miLienzo.com » Graphic Design and Print

Photoshop image manipulation

Jason — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:41:39 +0000

I was away on holiday a few weeks ago, and as much as it was cold, wet, rainy, windy (traditional British weather of course) I did manage to take what I considered to be reasonable photographs. This was fine until I got them off the camera and looked at them in full res. And they looked AWFUL! I then set about tweaking the settings until I had a set of photos I could be pleased with.

This is all well and good, but then I started looking into image editing a bit more. Now don’t get me wrong, I knew alot could be achieved with photoshop in regards to manipulation but I had never really explored enough, after all i have always used photoshop for web design! A few hours and many sites later I was AMAZED with the results people had, with suprisingly little work. Take a look at these:

Please see idigitalemotion.com for information on this image

Please see 3dm3.com for information on this image.

These were just a couple of the examples I found, but two that jumped out at me. Seeing how these effects are created (and these are a couple of the simpler ones) makes me want to delve even deeper into photoshop.

But why wait until you get the images in photoshop? Why not be more creative whilst your out and about (or even at home!) TAKING the photgraphs. Here are a couple of links links to some great examples of this:

wambie.com
curiosidadesnanet.wordpress.com

If you really want to go all out and create some masterpieces, obviously alot more work is involved! After looking through these sites it has inspired me to maybe take my images that step further and create something unique, something I can be proud of. This is new territory for me, I have always used photshop for design purposes from school through to current day. Now it is time to explore the intensness of image editing it offers, and i’ll let you know how I get on!

Jason

P.S – After writing this post, I visited smashing magazine and found this which may be of interest, enjoy!
Smashing Magazine – Tilt Shift Photography

An interview with Caroline Murphy

Aaron — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:00:49 +0000

Last week I was asked to participate in a group interview project organised by a handful of blogger-designers on the Estetica Design Forum. With my lifelong ambition for a Friday evening chat show at the forefront of my mind, I eagerly agreed.

I was asked to interview 24 year old graphic designer and self confessed geek-girl Caroline Murphy from Newcastle in the North East of England.

Tell me a bit about yourself and what you do for a living?
I’m 24, living in the east end of Newcastle with my partner and little kitten. I work full-time for a firm called Armadillo Creative and also try and freelance in my spare time under CM Designs.

Tell me more about your love of design and creativity. How did it all start?
I think it has always been with me; apparently when I was 3 I won an art competition! But, I’ve always been into drawing but was extremely precise and neat. My mum told me it was graphic design and from then on I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Before we go any further, one crucial question: Mac or PC?
I’ve used both, but PC is the one for me! Mac’s do look good, but I like to be able to customise and upgrade my PC to no end, myself. Yes, I am a geeky girl.

So you run your own business and work in an agency? How do you squeeze it all in?
With great difficulty!! It was OK when I was part-time for the ‘Revenue, but now its very hard when I’m working over 40 hours a week. But as always I get there in the end: persistence and a lot of tea!

Hows the Freelance side of your career going? Is it something you intend to push further or are you happy being an employee?
Its had its up and downs, I didn’t expect to start freelancing so early in my life, therefore its been a steep learning curve, but I do wish to gain experience every day and hopefully do more work for more clients in the years to come. My dream would to be in my own small creative firm, alongside friends that have that same interest.

If I came to you with an ideal project that filled you with joy, what would that project be?
Oooh gosh that is a hard one. Sounds odd but I like someone quite demanding and knows their own mind, so it would inspire and encourage me to create something big and wonderful!

Where can I go to see examples of your recent work?
You can find my main portfolio blog at www.caroline-murphy.co.uk and my less serious side at http://playboy-bunnie.deviantart.com

When you’re feeling down and uninspired, what do you do to get the creative juices flowing again?
I flick through my Computer Arts magazine, look at inspiring art on deviantART and if that doesn’t work, me and my boyfriend go to the coast for a drive and chill out.

Do you have any advice for the kids out there?
Work hard, play hard. Keep your chin up and you will get there, maybe not tomorrow, but you will someday!
Oh, and don’t take drugs!

What about the ones that are looking to start a design career?
Do listen to those who are already doing the job you want; not everyone is right just because they are older. A bit of education and experience (not either or) goes a long way. Don’t loose the enthusiasm you have as a young person. Its OK to be different.

Last but certainly not least, what song is getting played the most on your iPod right now?
I don’t own an iPod (shock horror) but I have a lovely new head-unit, and at the moment its Tidy Boys – Heavens Cry (Til Tears Do Us Part).

The other Estetica interviews

Everyone’s a winner in Just Creative Design group writing project

Aaron — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:58:10 +0000

January and February? I can’t believe they’re gone already. I was out of the country for a week towards the end of February and consequently failed to pick up on a great graphic design competition being run by Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design, and therefore missed out on a chance to win some freebies.

Jacob has rounded up $5,000 of various goodies to give away, all in return for writing an article of some sort on the subject of graphic design. I would have spread the word about this giveaway a lot earlier had it not been for the fact I only found out about it myself a couple of days ago.

Oh well, the competition ended last night and there are a wealth of juicy-looking entries in. Articles that I’ve found particularly eye-catching and have bookmarked for later reading include:

Are You Neglecting Good Looks in Favor of Great Content? (Men with Pens)
Creative design by committee is OK – but who wants OK? (Jason Slater)
All about Paul Rand (Logo Design Love)

Head over to Just Creative Design to see a comprehensive list of all the entries as this competition has produced a wealth of useful information and if the few I’ve highlighted above don’t float your boat, I’m sure there’s something in there that will.

My hat goes off to Jacob for organising this competition/group writing project and also all the entrants for sharing their thoughts and ideas. Great stuff!

How do you style URLs for print?

Aaron — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:59:09 +0000

One of the problems I come across over and over again with all of the publications and printed materials I work with and produce, is how to style URLs.

You see, the problem is most of the time URLs are just too long, especially if you are trying to insert them in a narrow column of text. Let me show you a particularly bad example.

OK, that URL is probably the longest in the world ever (and worse still, it’s in a document I produced), but it demonstrates a point. It is very easy for URLs to appear messy and look out of place in a printed document.

Yet, the Internet has become a ubiquitous part of modern life and URLs are as commonplace as telephone numbers, if not more so. They are everywhere.

So, what about the ‘http’? Most designers don’t bother with it as it’s taken for granted that anything beginning with a ‘www’ is a URL. But what if you’re working with URLs that don’t begin with a ‘www’, such as a sub-domain? You have to include the ‘http’ in this instance, so from a style consistency point of view shouldn’t you include it with all URLs?

I’ve noticed an interesting approach taken by the Guardian newspaper. They put every URL they mention through TinyURL.com and print the shortened URLs.

This is a good idea but I have my concerns. Firstly, I think there is a branding issue as your URL is part of your brand and you are removing it entirely. Secondly, from a practical point of view I don’t want to have to convert a hundred URLs through TinyURL.com every day – I just want a consistent solution for styling them.

So, please help me make URLs pretty?

I realise I ask a lot of questions. I certainly don’t have the answers. So I’m opening this one up to graphic designers out there to share your thoughts. Do you have style guidelines that you follow for URLs? Do you include http? And would your clients be happy with you using tinyurl.com for those stupidly long URLs?

Many thanks for the previous posts’ comments: Randa, Ryan and Jim.

See my personal business card design

Aaron — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:10:36 +0000

Just over a month ago I designed and printed personal business cards for my graduation exhibition. In fact, I ended up printing a few more cards than I needed, but that’s another story altogether.

The design uses the coloured circular elements from my personal logo design, and the branding is consistent with my business website, printed portfolio and interactive-CV CD-Rom.

The cards are printed on a 400gsm silk stock and are ever so slightly narrower than a standard business card size. To be honest, I’m not sure I like the slightly unconventional size but it meant the cards fitted perfectly into my C-Shell CD cases whereas standard-sized cards would not have fit.

I won’t mention who printed the cards because, frankly, I don’t think they’re worthy of a mention. As I alluded to earlier, I had a few problems with the printing. This was in part due to my inexperience (lesson learnt) but also the printers complete lack of customer service played its part too. They were an Internet-based printers with attractive prices, but in future I will be seeking to develop a relationship with a good local printer. Another lesson learnt!

If anyone wants a card, drop me a line and I’ll happily pop one in the post to you.

Many thanks for the recent comments: Paul, Lorelle, David and Johno.

Designing on the cheap with open source software

Aaron — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:25:57 +0000

So, you wanna be a designer, huh? Well, first things first – go out and spend a few grand on a Mac Pro, then splash another couple of grand on Adobe CS3. Once you’re set up, then you can start thinking about being a designer.

Unfortunately, we don’t all have endless reserves of cash to spend on powerful computers and industry leading software. An alternative solution can be to acquire pirated software. But you know that every time legitimate software is copied a puppy gets run over, right? A more morally sound solution can be to delve into the geeky waters of open source software.

The open source movement is a community of dedicated geeks and nerds who develop alternative versions of commercial software, with all the features, bells and whistles, and distribute it for free (or donations). Personally, I’m a firm believer in you get what you pay for, but when you’re not paying anything you can’t really lose. So lets take a closer look at some open source design software.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (The GIMP)

The GIMP is one of the most famous open source applications, and is considered by many as the open source alternative to Photoshop.

The down side is that the GIMP is pretty ugly – functional more than glossy – and the user interface isn’t the most intuitive. But if you can get over the bad looks, you’ll find a great personality. It offers many of the features and tools of Photoshop and can certainly hold up its own as a decent alternative.

The GIMP is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the GIMP website.

Gimpshop

Gimpshop is based on the GIMP application, but replicates as far as it can the feel of Photoshop by replacing the user interface. As the GIMP doesn’t have all the features of Photoshop it is not an exact like for like, but if you are comfortable with Photoshop but scared by the look of the GIMP, Gimpshop might be worth a try.

Gimpshop is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Gimpshop website.

Pixelmator

Edit: As Arpit Jacob correctly points out below, Pixelmator is not actually open source. It will retail at $59 (US). I have kept the listing here as it is still in interesting option for designers on a budget.

Pixelmator is currently in development but due for release later this year. It’s a Mac only affair, but worthy of mention because the preview screenshots look stunning. It promises many of the features of Photoshop and it looks very similar indeed. As it’s not been released yet, I can’t comment how it compares, but because I know designers are a superficial bunch who love good looks above all else, I know this will cause a stir when it’s released.

Pixelmator will be available for the Mac later this year. Further details are available from the Pixelmator website.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator. Currently many of Inkscape’s functions are operated with keyboard shortcuts rather than contextual mouse-operated menus. This is great if you can learn all the functions but for a newcomer it’s a steep learning curve. Inkscape still lacks a few features that a professional designer might need, especially when preparing artwork for print. However, Inkscape is still at version 0.46 – it is very much a work in progress and is showing a lot of promise.

Inkscape is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Inkscape website.

Scribus

Scribus is an award winning open source desktop publishing platform, similar to Adobe InDesign and Quark. It is a very complete and impressive application, boasting many of the features needed in a professional printing capacity. Like all of the applications listed here, it is a work in progress, and there is a steep learning process for anyone used to its commercial alternative. That said, Scribus is one of the most polished of these applications, and is certainly worth investigating.

Scribus is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Scribus website.

Conclusions: Made by geeks for geeks

Once thing that is apparent when using all of the applications here, is that a certain mindset is required to get to grips with them. If you’ve ever run your own web server off a Linux box just for fun, you’ll love these applications and find them a joy to use. Most creative designers I’ve come across aren’t always the most technically astute types, and the learning curve these programs present may prove too big a turn off.

However, underneath the quirky geeky interface, these applications boast some real power and are developed by incredibly passionate and supportive communities. Given that they are offered free of charge, these applications have to be be admired. I’m not sure professional studios will be cancelling their CS3 licenses just yet, but for the amateur or hobbyist these offer a great way in to design.

Does open source have a place in professional design?

This where I hand over to you. Have you ever tried any of the open source alternatives to our beloved Adobe applications? How did you find the experience and how do they compare with their commercial counterparts? Are these open source applications at a stage in their development where they are ready to be used in a professional capacity? If not, do you think they ever will be?

Many thanks for the recent comments: Asgeir, David, Johno, Charity and Psycho Dude.