DAVID SIMM’S QUICKIES

Quick Fixes 101... Simmply Speaking

PHOTOSHOP IS THE MOST INCREDIBLE PROGRAMME, it reminds me of an ice berg, the amount I have mastered is like the little bit of the ‘berg sticking out of the water, while the vast volume of unknown lurks beneath the waves. It is the little intuitive things that I really like and here is a quick fix that is related to an article I wrote a couple of years ago on dealing with recovery from under and over exposure situation. This one has both rolled into the one image.

As I was shooting a wedding reception, at an hotel that I been trying to establish a rapport with, suddenly the Catering Director came up to me and asked if I wouldn't mind shooting a quick picture of the patio behind the hotel. OK I thought, during the receiving line I'll sneak out and grab the shot. To save time I did a very un-Simm thing I took two shots at different exposure, one for the patio, the other for the sky, intending to combine them once back at base.

Opened in Photoshop the one image revealed that I had no need to bother with all that cut and paste to combine two images, I just got a better idea. I grabbed the thumbnail in the layers palette and dragged it to the create a new layer icon (next to trash can), I changes the opacity to multiply, see figure 2, then with the eraser I wiped out the ground and buildings from the new layer, effectively just darkening the only sky. I added a second layer of just the sky to darken it further without affecting the foreground. I then linked the layers and with Ctrl-E flattened them.

The sky is now beautifully detailed, but I would like to see more information in the foreground, I created a new layer in exactly the same way, drag the thumbnail clown to the new layer icon, but this time change the opacity to screen and this time I erase the sky from the new layer, just brightening the foreground, again drag the top layer to the new layer icon and immediately see a vast improvement, I linked the layers and with Ctrl-E flatted the image.

By Monday afternoon my prints were in the mail and ready to impress the director of catering, if that doesn't get us on the hotel's wedding referral list, nothing will. Although the middle of a wedding is not really a good time to be asked to do a commercial shoot, a lightening fast demonstration of skill was just what I needed to impress the iceberg of a catering director, now instead of just one or two weddings a year at this venue,we may be able to look forward to a sizeable share of the events they host. Moreover the whole Photoshop operation took only minutes... that's a quick fix!

Quick Fix 2

IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU THEY COULD GET THEIR BUSINESS CARD into the pockets of almost every guest at every wedding, you'd be hard pressed to believe it wouldn't you. As fantastic as that as that may sound, I do it with monotonous regularity and here's how.

At the final briefing for a wedding couple, just a few days before their big day, I shoot a simple close up picture by my log pile, bring it into the work room and show them immediately, impressed they certainly are and quite tickled at what is about to happen next. I add a sloppy border, shrink the image down to post card size and then increase the canvas size with a white background. We have a couple of stock phrases like, "Wanna See Our Pictures?" and, "See Us On The Internet", I ask them to choose one and start to make the business card.

As the couple sit there mesmerised, I use Photoshop's Automate>Picture Package to make nine 2.5” x.2.5" images on a ten by eight inch print and then run off sufficient quantities so that every family at the wedding can take at least one home with them.

Next I add my web address, the couple's names and a password along with the dates that the images from the wedding may be viewed.Distribution is guaranteed, often they are placed out by the place cards, other times they are on the dinning tables and very occasionally they have been sent out in the thank you cards by the bride and groom, but without fail, every family that attended the wedding go away with a card bearing my web address and a fair certainty that they will make at least one visit there, if only to see the proofs of the wedding.

This one very inexpensive studio promotion that goes a long way to impress all who come into contact with it, bands, florists, and caterers alike, but above all there have been times when a totally unrelated job came in just because someone at a wedding picked up one on those cards.

Cute Album page template

Creating templates to use as page backgrounds in a wedding album is one of the easiest Photoshop techniques you could ever pick, this is one of my favourites for it's simplicity and effectiveness at tying elements together as a pictorial paragraph like a picture story book.

First I start with a background image, it could be any of the artefacts from the wedding, bouquet, altar flowers, sweet table, wedding cake etc., in this case I took a close up of one part of the sweet table, you can just make out some strawberries around the edge with rose petals scattered among them. Using the cropping tool I size it at 250ppi to the full-page size, in this instance it is 10" square.

Since the background needs to be subdued we are going to alter the brightness and contrast to give the effect I'm looking for, so first “save as” (give it a page number or any other name and save as .PSD), now whatever happens the original file remains unscathed. Go to IMAGE> Adjustments> Brightness/ Contrast and adjust the sliders for both until you see the effect. Drag the thumbnail down to the new layer icon on the layers palette so now you have two identical low contrast thumbnails showing in the layers palette.

Open the primary images, as I have here (it is the cake cutting sequence) crop and size at 250ppi, they don't need to be exact, you could actually use the marquee to shape and crop the image and then bring it down to size with Edit> Free Transform (or ctrl T) and while holding down the shift key, drag one of the corner handles inwards until you get the approximate size you want. Repeat the process for all the other images that you wish to group together and line them up using the grid for accuracy.

If you now look at the layers palette, you will notice that you have five layers, two for the background and three of primary images, if you now wanted to do any work to all three primary images you could link the them and then bring them into a single layer with ctrl E, but that is by the way, what we want to do next is create the bevel around the group.

Select the rectangular marquee tool and make sure that feather is set to zero pixels, select layer background copy one and drag the marquee around you group of primary images adjust it left and right or up and down until it is just where you want the bevel to sit, now hit the delete key. You won't, at this stage see any difference but when you go to Layer> Layer Style>Bevel and Emboss and change only the size to 25pixels the effect will begin to manifest itself. Next go back the rectangular marquee tool and draw a second line around, perhaps 1/8th on an inch or just larger than the first, go to Select> Inverse (shift Ctrl I) and hit delete, it will now look like you have a perfect rectangular bubble all around the primary images, even though the whole background is the same tone, density and contrast.

That whole exercise took only a couple of minutes and time is money, so creating good looking album pages quickly is where your profit is going to be made, remember too, your clients' expectation are much more simple than a qualifications panel, you really don't have to work too hard to look really good in their eyes, so keep it simple and make money.

Simm

The SWPP 2008 Convention was an outstanding success,
we have 193 days to get ready for the 2009 convention - which starts on January 14, 2009

Photo Quote: One must always tell what one sees. Above all, which is more difficult, one must always see what one sees. - Charles Peguy