In a recent article about differentiating yourself as a photographer, I mentioned panorama prints, and how JD can print panoramas up to 30×72″ on regular or metallic paper.  What I didn’t mention was the process for creating panorama prints. Actually, the process is pretty easy, and you can create them for free.

So why should you create a panorama if you aren’t going to print it?

Although panorama-sized portraits can be an incredibly profitable sale, printing and framing a large studio sample is an investment. Instead of printing one to start, use the instructions below to create a panorama, then layer it on a wall image (like on the right) and feature it on your website and in your marketing materials. If you can show potential clients what you’re capable of producing, you’re more likely to make the sale.

How to Create a Panorama:

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Have you ever had an image that was cropped too tightly to print in two different formats? To help you out, Photoshop CS4 and CS5 have a tool called Content-Aware Scale.

Content-Aware Scale re-sizes an image by attempting to scale the background without changing the subject. While normal scaling affects all pixels uniformly when resizing an image, content-aware scaling mostly affects pixels in areas that don’t have important visual content. Using Content-Aware Scale, you can upscale or downscale images to improve a composition, fit a layout, or change the orientation.

In the example to the above, when I tried to apply a 5×7″ crop to the 8×10″ image, the crop lines were against the animal’s heads and feet. By using Content-Aware Scale instead, I was able to maintain a nice border around the image subject.

Here’s how I did it:

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We had a new client send us several questions in an email, and Heidi in customer service took the time to answer in writing. She did such a good job, we thought we would share her answers here:

Dear JD,

I’m just starting out and am new to this, so I have a few questions. How do I know if I need Color Correction service or not? I’m using Photoshop to edit my photos. Will that bother printing in anyway? Also, can I change the tones myself like B&W/Sepia instead of color, or do I need to use your system?

And lastly – pricing on wallets – how exactly does it work?

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If you create images with gradients, you’ve got to watch out for banding. Banding are stripes of colors that destroy the beauty of the gradient effect.

Typically, banding occurs in two cases: in natural gradients like a blue sky, or in large prints that have gradients added as a layer in Photoshop.

Banding has been a problem for printers for years — Short gradients are usually okay because they don’t cover long expanses of surface. Full page gradients present a challenge because from 0% to 100% of any given color generates fewer than 255 individual colors — banding can occur after the stretch goes over a few inches. If the two colors in the gradient are closer in spectrum (blue to light blue, for instance) then even fewer tones are generated.

Tips for avoiding banding:

1. Add noise. This is the standard solution printers have recommended for years. Create a new Gradient Layer in Photoshop, then select the layer, and from the Filter menu, choose “Add Noise.” Set the amount to 2%, select Gaussian Distribution, click the Monochromatic check box, then click OK. For non-rectangular areas like sky, select the sky only – not the entire image – create a new layer, then apply the Noise filter.

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Your next PC or Mac should be a 64-bit model. If your computer is more than a few years old, it is probably a 32-bit model, and it is probably time to upgrade.

Why?

32 bit and 64 bit refer to the size of the packets of data a modern computer communicates with. Think of it like a language with only 5 letters in the alphabet compared to a language with 26 different letters. 64 bit computers aren’t just twice as powerful – they are exponentially more powerful than their 32 bit counterparts.

Most modern software programs like Photoshop CS5 are capable of running in native 64-bit on both Mac and Windows. This means Photoshop can address all the RAM you can afford (instead of just 4 GB). The results are speedier operations – in some cases, up to 10 times as fast. The bigger the file you’re working on, the bigger the difference.

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I hate upgrading computers and software. It is expensive, time consuming, and it is never as easy as you expect it to be. So typically I’ll wait until something goes wrong. Once my computer isn’t working, the pain of upgrading becomes less than the pain of spending the time and money to fix it.

However, I’m ready to upgrade Photoshop. Content-Aware Fill will be worth it.

For those of you not familiar with this feature in CS5, Content-Aware fill lets Photoshop analyze an image, and try to figure out how to remove the damaged or unwanted area you’ve selected from the background.

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Thom Rouse, an internationally known artist, will hold a 3-day workshop entitled “Fine Art Portraiture in Celebration of the Feminine Image” May 15-17 at Hicks Studio of Fenton (map). Cost for the workshop is $425 for 3 full days, and is limited to 12 participants.

Thom combines photography and advanced Photoshop techniques to create his fine art portraiture. Here’s a tutorial he recently posted in Professional Photographer Magazine and an article on Shutterbug.com that gives you an idea of the techniques you’ll learn in his class.

According to Thom, on the first day photographers will work with live models using concepts for “dressing, lighting and posing that celebrates the feminine image.” Then, on days two and three photographers will learn how to apply different fine art enhancements using Photoshop layers. By the end of the third day, “photographers will have a full set of layered images as a reference for applying the techniques to other images.”

If you are looking for a new portraiture style – or to enhance your current style – you owe it to yourself or your graphics artist to take this class.  The ability to create and display images like these on your website and in your studio will help you to justify premium prices for all your portraiture.

For more information or to register for this class, contact Thom Rouse at (815)761-1358 or thom@thomrouse.com. To see more examples of his work visit his website www.thomrouse.com

Give me a camera, and by the end of a day of shooting I’ll take several bad images. I mean really, really bad. Even after all the classes and time spent reading manuals I still, somehow, end up with a few real stinkers.

Unfortunately, some of these images mean a lot to me. I don’t want to throw them away, and I don’t want to send a single low-res image through ROES just for color correction. So I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to quickly get an image that looked bad on my monitor to look good on a print.

Then I discovered an easy Photoshop trick. Buried in the Curves window are three little eyedropper buttons that can fix the majority of density and color cast problems with an image. Here’s how to use them.

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We occasionally see images coming off the digital printing presses with cropping problems. If you grew up using film, you remember that everything was printed out to the edge.

However, images printed on digital presses (photo books, holiday cards, etc) are different. Friction rollers have to grab a bit of the edge of each piece of paper to pull it through the machine. To keep the rollers from gumming up, the edges don’t get printed. This means that every piece of paper that goes through the printer has a bit of white border on all four edges. To create a full-bleed print, we trim off these edges.

To account for trimming, here are three tips you should know:

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A couple of times a year a customer will call and say “my computer died. I installed ROES/LabPrints on my new PC, but how do I get my work back?”

There are actually three answers to this question: how to backup ROES, how to backup LabPrints, and how to backup your images.

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