The most ridiculous color...EVER.

From a printing standpoint the color I am about hate forever is illustrated below. 

 Why will I hate it forever?  Well if you look closely at the color, it should be so similar you really couldn't tell the difference, but when you see the differences in the CMYK values (highlighted in yellow), you should instantly understand why I am about to hate it forever.   I didn't see that one side of a piece we were printing was created in color #1 and the other side was created in color #2.  On our proofing printer, the differences didn't show up, on our monitors the differences didn't show up.  So we never looked closely at the color breakdowns until it was on the press.  The Hex color is even just 1 letter different!  But the CMYK values are completely different.  One has no yellow in it what-so-ever and the other has a ton of yellow in it.  Who knew that two completely different colors in print would be so similar on screen and everywhere else!

InDesign Tips: Viewing a 2 page document in a facing spread

Step 1:  Open the Pages panel in InDesign so you can view the entire document spread. 

Step 2: Select the options drop down located in the upper right of the pages panel.

Step 3: Uncheck both options “Allow Document Pages to Shuffle” and “Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle”

Step 4: Click on the thumbnail for page 2 and drag it up to the left or right (whichever side you want to view it on) of page 1 until you see a black bar appear.  Drop the page and the pages will then be viewed side by side.  

30000 dpi?!

 I received a photo from a customer with the following settings:

Check out the resolution on it!  Have you ever seen such a thing? 

It brightened my day significantly.  I know... only a graphic geek would get a kick out of this!

A Study in Color Correction - Answer

Printing Mystery:

I received an art print to color correct for the press recently.  I took a full morning to adjust, print and re-adjust over and over again, until I had the press proof looking exactly like the oil painting that had been photographed to print from.  8 different color corrections later, I was ready to show my final version to the customer.  I moved the painting and the proof to our conference room, where I was to meet with the customer.  Once the press proof and the oil painting were compared to each other in the conference room, it was clear that my proof was not anywhere near the color of the original oil painting.  My proof matched the painting in one room but then appeared to be too green in another room.  Where was my mistake made?  Stay tuned for the nail biting conclusion to "A Study in Color Correction"!

My 2 followers: If you can figure out where I went wrong, please post a comment. You won't win a prize if you get it right, but you can live with the satisfaction of knowing that you were right.


Answer: The lights present in the room I was using to make the color adjustments were standard fluorescent lights.  The lights in the conference room were "Daytime" fluorescent lights which shows a more true-to-life color than the standard fluorescent lights.

Lesson learned:  Always make color adjustments in a room that has Daytime fluorescent lights!
 

A Study in Color Correction

Printing Mystery:

I received an art print to color correct for the press recently.  I took a full morning to adjust, print and re-adjust over and over again, until I had the press proof looking exactly like the oil painting that had been photographed to print from.  8 different color corrections later, I was ready to show my final version to the customer.  I moved the painting and the proof to our conference room, where I was to meet with the customer.  Once the press proof and the oil painting were compared to each other in the conference room, it was clear that my proof was not anywhere near the color of the original oil painting.  My proof matched the painting in one room but then appeared to be too green in another room.  Where was my mistake made?  Stay tuned for the nail biting conclusion to "A Study in Color Correction"!

My 2 followers: If you can figure out where I went wrong, please post a comment. You won't win a prize if you get it right, but you can live with the satisfaction of knowing that you were right.

J.R. Rowell Franken-Printing

My latest attempt at Flash animation with a bit of Halloween fun!

Easy Tilt Shift Effect in Photoshop

Working on the printing side of graphic design has forced me to come in contact with images of varying quality.  Most designers prefer to use high quality images taken by professional photographers. I have received so many files from customers who either can't afford high quality professional photographs, or believe that they can take photographs that are just as good as the professionals'.  I have learned to get very creative with images that are fuzzy, out of focus, or grainy in order to be able to use them in a professional looking design. 
For example, I received the photograph above to use on a brochure and business card design.  The image was high resolution, however the camera used was not a professional grade digital camera, resulting in a very grainy image. In order to be able to use the image, I took the following steps. First I erased the clouds to make the sky more uniform. Making the sky uniform enabled me to use a blur effect (under filters in Photoshop) to lose the graininess in the photograph.  I then wanted to make the photo "pop".   A while back, I stumbled upon a very cool technique called tilt shift photography used to make photographs appear to be images of miniature items.  Below is a link to give you an idea of what tilt shift photography is
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photography/
I learned that by attempting to recreate the tilt shift effect on low quality photos, the finished image gave the illusion of being a high quality professional image. 
Below is the photograph after I added the effects. 

Easy Tilt Shift Effect - Photoshop CS5

Step 1 - Use the box selector or ellipse selector to select 60 to 80% of the image 

The shape you use is entirely up to you.  I prefer the rectangle, but some photos might require the use of the elliptical selector.

Step 2 - Feather the selection.

This step is taken to ensure the selection area does not have a straight edge to it.  Usually with a high resolution photo I choose to feather by 100-200 pixels, sometimes more.

 

Step 3 - Inverse your selection 

Only the outer edges of the image should be selected.

Step 4 - Apply a Lens Blur

Select the "Filter" option in Photoshop, then "Lens Blur".  Adjust the blur to any settings that you prefer, the image will preview using the settings that are selected making it easy for you to choose the blur that is right for you.

Voila... you have added a quick tilt shift effect to a photograph in 4 simple steps!

Some photographs do not look good with this effect applied.  The photograph should be taken from a long distance, and should be taken from a high angle in order to achieve the miniature effect that the tilt shift technique is so famous for.  The photograph I used above was not taken from a high angle which made the effect subtle, but the use of the effect covered up the grainy quality of the photograph allowing me use it in a professional looking design.