracing allows graphic artists to create some pretty cool effects.

The wooden seagull in our front yard was purchased by my wife because it was on sale for $1.00, and once it was planted I took the photo shown minus the real seagull. Using the photograph closeup (below) that I took on the Maine coast several years ago, I clipped and resized just the gull.

Tutorial: I outlined the seagull with the pen tool by zooming in 5x and using a contrasting line before converting it to the dotted red line shown. Once outlined I clipped the gull from the original photo and resized it to fit the fake graphic version. The background has transparency added to better illustrate the cropped portion.

What’s the bonus? My wife wanted the top photo saying it would be a cool wallpaper for the computer desktop, so I created a high resolution version. The free wallpaper includes more of the foreground for better proportions to stretch on your desktop. You may download the free seagull wallpaper here (right click and save target) to add this to your collection. The wallpaper is in a zipped folder, 677Kb.

Experiment in Xara Xtreme with a free 30 day trial and try clipping portions of photos as shown in this lesson. The technique works great for business cards, and most other printed marketing material.

Some small business clients have problems retrieving artwork or photographs when working with their designer for custom websites or printed marketing material. Here is a tutorial on how to save, store, and retrieve graphics on your computer. Advice is based on using Outlook for email, and selecting “folder view” in the toolbar of My Documents. The steps may be slightly different depending on your email program, but use the program help files to adjust the system.

1. Create a New Folder in My Documents

Go to My Documents and click on “file” in the menu located in the upper left hand corner of the window and next select “new” and then “folder”.

This creates an empty folder entitled “New Folder” and the name should appear immediately and be highlighted in blue with white lettering. Do not click or hit enter, simply begin typing on your keyboard and type “Artwork”. The new folder should now be there with the title Artwork.
If the folder is still named “New Folder”, right click on the name and select “rename”. This will highlight the name again, so just type “Artwork” to rename it.

Note: Do this on all artwork or photos received before you delete any email. If you find an email with something that you need to send to someone, open that email and click “forward” to send the original email with the graphics attached. Just fill in the “to” address, and click “send”.

2. Store Artwork or Photographs from Your Received Email

Open your email program and find any email from a person with artwork attached. Click once on that person’s name to highlight that email. Next, look at the top of your email list and there will be a title bar for the column “From”. Click on the “from” bar, and the program will rearrange the order of your emails and show all from that one person together in one list. Once done you may restore the list in date received order by clicking on the title bar “received”.

Next, double click on the first email with artwork attached to open the email. Under the subject box will be “Attachments” incuding a file name or zipped folder name. Right click on the file and then select “save as”. This opens a new window with your My Documents list of folders.

Find the folder entitled “Artwork” and double click on that to open the folder, and then select “save”. This saves a copy of your artwork to the Artwork folder. Continue and do the same on all artwork or photographs received that you want to store.

Note: After saving to the folder you may want to “unzip” files that were sent to you in a zip folder. Once saved to your My Documents artwork folder, right click on any zip folder and select “extract all” and it will automatically unzip the individual artwork files and add them to the folder.

3. Store Artwork or Photographs Received on a CD

This is similar to graphics received by email. The only difference is the source. Place the CD in your CD drive, and for most computers the file list opens automatically. If not, go to My Documents and locate the drive name containing the CD under My Computer to see the list of iles on the CD. To copy files to your hard drive right click on the file names on the CD and select “send to” and then “My Documents” to transfer all from the CD to your hard drive. Remove the CD and store it in a safe place as backup.

Next, under My Documents, locate the same files, hold the CTRL key, and then right click the file names to highlight each. Once highlighted, left click on any one and drag your mouse to the “Artwork” folder icon. Release your mouse, and all files will be copied to the artwork storage folder for you to retrieve later.

4. Retrieve Stored Artwork to Send in a New Email

Open your email program and create a new blank email. Complete the “to”, “subject”, and write your message. Next, view the menu across the top and click on “insert” and then “file” to add an attachment. This opens a new window with your My Documents list of folders. Go to the “Artwork” folder and find the file or zip folder that you want to forward and double click on the file, or single click and select “insert”.

Confirm that the attached file is displayed in your email next to “Attachments” under your “Subject” box, and then click send to email the artwork.

If any of the terms are unfamiliar, or you use a different program than Outlook for email, you may use the help files to adjust your filing system.

Later when you need to retrieve or forward important artwork or photographs, you will have a system in place to do this quickly and easily.

Here is a tutorial including my zoom test to determine if a photograph is suitable for print. To create a full color business card design with photographs, the final quality depends very much on the resolution of the photo you take. Keep in mind that what you see on your computer monitor is low resolution, and although it may look great the quality may not be appropriate for printed marketing materials.

To perform the zoom test double click on the file name of your photograph in My Documents to open it, and zoom in at 5 times normal size. If key lines or shapes like a person’s eyes or nose look blurry, you need a better photo. View the quality comparison of my white cat shown below.

Compare the left side which is perfectly clear at 5x normal size to the right side which is obviously blurry. Your computer screen is low resolution with 3-color images, and screen illumination enhances the look. Printing on paper requires high resolution and a 4-color process, and obviously cards are not illuminated. Test your photos with the zoom technique or you may face disappointment with the printed cards.

Bonus tip: Another test is file size. When creating a business card for print check the file size in My Documents and if it is less than 100KB under the “size” column, you need a better version. My advice is bigger is better and a minimum file size of 200KB and up is recommended. I prefer 1000KB which is 1 megabyte, or larger.

On a personal note, and not included in the About Me, the cat in the photo adopted me and incredibly likes to go for a daily walk. Yes, just like a dog this cat stays at my side without a leash for a mile or more and then back home. It was abandoned and living off garbage bins before adopting me. Neighbors are astonished. One asked if I ever worked as an animal trainer. This cat is absolutely gorgeous, so most people think it’s she, not he.

Finally, visit my directory of royalty free photographs to search more than 200,000 high resolution pix for your next project.

Learn why your website photographs may not be acceptable for professional printing of trifold brochures and other marketing materials like a business card or flyer. Any picture viewed on a computer monitor may look great on an illuminated screen, but they are usually low resolution and unsuitable for printing on paper. The file size online is small and low resolution (72 dpi or 96 dpi) and needs to be large (300 dpi).

Here is a comparison of a photograph intended for a client’s website showing why it would not be suitable for their trifold brochure.

The online version will look great (inset), yet the enlarged version is very fuzzy which will be unsuitable for printed materials. Zoom in 500% to test yours or use the following advice.

As a guide, most photographs for print need to be at least 1 megabyte (1000KB) file size. Check yours as you view the “size” column under the directory in your My Documents folders. Photos from your website can be 5KB to 50KB and look great. Better quality is required for print advertising.

View examples of printed material with photographs including trifold brochures, full color business cards, and post cards or flyers on my main site.

Photographs used for business cards or other printed marketing materials will display differently on your computer screen compared to the actual printed piece. This photograph shows the original screen view (left) of palm trees and the sky, and then a simulation of the same photo when printed (right) in a 4-color professional process.

Colors will be vivid, but the 4 color process will make them appear duller and usually darker than the original.

Graphic artists have tricks to improve the finished work. Begin with a quality photograph. Enhancing brightness to offset the difference from the screen view to your printed business card is another. Questions or comments are welcome.

Here are tips and a brief review of freeware for easy photo edits or taking screenshots for the benefit of my small business clients. Real estate agents are often faced with uploading photographs of new listings to their website. The file size of high resolution digital pictures is usually impractical for websites, yet I see many sites with 1 megabyte and higher photos of real estate property. These may look great, but visitors on dialup will not appreciate the 20 minute load time.

Here are reviews of two programs for doing photo edits or taking screenshots that have worked well for me and they are easy to use, plus they are freeware (cost nothing).

ScreenHunter 5.0 from Wisdom-Soft.com
This program is great for taking screenshots, as in clipping portions of something you view online like your website, that you may need as a JPG file to forward to someone. This works in the background and takes up very few resources, so it shouldn’t slow down your pc performance. Visit www.Wisdom-Soft.com to learn more.

IrfanView from IrfanView.com
This freeware program has screenshot capability, however, advanced edit features may be perfect for clients who need to crop photos, convert to greyscale as in black and white, plus more. Personally, this is my first choice for opening graphic files in My Documents. Once installed, right click on files in your directory, choose “open with”, and then select IrfanView.

Like any new program, the best way to learn is jump right in, and then open the help files for advanced tips. Please provide feedback on your experience with either of these freeware products. If you are looking for royalty free photos, please check out my 5 Star Stock Photo Directory with links to over 200,000 photographs.

Designing your next 8-1/2 x 11 trifold brochure to promote your small business just became easier. The latest addition to my commercial site, the Small Business Resource Center for website design and custom graphics for print or online is a trifold brochure design tutorial.

The illustrated lesson includes software requirements, technical advice, template dimensions, and then step-by-step instructions for do-it-yourself design. A major problem creating marketing materials for print is finding suitable high quality photographs. I researched over 150 sites and compiled a directory of my top resources for royalty free stock photos, with links to more than 200,000 high quality pictures. Sites were rated from 1 star to 5 stars, and only 18 out of 150 made my list.