Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: Desktop Printing Techniques

Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: Desktop Printing Techniques

with Chris Orwig

 


As Ansel Adams once said, "The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance." Now, with Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: Desktop Printing Techniques, creating breathtaking prints is within reach. In this course, photographer and instructor Chris Orwig teaches techniques and workflows for crafting powerful and enduring images that bring the photographer's vision to life. From producing a business card to visiting a working press, Chris covers everything photographers need to know to achieve unique, compelling results from the printing process. Exercise files accompany the course.
Topics include:
  • Implementing a color-managed workflow
  • Creating color-correct prints
  • Advanced image sharpening techniques
  • Using typography with promo materials
  • Working with print layouts and montages
  • Considering paper and printer choices
  • Soft-proofing to ensure stunning results
  • Optimizing the print workflow
  • Converting to CMYK and going to press

show more

author
Chris Orwig
subject
Photography, Printing Photos
software
Photoshop CS4
level
Intermediate
duration
5h 11m
released
Feb 25, 2009

Share this course

Ready to join? subscribe


Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses.

submit Course details submit clicked more info

Please wait...

Search the closed captioning text for this course by entering the keyword you’d like to search, or browse the closed captioning text by selecting the chapter name below and choosing the video title you’d like to review.



Introduction
Welcome
00:06Hey, welcome! My name is Chris Orwig. I'm going to be your host and guide on
00:10this training adventure. What we're going to do is in this training title we
00:13are going to talk about printing. A lot of times when you begin to talk about
00:16printing you realize that you have been out in the field, or you have been in
00:19the studio and you have been shooting and now it's time to head into your
00:21studio and to create that final print. So let's go ahead and head into my office
00:25and we will talk a little bit more about printing. Come on in. Now,
00:28one of the things that we want to think about in regards to printing is that when
00:31you are creating the final print really what you are interested in doing is
00:35completing that entire photographic process, from capture on your camera
00:39all the way to output on your printer. So what's printing all about? Is it just
00:43about using your printer? Well, no, not at all. What we are going to do in this
00:47training title is for starters we're going to get into color management.
00:50And color management is all about clarifying the communication between the color
00:54you are seeing on your monitor and the color you are getting out of that final print, right?
00:58So we need to figure out how we can clarify the communication
01:01between those two devices. We will also talk about color correcting our
01:04photographs. How can we get good neutral color correct images. How can we also
01:08color correct the skin, because skin is really tricky, especially with digital
01:12capture, right? We will also talk about the topic of sharpening, because when
01:16you think about sharpening, really you are sharpening for output. Because if
01:20I'm going to print say an image on a velvet piece of paper, well, there is
01:23going to be a different amount of sharpening compared to if I print on a
01:26premium glossy sheet of paper. So we are going to talk about how can we sharpen
01:29this image with that final print in mind. We will also talk about some
01:33different ways that we will print our material; let's say promo cards or
01:36creating different print layouts. We are going to get into some other topics as well,
01:39like what type of papers we can use or printers we can use.
01:43We'll discuss the topic of soft proofing. What soft proofing is all about is it's about
01:47ensuring that what you are seeing on your monitor is close to what you will get
01:51out of your printer. We will go through an overall desktop workflow from start
01:55to finish so that you can see how you can create a really stunning and
01:59compelling and engaging print. Now, most of this training title is going to be
02:03about desktop printing, yet I decided to include a little bonus chapter near
02:07the end of this training title, and that one is all about going to press.
02:10So let's say you are really good at desktop printing and then you need to go to press;
02:13maybe your images will be in a magazine or maybe you just want to go to
02:17press to create a promo card. Well, we will briefly talk about how you can do that.
02:20All right. Well, throughout this training title my hope is that it will
02:24provide you with some information. It will provide you with the technical knowhow,
02:28so that you will know how to use Photoshop in order to create the most
02:32compelling and engaging final print.
Collapse this transcript
Using the exercise files
00:00If you are a Premium member of the lynda.com Online Training Library or if you
00:05are watching this training title on a disk, you have access to the good old
00:09exercise files. In order to take advantage of the exercise files you can see
00:12that I have the folder selected here. I have double clicked to open up that
00:16folder, and here you can see that the exercise files for this particular
00:19training title are divided up into the different chapters.
00:23Now, the best way to use and to take advantage of these exercise files is to
00:26open up this folder inside of the Adobe Bridge. I'll go ahead and navigate over
00:30to the Adobe Bridge here and pull that up. Here you can see I have the main
00:34exercise files folder.
00:36So let's say you are watching a movie in Chapter 2 on color correction.
00:39What you would want to do is navigate to that particular chapter folder, and here
00:43you can see all the images and all the files that we'll be using in that chapter.
00:48Now, if you don't have access to these exercise files, no big deal. You can
00:51always follow along from scratch or of course you can use your own photographs.
00:55All right. Well, let's begin.
Collapse this transcript
1. Color Management
Introducing color management
00:00As you may or may not know, in order to create compelling prints you just have
00:05to have a color managed workflow. Now, I'm assuming that some of you know a
00:08thing or two about color management, and if you are in that group feel free to
00:11skip these movies and jump ahead to the next chapter. Yet if you are a little
00:15bit uncertain about color management or if you would just like to learn a
00:18little bit more, feel free to watch this and the next few movies.
00:21All right. Well, what exactly is color management and why is it such a big deal?
00:25 Well, in sum or in short, color management is all about clarifying
00:30communication between multiple devices. Let me explain.
00:33Let's say that we see these beautiful vivid colors on our monitor, like we can
00:36see in that image in the background. While we are seeing those colors on the
00:40monitor and there the colors are created via light, but then we have to send
00:44that color information, those colors to our printer, which is then going to
00:48create those colors with ink. It's a very different type of color. We can
00:53create certain colors on our monitors that just can't be reproduced on our printers.
00:57So how then do we clarify this communication? Well, what I want to do here is
01:01just begin to talk about this a little bit analogously in order to deconstruct
01:06what exactly color management is.
01:07Now, let's say for example that we are in this Adobe RGB color space, and just
01:13for the fun of it let's just say there is a color in this color space.
01:16This color space over here, which is red, and we will call it Red Number 3.
01:20Again, there is really no such thing, but by way of analogy we will say in the
01:25Adobe RGB color space there is a red which is Red Number 3.
01:29We decide to then print this particular red. Well, this color then needs to be
01:34translated into this Lab color space, and that Red 3 becomes a Lab Red 1.
01:40The Lab color space is a much wider gamut. So now we have this Red 1.
01:45Then this Lab color is then converted to the CMYK color space and that 1
01:50becomes a 6, and over here our printer is then printing the Red 6. So as you
01:55can see here there is quite a bit of translation. There is quite a bit of a
01:58process of translation that's happening.
02:00Now, what would happen if we simply sent Red 3 to the printer? Well, it would
02:05print number 3 Red but it wouldn't look very good. Are you with me on that? So
02:10what's happening here is there is a translation of the colors that we are
02:13seeing created via light, to the colors that are then being reproduced via ink.
02:18So color management is all about clarifying the communication between these two
02:22devices in order to increase our color accuracy and ultimately in order to
02:26create more compelling and engaging and enlivening photographs.
Collapse this transcript
Creating a neutral work environment
00:00So far we are beginning to discover that color management and that having a
00:04color managed workflow is actually quite important. So where do we actually begin?
00:09Well, for starters, one of things that we need to keep in mind is that color
00:12management isn't something that we have to be afraid of. I want to talk about
00:16this in regards to a quick story.
00:18When I'm traveling I love taking photographs of signs. I love this particular
00:22sign because it's quite scary. DANGER OF DEATH. I'm definitely going to stay
00:26away from that particular location.
00:29Now, a lot of times what happens in regards to color management is because it
00:32sounds so complicated, people are scared of it. They don't even know what to do
00:36so they don't do anything.
00:38What I want to try to convince you to do is say, you know what? Yeah, color
00:41management is a little bit tricky, but I can take a few simple steps in order
00:45to create a really good color managed workflow in order to create really good
00:50color correct photographs.
00:52So what then is the first step? Well, the first step is to consider your
00:56workspace, your studio, your office, wherever you are working on your
00:59photographs, and one of the most important things to consider is the light source.
01:03Now, let's say that you are working on an image and it's a bit of a gray image,
01:07yet you have a yellow light source. Will that gray actually look gray? No,
01:11it will look yellow, because of the yellow light coming out of the light source.
01:15So what you need to do is to try to neutralize your studio or your office or
01:19your workspace. Now, you can do this in a number of different ways. The most
01:22simple way to do this is to first purchase daylight-balanced light bulbs.
01:25Now, these are relatively inexpensive and you can purchase them at any of your local
01:30hardware stores or any of the other stores where you live.
01:32I am just going to go ahead and navigate over to the web browser and navigate
01:35to homedepot.com. Now, here I did a quick search for daylight-balanced bulb and
01:40that gives me a number of different options and I'll go ahead and click on one
01:43of these options.
01:44What we are looking for here is a light bulb that's daylight-balanced. So let's
01:47go ahead and click on the specifications and see what we have. Well, one of the
01:50things that I'm noticing that I have here is that my Color Temperature is 6500 Kelvin.
01:56Now, when it says 6500 Kelvin, it's something a little bit closer to probably
02:005700 Kelvin. Ideally we want 5000 Kelvin, but this light will work really well for us.
02:05So I'll go ahead and navigate back to my slide for a moment. Now, why will this
02:09light work really well? Because it will be a neutral light source.
02:12Now, when you first start using neutral lights you will feel like the light is
02:15a little bit sterile, because you are really used to having this yellow glow or
02:18this warm glow coming from your lights. Yet, eventually what's going to happen
02:23is once you get used to this neutral light source, it's going to feel real
02:26pure, real clean, real vibrant. You are going to start to see color in a whole new way.
02:31Another thing to keep in mind is that while you are working on your photographs
02:33you don't want to wear bright colored clothes or have a bright colored wall
02:37next to your monitor, because the light is going to hit that bright color and
02:41then bounce onto your monitor.
02:42So again, step one is simply to begin to create a more neutral work environment.
Collapse this transcript
Calibrating your monitor
00:00Step two to creating a color managed workflow is to keep in mind that color
00:04management is all about reproducing beautiful colors that we see on our
00:08monitor. Like we see in this particular field of sunflowers.
00:11Well, how then do we reproduce those colors? Well, one of things that I have
00:15already mentioned is that color management is all about clarifying
00:17communication between our monitor and our printer. We want the color that we
00:22see on our monitor to equal the color that we see in our printer. So this is a
00:27little bit of a two-way street. What I mean by this is we then need to create a
00:31profile for our monitor as well as a profile for our printer.
00:35What exactly is a profile and how does a profile work in regards to clarifying
00:40communication between monitors and printers? Well, I like to think of profiles
00:44as kind of like tags on garments.
00:46Let's say that I'm going to go down to the local shirt shop and buy a t-shirt
00:49for my brother-in-law. I say hey, you know what? I really like this t-shirt,
00:53and I know that my brother-in-law is size medium so I pick out the t-shirt and
00:57I look at the tag. The t- shirt is tag size medium.
01:00Now, my brother-in-law can't try on the t-shirt because he is not there and
01:04it's a gift for him, so I trust that tag for that particular t-shirt.
01:08Now, what would happen if garments like t-shirts didn't have tags? Well,
01:13it would be impossible to buy things. You would have to try every single size on
01:17in order to determine what was best for you, and it would just be a big mess.
01:22So what we have is we have these little tags that say you know what?
01:24This t-shirt is size medium. Perfect. I'm then able to then take that shirt and give
01:29it to my brother who also knows his size.
01:32Now, this analogy falls apart a little bit, but hopefully it begins to clarify
01:36how this works. What we are going to do is tag or create a profile for a
01:39monitor, which says hey, this is how this particular color looks and how it's
01:43represented here.
01:45We are also going to create particular tag or profile for our printer, with a
01:49specific paper type. It's that tag or it's that profile that ensures that we
01:54get the best fit. It ensures the best process from monitor all the way over to our printer.
01:59Well, how then do we create these profiles? If we actually want to have true
02:03correct colors what you need to do is you need to invest in a color calibrator.
02:08Here you can see I have a color calibrator that was put out by X-Rite.
02:11It's called the Eye-One calibrator. You can see that little device there,
02:14it's a spectrophotometer, and that little device is simply something that measures the
02:19color and the brightness of the color that's on the monitor.
02:23So what you can do is purchase a system like this and then measure the color
02:26that's actually coming off your monitor. Now in this particular case, this is
02:30an older photograph and the actual device that I'm using now is called the
02:33ColorMunki. This device is also created by the same company, X-Rite.
02:38The device is actually quite fascinating, because again you can see there is a
02:41spectrophotometer. You can see that that's on the monitor there. You can use
02:45that to create a profile or to "tag" the color that you are seeing on your monitor.
02:50You can also create a test print on a particular paper type from a particular
02:54monitor. You can then use the ColorMunki or the spectrophotometer and you can
02:59then hover over the different color swatches.
03:01You can see the little icon there on the right hand side. It will then measure
03:04those different colors. It will measure the way that that color was created.
03:08It will then create a profile so that your monitor will be tagged with a
03:11profile and your print will be tagged with a profile.
03:15Then finally, when you get to creating a print, you can use those two profiles
03:19or those "tags" in order to create a high level of color accuracy. So if you
03:25are serious about color, or even more, if you just love color, if you love
03:28vivid and accurate color, well, you probably want to begin to invest in a device like this.
03:34Now, there are other devices out there that do the same exact thing, yet these
03:37are the two devices that I have had incredible success with.
03:41Now, if you are listening to this movie and thinking, hey, this is really kind
03:43of interesting. Well, you are probably going to want to watch the next movie
03:47where I dig dipper into these topics about color calibration and about creating
03:51a color-managed workflow.
Collapse this transcript
Calibration demo
00:00All right, you know we use different devices in order to clarify our vision, like binoculars, and
00:05we have used binoculars for a long time in order to be able to see things more
00:09clearly. In regards to printing, what we need to do is have a color-managed
00:13workflow and we have talked a little bit about this.
00:15What we are trying to do in color management is clarify the communication
00:19between our monitor and also our printer. If we really want to step things up a notch,
00:23let's say we really want to get into the fine details of color, if we
00:27really want to have true accurate color, what we need to do is get a
00:30colorimeter or a spectrophotometer in order to measure the color that's
00:33coming off of our monitor and then to create a profile.
00:37So what that means is we can get a device, like this particular colorimeter.
00:40We could then hang that on our monitor. That would then measure the color that's
00:43coming off of it.
00:45Now, a device that I like to use is actually the one that's called ColorMunki,
00:48put out by the guys at X- Rite. It's a phenomenal tool.
00:51What you can do with this is you can again hang this on your monitor. You need
00:55software program, and it comes with a little software program, it's very
00:57simple. It goes through this process of sending colors to your monitor. Those
01:02colors are measured and you have a monitor profile.
01:04Now, you can also use this device, which is called the spectrophotometer, not
01:08just to measure the color on our monitor, but to also measure the color that
01:12comes out in the final print. So with this particular device what you do is you
01:15make a couple of these test prints. This is all part of the process of using
01:19their software. It creates these really simple test prints and you can see that
01:22there are arrows on these.
01:23You then take this device and you walk it along these different color chips,
01:28and as you do that it measures those colors and it creates a profile for that
01:32particular type of paper.
01:34So what you can do with these profiles is then you have a profile which says
01:38hey, my printer with my type of paper is going to print or render this color
01:42this particular way. Now that I have a profile for my monitor and also for my
01:47printer and paper, it's going to ensure more color accuracy.
01:51So if you are really interested in stepping things up a bit, what you want to
01:55do is look into using one of these systems.
01:57Now, I know a lot of you may be thinking, okay, I just don't have the extra
02:00cash to buy one of those right now. Well, put it on your wishlist. Begin to
02:04save for it, because if you are serious about photography and if you are
02:07serious about the fun of creating amazing prints, you really are going to need
02:11to use one of these systems.
02:12Now, there are a wide range of systems out there. The one that's my favorite is
02:16this one called the ColorMunki. It's really easy to use, it's simple, there is
02:20not a lot to it, and as you can see, this is the only device that you need to use,
02:24and so that cuts down on storage as well. So I love the thing and it has
02:28given me great results in regards to my printing.
02:31So most importantly, what I want to do here is just simply demo this process as
02:34we have done, to say hey, this is one of those things that's important. And if
02:38you want to start to get good results when you are creating your own prints,
02:41begin to think about what type of colorimeter or spectrophotometer you want to
02:44use in your own color managed workflow.
Collapse this transcript
2. Color Correction
Correcting color pt. 1: Determining the white and black points
00:01 Well, now that we know a little bit about color management and now that you
00:04 have hopefully begun to create a little bit more of a color managed workflow,
00:08 we are ready to color correct our photographs.
00:11 Now, it's kind of fitting that we are working on this photograph of one of my
00:14 friends and colleagues, Nick Dekker. Nick Dekker is an amazing photographer and
00:18 an amazing traditional printer.
00:20 Now, one of the things that impresses me about traditional printing is there is
00:23 so much process, and as we begin to work on our photographs, in order to create
00:27 a good print digitally, we need to tap into this history of photography which
00:31 involves process, and think about this as a way to process.
00:35 Well, here we are going to begin with color correcting our photograph. Now,
00:38 with this particular photograph, one of the things that I'm noticing is that
00:41 there is a bit of a color shift. Now, how can we begin to see these color
00:45 shifts? What you can do is go to your Window pulldown menu and choose Info to
00:49 open up the Info palette. You can then hover over the image. When I hover the
00:53 image I'm looking at these RGB values.
00:55 Now when I do that, one of the things that I'm noticing is that the B value is
00:59 really high compared to the Red and Green, especially when I go over the shirt.
01:03 Now, I know that shirt is black. I also know that this beard doesn't have any
01:06 blue in it. But if you look at that B value, the Blue value there, it is a high
01:09 number, so I have a problem. So how can we then correct this?
01:13 There are a number of different ways that we can color correct our photographs.
01:16 One technique that I like to use is to navigate over to the Adjustments panel
01:20 and click on the icon to open up the Threshold Adjustment.
01:22 Now, we are just going to use this Threshold Adjustment in order to find our
01:26 White Point and our Black Point. So let's go ahead and scrub to the left here
01:31 and there we can see our darkest tones.
01:33 When I do that I can see, you know what? These are some of the dark tones.
01:36 I could have guessed that, because there are some trap shadows in there. So I'll
01:39 press the I key. That will select the Eyedropper tool, or of course you can
01:43 click on it in the toolbox, and then we are going to Shift-click on this area.
01:46 We are just setting a little sample point. There you can see the values for
01:49 that point. Great!
01:51 Now, I'll click and drag this to the right, and what we are doing is looking to
01:54 find the brightest points. We can see that the reflective surface of this
01:58 button is one of the brightest points, so I'll go ahead and Shift-click on that
02:01 little reflective surface there. We can see the values for that point as well.
02:05 All right. Well, now this layer has done what we have needed it to do. We can
02:08 delete it; press the Delete key. So again, all that we were doing was using
02:13 that Threshold adjustment layer in order to find our White Point and our Black Points.
02:17 Well, now that we have found those two points, we are going to use those points
02:20 in order to color correct this image and in order to improve this image, so
02:23 that it will be able to be reproduced even better.
02:27
Collapse this transcript
Correcting color pt. 2: Using curves
00:00Now that we have defined our black point and our white point, we are ready to
00:04color correct this photo. So here is what we are going to do. Let me go ahead
00:07and click on the icon to open up the Curves adjustment.
00:09Now, here you can see we have three eyedroppers. Now, these three eyedroppers
00:13work pretty well. If I go ahead and hover over one of these eyedroppers, we are
00:17going to see a little bit of a Help menu here, which says Sample in image to
00:20set the gray point.
00:21Now, we can use this Midtone eyedropper in order to color correct our photos.
00:25So I'll go ahead and select that eyedropper. Then I'm going to hover over the
00:28image and I'm just going to look to click on something that I think should be
00:31neutral. I'll go ahead and click on the shirt there.
00:34Now when I do that, it removes the colorcast in a pretty good way. Well, let's
00:37undo that. Command+Z on a Mac, Ctrl+Z on a PC.
00:40Well, what if I click on the cheek? When I do that I then have quite a bit of a
00:44problem. I have more of a color problem than I had before.
00:47So when you are using these eyedroppers, one of the things to keep in mind is
00:50that we are looking to click on something that should be neutral. Let's go
00:53ahead and undo that.
00:54Now, we are not always going to use our Midtone eyedropper. Sometimes we will.
00:58But what I want to do now is actually go into my White and my Black Point eyedroppers.
01:02So I'll go ahead and double click on my Black eyedropper. This will open up the
01:06Color Picker window, except this one has a little bit different, and here is
01:09how it's different. At the top it says Select target shadow color. It's giving
01:14me a little bit of a help here saying, hey, use this dialog in order to select
01:17the color for your deepest shadow.
01:20In my case, I'm going to give that a percentage point right here at the
01:23Brightness value. We have a Hue and Saturation of 0 and 0. The Brightness for
01:28our Black is going to be 5%. Now, this is a default number. Black is at 5% and
01:32then our White will be at 95%. Later in this training, we are going to look how
01:37we can create a more specific percentage point for this in order to create more
01:41accurate detail in our shadows and our highlights, but for now we are going to
01:44start off with this default number.
01:46So go ahead and click OK to choose that number. Do I want to set that as a
01:49default? Yeah, sure. I'll then go with the Black eyedropper and I'll click on
01:53this dark shadow area.
01:55Now when I do that, I'm going to see that all of a sudden my image is lifted up
01:58a little bit and in addition, there is a little bit of an effect on the color.
02:02Okay. Well, next, I'll double click on the White eyedropper. Now, my Brightness
02:06value for the White is going to be 95%. I'll go ahead and click OK. I want to
02:10set that as my target color as well.
02:12I am going to go over here to this button, and this is going to be a little bit
02:15tricky, because this button is reflective. Now did that click work for me?
02:18No, not at all.
02:19So I'll zoom in on the button. Command+ Plus on the Mac, Ctrl+Plus on a PC. Now,
02:23I don't want to select one of the deep areas, but I want to select one of the
02:26areas that's a little bit of a bit bright white. So I have gone and selected that.
02:31Okay, let's zoom out, Command+Minus on a Mac, Ctrl+Minus on a PC, and look at our
02:35before and after. Here is before and then after. So now we have more detail in
02:39those shadows. We have also color corrected this photograph.
02:43Now, we can of course go back to that Midtone eyedropper and click on the image
02:46as well to remove any further color shift that we are seeing. So one of the
02:50things that you are discovering here is that you can use these eyedroppers in
02:53unison with each other in order to color correct our photos.
02:56Let's check our numbers.
02:57Well, go ahead and open up the Info palette and here you can see our two
03:00points. Here is the before. We had no detail in these shadows at all, now we
03:05have quite a bit of detail. That's going to print just fine.
03:08Now, with our highlights, we have pretty high numbers, yet we are seeing quite
03:11a bit of a blue shift. There is a bit more of a blue shift that was
03:13recognizable there.
03:15Now the after, these numbers are much, much closer. Now, there is still a
03:18little bit of blue in that, but that's most likely due to the fact that there
03:21is a little bit of a reflective nature on that particular button.
03:25Let's go ahead and set one more point. How about on the shirt? We will grab the
03:28Eyedropper tool by pressing the I key, if you don't have it already, and then
03:32we will hold down the Shift key and we will click on the shirt. And there we
03:35have yet one more point.
03:36In order to have neutral color these three points need to be pretty similar.
03:40I can also hold down the Shift key and click and drag this around and open up the
03:44Eyedropper again and we can see what another point looks like.
03:47Again, we are pretty close in our numbers. There still is a little bit of a
03:50blue shift here. So let's look at our before and after. Here is before, and
03:53let's also open up the Info palette so it stays; I'll drag it out for a moment,
03:57and then here is our after. Again, we can see how those numbers are changing.
04:02What's happening here is that these numbers are much closer together. Now, the
04:06closer together these numbers are, the more accurate or neutral the color is,
04:10because if we have equal amounts of red, green, and blue, then we have neutral color.
Collapse this transcript
Correcting color pt. 3: Fine-tuning
00:00 So now that we have this image pretty close to neutral, how do we then finish
00:04 it off? Because one of the things that you may have noticed is that our numbers
00:07 aren't quite right.
00:08 Now, our number 2 point here on the button, I'm not going to really worry
00:11 about, again, because its reflective, we are seeing quite a bit of color in
00:14 there, but I'm going to worry about these two numbers: number 1 and number 3.
00:18 Now, number 3, there is still quite a bit of blue in this area or these tones
00:21 of the shirt. How can I then fix that? I want to create yet another Curves adjustment.
00:26 So I'll click on the Adjustment Layer icon, I'll navigate up to Curves.
00:29 Now that I'm up in Curves what I'm going to do is I'm going to navigate to the
00:32 Blue-Yellow Channel. I'll then grab the Target Adjustment tool. I'll hover over
00:37 this area of the image, and I'm going to click and drag it down, because I want
00:40 to bring this number down.
00:42 Now, these numbers are a little bit closer here. We can see that I'm bringing
00:45 these numbers down a bit. Now, I don't like how it affected the brighter tones.
00:49 So I'm going go ahead and click and drag the top part of the curve back up, so
00:52 it's a little bit more normal.
00:54 Well, so far so good, except we now see that the blue is a little bit low down
00:58 here. So let's go ahead and grab the Target Adjustment tool, hover over this
01:02 area, and here we are going to go ahead and click and drag up. So we are going
01:04 to bring back some of that color.
01:06 So what we did is we were able to localize a correction to a real specific area
01:11 in this photograph. Here is our before and if we zoom in on the shirt, we
01:15 should see the shift here, our before and then our after. Well, that's looking
01:19 a little bit better.
01:20 Then we have this red to deal with up top. Well, let's go to our Red Cyan
01:24 Channel. So in our Red Cyan Channel we will continue to use this tool, where we
01:28 can click on the image and change the values, and here what we are going to do
01:31 is click and drag up.
01:32 Now when I do that, I have a little bit better color in the shirt. These are a
01:36 little bit closer to neutral. I want to hold down the Shift key and move this
01:39 around to see how this is looking.
01:41 Now when I do that, I realize I went a little bit too far. So I'm going to go
01:45 ahead and click on that point and drag down just a touch, and again, I don't
01:48 need to have these perfect, but I do want them to be a little bit closer.
01:52 Now, at the top we have a little bit of a higher number up there in my darker
01:55 shadow, so again, I can use this particular tool and click and drag down, and
02:00 just look to try to equalize those numbers just a touch there.
02:03 Now, do they have to be exactly the same? Do they have to be all 13 or all 40?
02:08 Well, no, not at all.
02:09 We will go ahead and zoom out for a moment though and take a look at our
02:12 correction. So here is our before and then after.
02:16 Now, well, I think that correction is a little bit better. We want to
02:19 Shift-click and move these points around and just see how the colors are doing.
02:22 One of things that I'm noticing is that my red is just a little bit too high
02:25 there. So I'll go ahead and click on this point and drag that down a bit.
02:28 I'm going to go ahead and be a little bit satisfied with the touch lower red there.
02:33 So part of color correcting is going to be quite a bit of give and take. It's
02:37 going to be sampling a point, moving it, modifying your curves, and so on.
02:41 I think the color in this image is looking a ton better. Let's take a look at
02:44 our before and after. Here is before and then here is our after. Now, that
02:48 final little adjustment there that we made in this movie so far wasn't
02:51 significant touch.
02:53 Now, at this juncture though one of the things that I'm noticing is now that
02:56 this image is color correct, we have a little bit too much in the red, in the
02:59 face, and I want to neutralize the tones in the face a bit. I want to enhance
03:03 this image. I want to make a subjective adjustment. Right now we have just been
03:07 working objectively to try to get correct color. Well, what about getting
03:11 interesting color? Well, we will talk about that in the next movie.
03:15
Collapse this transcript
Correcting color pt. 4: Adding finishing touches
00:00Now that we have color corrected this photograph, one of the things that I'm
00:03interested in doing is enhancing this even a little bit further. Now these
00:06enhancements can be subtle or dramatic. But let's start with some subtle
00:10enhancements. So we are going to go ahead and click on the Adjustment Layer
00:12icon and choose Hue/Saturation.
00:14Now what I'm going to do is grab the Target Adjustment tool and I'm going to
00:17simply click on one of the areas of the skin that I think is pretty red. So go
00:21ahead and try to find a red point there and I'll sample that. That will give me
00:24a good selection of those reds. I then want to decrease the transition area in
00:29this dialog so that I just have those reds there.
00:32Okay, great. Now if I change the Saturation it is going to affect the overall
00:35image. So I'm going to do that so we can see that it's mostly targeting the
00:38area of the skin but it's more focused on the areas that are red. Well, I don't
00:42want to shift the Saturation that far but what I do want to do is desaturate
00:46just a little bit and I want to change that red just a little bit towards
00:49yellow there.
00:50Now by doing this what I can do is begin to equalize the color or the tone of
00:55the skin. Now I'm going to go too far for a moment, so you can see what's
00:58happening. This is too far but stick with me for a minute. So here we can see
01:02our before and then our after. Again, get in that little bit more of an even tone.
01:06Now that doesn't look very good and in particular I can see that I don't have
01:09quite all the red that I need. So I'll grab the eyedropper with the plus icon
01:13and I'll grab a few more areas here, this will then expand the reach of that red.
01:17I'm just going to go ahead and click through these areas
01:19to make sure I have those.
01:20Okay, great. Well, now that I do, I'm going to bring this back to 0. I have a
01:25little bit of a desaturation here, so we will go back to 0. And we are going to
01:29click-and-drag to the right just a few points. Desaturate just a few points
01:33there and again just looking to equalize the tone. Now I'll zoom in a bit so
01:37you can see what's happening here in regards to this photo.
01:40Now here is our before and then after. Zoom in even further perhaps on the skin
01:44area here and you can see before and then after. I'm just pulling out some of
01:48those brighter reds on the skin.
01:49Now, of course, I can desaturate that a bit more. I can shift those a bit more
01:54towards yellow. Here is my before and after. Okay, well now I'll zoom out.
01:57Again, a little bit too exaggerated there but let's say I want to have a little
02:01bit stronger effect here, we are just removing some of those reds in order to
02:04illustrate what I'm doing.
02:06I am in the Mask, I'll grab the Brush tool and make my brush a little bit
02:09bigger by pressing the right bracket key and then press the X key to paint with
02:13black and I want to paint away the loss of color on the lips. I want those to
02:17be nice and red.
02:18I also want to bring back some red into the cheeks. So currently I'm painting
02:22at 60% Opacity. That will be just fine, just a little bit of red there on the
02:26cheeks. Press 0 to go to 100% and bring back even more color on the lips there.
02:32And now here is our before and after and again just removing some of the reds
02:35from up in the forehead and on the nose.
02:37Now a lot of times when you remove color, you then need to add color on top of
02:42what you have done. So that's what I'm going to do here. I'll click on the
02:45Adjustment Layer icon, navigate to Curves. Now when Curves are going to
02:48navigate to my Red channel and I'm going to increase the red. So I'm going to
02:51go ahead and click on my midpoint right there and just drag just a bit up.
02:55Now I'm adding some reds. This is subjective color. And the nice thing about
02:59this is I can add a bit of red because I have already decreased the red variety
03:03in the skin. Now let's look at our before and after. Before and then after. So
03:07I can get away with that little bit of extra warmth, because I already pulled
03:10some out with Hue/Saturation.
03:12Next, we will go to the Blue, Yellow channel and we are just going to add just
03:15a touch of yellow there. Now when you add yellow, you need to be careful that
03:18you also add a little bit of magenta or red to offset that. I have already done
03:23that, so that looks pretty good. Well, let's press the F key to go Full Screen
03:26View mode. Then the F7 key to open up our Layers palette and let's see how we have done.
03:31Well, here is the original image. We started to color correct the image so that
03:35we could reproduce it much better. We then worked on the shirt and we pulled
03:39out some of the blue down here on the shirt and again. That looks a little bit
03:42better. Subtle, yet significant.
03:44And then we started to work on the skin a little bit. Now when we did that our
03:47adjustment made the skin a little bit too pale, although it did equalize the
03:51color that we had there. Well, we did that knowing that at the end we would add a
03:55bit of the Curves adjustment on top of that which then makes for a pretty
03:58interesting and pretty compelling photograph.
04:00Let's take a look at the before and after. Here is the before and then here is
04:04the after. Now in closing, I just want to remind you that a lot of times what
04:08we are going to do is get our image so that it is color correct. And then later
04:12we are going to add some subjective edits.
04:14Now if you are more interested in these subjective types of edits, I have a
04:17couple of other training titles on the lynda.com training library. One is
04:21called Creative Effects and other one is called Creative Color. If you are
04:25interested in the subjective side of modifying your images, take a look at
04:28those titles where you can dig deeper into a wide range of topics where you can
04:32learn how to further enhance your photographs.
Collapse this transcript
Color-correcting an outdoor portrait with curves
00:00So far we have taken a look at how we can identify our white point and our
00:03black point in order to color correct our photos. What about those situations
00:07where you are simply going to use Curves to color correct an image? Well,
00:10that's what we are going to look at here. Let's press the I key to select the
00:13Eyedropper tool.
00:14Now when you are using Eyedropper tool, you want to have your sample size
00:17something other than Point Sample. Because Point Sample will select the actual
00:22pixel that you click on. Now if you zoom in on an image. I'll go ahead and grab
00:25my Zoom tool and zoom in on the image, so let's zoom in on the shoe down here.
00:29Here we can see that while this shoe is black, there are areas of blue. So if
00:32it were to select one of these pixels that wouldn't be accurate. Rather 5x5
00:36would select a 5x5 grid and average those tones. So with the Eyedropper tool,
00:41we want to have something above Point Sample.
00:43Now you want a higher number for higher res images. This is a pretty low-res
00:47file. So 5x5 will be fine. Okay, well let's double-click the Zoom tool to take
00:51it back to 100%. Next step that I want to take is I'm going to go ahead and
00:55grab my Eyedropper, press the I key and I'm going to set a few points.
00:59Hold down the Shift key, I'll set one point on the shoe because I know that
01:02shoe is black. Shift-click on the border here between these two stones because
01:06I know that's gray. I also have a feeling that this concrete should be pretty
01:09close to white, so I'll go ahead and set a sample point there.
01:12Now we are going to then evaluate our RGB values. Now one of the things that
01:16I'm noticing is that while these values are pretty close, we do have quite a
01:19bit of shift and again we are seeing that this image is too cool. So we will go
01:23ahead and click on our Curves adjustment layer icon and open up Curves.
01:26Now that we have Curves open, we need to have our Info palette open. So let's
01:29pull that out of that group there, close that group so we can really focus in
01:33on our numbers. Now first things first, let's navigate to that Blue channel,
01:38grab the Target Adjustment tool. I'm going to go ahead and hover over this area
01:41and click-and-drag and I'm just looking to try to bring my numbers a little bit
01:45closer together.
01:46Now as I do that, I see that my one and my two points are looking quite a bit
01:50better. They are getting closer to being neutral. We will look at our before
01:53and after, here is before and after. Well what about this area? When I hover
01:57over this area, I notice that's a much higher part on this curve.
02:00So I'll click on that point and drag down. I'm looking to bring that down quite
02:04a bit. It's going to be a pretty strong adjustment here, and it's going to
02:07affect the rest of the image as well. Now here we can see the nature of the
02:10color shift. Here is our before and then here is our after.
02:14So our numbers are now in pretty good shape. The only thing we may want to do
02:17is click on one of these points and drag it one way or another, in order to
02:20just fine-tune this. Again, here is our before and then after. So in this case,
02:26we have successfully color corrected this photograph without even setting our
02:29white point and our black point. Rather what we did is we set a few points,
02:33looked at our RGB numbers, went to the particular channel in our Curves dialog
02:38in order to color correct this photograph.
Collapse this transcript
Color-correcting skin tone by the numbers
00:00In the next couple of movies, I want to talk about how we can begin to color
00:03correct photographs of people so we can get their skin tone to look good.
00:07One of the problems with digital captures is that their red channel is really
00:10sensitive to light. And that's where a lot of the information for the skin is
00:14and so as a result sometimes skin tones don't look very good in digital capture.
00:18Well, we want to correct that and in addition we want to make out images look
00:22better overall. Now one of the things that you can see is that this will give
00:25us the ability to correct our skin tone by the numbers. Now I want you to think
00:29of this a little bit like a recipe. I'm going to walk through these different
00:33steps here with this handout and then apply what we have learned in the next few movies.
00:36Well for starters, you want to try to find a diffused highlight on the skin.
00:41You want to be sure not to sample the cheeks or the chin if it's a male because
00:45there will be stubble there, the cheeks a lot of times will have makeup on them
00:48or they will be a little bit more red. I'm going to Shift-click to set a
00:51little sample point and then in your Info palette, you will change your reading
00:53to CMYK.
00:54You can do that by clicking on the little eyedropper in the Info palette.
00:58I'll show you that later. Next, you are going to evaluate your numbers.
01:01For Caucasian skin tones, the recipe is that your magenta and your yellow should
01:06approximately be the same with the yellow a little bit higher. Now your Cyan is
01:101/3 to 1/5 of your yellow or your magenta.
01:13Now you may be thinking at this juncture, I have no idea what this guy is
01:17talking about. Well, it's actually not that complicated and let me explain.
01:21So for starters, this would be a good reading on skin. We have a Cyan amount of 8,
01:26Magenta and Yellow are just about equal with Yellow a little bit higher.
01:30It's 32.
01:31Now how do we know Cyan is good? Well, we multiply by Cyan by 3 or by 5. So,
01:35when I multiply this by 3, that's 24 and when I multiply it by 5, that's 40.
01:41So are these numbers between 24 and 40? Yes, so this Cyan number is good.
01:45Now of course you have to keep in mind, all skin is completely different.
01:49The darker the skin, the higher the numbers are overall and the ratio of Cyan to
01:53the rest of the numbers may be closer to one-half. And also some people have
01:57more red in the skin, or more yellow in the skin. This recipe is only a
02:01starting point as you learn how to color correct your images this way.
02:04Once you look at your numbers, you then go into the different channels and
02:07curves, your Red, your Green, and your Blue channels and you make some
02:10modifications in order to make those numbers follow this recipe.
02:14All right, well you still may be thinking, I have no idea what this guy is
02:18taking about. Well, that's okay. All I want to do in this movie is introduce
02:22the topic and if nothing else, at this point you should know that what you can
02:25do is use CMYK numbers to try to color correct skin tone.
02:29Okay, well, if you know that, you are already ahead of the game and we will
02:32take a look at how this actually works in the next few movies.
Collapse this transcript
Applying skin tone color correction by the numbers
00:00 Now that we know a little bit about color correcting skin tones by the numbers,
00:03 we are going to apply what we know to this particular photograph. Now this
00:07 particular photograph was captured by a good friend of mine Greg. Greg, thanks
00:10 for the use of this photo. Now what we are going to do is we are going to begin
00:13 to identify the color shift. Now just looking at this image, one of the things
00:16 we are noticing is that it looks a little bit Cyan, right. You can start to see
00:20 that especially in some of the shadow areas. You see some of the Cyan and Blue in there.
00:24 We also notice there is a little bit of blue cast in the hair. Now this particular
00:27 photograph was taken near a swimming pool, so there is some reflected light
00:31 bouncing around here. Well, how then can we correct this particular image?
00:35 We will grab our Eyedropper tool by pressing the I key. Now what we want to do is
00:38 sample a good clean patch of skin. Somewhere next to a highlight. So the
00:42 highlight is right about here, it's already pretty diffused, so we could almost
00:45 just click right on that highlight to set our Sample Point.
00:48 All right, well now that we have set that eyedropper at our sample size,
00:51 something other than Point Sample, in this case 5x5 for a low-res image. If it's a
00:55 little bit higher-res image I might go up to 11x11. Okay, well let's take a
00:59 look at our numbers. Well, our numbers are in RGB. We need to change those to
01:03 CMYK. So we will click on the eyedropper and choose CMYK Color.
01:07 This then shows me my CMYK Ratio. Now what I'm looking for is the Magenta and
01:12 Yellow, it's pretty close. Well those numbers are pretty close. Okay, that's
01:14 not a big deal, all right. The Cyan channel, oh, my Gosh that Cyan channel is
01:18 huge. If I multiply that by 3, 3 times 30 is 90%, I have so much more Cyan than
01:24 I actually need. So I need to start to work on that channel.
01:27 Let's pull the Info panel out for a moment, close the other panels there. Click
01:31 on the icon for Curves and we are going to our Red-Cyan channel. We will grab
01:35 the Target Adjustment tool and then we will hover over this point and what we
01:38 are going to do is we need to add a little bit of red here, right? So we are
01:41 going to click and drag up. As we do that, we will notice that we are shifting
01:44 the other numbers.
01:46 So I'll click and drag up and the image is now too Red or perhaps too Magenta
01:49 because we can see that the Magenta amount is now too high. We will then go
01:53 into the Green-Magenta channel, we will click in this same area, if the tool is
01:58 still selected and in this case we want to add a little bit of green so we are
02:01 going to click and drag up as well.
02:03 Now our numbers are looking pretty good here. Or they are looking better I
02:06 should say. Let's take a look at our before and after. Here is before and then
02:10 after. Our skin tone and the overall image is looking much better. Now if we
02:14 multiply 3 times 16, we are going to get approximately what is that 48%. So I
02:19 still have a little bit of a problem in that particular area.
02:22 So I go up to the Red channel, and my Target Adjustment tool and here I'm going
02:25 to take out even more Cyan. And when multiply this by 3, it's still a little
02:30 bit high, I'm going to increase this even more. Now that's right about in the
02:33 range. Now I want my yellow to be a touch higher, so I go to the Blue-Yellow
02:38 channel and in this case, I'm going to click and drag down just to add just one
02:41 or two percentage points of yellow.
02:43 One of the things that you are discovering here is there is quite a bit of give
02:46 and take in this overall process. And let's take a look at our before and
02:50 after. Here is before and then here is after. Our image looks so much better.
02:54 All right, well let's press Tab to get rid of everything. Press F to go to Full
02:58 Screen View Mode and then press the F7 key to bring up our Layers palette, so
03:02 we can really view the before and after.
03:04 Before and then after, color correct and color correct skin tone. Now the last
03:09 thing that we may want to do is press Tab to bring back our Info palette and
03:12 the rest of the Photoshop interface. We want to move this point around, hold
03:16 down the Shift key and click and drag it around. We want to look to make sure
03:20 that our numbers are still in the ballpark range of where they need to be.
03:24 And as I move this around, I'm noticing I still have a little bit more Yellow
03:27 than magenta. This is approximately about a third right there, so between 1/3
03:32 and 1/5 of the Magenta or the yellow, so I'm in pretty good shape. This color
03:36 correction is really nice. Now the last thing I want to look at with this image
03:40 is this reflected light I'm seeing here, the blue on the hair.
03:43 So while I have corrected the overall image and the skin tone, I still need to
03:47 make a final correction up here on the hair and we will do that in the next movie.
03:52
Collapse this transcript
Correcting reflected color
00:00 Now that we have color corrected this image and color corrected the image based
00:03 on the numbers in the skin tone, we need to work with this little situation up
00:07 here in the hair where we have some reflected color. So let's close the Info
00:11 palette and next what we are going to do is click on the Adjustment Layer icon
00:14 and choose Hue/Saturation.
00:16 We'll then grab the tool which allows us to click on the image and we are going
00:19 to click on this area of the hair and drag it to the left. And we are simply
00:22 going to desaturate or remove that color. Now that looks really good. Now a lot
00:27 of times what happens is when you correct an image, you focus in on the
00:30 problematic area as we have done here. Yet when we turn the eye icon and on and
00:34 off, we realize we also lost so many of the other blues throughout the rest of
00:38 the image.
00:39 So here is what we need to do. We need to go to the Masks panel and in the Mask
00:42 panel, invert that mask. So go ahead and click Invert. So now the Mask is
00:46 filled with black, concealing all of that desaturation or all of the removal of
00:50 those blues.
00:51 Next, grab our Brush tool by pressing the B key and then we are going to go
00:55 ahead and paint with white. Make sure you have white in your foreground color
00:58 here. Paint at 100% Opacity in and then we will just click and paint over this
01:03 area to remove that subtle color shift from this particular photograph and then
01:07 here we have our before and after.
01:10 All right, so far so good. Now the last little thing that we might want to do
01:13 here is make any kind of a subjective color adjustment. So I'll click on the
01:17 Adjustment Layer icon, choose Curves and here I'm just going to brighten this
01:21 image up just a touch, just so that prints a little bit better and then I'm
01:24 going to go on to my Red channel and I'm going to bring in just a little bit of
01:28 red and then my Blue, Yellow channel, bring in just a little bit of yellow and
01:32 just a small little increment of color. Here is my before and after with that adjustment.
01:37 Again, a brightening and a little bit of warmth and a little bit of red. Now
01:40 let's double-check those numbers. You can press the F8 key to open up your Info
01:44 palette. Now those numbers are still pretty good. They still fall in the range.
01:48 So again this final adjustment, with just a bit of a subjective warming of that photograph.
01:53 Now do you have to do that? No, not at all. But again I just want to get you to
01:56 begin to think about how you color correct the photos and get them perfect and
02:00 then make other modifications.
02:02 Now sometimes what will happen is I'll make another modification like this
02:05 layer and I'll be really excited about it. But then when I print the image, it
02:08 just looks too warm or too yellow or too red. So I'll need to turn that final
02:12 layer off and the one that's a little bit more "accurate" will actually look better.
02:17 Yet, it's always fun to have a little bit of extra flexibility in your workflow
02:20 so that you can see what different color effects will look like with your photographs.
02:25
Collapse this transcript
Color-correcting a studio fashion portrait
00:00In this movie, we are going to apply what we know about color correction to
00:03another photograph, in this case, to photograph that was captured in the
00:06studio. Now this particular photograph comes from one of my other training
00:10titles on Photoshop retouching. Well, we are not going to be talking about
00:13retouching here; we are going to be talking about color correction.
00:17So let's press the F8 key to open up the Info palette, then press the I key to
00:20grab your Eyedropper, hover over the image. We want to select an area that has
00:24a nice diffused quality to it. Somewhere in the forehead will work well.
00:27Hold down the Shift key and click to add a sample point.
00:30Next, we are going to change our values to CMYK by clicking on that eyedropper
00:34and choosing CMYK Color. Now when we look at our CMYK numbers for the most
00:38part, we are doing okay. Yellow is higher than Magenta, yet Cyan is really low
00:43because if we multiply this by 3, that would be 12. By 5, that would be 20.
00:47That's where we have to go first.
00:49So we will click on the icon for Curves. Next, we will press Option+3 on a Mac,
00:54Alt+3 on a PC to navigate to the Red channel. Then we will grab the Target
00:57Adjustment tool there and we are going to click-and-drag. We want to add a
01:02little bit of cyan to this image. I'm just looking at that number saying, 7x3
01:07is 21, that's not enough. 8x3 is 24. Okay, I'm getting in the range. Although,
01:12I'm going to bring that up even, perhaps, a little bit more.
01:15Okay, so far so good. Now our Blue- yellow also need a little bit of work.
01:18We are going to press Option+5 on a Mac, Alt+5 on a PC to go to the Blue-yellow
01:22channel, grab our eyedropper. Here what I want to do is I just want to bring
01:25down some of those yellows here. I'm trying to get these numbers a little bit
01:28closer. Yellow needs to be, of course, higher than the Magenta. All right, 3x9
01:33is 27, 5x9 is 45.
01:35We need to work on that cyan. Let's go back there. We go to that Red channel.
01:38We are just going to remove some of the adjustments that we made and try to
01:43find a nice spot for this. It's going to be subjective. I'm going to have a
01:47little bit less cyan here because this skin tone here is a little bit lighter.
01:50Again, I'm just moving this around. I'm looking at the subjective quality of it
01:53as well. Now here is our before and there is our after. That image looks so
01:58much better. Before, there is a lot of problems with those reds and those
02:01yellows. Then finally, after. That's color corrected.
02:04Now again, I can fine-tune this by clicking on the curve point there and using
02:08my Arrow keys. Sometimes that's a helpful way to do that. I'll then go back to
02:12that Blue-yellow channel, click on that point there just to make sure I have
02:15it. Then use my Arrow keys, I just want to add a little bit more yellow into
02:18the mix and have a nice, warm skin tone there but not too warm. So here is our
02:23before and after. This studio photograph is now color correct.
02:28The last thing that I want to do is hold down the Shift key, I'm going to drag
02:31around this point. Look at my numbers and look at different areas of the skin
02:35and just see how we are doing. I'm going to compare across the board. Now
02:38different areas of skin will respond differently, but again I'm just trying to
02:42get a feel for some of the numbers that I have here and see if I'm going in a
02:45good direction because you can have a point that's a little bit off.
02:49As I move this around, I just see a few things. One is that I'm just wishing I
02:53had a little bit more yellow in the mix. So I'll go ahead and make sure I'm
02:56clicked on my point there, I'm just going to add, just a touch of yellow there.
03:00Okay, that looks nice. Then I'm going to go back to my Red-cyan channel, make
03:04sure that little point is clicked on. Then I'm going to add, again just a
03:08little bit more cyan to the mix. Look at our before and after. Here is our
03:12before and after, subtle yet significant color correction.
Collapse this transcript
Color-correcting skin in a natural light portrait
00:00Because color correcting skin by the numbers is a little bit tricky, we are
00:04going to apply what we know about color correction to yet another photograph.
00:07Let's press the F8 key to open up the Info palette, press the I key to select
00:11your Eyedropper, make sure your Sample Size is something other than Point
00:14Sample, a higher number for higher resolution files; 5 by 5 Average will work
00:18for this one. We will go ahead and Shift-click on an area of the skin up here
00:22and then we are also going to Shift- click on the background. Now why is that?
00:25Well, I'm guessing that background might be close to neutral. It's probably not
00:30perfectly neutral but maybe it's a little bit close to neutral. It could have a
00:34little bit of yellow hue to it, but I'm going to see what those numbers are.
00:37Next, we will change our first point by clicking on the eyedropper to CMYK color.
00:41Now one of the things I see here is the Magenta is way off. I also notice
00:45my background isn't anywhere close to neutral. There is a quite a bit of
00:48variety here. Let's go ahead and neutralize the background first.
00:51We will click on our Curves adjustment layer icon, grab the midtone eyedropper
00:55and click on the background. Let's look at our before and after. Here is before
00:58and after. Well, already the image is looking a ton better.
01:01Well, now that we have done that, let's take a look at our numbers. Well, our
01:04numbers look pretty good except our cyan amount, we may want to change a bit.
01:08So go ahead and click on the Adjustment Layer icon and choose Curves. I'll
01:11navigate to the Red-cyan channel, grab the Target Adjustment tool. I'm just
01:16going to click-and-drag to remove a little bit of the cyan here. I'm going to
01:20try to lower the cyan amount. There will always be variety with this number,
01:24based on the actual skin tone.
01:26We also want to Shift-click and drag this around a little bit, just to see what
01:30our numbers are doing. One of the things that I'm seeing is that in certain
01:33places the yellow is a little bit too low. So I'll go into that Blue-yellow
01:36channel and with this tool, I'm going to click-and-drag to add a little bit
01:41yellow. It's a subjective edit based on this recipe for skin tone. Go back to
01:47that Red-cyan and one of the things that's interesting to do here is to
01:50click-and-drag real extreme up and then click-and-drag real extreme down.
01:55Now what actually is correct? Well, again that's quite a bit of a subjective
01:59decision. We don't know exactly what the skin looks like. Although, we can make
02:03some guesses. Now how is our background doing? Well, those numbers are much
02:06closer. So again, it is close to neutral color back there. Here is our overall
02:10before and then after. That image is looking a ton better.
Collapse this transcript
3. Image Sharpening
Camera Raw input sharpening
00:00In this chapter, we are going to be talking about image sharpening for output.
00:04How can we sharpen our images so that we can create good prints? Well, in this
00:08initial movie what we are going to talk about is input sharpening or
00:11pre-sharpening. What that has to do with is
00:14how typically in most photographic workflows, we start with Camera Raw. We want
00:18to do a little bit of sharpening there, which we can think of as pre-sharpening
00:21or as input sharpening. We are just sharpening the actual image. Now we don't
00:25know what kind of paper we are going to use, we don't know what size this image
00:28is going to be, yet what we do want to do is just boost the sharpness of this
00:32raw file just a little bit.
00:34Now that being said, there are those who don't like to sharpen at all in Camera Raw.
00:37They do all of their sharpening later, all of the output sharpening once
00:41they know the final size, the dimensions, the paper type, etcetera. Yet for us
00:46or for my own workflow for that matter, I would like to sharpen a little bit in
00:49Camera Raw. So let's see how that works.
00:51Well, one of the things that we need to do is zoom in to 100%. Now one of the
00:55ways that you can do that is by shortcut, on a Mac, Command+Option+0, on a PC
01:00Ctrl+Alt+0. That takes you to this 100% view mode. Now to zoom back to fit in view,
01:05that's Command+0 on a Mac, Ctrl+0 on a PC.
01:08All right, Command+Option+0 or Ctrl+Alt+0, we are at 100%. Next thing that we
01:13want to do is navigate to the Detail panel. Now we can do this by a way of
01:16shortcut as well or by clicking on the tab. The shortcut, this is a handy one,
01:20it's Command+Option+3 if you are on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+3 if you are on a PC. So we
01:26have zoomed in, we have navigated to the Detail panel.
01:29Now we have our controls for Sharpening and Noise Reduction. Why are these two
01:33side by side? What happens is when we reduce the noise of in an the image, we
01:37need to raise a little bit of the Luminance noise, the images goes a little bit
01:41soft. So we are going to use these controls together.
01:44So now that I have done a little bit of Noise Reduction, I need to work on the
01:47Sharpening. Well, we are zoomed in to 100%, so that we can see the actual
01:52detail in this particular photograph. All right, great. Well, how much
01:55sharpening do we need to apply? Well, here is a great trick that will help you
01:59get more out of Camera Raw sharpening. On a Mac hold down the Option key, on a
02:04PC hold down the Alt key, then click-and -drag the Sharpening Amount control. As
02:09I do that, I can see this gray scale view. There is the image, really soft.
02:12There is the image, lots of detail.
02:14Now that's too sharp, yet I'm going to over sharpen this in order to
02:18de-construct how these controls work. Then we will go back and perform a
02:22sharpening that's a little bit better. The Amount control is the overall
02:25sharpening intensity. Well, what then is Radius? If we decrease Radius and then
02:29increase Radius, what we are going to do is we are going to see that this
02:32contrast edge almost grows out. It's like the radius of that edge extends
02:36beyond where it currently is.
02:38Well, that's how Radius works. We can kind of see how that end grows or
02:44decreases. Well, what about Detail? Well, this slider is actually not quite
02:47intuitive in my experience. If we have a low amount, that means the details
02:50aren't very sharp. We can see the wood. There is not a lot of texture. When I
02:53crank this up, all of a sudden, I have all of these little tiny details that
02:56are really sharp. So now that we know how the Detail slider works, what about
03:00the Masking slider?
03:01Well, when we increase the Masking amount, what we are going to do is limit the
03:05areas that are sharp. So in this case, the wood doesn't have texture but the
03:09edge of this hand painted sign is really sharp. Even more, we can hold down the
03:14Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC, we can go to the gray scale view for the
03:17Radius. We can go to the gray scale view for the Detail, seeing what types of
03:21details are being sharpened. Then finally, we can hold down that key, Option on
03:25a Mac, Alt on a PC and click- and-drag the Masking slider.
03:28Now when it's all the way down, we see white. That means everything is sharp.
03:32When we drag this to the right, all of a sudden there is a little bit of black.
03:35That's saying conceal. Black is conceal, white is reveal. So wherever there is
03:40black, there is no sharpening. So in this case, the sharpening is just on the
03:44edge right there. We can see it just there on the edge. Press the P key to look
03:48at your before and after, there is before and there is your after. I'm going to
03:51zoom in even further, press the P key, here is our before. Press the P key
03:56again, there is our after.
03:59Well, this sharpening isn't very good at all, but at least now we know a little
04:02bit about these sharpening controls. Well, now that we know a little bit about
04:05input sharpening inside of Camera Raw, let's go ahead and apply what we know in
04:10order to create a well sharpened image and we will do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Sharpening with Camera Raw
00:00Now that we know a little bit about pre-sharpening or input sharpening with
00:03Camera Raw, we are going to go ahead and sharpen this image here.
00:06Let's zoom in to 100%, Command+Option+ Zero on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+Zero on a PC.
00:11And we will click and drag around the image. What we want to
00:13do is just look at the different details in this photograph, see where the
00:16image is soft. It's a little bit more soft or out of focus up top, it's a
00:20little bit more sharp right here and then as we travel down the image, that's
00:25nice and sharp, nice and sharp, nice and sharp down here, a little bit less but
00:29we are seeing that it's primarily in focus in this range. So I want to pull up
00:33that area because I don't want to over-sharpen this area.
00:36Okay, well we obviously want to reduce the noise a little bit, almost all of
00:40our images need a little bit of luminance and color noise reduction.
00:43Next, we're going to go ahead and increase the Amount. And my Radius slider, I'm going
00:47to bring down. Detail, I'm going to bring up. I'm going to hold down the Option
00:51key or the Alt key as I move these sliders and just watch the overall amount,
00:55so this will help me really focus in on the task at hand.
00:59Now the Masking amount, I'm going to bring up just a bit. I want to limit
01:02perhaps a little bit of the sharpening but I do want to have lots of nice
01:05texture in the background. So I'll go ahead and bring my Detail slider up,
01:08Masking down. I'll press the P key, there is my before and after.
01:12Now on your monitor, you may not be even seeing any difference. Now that's
01:17probably the goal. We want to have real subtle sharpening. In order to
01:20illustrate this, I'll grab the Zoom tool and I'll zoom in way in on an area of
01:24the image. Now press the P key, there is my before and after. Again that may
01:29even be difficult to see, before and then after.
01:33So I'm looking to try to create a subtle yet significant sharpening amount.
01:37I don't want to go over the top here because I can always further sharpen the
01:41image later. Now I'll double-click the Zoom tool to go back to 100%. I'm just
01:45going to press the Spacebar key and then click and drag to pan around the
01:49image, look at my preview before and after by clicking on the Preview button
01:52here or by pressing the P key.
01:54I just want to make sure I'm not overdoing anything and as I move through this
01:58image I say, you know what? Hey! That looks pretty good. Let's go ahead and
02:01look at the top of the image where things get a little bit soft and look at our
02:04before and after. Okay, yeah that looks much better up there.
02:07All right, one final check here. I'm going to hit the P key, look at my before
02:11and after. Now the only thing that I'm noticing here is that this edge is
02:15glowing just a bit too much so I'm going to take the Amount and the Radius down
02:18just a little bit there. I'm also going to pull off some of the masking so I
02:22get a little bit more texture in the background.
02:24All right, we have now successfully sharpened this image in Camera Raw.
Collapse this transcript
Introducing Smart Sharpen
00:00There are a number of different techniques that you can use in order to sharpen
00:03your photographs. In this movie, I want to begin to introduce and de-construct
00:07how you can use the Smart Sharpen filter when sharpening your photographs.
00:11Now why do I have this image up of these train tracks? Well, I like to think of
00:15traveling as a way of sharpening your senses. There is something about
00:18traveling or getting out on that train, getting out in the big wide open, that
00:21your senses become alert to different things. That's what happens a lot of
00:25times when you sharpen your photos. You notice things that you wouldn't have
00:27otherwise noticed. You are bringing the photo to life in a whole new way.
00:31Well, I'm going to turn on this topmost layer here. It's called sharpening and
00:35I'll click on that layer in order to target it. Now one of the things that you
00:37can do in Photoshop is create a gray scale or in this case, a gray scale where
00:41I have chopped a couple of lines in it. You can then modify that gray scale and
00:45you can basically teach yourself how Photoshop really works.
00:48In this case, we are going to use this gray scale to teach ourselves how that
00:51Filter > Smart Sharpen works. So I'll navigate to our Filter pulldown menu. Now
00:55we could choose Convert for Smart Filters. That's a nice way to do this, but in
00:58order to keep things simple, I'm going to skip that and go directly to the
01:01sharpening. I'm going to choose Sharpen and then Smart Sharpen. As a side note,
01:06I'll talk about converting for smart filters in a few moments.
01:09Well, let's go ahead and select Smart Sharpen. This will then open up the Smart
01:12Sharpen dialog. Here we are going to see we have a preview of our image.
01:16The amount of sharpening being applied and we have the background image over there. Okay, great.
01:20Well, I'm going to go ahead and increase the Amount because what you want to do
01:23is when you are teaching yourself how to do something, you need to exaggerate
01:26what you are doing. I'll then increase the Radius as well, so that we can
01:29really see the different sharpening amounts.
01:31Now we have a couple of options. We can choose Basic where we just have Amount
01:35and Radius. Then we can sharpen our image in three different ways. Gaussian
01:38Blur works a lot like Unsharpen Mask. Now when I do that, one of the things
01:42that we are going to see is we have a halo that extends pretty far out from our
01:45edges. When I go from Gaussian to Lens Blur, we are going to see that those
01:49edges are reeled in, they are much tighter. What that means is less haloing.
01:54Now haloing is one of the worst things that can happen when you sharpen your
01:57image, because it's a dead giveaway that you have over-sharpened the file.
02:00So as you can see, the Lens Blur option, it works really well. Now what about the
02:04next option, Motion Blur?
02:06Well, this is pretty tricky. Here you can see I'm sharpening the left and the
02:09right edges. Well, what if I change the angle? Now I'm sharpening top to
02:13bottom. Well, what if I go side to side? Well, now it's a little bit of one
02:16side and a little bit of another. So one of the things that's tricky in regards
02:19to Motion Blur is you really have to know how the Camera Raw is panning, how
02:23the motion was happening in order to use that successfully.
02:26So for the most part, you are going to be using Lens Blur. More Accurate, this
02:30is pretty interesting. Now if we check this off, we are going to see less
02:33amount of sharpening. Now if we check this on, we are going to see more. Now
02:36this creates a more accurate sharpening effect. A lot of times you will want to
02:40use this when you have little small details in your photograph. Although for
02:43the most part I typically leave this off. I find that I'm able to dial in an
02:47appropriate amount of sharpening without that option turned on.
02:50Next, I'm going to go ahead and click on the Advanced tab. Now when I do that,
02:54I all of a sudden have these Shadow and Highlight tabs beneath my Sharpen tab.
02:57Now when I go to the Shadow tab, I'm going to go ahead and increase my Amount,
03:00Tonal Width and Radius. We can see that I'm diminishing the sharpening. When I
03:05go to the Highlight tab and increase this as well. Again, we can see that I'm
03:09decreasing the sharpening so much so that now it's completely gone. So I have
03:13completely removed the sharpening from this image.
03:16Now when I bring this back, we can see that I can bring back some of the
03:19highlight edge. I'll go ahead in the Shadow, and here we can see I'm bringing
03:22back some of that as well. Keep in mind that I'm completely over-exaggerating
03:27the sharpening amount but I'm doing that so that we can learn how this
03:30actually works.
03:31Well, let's zoom out of this little preview for a moment, so that we can see
03:35the image in its entirety. Go back to Sharpening, increase the Amount here.
03:39Let's go to Basic, so we don't have any of the other controls up. One of the
03:44things we are seeing is that this top edge becomes darker, darker, darker,
03:47darker and darker and wider as it goes towards the corner. I'll turn on More
03:51Accurate, so we can see even a little bit more of that how it's kind of
03:54fanning out to the edge.
03:56Now when I turn that off, perhaps it is a little bit easier because it's just
03:59a black edge. Same thing here, it's a white edge that goes out, out, out and
04:02extends. Yet when it gets to this color here, which is really close to our
04:06background color, there isn't really much sharpening at all. So what's
04:10happening is this particular dialog is looking for areas of contrast. So when there
04:14is white on dark gray, well, there is a lot of sharpening. When there is black
04:17on dark gray, there is more sharpening than gray on dark gray.
04:20Are you with me on that? So what's happening again is it's looking for these
04:23edges and it's saying, "Hey! I'm going to sharpen those edges based on the
04:27contrast." Here we can also see this, how these different rectangles are being sharpened.
04:31So again, we are not actually sharpening our image. Rather, we are creating the
04:34illusion of sharpness by trying to find contrast edges and then increasing the
04:39contrast on those edges. So in this case, it made the background darker and the
04:43foreground brighter. Here it made the foreground, or the blacker, blacker,
04:47and the background, which was gray, a little bit brighter. Again,
04:50boosting the contrast right around those edges to create or to simulate a
04:55sharpening effect.
Collapse this transcript
Sharpening pt. 1: Using Smart Filters
00:00In the previous movie, we learned a little bit about how Smart Sharpen actually
00:03works, and in this movie, we are going to apply what we know to a practical
00:07situation. Well, you have this wonderful portrait of my daughter Annika.
00:11What I want to do is print this out as a 4x6. So the first thing that you need
00:15to do before you can sharpen your file is resize it. In this case, we'll go to
00:19Image and then choose Image Size.
00:21Now, currently it's a 5x7, so I'll change this to a 4x6. Now, when I do that, I
00:26don't have enough Height. So I'll change my Height to 6. Now, when I do that I
00:29have too much Width. Well, what do I need to do? Well I need to size it down as
00:32close as I can and click OK. Make sure Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction) is on.
00:37Now, that I have sized it down, I'll then grab the Crop tool, and here I'm
00:41going to enter a Width of 4 inches and a Height of 6 inches, and Resolution 300
00:46there. And if those numbers aren't there for you, you can go ahead and enter
00:49them. You can also select this option from the pulldown menu, there it is, 4x6
00:54inch crop at 300 pixels per inch. All right.
00:56Next, we are going to click-and-drag the Crop tool across this image, and then
01:00we are going to reposition this crop to compose that. Press Enter or Return to
01:04apply that. Great, so far so good. We have now resized the image.
01:08Now, the next step that we need to take is to double-click the Zoom tool to
01:11look at the detail that we have. Press the Spacebar tool to move around the
01:15image. Now, as I do that, I say okay, well thankfully I have enough detail on
01:19the face. The near eye is in focus. So what that means is when you are taking a
01:23picture of someone, you will always want the eye that's closest to the camera
01:26to be the eye that's most in focus.
01:28Now, this eye isn't quite sharp enough over here. I have lots of other
01:32sharpness on the face, the ear is out of focus, really shallow depth of field
01:36here. So I'm going to have to do some unique sharpening.
01:39Now, in order to use Smart Sharpen effectively, what I want to do is I want to
01:43convert this layer to a Smart Object. So let's go ahead and do that. We are
01:47going to go to our layer. Right-click or Ctrl-click, choose Convert to Smart
01:51Object and then double-click the name here, and we'll give this new layer a
01:55name of annika. And the reason that I want to sharpen as a Smart Filter is
01:59because it gives me extra flexibility. Let me show you what I mean.
02:02We'll navigate to our Filter pulldown menu, choose Sharpen and then Smart
02:07Sharpen. Now, when I do that, this opens up the Smart Sharpen dialog window.
02:11I'm going to go ahead and increase my Radius and my Amount to a point where the
02:15image looks horrible. That is not good sharpening. But I'm doing this to
02:19illustrate a point. We'll click OK to apply that.
02:21Now, here you can see I have this Smart Filter icons. Double-click Smart
02:25Sharpen. Well, I can lower the Radius, dial that back in, bring back my Amount.
02:29Click OK. I can also double-click the icon to open up my Blending Mode option
02:33or lower my Opacity, to find the sweet spot for this particular degree of
02:36sharpening. Click OK to apply that.
02:39I also have a built-in mask. So I can mask-off particular areas in my
02:42photograph as we are going to need to do with this particular image. Okay, well
02:46now that we have set this up as a Smart Filter. I'm going to go ahead and
02:49double-click the option for my blend mode. Bring my Opacity all the way up.
02:53I will then double-click the Smart Sharpen filter, and pull up this dialog
02:57here. And what I want to do is position this and then press the Spacebar, move
03:01the image in the background, and position this dialog, so I get the best of
03:05both worlds, right? I have a really large preview, the preview here, as well
03:07as, the preview in the background.
03:10All right, we are all set to sharpen this image, and we'll do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Sharpening pt: 2: Using Smart Sharpen
00:00All right, well in the previous movie we converted this layer for a Smart
00:03Filter. Opened up the Smart Sharpen dialog, and we are using this as a Smart
00:07Filter, which basically means we have extra flexibility.
00:10We now need to dial-in the appropriate amount of sharpening. Well, how do we do that?
00:14Well, one of the things that I like to do is I like to think of the
00:17radius in regards to sandpaper. Now, let me explain. This is a bit of a
00:21stretch, but this is going to helps me understand how the Radius slider works.
00:25Pretend that you are working on a woodworking project. Now, if you have really
00:28coarse wood, I mean, it's really rough wood. Well, what you want to do is
00:32increase the radius, increase the grit of the sandpaper. On the other hand, if
00:36you have a real fine finished piece of wood, you are going to use a low, real
00:39fine grain sandpaper in order to finish it off.
00:42So, we can think about that in regards to our Radius amount. The higher the res
00:46of the file, the larger the Radius. For that matter, if it's a web file or a
00:49small file that we have here, we are going to use a real low radius.
00:53Now our Amount will vary as well, but it won't vary as significantly as the
00:56Radius. So in this case, we are going to go ahead and bring our Radius up a
00:59little bit. Click on the image to look at our before and after.
01:02We really want to focus in on the different areas of the image. I want to try
01:05to get this eye in focus as well, or to bring some sharpness to that eye.
01:09I'm noticing that as I'm increasing the Amount here, that I'm bringing a little bit
01:13of a haloing effect, although the image is looking good in certain areas.
01:17So now this particular amount of sharpening is too high. There is too much
01:21sharpening here. Yet I'm okay with that. Even though I absolutely despise over
01:26sharpened image, and I'm okay with that, because we are going to then paint in
01:30the sharpening to specific areas.
01:32Okay, well now that we have our Amount and Radius in, and again my Radius is a
01:35little bit high, my Amounts is a little bit too high than I'm comfortable with,
01:38I'll click OK to apply that.
01:40Next I'll move over, so I can focus in on the image, and look at my before and
01:44after. Here is before and here is after. Now, if I zoom way in on one of the
01:47eyes, and look at my before and after, the problem that I'm having is with
01:52these highlights. With the halos, the edges, that doesn't look good.
01:55So we need to click in the mask. And on a Mac, what I want to do is fill this
01:58mask with black. So black is in my background color. So on a Mac that's
02:02Command+Delete; on a PC that would be Ctrl+Delete. Now if black was in my
02:06foreground, that would be Option+ Delete on a Mac, Alt+Delete on a PC. Okay,
02:11well now that that's black, i.e. no sharpening at all. I'm going to then grab
02:15my brush. I'm going to move over to the eye; it's a little bit more out of focus.
02:19Make my brush a little bit smaller by pressing the Left Bracket Key. I'll press
02:22the Zero Key to take my Opacity 100% and with a nice small brush, by painting
02:27with white, not with black, I'm going to bring in full amount of sharpening on
02:31this eye. Because this is the area of the image that needs the most amount of
02:35sharpening. Let's look at our before and after. Before and then after. That eye
02:38is looking much better.
02:39Now do I always zoom in this file, when I'm sharpening? No, I'm just doing that
02:43in order to illustrate how to sharpen these eyes. Typically, you want to view
02:47your image at 100%. Okay, well I'll click back in the mask. I have my Brush tool.
02:51Now here, let me go down to about 80%, because I don't need to sharpen this eye
02:55as much as the other one. This one has a little bit more of it already in
02:58focus. I'll zoom out a touch just so I can start to zero in on the eyes. So
03:02here is my before and after.
03:03Okay, the eyes are looking much better. Now, as I did that I realize that this
03:07eye needs a little bit more. So I'll click in the mask, I'm going to increase
03:10this up, and then bring in some more sharpening over here. Again, just looking
03:15to try to get both eyes pretty similar place. Okay, great.
03:18Now, I'm going to make my brush nice and big. I'm going to go down to about 50%
03:22Opacity, and I want to bring in some of the details on the nose there, the
03:26lips. I'm going to bring in the eyebrows, little bit of the hair up here. My
03:31brush nice and big. And again, I'm just looking to bring in some of the
03:34sharpness to some of the other areas around the eyes there.
03:38Next, I'll press the X Key, and make my brush a little bit smaller. And I'm
03:44going to bring my Opacity up, this will mask out some of the sharpening I just
03:47did. I want to do that especially on these highlight areas. I don't want those
03:50highlight areas to look too crispy, where the light is really reflecting on her
03:55nose, and on her cheeks there.
03:56I also want to remove a little bit down here on the skin. I don't want to
04:00over-sharpen the skin. So again, I'm just dialing in the exact amount of
04:04sharpening that I want. I'll zoom in a little bit, so you can see what's
04:07happening here. Now, here is our before and then after.
04:11Now one problem is I sharpened this nose a bit too much. So I'll click at my
04:14mask. Make my brush nice and small. Paint with 100%. Press the Zero Key. That
04:19takes the Opacity at 100. Now I'm going to mask off the sharpening of that edge there,
04:22I don't want that halo to be showing up too much, and then we'll zoom out a bit.
04:28Double-click the Zoom tool to go to 100%. That's the zoom rate we want. And
04:31then click on the Eye icon to look at our before and then after. Now, we just
04:37applied a pretty good amount of sharpening, and this amount of sharpening will
04:40work really well if you are printing this image on glossy paper.
04:43Now, why do I say that? Well, I say that because the sharpening isn't over the
04:46top, and glossy paper will really show you a lot of the details. I mean it's
04:51able to show you so much color and sharpness.
04:54Now, let's say that I all of a sudden decide, I want to print this on water
04:57color paper, or on velvet paper, or on matte paper. Well, there is a higher Dot
05:02Gain with those types of papers. And what that means is that ink bleeds in the
05:05paper a little bit. The image will look a little bit more soft. So in that
05:09case, I need to double-click to Smart Sharpen icon there. And I'm going to
05:12increase my Amount and Radius a little bit more. I'll click OK to apply that.
05:16Now, the sharpening may feel like its a little bit over-sharpened on screen.
05:21Although with that paper, it's going to naturally soften the image, and dial
05:24back the sharpening amount.
05:25Now, I imagine that in these movies it's kind of hard to tell how much I'm
05:29actually sharpening the image, because these movies get kind of small. Yet, my
05:32hope is that through walking through this process, you have now learned how you
05:35can evaluate this on your own monitors, a nd get the appropriate amount of sharpening.
05:40All right, well we have now successfully sharpened this file and as a quick
05:44side-note I just got to tell you, I just love these colors and the patterns and
05:48the background there. I think that's so beautiful, such an amazing, little
05:50background effect there. I hadn't noticed that before, but just zooming on the
05:53image, that's a really nice little touch.
05:56And in conclusion, we have successfully sharpened this image, and learned how
06:00to apply, what we know about Smart Sharpen to a practical test.
Collapse this transcript
Sharpening and blend modes
00:00In the previous movie, we talked about how we could use Smart Sharpen in order
00:03to sharpen a photograph. Now, in this movie, what I want to do is take things a
00:06little bit further. I want to begin to talk about sharpening and blend modes.
00:11Here I have this photograph of this fascinating building, and then I have a few
00:14other layers on top of it.
00:15Now, one of the layers that I have is a grayscale layer. I'm going to go ahead
00:19and take this grayscale layer to some different blend modes. Let say I go to
00:21the Darken blend mode. But what happens? Well, I lose all of the brighter or the
00:25whiter tones. Now, on the other hand if I go to Screen or to Lighten for that
00:28matter, it does the opposite effect. I lose the darker tones over here, and
00:32brighter tones remain this way.
00:34Well, how then I can use that in regards to sharpening? Well, I could use that
00:39in a really unique way. On the topmost layer called halo_no_more. Let me go
00:43ahead and turn that on and zoom into this image. Now, when I zoom into this
00:47image, we can see that the image is yes much sharper, and I have simply applied
00:51some Smart Sharpening here.
00:52Yet I have a little bit of a halo happening. Now, that halo doesn't look good.
00:56Well, I can actually change the blend mode of a layer like this to a different
01:00blend mode, like Darken. Now when I do that all of a sudden, I have the
01:04sharpening effect, and we can see that it's bringing out those darker tones,
01:08but the lighter tones are no longer affecting this image. So I was able to pull
01:12off the halo all together. Again, here is Normal and then here is Darken.
01:17So one of the things that you can do is try these different blend modes, when
01:20you do have a little bit of a halo effect. Now that being said, you could also
01:24use those advance controls right inside of Smart Sharpen and do the same thing,
01:28but there are other times when you are using Unsharpen Mask, which we will talk
01:31about in a little bit, where you don't have those sliders. In this way, you can
01:35then pull out those halos by using these two blend modes.
01:38Now, there is one more blend mode that can be helpful when sharpening. A lot of
01:43times what happens when you are sharpening an image is you exaggerate noise.
01:46Then here you can see I have over- sharpened this file, but I have done that in
01:49order to illustrate how there is quite a bit of noise variation in the sky,
01:53also on the building. Now that doesn't look good at all.
01:56So one of the things that's really handy in regards to sharpening is to sharpen
02:00your photograph, and then at the very end, to take your blend mode to
02:04Luminosity. And this is especially important when you have skies, or when you
02:08have shadows that are a little bit underexposed, this can really help get rid
02:11off this exaggerated noise.
02:13Watch this. When I go to Luminosity all of a sudden, it only uses the Luminance
02:17values of this layer. It doesn't use all the color information. So here is my
02:21before and after.
02:22Now the sharpening amount there is way over the top, yet I did that in order to
02:26illustrate the difference between Normal. Lots of color noise. I'll zoom in
02:29even further so you can see all those colors in the sky right there. And then
02:33if I take this down to a blend mode of Luminosity, that can really help me out.
02:37All right, as you continue to work with sharpening, keep that in mind, you can
02:41always access the different blending modes in order to improve your sharpening even more.
Collapse this transcript
Using Unsharp Mask
00:00In this movie, I want to share with you some general sharpening guidelines, as
00:03well as I want to begin to talk about using the Unsharpen Mask filter.
00:07Now, for general guidelines what you want to do is for standard sharpening
00:10your Amount's set about 100, your Radius is going to be 2 or less.
00:14One other thing you are going to see is your Radius typically is pretty low.
00:17It rarely goes higher than 3. Now, for the Web, your radius is really low, 0.1 or
00:220.2 or 0.3. Very rarely goes up this high as 0.5. Now our Amounts also vary and
00:28again they are going to typically be somewhere in the 100s, although for the
00:32web that's a little bit different, but somewhere in the 100s with a really low radius.
00:36Okay, well now that we have those tips, let's click off that Tips layer. Click
00:39in the Background layer and copy it by clicking and dragging it to the New
00:42Layer icon. We will go ahead and name this new layer unsharp.
00:44Now we are going to navigate to our Filter pulldown menu, choose Sharpen and
00:49Unsharpen Mask. Just as a side note, could we have converted this for Smart
00:52Filters and done this as a Smart Filter? Sure. Yet, in order to do something a
00:57little bit different here, I'm going to simply do this as a regular layer.
01:00So I go to Unsharpen Mask. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring
01:03my Amount, my Radius, and my Threshold all the way down. And again, I like to
01:07reposition my dialog, so I can have a pretty good preview of the background as
01:10well as this portion of the preview here. Typically, what you want to do is
01:14bring your Amount to the somewhere in the high 100s, so in this case about 170.
01:19Next bring up the Radius, and you want to bring this up slowly. You want to
01:23find where it starts to halo and you can see the halo off of the petals on the
01:27sunflower here. Now, one of the interesting things with this photograph is it's
01:30not sharp. So we are trying to bring in some sharpness. It's pretty soft. It's
01:33not even that focused there. So I start to see the halo really early on with this
01:38image. It's coming in quickly. So my radius needs to be super low and I'm just
01:43looking to find where the halo becomes just unbearable.
01:46Now once I start to see that halo being unbearable and I think it's right about there,
01:50I'm going to then bring my Amount back down to about 100%. Now why did I do that?
01:55Well, I brought my amount up, in order to find the sweet spot for my radius.
01:59Now this is a pretty small file. It's a soft file. So I have a radius
02:03that's actually pretty high for this type of an image. Yet you can use this
02:07technique on all different types of images.
02:09Again a high amount, bring your radius up until you see the halo, then bring
02:14that amount back down. Now, what's the deal with the Threshold slider? Well, if I
02:17increase my Amount up, I'm going to go ahead and increase this significantly.
02:21The Threshold, I like to think of as a slider that says, hey guys, you know
02:24back it off a little bit. It's kind of the save-the-day slider.
02:27So when I increase the Threshold slider, even on that bad of sharpening, you can
02:30see that it's making out to be a pretty decent image. Now, it's not amazing.
02:35But keep in mind I'm exaggerating the amount intensely here. Okay well,
02:38let's go back down to about 100 or so. Bring the threshold down.
02:42So what I'm doing is I just think of this kind as a peacemaker slide. Make
02:45peace between the amount and the radius there. I click on the image to look at
02:49my before and after and I'm looking to try to create a pretty subtle effect.
02:53Now a lot of times it's helpful to actually look away from your monitor, and
02:56then look back and say, does this image actually look good? In my case, I think
03:01it does. Therefore I'm going to increase my Amount just a little bit more, also
03:05my Threshold and the Radius just a little bit more, so I have a little bit too
03:09much sharpening, click OK to apply that.
03:11The reason I like to have a little bit more here is because I can then mask it
03:15in the specific areas, or I can simply lower the Opacity to dial this and then
03:19find a sweet spot. So again, I just like to have a little bit of that upper
03:23room there, so I can bring it down and find the sweet spot. It also gives me
03:26different flexibility in regards to my different paper types.
03:30So if we zoom on in this image a little bit, here is our before and then after.
03:34This image has now been successfully sharpened, before and after, except if I
03:38really focus in on this portion of the flower, let's look for problem areas.
03:41Before and after, gosh. All on these petals, this looks horrible. So I click on
03:46the Mask icon, grab my Brush tool, Left Bracket key for a nice small brush.
03:50I press the X to flip black and white, so I have black there, at 100% Opacity.
03:54I am just going to go ahead and paint away the halos and anywhere where I see
03:59a real problematic halo, I'm going to get rid off it. I could also try few
04:03different techniques here. Blend modes would be worth trying and whatnot.
04:07I could also try to go back and lower the amount of my sharpening, but in my
04:11case, I'm just going to go ahead and hit these real heavy halo areas and
04:15it looks like I have got all of those there. I think down here, a little bit down
04:19below, and nothing too bad down below. Okay great.
04:22Now that really made a difference. If we Shift-click that mask and zoom in on
04:25those areas, so here is before, Shift-click, there is after. Okay, so we have
04:30nice sharpening. We have now some nice sharpening on these petals right here,
04:33but we are not getting any of that halo effect in the sky. Okay, now we have
04:37successfully sharpened this photograph. Yet, what we want to do here is begin
04:40to experiment with our blend modes a little bit.
04:42So let's zoom in on the image. And then we are going to go ahead and
04:45Shift-click this mask. Let's say that we didn't want to create this mask. Well,
04:48we could try our two blend modes. We'll first try Darken because that's up at
04:51the top. It won't work. But it's kind of interesting.
04:54Well, then what if we try our Lighten or Screen blend mode? Well all of a
04:57sudden the halo up there is completely gone. Here is our before and after.
05:00We still have some pretty nice sharpening effects, yet we don't have that halo.
05:04So again, keep in mind, these blend modes can really help you out. Right, well
05:07let's take it back to Normal, because we have already done our mask work.
05:11Shift-click that mask to turn that mask back on. What we want to do here is
05:15because we have created a mask and we have sharpened in a specific area, is we
05:19want to make sure not to add any extra exaggerated noise. So we are going to
05:24take our blending mode to good old Luminosity.
05:27Now that we have it on this Luminosity blend mode, we shouldn't see much of a
05:30difference. If anything we will see a subtle improvement with the photo.
05:34We'll go ahead and zoom out and then look at our before and after. That one is
05:37looking great and this image is now done.
Collapse this transcript
Using High Pass to sharpen
00:00 In this movie, we are going to take a look at another sharpening technique and
00:03 it's called the high pass sharpening technique. What we are going to do first
00:06 is resize this photograph of my daughter, Annika, in her mermaid costume.
00:10 She was getting ready for Halloween here.
00:12 So I'll navigate up to our Image > Image Size dialog window to see what kind of
00:16 information we have. We have quite a bit of information and let's say that we
00:20 want to print this at 8x10. I'll go ahead and choose 8 here and as I do that,
00:24 I get this 8x12 dimension. I'll click OK to apply that, making sure Bicubic
00:29 Sharper (best for reduction) is turned on. Click OK.
00:32 Next then, I'll grab the Crop tool, press the C key and my Width is going to be
00:36 10 and my Height is going to be 8, 300 pixels per inch. Click-and-drag to
00:41 create that shape. The reason we are printing this as an 8x10, let's say,
00:45 because it needs to fit in an 8x10 frame.
00:47 All right, well, so far so good. Now let's double-click the Zoom tool to see
00:51 what kind of detail we have. Now when we do that, we see that we have pretty
00:54 good detail in her face. Now the eyes are exactly sharp. The cheeks are a
00:57 little bit more in focus than the eyes because we have this super shallow depth
01:01 of field here. Although we are going to be able to make something of this.
01:05 So I'm going to zoom out a little bit, just so we can see the image while we
01:08 are working on it. Then I'll press Command+J on a Mac, Ctrl+J on a PC to
01:12 duplicate the Background layer and I'll name this new layer high pass. Next, we
01:17 are going to navigate to our Filter pulldown menu and choose Other and then
01:21 High Pass.
01:23 Now High Pass sharpening works good in a number of different of situations. It
01:26 works especially good when you want to do some edge sharpening or you want to
01:30 do this really fine-tuned type of sharpening. All right. Well, I'll go ahead
01:34 and migrate over on the image by clicking and dragging and I'm going to lower
01:37 the Radius. What I'm looking for here is just see a faint kind of silhouette of
01:41 the shape of the image. I'll go ahead and click OK to apply that.
01:45 Now one of the things that's happening with this particular image is if we zoom
01:48 in, we now have a grayscale or close to a grayscale except here you can see
01:53 there are these little color artifacts around the sparkles on her cheek.
01:56 You can also see a little bit of color artifact in her skin.
02:00 So before we actually leave this particular stage, we need to navigate to Image
02:04 > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation or press Command+U on a Mac, Ctrl+U on a PC and
02:09 desaturate this so we have no color here. Important step, many people miss that step.
02:14 All right, so far we have applied the High Pass filter, we desaturated. Now
02:19 what is next is we are going to take this to a blend mode of either Overlay or
02:23 Soft Light. Overlay is going to be a little bit more of an intense sharpening
02:27 effect. Soft Light a little bit less. So let's try Overlay, so you can actually
02:31 see the effect. We will zoom in a little bit and then click on and off. Here is
02:35 our before and then here is our after. Some nice, subtle, clean sharpening.
02:40 Now the nice thing about this, of course, is that we can mask off the areas
02:43 that we don't want to have sharp. In my case, there are just few areas that I
02:48 do want to have sharp. So I'll go ahead and hold down the Option key on a Mac,
02:51 Alt key on a PC, click on the Layer Mask icon down there. That will then add a
02:57 mask filled with black.
02:58 So when you click on this typically, it creates a mask filled with white. If
03:03 you hold down the Option key or that Alt key and click on that icon, we now
03:06 have a mask filled with black. I'll grab my Brush tool and make this nice and
03:11 big, paint with white. In this case, I'm going to paint with 100% Opacity
03:15 because what I saw there, it looked pretty good on those eyes. I thought that
03:19 looked phenomenal.
03:21 Those cheeks are already pretty nice and sharp, so I'll press the 5 key and
03:24 just paint with 50% Opacity on the cheeks, just a touch of sharpening, a little
03:29 bit on the lips there too. I'll make them look just a touch more glossy and a
03:33 little bit on that hair as well, just for the fun of it. We will zoom in, so we
03:37 can see how we are doing. Here is our before and our after. I'm going to zoom
03:42 in even further, so you can actually see this. It's tricky to see it on the
03:45 small movies. Here is our before and then after. So far so good.
03:50 Now because I'm focusing on the eyes, I decide, you know what? I want to bring
03:53 even more sharpening to these eyes. I want to get even more out of this. So in
03:57 that case, I'm going to go ahead and merge these two layers to the topmost
04:01 layer. I'm going to do that by way of shortcut. This is a handy shortcut. It's
04:05 Shift+Option+Command+E, if you are on a Mac. On a PC, that's Shift+Alt+Ctrl+E.
04:11 That allows you to merge your underlying layers to the topmost layer. We will
04:15 go ahead and name this layer high pass 2.
04:18 Next, we are going to Filter > Other and High Pass. We are going to do this
04:23 High Pass effect again. We are going to crank it up this time though, really
04:27 high amount here. Click OK, desaturate it, Command+U on a Mac, Ctrl+U on a PC.
04:32 Next, take our blend mode to Overlay. Now we have intense amount of sharpening there.
04:38 But what we are going to do is just paint that into specific areas. So hold
04:42 down the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC, click on the Layer Mask icon. So
04:46 it's filled with black, grab your Brush tool. You want a real small brush for
04:50 this. A lot of times what's helpful is when you are doing this sharpening eyes,
04:53 like this, you will want to try to bring in the sharpening amount. I'm going to
04:57 bring it at 100% there. Bringing the sharpening amount by painting the
05:00 direction of the eyes. So you can see here that I'm trying to kind of follow
05:04 the way that the eye is actually working.
05:06 Now this highlight is going to be a little bit problematic. So I'll press the 4
05:09 key to go to 40% and I'll just sharpen this just a touch because that's going
05:13 to look over-sharpened, if I go too far. There is my before and after on that
05:16 eye. Go over here to this eye. Now that highlight, that's good enough.
05:20 Actually, maybe 3 for 30%, still a little bit there. Press 0. That will take my
05:25 Opacity to 100% and then I'll bring in some sharpness here.
05:29 All right, let's zoom out a little bit, so we can see how that looks. Here is
05:34 our before and then after. Some nice sharpening on those eyes. Again, before
05:39 and after. Overall, here is our before and now our after. Very nice sharpening
05:46 with that High Pass filter and combining that with some masking.
05:50 Just when I want to look at my before and after, make sure we are going in a
05:53 good direction. That looks pretty good, I think, and we have successfully
05:57 sharpened this photograph.
05:59
Collapse this transcript
Adding texture and effects with High Pass
00:00In this movie, we are going to talk about another scenario for using the High
00:03Pass sharpening effect. What I want to do here is just begin to think about how
00:07we can add a little bit of texture with this effect. Before I do that, we have
00:11to talk a little bit about sharpening in regards to contrast.
00:14I click on the Curves adjustment layer icon and I decrease the Contrast here,
00:18well, the image doesn't feel as sharp. On the other hand, if I increase the
00:22Contrast, the image feels much more sharp. So let's delete that layer, we don't
00:26really need that. I just wanted to pull that up to illustrate this idea that
00:29sharpness and contrast go hand in hand.
00:33So let's say that with this particular photograph, we will double-click on the
00:36Zoom tool and with this photograph, we want to bring in some texture to this
00:39sculpture here. We don't obviously want to add any sharpening to the background
00:44but we want to have this be a little bit more tactile. We want to bring out
00:47these little tiny details. So here is what we are going to do.
00:49We are going to go ahead and copy the Background layer, Command+J on a Mac,
00:52Ctrl+J on a PC. We will name this high pass. Next, we will navigate to our
00:56Filter pulldown menu > Other and High Pass. Now we are looking to bring in some
01:01texture here and it doesn't really matter how the edges look. More important that it
01:05matters how the detail on the sculpture looks. Click OK to apply that. We have
01:09some color fringing. I can see that. All different kinds of color problems.
01:13You know how to fix that, right? It's Command+U on a Mac, Ctrl+U on a PC, remove
01:18the color and click OK.
01:20Next, we are going to take this to a blend mode of Overlay or Soft Light.
01:24I'm going to choose Overlay because I want to make this real intense. So here
01:27is my before, here is my after. Nice texture there, except I obviously wrecked
01:32the sky. So how do I fix that? Well, we will turn that layer off and click
01:35back into the Background layer. I'll close my Adjustments panel for a moment by
01:39double-clicking on the Adjustments tab, so that we can really focus in on the
01:43Background layer.
01:43Next, we are going to grab the good old Quick Select tool and all that we need
01:47to do here is quickly click-and-drag across the image. If there is an area of
01:51the image we don't want to have to selected, as I have here, hold down the
01:55Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC and just click-and-drag to paint that
01:58away. Then we will go ahead and add this area back in and just looking to try
02:04to get it pretty close to the edge. It doesn't need to be perfect. I'll make my
02:08brush a little bit smaller and again, just remove that, a little bit of an edge there.
02:12Again, the edge doesn't need to be perfect. Actually, having a little bit of a
02:16problem area there will help us out because we will be able to see how we can
02:19fix that later. Next, click in the high pass layer. Now this high pass layer,
02:24we are going to then add a layer mask. So we click on the Add Layer Mask icon,
02:28so that the sharpening is only affecting the sculpture. So here is my before and after.
02:34Well, so far so good, except my edges are a little bit too sharp. I'll go into
02:39the Mask panel. And when I go into the Mask panel, I can choose Mask Edge. Now
02:43this is really interesting. Here we can see that I'm in the mask and I'm going
02:46to bring back some of these adjustments, bring them back to normalize them a little bit.
02:51Then I'll zoom out, so I can see my image here. I'm going to view
02:55this with this red rubylith overlay and there you can see a little bit of
02:58my problem area.
03:00Now I can contract this edge, so that that becomes a little bit smaller there.
03:04It comes in. Feather it. We can see that it's softening those edges; the red is
03:08spilling over into the sculpture. I can also smooth that out. Again, that's
03:13going to take off that hard edge that I have there and I can dial this in until
03:17I see that it looks pretty good. Click OK to apply that and now I have a new
03:22edge on that mask. When I zoom in, it's going to be a much more friendly, much
03:25softer edge than it was before.
03:27Now I have a pretty intense amount of sharpening, yet I'm okay with that
03:31because I'm going for this kind of a special effect. Okay, so I have all that
03:35texture. Now I want to work with the color. Again, we are just beginning to
03:38combine sharpening with other techniques here. We will click on the Adjustment
03:42Layer icon and choose Hue/Saturation. Next, we are going to choose Colorize and
03:47we are going to add quite a bit of blue here. Then we will take the blend mode
03:50of this layer to good old Soft Light.
03:53Now I really like doing things like this because what it will do is it will add
03:56contrast and kind of bleach the image out a little bit, removing a lot of the
04:00color and adding in a little bit of blue. Now if I don't like that amount of blue,
04:03I can swing it one way or another, but again, I think that looks kind of
04:07fun there. Lower the Saturation perhaps to remove even more of the blue.
04:11Here is my before and after.
04:13Again, I'm going for a little bit more of a gritty, tactile feel. Almost looks a
04:17little bit surreal in my opinion. That image looks like it's almost two
04:20separate things. I'll click on our before and after, so we can zoom in to see
04:24what kind of texture we are bringing into this area of the photograph.
04:27All right, well, it's a little bit too strong, so we will lower the Opacity
04:30and/or try a different blend mode like Soft Light. Again, we just want to add a
04:34little bit of contrast there, a little bit of boost. We will find the sweet spot.
04:38 That looks good. Zoom out a touch to look at our overall before and
04:42after. Here is before.
04:44Now when we look at the before, this looks like it's not even in focus and
04:47there is the after. We added quite a bit of a tactile nature to that particular
04:53object in this photograph. It feels like it has much more texture in a kind of
04:57a unique and creative way.
04:59So all that I'm trying to do here is to just get you to begin to think about
05:02how when you are sharpening your photographs, sometimes you are just sharpening
05:06for a typical print. It's a normal workflow. Other times, you need to get a
05:10little bit more creative with your sharpening perhaps, in order to fulfill your
05:13desired intent with a particular photograph.
05:16Whatever your goal is, my hope is that these different sharpening techniques
05:20will ultimately lead you to creating engaging and compelling final prints.
Collapse this transcript
4. Creating a Business Card
Business card resources
00:00If you are a photographer or if you simply like to take pictures or if you are
00:04just plain creative, you just absolutely have to have a business card, so that
00:08you can begin to get paid for what you actually enjoy doing. There is nothing
00:12like having a good business card that can begin to formalize your process of
00:16doing more what you actually love to do.
00:18What I want to do in this movie is share with you a few resources where you can
00:22get some information and inspiration about designing business cards. The first
00:26site that I'm at is photoshopinfocus. com. If you click on Photoshop Resources
00:30and then Recommendations, you will see that there is a link which says Click
00:34here to view some of my recommendations of a number of books, etcetera. If you
00:38click on that link, it will take you to this page. From there you want to click
00:41on the link for Design.
00:42Now if you go to that Design page, you will notice that there are a number of
00:45different books that I'm recommending here which talk about business card
00:48design. Now you don't necessarily need to purchase these books, you can always
00:52just go to borders and flip through them in order to get some good inspiration
00:55about how to design your own business card. That being said, I do own quite a
00:59bit of these books and it's fun to look through them and get some real creative
01:02ideas about business card design.
01:03All right. Well, the next site that I want to show you is on Flickr. If you do
01:08a Google search for Flickr business cards, it will take you to this whole set
01:12of different types of business cards and here you can click through a wide
01:15range of business cards. Again, ton of inspiration here on how other people
01:19have designed their business cards.
01:21The next site we are going to is freelanceswitch.com. If you go to that site
01:25and do a search for business cards here, it will take you to this 18 smoking
01:28hot business card designs. If we scroll through this, you are going to see that
01:32there are indeed some really good business card designs here, and you can get
01:35some inspiration there.
01:36Another site for you. This one is dailypoetics.typepad.com. Again, you can do a
01:42search for daily poetics and the art of the business card. Here you can scroll
01:47through a wide range of really creative and interesting business cards. The
01:51next site that I'm going to go to is bittbox.com. Again, if you do a search on
01:59that site for business cards, here it will take you to some of the other links
02:03that we have already looked at. Flickr, FreelanceSwitch, and then a few other
02:06links as well.
02:08Now you can, of course, do a quick Google search and if you do a Google search
02:12for business card inspiration, it will show you many of the sites that I have
02:15just pulled up as well as other sites. So again, begin to do a little bit of
02:19research on what's out there before you actually start your own design process,
02:23so that you have some inspiration. You can then bring that inspiration to the
02:27actual design and development of the card. We will talk about how we are going
02:30to do that in the next movie.
02:32The last site that I want to highlight is a printing site. It's called
02:35overnightprints.com. Now in my opinion, this is the best inexpensive place
02:40where you can get business cards. Let's go ahead and click on one of their
02:43products, in this case Business Cards here. You can also do other things like
02:46Post Cards. Again, it just tells us a little bit about that.
02:49I will go to Pricing, so we get a feel for what are their prices for some of
02:52their different products. I can get 100 or a couple of 100 business cards let's
02:56say for $20 or $30. Keep in mind that shipping will be pretty expensive on
03:00these as well. So let's say for 100 business cards, it costs you $20 or $30.
03:04Well, that's pretty good and I actually like to use this particular site even
03:08to create proof business cards.
03:10And what I mean is before I pay $800 or $1,000 or $2,000 for business cards,
03:14I'll run the business card at this site and it will just be a way for me to get
03:18a feel for the size to carry it with me, to tack it up on the wall, to give it
03:22to a few people, to experiment with it before I have to commit the big bucks to
03:26that business card.
03:27Now that being said, I know other people who use this completely and
03:30thoroughly. They will create business cards because it's pretty inexpensive for
03:33a particular event, put pretty good photos on it. That makes sense for that
03:37event. In my own experience, I have found that these cards are phenomenal. Now
03:41they are not as good as high and expensive cards. So some people have had
03:44problems with them. Of course, that's part of what you are paying for, right?
03:48But as a nice starting point, it's a nice way to get you off the ground.
03:51Definitely check out this site. Now there are ton of other printing companies
03:54out there that do things like this. So if you know of another one, surely go
03:58ahead and use that one. This is just one that I have experience with. All right.
04:01Well, now that I have shared a few links with you and hopefully they will give
04:04some more information and inspiration about business cards, let's talk about
04:08how we can use Photoshop to design one.
Collapse this transcript
Using a business card template
00:00 In this brief movie, we are going to talk about using a design template in
00:04 order to begin the process of building a business card in Photoshop.
00:07 This particular design template comes to us from the guys overnightprints.com. So,
00:12 what you can do is navigate to their site or someone else's site for that
00:15 matter and you will be able to find these different templates.
00:18 Now these templates are great because they are already in the correct format,
00:21 CMYK. You notice that I have this description here of what the safe zone is.
00:25 What that's all about is that it basically is telling us that we need to be
00:28 able to add important information inside of the safe zone. Otherwise, we may
00:32 have our copy or our text or a part of the image that's cropped off.
00:36 You will also notice that there are some nice guides. I'll turn off the
00:39 visibility of this layer, overnight, and there we can see our guides. Here is a
00:42 great shortcut for you. It's Command+ Semicolon on a Mac, Ctrl+Semicolon on a PC
00:47 to toggle on and off the visibility of those guides. Just as a side note, if
00:51 you press Command+Apostrophe on a Mac, Ctrl+Apostrophe on a PC, you can also
00:56 toggle on and off the view of the grid.
00:58 Well, we don't need the grid, but we do need those guides, those will be really
01:01 helpful. So again this particular template basically tells us, hey, you want to
01:05 design with this middle space in mind. Although, your card will probably extend
01:09 beyond that, you want to have the design of the card in that middle area.
01:13 All right, well, now that we are familiar with this template, let's go ahead
01:16 and build the card based on this template. So I'll leave this file open because
01:20 we will be working with it in the next movie.
01:22
Collapse this transcript
Designing the front of a business card
00:00Here we are going to begin to talk about how we are going to design and build
00:03our business card. We are going to change our view, so that we can see these
00:06images. We will go ahead and choose this next view here, so we can have these
00:09two files open.
00:10Now I have this one file titled source_ ideas and here I have some copy that I
00:14copied off of something else, let's say, and pasted it into the document. Then
00:18I have a couple of images I might use. I have this photograph of Shaun Thomson.
00:21I have this one photograph of the desert and another one of Tom Curran and then
00:25another one of Tom Curran. They are a little bit cropped in but I brought all
00:28these files into one document. You can bring files into one document simply by
00:33clicking and dragging them.
00:34So now that I have these, let's go ahead and turn all these layers on. We will
00:37click on one of the layers and drag-and- drop the content into our business card
00:41template. We will go to the next layer and drag that in. Again, all that I'm
00:45interested in doing is bringing over some of my assets. I'm just trying to
00:49illustrate how we are going to start to build this out.
00:51Now the interesting thing that's going to start to happen is our business card
00:55will come to life once we are in the correct format. Again, I'm trying to
00:58illustrate that here a little bit. Again, it doesn't look very interesting in
01:01this space. But now all of a sudden when I go over here, I'll press F to go to
01:04Full Screen View mode and let's say that I want to work with this image of Tom,
01:08I can go ahead and reposition this and try to find a position that looks
01:11perhaps interesting.
01:13Now I'm starting to see something, right? Well, let's take a look at tom2 and
01:16I'll move this image around and see how that would look. Now I could go with a
01:20design like this with this particular photograph, let's say, for the front
01:23cover of a card because what I want to do is create a card with a few images on
01:27it. Yet in this case, this image is a little bit too dominant and at this small
01:32of a size I don't think that will work.
01:32So I'll try this other photograph of tom out. Yeah, I think that's going to
01:36work really well. Especially, if I have him offset over there to the side,
01:40looking out of the frame, kind of intriguing in that way. I put my border right
01:44on the edge there, so I'll get a bit of border in the mix. I now have some good
01:48negative space for copy. All right, I'm beginning to see this potentially as
01:52the front of the business card.
01:54Next thing I'm going to do is click on my type layer and drag that up to the
01:57top. Now if you don't have a type layer, no big deal. Grab the Type tool and
02:01then begin to type away. So I'll go ahead and add some type that way. So I
02:05could do this one of two ways. Add some type or bring some type in from another
02:09document. Just to speed things up, I'm going to use the type that I already
02:12brought in. Well, in this case, this type is too big. It doesn't really look
02:16very good here. How can I change them?
02:17Well, I'll double-click the T to select all of the type. I'm then going to
02:22right justify this, change its size by clicking and dragging to the left a
02:26little bit. Then grab the Move tool and I'll reposition this over here on this
02:30edge. I'm starting to see something that I might like. Now the font face that I
02:34have chosen here doesn't look very good in my opinion. Yet, I'm beginning to
02:38see how this card may come together.
02:40Next, I'll grab the T tool again by pressing the T key and I'll highlight the
02:44information underneath my name. I'm going to lower the size of that, just to
02:48create a little bit of visual interest, also to deal with the spacing that I
02:52have here. Press Enter or Return and then press the V key to select the Move
02:56tool and then I'm going to start to nudge this around. Again, I can find a
02:59different spot for that.
03:00All right. Well, now that I'm starting to see that yeah, this layout might work
03:05and this might work for the front of the business card, I'm going to group
03:08these two layers. So I'll go ahead and click in the type layer, hold down the
03:12Shift key, click in the bottom layer of tom, press Command+G. I'm going to name
03:15this front. Now I'm not done with the design but I'm pretty sure that's where
03:19I'm going. I'm also going to put this photo of tom in that folder. Then I'll
03:23open that, I'm going to have that layer turned off but I want that there in
03:26case I need to go back to it later.
03:29Now when I pull that up I just say the visual really doesn't work for me. Leave
03:32that layer off and turn tom on. Now I want to find an interesting font, so I'll
03:36click in my type layer, navigate to Window and choose Character. Now in the
03:41Character panel, I can click in the font name and use the Arrow keys to go
03:45through it, try to find different fonts that I think work with this particular
03:48type of layout.
03:49Now that's kind of interesting, it's a little bit sketchy. It kind of fits with
03:53the sepia tone film photograph, right. Yet not what I'm going for. I'm going to
03:57go ahead and scroll through. I know a font that I like to use a lot. It's
04:01called Meta. That's one of my favorite fonts. So I'm going to go ahead and
04:03select that. I think that looks pretty nice.
04:05Next thing I'm going to do is click on the image, press the T key to select the
04:09Type tool. I'm going to hover over all other type now and I'll go ahead and
04:13change its size. I want to change its size to something a little bit more
04:15uniform and see if I can get a type that looks pretty good, so that all fits
04:20right in there.
04:21This particular font tends to work well pretty small. Go ahead and increase the
04:25size of the name there just a bit, press Enter or Return. I also kind of like
04:29that I have this two-tone nature. We have a dark brown on top and a lighter
04:33brown below. To do that, all that you need to do is highlight a portion of the
04:36text field, open up the Character panel and here I'll change it to something
04:40other than I had before, in this case, an orange. Now I have this different
04:44color. I don't like that, so undo it. Then go ahead and close that Character panel.
04:49Now in my opinion, this is a pretty cool layout for the front cover of a
04:52business card. I just want to modify the positioning here a little bit.
04:55Actually, I ordered a business card with this particular design at
04:58overnightprints.com and it looked pretty good. All right, well, now that
05:01we have designed the front of the business card, it's time for the back and
05:05we will do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Designing the back of a business card
00:00 Now that we have successfully designed the front of the business card, it's
00:03 time to work on the back. So let's turn off the Visibility of this particular
00:07 layer set and turn on one of our images.
00:09 In this case I have this nice desert photo. I have resized it to fit on the
00:12 card. It's really dramatic. I like it. The tone doesn't really match the front.
00:17 So I say well I can do that, I can add a little bit of toning here. So I'll go
00:20 to Color Balance, add a little bit of red, maybe a little bit yellow, just
00:24 adding a bit of Sepia tone effect here and that's kind of a subtle little
00:28 effect, but yeah trying to connect it. Now look at the front and then the back.
00:32 We need to do a little bit more color work, but then all of a sudden I say you
00:34 know what? It doesn't work at all because the subject matter is so different.
00:38 Your business card really needs to feel cohesive. You can show variety, but it
00:42 has to feel cohesive. So I'm just going to just get rid of these layers, they
00:45 are not going to work for me. Well, what about this next layer shaun? Well it's
00:48 shot with the same type of film; it's part of the same project. Well I'll just
00:51 move that one in and try to experiment with where I want to place it. Now when
00:55 I bring Shaun down low, his chin gets cut off. That's not good and his eyes are
00:59 too low. But when I bring it up, it's kind of like it was that came in, which
01:02 101I got lucky there. That looks really nice. It's a little bit more about his
01:06 eyes, I like that.
01:06 And those eyes are also sitting closer to that rule of thirds spot, right over
01:11 there. Nice visual interest, perfect. I like the positioning.
01:14 Next thing I want to do is add my domain name. I'll press the T key to select
01:18 the Type tool and then I'll go ahead and type out my domain name chrisorwig.com
01:22 press Enter or Return, then press the V key to select the Move tool and try to
01:26 move this around. Could I put it down here, up top, over here? Definitely,
01:30 can't do it over the forehead, too close the eyes. So I can't find space for this.
01:34 Well I could decrease its size and put it right there yet that's not quite
01:39 compelling me enough. So Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC will Free Transform
01:43 this and we are going to rotate it. If I just hover near the corner points, I
01:47 can rotate that. I'm also going to decrease its size a little bit, because this
01:51 isn't as important here. Press Enter or Return.
01:54 I will position this up here, find a nice spot, making sure to stay away from
01:58 the safe zone guides there. Nice thing to have those on. Next I'll open up the
02:02 Character panel and I'm going to choose a color. I'll sample a color from the
02:05 image. Add a little bit more orange into it. I think that would be kind of fun.
02:08 Click OK.
02:09 Now in this particular case I want this to be a little bit more faint. So I
02:13 just going to lower the Opacity and I'll go ahead and lower the Opacity, have a
02:16 little subtle domain name reference there and I want this subtle because I do
02:20 want this to be pretty strong and about the photograph.
02:23 Now when designing business cards, you can do all different kinds of things but
02:26 this is just a particular flavor that I'm going for here. Now that I have
02:30 completed the design of the back I'll hold down the Shift key, click on shaun
02:34 layer and the chrisorwig.com layer, press Command+G to group those. I'll name
02:38 this group back.
02:40 Well now that I have the front and the back, let's take a look at them. There
02:43 is the front. Very nice. There is the back. That's going to really work for me
02:47 except the chrisorwig.com is way too big. So I'm going to go ahead and
02:51 Command+T that, hold down the Shift key, make this much smaller. Now you can
02:55 Free Transform text while holding down the Shift key to constrain proportions
02:59 and not worry about any degradation because text is vector, which is really nice.
03:04 Well now here is my front and my back. That looks nice. Well now that I have
03:08 the front and the back designed, I need to then create a flattened version of
03:13 the front and the flattened version of the back so that I can then upload that
03:17 flattened version to the server to overnight prints to whatever to order my
03:21 cards. So I'll go ahead and navigate to Image and choose Duplicate and I'll
03:26 name one of the duplicates the name front.
03:29 There is my front business card. I'll then turn off the front layer. Make sure
03:32 I have back turned on. I navigate to Image and choose Duplicate. This one is
03:36 going to be back. You got it.
03:37 If we go to our Window pulldown menu, we can see all of our open files. There
03:42 is my template file, some source ideas, those are from one of the previous
03:45 movies and then front and back. Well, here I'm inside of back. I need to
03:49 flatten this so I navigate to Layer and choose Flatten Image. Disregard the
03:54 hidden layers? You betcha. Now I have a nice flattened back image ready to be
03:58 uploaded to the server.
03:59 Next step, Window and choose front. Make sure I'm in the front. Now the front
04:05 is actually wrong. I didn't turn on the front layer here. So I want to make
04:09 sure I have that one on and navigate to Layer and choose Flatten Image and
04:13 discard those hidden layers, you betcha.
04:16 So now I have the front of the business card, save that file out. I also have
04:20 the back of the business card and I'm ready and set to upload this to my server
04:25 and then cross my fingers and wait on pins and needles until this arise. There
04:29 is nothing like ordering something that you have designed yourself and then
04:32 opening it up and seeing how it actually looks.
04:35 Now if you are new to business card design, here is what I recommend. Try to
04:38 follow someone else's business card, not this particular one, but some of those
04:42 others that I showed you in that inspiration movie and then first try a pretty
04:46 low run, meaning just get 100 business card, because in that way you can test
04:51 or experiment with a particular design and see how it actually works.
04:55 And here is the good news. Let's say your business card is just playing
04:58 horrible. I mean it is so bad, well it has your information on it and you can
05:03 always bring it to your local sandwich shop where they have one of those fish
05:06 bowls that says hey, leave a business card and you can win a free lunch, you
05:10 could always drop all 100 in there and your chances for winning the sandwich
05:15 would probably be pretty good.
05:17
Collapse this transcript
Repurposing a business card for others
00:00Once you have come up with the basic layout for your business cards, it's
00:03probably a good idea to see how scalable the idea is. Let's say, for example,
00:07that all of a sudden you hire a studio manager and you need to create a
00:10business card for that person. Well, how does this particular layout work for that person?
00:14Well, let's give it a try. So what I'm going to do here is click into my front
00:17folder and I click into my type layer where I have my name. Now I don't
00:21necessarily want my name there anymore, but I do want my studio manager's name.
00:24So I'll go ahead and type her name out and I'll just type out a make-believe
00:28name at this point and then her title. Next, I'll go down one level and I'll
00:34type out Chris Orwig Photography and now that I have all of this information
00:40I'll press Enter or Return. Now I need to reposition this, because it doesn't
00:44quite work down below, the weight doesn't work there.
00:46Now at this juncture I need to change a few other things as well, just
00:50visually I'm thinking you know what? I have the domain name there and then at
00:53the very bottom of that I'm going to create one more field and that will be the
00:57phone number down there and then reposition this so there is a little bit more
01:01negative space and here we have a card that's a little bit more about the
01:04studio manager. So it has her name up there, and then the name of the business
01:08down below and the back will work pretty much the same, but in this case I'm
01:13saying you know what? Hey, this business card is even better than I thought,
01:16because it's scalable. I can use this for myself and I can also use this in
01:20other situation for other people that are potentially going to work with/for me.
Collapse this transcript
Business card examples
00:00In this movie I want to talk a little bit about business cards. Now we have
00:03already designed our business cards and what I want to do is I want to show you
00:06the business card that I ordered with the design that we used in those training
00:10movies that you just watched.
00:11Now here is the actual business card, how it turned out and here we can see how
00:15the corners were cut and you can also see the little bit of the text on there
00:19and the images and for the most part the images look really good. So again
00:23I just wanted to kind of show you how you can complete this process and what they
00:26may look like.
00:27Now one of the things that you want to do with your own business cards is order
00:30a few and typically what I like to do order just 100 or so to get a feel for
00:35the card. I also want to take some time to show you some cards that a few of my
00:38other students have created. Here is one that's very visually different and you
00:42can see it has all of this information and some graphics on it.
00:45Another one, it's a little bit more photographic based. In this case he has a
00:48glossy finish. The one that I created had a matte finish. So again you have
00:51some options there. You can also see there are options for rounded corners or
00:55for not using rounded corners. Here is one student of mine who created a really
00:58unique standout business card. On each card there was a photograph,
01:01a different photograph, five different photographs. On the other side the copy
01:05and typography was all the same. She would give her clients a number of
01:09different business cards, so they can see some fun little photos, and there
01:12here again is another very different business card, different type of a layout.
01:16So if you are struggling with ideas in regards to your own business card,
01:20meaning what do I put on it? How do I design this? You can follow those links
01:24and I have shared with you for some good inspiration. I also recommend that you
01:28check out some of the different books that are out there and this is just one
01:30that I quickly grabbed off my bookshop, it's called Designing Brand Identity.
01:34It walks you through the different process of saying, okay, well, what is a brand?
01:37What makes a good brand? What are good brand marks? What are good brand designs?
01:42So a lot of times what you need to do in order to create a good business card
01:45is to have a strong idea. It's not just about putting something together and
01:50getting it printed but rather it's about having a good idea and some good
01:53supporting collateral, whether those are designs or photographs or whatever
01:56they are, and that will ultimately lead to the best business card design.
Collapse this transcript
5. Designing Promo Materials
Typography resources sites
00:00 As you know typography is incredibly important when it comes to promotional
00:04 materials and in this movie what I want to do is share with you a few resources
00:08 that will help you get better at typography. Now the first site that I have up
00:12 here is House Industries, the domain name is houseind.com. You could also do a
00:19 Google search for House Industries, it will take you to this site.
00:22 Now what we can do here is we can navigate to a particular font kit and I'm
00:26 going to go down to let's say Neutraface. I love that font. And here you can
00:30 see that it tells me the price of this font, and I can scroll through and view
00:33 the different type treatments. Now there is also some valuable information on
00:37 this site in regards to typography and in addition you can always submit email
00:42 to receive the free catalog. Now for some people these particular fonts are
00:45 going to be a little bit pricey, yet it will help you become familiar with some
00:49 really intriguing typefaces.
00:51 Now another site where you can go in order to find fonts is good old fonts.com.
00:56 Now one of the things that I like about fonts.com is that it can teach you
00:59 quite a bit about type and quite a bit about fonts. For example, so if you
01:03 navigate to the Find Fonts navigation button and then choose Search by Sight,
01:08 this will then take you through a series of questions.
01:10 For example what type of tail does the Q have? So you know what? I like it when
01:16 it just touches a circle and then you can go through and continually answer
01:19 these questions. After answering these questions it will then say hey, you know
01:23 what? Based on the way you responded, these fonts fit that particular criteria
01:27 and it's just kind of intriguing and kind of intuitive way to begin to search
01:31 for a particular type of font.
01:33 Now go to fonts.com for research like this and for other types of things as
01:37 well as to purchase fonts. Now the next few sites that I want to share with you
01:41 are where you can find some free fonts. The first one is the dafont.com. Now
01:47 here you can search for fonts based on their description. For example Sans
01:49 Serif and if I go ahead and click on that option and then scroll down, you will
01:53 see that I have different types of fonts.
01:55 Now just be sure to note what kind of font it is. In this case this is a free
01:59 font. So I can download and use that. Sometimes they are free only for personal
02:04 use. So just be sure to check that. Now another site where you can find similar
02:07 free fonts is 1001freefonts.com and again if you do a Google search for
02:13 1001freefonts it will take you to this site.
02:16 And here I have pulled up some of the retro fonts, just to give you a feel for
02:19 some of the things that you can find. One of the things that you want to begin
02:22 to think about is that all type has a voice. What voice do you want to have
02:26 with your particular type of marketing collateral? All right, a couple of more
02:30 sites for you. This one is abstractfonts .com. Again, a nice place where you can
02:35 find some free fonts and then one more, which is www.urbanfonts.com, very
02:40 similar to freefonts, and here we can see we have a featured free font. We can
02:43 roll over it to see the alphabet.
02:46 So as you are digging into creating your own promotional materials or if you
02:49 just want to have fun with typography I recommend that you visit all those
02:53 sites and if you visit them trying to think about what kind of voice do I want
02:56 to have with my particular promo materials. And experiment with fonts, download
03:01 them, install them and begin to use them in Photoshop, because one of the
03:04 things that I have found is that most marketing materials that are created by
03:08 photographers or for photographers for that matter are really, really simple.
03:12 They are based on typography and photography. A lot of times what happens is
03:16 photographers just focus in on the photographs and forget about the typography,
03:20 but both are really important, especially because typically the designs are so minimal.
03:24 All right, well, I hope that those sites will be a bit of inspiration as well
03:28 as information for you as you learn more about typography.
03:32
Collapse this transcript
Tips and shortcuts for working with type
00:00There is something incredibly fun about beginning to work with type inside of
00:03Photoshop and in this movie what I want to do is begin to talk about how we can
00:07work with type. In addition I want to share with you a few type shortcuts.
00:11Now here you can see that I have this document open where I have assembled a
00:14handful of the different type shortcuts that you can use inside of Photoshop
00:18CS4. Now at some point you will probably want to go through all of these
00:21shortcuts and you can find this document in the Exercise Files folder for this
00:25chapter. Yet for now I want to focus in on just a couple of the shortcuts.
00:29So I'm going to go ahead and turn on this way our focus. Now we can see that
00:33I'm just focusing in on a few of these shortcuts. Now I'm going to go ahead and
00:36press the T key to select the Type tool. Before I begin typing I'm going to
00:40choose a Font Size. I'm going to make this size pretty small, go to size 14,
00:43I'll go ahead and click and then begin to type.
00:46So you have typed out this message. Typography, typo there on there, Typography
00:55is fun, engaging, and interesting. I'll press Enter or Return to apply that,
00:59then I'll grab the Move tool and I'm going to click and drag to move this. Now
01:02when I move this out I suddenly realize I don't really like the font or the
01:06font size and there is a typo. Well, how can I then fix that? I'll go ahead and
01:10press the T key to select the Type tool. I'll click into this Type field when I
01:14hover over it, we will notice that the cursor will change. I'll select that
01:17letter which is a typo, the s there. Now it says Typography is fun, engaging
01:21and interesting. To accept this type field I press Enter or Return. All right,
01:26well what about changing the font?
01:28One of the things that I can do is if I'm in the Type layer I can go up to the
01:31Options bar here and then use the Arrow keys and I can scroll through the
01:35different fonts. Well that's kind of interesting, isn't it? And here I can see
01:38I have a wide range of fonts. I can also press the Up arrow or I can go ahead
01:42and click on some of the different fonts here and I'll go ahead and choose a
01:45font that I think will be kind of interesting Stencil. Okay, well how then can
01:49I select all the text?
01:50Well, here is our shortcut. Double- click the T in the Layers palette. Now all
01:54of that type is selected. Let's say that I want to increase or decrease the
01:58size of this particular font. Well, there is a nice shortcut here. We can use
02:02Command+Shift on a Mac, Ctrl+Shift on a PC then the greater than or less than
02:07keys in order to change our font size. Now we are not using the arrow keys. If
02:11we use the arrow keys what will happen is it will actually select or deselect
02:15different aspects of the type and here you can see I'm selecting or deselecting
02:19different parts of the type. But really here we want to use that greater or
02:22less than number and we can change different parts of the font.
02:25Now let's say I want to select everything. Well, I can press Command+A on a Mac
02:29Ctrl+A on a PC to select all of the type. Okay great. Well, here we can see we
02:33have a few shortcuts that allow us to change some of the spacing here with this
02:36type. We can change the Leading by holding on the Option key on the Mac, Alt
02:40key on a PC and then using the Up or Darrow keys.
02:44Now at the same time I press that same shortcut key down Option and now use the
02:48Right or Left arrow keys. Now some of you may be thinking, wow! There is quite
02:52a bit of shortcuts here. Am I really going to use all these shortcuts? Well,
02:56initially probably not, but the more begin to work with type, the more you may
02:59want to use and access these shortcuts.
03:02I will go ahead and press Enter or Return here. We can also access these by
03:06navigating to Window > Character and opening up the Character panel and here I
03:10can change some of the similar things that I have done before and we can see
03:13how that will work in this way simply by using the sliders and controls. Now in
03:17addition I can select different fonts or click into this Font field and then
03:21press the Up or Down arrow keys.
03:23Now the last thing that I want to talk about in regards to type is that you can
03:27Free Transform type. If I go ahead and press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a
03:31PC, hold down the Shift key and then drag one of the four corner points, I can
03:35resize that Font field as well. Press Enter or Return to apply that.
03:39Double-click that T to select all and I'll go ahead and take this back to a
03:42normal size so that all of the type is the exact same size and then I can click
03:46and drag this to increase the size or decrease. So one of the things that you
03:50are discovering here is that while there are some shortcuts, there are also
03:54some long cuts.
03:54Now we can do some of the similar things in different ways. There is no one
03:58correct way for working with type. Rather I just wanted to show you a few
04:01different options so that you can begin to be more effective when you are
04:05working with type in Photoshop.
Collapse this transcript
Promo card inspiration and resources
00:00 If you are like me and you like taking pictures or if you are a pro
00:03 photographer and you want to get more work doing photography, eventually you
00:07 are going to need to create and design and send out a promo card. What I want
00:11 to do in this movie is share with you a few resources where you can get some
00:14 information as well as some inspiration about how to create a good and
00:18 effective promo card.
00:19 Now, the first site that I want to share with you is pdnonline.com. Do a search
00:24 for that, then navigate to the Contest section. From there what we are
00:27 interested in doing is viewing the winners gallery. Now this will be really
00:30 helpful, we will click to enter the gallery and it will be helpful because here
00:34 we have some of the best promo cards according to this particular publication,
00:38 a great publication by the way.
00:39 So go ahead and view the winners and click on that link there. Then I'm just
00:44 going to click through a few of these different Promo winners and you can see
00:47 there are some really interesting ideas here. We can also navigate down to
00:50 Direct Mail and there we are going to see just some different types of Direct
00:53 Mail pieces. Again some real creativity, some great photography too. And it
00:58 will be a nice mix of things here. It will give us some inspiration in regards
01:01 to promo card design and layout.
01:04 All right, well let's go ahead and close those windows. The next site that I
01:07 want to share with you is aphotoeditor .com. Now if you haven't visited this
01:11 site before, it's definitely worthwhile. There is quite a bit of good
01:14 information here. Yet the particular section that I'm interested here has to do
01:18 with promo cards. So if you go to the site and do a search for promo cards it
01:21 will take you to this page and it will talk a little bit about promo cards.
01:25 Now, another section that it will take you to is this place where it shows you
01:28 how some of the promo cards have stacked up in his office and if scroll all the
01:32 way down, he has a wide range of promo cards here and if click through these we
01:36 can see some promo cards and click on the promo card it will then give a little
01:40 a comment by him in this case he says hey, that's pretty cool. We can also go
01:43 down to thumbnails and click on a few other promo cards in this way. Again a
01:47 wide range of promo cards, I really like that one, nice and clean layout.
01:51 You can also view these same images if you navigate to flickr.com and do a
01:56 search for promo cards. Again that's F-L -I-C-K-R flickr.com and do a search for
02:01 promo cards and you will find some of those same promo cards except the promo
02:04 cards are a little bit bigger and a little bit easier to see, so that's kind of nice.
02:09 All right, the last site that I want to highlight is modernpostcard.com. Well
02:13 there are a wide range of sites and also local services I'm sure that you have
02:17 in your area, where you can print promo cards. This is one that I found to be
02:20 really good. Now there are others out there, I'm just trying to show something
02:24 a little bit different compared to what I have shown in the past.
02:27 Now, here I have clicked on the section for promo cards and here you can see
02:30 that we can order about 250 cards for about $150, so that's not too bad. What
02:35 we can do is scroll down, we can then download a template, in this case I'm
02:39 going to download a template for Photoshop 5x7 postcard, I'll go ahead and
02:42 click Search. That will take me to the page where I can download that template.
02:46 I can also navigate to the File Setup Instructions.
02:49 Now, this is going to be pretty helpful because it will walk me through how I
02:52 can setup this file if I'm not using the template. It will also give me some
02:56 important information about the Safe Zone, the Trim Line. Also if we are going
03:00 to have Full Bleed how far we want our images to go out. So it will be
03:03 definitely worthwhile to read through these set of instructions here. And in
03:07 one of the subsequent movies we will actually be talking about how we can use
03:10 this particular template in order to design a promo card.
03:13 Now keep in mind, you don't have to get to your promo cards here, it's just one
03:17 place of many that I have had success with. All right well I hope that these links
03:21 provide you with bit of inspiration as well as a bit of helpful information.
03:27
Collapse this transcript
Using a template to build a promo
00:00 Here we are going to go through how we can use a template that we have
00:03 downloaded from a site in order to create a promo card. This particular
00:07 template comes to us from modernpostcard.com and it's a template for a 5x7
00:12 horizontal postcard. Now we could of course use this template and print it out
00:15 on our desktop printer or we could actually upload this and send this to Modern
00:19 Postcard so that they could print it for us.
00:22 Now, I'm going to be talking about going to press in one of the later chapters
00:25 yet here what I'm going to do is talk about how we can begin to use this
00:28 template to design a postcard. All right we will go ahead and double-click the
00:31 Zoom tool. That will take this to 100%, then I press the Spacebar tool and I'll
00:35 click and drag, so I can see these instructions here. And basically what these
00:39 instructions tell me is that the postcard will be trimmed right here. So what
00:43 you want to do, if you have an image that has Full Bleed, you want to go pass
00:46 the Trim Line, otherwise that Trim Line might not look so good so you need to
00:49 go beyond that just a bit.
00:51 Now, it also tells us, hey there is a Safe Zone and this is where all the
00:54 important element should be. They should be within this area. That being said
00:58 the postcard will go out to this extra outline here, these dotted lines. Now I
01:01 have brought some guides into this document. They don't exist on the template
01:05 when you download it and there you can see the guides is different spaces here.
01:09 All right, well I'm ready to begin to design the postcard. So I'll turn off the
01:12 modernpostcard layer and the instructions layer. So I just have those guides
01:16 on. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and navigate to 2-Up so
01:20 I can see these images side by side. I'll click in the photo document and this
01:24 is a JPEG that I want to include in this particular postcard.
01:26 I am going to click and drag this into the postcard document, now it says you
01:30 are pasting content from a document of a different profile. Do you want to
01:34 convert this to CMYK working space? Well I'm not really sure what particular
01:38 CMYK working spaces is. I could have converted it previously. Yet, this is
01:42 going to do the conversion for me so I'll simply click OK. Next we will press F
01:46 to go to Full Screen View mode and then we are going to zoom out so we can see
01:50 how this works and I'll zoom out by pressing Command+- on a Mac, Ctrl+- on the PC.
01:55 All right, so now that I have brought the image in, if I wanted this to be Full
01:58 Bleed, I would need to have the image extend beyond these guides, well perfect.
02:01 Well, all of sudden I decide I could do a Full Bleed and that would be fine.
02:05 I could have my information on the back of the card. But rather, I want to have
02:08 my domain name up on front, I want to have a little bit of negative space so
02:12 that there is a border around the image. I want to customize this a little bit
02:15 further. We will talk about doing that in the next movie.
02:18
Collapse this transcript
Customizing the template
00:00Well, the first thing that I want to do in order to customize this is to clean
00:04up my workspace just a little bit. What I mean is this edge is going to be
00:07trimmed off. So it's hard to determine what this card will look like while I
00:11can see that edge.
00:12So here is what I can do. I can go ahead and select the Marquee tool as I have
00:16done so here and then click and drag. It's going to lock to those guides there.
00:20Create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer icon, inverse the selection,
00:25Select and choose Inverse, then fill that with black, Edit and then Fill and
00:30we'll choose Black there, click OK.
00:31So now that I have that black edge, I can then go to that Full Screen view mode
00:36and get a better feel for the actual edge of this promo card. Now at the end of
00:40the process I'll delete this layer, but this layer help me pre-visualize where
00:44the postcard edge actually ends. Well so far so good, let's then go to Select
00:49and choose Deselect. Then we are going to Ctrl-click or right click and choose
00:54Black as our background color there. Now again, this helps me have a clear idea
00:58of where this particular promo card ends.
01:00Next, I'm going to click on the image layer here, I'll go ahead and name that
01:03layer image and I'll grab my Marquee tool, press the M key if you don't have it
01:07selected. Click and drag around these inner guides because this really is the
01:11safe zone. If I want to create a border, my image only needs to go to this line
01:15here, so I'll click on the Add Layer Mask icon, now perfect!
01:19Next thing I want to do is I want to add a little bit of space below the image.
01:22So unlink the image in the mask, click in the mask layer, Command+T on a Mac,
01:26Ctrl+T on a PC and I'm going to bring this up significantly, so I have a little
01:31bit of space there for my domain name. Press Enter or Return.
01:35Next I'm going to target the image itself. I'll click in the layer thumbnail,
01:38press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC to Free Transform the image. Now here
01:43is a great shortcut. If you can't see all of the Free Transform handles, press
01:47Command+Zero on a Mac, Ctrl+Zero on PC. It will then zoom out so that you can
01:52see all those and here I can now grab those and bring those in. I'll go ahead
01:57and bring those in all sides.
01:58What I'm looking to do here is just to have the surfer little bit smaller or
02:02perhaps as small as I can go with him so that I have a lot of the ocean
02:06surrounding him. Press Enter or Return and then I'll press the V key to select
02:10the Move tool and use my Arrow keys to nudge this around a little bit. Just
02:14find the sweet spot in regards to how I want the layout. So far so good, except
02:18those guides are really distracting, aren't they? Well, press Command+Semicolon
02:22on a Mac, Ctrl+Semicolon on a PC.
02:25Aright. Now I'm getting the feel for things, next step, grab the Type tool by
02:29pressing the T key and we'll go ahead and click and then type out our domain
02:34name. I'll press Command+A to highlight that, that's for the Mac, Ctrl+A on a
02:39PC and I'm going to go ahead and select the font that I typically use for my
02:42branding, which is Meta and I'm going to take that font size down quite a bit.
02:47Press Enter or Return to apply that and I'm going to look at where I can
02:51position that particular text field.
02:54One of the things that I'm noticing is I don't like the treatment of that type
02:56there. So I'm going to go to Window and choose Character and here I'm going to
02:59take this spacing between the letters back to zero. That looks much better.
03:04Then in regards to the color, I'm going to choose a color from this image
03:08except make this a little bit more brown, so a little bit less orange in there.
03:13Click OK to apply that. Then I'll close the Character panel and a couple of
03:18different places I could have this, perhaps down there in the bottom corner.
03:22I can also move it over here to the bottom -left corner. That could be kind of fun
03:26to have that there.
03:27All right. Let's turn on our guides, Command+Semicolon on a Mac, Ctrl+Semicolon
03:31on a PC. You want to make sure that that text is going to fit inside of the
03:34safe zone. Now our trimmed edge is still right here, so I may want to bring
03:38this down a little bit lower. I think that looks pretty good. Command+Semicolon
03:43to turn off those guides and again I can just find the sweet spot for that layer.
03:47All right. Well, the last step is going to be to turn off the Visibility of
03:50Layer 2. This is that border because we don't need that, because that's just
03:54showing us where the trim is going to be. We actually need to have the full
03:58file, needs to go to white all the way to the edge. The final thing that we
04:02would want to do would be to flatten this file.
04:04Now to flatten it, we are going to navigate to Layer and then choose Flatten
04:08Image. We want to do this when we are really sure about the design. In an
04:12addition, what I would like to do is navigate to Image and choose Duplicate so
04:17that I'm working with a duplicate version of it and I'll call this final. And
04:21then navigate to Layer > Flatten Image and discard those hidden layers,
04:26you betcha.
04:27Then there we have our promo card. Press Tab to get rid of everything. Here we
04:31can evaluate the promo card, make sure it looks good and at this juncture we
04:35can either print this out on our desktop printer and then trim it to size or we
04:39could upload this to ModernPostcard.com.
04:42Now if you're going to do a little bit more of a serious print run, like upload
04:45this to Modern Postcard or take it to another printing press. I recommend you
04:49watch the chapter on going to press where I get into more of the details of
04:52CMYK and of preparing our files for press. All right, well that wraps up our
04:57conversion about creating this promo card.
Collapse this transcript
Building a grid-based promo card
00:00In this brief movie, I want to simply talk about creating promo card with
00:03multiple images on it, in particular, a promo card that's based on a grid. Now,
00:08this is going to be a pretty easy process because I have already resized all
00:12the photographs and I have dragged them into this document. Now, this document
00:15isn't one of the Template files, yet I thought it would be fun just to use a
00:18low-res file with some small images in order to quickly talk about how you can
00:22create a grid.
00:22All right, well I'm going to go ahead and click in my Layer 9 and I'm going to
00:25click and drag this over the top right corner and when I do that, you can see
00:29that it kind of snaps in position over there and it is going to snap in
00:32position in a pretty good spot for me, so I have equal spacing above this and
00:36then also to the right of this. I'll go ahead and lower that just a touch there
00:39to get it perfect.
00:39All right, next I'll click in Layer 6 and now when I bring Layer 6 over; it is
00:43aligned off of the other image. So, the alignment goes hand in hand and I'll
00:48click and drag this one over here and bring that image in as well. Now, when I
00:51bring these images in, if I notice that they are off or if I feel like the
00:55spacing isn't perfect, well you can click in one layer, Shift-click into the
00:59other layer, so I have all of them selected, then say give me equal spacing
01:04between all of these images and then I can also use the arrow keys to nudge
01:08these around as needed.
01:09All right, well those look pretty good. Next, I'll go to Layer 8 and I'm going
01:13to click and drag, bring this over here and then Layer 5, click and drag,
01:18reposition these. Now, what about those layers underneath here that I can't
01:22quite get to? Well, I could of course click in the layer or even better, if I
01:26right-click or Ctrl-click, I can see it says Layer 7. That's the one that I
01:30want and then I'll bring this one over here. So that right-click or Ctrl-click
01:35trick is really helpful when you want to select a layer that is underneath
01:38something. Of course, we can always click in the Layers palette as well.
01:42I am just going to go ahead and build this out. We are almost done here with
01:45this nice colorful grid of images. Sometimes I create Promo cards with one
01:50image on them, other times, I put multiple images on them and I think it is
01:54kind of interesting, it tells a very different story. Last thing that I'm going
01:57to do here is add some type. Press the T key to select the Type tool. I'll go
02:01ahead and type out my domain name. Now, do you always only have to have your
02:05domain name on your Promo card? No, that's just what I have done in the last
02:08few cards that I have created. Press Enter or Return to apply that. Press the V
02:12key to select the Move tool and I'll click and Reposition that.
02:15Now, that font is a little bit too small for me. Then I'm going to keep that
02:19there. I need one more Text field. So, I'll hold down the Option key on a Mac,
02:23Alt key on a PC, then click and drag that will allow me to copy and paste that
02:27font over there. Press the T key, click into that text field, press Command+A
02:32to Select All. Go ahead and type a number out here. Press Enter or Return.
02:37Next, I'll select the Move tool, press the V key and I'll change the Opacity of
02:41this to about 70% Opacity, so I'll press the 7 key, then the 4 key to take it
02:45down to 40%. I kind of like that, really light gray there.
02:48All right, well back to this Text field here. How can we select that? Well, if
02:52we right-click or Ctrl-click, we can jump right to that text layer. Press
02:56Command+T on a Mac, Ctr+T on a PC, then we will hold down the Shift key, grab
03:01one of those corner points, press Enter or Return to apply that and then
03:04position this where we want it. All right, well, that looks pretty good. And if
03:08you want to change the Opacity of that layer, press the 8 key, it goes down to
03:1180% or 7 to 70% or 6 to 60%. That looks kind of nice. We have a little bit more
03:16prominent logo, little bit less prominent phone number over there. So, in this
03:20case, we have all the information that they need, a really nice and clean layout.
03:23Now, the only thing that I want to do here so that this is a little bit more
03:26photographic is lower the Opacity of that even further. So, I went down to 30%
03:30with that layer by pressing the 3 key. I'll go to the layer above, press the 3
03:34key now that's at 30% as well. Again, just pulling back the typography so it's
03:39a little bit more photo-based.
03:39All right, well that wasn't too painful yet I just want to give you some idea
03:44so that when you are creating promo cards, sometimes you may use one image,
03:47other times you will use multiple images. Now, I said that we didn't use the
03:50Template file in order to move quickly here, we could have done the same exact
03:54thing with that Template file. In this case we just created this nice little
03:57small promo card.
03:58Now, the last thing that I would like to do here in order to make sure that my
04:01borders are just perfect is to actually create my own borders and lay those on
04:06top of the images because sometimes what happens is even though you resize your
04:11images, you may have incorrectly resized one or not another, or cropped one
04:15incorrectly or something along those lines. Let's go ahead and zoom in on this
04:19image and see if we have done that. We will zoom in one of the intersecting
04:21areas and here we can see that, you know what? These two images aren't the same
04:25size. I have a bigger gap here than I do over here.
04:28All right, well I'll double-click the Zoom tool to go back to 100%. What I'm
04:31going to do is scroll up to the top of my Layers palette, create a new layer by
04:36clicking on the New Layer icon. Next, I'll grab my Marquee tool and I'm going
04:40to go ahead and create a gap here by clicking and dragging across this area and
04:45it is going to be a gap that will cover up a portion of the image here.
04:48I will lower that then fill it with white, Command+Delete on a Mac, Ctrl+Delete
04:52on a PC, then go to Select > Deselect. Well, now that I have one border, I'll
04:58hold down the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC, click and drag and bring
05:01this up to this top area, so now I have the space or border right there that
05:06has that equal size or equal width that's the other one. Great.
05:09We need a couple more. Option-click and drag on a Mac, that's an Alt-click and
05:13drag on a PC, then press Command+T if you are on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC, hover
05:18over one of those anchor points till you see the bent arrow and we are going to
05:22free transform that. So it is a vertical line and again I'm just doing this to
05:26make sure that the grid spacing is exactly prefect.
05:30Then I hold down the Option key or the Alt key, click and drag that bring that
05:34over to the side. But one of the things that's kind of nice about this is we
05:38now have equal spacing around our images. We know that it is prefect for sure.
05:42Now, we could of course have gone back and free transformed the images. I just
05:45kind of like this trick because it can speed up the overall process. Couple of
05:50more edges we need to work on. Well, that's the side edge and the top edge,
05:53also the side edge over here.
05:55So, hold down the Option key if you are on a Mac, Alt key on a PC, click and
05:58drag that. So, we have that over there on the side and we just want to make
06:01sure we have the same exact width as we do in the other places. Option-click
06:05and drag on a Mac, Alt-click and drag on a PC. Perfect. And let's select one of
06:10these other white lines here. You can select one of those by right-clicking.
06:13There you can see it is image 11 copy, Option-click and drag or Alt-click and
06:18drag. You get the gist, don't you? That looks pretty nice.
06:22The only problem is now those guides are actually covering out my two text
06:26fields. Well, how can we fix that? Well, let's click in one of the layers, hold
06:29down the Shift key, click in the topmost layer and press Command+G on a Mac,
06:34Ctr+G on a PC. We will name this spacers because those are the spacers between
06:39the images.
06:41Next, we are going to go into the Images folder. Scroll down to where we find
06:44the two text fields, click in one of the Text fields, hold down the Shift key,
06:48click in another text field. Now, here is a great shortcut for reordering your
06:53layers. If you press Shift+Command on a Mac or Shift+Ctrl on a PC plus right
06:58bracket, we can then move those up to the top of the stack. So I go ahead and
07:01press those keys a couple of times. It then positions or reorders my layer so
07:06that those are at the top of the stack and that's a nice shortcut for
07:10reordering our layers and as I do that, I realize I need to move things around a little bit.
07:15I will go ahead and select the chrisorwig.com, use the arrow keys to bring that
07:19in and then click in the layer for the phone number, bring that one in a little
07:23bit and voila! We have successfully created a perfect grid Promo card.
Collapse this transcript
Resources for creating a photo book
00:00On-demand printing and short-run printing has blossomed in the last few years
00:04and rightly so, it is better than ever. Now you can create books with your own
00:09photographs in them in unique ways and you can print these with these short-run
00:14print techniques.
00:14What that means is you can just order one copy or two copies or have your
00:18friends order copies. So, a lot of people are shifting to creating their own
00:21books or doing this for portfolios or just to create a simple book. Now, in
00:25this movie, what I'm going to do is just show you a few places where you can go
00:28to create your own books. I'm not going to teach you how to do this simply
00:31because it is so easy.
00:33For example, you can navigate to Blurb.com, and then download the Blurb
00:39BookSmart. It allows you to assemble and put together a book, upload it and
00:44then it is ready to be ordered and printed. It is quite amazing! Actually, if
00:48you navigate over the Book Store and do a search for my name, you can find some
00:51of the Blurb books that I have created.
00:54One of the things that I've found with Blurb is that the quality is phenomenal
00:56for the price. So, I have had great success with these guys. Now another
01:00company that you can check out is Fastback Books, the domain name is
01:04FastbackBooks.com. Again, here you can design and create your own book and have
01:09them printed for you.
01:10Now, certain companies like this one, you will need to know how to use InDesign
01:13in order to design the book. You will then upload those InDesign files for them
01:18to be printed. Other sites, for example like Blurb, have book building software
01:22that you can use in order to design your book with the software. So you don't
01:26really need to know how to do anything else besides use their little software
01:29application, which is quite intuitive.
01:31All right, another site that I want to highlight is EditionOneStudios.com. Now,
01:35Edition One Studios is yet another publishing company that does short print
01:39runs or you can design your own book and have it printed. There are also a
01:43couple of other companies you can go to as well that I want to highlight. One
01:46of them is Mpix.com.
01:49Mpix.com is a nice place to use because they actually have a color management
01:53staff and they have profiles and what not and you can get pretty accurate
01:57results from these guys. In addition, they have some soft cover books, some
02:00hard cover books and you can go ahead and navigate through their Prints &
02:03Products section to find out more about the different books that they have.
02:07One more self-publishing site I want to highlight is Lulu.com and again, here
02:11you can use their particular type of software in order to create hard cover,
02:14soft cover, paperback books, you name it. Now just by looking at these sites
02:18briefly, you are going to pick up a little bit of the vibe, right?
02:21Blurb is going to give you a little bit different quality, say for example,
02:24than some of these other companies. Yet, some of these other companies will be
02:27pretty cost-effective and for the most part, all across the board, these
02:31different book companies will give you pretty good results. So, here is my
02:35advice for you. If you haven't ever created a book of your own images, do so
02:39now. It is so much fun.
02:41What you want to do first is experiment with some photographs that "don't
02:45matter". I mean create a book just for the fun of it; maybe you have gone on a
02:47vacation or trip. Well, take those photos from that trip, create a simple book.
02:52Try to limit your page count let's say to about 30 pages in order to just get a
02:55feel for the book. Get a feel for how the images are printed, what size works,
02:59how the typography works. So, do one of these "test books".
03:03Now, it will cost something, yes, but you want to get a little bit of an
03:06experience with this before you do the book that you are really interested in
03:09doing, before you do your portfolio or before you begin to work with your
03:12images that really matter.
03:14So, again if you haven't experimented with creating your own book, I definitely
03:18recommend that you do so. I don't think that you will be disappointed.
Collapse this transcript
Photo book examples
00:00In the last movie, I briefly talked about creating your own book and in this
00:04movie, what I'm going to do is just pretend that you have come to my office and
00:06said, hey Chris! I would really like to get some more ideas about creating
00:09my own book. What I would do is then pull out a couple of books, maybe one that I created.
00:13This particular book I printed in at FastbackBooks.com, one of the sites that
00:16I shared with you, and I'll go ahead and hand this to you and you would flip
00:19through it and maybe get to a couple of different pages, perhaps find a page
00:23that you like the layout of. Then we would begin to talk about, well, how big
00:26should the image be based on the size of the page? Where could we put the
00:30contact info? Well, lot of times what happens is it's kind of a nice idea to
00:33put the contact info near the end of the book. Again, begin to see the actual
00:38physical artifact.
00:39Okay, well we wrapped up our look at this book. Let's go ahead and take a look
00:43at another book. This one was put together by one of my former students Matt Mallams.
00:47One of the things about being a teacher is it is such a privilege
00:50because guys like Matt just inspire you. Matt is an amazing journalist!
00:55This book contains a bunch of his photographs as well as a bunch of his journals.
00:59Let us take a look at this one.
01:00All right, so as we flip through this book, one of the things that you may
01:03notice here is that you see a wide range of different types of photographs,
01:07also some journal entries. And again, you get some ideas for different layouts.
01:11One of the things you will notice with this one is that there are a lot of
01:15pages here and then at the end of the book, he included his promotional
01:18information and his contact info, kind of a nice way to do it and the print
01:22quality looks really nice, the binding is really nice. Again, this photo book is
01:26inspiring to me. I loved it and thanks, Matt, for creating that book and for
01:30sharing it with me. It definitely was inspiring.
01:33All right, well all that I wanted to do here was just to begin to give you some
01:36ideas about how you can create your own books and I just want to illustrate
01:40this idea that there is something really fun and really tangible about having
01:44that artifact in your hand.
01:46There is also something interesting that happens to your photographs. When you
01:49bind them together and create them as a set, it makes them a little bit more
01:53formal. It formalizes your thinking. In your photographic vision in a way.
01:58If your images are all just loose leaf, well anyone can look at them in really any
02:03way they want to or they can click through them online in any way they want to.
02:07But if you look at a book, typically you are away from your computer and you
02:10slow down and you flip that page by page and you feel the paper of the book and
02:15there is something about that, that really invites the viewer in. So, if you
02:20haven't created your own book, I definitely recommend that you do so now.
02:24Take a break from this training title and put together a book and print it.
02:27I think that you will be surprised at how enjoyable this process is. And in
02:32addition, I think you will really be surprised at how educational the process is.
02:36I can't tell you how much I have learned by trying to put together these
02:39small books. Even if they are just for myself, they teach me so much about how
02:43I see. They also show me so many of the mistakes that I made photographically.
02:48They sharpen me as a photographer. All right, well that wraps up this movie.
02:52I hope you enjoyed it. Bye for now!
Collapse this transcript
6. Creative Print Layouts
Creating a PDF layout with the Output module
00:00This chapter is going to be one of those fun chapters and what we are going to
00:03do in this chapter is talk about how we can create photomontages. Now I read
00:07once that a montage is an art form that consists of smaller items that are put
00:12together. What I want to do in the next couple of movies is take a look at how
00:15we can use the output module, in order to create these unique layouts and
00:19combine multiple images together. Now this chapter isn't very technical. Well,
00:24it will have some technical aspects to it. It's going to be a little bit more creative.
00:28All right, well, here you can see I'm in the Adobe Bridge. I have selected the
00:31folder wolf_kids, which is a sub folder of the Chapter 06_print_layouts, and I
00:37have these four images of these kids here. I want to go ahead and take a look
00:40at them by pressing the Spacebar key that takes it to Full Screen view mode,
00:44there they have all of their fall leaves, they are throwing them up in the air
00:47and then they fall down and then fall some more, really fun photographs.
00:52Now one of the things that I'm realizing when I look at photographs like this
00:55is that these photographs work really well together, right it's that sequence,
00:59it's that event that really makes this kind of exciting. So I want to create a
01:03Print layout that combines all four of these images on one page. So let's go
01:08ahead and select all of these by pressing Command+A on a Mac, Ctrl+A on a PC.
01:13Next, we are going to navigate to the output module. Now we can do that by
01:16simply clicking on the output module or by pressing the shortcut. That's
01:20Command+F4 on a Mac, Ctrl+F4 on a PC. This then takes us to the output module
01:26where we can create web galleries as well as PDF files. Now, I want to create a
01:29PDF file and here it has the last PDF that I created or at least the last
01:33layout that I used. Now that doesn't really work for me and it doesn't really
01:37work for this set of images.
01:39What I want to do then is I'm going to take my template to maximum size and
01:42then choose Refresh Preview. Now your workflow when you are creating PDFs is
01:46going to be to make some changes and then click Refresh, make some changes and
01:50click Refresh. You are also going to want to access all of these different
01:54menus down here.
01:55Now because there is quite a bit of information in these menus, here is what I
01:58recommend, navigate to Adobe Bridge CS4, Preferences, in the Preferences
02:03dialog, what we are going to do is go to Output and choose Use Solo mode for
02:07Output panel behavior. Let me show you how that works. We will click OK here to
02:11apply that. Next, when I open up my Layout panel, now all of a sudden the
02:16Document panel is closed. So only one panel will be open at a time. That's
02:21going to help me out a little bit.
02:22So then I have to scroll up and down in order to access the different things
02:26that we will need to access. All right, well so far so good. Let's go back to
02:29document for a moment. We see that we have one image on the page. It's really
02:33big. I also notice that I have the file name here, I don't want the file name.
02:37I wanted to create a beautiful print with all of these images on it.
02:40So I'll go to Overlays and I'll turn off File name and Extension, great. Next,
02:46I'm going to go back to document. What type of layout work best, will it be a
02:50vertical or a portrait or a horizontal or a landscape, I want to go to that
02:54other layout here and then just refresh the preview. Now when I refresh the
02:58preview, all I'm doing is making some changes, refreshing it so that I can say
03:01yeah, this is what I'm talking about, this will look pretty interesting and I'm
03:05going to change my inches here so I can see what size paper I'm working on.
03:09That would be kind of nice 8.5x11.5 or 12. That would be a pretty nice paper
03:13size to print to. I can also change this of course.
03:16But I'll go ahead and leave that there for now and say yeah, that would be a
03:19nice way to test this out. Next, I'll click on Layout and it will open that up.
03:23What I really need is I need more than one image on a page. So I need more than
03:27one column right. So I'll go ahead and enter 2 here, hit Refresh Preview and
03:32I'm just trying to begin to show you how you are going to work through these
03:35different menus making changes, hit Refresh and see how you are doing. Okay,
03:39well now I actually need two rows, and I don't want to Rotate for Best Fit. I
03:44I want to have two images across and two images underneath, Refresh Preview.
03:48I'm getting closer to the pre- visualization that I had for this. Okay great.
03:53Well, now I have some spacing above and below. So they don't have any spacing
03:57between the images here, so I want to have some equal spacing. So in order to
04:01do that, I'll go ahead and type in .17 and again I'm just following what I have
04:05over here. That way I'll have equal amount of space and I can continually
04:09change these till I get my grid to be just perfect.
04:13All right, well, so far so good. I'm liking that. I like the space that I have
04:16here but the space between the images isn't right for me. So on the bottom, I'm
04:20going to go ahead and increase this a little bit. I'll increase this to 2 and
04:23it's going to just be a game of nudging, a game of saying, okay, well I'm going
04:27to nudge those prints up, now they are up a little bit higher and say hey, I
04:30want to nudge them a little bit more. So I'm going to go to .3 and again, I'm
04:34just going to go through this and use this as a way that nudge things up. Now
04:38it would be really nice if I could just pick these images up and move them
04:40higher. But I can't.
04:42So for the most part though I'm pretty satisfied. I have this nice four-image
04:46grid. Now I can zoom in on this by simply clicking so I can look at one of the
04:50images or hold down the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC and click again
04:54and then you can zoom out.
04:56So you can zoom in and out to really examine how this is going. Now I could
04:59further modify this layout, let's say there is too much space up top. Well then
05:03I can just reduce this number here and increase this number down here, so I can
05:08kind of shuffle things around quite a bit in order to get everything in the
05:11exact spot where I want it. Yet, for this particular id, I think we have a
05:15pretty good layout right here. This would be a nice file to save and print and
05:19I'm guessing that by having all four of these images together, the final print
05:23will be that much more dynamic because it tells a different story and your eye
05:27travels all across the images.
05:29All right, well the final step that I need to take is to click the Save button.
05:33I'll go ahead and save this to my Desktop and I'll call this wolf_kids and it
05:38will then generate that PDF. It will open up Adobe Acrobat if I have that and
05:44it's going to access Full Screen view mode so I can really evaluate that. Okay,
05:48well now that I can see this, I say you know what? This looks really good.
05:50I like this. I do have a little bit more space up top than I would like.
05:54But I could go back to Bridge and fix that.
05:56Yet for now, I'm going to say you know what? This is pretty nice. I'll go ahead
05:59and print this file out just in order to see if I like this concept, see if I
06:02like this print. Because if I do, after I print it on this smaller sheet of
06:07paper, I'm probably going to print this on a big huge 13x19 piece of paper
06:12because I think the impact of this type of an image sequence would really work
06:15if I went big. Yet I'm just going to print a smaller one first in order to see
06:19if I like it and the nice thing about using the output module is you can start
06:23to assemble your images in unique way and see connections between your images
06:27and discover new things and ultimately, create something that's completely
06:31different had you just printed a single image.
Collapse this transcript
Creating a layout pt. 1: Using the Output module to create a rough layout
00:00In this movie, we are going to continue to talk about how we can use the output
00:03module in order to create some unique layouts and here you can see that I'm in
00:07the Adobe Bridge and I'm in the subfolder for this chapter Austin.
00:11Now one of the things that's kind of interesting to do is when you are photographing at a
00:15particular occasion to try to pick a theme and here you can see I have a bunch
00:19of different images and they all kind of follow the same theme.
00:22Now it's not really the beautiful side of Austin, Texas but it's the kind of
00:25the back alley door side of Austin, Texas and a lot of times what happens is
00:30when you have this theme and when you pre-visualize and say hey,
00:32I want to be able to put these all in one page, it then kind of directs what you see and
00:37again I'm looking for kind of that back alley look. I want to have really
00:40interesting and vivid colors, have a range of colors and some pretty
00:44interesting options.
00:45Let's go ahead then and assemble all of these images on one page. We will do
00:49that by pressing Command+A on a Mac, Ctrl+A on a PC to Select All. Next, we are
00:53going to press Command+F4 on a Mac, Ctrl +F4 on a PC to go to the output module.
00:58It will then show me the last particular layout that I used. Now the first
01:02layout that I want to show you is a template and it's kind of nice because we
01:05can use this template to create a contact sheet.
01:07I will go ahead and use 4x5 contact sheet, refresh my preview and what this
01:11means is the amount of columns and rows, so we have a 4x5 thing here and I can
01:16use this particular type of a layout in order to create a little contact sheet
01:20so I can remember these images and I would like to have these contact sheets
01:24because a lot of times my photographs are buried in hard drives and it's really
01:28hard to access them and keep in mind, I use Lightroom, I use Bridge. I do all
01:31this stuff a lot but still they are buried. I need that visual artifact in
01:36order to trigger my memory about those images.
01:38Okay, well let's say I then print that out. But then all of a sudden, I start
01:41to think, well wouldn't it be interesting, if I perhaps had all of these on one
01:45page and had this kind of little bit more clean layout. Well, that's what I
01:49want to do here. So first things first, I realized that I'm going to need to
01:52get rid of one of these photographs. Now which one will I get rid of? Well, I'm
01:56going to get rid of the door handle image.
01:58So I'll hold down the Command key on a Mac, Ctrl key on a PC, click on that
02:01image in the filmstrip. I have now removed that from my selection. Next thing
02:04I'm going to do is navigate into my Overlays panel and click off the Overlay.
02:09Then I'm going to go back to the Layout panel and here we can see we have four
02:13columns, five rows. I'm going to go turn on, use autospacing and then refresh
02:18my preview. This will then bring all these images together and I say okay yeah,
02:22I'm kind of starting to see how this could work. Now all of the images are a
02:26little bit small. So why don't I increase their size. Now how could I do that?
02:30Well, I need four columns across, but how many rows do I actually need? Well, I
02:34only need three. So I'll go ahead and change that number to 3, hit Refresh
02:37Preview and as you will be able to see here, we are getting closer.
02:42All right, now I'm liking that. That's kind of interesting. I'll turn Use
02:45Autospacing off and then I'll hit my Refresh Preview and then I'm going to
02:48begin to customize the space a little bit here so that I can bring all these
02:52images together. All right, well now that I have all those photographs
02:55together, I'm going to add some more space on the bottom of this document. I'll
02:59go ahead and add a 2 here and hit Refresh and I'm just interested in trying to
03:03push my images up a little higher and we can see that they are getting closer
03:07and closer. Now let's say that rather than customizing the layout here and
03:12continually changing my numbers as we have done before.
03:15Well, let's say that what we actually want to do is take a look at how we can
03:17use this layout and customize it further in Photoshop. We will take a look at
03:22how we can do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Creating a layout pt. 2: Customizing a PDF layout in Photoshop
00:00Now that we have customized the layout of this PDF file, I'm ready to save it.
00:04Yet before I do that, I just want to check on my document size. So if I go to
00:07the document window, make sure I'm in inches, I can see my paper size.
00:12Now if this particular paper size isn't good for me, I want to change that let's
00:15say to A3 and then change my option to Inches there, refresh the preview
00:20because let's say I want a little bit bigger print. I want to have little bit
00:23more file size that I can work with. Okay, well that's fine. Now the next thing
00:27that we are going to do is navigate down to the Save button.
00:29Now we don't want to view this PDF after saving, so we are going to check that off
00:32and also just for the record, wouldn't it be nice if there is a button here
00:35that said Open in Photoshop? Well, that doesn't exist yet, maybe in CS5.
00:40So we will go ahead and click Save here, I'll save this to the Desktop and I'll
00:43call this Austin. That will then generate the PDF and when it's done, it will
00:48tell me hey, congratulations. Your PDF was successfully created. Perfect. Click OK.
00:54Next, I'm going to navigate over to Photoshop and in Photoshop, I'll go to File
00:58> Open and choose that PDF file and click Open. Now when I click Open here,
01:03it's going to open up the Import PDF dialog window. Now all the default
01:07settings will work just fine for me. So I'm going to click OK. It will then
01:10open up this particular PDF file. Now the nice thing about this is that I'll be
01:15able to work with this document in a unique way. So let's press F to go to Full
01:19Screen view mode now that we are in Photoshop. Okay, great.
01:21Well now I can see I have all the different layers here and I have these little
01:25thumbnails. Now currently, if I move this, I move it all together. Well that
01:30doesn't really work for me, because I want to get all of these thumbnails
01:32closer together. I also want to have a little bit more of a space around the
01:36edge. Well, I'll zoom out, Command+- on a Mac, Ctrl+- on a PC, grab the Crop
01:41tool by clicking on it in the Tools panel and I'm going to click and drag the
01:45crop around the image and I'm going to actually go beyond the document size
01:50here and then I'll press Enter or Return.
01:52Now when I did that, I actually opened up more space for me to work with.
01:56Great. Next step. I'll go ahead and make a selection of these doors here.
02:01Navigate to Edit and choose Cut. So those are now gone, create a new layer by
02:07clicking on the New Layer icon, Edit and Paste and of course you can use your
02:11shortcuts if you know those. Press the V key to select the Move tool and then
02:15we will move those up.
02:17We can use the Arrow keys also to nudge those around. Next step, go back to
02:21layer 2, Marquee tool, make a selection of these bottom images here and this
02:27time we will do by a way of shortcut, Command+X on a Mac, Ctrl+X on a PC.
02:32Next, Shift+Command+N on a Mac, Shift+ Ctrl+N on a PC. That's a shortcut to
02:38create a new layer and we will just name this layer, Layer 3. That's fine. And
02:42then, we are going to Paste, we are going to press Command+V to Paste those
02:47images into that layer and then move them around. Now if you don't like those
02:51shortcuts, you can always do it the way that I did previously, the long cuts.
02:55All right great.
02:56Let's click in Layer 1. At this juncture, I need a white background, right. So
03:00if I click on the New Layer icon, it will create a new layer above this layer,
03:04if I want to create one below, you hold down the Command key on a Mac, the Ctrl
03:08key on a PC, then click on this New Layer icon so that you have a layer
03:12underneath the layer that you have previously targeted. Next, Edit > Fill.
03:17I want to fill this with a white color there, all right.
03:21Now we can start to see how this particular montage is going to come together.
03:25All right, well my crop wasn't that good. So I'm going to go ahead and extend
03:28my crop around the images here. What I'm interested in doing is just bringing
03:33this in a little bit, I want a little bit of a tighter craft, little bit less
03:36space around the edge. Just felt like it was too big for me. I want to have
03:41some nice space down below, so I can put the title of this montage. I'll press
03:45Enter or Return. All right, so far so good.
03:48Next, press the T key to select the Type tool and I'll go ahead and type
03:53something out here. This font is super small. It's only a 2 point font, so I'll
03:58press Command+A on a Mac, Ctrl+A on a PC, then I'll click and drag to the right
04:02in order to make that bigger. Grab the Move tool so I can move this around and
04:08re-access that Type tool by pressing the T key, hovering over the text field
04:13and clicking and type in a little message here. Press Enter or Return,
04:19reposition that and I want to have a little bit lower Opacity there for this,
04:22so I'll press the 5 key to go to 50% Opacity.
04:26You can also experiment will free transforming this Copy here, Command+T on a
04:29Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC and then hold down the Shift key while you grab one of
04:33those four corner points and you can extend this. Press Enter or Return. Now
04:40press 2 to go to 20% and that's a little bit too big for me, so I'm going to
04:46free transform it again, Command+T, didn't really like the big font there,
04:49didn't wok for me, press Enter or Return. Next, press F to go to Full Screen
04:53view mode and we have created a pretty unique layout by way of the output
04:58module in combination with Photoshop.
Collapse this transcript
Creating a three-image layout in Photoshop
00:00Here we are going to take a look at how we can combine multiple images or three
00:03images on one page in Photoshop. You can think of this movie as a creative
00:07movie as well as a little bit of a technical movie because I imagine you are
00:10going to pick up a few tips and tricks here along the way.
00:12All right, well the three photos that I want to combine are greg_lawler_01,
00:16greg_lawler_02 and greg_lawler_03. You can see that I have those open here and
00:19I like these three photos because they were captured with film, the film was
00:22cross-processed. So nothing has been done to these photos in Photoshop just yet
00:26and I really like that effect and Sophia is just so cute there.
00:29So the first thing that I'm going to do is navigate to the Arrange Documents
00:32option and I'm going to choose this particular option here where I can see all
00:35the photos. I'll then click on one of the documents and drag it into another
00:39while holding on the Shift key that will bring that into the center of this
00:43document. Click on another one, hold down the Shift key and bring that one in as well.
00:47All right, let's press F to go to Full Screen view mode so that we have all of
00:51these photos here. Well, now when I do that, I can click and I can reposition a
00:54photo so that it's above another photo. It's actually off of or outside of the
00:58confines of the canvas. Well, how can I access that? Well, if you go to Image
01:02and then choose Reveal All, it will then extend your canvas, I'll zoom out so
01:06we can see that, so that I have those images there, well perfect.
01:09Okay, well then I want to have this particular layer down below, how can I do
01:14that? Well, hold down Ctrl+Option+ Command on a Mac and click. You notice that
01:19helps me target that layer. On a PC, that's Ctrl+Alt-click or you can always on
01:23the layer. Here I'm going to go ahead and move this down and then go to Image
01:28and choose Reveal All. Now I have this trip deck here and it's starting to look
01:32kind of interesting.
01:33I want a little bit more space, so I'll press the C key to grab the Crop tool.
01:37Click and drag to expand that across these images here. Now that I have done
01:41that, my spacings are a little bit off. No big deal. I can re-orientate this
01:45either by grabbing my Crop tool and clicking and dragging this out a little bit
01:50and up so I have a little bit more space or I can reposition the images in
01:54another way. Okay, well great.
01:56Next, I'll click in the topmost layer and I'm going to do that this time, by
01:59selecting the Move tool, press V on the keyboard, right-click and then I can
02:03see the layer name there, Layer 2 and I'll move this one up. I'll go down and
02:07right-click, choose Layer 1 and then drag this one down a little bit. All
02:11right, well so far so good. We have almost successfully designed this little
02:15trip deck of photos here. Last thing I want to do is create a little bit more
02:18of a clean crop. So I'll grab my Crop tool, I'm just going to extend this
02:23beyond the edge here and then press Enter or Return to apply that and press F
02:28to go to Full Screen view mode and then zoom in perhaps a little bit so we can
02:32see that, you saw it was a little bit too far wasn't it. We will zoom out just
02:35a touch here, so we can see all of those and we have successfully created a
02:39different story by combining these three images together. We have created a bit
02:43of a photomontage, a bit of a photo story in a really unique way without a lot of effort.
Collapse this transcript
Creating a grid photo montage
00:00In this movie, we are going to combine more images in one document in
00:03Photoshop. You can think of this movie as a bit of creative inspiration. Now
00:07let's take a look at some of the photos that we have up. Currently I have the
00:10bg.psd file open and here I have dragged in a number of the different files.
00:15Now what happened was I had to take my car into the shop to have a smog check.
00:18I had five minutes, I walk around with my camera I'm thinking,
00:20I'm going to shoot images that will work well together. Now here we have laundry mat,
00:25we have some birds on telephone wires, picture of a laundry, one of the laundry
00:29machine, a corrugated wall, you get the idea.
00:32And somehow I thought, it's kind of interesting. None of these images are
00:35amazing by themselves, yet together it really creates something. So, again as
00:40we are working through these different print layout, keep in mind that what I'm
00:43trying to get you to think about is just how can I combine images and even
00:46more, how can I begin the create print layouts so that it shapes how I
00:50photograph, because I can then try to have consistency and cohesion and
00:55connection with my photographs because the problem is with a lot of amateur
00:58photography is you just don't have that common thread that unites the photography.
01:04So, we can do this with simple five- minute walks. All right, well I brought in
01:07most of the images. There is one image that I still need to bring in and I also
01:11need to work on resizing this. So, I'm going to go ahead and navigate to the
01:14Arrange Mode where I can see that image. I'll click on it and drag it into this
01:17document. Okay, great. Now press F to go to Full Screen View Mode, I'm going to
01:22click in one of these layers, hold down the Shift key, click in another and
01:25I'll center these vertically and horizontally.
01:27Now when I do that I realize, hey, you know what? This looks pretty good except
01:31this washer image is the wrong size. I didn't resize that correctly in the
01:35other documents. Well, no big deal, check this out. Because they are centered
01:38vertically and horizontally, I press Command+T on the Mac, Ctrl+T on the PC.
01:43I'm going to go ahead and just bring this down right to that corner edge there,
01:46also hold down the Shift key, bring out in the other corner point. Now I have
01:49the exact perfect size and I'm able to do that because I aligned all of those images.
01:54Now let's just make sure they are fully aligned, click on one layer,
01:57Shift-click in another and then we will align those vertically and
01:59horizontally. All right, great. Now is where the fun begins where we get to
02:03begin to tell the story.
02:05So we are going to go ahead and click in one of my layers here and I'll click
02:08in Layer 1 and I'll reposition this up in the top corner. I'll then click in
02:13another layer and position that, now it's going to kind of lock to the same
02:17grid type of space as this image, you notice I have that equal space on top,
02:21perfect.
02:22I will then go to the washer photograph, I just like this one, all you have to
02:26do is have a slow shutter speed and get some of the motion there, really fun.
02:31Click in Layer 2 and again just bring in these images together and click in yet
02:38another layer and finally our shadow layer and then just fine-tune the
02:45positioning on this just a bit.
02:47Now I'll click in the topmost layer, Shift-click in the bottommost layer, grab
02:51the Move tool, by pressing the V key and I could just nudge this around based
02:54on where I want them, so I can have some equal spacing all the way around the
02:58board. Now grab the Type tool and I'll type out the title of this particular
03:04project 5 Minute Walk, press Enter or Return, reposition that, Command+T to
03:11free transform that 5 Minute Walk.
03:14I want to have a little bit more interesting font so I'll navigate to Window
03:17and Character, and I'm going to go ahead and scroll through these font till I
03:20find one. I think it's kind of interesting and fits this particular project.
03:24Now here is one that may look kind of interesting, all right. I'll then
03:28reposition that and Command+ T to make it much smaller.
03:32Then hold down the Option key on the Mac, Alt key on a PC, click and drag and
03:36drag it over to the other side and I'm going to type out By Chris Orwig, press
03:41Enter or Return. Now I'm going to lower the Opacity of that layer so with the
03:44Move tool selected, I'll press the V key and then I'll press the 4 key to go to
03:4840 % Opacity.
03:49I will go to the 5 Minute Walk layer. What I actually want to do is change the
03:53color of this. So I'm going to then go back to my Character panel and I'll
03:57choose a color here and I'll sample color from the photograph and click OK, all
04:01right. So let's press Tab and then F to go to Full Screen View Mode. I have the
04:05rulers visible. To hide those that's Command+R on the Mac, Ctrl+R on a PC.
04:10Now we have successfully created a pretty interesting photo grid here, a little
04:13bit too much spacing between those photos. So I'm going to go ahead and click
04:16in that layer and just nudge those over a little bit, hadn't realized that my
04:21Spacing was off there and again just using the arrow keys to nudge those around
04:25and then click and Shift-click to move those over to the other side and I think
04:29that looks pretty good.
04:30Let's press Tab to bring everything back, so we can see that looks good. Press
04:34F to go to Full Screen View Mode and we will just nudge that over so that we
04:39have equal spacing all the way around the board.
04:42All right, that looks pretty nice. Next, we are in Full Screen View Mode and I
04:46need to move this text field, and how can I do that? We will right-click, I can
04:50select it and then use the arrow keys to nudge it around. Same thing over here
04:55right-click, select that layer and we have successfully made some changes
04:59without even having the Photoshop interface visible.
05:01Now that's quite a bit of fun. All right, well enclosing we have successfully
05:04created this photomontage. Now if you haven't created one of these before, I
05:08recommend you do so now, take five minute, take a five minute break right now,
05:12wander around, just try to capture six images that belong together. Now they
05:16can perhaps be different images but if they are connected enough together, they
05:20can tell a unique story.
Collapse this transcript
Building a creative layout pt. 1
00:00 Here, we are going to have some more fun with layout and we are going to be
00:03 working on these images that I brought into this document, all these
00:05 apples_picking files, but we are going to do this a little bit differently.
00:09 So for starters we are going to navigate up to our Options bar, select the Move
00:12 tool and turn on Auto-Select. Next, we are going to press F to go to Full
00:15 Screen View mode, then press F7 to bring back our Layers palette. We are going
00:19 to do this without all of the rest of the Photoshop interface visible.
00:23 Well, now here I have a bunch of different images so I'll go ahead and click on
00:26 one of them and I'm going to reposition that photograph and then I'll click on
00:29 another, I'll reposition that one and yet another I have some verticals there,
00:33 those are really interesting.
00:34 Now what I'm going to be able to do with those? Well, there are little bit
00:37 different in size of my other photos, so I'm going to group this together. So
00:41 I'm going to go ahead and click in one of the verticals, hold down the Shift
00:44 key, click in another and then press Command+G on a PC, that's Ctrl+G for Group.
00:49 Now let's turn those off. We will come back to those later. All right, well
00:52 next, we will click on Fresh Apples and we will go ahead and put that in our
00:56 space in there and then we are going to bring in our tractor shot, we have this
01:00 old rotten apples on the ground, some fresh apples here, apple picking cart and
01:05 kids in an apple picking cart. Again, we are just first starting to reorganize
01:10 this and bring some of these images around.
01:12 Okay, well great! Well, now that we can see what we have here, one of the
01:15 things that I'm thinking is it would be kind of interesting to get our
01:17 alignment a little bit better to see if we actually like this. So I click on an
01:21 image, use the Arrow keys and nudge things around. Well, at this juncture, this
01:25 montage or this grid is pretty normal, right? Well, how could we introduce
01:29 perhaps a little bit more of an interesting pattern here, or work with space in
01:34 a little bit more intriguing way?
01:35 Let's click in our bottom layer, green, hold down the Shift key and click in
01:39 the top layer, fresh, and reposition these in the middle of the screen here for
01:42 a moment and then just begin to change this up a little bit.
01:46 All right, well one of the things that I'm going to do is go ahead and begin to
01:48 change the way that these images are laid out. I'm going to try to have a
01:52 little bit of a different grouping. So I'll click in one of them and I'm going
01:55 to drop this down here, click in another one, drop this one over here and again
02:00 I'm just having a little bit of fun with my layout. I'm going to turn on my
02:03 three verticals.
02:04 Now with my three verticals what I'm interested in doing is using those in one
02:08 of these spaces. So I have these three together. I'll press Command+T because
02:12 they are in a group, I can press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC, and I'm
02:16 going to resize these so that these actually fit inside of this space that we
02:20 have here, the width of the space that we have.
02:23 Next, I'll click on my background image. I'll reposition that and say OK. It's
02:26 kind of going in an interesting direction. Now I want to bring out some guides
02:30 just to make sure my spacing is working out. Press Command+R on a Mac, Ctrl+R
02:33 on a PC. We will click one of the guides and drag that out. What we are looking
02:38 to do is to drag that out and align that off of one of our images.
02:41 So we can see here that this image needs to move over our group. If we click on
02:45 that, that needs to come over. We're also going to bring out another guide to
02:48 see if our resizing of our group worked out. You know what? It's just too big
02:52 there, so I'm going to go ahead and Command+T that and make that a little bit
02:56 smaller, right, so that then fits inside of this space here. We can bring a
02:59 guide out and again just to make sure we have everything lined up.
03:03 Okay, well the guides and the rulers are a bit distracting at this juncture, so
03:07 I'll press Command+R on a Mac, Ctrl+R on a PC to hide those and then on a Mac
03:12 Command+Semicolon, on a PC Ctrl+ Semicolon to remove those guides.
03:16 Okay, great! Well, the next thing that I'm going to do here is I'm going to
03:19 move this tractor shot down a little bit. I'll move this apple shot up. It's a
03:24 little bit like a puzzle, right, just shifting things around. Then I'll click
03:27 in this bottom layer here, bring this one up. So I'm just going to continually
03:31 modify this around and see what I can do in regards to my overall spacing here.
03:36 One of the things that I'm realizing is that I could change things up a little
03:39 bit in regard to the size of the images. So I'm going to need to do perhaps a
03:44 little bit of cropping or a little of masking in order to get this to look really good.
03:48 So at this juncture, let's say, we have a pretty rough layout. Now you may not
03:53 quite know where I'm going with this, but what I want to do here is I want to
03:57 start to have multiple size images, I don't want to have them all of the same
04:01 size. I like my little triptych here of these verticals, I would like to have a
04:05 few other images that have different sizes as well. And in addition, I want to
04:09 add a few other design elements to make this even better.
04:13 All right, well at this point, we kind of have all the puzzle pieces roughly
04:17 laid out. It's a rough layout here. Let's go ahead and make this layout even better
04:21 and we will do that in the next movie.
04:24
Collapse this transcript
Building a creative layout pt. 2
00:00 In order to finish off this montage, which is a little bit like a puzzle,
00:03 what I want to do next is begin to change the spacing and also the size of some of
00:08 the images. So I'm going to go ahead and click in the Rotten Apples layer.
00:11 I'll use my arrow keys to nudge that up. I'm also going to nudge up these
00:14 images here. I'm just going to start to work from the top down. Again, I want
00:19 to get my spacing nice and equal.
00:20 Next, I'm going to click in this layer titled Tree, I want to grab that marquee
00:25 tool by pressing the M key. What I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to
00:28 make a selection. I'll make a selection that's about the size of the image, yet
00:33 not quite the full size there, and may click on the Add Layer Mask option.
00:38 Now when I do that, I can then turn off the link option between the image and
00:42 the layer mask, click in the image, press the V key, just like the Move tool,
00:46 and then use the Arrow keys to move this around, so that I have some nice
00:50 bright apples there.
00:51 Right, well great. Well, now that I have done that, I can then go ahead and
00:54 click on the layer underneath it, and bring this one up. All that I'm
00:58 interested in doing is trying to begin to create a little bit of an
01:01 interruption of the pattern.
01:03 Okay, well, I'll click in the layer for the group of those verticals. I'll
01:06 bring those up as well. We are just starting to see how we have a little bit
01:09 more of a dynamic layout because our sizing of the images is changing up a bit.
01:14 Let's do that with the Tractor layer as well. I'll go ahead and bring up the
01:17 Tractor layer. One of the things that I notice is when I bring this Tractor
01:20 layer up, really, I can have it up quite high, and just focusing on Annika, my
01:25 daughter there.
01:25 Okay, well great! Well, let's grab that Marquee tool by pressing the M key, and
01:29 then we will go ahead and click and drag across that and then click on the
01:33 option to Add Layer Mask. Now that we have added that layer mask, we can then
01:37 click off this to link those two, and I can move the mask or the photographs.
01:41 If I click on the mask, and I can go ahead and then press the V key to grab the
01:44 Move tool, and I'm just going to nudge that down, so that I have equal spacing,
01:49 and just a little bit more focused version of that particular photograph.
01:53 All right great! Next I'll press the V key to select the Move tool. I'll then
01:56 click in another layer, so in this case, I'll click in Fresh, let's say, and
02:00 I'll bring up that Fresh image there. I really like that one. I think it is a
02:04 fun photograph. I like what it brings to the mix.
02:07 As I do that, I realize that kind of have a duplicate. I like the sign, but
02:10 it's even better with her. So I'm going to go ahead and replace that by
02:13 bringing this by all the way up top.
02:15 Now this particular layer is underneath Fresh. How can I reorder my layers by
02:20 way of shortcut? Again we are trying to push the envelope a little bit here, or
02:24 we can do that by pressing Command+] on a MAC, Ctrl+] on a PC. I'm going to
02:30 then turn off the Fresh layer altogether. I don't need that layer anymore.
02:34 All right great! Well so far so good. Last thing I want to do is then have a
02:38 mask for this layer here which is Empty Cart, and I want the mask to be pretty
02:42 similar in size as the mask that I have here on my Tractor layer, actually
02:46 right here.
02:47 So I'll go ahead and click on the Tractor mask, hold down the Option key on a
02:50 MAC, Alt key on a PC, and click and drag that to the Empty Cart layer. Now I
02:55 have added that mask to this layer, except it's on the wrong spot.
02:58 So I'll click on the mask, and I'll go ahead, and then click and drag it over
03:02 to the left, so that I have it in the correct spot. Now I have a very different
03:06 layout. I'll go ahead and use the arrow keys in order to nudge that one up.
03:11 So far so good. Next I'm going to click in the layer with the kids in the cart.
03:15 So I'll go ahead and click in Kids Cart, and I'm just going to move that one
03:19 up, so that it's aligned with the bottom of these verticals here. When I do
03:23 that, I realize that my spacing between these two images isn't quite perfect.
03:27 So I'm going to go back to that particular layer here. We can see that this is
03:30 the layer and I'm going to free transform the mask, Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T
03:34 on a PC. That gives me the ability to just bring that mask up a little bit, and
03:38 them press Enter or Return.
03:40 Well our spacing is starting to look good. We need to elevate or lift up these
03:44 bottom two images. How can we do that? If I click in Empty Cart, I then need to
03:50 relink the mask and the image, and then use my arrow keys, and I can nudge that one up.
03:54 Same thing with Tractor, I'll click in that Tractor layer, relink those, target
03:58 that layer, and I'll go ahead and nudge those up, nudge just a little bit, but
04:01 that really helps out. Okay, we kind of have this interesting grid, because we
04:05 are playing with sizes, we have different sizes. It's a very different type of
04:09 a montage. It tells a very different story.
04:11 Well, the next thing that I want to do is I'm going to grab the marquee tool by
04:14 pressing the M key, and I'm going to click and drag to create a shape that's
04:18 the same width as what I have here. So now that I have that same width, I'll
04:23 press the spacebar key, and I'll drag this down, so that it's underneath all
04:26 those photos there.
04:28 Great! Well, now that that's underneath, I'm going to create a new layer,
04:31 Shift+Command+N on a Mac, Shift+Ctrl+ N on a PC. I know there are a lot of
04:36 shortcuts here. If you don't know any of these shortcuts, pause the movie,
04:39 write them down, and then keep going. We are going to name this layer bar,
04:43 because I'm going to create a bar at the bottom of the photograph.
04:46 Now I need to grab the Eyedropper tool. Press the I key to select the
04:50 Eyedropper tool. I'm going to sample a color. In this case, I'm sampling this
04:53 red here on the background. I then want to fill this selection with that color.
04:58 On a Mac that's Option+Delete; on a PC that's Alt+Delete. Well, now that we
05:02 have that color, let's go ahead and deselect. That's Command+D on a Mac,
05:06 Ctrl+D on a PC.
05:09 Let's then, grab this color and hover it over our images. One of the things
05:12 that I'm noticing is that when I do that, it's not quite the right size. It's
05:16 not exactly where I need it to be, it's not quite long enough. Command+T on a
05:19 Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC. I can make that a little bit longer here.
05:23 If I zoom in even further, and really look at these edges, or line them up
05:28 right there on the image, actually that's pretty good. Then I'll nudge that
05:31 back down, so I have it back below. Command+Minus on a Mac, Ctrl+Minus on a PC,
05:37 to zoom out.
05:38 Great! We are getting close to finishing off our layout. Press the C key to
05:42 grab the Crop tool. What I'm going to do here is just create a crop around the
05:45 edge of our layout, and you can click and drag to extend that crop. If you want
05:51 to shift its position, all that you need to do is press the spacebar key and
05:54 then you can move that around, and then when you let go off the spacebar key,
05:58 you can further resize the crop area.
06:01 Well, now that I have that, I'll press Enter or Return to apply that. Great!
06:05 That's looking pretty interesting. I'll grab the Type tool, and I'm going to
06:09 add some type here. The type I'm going to add is Apple Picking.
06:12 Now when I do that, my Apple Picking layer, I can't really see. I can't really
06:17 see it for a couple of reasons. One is because you can tell that the font is
06:21 red. So that's not going to really work for me.
06:24 Now I can change this font in a number of different ways. The easiest technique
06:27 that I can use is going to be to press the Tab key to bring back some of my
06:30 interface, and then go ahead and minimize this panel by double-clicking the
06:34 Adjustments tab. Double-click the T, to select all of the font there, and I'll
06:39 go ahead and choose a new color. The color that I'm going to choose is white.
06:43 If I click on only web colors, it makes it really easy to grab that white, and
06:47 I'll click OK to apply that. Then I'll grab the Move tool and I'll click and
06:51 reposition that, Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC, and then free transform that.
06:56 I have a little Apple Picking message there, and then I'm going to Option-click
07:00 and drag, so I have the same font on this side over here, and I'll type out By
07:04 Chris Orwig, press Enter or Return, use my Arrow keys to nudge those around,
07:10 and then lower the opacity of that, because I want that to be a little bit less
07:14 prominent. Press Tab to get rid of the interface, and we have now created a
07:17 really unique layout.
07:19 Now, part of the intent of this movie is just to have fun with layout, and in
07:22 addition to try to get you to begin to work in Photoshop without using the interface.
07:28 Now I know that I threw in quite a bit of shortcuts there, and some of the
07:30 shortcuts may be a little bit complicated or confusing, my hope is that by
07:35 having this movie at the end of this chapter, you can kind of build up to it,
07:39 and if any of this doesn't make sense, keep in mind, you can always do things
07:42 with the Photoshop interface visible.
07:44 If these shortcuts frustrate you, no big deal, just go back to what you know.
07:48 Yet perhaps, by watching this movie, you may have picked up a few shortcuts
07:52 that you can begin to integrate in your own workflow, and even more. I hope
07:56 that by talking about print layout, you can begin to see how you can assemble
08:00 images in some unique ways, in order to tell completely different photographic stories.
08:06
Collapse this transcript
Multiple-image layout pt. 1: Using Bridge and Photoshop
00:00 A good friend of ours, Greg, who is a great photographer, took some family
00:03 photos of us down at the beach. I want to show you those photos, and then talk
00:07 about how we can bring these photos together in one layout. What I want to do
00:11 here with these photos is create a Christmas card.
00:13 So I'll go ahead and click on the first image and press the spacebar key to
00:16 take these to full screen view mode, I'm then going to scroll through these
00:19 images, and here you can see we have some action photos of my wife Kelly
00:23 spinning Annika around. Here's a nice family portrait, a great portrait of my
00:27 wife Kelly and Sophia, and then me tossing Annika up in the air. Then again,
00:32 just some more really fun photos.
00:34 Now, when I get these photos back from Greg, I think, oh yeah, these are great.
00:37 Yet, how can I choose one of these for the Christmas card? So what I'm going to
00:41 do is press the Escape key to go back to the Adobe Bridge, and rather than
00:45 picking one of these images, what I'm going to do is create a layout based on
00:48 all of these files.
00:49 Now I have already resized these images down, so they approximately fit on a
00:53 4x6 image, so that I can then have this printed at a local digital lab, so it
00:57 won't cost very much. But it will still be kind of an interesting layout with
01:00 multiple images on it.
01:02 Well, I'll go ahead and select the first file. Scroll down, Shift-click on the
01:06 left on the last file, then I'm going to navigate to Tools > Photoshop and load
01:10 these files in the Photoshop layers. I'll go ahead and click that option, and
01:13 what this will do is it will open up all of these different images in one
01:17 layered Photoshop document.
01:19 Now this is really helpful when it comes to creating a layout. So let's press F
01:23 to go to full screen view mode, and then I also have my Rulers visible, so I'll
01:27 press Command+R to hide those rulers, and just to reset everything, I'm going
01:31 to click on the Essentials pulldown menu here for my different workspaces, and
01:35 choose Essentials. That will take me back to my default Essentials workspace.
01:39 Again, I just kind of want to clean everything up a bit before I start, because
01:43 I'm working with multiple pieces. Whenever you are working with multiple
01:46 pieces, you want to reduce and simplify, so you can really focus in on the task
01:49 at hand. Well, let's double-click the Color tab, and double-click the
01:53 Adjustments tab, so we can see our images.
01:55 Now the first set of images that we have, 01 through 07, it's almost like a
01:59 movie, right? With Annika being spun around in circles there, and if we turn
02:03 off these Eye icons, that's really fun how that happens. So I want to make
02:07 those a little bit cinematic, so I'll click on the top one, hold down the Shift
02:10 key, click in the bottom one, which is 07, press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on
02:15 a PC. I'm going to free transform these, and the vision that I have for these
02:18 images is to create a little bit of a film strip that stretches all the way
02:21 across this particular layout.
02:23 Now the actual size of this particular scene is really going to be subjective.
02:27 Also just for the record, it's pretty fun to create Christmas card layouts or
02:30 other different types of layouts that are bigger than this, but for now I'll
02:33 stick with this 4x6.
02:34 While I free transform this, and I think that looks pretty good, I'll
02:38 double-click that to apply it. Next, I'll click on the second image, and I'll
02:42 go ahead and bring that one out, click on the third image, bring that one out,
02:45 and then click on the fourth image, bring that one out as well, and then I'll
02:49 go down to 05, click and drag that over to the right.
02:52 One of the things I'm noticing here is that these are too big. I can't fit all
02:56 of them in the frame. So I'll go ahead and click on the topmost image, hold
02:59 down the Shift key, click in the bottommost image of this set, press Command+T
03:03 on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC, hold down the Shift key and then click and drag to
03:08 decrease the size of those, press Enter or Return.
03:11 Okay, great. Now where was I? I'll click in 05, and I'll drag that. That wasn't
03:14 the right one. Click in 06, and I'll click and drag this one all the way over
03:18 here to the right. At this juncture, I think that's kind of fun. I might just
03:22 leave that as-is and lose this last little image here.
03:25 So let's go ahead and move these around just a touch. So I'll click in this
03:29 one, hold down the Shift key, click in the topmost layer, press Command+T on
03:32 Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC. That shows me I'm just beyond the edge of the frame. So
03:37 hold down the Shift key, and free transform those, so they are all of equal
03:40 sizes, they all fit perfectly there in this layout.
03:43 Great! Well, I'm not going to use orwig _family_07. So I'll go ahead and turn
03:47 the visibility of that one off, zoom in a little bit, so I can see my nice
03:50 layout. I like that. I think that's kind of fun. While, we have started to
03:54 build this layout, we have more ground to cover, and we will do that in the next movie.
03:59
Collapse this transcript
Multiple-image layout pt. 2: Masking and resizing photos
00:00Now that we have worked on the filmstrip aspect of this particular layout, I'm
00:04going to go ahead and group these images. So I click in the topmost images of
00:07the set, hold down the shift key, click in the bottom most image of that set
00:10and press Command+G to group. Then I go ahead and call this group filmstrip.
00:14That's kind of what is like.
00:16Next, what I want to do begin to create a layout that makes sense so I can fit
00:19three images across on both these sections above and below this filmstrip. So
00:24what I'm going to do is grab my Marquee tool and I'm going to click and drag to
00:27create a marquee selection over the entirety of that space there. I'll then
00:31create a new layer. So I have a Layer 1 here and I fill this particular
00:34selection with that color. I'll navigate to Edit > Fill and choose white or black.
00:39It doesn't really matter. Click OK to apply that and then Select and Deselect.
00:43Well now that I have the selection I'm going to Free Transform it by pressing
00:46Command+T on Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC. I'll then click and drag this center point
00:51here over to the far right so that the X coordinate is 0. Now the width I'm
00:55going to change to 33.33%, press Enter or Return to apply that. Now that's
01:00roughly a third of this particular distance here.
01:03Well, let's copy and paste the selection. We are going to do that by pressing
01:07the Option key, clicking and dragging so that we now have another version of
01:11that shape. And there we can see there is a subtle gap. If we zoom in a little
01:14bit more, we can see that there is just a slight gap there. It will show up in
01:17different zoom rates. I hold down the Option key and I'll click and drag this
01:21over to the right so that I have that image on the far right over there.
01:25Okay great. Well, let's zoom in a little bit and when we zoom in we can see
01:28that, yeah, they are pretty closer. There is a little tiny gap between these.
01:31But for the most part they are in pretty good shape. So we will go ahead and zoom out.
01:34Now that we have these shapes here, we can use these shapes to begin to
01:39assemble our images and create a mask based on those shapes. So first thing we
01:43want to do is try to figure out what image would we like in a top left hand
01:46corner. Well, I'm going to turn off the visibility of all the underlying layers
01:50and just turn on the visibility of one image that I really like. Top left.
01:53That's something you see quite often. That's one of the first images you see,
01:56because we read top to bottom, left to right.
01:59So I'm going to go ahead and select this orwig_family_09.jpg photograph. I'll
02:02click in that layer an then I'm going to press the Command key on the Mac or
02:06Ctrl key on a PC and I'm going to Command-click on the shape that I want to use
02:10to create a mask, which in this case is Layer 1. So I Command-click on Layer 1.
02:14That activates that shape as a selection.
02:17Well, now all that I need to do is click on the Add layer mask icon. So I now
02:20have a mask which masks off just that particular area. Well, I can't fit the
02:25whole image in there, so unlink the image from its mask. I click on the Image
02:29icon. We will see the brackets around that showing me I'm actually there and
02:32I'll click to reposition this photograph and then press Command+T on a Mac,
02:36Ctrl+T on a PC, hold down the Shift key and Free Transform this so that it fits
02:40in this new shape here.
02:42Now because this shape is a little bit different it is going to change the
02:45overall composition, yet I'm okay with that. I'm going to kind of have some fun
02:48with this. I'll press Enter or Return. Well, I'm ready for the next image. What
02:52can I use next? Well. How about this one here? I kind of like that photograph.
02:55I'll click in orwig_family_08.jpg. Now hold on the Command key on the Mac,
02:59Ctrl+Key on a PC. Click on the layer thumbnail. In this case Layer thumbnail 1,
03:03click on the Add layer mask icon. Click to unlink the image from the mask.
03:07Click in the Layer thumbnail. Press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC and we
03:12will Free Transform this and just want to get that image in there. Maybe offset
03:17that one a little bit, so it's off to the side. Press Enter or Return. All
03:21right we are making some good progress here.
03:23Now we need to add one more image to this space over here. What image would
03:26look nice there? Well, how about this one, orwig_family_13? I'll click in that
03:30layer and then hold down the Command key on the Mac, Ctrl key on a PC and
03:34Command-click on Layer 1 copy 2, which is this far rectangle on the right.
03:39Click on the Add Layer Mask icon, unlink these two and then click in the image
03:44Command+T on the Mac, Ctrl+T on PC and then click to reposition that and press
03:49Enter or Return.
03:50Well, so far so good. We are going in a pretty good direction. Now these three
03:54images all belong together and we go ahead and click and drag this so that we
03:58have the far right and then the middle and then the far left. Now the only
04:01problem is that as we click through here one of the things we are seeing is
04:05there is a bit of a gap. Now sometimes it's kind of hard to see the gaps. So
04:08here is what I like to do.
04:09I will go ahead and click underneath the images that I worked on, create a new
04:13layer and I'll fill that layer by going to Edit > Fill. I'll choose a color
04:16here and I'm going to go ahead and choose a strong color like Red and I'll
04:19click OK and then OK. Now that I have that color and I zoom in a little bit, I
04:24can see I have some pretty serious gaps that I need to deal with.
04:27So how can we fix those? That's actually quite easy. So we will go ahead and
04:31click in the middle layer here and I'm going to move my mask around just a
04:35touch. Now I'm going to go ahead move it over to the right just a bit and then
04:38I press Command+T on Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC and I'll click and drag this to the
04:42right a bit so that I then fill that out.
04:44Now I'll click in the other mask, Command+T there, and I'll go ahead and expand
04:48that a touch as well. That looks nice and then I'll go over to my first image,
04:52Command+T and I click and drag that down just to cover up that space. And click
04:57in this one, Command+T, move that over to the right and the way that these
05:01images are overlapping, I can get away with that.
05:03Now is this grid perfect? I mean pixel perfect. No, but I'm okay with that. No
05:08one is going to ever notice the half a pixel of that that's off. One of the
05:11things that I do notice though is that my filmstrip, there is a little bit of a
05:14gap here between these two photos. So we are going to go ahead and navigate
05:17down to that filmstrip and I'm going to click in the layer where I'm seeing the
05:20gap. Its one of these two layers here and I'm going to go ahead and move that
05:23over just a touch and when I move that over, I realize I now have a gap over
05:27here on the right hand side. So I click to move over the entire filmstrip and
05:31then I have a gap on the right hand side.
05:33I need to free transform all the images in the filmstrip. So I'll click in my
05:37folder. Command+T on Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC, click and drag that just a touch
05:41there. Press Enter or Return and then we will go in and fine-tune some of the
05:45other little gaps that we have here. And again just making the most of these
05:49and we will nudge this one over to the right a bit. You see arrow keys. Nudge
05:52this one over. You see arrow keys, nudge that one over, arrow keys, nudge this
05:56one over and that looks perfect.
05:58All right one of the things that you can see here is that we need to do a
06:01little bit of fine tuning, but it's actually a quite fun. This image is really
06:05starting to come together. Well, let's go ahead and turn off the visibility of
06:07the red layer and now we finish a large portion of this particular layout.
06:12We are ready to now build the bottom portion of this image and let's do that and
06:15finish off this Christmas card in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Multiple-image layout pt. 3: Finalizing the layout
00:00All right, we have made some great progress. What we need to do here is
00:03finalize the bottom three images and then work on the color. So what I'm going
00:06to do is go ahead and turn on one of the images that I like,
00:09orwig_family_12.jpg. I'll move that down a little bit.
00:12Then I'm going to go ahead and hold down the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a
00:15PC and I'm going to click and drag the mask icon from one of my other layers.
00:19In this case, I add the mask from this particular layer here. Now that mask is
00:23too high. So I want to make sure I'm targeting that particular mask layer. Hold
00:26down the Shift key and I'll click and drag that down and you can see that it's
00:30now showing up down below.
00:31Well, that mask isn't quite tall enough. You can see that there. So I'll go
00:34ahead and leave that where it is. Press Command+T and I'll click and drag that
00:38down, so that it covers the entire of that space. So my image here is going to
00:41be a little bit taller than my images are up top. All right, we will then click
00:45in the layer thumbnail. Press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC, hold down the
00:49Shift key, free transform that. We will just go ahead and try to find the free
00:53transform that works. That one is a little bit crazy there. So I'll go ahead
00:56and try to find a nice position for that. Then press Enter or Return to apply that.
01:02Let's click in the next image, orwig_ family_11.jpg. Click and drag that down,
01:06so we can see it there. Then we are going to hold down the Option key on a Mac,
01:10Alt key on a PC, click on the layer mask for the middle image. If we hold down
01:14the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC and click and drag, it will copy and
01:17paste that layer mask. Now hold down the Shift key. With the Move tool
01:21selected, we will click and drag that down. So we are just bringing that down
01:24here and it's not going to be quite tall enough.
01:27So we press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC to free transform that and then
01:31click in the layer thumbnail. In this case, I like that one. That size that it
01:35is. So I'm just going to leave it as -is. Next, turn on our final layer,
01:39orwig_family_10.jpg. Reposition that just a touch here and then hold down the
01:43Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC, click and drag that layer mask. There it
01:47is up top, so Shift-click and drag that down. Press Command+T on a Mac, Ctrl+T
01:51on a PC to free transform it. Then finally, click in the layer thumbnail,
01:55reposition this.
01:57As we reposition this, we can either find perhaps a new layout, a different
02:01version of the image or press Command +T on a Mac, Ctrl+T on a PC to free
02:05transform that, so that more of the photograph fits in this particular space
02:09here. I'm just going to free transform this down. See if I can get Annika being
02:13tossed up in the air there. That's so much fun. All right, press Enter or Return.
02:18Okay, let's zoom out and take a look at our clause. So far so good. I'll press
02:22the Tab key once, zoom in. Press the F key to go to full screen view mode. Now
02:27I have this really nice layout. Now there are only a couple of things that I
02:30want to do here. One thing is I want to work on the overall color as well as
02:34the overall sharpness of this file. We will do those two things in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Multiple-image layout pt. 4: Color and sharpening
00:00 In this last movie, we are going to work on the color a little bit of this
00:03 layout. So here is what I'm going to do. We are going to go ahead and delete
00:05 some of the layers that I don't need like Layer 2. Don't need it. Press the
00:08 Delete key. Now I want to organize these layers as well. So I'll go ahead and
00:12 click in this top layer of the bottom set here and then Shift-click in the
00:16 bottom and press Command+G on the Mac, Ctrl+G on a PC and I'll name this one
00:20 the lower set and then click in one of the images from the top set. Hold down
00:25 the Shift key, click in the top image there. Press Command+G on a Mac, Ctrl+G
00:28 on a PC and I'll name this top set. Okay great.
00:31 Well now that I have all my different sets I can then click in my shapes up
00:35 here. I need those anymore. Hold down the Shift key, click in another one,
00:38 press the Delete key. They are gone, all right. Well I have reduced and
00:41 simplified a bit so that I can clean this up and then I can create some unique
00:45 color effects.
00:46 So go ahead and click on the Adjustment Layer icon and choose Curves. Well now
00:48 in Curves what I actually want to do is I want to increase the contrast quite a
00:52 bit. So I'm going to bring down my blacks and I'm going to bring up my whites.
00:56 So I'm increasing the contrast here. We can see quite a bit. Now will this
00:59 image print very well? Well, my blacks may be at little bit too black there,
01:03 but I'm going to have some fun with this and modify the color quite a bit.
01:06 I will go to the Red channel and here I'm going to increase red significantly,
01:09 adding a ton of red. Go to the Green- Magenta channel, add a ton of magenta
01:13 there and then also the Blue-Yellow channel. Adding some yellow into the mix as
01:17 well. Now I have added a ton of color and contrast. Too much, right? Well, no
01:21 big deal. What I want to do is have this strong color shifts so that I can kind
01:24 of see where my image is going. This now looks too green to me.
01:28 When I add all that red, now that looks kind of interesting. This image looks
01:31 really good. So I'm going to go ahead and lower the Opacity here and we are
01:34 trying to find a sweet spot where I'm adding a bit of that contrast and that
01:37 color shifts and I think that looks kind of nice right there, at just about 50%.
01:42 Now I exaggerated it initially that kind of get the real move that I was going
01:46 for and then I dial that back a bit. So that the colors are little bit
01:49 manageable and a little bit more interesting there. It's not as over the top as
01:53 it was before. Next, I want to modify the color of the filmstrip here. So we
01:57 are going to go ahead and click to open up this filmstrip group. I'm going to
02:00 close my Adjustments panel for a second.
02:01 I am going to click into this group and I'll click on the icon for Curves. That
02:04 makes a real drastic Curves adjustment. Now this isn't my final adjustment, but
02:08 just to illustrate what I'm doing here is I can modify just a filmstrip by
02:13 changing the blend mode for this particular group here. Now currently my blend
02:17 mode is on Normal. By default it's on Pass Through. When it's on Pass Through
02:21 this Curves adjustment affects everything. If I click on the layer set group
02:25 there and changes this to Normal, well this adjustment then just affect those
02:29 images in the filmstrip.
02:30 Okay well let's click on this Curves adjustment. We don't want to brighten it
02:32 up that far. What I do want to do is bring up my blacks a little bit there. Go
02:36 ahead and click and drag my midpoint off there. So I do want to brighten this
02:39 image up a little bit and I go into that Blue-Yellow channel, I'm going to add
02:42 a nice bit of yellow there. I need to go to Green-Magenta, add some magenta as
02:46 well. And then Red-Cyan, add some red there as well. So let's look at the
02:50 before and after of those. Here is before and here is after. Again, just adding
02:54 some nice warmth to the little filmstrip set of the images there.
02:57 Okay well let's double-click the Adjustments tab and see how we are doing. Here
03:00 is our color before and then after and also we have this filmstrip adjustment,
03:05 before and after. The trick to that was making sure that our blend mode for the
03:09 group was on Normal rather than Pass Through. Okay great. Well what about
03:14 sharpening of this image? Well I could go through and sharpen each individual
03:18 image. Yet that would be kind of problematic, right it would take forever. So
03:21 on the other hand, what I can do is merge all these layers to the topmost layer.
03:26 So I'll click in my topmost layer. Then I'm going to use this great shortcut.
03:29 It's Shift+Option+Command+E on a Mac, Shift+Alt+Ctrl+E on a PC. That will take
03:35 all of your underlying layers merge them to the top. So if I turn off these
03:39 layers those are now irrelevant. I just have this topmost layer and I'll go
03:43 ahead and name this layer, sharpening.
03:45 Next I'm going to right-click or Ctrl- click and choose Covert to Smart Object
03:49 and then from there I'll double-click the Zoom tool to take this image to 100%.
03:53 Look at an area of the photo that needs to be sharpened a bit. Navigate to
03:56 Filter > Sharpen and choose Smart Sharpen and then I'm just going to move this
04:01 around a little bit. We are going to have a pretty low Radius here and my
04:05 Amount, bring that down a touch. That's a pretty small file we don't need to
04:08 over sharpen it. I'm just clicking on the image to see my before and after.
04:12 See what is actually sharpened and what isn't. Just for the record, you could
04:16 use this technique to add a little bit of film grain as well which might be
04:19 nice with these photos because I'm going for this specialized kind of color
04:22 treatment. But I think that looks pretty good. I'll click OK to apply that. Now
04:26 I can look at my before and after. That looks pretty nice. I'll zoom out a
04:30 touch and we have now finished up our work on this file. Let's press F to go to
04:34 Full Screen view mode and then the F7 key to bring up our Layers palette and
04:38 walk through what we have. If we turn off all the layers, we have the lower
04:42 set, the top set, that filmstrip in the middle and then some color adjustments
04:46 and then finally on top of everything, a little bit of sharpening.
04:50 Now my hope is that this movie has given you some creative inspiration about
04:53 how you can create some unique layouts that tell a very different story.
04:57 Because now we have multiple images combined on a single Photoshop document.
05:01 We can tell a very unique story compare to just having one image. So again, if you
05:05 haven't experimented with techniques like this I definitely recommend that you
05:08 do so. I think you will enjoy the process and the final results.
05:13
Collapse this transcript
7. Desktop Printing Considerations
Printer recommendations
00:00When it comes to picking out a printer, one of the things that you have to keep
00:03in mind is there is something magical about the final print. It's almost as if
00:06it just completes the whole photographic workflow, that final artifact
00:10is so fascinating.
00:11So one of the things that you need to consider in regards to your printer is
00:14that you typically want to get the best of the best. I mean, you want to get
00:18the best that you can afford because it's always worthwhile to invest a little
00:22bit more in a printer.
00:23Well for starters then, what does that mean in regards to different brands.?
00:26Well, the three top brands that all of the top pros use are either Epson, Canon
00:30or HP. So if you are going to get a photo printer I recommend that you get one of those.
00:34Again, it's not really worth skimping on your printer because that final artifact,
00:39that final print is going to be so worth it, if you have a nice printer.
00:43Now you may be thinking, well, I don't have enough money to buy this type of
00:46printer. Well neither do I. We all have a certain amount of money that we can
00:50afford for a particular type of printer.
00:52So I'm not necessarily saying that you have to buy the best. But buy of what
00:56you can afford but try to push the envelope a little bit here because typically
01:01it's well worthwhile. Well, I do all of my printing on Epson printers and here
01:05you can see actually a little bit of an older snapshot of my office and there
01:08I have the Epson 2400.
01:10The two printers that I use most often are that printer as well as the Epson 3800.
01:14Now the Epson 3800 in my opinion is just hands-down amazing. Now I don't
01:19get anything for saying that. But this printer is just unreal. The first time
01:24that I plugged in my Epson printer and I ran a print through it, I was just
01:27stunned. I was literally excited about desktop printing.
01:30This for me is the printer that changed my mind about how desktop printing is
01:35incredibly exciting. Now I have been doing desktop printing for a quite a bit
01:38of time and I have been using high- end printers for quite a bit of time.
01:41But it's this printer that really just excited me about this overall process
01:45and again if I have to do any printing this is really the one that I turn to.
01:49Now I'll use some of the other printers as well just to experiment with them
01:52and also to do some other test prints. Yet this one I found to have the best
01:56luck with. Now I'm saying all of this in a way that I hope is a little bit
01:59descriptive rather then prescriptive. And what I mean by that is I could only
02:03describe what I do in my own workflow. And share that with you.
02:06I am not necessarily saying that you have to get an Epson printer, although I
02:10think it would be a really good idea. What I'm saying is hey, this is how I do
02:14things and this is my own workflow. What you then need to do is take these
02:17ideas and say okay, what then can I do that will make sense in my own
02:21photographic workflow.
02:23And then finally, you are obviously picking up a bit here that I'm encouraging
02:26you to try to begin to think about your printer and possibly then begin to
02:29invest in a printer. Because one of the things that I found, and again this is
02:33descriptive of my own workflow, is that by investing a little bit in printing,
02:37it has really added a quite a bit of excitement to my overall photographic
02:41process and in turn it has helped me create images that are that much more stunning.
Collapse this transcript
Paper recommendations
00:00 Here I want to briefly share with you a few paper recommendations. Now before I
00:04 actually talk about the paper I want to talk about one thing really quickly. As
00:07 an artist you have to be a little bit opinionated, right. Because it's that
00:11 opinion that then takes your vision somewhere. And so in my case I'm a little
00:15 bit opinionated about paper and about printing and I print a certain way with
00:18 a certain type of paper. And all that I can do is really talk about my perspective.
00:23 Now I'm going to talk about my perspective, not necessarily because it's
00:26 prescriptive meaning that you have to do this. Rather I'm going to describe my
00:30 own workflow so that you can get some ideas from that and then take those ideas
00:34 and blend them with your own ideas and come up with what works best for you.
00:38 All right. Well I print everything on Epson printers. I absolutely love those
00:42 printers and I have already talked about that a little bit. And I also do
00:45 almost all of my printing with Epson papers. Now the different types of papers
00:48 that I like to use are the glossy paper, the luster, the matte and the velvet
00:52 fine art papers. I also experiment a little bit with some of the canvas papers.
00:55 Those are really fascinating.
00:57 The majority of my printing is done on the matte paper. It's called
01:00 presentation paper. And I really like that. I like the way that the blacks work
01:03 and contrast and what not. I also am starting to do some printing with Red
01:07 River paper. They have this line of paper called Green Pix. It's 100% post
01:11 consumer recycled paper. Now in my opinion this is the first recycled paper
01:16 that actually looks good and it looks really good and I'm pretty excited about
01:21 that as you can tell.
01:21 So if I have recommend some paper for you as you begin to experiment with
01:25 printing, I would say okay if you have an Epson printer you definitely want to
01:28 get some luster paper matte and then one of the fine art papers like a velvet
01:31 fine art, and begin to see how color and tone and contrast and sharpness works
01:36 for these different types of papers.
01:38 I also would recommend that you dig into the Red River Green Pix paper.
01:41 They have different sizes and also types of paper. You can use these for greeting
01:45 cards or you can use various standard sizes of that paper as well.
01:50
Collapse this transcript
Paper resources
00:00All right, in this movie, I want to share with you a few paper resources that
00:04will help you in your overall printing workflow. The first thing that I want to
00:07do is pull up my web browser. I'm going to go ahead and do that and share with
00:10you a few links.
00:12Now I'll share with you some links where you can find your paper profiles. Now
00:15if you remember from the chapter on color management, paper profiles are really
00:19important because they help clarify the communication between your monitor and
00:24your printer.
00:25So one of the places that you can go is to the particular paper company that
00:28you are buying the paper from, for example, Epson and here you can see that you
00:31can download the ICC Profiles for this particular type of paper. We can also go
00:36a few other places as well. PixelGenius .com has some great paper profiles and
00:41here you can see that I can find profiles for different printers. So like the
00:44printer that I print to, the Epson 3800, I can then download the profiles for
00:48the different type of papers that I'm going to be using.
00:50Now in other place where you can find these is yet a different site,
00:54BreathingColor.com, and again here they have created a number of different
00:58profiles for different printers and you can see the list of printers down here.
01:02Now here I'm tending to show profiles for the printers in the paper that I'm
01:05using, but of course, all that you need to do in order to find the profiles for
01:08your paper and your printer is to do a little bit of a Google search and you
01:12will be able to find these pretty quickly. The last thing that I want to share
01:16with you here is for redrivercatalog.com /profiles and here is where I can find
01:21some of the profiles for this particular paper company.
01:24So again, keep in mind, what you want to do is to go to the paper company's
01:28website first to try to find the profiles there. If you can't find them there,
01:32you can always look other places and then finally, it's always best to create
01:35your own paper profiles with your own printer because each printer is a little
01:39bit different, each batch of paper is a little bit different.
01:41All right, well now that I have shared with those things, I want to go back to
01:45this file that we have in our Chapter 07 folder. Here I'm in the Adobe Bridge,
01:48I'll press the Spacebar in order to open this up in full-screen view mode.
01:52Now this is a screen capture from a document on the Epson website. Now while
01:57it's on the Epson website, I think this document is actually helpful for anyone
02:00printing with any kind of paper. And what it has to do with this paper surfaces
02:05and light reflection? One of the things that it says over here is that plane
02:09paper or uncoated paper, it absorbs ink there is a lot dot gain.
02:13Now dot gain you can think of like having a magic marker and sticking that
02:16magic marker on a paper towel. Well the ink then spreads out into the paper
02:20towel. Well in this case, what happens is lights reflected away from the
02:24viewing eye and it doesn't look very good. The image doesn't look very strong.
02:27Well, you can also use glossy papers. They're an improvement because you have
02:31minimized dot gains, so you are getting a little bit more of the image. Yet
02:34what's ideal is to have resin- coated paper for the finest quality of
02:38photographic results as it says here, you want to go for these results that are
02:42resin-coated. So they give you the look and feel and the colors of traditional photography.
02:46So the whole point of this particular document is that good paper really I mean
02:50really matters. The other thing to keep in mind is that there is always one
02:54side of the paper that's coated and one side that isn't or I should say
02:57typically that's the case. Most papers aren't double-sided.
03:00So in that case what happens is you want to make sure that you are printing on
03:03the correct side. So if you ever insert a piece of paper in your printer and
03:06the image comes out and it just looks kind of flat and the colors don't look
03:09very good, it just looks strange, you probably are printing on the wrong side
03:13of the paper. And then my final thought for you is this; if you haven't
03:16experimented with printing on good paper, you just have to. It is so
03:21compelling. It's inspiring to see that print emerge and to see how good it can
03:25actually look.
Collapse this transcript
Printing recommendations overview
00:00Hey, welcome. This is Chris Orwig here and here we are in my office. What I
00:05want to do in this movie is just have a little bit of a conversation about
00:08printing and about paper and let's imagine that you came by my office and say
00:12hey! Chris, what's the deal with different types of printers and
00:14do you know what printer is best?
00:15What I would probably do is I'll pull out an analogy. I would say well what
00:19camera is best? Let's say I reach for my Hasselblad. Well in this case, if I'm
00:23going to shoot a photograph with a Hasselblad, it's going to give me a particular
00:26type of an image. Let's say just at the base level, it's going to give me a
00:29square format. Now is this square format better or worse than my 35 millimeter
00:35camera that I'll grab here? Well no, it's just different.
00:38Then they also might say well, will the camera body and the camera type and lens
00:42determine how good the photograph is? Well, yes and no, right. There is a
00:47little bit of give and take there. At the end of the day, if we take a look at
00:50this camera that I have here. This old Nikon D1x that's been taken apart by one
00:54of my friends. We can see that it's just a camera. There is really nothing to it
01:00or it's a shell of a camera and it kind of reminds me that the camera isn't
01:03going to make a good image. It's more about me and so when considering a printer,
01:08yes, we do want to consider, okay what printer will be best? And there
01:12are printers that are better than other printers, etcetera.
01:14But ultimately when you want to create a good photograph, when you want to
01:18create a good print, it's really about you and about the whole process and
01:22going through that whole process. Well, how then do you start to think about papers?
01:26Well there are a lot of different types of papers you can use. One of
01:29the type of papers I like is this Red River Paper, because it's completely
01:33recycled and I enjoy that. I like when I'm able to create some prints that
01:37are a little bit more green.
01:38Another type of paper that I print to quite often and I have mentioned this
01:41before is this Ultra Premium Presentation Paper. Basically, Epson's matte paper.
01:46Wonderful stuff, I love printing to that. And again, one of my other
01:50favorites is this velvet fine art paper. Now speaking of the velvet fine art
01:54paper, I have a handful of prints on my printer here and if you came by my
01:58office, I would say well, let's look at some of these and I'll pull one out.
02:00For example, this photograph of my daughter Sophie and my wife Kelly. I love
02:06this image on this velvet paper. I love that I can touch this. It really fits
02:10the message and the feeling of this particular event. Now let's go ahead and
02:15grab another print that's come off my printer recently. This one is Gerry Lopez,
02:18an amazing and renowned surfer. I love the vivid colors that you can see
02:23here and I like how those colors work with this matte paper. I like that I can
02:27feel bit of that texture there. It's not glossy or shiny.
02:30Now again, the type of paper that you use is really preferential. Is there one
02:35type that's better than another? Well not necessarily. Really it depends on
02:39what you want to communicate. Now other times you reach for a print and you say
02:42oh yeah, I love that. You know, again, that really works with the message that
02:46I'm trying to communicate and you are getting excited about your printing. Then
02:49all of a sudden, you get one of these and your print doesn't look good at all.
02:53It just looks like everything is wrong. I mean the photograph is good,
02:57but the print isn't good.
02:58Well in this case, I print on the wrong side of the paper and you know that
03:02happens to us when we are printing and the reason I bring that up is that
03:05printing takes experimentation. It takes learning your paper. In this case,
03:09here is that final print of that same photograph. It looks so much better.
03:13Let me show you a comparison and again we would talk a little bit about printing
03:16and that process of printing and ensuring that you get that good final print.
03:21And there are lot of times, getting that good final print is really about you.
03:25You are in the printing community, or in the printing world, one of the
03:28things that they say is that there are these print masters, these people who
03:31have mastery over this printing process. That's kind of interesting when you
03:34stop to think about it. It's not something like you can just push a button
03:37and cross your fingers and hope to get a good print. That's why you are
03:40watching this training title, right, so that you can learn more about how you
03:44can use all these different things in order to create amazing prints.
03:47Another thing that printing does for you. As you print out a photograph, like
03:51let's say this photograph of Ben Harper. What you need to do typically is print
03:55a photograph and then let it sit somewhere. Hang it up on a wall. Walk away
03:59from it and then when you come back to the photograph, you will see things anew.
04:02Like with this image. I see that there is this little divot right close to
04:06his eye. Now I don't want anything distracting right close to his eyes.
04:09And I didn't notice that while I was working on my computer because I really focused in
04:13on his eyes and it took me turning away from the photograph and then coming
04:17back to it to discover that mistake. And you will find that creating prints is
04:21a great way to learn about photography. You will find that it will sharpen your vision.
04:25Now I'll go ahead and just pull out a couple more here. Just some fun photographs.
04:28Another one, Jack Johnson, great print of Jack. He is an amazing guy and then
04:32another print here. We will talk about his later. How we can use print layouts,
04:37in order to print multiple images on one page for testing, or to save paper,
04:41and to save time, and to save ink.
04:43So one of the things that I want you to begin to think about as you dig deeper
04:46into this wonderful world of printing is that there are number of different
04:49devices that you can use. There are number of different paper types that you
04:52can use. There is no one correct or no one best way to create a print.
04:57Some people will say you have to use this or you have to do that. Well it's not
05:00necessarily true, because printing is essentially an experimental process.
05:05It's a process that will teach you quite a bit about how you think, how you
05:09photograph, how you see. It will clarify your vision and it will do so much more.
05:13So here is my hope for you. My hope is that as you learn more about printing,
05:17as you dig deeper in this training title that this will all help you create
05:22much more compelling prints. All right, well, thanks for stopping by my office.
05:26I'll catch you in the next movie. Bye for now.
Collapse this transcript
8. Desktop Printing Preparation
Color management refresher
00:00 Before we dive head first into the wonderful world of printing, what I want to
00:04 do is just step back for a moment and I want to step all the way back to our
00:08 conservation about color management. Here we have these images, which
00:11 represented typical photographic workflow from capture over here on the left
00:15 all the way to output over here on the right.
00:18 Now one of the things that we talked about in regards to color management is
00:21 that color management is all about clarifying the communication across multiple
00:25 devices. So far we have talked about creating profiles for our monitor. Now
00:29 that's really important, because on our monitor, the color is created via
00:32 light. That color and those tones have to be translated into a different color
00:36 space because the color on a printer is created via ink. All right, well what
00:41 we need to do in order to tighten up our overall color management workflow is
00:45 begin to create some test prints.
00:47 Now you have done this before right. You print an image out, you are like wow!
00:50 It is way too blue. So you add a little bit of yellow. Well then you kind of
00:54 have to do this back and forth thing until you get the print just right.
00:57 Wouldn't it be nice if we are able to create some test prints that had a little
01:00 bit more logic built into them, so that then ultimately we could begin to
01:04 create profiles, so that we would know exactly how our particular image will be
01:08 printed on a particular printer and a particular paper type?
01:12 Now that's important because I tend to like to think of it this way: your
01:15 printer and your paper have a mood. It may be a little bit moody. One day there
01:19 is some moisture in the air, where your image is going to print a little bit
01:22 differently or in another day, let's say, there is a little bit of a blockage
01:26 in your ink cartridge. Well, a little bit less ink is going to come out and for
01:29 that reason, what we want to do is to begin to create some test prints as well
01:33 as some profiles which will help to clarify the communication from our monitor
01:37 to our printer. So we have our profile for our monitor, we have some test
01:40 prints, some profiles for our printers and in that case, we can speed up our
01:43 overall workflow and ultimately, all of this work that we are going to putting
01:47 into this process is going to lead to creating more stunning and compelling final prints.
01:53
Collapse this transcript
Finding sample files online for test printing
00:00In the previous movie I mentioned that it's a good idea to try to have a good
00:04test print, so you can see how your printer is actually rendering color and tone.
00:07We have a sample file here that we could use as a test print.
00:11Now there is some interesting things about this particular file. We have this
00:14grayscale wedge, we have a grayscale, all these vivid colors. So again what we
00:18can do is use a file like this and printed out and analyze the actual print of
00:23this particular type of document and then determine how our printer is actually
00:27working and then make some logical decisions and apply those decisions to how
00:31we edit and work on our photographs.
00:33All right, where do these test files come from? Well, what I want to do is
00:36first share with you a few different test files and then show you a few links
00:39where you can download these files so that you can use them in your workflow.
00:43All right, well here is a different type of a test file. It's a just a
00:45grayscale or grayscale step wedge there and you will see this grayscales show up
00:50in a number of different places.
00:51This will help us set our white and our black points. Now we will talk about
00:55how we can use some of these test files in a moment, yet for now, I just
00:58want to share with you a few different files. Now this particular file is one
01:02that's included with this training. You can find it in the chapter folder for
01:05this training and it was created by one of my colleagues and fellow teachers,
01:08Rob Winner.
01:09And here you can see again, we have all of this different color information in
01:13this file. And one of the things it's kind of fun about this document is I have
01:16created another layer where you can remove all of his photographs, add some of
01:19your own, and for that matter I also have a new layer called smaller where
01:23I have all the color information below where you could then include some of
01:26your own photographs above.
01:29Now the idea here is to include some of your own photos that have different
01:32colors, so you can see how those colors are rendered and how the colors compare
01:36to what you are seeing on your monitor. All right, well, enough on showing you
01:39the files. Now I want to navigate to my web browser and show you where you can
01:43find some of these.
01:44Well, if you do a quick Google search for a Bill Atkinson's test file, it will
01:48take you to this page. Now here are a bunch of different downloads that you can grab.
01:51One of them is that test print file that I showed you previously, in this
01:55case right here. So you can download that and then use that as your own test file.
02:00Now, another site that I want to navigate to is John Paul Caponigro.
02:03Now if you are not familiar with John Paul, his work is stunning and he is
02:07incredibly technical. He is one of these unique individuals which is both
02:10artist and technician and somehow he combines these two worlds in a really nice way.
02:14Well, if you navigate to his site and click on Downloads and then Technique,
02:19you can find this different files and I'm just going to go ahead and pull up
02:21one of the files and articles that he has in which he talks about how you can
02:25create this linear gray gradient and then also use that as a test file and then
02:29download a sample file.
02:31Now a number of his files, you have to actually be a member. For example, here
02:34you can see where he is talking about exposure. This is free if you are a
02:37member of his site.
02:39So again I recommend that you become a member of his site, not only because
02:42you'll get some helpful emails from him in regards to Photoshop and printing,
02:46etcetera, but it also will give you access to hundreds of resource files.
02:50All right, well I hope that those resources will be helpful to you. Now that we
02:54know a little bit about test printing, let's go ahead and take a look at how we
02:57can integrate this into our own workflow.
Collapse this transcript
Soft-proofing with paper profiles
00:00 In this movie, I want to talk about the process of soft proofing. The nice
00:04 thing about soft proofing is it gives us an idea of how the image will actually
00:08 look on a particular type of paper with a particular type of printer. So we can
00:12 then use this to make modifications, if we need to or corrections for that matter,
00:16 so that our print looks even better.
00:18 Again, soft proofing is all about clarifying the communication between monitor
00:22 and printing. So how then do we do soft proofing? Well, once we have our
00:26 photograph ready for print, as I have here, I'm going to navigate up to my View
00:30 pulldown menu and there I'm going to choose Proof Setup and then Custom.
00:33 Now I go to this Custom Proof Condition. What I'm going to do is select a
00:37 Device to Simulate. In this case, I'm going to scroll down and find my
00:40 particular printer. Let's say that in this particular scenario, I'm printing to
00:44 the Epson 2400. So I'm going to go ahead and choose a particular type of a profile.
00:48 I'll go ahead and select Enhance Matte there (EnhMatte). My Rendering Intent,
00:52 I'm choosing as Relative Colorimetric. That's typically where you want to start.
00:56 Black Point Compensation on and Simulate Paper Color on as well.
01:00 So we'll go ahead and click OK. We now see a very different photograph. We can
01:03 toggle this preview on and off by navigating to View > Proof Colors. Again, we
01:08 can also press Command+Y on a Mac or Ctrl+Y on a PC to toggle that on and off.
01:13 Now one of the things that I see here is that the image is just a little bit
01:16 less yellow. I also have a little bit less contrast. You have to keep in mind
01:20 that in order to build up these blacks in here, the black shadows, it's going
01:24 to be setting down quite a bit of ink. So is this image going to look really
01:27 faded and muted as it does here? Well, not necessarily. We have to get into
01:31 this mindset that this is going to be printed on paper. It is going to have
01:34 this type of a shift. So we have a little bit less contrast, also a little bit
01:39 less saturation.
01:40 So we may then want to make some corrections or enhancements based on the soft
01:44 proof that we are viewing here. Well, how do we do that? We will talk about
01:47 that in the next movie.
01:49
Collapse this transcript
Soft-proofing to correct an image
00:00So now that we know a little bit about soft proofing, let's go ahead and walk
00:04through a typical soft proofing workflow. The first thing that you want to do
00:07is navigate to the Image pulldown menu and choose Duplicate. This way you will
00:11have a copy of the exact same image.
00:13Next, we are going to navigate to the option where we can see these side by side.
00:16So here I can see the actual file and here is the copy. I'll press the
00:20Spacebar key and move this over so I can actually see the face, click in the
00:24other image and then move the face over as well.
00:26Currently, the view on both of these images is exactly the same. The next step
00:30is to navigate to our View > Proof Setup > Custom menu and here we are going to
00:34choose a particular type of paper that we are going to be printing to.
00:36Now in my case, I'll go ahead and scroll down and let's say that this time I decide
00:41that I'm going to print to Premium Glossy paper and I'll Simulate Paper Color on,
00:45Preserve RGB Numbers off. Rendering Intent, Relative Colorimetric.
00:50Black Point Compensation on. Let's go ahead and click OK.
00:53All right, well here we can see the original image and the after. If we press
00:57Command+Y, we look at the before the profile or before the soft proof and then
01:01after. So one of the things that I'm noticing is that I lost a little bit in
01:05this image. I want to bring some of that back, so I'll go ahead and click on
01:08the Adjustment Layer icon and choose Curves.
01:10In this Curves dialog, I'm just going to darken up some of my blacks there.
01:14I'm just looking to try to bring back down some of those darker tones. So here is
01:18my before and after. Again, just bringing back some of that contrast in the image.
01:22Next, up in the highlights I think that looks okay and then I'm going to go
01:26ahead and navigate to my Blue-Yellow channel. I want to add just a touch of
01:30yellow here, so I'm just going to warm this up just a little bit and again,
01:34I'm making small kind of micro adjustments here and then I'm going to go into that
01:39Red-Cyan channel and add a little bit of red to the image and trying to get the
01:43color to look a little bit more accurate.
01:45Again, I'm just making some small adjustments to try to get these two to look
01:50the same. And again, I'm going to try and compare them back and forth and whatnot.
01:53Now this image, it has a little bit of a nice warmth to it but they are pretty close.
01:57Well let's turn the profile off. Command +Y on a Mac, Ctrl+Y on a PC. Now when I
02:02do that, this image looks a little bit over the top, right? It's much warmer,
02:06much higher contrast in this file. So what we are doing here essentially is
02:10when we turn the profile on, we are saying you know what? This image is going
02:13to let's say fall a little bit to the left.
02:14Well because it's going to fall a little bit to the left, we are going to then
02:18correct it as we did so here with this layer and then when we print this image,
02:22the soft proof is really irrelevant. All that we are doing is turning this on
02:26simulate how it will print.
02:28So we are going to then print the image this way and ultimately what we see
02:32here will eventually turn out to be a print like this over here. So we can
02:36use this soft proofing technique in order to increase our accuracy, in order to
02:41preview what the print will actually look like.
02:43Now if you haven't experimented with soft proofing, you definitely want to
02:46because you will soon discover that you can create much more color and tone
02:50accurate prints.
Collapse this transcript
Setting white and black points based on the test print
00:00Now that we know a little bit about where we can find some test print files and
00:04we also know little bit about Soft Proofing, let's take this even further.
00:08Well here I have one of these test files, I'm going to navigate up to my View
00:11pulldown menu > Proof Setup > Custom and here I'm going to do a Soft Proof on
00:15the Epson 2400 Premium Glossy, Relative Colorimetric, Black Point on, Simulate
00:19Paper Color, bingo! Click OK.
00:22Now when I press Command+Y on a Mac, Ctrl+Y on a PC, I can toggle back and
00:26forth between the actual image and the soft proof. I see that I lose a lot of
00:29saturation. I also lose some tone across the image and a little bit of
00:33sharpness as well, right? So it's kind of helpful.
00:35Well one of the things that also we will notice if we zoom in on this grayscale
00:39down below, so when you press Command+Y, we notice that what was once bright
00:42white is now a little bit more of a muted white and what was once black with
00:46detail, now has perhaps less or more detail. So this proof is showing me that
00:51when I print this image, there is going to be a little bit of a shift. So what
00:54we can do is actually use a Grayscale Step Wedge like this or just a regular
00:58grayscale and we can create a grayscale by simply using our Gradient tool and
01:02go from black to white or use one of these files and we can then print out that file.
01:07Now I have another test file, I want to pull up which is just a grayscale and I
01:11want to pull this one up here and we can see that we have a grayscale step
01:14wedge as well as grayscale. In order to simplify what we were talking about
01:18here because we are going to take a look at how we can use a test print to set
01:21our white and our black points so that we have accurate detail on those points.
01:26Well, let's say, for example, that we print this image and we print it out and
01:29we grab the print off the printer and we say you know what? I'm going to
01:32evaluate where I can see relevant white detail. So where I see relevant white
01:37detail on the print, not on the monitor, but on the print. Let's say somewhere
01:40right around in here. So I say oh, it's right there. That's where I start to
01:43see relevant detail.
01:45Well I'll then go back to the digital file, right here and I hold down the
01:48Shift key and I click to set a little point. I then, with the actual print, I
01:52look and say, where is my black with detail? Where do I actually start to see
01:55some black show up? And I say, you know what? It's right over here. And then in
01:59my Info palette, I'm going to take these values to Grayscale.
02:03Now this is kind of an abstract concept and I'm aware of that. Yet what I'm
02:06trying to do is just say that what we are doing is we are analyzing a print and
02:10with that print we are seeing where we start to see our whites and our blacks.
02:14Well then, going back to the digital file and measuring what the amounts are
02:18at that point.
02:19So we are going then write down these numbers and these numbers are little bit
02:23strange but we are going to write them down because the proof is in the
02:26pudding, the proof is in that print, right? So we are going to write down that.
02:29For my blacks, I have 98%. For my whites, I have 11%. So remember those two
02:36numbers. So blacks 98, whites 11%. I then go to an image that I want to print.
02:41In this case I'm going to navigate to another image that I have opened and this
02:44is a photograph of my friend Martin in Baja, California and I want to first
02:48define where are my brightest points are and my darkest points.
02:52So I'm going to use that threshold trick, we learned before, right? We will
02:54click on the Threshold adjustment layer icon, drag to the left, find our
02:58deepest blacks. They are up in here somewhere. I'll Shift-click to add a little
03:01point. I'm going to close that Info palette so you can see that. Drag the
03:05Threshold slider over here, find the brightest points. It looks like it's the
03:08skin and the shirt there. So I'm going to go ahead and set a point on that
03:12garment, Shift-click to set that.
03:14All right, I'm going to pull the Info palette out so we can keep that visible
03:17and close the other panels there. Next I'm going to delete this layer. It's
03:20gone. Now let's say this image is color correct. What I want to do is just make
03:24sure it's going to print well, make sure my whites and my blacks are going
03:27to print well.
03:28Well, let's go back and revisit those numbers for a moment. Now I know, we
03:31probably wrote them down, but just in case, now my white point is 11%. What's
03:36that going to mean over here? What I'm actually going to do over here is it's
03:40not going to be 11%, right there, it's going to be 89% for that white point.
03:46Let me show you what I mean. I'll click on the Adjustment Layer icon and choose
03:48Curves, double-click the eyedropper for my whites and here I need to type in
03:5389% because 89+11 = 100.
03:57So that's what my printer has told me is where I want to have my white with
04:01detail. I'm going to go ahead and click OK to apply that number. I don't want
04:05this as my default color right now because I'm just doing a demo, but typically
04:09yes, you would want that. I'm going to click on that point. Now when I do that
04:13I all of a sudden shifted those whites and in addition, I have a little bit of
04:17a color shift or perhaps a color correction.
04:19Well let's say that all I want is the tones to be corrected and not the color.
04:23Well we will fix that in a second. Okay well what about the blacks? We are
04:27going to navigate back to the grayscale file here and with our blacks, remember
04:30it was 98%. So our blacks, that's going to be 2. So I'll navigate back to that
04:35file, double-click the black eyedropper, we are going to change the brightness
04:38value to 2%, click OK to apply that. Typically you would say Yes, but for me,
04:43I'm going to say No because this is just a demo and I'm going to click on my
04:46blacks up there.
04:47Now, one of the things that's happened is we can see our before and after,
04:50there is a color shift, right? Well, if I just want to tone shade so the image
04:55prints properly, I'm going to then take this blend mode all the way down to
04:59Luminosity. Now the colors will shift a little bit but there is going to be
05:02much less of a color shift, mostly toned, mostly brightness values. Now what I
05:07have done here is I have ensured that this image is going to print well, that
05:11my blacks are going to print well and that my whites are going to print well.
05:14Now where am I coming up with these numbers is just by way of review and are
05:18these numbers something that you are going to use? Well no, not at all. These
05:21are make believe numbers, what's most important is that you print out this
05:24grayscale or one of those grayscale wedges and again you can also use the
05:28grayscale that we saw here in this raw winner file, right? You are going to
05:32print that out and say you know what? Based on the print, the actual artifact,
05:36I see why would detail coming in here. I'll then sample that point and then
05:40measure it and then apply that measurement that I have discovered to an actual
05:44photograph so that I can get accurate and good highlights as well as accurate
05:48and good shadows.
05:50Now a lot of time when people first discover this concept of test printing and
05:54getting their whites and their blacks in appropriate place, they start to say,
05:57Wow! It's kind of little bit confusing. But one of the things that I have found
06:00is that the more you experiment with this and dig into this and perhaps watch
06:03these movies again and then try it on your own, you will really start to see
06:06the benefit of this. Because what will happen is your prints will start to look
06:10better and better.
Collapse this transcript
9. Desktop Printing Workflow
Starting with Camera Raw
00:00In this chapter we are going to walk through a typical Desktop printing
00:03workflow starting off with a raw photograph.
00:06Here I have this fun photograph that I captured of my good friend Sarah and her
00:09bridal party there and I climbed up in a tree to get this perspective. It's a
00:13raw file. So the first thing that I need to do is open this up in Camera Raw by
00:17pressing Command+O on a Mac. That's Ctrl+O on a PC. That will open up Camera
00:22Raw inside of Adobe Photoshop.
00:23Now when I'm working in Camera Raw, I like to always work in full screen, so
00:27you can press the F key to toggle between the Full Screen View Mode and the
00:30Regular View Mode. You can also click this icon here to do that as well.
00:34All right, well the next thing that I'm going to do is rotate this image. So
00:37I'll click on the Rotate icon because I want to make this photograph a little
00:40bit more about Sarah. Rather than having her at the bottom of frame, I'll have
00:43her right there in the middle of frame. Later I'll be cropping this image. Yet
00:47for now, I really want to determine if I have enough information and if the
00:50information that I have is good and that's really important in regards to printing.
00:54So in order to do that, I'm going to press Command+Option+0, on a PC. That's
00:59Ctrl+Alt+0. Next I'll press the Spacebar key and I'm going to click and drag
01:03and I really want to focus in on the bride here Sarah. Now I have great detail,
01:07I don't see any potential problems, so I'm pretty good to go. So I'll then zoom
01:11back out to fit in view and I'll do that by pressing Command+0 on a Mac or
01:15Ctrl+0 on PC.
01:17Now if Camera Raw is new to you I have a whole other training title on Camera
01:21Raw, be sure to check that out to learn how to use Camera Raw. We are not going
01:23to really talk about how to use Camera Raw in depth here, so again dig deeper
01:27into that by watching that other training title. But here, all that I'm going
01:30to do is simply click on this Auto button here, this will be give me some auto
01:34adjustments, so we will try to modify the image just a little bit and the other
01:37thing that I'm going to do is make sure that my Workflow Options are at
01:40the Native Size.
01:41I will go and click on the link at the bottom. What I mean by that is you can
01:45see there is nothing subtracted or added to the native size of the chip for
01:49this particular camera. It's a 12.7 megapixel chip, so I have the native size.
01:53So when I zoom in all the way as I did there with that shortcut previously, I'm
01:57seeing the actual pixels, not anything taken away or not anything added.
02:01All right, great. So now that I have gone through this and I'm at my Native
02:04Size, I'll go ahead and click OK. I'm ready to make a few subtle improvements
02:08and enhancements in Camera Raw, so I'll go ahead and do that now. I'll increase
02:11the Temperature just a bit because I want to warm this image up, just a touch
02:14there. Clarity, I'm going to increase as well, add a little bit of Contrast, a
02:18touch of Fill Light and I also be modifying the overall tone inside of
02:22Photoshop. So I'm not too concerned about my Camera Raw controls here though.
02:25Next, I'm going to do is go to the Detail panel. I'll just make sure I have a
02:28low amount of Detail Sharpening. I don't want to do that because I have a
02:32photograph of people, this will then focus the native sharpening on the edges a
02:36little bit more. I'm going to make sure I have a little bit of Luminance and
02:39Color Noise Reduction. Most of her images will need a touch of that and at this
02:43juncture I'm going to say, you know what? This image is fine. It's a pretty
02:46good file, it's good to go, let's go ahead and open this image up in Photoshop.
02:50So I'll click Open Image, it will then open this file up at it's native size
02:54inside of Photoshop, I'll press F to go to Full Screen View Mode and here we
02:59are ready to begin the work in Photoshop and we will do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Resizing in Photoshop
00:00Now that we have this image open in Photoshop, we are ready to resize this
00:03photo yet before we do that I just want to double check to make sure I have
00:07good information at 100%. Now do you remember the shortcut to zoom in into 100%
00:11in Camera Raw? Well the same shortcut works here. On a Mac, that's
00:15Command+Option+0, on a PC, that's Ctrl+ Alt+0 and then that takes us into 100%,
00:21we can press the Spacebar key and then click and drag to move around the image
00:24and again we are just looking to make sure we have good detail, good sharpness,
00:27good color, good contrast, all of those things at 100%, okay, great.
00:30Well, next what I'm going to do is go ahead and press Command+0 on a Mac or
00:35Ctrl+0 on a PC that takes us to this fit in view mode, I can also zoom in and
00:39out by pressing Command on a Mac, Ctrl on a PC plus or minus. Again, I just
00:44want to do a quick double check, all right.
00:45Well we are now on to the wonderful world of image resizing. When we navigate
00:50to our Image pulldown menu, you will notice you have the option for Image Size.
00:53There is also a shortcut there. One of the things that I want to do here is
00:56just again take a look at what we have. So in this case, we have a file about
00:5930 megs. We can print this currently at 300 pixel per inch is about 9 by 14.
01:04One of the things that I like to do when printing is actually typically don't
01:08print it at the resolution of 300, I print it something much less. So I'm going
01:11to go ahead and change those numbers. So I'll click Resample Image off, I'm
01:15going to change my Resolution to 240 and then I'll go ahead and click Resample
01:20Image back on.
01:21All right, well now that I have that I see that I can get away with printing
01:24this a little bit bigger and just for the record, you can print it at much
01:27lower resolutions as well. The next thing that I want to do is double-check my
01:31Image Interpolation. In this case, it's set to Bicubic Sharper, which is best
01:35for reduction. So if I'm going to reduce the size of this image, I'm definitely
01:39going to be wanting to use Bicubic Sharper.
01:42Now we will have to see what we are actually going do in regards to the image
01:44size, we don't really know and I'm not actually going to change the image size
01:48in this dialog window, rather I'm going to crop the file. So this isn't going
01:52to be too relevant for me but I'll show you where it will be relevant in a moment.
01:56All right, if I wanted to resize the image here, what I would do now is simply
02:00change the height or the width or I'll change the height or the width here in
02:04the pixel dimensions, either way it would work. Yet what I'm interested in
02:07doing is cropping this image as a square, I really like the square format and I
02:12think this particular cluster of people there will work really well inside of a
02:16square. So for now, I'm going to go ahead and click OK, all that I have done is
02:20change the resolution.
02:21Next, I'm going to grab the Crop tool by pressing the C key. Now in my crop,
02:25you can see that I can choose a number of different crops, I'm going to go
02:28ahead and select perhaps 5 by 4 inch here and once I do that, you can see that
02:32the options change up top and I'll click out of that. Well I don't want a 5 by
02:364 inch, what I'm really interested in let's say 5 by 5 inch, my resolution of
02:40240 pixels per inch.
02:43Now in this juncture, it may be that I'm going to be sizing this image down
02:47because I may end up cropping into an area, which then will resize the
02:50photograph. Well what Bicubic interpolation is going to be used? Well, the
02:55Bicubic Interpolation that will be used will be whatever I set in my
02:58Preferences. Now the quickest way to do that on a Mac or a PC is Command+K on a
03:03Mac, Ctrl+K on a PC.
03:06Now here we have our default image Interpolation. Now just in case I'm going to
03:10re-resizing this image down, I need to make sure I have this Bicubic Sharper
03:14best for reduction. Now if you are going to increase the image, you will change
03:17that to a default, a best for enlargement and the reason we are changing the
03:21default here is because whatever we set here is what will be used by the Crop
03:25tool. We will go ahead and click OK.
03:26Next, we are going to click and drag to expand that crop as a 5 by 5 inch. Now
03:31typically when you are cropping, what you want to do is not really cut into
03:34people too much, you don't want to cut off arms or elbows or tops of head but
03:38it's already happening a little bit here and this group of people are so
03:42crowded together I kind of like that and I'm going to go with that. I'll hold
03:45down the Shift key and I'm going to bring this cropping even further, and I'm
03:48going to try to bring it in really tight just so that I have this really nice
03:51close group feel to the image.
03:54Here what I'm doing is just modifying the crop till I get something that I
03:56like. I can then use the arrows key to nudge this around. And a lot of times
04:00what happens is if you crop in like this so that you have a repeating pattern,
04:04in this case, the kind of repeating pattern of people, it can create a little
04:07bit of sense of excitement or if it's a repeating pattern that goes all the way
04:11to the edges and it feels really crowded, the mind will imagine that that
04:15pattern kind of continues outside of the frame.
04:17They can just give this illusion of a little bit of excitement, a lot of people
04:21there, so I'll go ahead and apply that crop and press the Enter key. And I
04:24shouldn't say a lot of people, but what I should say is what it will do is then
04:28give the sense of like, wow! This is the kind of the moment, we are not really
04:31focusing in on the landscape anymore but really the people and although I have
04:35cropped off an elbow and elbow and part of a head which typically I don't like
04:39doing with this particular photograph, I kind of like it.
04:42All right, well let's go ahead and confirm our image resized. We can open up
04:45the Image Size dialog window by pressing Command+Option on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt on a
04:51PC and then the I key and here you can see I have this 5 by 5 image. It's about
04:55a 4 meg file now and that will print really well as a 5 by 5 photograph.
05:00All right, well now that we have done that, we are ready to do a little bit
05:03more work in Photoshop to prep this file for printing and we will do that in
05:07the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Setting the white and black points
00:00We are now ready to begin to prepare this file for print. One of the things
00:03that I want to do here is make sure I have good detail in my blacks and my
00:07whites. Now in order to do that, I'm going to go ahead and navigate to the
00:10Adjustments panel and click on the Threshold icon there. I'm just going to use
00:14this to try to find my deepest blacks and also my brightest whites. So when I
00:17do that, I can see that I have some deep blacks here. I'll press the I key to
00:21select the eyedropper and I'll Shift-click there.
00:23Now all this is doing is just setting a little points saying, "hey! Here is
00:26where you can find some deep blacks." Then I'll go ahead and click and drag to
00:30the right and here I'm going to find some nice bright whites on these roses
00:33over here. I'll Shift-click to set another point. Now do I need this layer
00:36anymore? No, not at all. So I'll delete it, I'll press the Delete key. Now I
00:40love that in CS4 you can delete layers simply by pressing the Delete key.
00:44The next thing that I'm going to do is go ahead and navigate to my Curves
00:47adjustments and I'll click on the Curves icon there. I'm going to go ahead and
00:51open up the Y eyedropper. I'll double- click that. Here I can select a target
00:55highlight color. I'm just going to use a default color here. I have 95%.
00:59You can see that's the last number that I used and that's the brightness value of
01:0295%. I'll click OK to make sure I have that. Then I'll sample this point here.
01:07Okay, great.
01:07Now I'm going to go to my black point. I'll double-click that eyedropper, I'm
01:11going to change that to 5% of my brightness value. Again, those were the last
01:15percentages that I used, so I remember those. I also had set those as my
01:19defaults in a previous movie. So go ahead and click OK and then I'm going to
01:22sample this area of the hair. Now when I see that, one of the things I'm
01:25noticing is it's bringing out some more detail there in the hair. That's just
01:29going to help us, so that this image prints better.
01:31Now one of the things that happens sometimes is when you do this, it creates a
01:34little bit of a color shift or in my case, it removed a little bit of the
01:37warmth from the image. It's real subtle but if we zoom in a little bit, you can
01:41see here is our before and then here is our after.
01:44Now this image, perhaps, is a little bit more color correct but I'm interested,
01:48perhaps, in having a little bit of that warmth in the image. So what I'm going
01:51to do here is click on this particular adjustment layer and make sure I'm
01:54targeting that Curves layer and take my blend mode to good old Luminosity. Now
01:58here all it's going to do is work on the overall luminance value or the
02:02brightness value. So I have more detail in the shadows there. If I zoom in on
02:05that particular area of the hair, we can especially see that. I'm definitely
02:07going to have that print a little bit better. Well, let's zoom out.
02:11Well, now that we have modified the overall tone, we are ready to work on the color
02:14and we will do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Checking skin tone
00:00 In this movie what we are going to do is just double check to make sure that
00:03 our skin tones are in a good place.
00:05 Now, my guess is that they are pretty good, yet I just want to double-check
00:08 this. Also, as a side note, what I'm going to do here is just briefly get into
00:12 the topic of color correcting skin by the numbers, but keep in mind, we cover
00:15 that in detail earlier in this training title. So if you haven't watched those
00:19 movies, it definitely would be worthwhile to dig into those movies before
00:22 watching this one.
00:23 So I'm going to go ahead and press the I key to select the Eyedropper tool.
00:26 Make sure my sample size is something other than Point Sample; in this case 5
00:29 by 5 Average will be fine.
00:31 I'm then going to sample an area just off of the highlight. I have a highlight
00:34 on the forehead there. I'll hold down the Shift key and click to set a point
00:37 there. I'll change my numbers to CMYK Color.
00:40 Now, sometimes it's a little bit distracting to have all these numbers visible.
00:44 You can remove numbers by holding down the Shift key and clicking and dragging
00:47 one of those points out. So go ahead and hold down the Shift key and click and
00:50 drag those points out, and then I'll navigate back to the image there.
00:53 Open up the Info palette, and here you can see I have my CMYK mix. Now, what
00:58 I'm looking for here is a cyan amount that's one-third to one-fifth of my
01:02 magenta, my yellow. What that means is you multiply 8 by 3, that's 24, or 8 by
01:07 5, that's 40. So I need to see a magenta or a yellow value of somewhere between
01:12 24 and 40.
01:13 Now, are those numbers right in that range? Yes, exactly. Now, my next numbers
01:17 I want to work at are the magenta and the yellow. I always want a little bit
01:21 more yellow than my magenta. So in this case, I'm in good shape, these skin
01:25 tones look really good. The only thing that I may want to do here is go ahead
01:29 and create another Curves adjustment.
01:31 So I'll go ahead and navigate back to my Adjustments panel, Click on Curves,
01:34 navigate to the Blue Yellow Channel, and open up the Info palette and drag this
01:38 out so I can watch this while I'm working on it. In this Blue Yellow Channel,
01:42 I'll click on the Target Adjustment tool, and I'm simply going to click and
01:45 drag down to add a little bit more yellow to warm this up even more.
01:49 Now, I have gone a little bit higher than I typically would like to. Now, my
01:52 magenta is lower than the yellow, which is good. The yellow is now even more
01:57 higher, yet it still fits in this general recipe of numbers.
02:01 Again, if you are thinking, Chris, I have no idea what you are talking about.
02:04 Keep in mind that there is more information about this earlier in this training
02:07 title. Here, basically what we want to do is have a number of our cyan, where
02:11 we can multiply by 3 or 5. When we do that, we see that our magenta or yellow
02:16 percentages are somewhere in that range, and in addition, we have a yellow
02:20 that's always higher than magenta. In this case I'm just adding a little bit
02:23 more yellow, just for the fun of it, just to warm this image up a touch more.
02:27 Now, another way that we could warm this image up would be to click on the
02:30 Adjustments Layer icon and choose Photo Filter, and add a little bit of a
02:34 warming filter.
02:35 So I'm going to go ahead and do that and look at my numbers. Now, are my
02:38 numbers still in the range? Well, they are a little bit off now, right?
02:41 Now, if I multiply 3 by 5, it's 15. If I multiply 5 by 5, that's now 25. So
02:47 what I did here was I added a little bit too much of a color shift, so this
02:50 isn't going to really work for me. But I could lower my Opacity, and I could
02:54 lower that Opacity just so I can find a place where I can bring those numbers
02:57 back into range. When I do that I say hey, those numbers still fit in that mix.
03:01 Now, this image is much warmer, and this is a little bit of a subjective edit,
03:05 yet this is where things get a little bit fun. Do you always want something
03:08 that's perfectly color correct, or do you want to add or enhance the photograph
03:12 a little bit? Now, the choice is really up to you.
03:15 In my case, I want to warm this image up a little bit, have a little bit of fun
03:18 with that, bring out some more of those vivid colors, and so I have done that here.
03:22 All right. Well, now that we have talked a little bit about color correcting
03:25 the skin tones, just to highlight, did we actually need to make those two
03:29 adjustments? No, the image looks fine here, and these final adjustments are
03:33 pretty subtle, yet I thought that it would be helpful in regards to printing to
03:37 at least point out that one of the things that I typically do in my printing
03:40 workflow is I double check my numbers. I make sure my numbers are in a good
03:44 place before I actually get to the process of printing the photograph.
03:48
Collapse this transcript
Sharpening with Smart Sharpen
00:00Now that we have worked on the overall tone and color of this photograph we are
00:03ready to sharpen it. The way that we are going to sharpen this image is we are
00:06going to navigate over the background layer. We will right-click or Ctrl-click
00:09the background layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. This way we can use a
00:13Smart Filter while sharpening this image. Next let's double-click the Zoom tool
00:17to take the image to 100% so we can see nice details there, then we will
00:21navigate to our Filter pulldown menu and choose Sharpen and good old Smart Sharpen.
00:26Now, the Smart Sharpen dialog open, what I like to do is to try to align this
00:29so I can see some of my image in the background there. I can also see the
00:33preview in this preview window, so I have the best of both worlds. I'm getting
00:36a little bit of larger preview and align it with the background image if I can.
00:40Now typically what you want to do with Smart Sharpening is you want to have
00:43your Radius is going to be pretty low and our Amount, we are going to go to
00:46about 100, we are on Advanced Lens Blur. We are going to start with a low
00:50Radius here, we are going to bring our Amount up and I'm going to bring my
00:53Amount up somewhere in the 130s or so, and then I'm going to slowly
00:56incrementally bring up this Radius.
00:58Now, as I bring up this Radius what I'm looking to do is to try to define where
01:02I start to see halos. If I click on the image and let go, I can see my before
01:06and after. I'm going to start to see haloing around edges like along the chin,
01:10the necklaces, any areas of high contrast and I'm going to try to find this
01:14sweet spot for the sharpening here and I like to find that sweet spot either
01:17within an Amount somewhere in the 100s or perhaps even the high 100s and again
01:21it will just start to show me where the haloing shows up and then once I see
01:25where that haloing shows up I'll drop my Amount to perhaps somewhere down 100%.
01:29Now, there are quite a bit of techniques that you can use for sharpening but
01:33most importantly you just want to make sure that you are not over sharpening
01:36the image in addition you want to keep in mind that what we are doing here is
01:39called Output Sharpening. Where sharpening based on how we want to output this
01:43image it's going to be a 5x5 photograph, so it's going to be a relatively small
01:47right. And I have decided I want to print this on Matte Paper let's say.
01:51So again my Sharpening Amount is going to be a little bit higher, than it would
01:54be say on a Glossy paper. Because on Glossy paper the ink isn't going to absorb
01:59into the papers much so I don't need to sharpen it quite as much. Here my ink
02:02is going to absorb a little bit into it, it's going to soften the image just a
02:05touch so I have a little bit higher sharpening amount.
02:07All right, well I'll go ahead and click OK to apply that and the nice thing
02:11about this is I can click on this icon here to see my before and after. Again
02:15really paying attention to the different details that I'm seeing. I can also
02:18click into the mask, press the B key to grab the Brush tool, change my Brush
02:22Size by pressing the left bracket key and then D takes me to my default colors
02:26black and white, X flips those colors.
02:29What I'm going to do is paint with black along this edge of the face there and
02:32also along the edge of the chin, just to paint away any areas where I'm seeing
02:36a little bit of haloing effect and I'm doing that at a low Opacity of 40%
02:41accidentally, I want this opacity to be up to 100% because I want to mask this
02:45off completely, paint this out complete black there because I don't want those
02:49edges to be over sharpened. There already is a little bit of a halo there.
02:52I don't need to overdo that. And so I'm just going to paint around the image and
02:56just make sure I cannot remove any other areas.
02:59I am just paying special close attention to the face because I don't want any
03:02halos around the face and what a halo is where that edge becomes a little bit
03:06too strong, a little bit too strong and little bit too harsh. I do want some
03:09nice sharpness in the hair and the eyes and the teeth and again I'm just going
03:13to make my way through this document and remove any halos that I see. I'm going
03:17to remove a little bit of sharpening on those teeth there because I definitely
03:21don't want the image to look over sharp.
03:23All right, well now that I have done that we can turn this on and off and look
03:26at our before and then after. If I zoom in even further we are going to see
03:30even closer look at the sharpening. It's subtle, here is my before and there is
03:34my after and if I zoom in even closer so you can see that, here is my before
03:38and after. Now what percentage rate should you actually be at when evaluating
03:42your sharpening? Well 100%. Double click to your Zoom tool and there you can
03:46see the actual detail that you will get when you are printing. All right, well,
03:49this image is now sharp. We are ready to go through the rest of our printing process.
Collapse this transcript
Making soft proof corrections
00:00Now that we have worked on the color, and the tone, and the sharpness of this
00:03photograph, we are ready to send it to the printer, but first it's a good idea
00:06to soft proof the image.
00:07Now we have actually already talked about soft proofing in the previous
00:10chapter, so I'll just go over this briefly here. What we are going to do is we
00:14are going to navigate to our Image pulldown and choose Duplicate, so that we
00:17will have a copy of this photograph. Next we will take this to the View, the
00:212-Up view, so we can see this side by side, press the Spacebar key, click to
00:25reposition this, so we can see some important information.
00:28Then we are going to actually click in the image that we will be printing and
00:31we will navigate to the View pulldown menu and choose Proof Setup and then
00:35Custom. Here we are going to choose Device to Simulate, a particular printer
00:39and a particular paper type. Now typically I print to either the Epson 2400 or
00:44the 3800. Let's say we are going to the 2400 this time and I have a couple of
00:48different options here. If I choose EnhMatte, for example, we can see that
00:51there is quite of bit of a shift and my blacks aren't quite as black. I don't
00:54quite have as much saturation. I'll go back to that Premium Glossy Best Photo
00:58and we see a little bit of a different shift.
01:01So let's say that I all of a sudden decide, I want to get a little bit more
01:03color out of this, little bit more saturation. I'm going for that Premium
01:07Glossy Paper. Now Rendering Intent typically you start with Relative
01:10Colorimetric, then if you have any problems with banding or anything you go to
01:13Perceptual. So I'll leave that on Relative Colorimetric. Black Point is on,
01:17Simulate Paper is on and I click OK. Now I can toggle this on and off by
01:21pressing Command+Y on a Mac, Ctrl+Y on a PC. So there is my before and after.
01:26Now is this soft proof actually doing anything? No, it's just simulating how
01:30this particular image may print on that printer with that particular type of
01:34paper. So now that I can see that, now that I can see there is a little bit of
01:37a difference between these two images, I'm going to try to minimize the
01:40difference there.
01:41So I go ahead and click in my topmost layer. Click on the Adjustment Layer icon
01:44and choose Curves. With this image it looks like all that I really need to do
01:48is just to darken this up a little bit and add a little bit of brightness as
01:52well. So it's a subtle S curve and again I'm just visually looking at the two
01:56images side by side. Here is my before and after just bringing that out a
02:00little bit more and that looks really nice.
02:02Now if I turn the Soft Proof off, so go ahead and choose Proof Color, this
02:06image will look too saturated, it will look too contrasty. Well, it looks that
02:10way because I made that adjustment with the proof on. So let's turn that back
02:14on in order to get these to look a little bit better. So again what you do with
02:17soft proofing is you turn on that soft proof. You make a comparison, so you
02:21compare a contrast and say you know what? Hey, with that proof on I'm going to
02:24make some adjustments so that the final print will look that much better.
02:27And again if you haven't experimented with soft proofing, you definitely want
02:31to do so because this process, it can really speed up your overall printing
02:35workflow and in addition it can help you increase the accuracy between the
02:39photograph that you are seeing on your monitor and the final print.
02:42All right well the last thing that we need to do is go ahead and get rid of
02:45this copy, so I'll go ahead and close that. We don't need to save that. Take
02:48this image to Full Screen View Mode. This photograph is now ready to be sent to
02:53my desktop printer.
Collapse this transcript
Introducing the Photoshop Print dialog
00:00We are now ready to send this image to our desktop printer. Now in the next
00:04couple of movies, we are going to walk through that process and you may notice
00:07that the sound sounds just a little bit differently because now I'm actually
00:10working on one of my main studio computers.
00:12All right, well let's go ahead and navigate to where we can send this to our
00:15printer and that's by going to the File pulldown menu and choosing Print
00:19or by pressing the shortcut key, Command+P. So go ahead and select that option.
00:23This will open up the Print dialog window.
00:25Now the Print dialog window is packed with valuable information. I like to
00:29think of this dialog window as been divided up into three vertical columns.
00:33Here is one column where I have Preview and also some soft proofing
00:35information. Then in the middle, I'm able to choose my printer and dial in a
00:39few settings there and then finally in the far right, here is where I'm going
00:42to dial in all of my Color Management options.
00:44Okay, well for starters, one of the things that I need to do is to select the
00:48printer that I'll be printing to. In this case, I'm printing to the Epson 3800,
00:51so I have gone ahead and selected that. Now that I have selected that,
00:55I'm going to go up to the Page Setup options because the page setup that
00:58I determine is really contingent upon the particular printer.
01:01So I'll go ahead and choose Page Setup. Now in this Page Setup dialog, I need
01:05to choose the particular printer. So I'll go ahead and leave my Page Attributes
01:08as-is, select the printer, Epson 3800. Now here, I'm going to choose a
01:12particular paper type. Let's say that I want to print this on this A3 size. So,
01:16I could go ahead and do that and I could determine the particular type of
01:20layout that I want and I'll go ahead and select OK.
01:22Well, now my image appears much smaller in this larger sheet of paper.
01:26Now I realize I'm going to be wasting a big piece of paper. So I go ahead and
01:30navigate back to Page Setup and I'll choose something much smaller and I'll go
01:33ahead to that US Letter size and click OK and now this 5x5 image looks a little
01:38bit bigger on that sheet of paper.
01:40Okay, well now that we set up the page, I'm going to go ahead and click Center
01:43Image off and I'm going to click and drag to reposition this image. So it's a
01:47little bit higher on the page just because I think that will look nicer.
01:50Now, the next option I have has to do with scaling the print size. Now I can
01:54Scale to Fit Media. It will resize the image, or I can also increase the Height
01:59or the Width here. Now typically, I don't like to do any scaling inside of this
02:03Print dialog window. I almost think they included this in order to speed up your
02:07printing process just when you want to create a rough print. Typically what you
02:11want to do is dial in the exact image size before you actually get to this
02:15dialog. So I almost always skip this dialog in its entirety.
02:18Now I can turn the visibility of this bounding box on or off and again that's
02:22just a visual which would then help me scale or resize this. Well, I don't need
02:26to scale or resize this image so I'm going to obviously turn that off.
02:29Okay, but what about this information over here, the information in regards to
02:33soft proofing? Well, in order to be able to take advantage of those options,
02:37I need to change something over here in the right-hand column, the Color
02:40Management column. We will take a look at that column in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Color management and the Photoshop Print dialog
00:00As we continue the printing process the next place we want to go is this third
00:04column or at least this column as I call it here, where we can dial in some
00:07Color Management options.
00:09Now that being said, we can also go to this pulldown menu and we can choose
00:12Output. Now if we choose Output we can add things like Crop Corner Marks and
00:16then that can help us as we are cropping our image. We can also do a few other
00:19things here. But typically I find as a photographer I rarely go to this menu.
00:23Most of the time, I'm simply in this Color Management menu. So I'm going to
00:26focus in on that.
00:27Now currently this document is profiled in the Adobe RGB (1998) Color Space.
00:31Great. Now color handling what do I want to do? Do I want my printer to manage
00:35the color or do I want Photoshop to manage the color? Well, typically Photoshop
00:38does a better job. So I'm going to go to Photoshop to manage this color.
00:41Now when I do that, all of sudden I have some options over here. Now it gives
00:45me a warning message. Remember to disable color management in the printer
00:48dialog box. That's going to be really important. We don't need double color
00:52management. If we have that, print isn't going to look good at all. So what we
00:56need to do is have Photoshop manage our color and then we will disable Color
01:00Management inside of our Printer dialog when we get there later.
01:03Okay well let's skip around a little bit and jump back over here to these
01:06options now that we have them. Well, here what I can do is Match my Print
01:09Colors, I can also select a Gamut Warning which will show me out of gamut
01:12colors and then display the Paper White.
01:15Now in this case, I'm not seeing very much, yet when I change my Printer
01:18Profile, and I'll go ahead and scroll down and select a paper that I want to
01:21print to and let's say that I'm going to be printing the Epson 3800 here,
01:25Premium Glossy Photo paper (Pro98 PGPP ). Now these become really relevant. So
01:28my Gamut Warning you are going to see is this gray color and you can just
01:31barely see it on some of the flowers there that are a little bit out of gamut.
01:35Now when matching the print colors, it's going to show me that Soft Proof based
01:38on this particular printer and paper type. It's also going to show me my paper
01:42white, i.e. the actual light of that paper or trying to simulate the light
01:45of that paper.
01:46Now is this incredibly helpful here? No, but it's just kind of a nice second
01:50soft proof glance, right? Saying, Hey! This is probably how this image is going
01:54to look when it's printed. So you say okay, great.
01:56Well I need to scroll down to the next option and choose a Rendering Intent.
02:01Now we have talked a little bit about Rendering Intents and I'll talk a little
02:04bit more about them in the next chapter but for now, one of the nice things
02:07about this is when I scroll over this option I get a full description down here.
02:12Typically what you want to do with photographs is choose Relative Colorimetric
02:15first, if that doesn't work, if you see some strange banding or some color
02:19problems try Perceptual. And one of the reasons why you want to choose Relative
02:23Colorimetric first is what it does is it just shifts the out of gamut colors.
02:27So it doesn't shift the other colors. For example, here in my Gamut Warning,
02:30it's just some of the bright oranges of the flowers. So all the other colors
02:34will look as it is, but it's going to shift those bright oranges and I know you
02:38probably can't see those because this is so small. But just imagine with me
02:41that those are out of gamut. So it's just going to shift those.
02:44Now one of my colleagues, kind of said it to me this way, just by way of kind
02:47of a fun anecdote, he said, Well, hey! Why don't you think of Relative
02:50Colorimetric as that Rendering Intent that gets rid of one of your relatives?
02:54You know when your family just have that one relative you don't want to have in
02:57the photo, you just kind of want to kick them out of the photo. Well that's
02:59what this Rendering Intent does. Again, it just works with those out of gamut colors.
03:03Now on the other hand, Perceptual, what that does is it says, Hey! Take the
03:07whole color gamut. Let's take everyone in the picture for example, and let's
03:11say everyone, move over two steps and then everyone moves over in a certain way.
03:16So it looks at all the colors and shifts all of them in a unique way. And
03:19again, we will talk a little bit more about this later but for now, I'm going
03:22to go ahead and select Relative Colorimetric, leave Black Point Compensation
03:26turned on and now we have a couple of more steps and we will talk about those steps
03:29in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Final Print dialog settings
00:00 We are now ready to send this photograph to our desktop printer. And in order
00:03 to do that we will simply click the Print button. At this juncture what we are
00:07 actually doing is exiting Photoshop, we have now entered into the Epson Print
00:12 dialog window, because I'm going to be printing to the Epson 3800.
00:15 Now whatever printer type you are using, it doesn't really matter what will
00:18 happen here is it will open that printer's dialog window where you want to dial
00:23 in a few options.
00:24 Now most importantly what we need to do is choose our Media Type and turn off
00:28 Color Management. Now each dialog window will look a little bit differently. So
00:32 what you are going to need to do is go through the settings for your particular
00:35 printer. I'll go through the settings for my printer just so you have an
00:38 example of what you are looking for.
00:40 All right. Well, what I'm going to do here is click on this pulldown menu. Also
00:43 I should say if you are not seeing many menu options click on the icon next to
00:46 the Printer, pulldown menu and there you get a number of more options.
00:49 Now, we are going to click on this pulldown menu and the only place that I need
00:52 to go is Print Settings. Now in the Print Settings dialog window, I need to
00:56 choose my Media Type and here I'm going to go to Photo Paper > Premium Glossy,
01:00 all right. That looks good.
01:01 Color, it's going to be Color, not Advanced B&W or Black. So I'm going to go
01:04 ahead and choose Color. Color Settings important step, right? We want to make
01:08 sure to turn off Color Management inside of this dialog. So the Color Settings
01:12 are off, perfect.
01:14 Now the Print Quality, there are two options here. SuperFine or SuperPhoto.
01:17 SuperFine will work well with this image. Now we have High Speed, on this
01:21 particular printer because it's a high- end amazing printer, I'm going to leave
01:24 High Speed on.
01:25 Well, with a little bit of a lower-end printer I might turn this off and here
01:28 is why. What happens is when the print is created? The ink is set down, right?
01:32 And it moves from left to right. So the ink is set down as the ink cartridge
01:36 travels across the paper.
01:37 With High Speed on, it sets down ink as it goes left to right and then right to
01:42 left as well. So it doesn't give much time for the ink to dry which can result
01:46 in a lower quality print. So you have to experiment with that setting. But with
01:50 this printer I know that High Speed, leaving that on, it will work really well.
01:53 All right, at this juncture we are now ready, we have completed the entire
01:57 process. All that we need to do is simply click the Print button in order to
02:01 print this image and at this point what we want to do is wait on the edge of
02:05 the our seat because there is something so exciting about seeing that image
02:08 roll out of the printer then finally holding it in your hand.
02:11 It's that final artifact that completes the whole photographic loop from
02:15 capture all the way to output and there is something about that, that is just
02:19 completely exhilarating to me.
02:21 All right, well this wraps up our conversation about printing to your desktop
02:25 printer. I hope that these movies will help you create many stunning, engaging
02:30 and compelling photographic prints.
02:33
Collapse this transcript
The final print
00:00Hey, welcome back to my office. Come on in. In this movie what I want to do is
00:04talk about the final print. A lot of times what happens is we print our images out
00:09but they don't just feel quite complete. Let's say even when we print our
00:12images really big, like we have this one up here. I have a number of large
00:16format prints there.
00:17Yet what we need to do is finish them off in some way, shape or form.
00:21For example, I had one of my former students Todd Glaser, he printed this
00:25photo for me and it's one of my all time favorite surfers at one of my all time
00:28favorite surf spots and I enjoy the picture in this format, yet it feels a
00:33little bit floppy. We can hear that and feel that. It doesn't feel like it's
00:37been formalized, that it's been completed.
00:40Now there are a number of different ways that we can do that. One way is to
00:42simply mount our photographs on gaterboard, and I like that format.
00:46You can also frame your images as well. But in this case, when I get this image
00:50back from the framing shop or from the local camera store that does this here in town,
00:55I say, Oh yeah! I want to hang that on the wall. I'm just like,
00:58all right, that's the image! That's that final photo!
01:02What I want to do is just walk through a couple of examples of that and again,
01:05you can print or formalize your photos in a number of different ways and
01:09what we want to do here is just get you to begin to think about that. Again, we have
01:13a photograph. In this case we have seen this one before but it feels floppy.
01:16It's interesting yet it doesn't quite feel as significant until we do
01:21something with it.
01:22In this case, it's one of the large prints here but I just have it mounted and
01:25when I have it mounted and it's really big, I can actually see that. I think,
01:29yeah, there is something there. There is something to be reckoned with.
01:32There is some permanence there.
01:33One of the reasons that we love photographs is because of their permanence and
01:37again, just one more example for you and then a quick thought. Here is another
01:40photograph that I took, in this case of World Champion pro surfer Shaun Thomson.
01:45In this case, it's a little bit of a smaller print but it still has some
01:49substance to it. It feels like there is something there. And you know framing
01:52or mounting can really do that for a photograph. We can also do this in
01:56different sizes and just to show you some variety here, here we have a
02:00photograph that's a little bit bigger in this case, a larger print.
02:03Now there is something that happens to your photographs when they go large or
02:07when they are framed or when they are mounted in this case. And what happens is
02:12again, it kind of formalizes the print in a unique way and one of the things that
02:15you will discover is that some prints look great when they go big. Other prints don't.
02:20Some prints look better when they are small. And it really depends on the
02:23subject matter. It depends on the intimacy of the photograph. Sometimes if it's
02:27something that's like a little delicate something, let's say a delicate leaf,
02:31when you make that big and you can really see the intricacies and
02:34the intimacies of those delicacies, it's fascinating when it goes big.
02:38Other times, when you have a photograph that's really graphic and when that's
02:42printed a medium size that graphic shape become intriguing or engaging.
02:46Another thing to think about in regards to printing and how big you go is your
02:50viewing distance and typically what you do is you take the width let's say from
02:54corner to corner in this case, and then you double that. So you need to be
02:58about this far away from this photograph in order to enjoy it.
03:01Now if you have a small space, like let's say my office here, it's a pretty small space.
03:05If I were to hang a wide range of large format prints and here it would
03:09overwhelming, you would want to back away from them. So you can't typically get
03:13away with hanging a ton of those. Yet, if I had smaller images and I put those
03:17smaller images in a row, it would be inviting, it would draw me and I would want
03:20to lean forward and look at them.
03:23So as you get to the stage of creating the final print, think about how you can
03:27finalize your photographs, whether by let's say mounting or overmatting or
03:32framing. But whatever you do, take a risk and spend a little bit of extra money
03:37in order to formalize a few of your prints. And just a few of them.
03:40And you may be thinking, Oh! Gosh, I don't have any extra money to do that.
03:43Well then save up some money to do it, because one of the things that I have
03:46found is it helps me learn to see anew. It helps me enjoy my photographs in
03:51new ways and it also helps others enjoy my photographs as well.
03:55All right, well either way, I hope that you enjoy creating your final prints.
04:00Thanks for coming by my office. I'll catch you in the next movie. Bye for now.
Collapse this transcript
10. Speeding Up the Printing Workflow
Setting up a test strip print
00:00In this chapter, I want to share with you a few tips that will help you speed
00:03up your overall printing workflow and in this movie, what we are going to do is
00:06talk about how we can create a test strip and do test strip printing again in
00:10order to speed up how we are actually printing our photographs.
00:13Now, there is nothing worse than printing out a photograph and realizing, you
00:16know what? The blues in that photograph aren't quite blue enough and then
00:20creating another print. So you know there are now too blue and then going back
00:23and forth and wasting all of this paper, this time and this ink. So how can you
00:27get around that? Well, let's talk about that here.
00:29Here I have a photograph of Ivan Basso in a wind tunnel in San Diego. Now, what
00:32I want to do is run a couple of test prints. Now here is how I'm going to do
00:36that. First, I'm going to grab my Marquee tool by pressing the M key. I'm going
00:39to then click and drag along something that I think is kind of important.
00:44In this case, I have a little bit of a skin tone. I also have some blues from
00:47the bike and I have a few other colors in the mix as well. So, I'm selecting
00:51something from the photograph that I think is kind of important. Well, then I'm
00:54going to Copy this selection into a new layer. On a Mac, you can do that by
00:58pressing Command+J. On a PC that's Ctrl+J.
01:00Well, now that I have this test strip on a new layer, we can turn off our
01:04Background layer and see that we just have this single strip here. Okay, well,
01:08great. Well, how then can I use that in a unique way in order to create a
01:12print, which will give me a lot of different information and help me create the
01:16final accurate print.
01:18Well, here is what we are going to do. We are going to go ahead and hold down
01:20the Command key on a Mac, Ctrl key on a PC and click on the New Layer icon that
01:24will create a new layer underneath our Layer 1 and let's close the Adjustments
01:28panel and the Color panel by double- clicking the tab so we can really see what
01:31we are doing here.
01:32And now that I have this Layer 2, I'm going to fill that with a color. We can
01:36do that by way of shortcut or by going to Edit > Fill and then selecting in
01:40this case, White and click OK. Well, now that I have that white, I'll click
01:43back into my Layer 1, my test strip there. I'm going to then select the Move
01:48tool by pressing the V key.
01:49Here I'll hold down the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC and I'm going to
01:54click and drag with that key being pressed down which will give me the ability
01:57to Copy and Paste that particular portion of the image.
02:00So, again, on a Mac, you hold down the Option key and on a PC that's the Alt
02:03key and you click and drag and we are going to do this multiple times so that
02:06we have multiple strips of this particular portion of the image.
02:09Now, in this case, I ran out of space over there, so I'll go ahead and click
02:13back down to Layer 1 and I'll Option- click and drag a little bit forward.
02:16Again, so I have multiple test strips.
02:19All right, well now that I have all of these different strips of that
02:22particular photograph, how can I use those in order to speed up my overall
02:26printing workflow? Well, we will talk about how we can use these different
02:29strips of our photograph in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Modifying the test strip print
00:00Now that we have all of these test strips, we are ready to begin to make some
00:03modifications so that we can determine the best print. Now you may be
00:07wondering, okay Chris, why are you actually doing this? Well, I'm doing this so
00:10that I can have, in this case, seven different types of prints. I can print all
00:14of those on one piece of paper. I'm not wasting a lot of paper. I can then make
00:18an adjustment based on what I'm seeing by this particular test. All right, well
00:22let's take a look at what the test might look like.
00:24So I'll go ahead and reorder my layers first. I'm going to click and drag this
00:27one down and this one down so that I have this real linear pattern. This is my
00:30first image and then all the way over to my last. Next, I'm going to make any
00:34kind of adjustment. Now keep in mind, I can make an adjustment based on
00:38sharpness, on contrast, on color adjustment, hue/saturation, color balance,
00:43you name it. The sky is the limit.
00:45In order to make this really visual, in order to actually see how this works,
00:49I'm going to make a desaturation adjustment. Now I wouldn't typically
00:52desaturate this image but again, I think this will help you understand the
00:56concept, so you can see how you can apply this in your own workflow.
00:59All right, well first I'm going to click on the Adjustment Layer icon, choose
01:02Hue/Saturation. I'm going to desaturate 100 points. Next, I'll close the
01:06Adjustments panel by double clicking that. Here we could see that I have an
01:09adjustment where I'm desaturating the image 100%. I'll go ahead and hold down
01:13the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC, hover over between these two layers,
01:17my cursor changes and now I have an adjustment which just affects the
01:20underlying layer.
01:22Next, I'm going to copy this and I'm going to copy it by way of a shortcut.
01:26Here is a real nice shortcut to use when you need to copy layers. You hold down
01:30the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC and then click and drag. So I'm going
01:34to go ahead and click and drag this so I have this adjustment between all of my
01:38layers or on top of every layer that I have here.
01:41Next, I'll hold down the Option key on a Mac, Alt key on a PC and then go ahead
01:45and make sure that this adjustment is just affecting the layer immediately
01:49underneath it. In this case, I made a little bit of a mistake there. So I want
01:53to make sure that the adjustment layer is affecting the photograph. So again,
01:56adjustment layer, photograph, adjustment layer here. Hold down the Option key on
01:59a Mac, Alt key on a PC, photograph and here you can see I'm going through my layers.
02:03All right, great! Well how then can I make some changes?
02:06Well, I could make some changes by modifying this particular type of adjustment
02:11or for that matter, I could go and say, you know what? This one I'll leave at
02:14100%. This one here I'm going to click in and then I'll press the 8 key.
02:19It will take it to 80%. I'll click in the next one. I'm going to press 6 to go to 60%.
02:24I'll go to the next one. I'll go to 40% there and then I'll go to this
02:27next one. In this case, I'm going to go to 20% and then in this one, I'll go to
02:3310% and then finally the last one, I'm going to go ahead and take this all the
02:37way down to 0%.
02:39So here you can see I have these differing degrees of desaturation, because
02:44let's say one of the things I've decided is that this image is a little bit too
02:47saturated. Yet I'm not exactly sure how far I should actually go in regards to
02:51desaturation. So I could then print this test strip out and I would have seven
02:56different options. Well here is the original file and I could compare that to
03:00these different options. When I compare that to the different options, I say,
03:03you know what? This one was too saturated, but you know this one, it looked
03:07really, really good based on the way I was printing it on this premium glossy
03:10paper and this was the one that I really liked. Well, let's go ahead and find
03:15that image and we can do that by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking and selecting the layer.
03:20So in this case, it says Layer 1 copy 2. So let's take a look at the
03:25adjustment. Well, it says desaturation at an amount of 20%. Okay, well, we have
03:31determined what we actually need to do here. So at this juncture we can go
03:35ahead and either get rid of all of these other layers or we could group them or
03:38hide them. I'm going to group them. So I'll click on my topmost layer, hold
03:42down the Shift key, click on my bottommost layer and press Command+G to group those.
03:46I don't need any of those test stripes anymore or for that matter,
03:50I don't need this Layer 2 anymore. So I'll click on the original document.
03:54Next, I'll go ahead and click on the Adjustment Layer and choose
03:57Hue/Saturation, desaturate 100%, do exactly what I did before and then take
04:03my Opacity to 20% and here, I have the exact adjustment that I made
04:08to that particular test strip. And I was able to discover that particular
04:12adjustment was the best adjustment for this image by creating one single print
04:16rather than creating three or four or five or seven prints. So again,
04:21the particular adjustments that I was showing here with the desaturation isn't
04:25something that I would typically do, but I do make adjustments like that,
04:28with sharpness or with contrast or with color shifts or with color saturation trying
04:33to determine how far I'm going to saturate something.
04:36Also keep in mind that you always don't need to make these many test strips.
04:39So I'll go ahead and turn that on for a second. What I may have really needed
04:42to do was only have three little test strips in order to simplify the
04:45process. Yet here in order to understand the concept, what I was interested in
04:50doing was showing a lot so you can really see that there is quite a bit of transition.
04:54When it comes to printing, your transitions aren't so strong. They are a little
04:58bit more subtle, because creating the perfect print is all about making those
05:02subtle fine-tuned adjustments in order to get the print to just look perfect.
05:06Yet here again for educational purposes in order to teach the concept, I made a
05:10pretty drastic adjustment. So what you need to do in your own workflow is take
05:14this concept and say okay, I kind of get it. What Chris is taking about is
05:17taking a slice of the image and then making some modifications to that
05:20particular slice, printing a bunch of slices on one page, or a bunch of test
05:24prints or test strips on one page in order to determine what's best without
05:27wasting ink, paper, or time.
Collapse this transcript
Understanding rendering intents
00:00When you are printing your photographs, one of the decisions that you will
00:03eventually need to make is what rendering you intent to use. Now, initially
00:06this term may sound a little bit strange. It is a little bit strange but
00:10it's not that bad. Let me explain.
00:12rendering intent has to do with how you are going to render the color. Now,
00:15when you think about color for a moment, you have colors on your monitor,
00:18for example, that are bright and saturated because of the color is created via
00:21light. Well, you just can't reproduce those colors on the printer, so what then
00:25do you do with those colors that are "out of gamut"?
00:28Well, typically, for photographs, Relative Colormetric and Perceptual work best.
00:33Now these two rendering intents are actually pretty similar. Relative
00:36Colormetric is the one you want to try first. It keeps the colors that are in gamut
00:40but it clips those that are out of gamut. It keeps the most amount of
00:43color, yet it can't posterize the color that is out of gamut.
00:46So, again for portraits and things like that, Relative Colormetric is going to
00:50be very good for you. Now, Perceptual, what's that about? Well, this maintains
00:53color relationships. It scales those out of gamut colors and scales the other
00:58colors in a similar way so that there is a very similar color relationship.
01:02On the other hand, we have another rendering intent called Absolute
01:04Colormetric, which maps colors from any space to in gamut colors without
01:09adjusting the white and the black points.
01:12Then the final option is Saturation. Now this option typically isn't good for
01:16photographs because it doesn't necessarily look real. It's not going for
01:19realism or color relationships. Rather what this rendering intent is going for
01:24is just keeping those saturated colors as saturated as possible.
01:28Now, that being said there are times and places where you have images and you
01:31have colors that are just almost surreal. I mean, in real life, you know those
01:35real life colors that are amazing. So that Saturation rendering intent might help you out.
01:40All right, well now that we have talked a little bit about these rendering
01:42intents, the thing to keep in mind is this. First, try Relative Colormetric.
01:46If that doesn't work, try Perceptual or Absolute. And what you are going to need
01:50to do is to build up some experience with these different rendering intents, so
01:53you can actually begin to see how the color shifts. Because color and color
01:57gamut is a pretty abstract concept, again, it's helpful to create some test
02:01prints so you can learn to see color and so you can learn to see how these
02:05different rendering intents actually render color and the out of gamut colors as well.
02:09Therefore, what we are going to do is talk about in the next movie how we can
02:12create some test prints which will help us test and begin to deconstruct how we
02:17can work with rendering intents.
Collapse this transcript
Test-printing rendering intents
00:00 In order to better understand how rendering intents actually work, here is what
00:03 I recommend that you do. You go ahead and find a file that you really like.
00:07 For example, I have this photograph of this jellyfish right here and I like the
00:11 bright vivid colors. You then bring that file into your document, like in this case,
00:14 an 8x10 page.
00:16 You then add one word next to this. In this case, I'm adding the word
00:19 Saturation next to this particular image. I'll then print this particular
00:23 image out with the saturation rendering intent and then I'll go ahead and
00:27 duplicate that folder and here, you can see, I just have a duplicate of that
00:30 same exact image, this image time on perceptual. I'll then print this out on
00:34 the same exact piece of paper, this time using the perceptual rendering intent
00:38 and then I'll do that one more time, this time with relative colorimetric
00:42 rendering intent.
00:43 I'll then have one piece of paper with three different prints on it with three
00:46 different rendering intents so that I can look at side by side. Now the
00:50 advantage of doing this is that one, I haven't wasted paper; two, I haven't
00:53 wasted time; and three, I can compare and contrast the different rendering
00:57 intents all on one page.
00:59 After you have done that, what you are going to want to do is go through the
01:02 same exact thing except make another drastic adjustment. Let's say you make a
01:06 strong Hue/Saturation adjustment. Print this now on a new piece of paper with
01:10 saturation on. On that same piece of paper this time with perceptual and then
01:14 on that same second piece of paper with relative color colorimetric. And then
01:17 again, make yet another adjustment and do something and then do something very
01:20 similar so that what you'll have is you'll have three different prints.
01:24 One print with these three different rendering intents as so, another print
01:28 with these three different prints with this saturation, and yet a third print
01:32 with these three different rendering intents on one page again just showing a
01:36 subtle change, a subtle contrast in color saturation change.
01:40 One of the things that I have discovered myself and I think you'll discover as
01:43 well is that you can begin to teach yourself about rendering intents because
01:47 it's one thing to read a description of a rendering intent or to hear someone
01:50 talk about a rendering intent. Now, many times that's helpful because you just
01:54 start to think about it, but really for me, I actually have to hold the print,
01:58 I have to compare and contrast and begin to see what happens with certain colors.
02:02 Now this particular image is really saturated and it has very specific colors
02:07 so I would also need to do the same test with some other images, let's say,
02:11 some "more normal" images. Let's say a photograph of a person in available
02:14 light or photograph of a person with studio light and then again, that compare
02:19 and contrast can be incredible helpful.
02:21 And you know one of the tricks with Photoshop is this. The trick is not just to
02:25 learn Photoshop but to teach yourself how to learn Photoshop so that you can
02:29 continually learn and that you can go above and beyond all the things that
02:33 you have seen and heard.
02:35
Collapse this transcript
Batch-processing with actions
00:00As you dig deeper into printing, one of the things that you will soon discover
00:03is that you will be doing some of the similar things over and over again. Now
00:06if you ever find yourself doing something over and over again, you may want to
00:10consider creating an action. You can record an action that has a few steps in
00:14it so that you don't have to apply those steps to every image all the time.
00:18Now one of the things that you may need to do in regards to printing is send
00:21your images to a lab. Now if you are going to send your photographs to a lab,
00:25typically they need to be in that sRGB color space. And let's say for example,
00:29that we have this set of images and we have this images that I really like, yet
00:32what I want to do is I want to send these to the lab so they can be printed.
00:35I need them to be resized. I need them to be in a particular color space and for
00:40that matter, I want to have a black and white version of these photographs. So
00:43how can I then do that?
00:44Well what we are going to do here is create an action to do a few of those
00:48steps and then in the next movie take a look at how we can use the image
00:51processor to resize and to play our action.
00:54So the first thing you want to do is open up one of your images. I'll go ahead
00:57and open up this file corwig_bridal_ party 01. Press F to go to Full Screen View
01:02mode. Now here, I'm going to zoom in a little bit on this photograph and next
01:06I'll navigate to my Window pulldown menu and open up Actions.
01:10Now in the Actions panel, I'm going to go ahead and create a new folder or a
01:13new set of actions and here I'm going to call this wedding and next I'll create
01:17a new action by clicking on the New Action icon and I'll name this one sRGB+bw
01:23for black and white. I'll go ahead and click Record to start recording this.
01:27Here I'll navigate to the Edit pulldown menu and choose Convert to Profile.
01:32Now it's going to remember everything that I'm doing here, so I'll go ahead and
01:35convert to this sRGB color space and I'll click OK to apply that adjustment.
01:40Next, I'm going to click on the Adjustment Layer icon and here I'm going to
01:43choose Black & White and I'll go ahead and convert this to Black & White and I
01:47may customize this.
01:48Now, all these images are pretty similar, so I can get away with making an
01:52adjustment that will probably work across the board, a little bit more
01:55brightness on those dresses is nice. And then again just making a few minor
02:00adjustments. Okay, great.
02:01Well, now that I have done my black & white conversion, I'm going to go ahead
02:04and click on the icon and make a subtle Curves adjustment. I'm just going to
02:07brighten this image up and then darken my black. Just going for a bit more
02:11contrast here and trying to find a sweet spot for this particular image. Here
02:15is my before and after.
02:17Again, really boosting those up black and white, overall before and then after.
02:21Okay, well let's take a look at the action for a moment. So go ahead and open
02:25up the Actions panel and pull this out and take a look at what it has recorded
02:28so far. Well it has recorded the convert the profile, make the layer
02:31adjustments, set the adjustments and then all of a sudden, it also recorded
02:35when I clicked that eye icon to show or hide those different layers.
02:39Now do I need it to do that every time? No, but it's a nice illustration that
02:43it records everything that you are doing or most everything that you are doing
02:46in Photoshop. So in my case, I'm going to stop this action, I'm then going to
02:51go ahead and select all of these actions where I was just clicking on the eye
02:54icon there to evaluate my adjustments because you do need to evaluate them. And
02:59then I'm going to trash that. I don't need any of those. Delete all of those.
03:02So in this case, it's just going to convert this to sRGB, make a Curves and a
03:07black and white adjustment.
03:08Okay, well perfect. Well, then let's restart this action, so we will click on
03:12the Record icon and save this image out. So here I'm going to go ahead and
03:16press Shift+Command+S on a Mac, Shift+ Ctrl+S on a PC. And I'll save this out as
03:22a Photoshop document, a PSD file so I can have those adjustment layers in this
03:26document and I'll click Save. Okay, maximize compatibility, don't need to do
03:31that, I'll click OK.
03:32It now recorded that Save step. Let's close the file. Command+W on a Mac,
03:37Ctrl+W on a PC and save it out. Now let's stop the action and navigate back to
03:42the Adobe Bridge. Now here in the Adobe Bridge, I have another version of this
03:46particular file. It's a file that's been converted to this sRGB color space.
03:51It's now black and white and has a Curves adjustment applied to it.
03:54Well, how about applying that action to the rest of the photographs. Well, what
03:58I can do here is click on the next photograph, hold down the Shift key and
04:01click on my last image, navigate to Tools > Photoshop and Batch. Now the Batch
04:07command. I'm going to play from the Set wedding, the Action sRGB+ BW. I'm not
04:12going to override the Open commands, I'll suppress the color profile warning
04:16because I'll be converting that color profile anyway and then I'll go ahead and
04:20click OK. This will then walk through these different steps in this particular action.
04:24It will open up all those files, apply the steps that I have created there and
04:28we can see that the window in the background has been filled up with these new
04:31images, we will go ahead and exit out of Photoshop by clicking on the Bridge in
04:35the background and here we can see that we have two different sets of images.
04:38We have the color photograph and then there is black and white image. Now the
04:41nice thing about this particular type of action is we can go into any of these
04:45files by double-clicking them to open them up. Now it's in that sRGB color
04:49space. So let's use that profile. We want to stay there for a moment and I can
04:53go into this file, I'll close my Actions panel for a moment, zoom in a bit and
04:56say you know what? This particular adjustment, this Curves adjustment, wasn't
04:59quite strong enough here. So I'm going to go ahead and increase this a little
05:02bit more for this image.
05:03Now it doesn't really need that, but I'm just saying that you have that
05:06flexibility, I can then save and close the file. So the particular action that
05:10we wrote was kind of helpful, right. It converted all of these images to this
05:14sRGB color space, black and white and a subtle Curves adjustment.
05:18All right, well as you can see, you can use actions and also batch processing
05:23of your files based on actions to really speed up your workflow and in this
05:27case what it's done is it has spread up our workflow so far in regards to
05:30converting to black and white.
05:32But now I have all these Photoshop documents. They are not resized. They are
05:36pretty huge. I just want these to be 4x6 and take a look at how big they are.
05:39So how then can I speed up the process of resizing all these files, so that I
05:43can then send these black and white images to the lab so that they can printed.
05:47Well we will talk about how we can do that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
The image processor
00:00In this movie, we will take a look at how we can use the image processor to
00:03speed up our workflow even more. On the previous movie, we converted a bunch of
00:07images to black and white, sRGB color space, and added a little bit of Curves
00:11adjustment. Those are all Photoshop documents.
00:13So I'm going to click over in my Filter panel and I'm going to filter based on
00:17the Photoshop document so that I'm just seeing these black and white images and
00:20I'll scroll trough these to make sure that these are all the images that I want
00:23to print. And these are some pretty fun photographs and here is a photo tip for you.
00:27If you want to create a dynamic photo, get people to move, to walk, to do
00:31something, to go across the street, to get out of a typical scenario and you
00:34can come up with some pretty interesting expressions. I always like to keep
00:37people moving when I'm creating photographs because it has potential to bring
00:41so much life to a photograph.
00:42All right, well now that we have all these photos, let's go ahead and click on
00:45the first one, hold down the Shift key, click on the last one, navigate to our
00:48Tools pulldown menu, choose Photoshop and then Image Processor. Now the nice
00:53thing about Image Processor is that it runs incredibly well, incredibly fast
00:57and here I'm going to select the images to process, the ones I have already
01:00selected in Bridge. That's why I already selected them.
01:03Where do I want to save those? Well, I'll just save them in the same location
01:06and in this case, I'm going to save these out as JPEGs. Do I need to convert
01:10the profile, the sRGB? No, I don't need to do that. Although if I hadn't
01:14created that action and batch processed those, I would need to do that. My
01:18quality goes from 0 to 12. Now, I'm going to print these at about 4x6.
01:22So I can go ahead and take this quality all the way up or if I want to decrease
01:26my upload time, if I'm going to upload them to a digital printing service, I
01:30may want to take this down a bit. I find with a quality of 10, the images will
01:34still look really nice. Next, I'm going to turn Save As TIF off. I don't want
01:38to do that, I do want to resize these JPEGs here. Now what size am I going for?
01:42Well, I'm going to print these out at 4x6. So what we can do is let's say we
01:45are going to print them at 300 pixels per inch. Well, 300 times 4 is 1,200. So
01:49I'm going to go ahead and enter in 1, 200 here, 300 times 6 is 1,800. So I'm
01:54going to resize these to something along those lines. 1800X1200 or if I want a
01:59little bit more space, I could crank this up a couple of hundred pixels as well.
02:03Now why would you want to crank these up a little bit? Now sometimes what
02:06happens is based on the particular type of camera that you are using, you may
02:10have a three quarter size chip or you may not have exactly a 4x6 ratio. So
02:14there may be some cropping that happens. So in that case, you may want a little
02:17bit extra flexibility.
02:19Okay, well I now have my file type, I have some preferences down below, I could
02:23run an action here if I wanted to. Now I don't want to run an action because I
02:27have already done that, but just to illustrate what I could do is click around
02:31action, I can choose that wedding action that I had done before. So I actually
02:34could have done all of these different steps in one place with Image Processor.
02:38But again, I have already done that so I don't need to do that there, I'm going
02:41to add my copyright. I'll include the ICC profile as well and then all that I
02:46need to do is click Run, here is where I kick back and watch while Photoshop
02:50does all of it's magic. It is now completed out process. I'll go back to the
02:54Adobe Bridge and in this resize folder, there is now a subfolder titled JPEG
03:00and here you can see I have those JPEGs that have been resized, nice small file
03:03size as well and what I'm going to do is just open one of these up so I can see
03:07if the file size and the quality actually looks good.
03:10So I'll double-click this file, it will open it up in Photoshop use the
03:13embedded profile because I'm going for that sRGB color space, double-click the
03:17Zoom tool to take the image to 100%. Press F to go to Full Screen View mode.
03:21Press F again to go all the way to Full Screen View mode. This way I can pane
03:25across the image and again I'm just trying to evaluate this image, making sure
03:29the detail looks good.
03:30I want to get one last look at this before I actually send this to the printer
03:33and you know what? This one is looking pretty nice so I can go ahead and press
03:37Command+W on a Mac, Ctrl+W on a PC to close the file. These images are now
03:41ready for me to upload them to a photo services site where I can have these
03:45files printed.
03:46And then closing, there is one last thing that I want to say here. In these
03:49last couple of movies, I have gone through a particular and specific workflow
03:53in regards to batch processing and actions and easing the Image Processor. Well
03:57I have done that, keep in mind that you can use these different techniques in
04:01the concepts that you have learned here in order to do a whole wide range of things.
04:06So as you will be getting to create more and more prints, if you ever find
04:09yourself repeating a process or needing to speed up your process, use the
04:13concepts and techniques that you have learned here in order to accomplish what
04:16you need to accomplish in your own particular workflow.
Collapse this transcript
11. Bonus Chapter: Going to Press
Overview and intro
00:00In this movie, I want to introduce the concept of going to press. As a
00:04photographer eventually, you are going to need to create a file and convert it
00:07to CMYK in order to have a professional printing press print that document for
00:11you or on the other hand, you may be sending a file to a client and this
00:14particular file will be printed in a magazine. In that case, you are also going
00:17to need to convert that image to CMYK.
00:20So what we are going to do is talk a little bit about going to press and in
00:23this movie, I just want to introduce the topic. Now as I previously mentioned,
00:26I'm on the photography faculty at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California.
00:30There is this really rewarding class there. It's called Digital Color Workflow.
00:34Now I don't actually teach that class but it's a phenomenal class. One of the
00:37things that students get to do is they learn a ton about Photoshop, also about
00:41CMYK. At the end of the class, they learn how to convert their files to CMYK
00:45and prepare them properly and actually get a free promo card out of the deal.
00:48They get 500 promo cards printed on a professional press. These are all printed
00:52at a local printing press named, Ventura Printing, they do a phenomenal job.
00:56Well, anyway I have this document here, which is a template, which is the file
01:00we get from Ventura Printing, but I have included a little note here which
01:03says, "This template has been resized ." Let me show you what I mean. I'll go
01:07ahead and open up the Image Size dialog window and here you can see the
01:10Resolution is a mere 100 pixels per inch.
01:13So I have sized this template down, so that I could, of course, include it with
01:15the train. Otherwise, the file size would just be too big. It wouldn't really
01:18be worth it. So we just keep that in mind while working with a sized down file.
01:22Yet that being said, the rest of the process will be identical to what we would
01:26do if we had the full resolution file.
01:28So if you are actually going to go to press, you would want to have your
01:30correct resolution. We have talked a little bit about file size and resolution
01:33previously. So I'm not going to go there now but just know that we are working
01:36on a file that's been sized down in order to speed up how we conceptually talk
01:40about going to press.
01:41All right. Well, the next thing that I need to point out is that we have these
01:44guides. These guides are showing me something actually kind of important. Well,
01:48what are they all about? Well, first we need to know how to toggle those guides
01:51on and off. If you go ahead and press Command+Semicolon on a Mac or
01:55Ctrl+Semicolon on a PC, you can toggle the visibility of those guides on and off.
01:59When we turn those guides off, you will notice that there are some crop marks.
02:03Now what's to do with the crop marks? We actually need to submit this
02:06particular promo card with these crop marks turned on. Now before we actually
02:10get to the crop marks, I should also point out -- if we go back to Image >
02:13Image Size, this is a promo card that's been setup to finally be a 5x7 print.
02:18Now it's a little bit larger than that, and why?
02:20Well, it's a little bit larger because we need some extra space. Let's turn the
02:25guides back on because let's say this is where it's going to be cropped, right
02:28there. Well, if that's right where it's going to be cropped, we actually need
02:31to extend our image beyond that, if we want a full bleed image, because it's
02:35not always going to crop exactly on that line. You know how printing presses
02:39work. There is a little bit of a shift when they are going to the press because
02:42it's a pretty high-speed process.
02:44So again, these crop marks are saying, hey, you want to design your promo card
02:48to this edge here. Although if you are going to do a full bleed, you are going
02:52to need to extend the image beyond the second crop mark or the second guide
02:56right here. So again, those crop marks and guides give me a little bit of help
03:00in that process. Let me show you what I mean a little bit more specifically.
03:03I will go ahead and create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer icon and
03:07then I'm just going to create a simple shape here. It's just going to be a
03:10shape that's black. Okay, well, let's say that this is my photograph here and I
03:14want this on the promo card. Well, if I wanted it to be inside of those crop
03:18areas, I would then click to move it. I'm just using the Arrow keys now.
03:22I'm nudging it around making sure it's inside of this crop line and also this crop line here.
03:26So it is inside those. So that photograph won't be cropped in any way, shape or
03:30form. Although, the one thing that's kind of tricky is the border around this
03:34may not be exactly equal, again because as the paper is going to the press,
03:39there may be a little bit of a shift. But this is pretty good, but let's say on
03:43the other hand, all of a sudden I decide, I want an image that is just a full
03:47bleed. I want it to go everywhere. So here is my photograph.
03:50Well, in this case what I need to make sure I do is that this image extends
03:54beyond the crop mark and beyond the second guide as well. For that matter, it
03:58would be a good idea to have it go even further. Now this gets a little tricky
04:02because you are saying, well, let's say I want to have a particular crop on an
04:05image. Well, when you go to full bleed, you are going to have to give a little
04:09bit of your composition away. What I mean by that is you have to extend the
04:12image beyond the original crop line.
04:15Now do you have to go as far as I have gone here? No, I just want to go as far
04:18as that second guide in order to make sure that it will be a nice clean crop,
04:23but yeah, you are going to lose a little bit of the image. Well, I'll delete
04:25that layer because I just had that in order to illustrate what we want to do
04:28with the file.
04:29Well, now that I have gone over a brief introduction of going to press and of
04:33using this particular document, let's go ahead and begin to build our promo card.
04:37Then we'll go through the different steps that we need to take in order to
04:41ensure that we have a beautiful print that comes off of that printing press.
Collapse this transcript
Using a promo card template
00:00So now that I have introduced the topic of going to press, let's navigate over
00:03to the Layers panel. Here you can see we have two different options. I have one
00:07promo card here that I have printed before which is a grid - horizontal.
00:11In order to really be able to evaluate this, we are going to need to navigate to
00:14Image > Image Rotation > 90 degrees Counter Clockwise. Here we can see that
00:19promo card is made up of a bunch of small images.
00:22Now we have already talked about how to create layouts like this. So I'm not
00:25going to go into the layout aspect of this but just to say hey, this could be
00:28one promo card option, we have copy down below. Here you can see I have
00:32chrisorwig.com. Then something that says life is a sojourn, live well, go for it.
00:38The copy is really small and in these two promo cards that I'm going to
00:42show you, the typography is really, really small. Now is that typical for promo cards?
00:46No, nothing is really typical when it comes to how you create your promo card,
00:51but this is just a way to give you an idea of some different promo cards that I've created.
00:54All right. Well, let's go ahead and turn on wave riders - vertical. Now in
00:58order to view that one, we are going to need to navigate to Image > Image
01:01Rotation and then 90 degrees Clockwise. Well, here we can see I have this
01:05portrait of Jack O'Neill at his house in Santa Cruz, California. If you are
01:09not familiar with Jack, Jack is the inventor of the wetsuit. He is also the man
01:14behind the surf brand, O'Neill. He is an amazing person and yes, the eyepatch
01:19that he is wearing is made out of wetsuit material. A really interesting guy,
01:23fascinating character!
01:25Well, let's say that we decide we want to print this promo card or the other
01:28one for that matter, but let's just stick with this one so that we can at least
01:31choose something. One of the things that I want to do is zoom in a little bit.
01:34I want to just make sure that my image is falling inside of the crop marks.
01:38Yes, it is. Well, that's nice and it falls hopefully inside of that. Now my
01:41copy, I want to be really careful with this copy. I'll go ahead and select that
01:45for a moment by right clicking or Ctrl -clicking and then choosing that type layer.
01:49Now if I move this down, even down here, there is a chance that that will get
01:53chopped off. Again, keep in mind that although this is the crop mark, it's not
01:56a hard-and-fast crop mark, meaning the paper can't shift or move in while it's
02:01being printed. So I need to have a little bit of breathing room, right? So I'm
02:04going to move that up a touch so I have nice amount of space here.
02:07Now this edge, I don't have quite as much space. Yet if this is cropped a
02:10little bit, I'm fine with that. That would look just fine. Now up top, you will
02:13notice that I do have some of the image that's extending beyond this initial
02:16crop mark. So this particular part of the edge is going to get cut off, but I'm
02:20fine with that. I think that will look kind of neat. In addition, you are
02:23noticing that I have extended the image beyond that crop, so that what will be
02:27cropped off will be a nice clean crop.
02:30Well, that looks good. The image is now in the correct position and we are set
02:34and ready to go. The next thing that we need to do is we need to convert this
02:37to the CMYK color space. We are going to do that with a particular profile that
02:42was given to us by Ventura Printing. We'll do all of that in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Converting to CMYK
00:00In this movie, I want to begin to talk about converting this file to the CMYK color space.
00:04Now currently this particular document is in the Adobe RGB 1998 color space.
00:09So what I'm going to do is zoom in a little bit by pressing Command+Plus on a Mac,
00:12Ctrl+Plus on a PC. Next, I'm going to open up the Info palette by pressing
00:16the F8 key. I'll click and drag this out of the panel group there and then I'll
00:20close that group because I don't need it but I do need the Info palette visible.
00:24Now I want to try to find my brightest and my darkest point and just make sure
00:28that those numbers are in a good spot. So I'm going to go ahead and click on
00:31the Adjustment Layer icon and select Threshold. Now I'm just going to use this
00:35Threshold control and find my darkest points. There is a nice deep tone up there,
00:39grab the Eyedropper tool, hold down the Shift key, Sample Size something
00:42other than Point Sample. 5 by 5 Average will work fine. Shift-click to set a
00:46point there and then click and drag to the right to find the brightest point.
00:49So we have some nice bright values over here.
00:52Shift-click to set a point there. There we have the RGB values for those two
00:56points. Now let's delete this adjustment layer by pressing the Delete key.
01:00That's gone. Well, we're going to click on the eyedropper and we're going to
01:03change this to HSB, Hue, Saturation and Brightness. We're going to pay attention
01:08to that B value, the brightness value there. We'll change both points here.
01:12What we're looking for is a brightness value that fits within our range. Now
01:16typically, what we want to have for our deepest blacks is somewhere around 5%.
01:20Here you can see my brightness value for the blacks is 5, the brightness value
01:23for my whites is 95. So I'm in pretty good place, right? I have good white
01:27with detail. I also have good black with detail.
01:30Now if I don't have good white and black with detail, what I could do is use
01:33Curves to make adjustments in order to correct that, to bring out a little bit
01:37more of the tones. Also, as a side note keep in mind that while this image is
01:41a little bit dark, it's probably going to become just a touch brighter once
01:45I've converted this to CMYK. Well, my numbers are in a good shape. I'm going to
01:49go ahead and close this Info palette for now. Next what I'm going to do is
01:53navigate to Edit and choose Color Settings.
01:56Now in my Color Settings dialog, I need to change my CMYK values. Now if I were
02:01just going to convert this to CMYK and I were sending this photograph to a
02:04magazine that said, "hey! Can you please give me your photographs in the CMYK
02:08color space?" I would choose this option, which is U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
02:11and that would work really well.
02:14On the other hand, let's say that this particular photograph was going to be in
02:17brochure, which was a little bit more of a high-end brochure, and it was a
02:20sheetfed, meaning it was printed one sheet at a time. In that case, I would
02:24choose U.S. Sheetfed Coated v2. But I'm not going to choose either of those
02:28options. What I'm going to do is load a profile that was given to me from the
02:33printing press. So go ahead and navigate to Load CMYK.
02:37Now when I go to this Load CMYK option, I'm going to navigate to my
02:40exercise_files folder and I'll select the Chapter 11 folder. Then here is the
02:45CMYK profile that they've given us to use when we're printing with their
02:49printing press. So go ahead and load that. There you can see it's now loaded in
02:53to the CMYK value here.
02:55Now this is really important that I have this value loaded into this particular
02:58point. On the other hand, one of the things that I could do, if I don't have
03:02this particular profile, is I could go back to Custom CMYK. This will open up
03:07the Custom CMYK dialog. Now I could then go through and follow the numbers that
03:11they've given me in order to create a good print.
03:14In this case, I'm going to give it a name, something like Ventura Printing
03:18Press or something along those lines. Ink Colors, SWOP (Coated); Standard,
03:21my Dot Gain for the particular type of paper; and the printing press I'll be doing
03:25is 16%. Then I'm going to go to my Gray Color Removal; my Black
03:30Generation, Medium; my Black Ink Limit is going to be 95%; the Total Ink Limit
03:35is going to be 350%.
03:37Now you may be thinking, "Okay Chris, I've no idea what you're talking about here."
03:40Well, all that I'm doing here is entering in the values that, let's say,
03:44that Ventura Printing Press gave me in order to create a good CMYK conversion.
03:49Now I don't actually need to do this, yet I wanted to show you this technique
03:53because there are other ways that you can create these custom CMYK conversions.
03:57So in this case we would dial in the values that they've given us from the
04:01printing press.
04:02Well, as I mentioned, I don't need to do this yet I thought that would be kind
04:05of helpful to show you that, in case at one point you may need to enter in
04:08those values. From my own experience, the first time I see a dialog I'm like,
04:11"Oh no! What if I mess up?" But now simply by walking through this and showing
04:15you how you may modify this, it's actually quite easy, right?
04:18Well, let's click Cancel because we don't need to use that, but what we do want
04:22to use is this particular profile that was provided to us from Ventura Printing
04:26or from whatever printing press you're printing to. Well, go ahead and click
04:29OK. Now what's happened? Absolutely nothing. We've just set that up as the way
04:34that we want to create the CMYK file.
04:36Now what we need to do is navigate to our Image pulldown menu, choose Mode and
04:40then CMYK Color. It's going to convert this image to the CMYK color space based
04:46on the color setting that we just set up in that previous step. So I'll go
04:49ahead and choose Image > Mode > CMYK Color. We don't want to flatten this file,
04:53so I'll select Don't Flatten. It says you're about to convert it using this profile.
04:57This is what I want to do, so I'll go ahead and click OK.
05:00It's going to then convert that.
05:02Now if I press Command+Z on a Mac, Ctrl+ Z on a PC, I'm going to see the before
05:06and after. So I'll zoom in a little bit so you can see some of that detail here.
05:09Here is before, this was the RGB file. Here is the CMYK file. So one of
05:15the things you're noticing is, as I mentioned, that CMYK file is a little bit
05:18brighter. Now I think that's going to look just fine. If I didn't think that
05:22was going to look good, what I would want to do is open up a Curves dialog and
05:25then make some modifications in order to get the image to look as I wanted it.
05:29Yet in this case, I think it looks fine.
05:31Now the last thing that I want to do here is reopen the Info palette.
05:34I'll do that by pressing the F8 key. Now, in the Info palette, I'm going to change my
05:38main eyedropper, which is this one here, to Total Ink. Now when I hover over
05:42the image, it's going to give me the total amount of ink underneath my eyedropper.
05:46Now this is really important because we want to make sure that we don't have
05:49too much ink that's going to be set down on this promo card, because if we have
05:53too much ink, 1) this thing will never dry, and then 2) we'll start to have
05:56some color problems and whatnot.
05:58So when I hover over my darkest black, I'm looking at that number, which is
06:02somewhere for this particular printing press between 320 and 350, no higher
06:06than 350. So in this case it's sitting right around to about 320, 330 or so.
06:10That's going to be fine. I'm just going to hover around some of these dark
06:13points, just making sure that I don't have too much ink that's going to be set
06:17down on this particular promo card.
06:19So as I hover over the image and especially over these dark points here in the
06:23photograph, I'm saying you know what? I'm in good shape, this file looks great,
06:27it's ready to be sent to the press. So I press the F8 key to hide the Info palette for a moment.
06:31Zoom out just to double-check everything to make sure I'm in good shape.
06:34I would then save this file out, so I'll go ahead and press
06:37Shift+Command+S. I'm going to save this out, corwig_promo_cmyk.
06:43I want to name it cmyk just to alert myself to say this is the actual file that
06:48I want to send to press. I'll go ahead and click Save to save that file out.
06:53Now my final step is going to be to flatten the image. So I'll navigate to
06:56Layer and then choose Flatten Image. I'll go ahead and discard those hidden
07:01layers, sure? Click OK. Now I have a flatten document. Finally, save that.
07:06So now we're ready to deliver this file and we can do that simply by uploading
07:10it to the printing press' site. Then we will wait expectantly for these promo
07:15cards to show up in the mail. Just as a side note, if you haven't created a
07:18promo card, maybe now is the time to do so.
07:21Experiment with this process. There is something quite fun about having a stack
07:25of freshly printed promo cards. Mostly because it's neat to see your images in
07:29print this way and even more, it can help you get work doing more of the type
07:33of photography that you enjoy.
Collapse this transcript
Field trip to a printing press
00:00Hey! Welcome. Chris Orwig here. Here we are at V3 Data, Print, and Mail
00:05and what we're going to do is we're going to take a field trip. We are going to head
00:07on in to the printing press and there is something that's so wonderful about
00:10doing this, because we captured our image, we worked in Photoshop and here we
00:13are then going to see the whole process.
00:14One of the things that's fascinating to me about going through that process is
00:18that we are going to create 500 promo cards. And if you are going to create 500
00:22promo cards, they better be pretty good, and because are committing this time
00:26and energy and effort and going through this whole process, it will kind of
00:30sharpen our overall photographic skills and even more it will formalize a few
00:34thoughts for us. And that's a lot of time what happens is when you go to press
00:38and that's one of the reasons I recommend you experiment with this, because
00:41again you are committing to something in a little bit different way.
00:44A lot of times when you have a higher level of commitment, it kind of requires
00:47that you step things up a little bit, that you get a little bit more involved
00:51and by getting involved in that process, a lot times the end results
00:55are so much better.
00:56All right, let's go ahead and head on into the press. I look forward to walking
01:00around the press with you and having this little "field trip"
01:03as we check out the process of creating a promo card.
01:08Hey, here we are inside of the printing press. You can see that the tour is
01:11taking place back there. What we are going to do is stray away from the actual tour.
01:15We are going to take a little bit of our own behind the scenes tour so we
01:18can see how this whole printing press process actually works. Let's go.
01:24All right, come on. As you can tell the printing press is a very active place
01:30and it's really noisy in here. So what I want to do is talk a little bit about what we're doing.
01:39And I want to talk about that as we walk through the printing press.
01:41Well, here we are right on top of the printing press and one of the things
01:46that's interesting to me about printing is we talk a lot about CMYK
01:49conversion and a lot of times that's strange. Well, what exactly is CMYK?
01:54But then when we actually look at the color, we have our Cyan, our Magenta, our Yellow,
01:57and our Black. You realize all it is, is kind of like painting or when you were kid and
02:02you worked with your different paint colors. You combine different ones
02:04together in order to create new colors. And that's the same thing that's going
02:08to happen here on our press. We are going to take all of these different
02:11colors, combine them together to create our final full colored promo card.
02:21Here we are right in the midst of the printing press and yes, it is noisy but
02:25also it's fascinating. You can see these different colors here. We have the Yellow,
02:29some of the Magenta, the Cyan, the Black behind us. What's going to happen is the
02:34printer is going to run through these three different colors and plus that
02:37black, and then we are going to create this final beautiful photographic print.
02:41All right, here we have the location where they are going to create some test prints.
02:45The fascinating thing about this is what they are going to do is create
02:48these test prints and then measure the color, measure the CMYK values, they are
02:51also going to get into the fine details of these prints and just make sure this
02:55is looking good. What they want to do is make sure that this looks perfect
02:59before they actually do the press run and so they have this neutral light
03:02environment and it's a great way to evaluate things.
03:04A lot of times what happens is you come to this location in order to do a press check,
03:09in order to say you know what, does my promo card look good?
03:11And here's the promo card that we created. And as I look at that I say hey, you know what?
03:15That looks great. The color and tones look really nice. I can't wait
03:18to see how the final promo card actually turns out.
03:23All of these inks are vegetable based. They are either soy or linseed and
03:27the nice thing about that is all the paper is actually recycled. So these are just
03:30the make-readys or the test prints. So what's going to happen with these is
03:33we are going to measure the color. Make sure everything is looking perfect and these look great.
03:38Then we are going to toss them into the recycling bin and
03:40again that's a nice aspect of printing.
03:42A lot of times you think, where does all of this stuff go? Well, everything
03:45that's used in this process in this case is really environmental, which is a
03:49nice touch, and it kind of makes the overall process a little bit better.
03:53It's so fun to take a field trip and get out of the classroom and here we are
03:57at the press and there are a number of other Brooks' faculty members here and
04:01I thought it would be kind of fun to have some of them step in front of the
04:03camera just in order so that it feels like hey, you are coming along with us to
04:06the press. The first guy you are going to hear from is Anacleto Rapping.
04:09Now, Anacleto Rapping was Los Angeles Times staff photographer for years and years.
04:13The guy is a legend. His photography is amazing.
04:17Anacleto Rapping >> It's really quite amazing to see all the color being
04:21printed on this high, glossy, stock, wonderful reproduction.
04:27A lot of us are used to just printing out of a small Inkjet printer or a large Inkjet printer
04:32and we think, ah! I've got a great print. But to make 80,000 copies of
04:37something and to watch that go through is quite amazing. These presses run so
04:42quickly. They can print 700 copies in probably 10-15 minutes. It's absolutely
04:48beautiful to see the finished product.
04:59Chris Orwig >> The next person you are going to hear from is Greg Voight. Greg Voight, again
05:02is just one of those amazing people. He is v ery talented teacher and commercial photographer.
05:08Greg Voight >> My background is in commercial photography, primarily
05:11products, advertising, those types of things, catalogs and today we are into
05:15Ventura Printing and this is the end product of most of your clients. It's not
05:21going to be websites always. It's going to be something printed on paper that's
05:25going to be sent out or put into a magazine or something like that. So you have
05:29to understand the printing process really well.
05:31What you see on your monitor may not be what you get in the final press. So,
05:35learn color management, learn it well, because the quality of your work is
05:39solely dependent on whether or not you understand this process or not.
05:44Chris Orwig >> One of the things that's fascinating is what happens is these aluminum plates
05:48are created. Check this out. This is aluminum and here we can see that we have
05:52the magenta plate and this plate is used combination with the other plates in
05:57order to create the final photographic print. The nice thing about these is
06:01because they are aluminum you can recycle these and use these again and again.
06:08So after those big sheets come out of printing press what happens is they go to
06:12the cutting area and in the cutting area they trim off all the excess edges and
06:16it's really quite fascinating and of course all of this can be recycled which
06:20is really nice. And it's just kind of an interesting visual of the one of the
06:23final steps there.
06:25The nice thing about those cards being cut is that once they are cut you have
06:28them in hand. Now ours haven't been cut yet. I can't wait to see how they
06:32actually turn out.
06:33Oh yeah! Right there.
06:37One of the things that's so fun about
06:39going to a press is that you get to see the final result and here I have some of
06:42the promo cards that were created and there is the promo card that we worked on there.
06:46It's just fun to hold it in your hand and watch is go through this whole
06:49process and as I was watching around the warehouse, I happened to notice that
06:54there are some other interesting pieces being printed here. These are lynda.com
06:58gift cards and I was like hmmm, $25 value. I might need to grab a couple of sheets of
07:02these for myself. But I just thought it was fun. And it's interesting to see
07:06what actually gets printed at a press and really, that just happened to be here.
07:09And it's interesting to see these different things and to see them before they
07:13are all cut and cropped in and even the promo cards. What it gets me thinking
07:17about is the value of the process. As a creative individual there is so much
07:22value to the overall process. A lot of times what happens is we just focus on
07:26shooting or maybe we just focus on Photoshop, but in that case we are missing
07:30half of the enjoyment of photography, of completing that by going to print
07:35and then somehow finalizing the print.
07:37Maybe it's at a press or maybe it's simply by framing a photograph, but either way
07:41there is something incredibly invigorating about delving into the process,
07:45the creative process of photography and of creating that final print.
07:49All right, well this concludes our tour of Ventura Printing or as it's called
07:54now V3. Now here is what you need to do. You need to go to press. I hope that
07:59this video has provided you a bit of inspiration and it has helped you
08:02demystify those processes of going to press. Now I was just talking with the
08:06guys at V3 and they said if you mentioned that you are coming to them by way
08:09of lynda.com, they will give you a free consultation.
08:12Now either way go to V3 or go to another printing press, but what you want to
08:15do is begin to establish a relationship with a printing press, so that you can
08:20talk through the different issues, maybe it's for your client or yourself.
08:22What paper do you use? How do you actually deliver this particular marketing piece
08:26that you are creating? Or what are some different considerations that I need to
08:29think about before going to press? Because one of the things that you will soon
08:33discover is that going to press is an incredibly rewarding process.
08:38Well, thanks for joining me for joining me on this field trip. I look forward
08:40to catching you in the next movie.
Collapse this transcript
Conclusion
Resource sites
00:00 In this brief movie, I want to share with you a few resource sites where you
00:03 can some more information about Photoshop and about printing.
00:06 The first site that I want to highlight is a small resource site that I have pulled together.
00:10 It's photoshopinfocus.com. If you navigate to this site
00:14 and then click on Photoshop Resources, it will take you to a page where you can
00:18 subscribe to a newsletter that I put out every couple of months. In that
00:21 newsletter, I include information about creativity, a little bit of inspiration,
00:25 some information about Photoshop and Lightroom. So if you want to subscribe to that,
00:29 go ahead and navigate to that page.
00:30 Another site that I want to highlight, I have actually pulled this one up
00:33 before but I just want to highlight it again here, is John Paul Caponigro's site.
00:36 Now John is a great photographer, he is also
00:39 really good at Photoshop. In addition, if you subscribe to his site, you can go
00:43 to the Downloads section and click on Technique. Here there are a number of
00:47 different things that you can download. In particular, if you click on the
00:50 section for Printing and you can see here that he has a wide range of resources
00:54 in regards to printing that will help you out in your printing workflow.
00:58 The next site that I want to highlight is www.photoshopnews.com.
01:01 This particular site is put together by Jeff Schewe. Jeff is a great guy. He really
01:05 knows this stuff. His book on Camera Raw is actually quite good. But on the
01:08 right hand side, the thing that I want to point out is he has a number of
01:11 really good links. There are so many good links here. If we scroll down,
01:15 we will see that he has a section on Digital Printing. Here you can find some
01:18 information that's loosely related to Photoshop and to printing and some of
01:22 those links may help you out.
01:23 The last site that I want to highlight is www.tv.adobe.com and you can go to
01:28 this particular location to find free movies on everything Adobe. So if you go
01:33 here and do a little search for Chris Orwig, you can find a handful of movies
01:36 that I have created that are on the site. You can also do a search, even
01:40 better, for printing and watch a free tutorial movie on printing.
01:43 So just one of the sites that you want to know about because again, there is
01:46 some great training on here and it's all free. Well, in closing, I hope that
01:50 these sites will help you out as you dig deeper into Photoshop and as you dig
01:55 deeper into the wonderful world of creating beautiful and stunning photographic prints.
02:00
Collapse this transcript
What's next
00:00At this juncture, you have made it through the training and you may be
00:02thinking, okay, what's next? How can I take my printing skills to the next level?
00:07Well, I thought would be helpful here is just to share with you a few ideas conceptually.
00:11Now the first idea is it may be helpful to take a workshop. There is nothing
00:15like a hands-on workshop to take your skills to the next level. There are a
00:19whole slew, a whole wide range of workshops and books and tutorials out there
00:23in regards to printing and here are few that you may be interested in.
00:26The first one is put together by the guys at Epson. It's called the Epson Print
00:30Academy. This particular workshop comes to Brooks Institute of Photography
00:34where I teach a couple of times a year and the people who put on this workshop
00:37are hands down amazing. It's a phenomenal workshop. I couldn't recommend it enough.
00:42Another place where you could go to find a workshop is at Santa Fe workshops.
00:46Now they have a whole slew, a whole wide range of workshops here. This is one
00:50that's put together by Jerry and it's called The Digital Print Making
00:53Intensive. Again, I have heard great things about things about this and Jerry
00:56is a great guy, a great instructor as well.
00:58Now another workshop, just to spice it up a little bit, is put together by the
01:02people of Pacific New Media. Actually it offers a couple of workshops here
01:05nothing on printing yet there are a few that you can find on printing. For
01:09example, on the particular calendar I'm looking at there is one that's coming
01:11out that's put together by George Lepp. Now George Lepp is a phenomenal nature
01:15photographer. Again, he is really good at printing and here be able to get some
01:19information from a successful pro photographer. He is one of the Canon
01:22Explorers of Light and also he focuses in on printing with the Canon printers.
01:27So what I'm trying to do here is not to say hey, these are the only workshops
01:31out there. But I'm just trying to get you to begin to think about how there are
01:35a wide range of options. For example, this particular workshop, it's a shorter
01:38workshop. It's relatively inexpensive. This one has a different price point and
01:42this one a different price point. This one travels all around, so it may be a
01:46little bit more accessible to you.
01:47Now you may be thinking, okay, hey Chris, that's really nice but I live outside
01:50of the States, what else can I do? Well, there are also some really good books
01:54out there and one particular book that I want to highlight by Tim Daly is
01:57called Printing with Adobe Photoshop CS4. That's a great book again. It digs
02:02into some of the issues that we have covered here and a little bit more that
02:05can help you get more out of printing.
02:07Now I don't necessarily get anything out of saying, hey, these workshops are
02:10great or this book is interesting. My point here isn't really say specifics
02:14like this particular thing is the best, but rather what I want to do is I want
02:18to ignite your passion for printing and I want to share with you some other
02:22ways of thinking about how you get even better at printing. But what I do want
02:26you to do is to ask yourself -- hey, what do I need to do in order to take my
02:30printing skills to next level? And do whatever it takes to create amazing
02:34prints, because one of the things that I think that you will find that I have
02:37discovered is that the better I get at printing the more enjoyable my overall
02:42photographic process actually is.
02:44All right, well I hope that those few ideas and resources will be helpful for you
02:47as you become better and better at printing.
Collapse this transcript
Goodbye
00:00 Hey! Welcome and congratulations on making it through this training title.
00:04 Now that you know about all of these different ways to create amazing prints,
00:08 what comes next? Well, really it's time to get back to shooting with whatever type
00:12 of camera you use. It's time to get back to taking those pictures and thinking
00:16 about that final print.
00:18 You know a lot of times what happens especially in digital capture is we just
00:21 get caught up in the experience of taking the picture. Now I love the
00:24 experience of taking pictures, but we also want to think about where is this
00:28 going to end up, what size, what type of paper, how I'm going to actually
00:31 create this final print?
00:32 Another thing that you want to start to begin to think about is how you can
00:36 share your prints with others. Ultimately, you create photographic prints for others, rights?
00:41 They're for yourself, but it's even more fun to give those away.
00:44 For example, this is a print that I just love. It was created by one of my good
00:47 friends Joe Kern and here we can see these little kids with these wooden
00:50 surfboards, fascinating. Well here is another print that I enjoy that was
00:53 given to me by one of my former students. It's a photograph of this old camera
00:57 and I love old cameras. There is something about that. It was such a nice and
01:00 thoughtful gift. Now it didn't take a lot of effort for that print to be
01:04 created, yet there is something that's so meaningful when you share your prints with others.
01:09 Now of course, there are other times when you want to sell your prints or
01:12 when you want to work more commercially in regards to printing. So keep in mind
01:16 that the whole goal of this is to create these final prints. Not so that the
01:19 print sit in a box, but rather so that you get those prints out there and also,
01:24 this whole training title was all about creating that final print so that you
01:28 can then get back to shooting and do more shooting and ultimately do more
01:31 printing. So that you can complete the entire photographic workflow from
01:35 capture all the way to output.
01:38 Well, it's been a distinct privilege and honor to partner with you in this
01:41 training adventure. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now!
01:45
Collapse this transcript


Suggested courses to watch next:

Photoshop CS4 for Photographers (14h 50m)
Chris Orwig

Photoshop CS4 Essential Training (7h 55m)
Jan Kabili



Are you sure you want to delete this bookmark?

cancel

Bookmark this Tutorial

Name

Description

{0} characters left

Tags

Separate tags with a space. Use quotes around multi-word tags. Suggested Tags:
loading
cancel

bookmark this course

{0} characters left Separate tags with a space. Use quotes around multi-word tags. Suggested Tags:
loading

Error:

go to playlists »

Create new playlist

name:
description:
save cancel

You must be a lynda.com member to watch this video.

Every course in the lynda.com library contains free videos that let you assess the quality of our tutorials before you subscribe—just click on the blue links to watch them. Become a member to access all 98,468 instructional videos.

start free trial learn more

If you are already an active lynda.com member, please log in to access the lynda.com library.

Get access to all lynda.com videos

You are currently signed into your admin account, which doesn't let you view lynda.com videos. For full access to the lynda.com library, log in through iplogin.lynda.com, or sign in through your organization's portal. You may also request a user account by calling 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or emailing us at cs@lynda.com.

Get access to all lynda.com videos

You are currently signed into your admin account, which doesn't let you view lynda.com videos. For full access to the lynda.com library, log in through iplogin.lynda.com, or sign in through your organization's portal. You may also request a user account by calling 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or emailing us at cs@lynda.com.

Access to lynda.com videos

Your organization has a limited access membership to the lynda.com library that allows access to only a specific, limited selection of courses.

You don't have access to this video.

You're logged in as an account administrator, but your membership is not active.

Contact a Training Solutions Advisor at 1 (888) 335-9632.

How to access this video.

If this course is one of your five classes, then your class currently isn't in session.

If you want to watch this video and it is not part of your class, upgrade your membership for unlimited access to the full library of 1,894 courses anytime, anywhere.

learn more upgrade

You can always watch the free content included in every course.

Questions? Call Customer Service at 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or email cs@lynda.com.

You don't have access to this video.

You're logged in as an account administrator, but your membership is no longer active. You can still access reports and account information.

To reactivate your account, contact a Training Solutions Advisor at 1 1 (888) 335-9632.

Need help accessing this video?

You can't access this video from your master administrator account.

Call Customer Service at 1 1 (888) 335-9632 or email cs@lynda.com for help accessing this video.


site feedback

Thanks for signing up.

We’ll send you a confirmation email shortly.


By signing up, you’ll receive about four emails per month, including

We’ll only use your email address to send you these mailings.

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses with emails from lynda.com.

By signing up, you’ll receive about four emails per month, including

We’ll only use your email address to send you these mailings.

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

   
submit Lightbox submit clicked