Fixing a Problem Photo

July 30, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
…by blurring the background, yet keeping the grain.
You can remove distracting detail from an image or focus attention on the subject by isolating the subject and keeping it in focus as you blur other parts of the picture. The Photoshop technique presented in this tip imitates the effect you get with a shortened depth of field, traditionally achieved by opening up the camera’s iris (setting the f-stop low). The blurring can be limited to the background, or, as shown here, the sharp subject can be sandwiched between blurred background and blurred foreground. In either case, you’ll need to make the blurred areas match the sharp ones by restoring the film grain or digital noise (the equivalent of film grain in an image captured with a digital camera) that was lost in the process of blurring.
Defining the Foreground
If you want to keep a foreground subject in focus while blurring only the background, it’s a good idea to make sure the foreground subject bleeds off the bottom of the picture, even if it means cropping the image. Otherwise, if the subject is standing on the ground, it can be very tricky to make the transition from the in-focus ground at the feet of the subject to the out-of-focus background.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, design, social media, marketing services. 318-868-3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

PHOTOSHOP – Resizing Multiple Layers

July 29, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
Here’s a real timesaving tip for Photoshop that enables you to resize objects or text on multiple layers all at the same time. Just link together the layers you want to resize, then press Command-T (Macintosh) or Control-T (Windows) to bring up the Free Transform bounding box. Hold the Shift key (to constrain proportions), then grab any of the bounding box handles and drag. As you drag, all of the linked layers will resize at the same time.
www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, design, social media, marketing services. 318-868-3351
Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Understanding Compound Paths

July 28, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
Illustrator lets you carve holes inside a path. You can then see through these holes to objects and colors that lie behind the path. A path with holes in it is called a compound path.
If you convert a letter such as B or O into outlines, the letter is automatically converted into a compound path.
To make a compound path, do the following:
  1. Draw two shapes. Make one smaller than the other. You can use any tool to draw either shape, and the paths can be open or closed.
  2. Select both shapes and choose Object>Compound Paths>Make. Where the two shapes overlap, the compound path is transparent. Where the shapes don’t overlap, the path is filled.
  3. Edit the individual shapes in the compound path with the direct selection tool.
After you combine two or more shapes into a compound path, select the entire path by clicking on it with the arrow tool. If you want to select a point or segment belonging to one of the subpaths — that’s the official name for the shapes inside a compound path — press Command-Shift-A (Mac) or Control-Shift-A (Windows) to deselect the path, and click an element with the direct selection tool. You can then manipulate points, segments, and control handles as usual.
At this point you might ask, “Why do you need a path with a hole in it? Why not just stick the smaller path in front of the bigger path and fill in the smaller path with the background color?”
Two reasons:
  • First, the background may contain lots of different colors. The “B” on the left is a proper compound path, allowing us to see through the holes to anything behind it.
  • Second, working with opaque paths limits your flexibility. Even if you can get away with filling an interior path with a flat color, you’ll have to change that color any time you change the background or move the objects against a new background. But with a compound path, you can move the object against any background without changing a thing. You can even add effects like drop shadows without modifying the compound path one iota. It’s flexibility at its finest.
Now, as we said, Illustrator automatically turns letters into compound paths. But you may want to create additional compound paths of your own. Doughnuts, ladders, eyeglasses, windows, and ski masks are just a few of the many items that lend themselves to compound paths.

www.ParagonPress.net  - #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, design, social media, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Graphics File Naming System

July 27, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
One of the least glamorous but potentially most time and frustration saving habits you can acquire is to adopt a good file naming system and then use it consistently. A good file naming system can save you hours of time when you are trying to find an image. This is particularly true if you tend to save several versions of a file.
A complete graphic file name should include: item name, color mode, resolution, and file format. An example would be Trees_CMYK_200.psd. This type of attention to detail in file naming, while perhaps a bit cumbersome, will make your file management and location chores much easier. In addition, it will make it easier to identify your graphic images.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, graphic design, social media, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Photoshop – Straightening a Crooked Photo

July 23, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
Let’s face it. We’re not all expert photographers. Occasionally, a photo comes out a little more crooked than we’d like. You probably already know how useful Photoshop’s crop tool can be for trimming undesired elements from your photos, but did you know you can use it to straighten a crooked image, as well? Here’s how:
1.Select the Crop tool from the tools palette.
2.Click and drag the cursor across the portion of the image you wish to use.
3.Move your mouse outside the selected area. The cursor will turn into a double-sided arrow, connected by a curved line.
4.Press and hold down the mouse button (left mouse button on the PC) and move your mouse. The selected area of the photo will rotate in whatever direction you move.
5.Once you’ve rotated the selection enough to make up for the photo’s crookedness, release the mouse.
6.Press Enter, or double-click inside the selected area. The image will be cropped accordingly and rotated to bring it straight.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, design, direct mail, social media, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Right on Spot

July 22, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
We love color, and we know you do, too. While budgets don’t always allow for four-color work, two-color printing projects don’t have to look drab or dull. Adobe InDesign allows you to define a whole range of swatches based on any two ink colors, providing you with the options you need to make your project look great. So how do you go about using this feature?
Here are the steps to take:
  1. Open the Swatches palate and bring up its flyout menu. (Click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner to do this.)
  2. Select New Color Swatch.
  3. Create a color swatch for each of the colors you will be using in your design. (Choose Spot from the Color Type menu.)
  4. Once both swatches are created, go to the Swatches flyout menu again, and select New Mixed Ink Group.
  5. Click in the gray boxes to the left of your two swatches.
  6. Give each color an initial value (we recommend starting with 0%), a repeat value (equal to the number of steps you’d like the program to take to reach 100%), and the increment you’d like the value to rise with each of those steps. Keep in mind that the final percentage cannot exceed 100%. That means if you start with 0% and choose a repeat value of 10, your increments would have to be 10% or less. Or, if you start with 0% and choose a repeat value of 4, your increments could go as high as 25%.
  7. Once you’ve set your values for both ink colors, hit Preview Swatches. A list of swatch colors using varying percentages of each ink will then appear. Use these in your layout to add variations of color without worrying about adding another color of ink to the project.

www. ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, design, social media, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Creating Photoshop “Actions”

July 21, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
So, you’ve used Photoshop for awhile now and are fairly adept at cropping, working with layers, changing colored photos to black-and-white and the like.
Have you ever had this happen? You tinkered around with a picture for awhile using Photoshop, and ended up with an image that was creative and different. The only problem is, you can’t remember how you arrived at that final look.
Actions
What you need to learn now is something called “Actions.” In Photoshop, an “Action” is a digitally written record of the steps you’ve taken to enhance or alter a photograph or image.
Some advantages to using Actions are:
  • you’ll save time and money
  • you can customize actions to fit certain workloads
  • you can share actions with others
  • you can make a hard copy of an Action you’ve developed, which can become a tutorial for you to use anytime
There is so much that can be done with Actions, it’s actually beyond the scope of what can be presented here. We’ll just touch on the basics.
To create an action, use the Actions palette.
The Actions palette is accessed one of two ways:
  • Use the menu command: select Windows > Actions or
  • Use the keyboard command: type Alt+F9 (Windows) or Opt+F9 (Mac)
This will open your Actions palette. The palette then becomes your best friend as you create a series of steps to alter a photo, make a record of those steps, save that record and then re-play those steps in the future to achieve the exact same effect with another photo.
Applying Actions to batches of photos
Not only can you alter an individual photo using Actions – you can alter large numbers of photos with Actions. And the beauty of it is, you don’t even have to be at your computer while this is happening.
To process a batch of images, first be sure that the action you want to use is loaded into the Actions palette. Then go to the Batch dialog box (File > Automate > Batch).
The Batch dialogue box contains four main areas:
Play. Choose the action you want to assign to the Batch command.
Source. Select the images or folders of images you want to alter.
Destination. Determine the destination for the images you’ll be processing.
Errors. Photoshop logs any errors that might occur during processing.
Some Action tips
Author Al Ward, Photoshop expert and self-proclaimed addict, suggests a few things to keep in mind as you set up your own actions.
  • Use as few displayed dialog boxes and stop messages as possible.
  • Establish color codes for your actions.
  • Keep the names of your actions as short and descriptive as possible.
  • Use keyboard shortcuts.
  • Save your actions frequently.
  • If you include a Save As command in an action that saves a file as a JPEG, be sure that the Save As Copy check box is checked in the Save As dialog box.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, design, social media, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Fine Tuning Typography

July 20, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
The fine line between ordinary and extraordinary design lies in the details. While great attention to detail is placed on layout, often overlooked in document creation is the text itself. In the days of yore, professional typographers would peer over the printing press to ensure that the typeset was truly a work of art. Typographers would, quite literally, make certain that the “i”s were dotted and the “t”s were crossed.
While Typographers in the print shop may have fallen to the wayside, typographers at digital foundries take special care to craft highly functional pieces of digital type that can truly sparkle in the right hands. However, unless you know where they have hidden their tools, your electronic documents may be missing their finery. In Quark Express 8, the ability to bring out the best of typography are just a few quick clicks away.
Working With Special Characters.
What you see on your keyboard is just the start of what lays hidden within many fonts. Bullets, accented characters, monetary symbols, and much more lurk just beneath the surface. Some special characters even include multiple shapes for you to chose from to bring out the best in your document. These special characters can be found in the Glyphs pallet of the Windows Menu.
To add a special character, open up the Glyphs pallet in the Window menu, and then scroll to locate the character you would like to use. Double-click the glyph and it will be placed in your document. If you have a few glyphs you find yourself favoring, you may wish to save them in the Favorite Glyphs area at the bottom of the Glyph Pallet by dragging and dropping them into the open boxes.
Creating Fractions
While you can easily create fractions using numbers and a slash, the results can lack the refinement that actual fractions lend to a document. For a more polished approach, you can utilize QuarkXpress’ built in functionality to give your fractions the detail they so highly deserve.
To create your fraction, simply highlight your text, and chose Style > Type Style > Make Fraction. This will convert those unsightly displays of 1/ 2 and 1/ 4 into more elegant ½ and ¼. Even complex fractions can be expressed with a more refined appearance with just a few quick clicks of the mouse.
Applying Ligatures
Often times, certain combinations of letters can cause your type to look a bit more shabby then it could. Notoriously, “fl”s and “fi”s can become crowded with some typefaces. Ligatures are special glyphs that represent a character pair, and can help remove the awkwardness to those type combinations. Fonts can easily be substituted with ligatures automatically in QuarkXpress if you know where to look. Simply click on Enable Ligatures in the Character tab of the Measurements pallet.
Typography may no longer be the first thing you think of in document creation. But thanks to QuarkXpress 8, your documents can still have the look of “hands on” craftsmanship like that of the typesetters of old. With a little attention to detail and a little knowledge of QuarkXpress’ powerful tools, you can bring back the fine art of typography to your documents.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, graphic design, social media, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing

Using Enriched Black Ink

July 19, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment
When we think of colors, we often think of many different shades of each primary color. Take blue for example… it can vary between colors such as baby blue, aqua, turquoise, teal, royal blue, or navy blue.
Many people would assume that the one exception to these color variations is black. After all, we think of black as being absolute darkness, and expect it to appear this way when printed on a document as well. However, black that is used in full-color (process) printing is transparent, like all process inks, and cannot cover ink or paper as thoroughly as you may like.
Although using an opaque black ink may seem like a simple solution, it would cause adverse reactions to other color or high-res images that contain black ink. Instead, the wise choice would be to add various “enriched” process blacks to your color menus. Their use should vary according to how and where the black is applied.
Here are two types of enriched blacks to consider using:
  • Rich black. Rich black combines process black with one other process ink (traditionally 100% black and 60% cyan), which causes the black to appear “blacker” because the second ink color increases its density. Use rich black whenever the edges of a black object are fully exposed, or when a black object straddles other image information. And remember, it’s only appropriate for objects that are at least a quarter-inch thick.
  • Super black. By combining three process undercolors (50% cyan, 50% magenta, and 50% yellow), you can create the deepest, most satisfying process black you can reproduce on-press. Use super black only when all the object edges are within other colors, or when they bleed off the edge of the page.
Note: Because computer monitors cannot accurately duplicate printed results, the graphic illustrating the use of enriched black is meant only to give an approximation of the end result.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for printing, direct mail, graphic design, marketing – 318-868-3351

Categories: Printing Tech, graphic design, printing

Clearer Carbonless Forms

July 16, 2010 Joan Romph Leave a comment

Did you know that carbonless paper ages? If you’ve ever used a carbonless form that doesn’t print very dark on the second or third sheets, the problem is most likely caused by old paper that contains dried-out micro ink capsules. You’d be interested to know that some of our competitors buy “old” carbonless paper on sale to lower their costs. We never do. We only purchase fresh carbonless paper!
Carbonless Form Production and Design Tips:
  1. Give yourself 1/2″ of white space at the top of any carbonless form. Occasionally, the padding compound that printers use will bleed down from the padding edge and cause the top 1/8″ of the paper to wrinkle slightly. White space makes it very hard to notice the wrinkling.
  2. Just because carbonless forms are practical doesn’t mean they have to be boring. Experiment with bold graphics to add pizzazz to your next project. In addition, two colors of ink can make a dramatic improvement in the appearance of carbonless forms, most of which are printed in black ink.
  3. Since many carbonless business forms are saved or filed for record keeping, why not consider designing the form so it includes three-hole drilling on the left side for those who want to archive their forms in three-ring binders?
  4. Consider shrink-wrapping the finished carbonless forms. They’ll look nicer and actually last longer.

www.ParagonPress.net – #1 in Shreveport, LA for FAST printing, direct mail, graphic design, marketing services – 318.868.3351

Categories: Printing Tech, printing