Video Tutorial: Create a Photo Planet

Watch the video and learn how to create this effect in Photoshop! This kind of effect is perfect for greeting cards, to spice up wedding photography, to illustrate a magazine article, or just for the sheer fun of it. You could also make a personalized version of The Little Prince for someone, I’m sure they’d love it. As mentioned in the video, you’ll probably want to use a fairly wide photo to avoid stretched top parts, especially if there are any people in the photo. By Peter Werner.

The Contact Sheet tip of the week

By Lesa Snider King:
Resizing Without Quality Loss

Photo resolution is probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of digital image editing. The truth is, image resolution matters only if you're going to print the image. If the image is destined to live onscreen, it's the pixel dimensions that matter. Pixel widths and heights can be measured at any resolution. However, you have to be careful how you change it. Pop open the Image Size dialog in Photoshop and uncheck the Resample Image checkbox at the bottom left. This locks the pixel data, locking in quality. It’s confusing because the onscreen image won’t change a bit; the truth can be only revealed by the Image Size dialogue box.

Lesa Snider King, The Graphic Reporter, is iStockphoto's Chief Evangelist.

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The Contact Sheet tip of the week

By Lesa Snider King:
Auto align saves time

Did you know Photoshop has alignment tools? The only problem is that you may never see them. They live in the options bar at the top of the screen but they only appear when you have the Move tool selected, and more than one layer highlighted. So the next time you find yourself going blind by trying to align things by sight or by dragging placing guides, reach for the alignment buttons instead. It can be a huge production time-save

Lesa Snider King, The Graphic Reporter, is iStockphoto's Chief Evangelist.

Color

You've finished your image and everything should look perfect: you've got lots of detail, you've put a lot of thought into the overall placement of each element, and you've got a great concept. But something's not working.

If you're not paying attention to the color in your image, you're missing one of the single most important visual elements at your disposal. Color does it all: inspires emotions, punches out elements and draws the eye, heats up or tones down a mood. Color creates drama, depth, and volume. On the flip side, though, using the wrong color can easily ruin what otherwise would have been a great composition. Don't settle for the colors the world dishes up. Choose your hues, organize your tints, and take control of your palette.See, different surfaces reflect or absorb different parts of the visible light spectrum. Your eye, little marvel that it is, sorts the light out and gives you the color. "What is red?" is a question for philosophy students and stoners. What matters to us is that all colors evoke different moods, feelings, and reactions in people, and if we can control the color in an image, we can influence how people react to it.

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Vector Do's & Don'ts VI

Gradients

We see this time and time again: new vector illustrators who are smitten with gradient effects. We’ve never been able to figure out why this is (though we’ll all admit, under pressure, that we were the same way when we first started illustrating).

Gradients can add instant depth and volume to a shape with the click of a button and make surfaces gleam. However, it takes a good understanding of how light works to turn a gradient into the powerful tool it can be in the right hands.

Example 1 is a simple file, which would work very well as line art or with some simple shading. But wait: let’s try to make it look nice and rounded with some neat-o gradients! Ouch. Wrong. The gradients here are way too harsh. Creating a gradient that transitions from a solid color all the way to white or black usually ends up looking pretty nasty. That cigarette filter looks horrible with that amount of contrast between the opposite ends of the gradient… After all, filters are made of colored paper, not chrome! The gradients are better on the white part of the cigarette because the contrast isn't as dramatic, but still they really aren't suited to the style of this illustration with its thick heavy outline. Besides, the surgeon general says smoking's bad for you.

We've kept the outlines the same in Examples 2 and 3, all we've changed is the interior coloring technique. The example on the far right is simple flat color, which is clean, bold and simple. The middle example uses a little shading to show a bit of depth, but it's nice and subtle and doesn't interfere with the style of the illustration. I'm still not saying you should light up but this cigarette would clearly be much easier on the eyes/lungs.
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Vector Do's & Don'ts V

Style (Bortonia)

There are lots of stylistic techniques you can use to add oomph to a vector and give an illustration your own personal flair. Color combinations, line weights, graphic simplification, shading and highlights, and texture can all be manipulated to create different looks and feels. The trick is to pick a style and stick with it: mixing and matching styles can get distracting quick unless handled by an experienced professional.

Each of the characters in Example 1 are great. The problem is they have nothing to do with each other, stylistically. We have the simplified cartoony ladies in the back, a comic-style outlined girl in striped socks, a realistic business man, and then a more detailed cartoony woman in the foreground. The overall effect is weird, disjointed, and distracting. While it’s tempting to reuse elements from existing vector files in a new composition you still need to ensure everything matches in the end.

In Example 2, all of the characters are drawn in the same style: simplified, geometric, and angular. The colors are all flat with no gradients or detailed shading, and the color palette plays on a warm/cool complimentary color scheme (red and green). Nothing jumps out as being out of place or at the wrong party.click here for Full Article.

Vector Do's & Don'ts IV

Proportion (Jayesh)

Stylization and exaggeration of the human figure is way cool and we encourage it, however you still need to keep in mind where exaggeration works and where it doesn’t. Just remember that when stylizing you should still be paying attention to the basic rules of proportion.

We’ve used the classic ‘proportions of man’ to demonstrate. Example 1, on the left, shows a myriad of proportional mistakes. The head is too small, the arms are all different lengths, the hands and feet vary in size from honkin’ huge to miniscule, and the legs are too short. This is one weird looking dude, and it’s clearly not because of artistic license.

The man in Example 2, while highly stylized, follows an actual human’s proportions much more closely. The limbs are all the correct lengths and the hands are the right size (remember, a human hand is approximately the same size as a face). Here’s a great example of how to create a distinctive style and feel while maintaining an accurate human proportion.click here for Full Article.

Vector Do's & Don'ts III

Cropping and Alignment (Jayesh)

There are countless ways to organize vector elements on an artboard. That’s one of the best things about vectors: It’s easy to break them apart and tinker with individual shapes, without the loss of image quality you often see when editing a raster file. That said, vectors can easily suffer from poor decisions when it comes to composition and cropping.

The elements in Example 1 have been aligned to the vertical or horizontal edges of each other. This creates awkwardly tight eye movements for the viewers, and makes things appear cut off.

Negative space is wonderful when used effectively. On the other hand, abandoning large areas of real estate within an illustration, or chopping off shapes without forethought, just shows poor planning, like in Example 2.

Clumping everything into the centre in Example 3 not only creates a rushed and unplanned composition, it is just bad feng shui.click here for Full Article.

Vector Do's & Don'ts II

Linework (72ppi)

Illustrator offers a few ‘default’ options for outlines. You get your simple, mechanical-styled strokes in whatever point size you choose. You also get nifty strokes that look like paint, or chalk; oooh, aah! Unfortunately, many designers have seen these default stroke effects used, over and over again. To stand out from the crowd you’ll need to take things to the next level.

We’ll admit, Example 1 isn’t a bad illustration at all. The proportions are good, the details are relatively clean and there’s some nice color happening. But it could have been a heck of a lot more interesting! You’ll notice all of the lines, while cleanly executed, are the plain ol’ boring 1 point default stroke ending in your typical, bland rounded ends. Every line in the file is the exact same weight. While using default stroke weights can work very nicely on subjects like diagrams and mechanical drawings, it’s not working so well on this hand. Even on mechanical and technical drawings you should still be customizing your stroke weights, or using several different weights to help differentiate between specific sections within the drawing. The line work here lacks both style and personality.

Example 2 is far more exciting. We’ve used what’s called ‘variable’ line weights, meaning the strokes travel from thick to thin. Variable lines are much more natural looking: Even though real-life objects don’t have outlines around them, if they did, we bet they’d be variable and not a consistent 1 point black stroke. Variable lines can be created by outlining your strokes and then playing around with the edges; you can create your own brushes to do the work for you. Working with variable lines can be daunting at first but it’ll elevate your illustrations from amateur to pro.



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Vector Do's & Don'ts

It's All About The Details (Bortonia)

Once upon a time vector files had a teeny tiny 270 pixel preview thumbnail, with no zoom feature. Happily those days are long gone and all new vector uploads boast the same zoomable preview image as their photo counterparts. Unfortunately this also means that your vectors are going to be scrutinized closer than ever before. That’s why it’s important to take a close look at your illustration before you submit.

Are the curves in your shape curvy, or choppy? Do your shapes meet up cleanly at the edges, or are there small gaps where you rushed while drawing? Sometimes a file will look fine from the preview but once it’s opened into vector editing software it suddenly won’t be as pretty. And yes, customers do notice rushed details.

Example 1 looks pretty nice from the thumbnail (what an adorable dog!), but zoom in a little and you’ll see all sorts of problems. The fur is rumpled like someone didn’t read the ‘dry clean only’ tag, and shapes are crossing over themselves left and right. Crossed shapes, while not a technical issue per say, tend to scream “rushed!” and “I haven’t learned to use the pen tool properly yet”! Fur shouldn’t look this gloppy, bedraggled and messy!

Example 2 is much, much cleaner up close. The fur is smooth and each hair ends in a tidy point. The eyes are perfectly round now and it’s easier to see the dog’s cute little mustache, since all the sloppiness of the first Example has been cleaned up. You might want to pass on petting the first dog, it looks like it may have fleas. Puppy number 2 is ready for adoption.
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Momma Can't Help You Now:

A Crash Course in Organization for Designers

As a child, I was constantly trying to find new and innovative ways of avoiding chores. Cleaning my room was by far the worst--operating under the motto "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," I would use a single ploughing motion to bury my stuff far under my bed. The advantages of my system were immediate but fleeting. And it always left me sorting through a mess of my own making.

In my design career, it soon became clear that my personal housekeeping techniques just wouldn't do. The lack of organization in my computer workspace caused me great stress. Thankfully, with some persistence, I eventually organized my digital work environment and, in so doing, exponentially increased my productivity. I no longer spend time needlessly scouring a disorganized database to find a single file. This makes for faster project turnovers and more deadlines met.

If you think your personal organization is just your problem, consider this: your project may eventually pass into other designers or developers who will use the files for their own purposes. Passing off a mess of files to them will cause them undue frustration and may even spoil your chances of landing future projects. In my own career, I've learned the hard way that the benefits of organization can't be overstated. And so I have reformed. Here are a few of my personal tips for those of you looking to turn over a new (and I hope orderly) leaf.

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