Photoshop Tutorials & Inspiration for Beginners
How To’s, Inspiration, and Resources for Aspiring Photographers, Designers, Content Creators, and Crafters
In between packing moving boxes and training for tomorrow's Leprechaun Chase, Dan and Steph carved out time for some engagement portraits. These crazy love birds are planning a 4th of July weekend wedding—and yours truly gets to capture it all!
Alright people. It's a new year and wedding season will be upon us shortly (or may be already—depending on what part of the world you're in). The time to get a grip on your design/production workflow is now, before you get bogged down and fall behind, promising yourself you'll do a better next year.
If you're headed to WPPI next week, join me at 3pm on Wednesday for Wicked Fast Albums and get a grip on the chaos once and for all! I'll show you the basics of InDesign so you can rock not only albums (in record time), but studio marketing materials, ebooks, and even ipad apps! (What?!) For real.
And, I have a ton of great prizes from folks like Adobe, MpixPro, Finao, AsukaBook, Triple Scoop Music, Adorama, Kelly Moore Bags, and of course—Peachpit Press, RockYourWorkflow, and Banti Album Proofing.
Plus—free hugs to those who need 'em. Let's do this! Who's with me?
When I think of Natalie, I'm reminded of the little girl whose nails I painted while singing along to Bart Simpson's "The Bart Man." (It was the 90's after all. But I'm pretty sure I could still sing along if Pandora tossed that tune my way. ;) Now that little girl is all grown up and yesterday—she gave her heart to Tim. I was lucky enough to capture the day for them. Here are a few quick favorites...
I'm honored to be participating in Thirst Relief International's annual Mentor Auction again this year. If you're not already familiar with Thirst Relief and the amazing work they do, prepare to be blown away.
Their mission is to "overcome death and disease resulting from the consumption of contaminated water by providing safe, clean drinking water to those in need around the world."
Founded in 2005, Thirst Relief operates in nine countries to launch sustainable water projects in impoverished rural areas and urban slum communities. 100% of public donations go to their various water projects and amazingly—$5 provides 25 yrs. of clean water for one person.
Want to get in on the action and give yourself something to feel really great about? Make a donation to one of their projects —OR— get your bidding on to win a 90-minute mentoring session with yours truly (along with a copy of my Wicked Fast Wedding Workflow Guide and my InDesign Tutorial Video)!
Check out this video to learn more about the work they do, then feel awesome while you set the auction bids on fire! I'm looking forward to connecting with the highest bidder!
PS: Better hurry! Bidding closes Sunday night (Feb. 3rd) at 10pm CST!
Thirst Relief Short from Anton Lorimer on Vimeo.
*** This post has been updated to make it even more awesome! *** Let's be real.
I appreciate scrap booked labors of love as much as the next gal, but honestly, if my future (yet-to-be-conceived) children are to have any chance of having their memories live on in an analog format, I can't carry on with the fantasy that someday I'll make scrap booking a regular part of my life. Maybe for a special gift, but definitely not a monthly/yearly thing.
Thankfully, I found a painless alternative.
I've been stewing about how I can make it easy to make sure that our family memories (and bits of daily life) have a life beyond a dusty ol' pile of hard drives.
(This is one of my favorite What the Duck comic strips by the genius Aaron Johnson)
I generally recommend that each time you download photos (whether from your phone, or your "real camera"), pick your 10-20 favorites and order some prints. When they come, just drop them in a photo storage box. Getting fancy with glue and scissors is nice, but totally not required.
Of course, if you're like me, as diligent as I am with taking care of client images, when it comes to my own personal photos—I'm lucky if I download them 3 or 4 times per year. In fact, I've gotten to the point where—like lots of folks—most of the time, the only camera I have with me is my phone.
And the most action my personal photos ever see is if they happen to get posted online via Instagram, etc. So it made the most sense to find a way to make a book from my Instagram images.
And since sifting through my entire photo collection in search of the images I happened to post to Instagram is not likely to happen (like trying to find a needle in a haystack), I was on a mission to find a better way.
Enter Blurb. There are a lot of book-making solutions out there (especially when it comes to Instagram and other social photo sharing sites), but many leave much to be desired in terms of design flexibility, ease of use, and product quality.
Having been a Blurb fan for years, I already knew that I wanted them to print my books, but the online tool they provide for printing your Instagram images has some sort of bug that jumbles the images out of order if you try to add more than the default of 52. And since I was planning to include roughly 250 images, this was a serious concern. (This is really too bad, as otherwise this tool would be so great!)
Blurb also makes a book plug-in for Lightroom, but after playing around with it for awhile, though the interior page layout options had what I wanted (a single square image per page), I found the cover layout and material options to be limiting (compared to the choices Blurb offers elsewhere) and ultimately I wasn't able to cobble together the book in the specific way I wanted. So, I turned my attention back to Blurb's free desktop application (called BookSmart).
Here's the Step-by-Step
I wanted a single image per page with plenty of white space around it, so I wrote a Photoshop action to build out each 4x4 image with a nice white background to fill out a 7x7 page. You can write your own, or download my custom action here (for a 7x7 book). Then batch run the action on the whole folder via Bridge.
Enjoy!
PS: Save 20% on your Blurb books through Dec. 8th with the code ANY20
2013 is off to a busy start! It's conference season in the industry, and I'm thrilled to be presenting at three of my faves. If you have plans to be at one of them—I hope you'll join me and come say hello!
I'll be teaching various combos of my Wicked Fast Workflow and InDesign Basics at the following international photography events:
SWPP | London Jan. 11th & 12th
ImagingUSA | Atlanta Jan. 20th
Also in Atlanta: I'll be speaking at the Mpix Pro booth at 1pm on Jan. 20th and at the SMUG Mug group at 8:30pm on Jan. 20th
WPPI | Las Vegas March 13th
Drop me a note and let me know if I'll get to see you!
Have you seen Adobe's new SWAPP publication yet? (It's FREE and available here via iTunes.) Check out the 2nd issue (blue cover) for my quick video tutorial to learn how to make a Facebook Timeline Cover using a lightning fast combo of ID, PS, and BR!
Don't have a tablet? Watch the tutorial video here on YouTube.
This year, I decided to get crafty for the nephew's Christmas presents. 5 nephews in 3 families meant making whatever I came up with in triplicate to avoid any melt downs... Thankfully, these A-frame tents (via Ana White) were simple enough that making three of them was pretty painless.
I pretty much followed Ana's plan, but instead of curtain panels, I bought a 9'x12' canvas drop cloth from Lowe's (available in the paint section, the kind you put on the floor to keep it free from spills and drips) and cut it into thirds measuring 3'x12'. It turned out that the drop cloth wasn't exactly 9'x12'... the edges weren't straight, so I had some trimming and clean up work to do, but over all, it was like $10 for the material, which was definitely cheaper than 6 curtain panels or fabric by the yard.
Here's Emir helping to cut apart the huge drop cloth...
To get the fun and playful stripes, I mixed regular interior latex paint (Valspar, also from Lowe's in Orange Crush, Twist of Lime, Dive In, and Cherry on Top) 2 to 1 with a textile medium from the craft store. This thinned it out, making it appropriate for fabrics and keeping the canvas from becoming crusty and stiff once painted.
Since it was so crazy cold outside, I decided to work in the house instead of the garage... which meant a bit of furniture re-arranging...
Although I painted the stripes on the canvas roughly the same for each tent, I decided to paint the wooden frame for each tent a different color. One green, one blue, and one orange.
Then, Emir screwed the frame together and staple gunned the fabric on.
We delivered Haris and Eldin's tent, then unveiled Cole's, Dominic and Oscar's on Christmas Eve at the lake.
So fun! I'm already looking forward to the round of birthdays we have coming up this spring and summer... looks like there might be more sawdust in the forecast. :)
This time of year is the perfect time to make plans for the upcoming season. Looking to turbo charge and ReFocus your business in 2013? Check out this AWESOME and FREE learning opportunity to gleam all kinds of business wisdom from 13 industry leaders.
No hotel rooms to book, no flights to catch. Tune in and get it all from the comfort of home with your wifi connection and favorite pair of slippers. It's three days worth of goodness that's entirely FREE when you tune in on Jan. 8th, 16th, and 24th.
Yours truly will be sharing my big, bold, and simple approach towards package structuring on Jan. 8th. Other speakers include Dane Sanders, Zach and Jody Gray, Jeff & Julia Woods, and Michael Corsentino—just to name a few.
Learn more and sign up here.
Who doesn't love a good photo related craft now and then? Whether you're in the market for some crafty fun or you just need a fun, last-minute gift idea... this is for you!
(I originally created this tutorial a ga'zillion years ago for a publication that ended up not using it—go figure—and had forgotten about it until recently. Thanks to the search capabilities on my Mac, I was able to dust it off for you now. Enjoy!)
Ingredients:
STEP 1: Drill holes Measure 1cm in from each end of the domino and mark for drilling (2 holes for each domino). Drill through each domino. (A vise is very helpful, but not necessary.) If you prefer, it's easy to find pre-drilled dominoes at most craft stores if you don't have a drill or want to save a step.
STEP 2: Prepare and print photos Dominoes measure 1” wide and 2” tall, so as long as you make the photo a smidge (a very technical term) smaller than that, you should be golden. To make things easier for you, take advantage of this lovely Photoshop template.
STEP 3: Adhere photos to Dominoes After printing the pictures and cutting them out, you’re ready to glue! Cover the back of the photo with glue (Mod Podge) and place it on the smooth side of the domino. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, the dotted sides are the inside of the bracelet. It’s actually reversible. If you want to wear it inside out, you can!) Repeat for the remaining dominoes and let dry.
STEP 4: Protect your photos! Cover the front of each photo with a couple coats of glue to seal and protect it. (Allow to dry between coats.) Don’t panic, it will dry clear.
STEP 5: String together Layout the dominoes in the desired order. Begin threading the elastic through the top holes in the dominoes, adding a spacer bead between them. Cut the cord and begin again on the bottom holes. To finish, tie the ends of the string together making a knot (one for he top row, one for the bottom row).
Viola! Get ready to turn some heads!
Khara Plicanic. Instructor, Photographer, Designer, Advocate. Here you'll find tools, inspiration, and empowerment to help you on your own creative journey.
