Photoshop Tutorials & Inspiration for Beginners
How To’s, Inspiration, and Resources for Aspiring Photographers, Designers, Content Creators, and Crafters
They say rain on your wedding day is good luck. If so, Erin and Dusty are set for life! Though there were multiple moments of torrential downpour, surprisingly, they had little affect on the day's festivities, and by the end of the evening, there was even enough of a break in the clouds to allow for a decent sunset behind the lake. I'd say these two definitely have some luck on their side!
Talk about a pretty bride—Hayley was truly gorgeous, complete with a mega-watt smile that hung on all day, despite the cooler temps and rainy moments! So excited for these two.... hope you're both enjoying Maui! xoxo Khara
What a dream! A great couple, a well planned event (with every detail considered), and one gorgeous location. I tried to talk them into getting married every weekend, but I don't think I quite pulled it off. Andy and Katie are on-board with that idea, but I'm yet to convince the parents. :) Congrats to everyone, enjoy your sneak peek!
Spring has sprung and love is in the air! These two cuties are tying the knot just next month. Let the celebration begin!
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!
Khara Plicanic. Instructor, Photographer, Designer, Advocate. Here you'll find tools, inspiration, and empowerment to help you on your own creative journey.
