I found a number of old photos and after scanning them in – they had a grainy finish and had lost the punch and impact they once had. So I devised this little process to give them their punch back! Hopefully its of use to yourself. You can follow along with the screenshots or just watch the video.

Duplication

Ok, you are going to begin by duplicating the layer containing your photo. You can do this by selecting the layer with the original photo and hitting COMMAND / (CTRL) + J or by right-clicking the layer and navigating to ‘Duplicate Layer’. Repeat this step twice. Following this, you need to re-name the layers for good organisation.

Apply ‘Diffuse Filter’

Now, with the first of the duplicated layers selected ‘diffused smoothness’ you are going to navigate to Filter –> Stylize –> Diffuse and yur going to select Anisotropic. Hit OK. This is a trick that I sometimes use instead of Photoshop’s Reduce Noise filter if the grain is too extensive.

Apply ‘High Pass’

Now, with the second of the duplicated layers selected ‘high pass’ you are going to navigate to Filter –> Other –> High Pass. As you move the slider from left to right you will notice the filter picks up or dops more or less lines respectively. You need t experiment and see what value picks up the most lines in your image. For this image I decided 6.4

Set Blending Modes To Soft Light

Now, to finish up and complete the effect – you are going to set both layers blending mode to Soft Light. If you wish for certain images it may look nice to decrease the opacity of the layers ever so slightly, experimenting with different looks. So there we are – you should have now a slightly sharer punchier photo!

Below, is the video of myself doing this:

Give Old Photos A Punchy Stylistic Feel – Photoshop Tutorial from Acuity Designs on Vimeo.

Related Posts:

• November 30, 2009 -- Turn A Boring Photo Into An Emotive Portrait – Photoshop Tutorial – with video (10)
• September 7, 2008 -- Photoshop Adjustment Layer and Retouching Tutorial with Video (8)
• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
• January 26, 2010 -- Aurora Borealis Typopgraphy Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial (18)
• October 2, 2008 -- Photoshop Actions Tutorial (1)
• September 11, 2008 -- Adding A Rainbow To A Photo in Photoshop Tutorial (1)

This is a fairly ‘intermediate’ tutorial, although most beginners will be able to follow along with the video. It’s a neat little tutorial packed full of lots of little gems and tricks which we use in order to arrive the result; which is a much more stylistic portrait, that’s a lot more emotive and also has greater depth. The change is supposed to be subtle and thus its an effect your likely to use a lot more often than some of the tutorials floating around. Hope you enjoy! and its of use! Don’t hesitate to drop a comment below…

You can view a full resolution version of the final image here: FINAL IMAGE

You can view the final next to our boring chap here: SIDE BY SIDE IMAGE

You can download the stock image of our boring chap here: STOCK IMAGE

Lets begin!

Follow step by step below or watch Video of the tutorial

To begin with we want to secure an original copy of our stock image using the ‘padlock’. Now duplicate this layer 3 times. Name the layers ‘desaturated, black and white glow and sharpening’ : this should give a clue as to what we are going to do to each layer.

Now you want to turn of visibility by clicking the ‘eye’ icon on the bland white glow layer and the sharpening layer. Select the desaturated layer and then hit at the same time COMMAND+SHIFT+U or for windows substiture COMMAND with CTRL. Then set the desaturated layer’s blending mode to Multiply. You hsould notice this creates a nice shadowy effect to the image.

Turn off the visibility on the desaturated layer and now make the sharpening layer visible. Navigate to Filter -> Other -> High Pass . You should see the below. Moving the slider makes the filetr pick up more or less lines. Play with this until you find a sweet spot. For this image I decided upon 21.5

It might look weird once you click’OK’ – the key is to change this layer’s blending mode to  Overlay and you should immediately see an increase in the sharpness of the image. This is a neat little trick for sharpening up images it’s at times are much better option than some of Photoshop’s standard sharpening tools. A great little process to run before taking photos to print.

Now you want to select the black and white glow layer as we want to create an adjustment layer above it. At the bottom of the layer panel click the circular icon for adjustment/fill layers and select Black and White.

The purpose of this step is to create a base for us to build up upon with the the subtle touches to the image. The aim at this stage is to try and make much of the facial skin white but to bring out many of the facial features and emphasise them (e.g bags under eyes / iris / white of eye / shoulder blades / mouth / forehead lines). This will serve the final effect and feel. In the adjustment layer settings if your following this verbatim – you can enter the same settings – if you are being adventurous, experiment with the slider until you receive the desired effect.

Once you’ve configured the adjustment layer  – hold shift and select the adjustment layer + the black and white glow layer. With them both selected hit COMMAND+E . This will merge them. Alternatively, you can right click and select ‘merge down.’ after this re-name the layer ‘Black and White Glow. Re-arrange your current layers in the order below and insert 3 new layers above the sharpening layer.

Here is another neat little technique. We want to fill each layer with 50% Gray. Select it and hit SHIFT+F5 and then choose 50% Gray.

Following this we then want to name the layers for the part of the image we will edit using them and then set all 3 layer’s blending mode to overlay. The 50% Gray will seem to disappear. Then select the Burn Tool as shown below.

We are going to touch up the mouth first and we will begin with a smaller hard-brush. We also want to begin using ‘Midtones’ at a low exposure. As we apply the effect below we are going to switch back to these settings and increase exposure / brush size/ brush weight to achieve the subtle effect. bit by bit.

Using the burn tool and different setting , with the mouth layer selected. We want to gradually emphasie the cracks / gap in the lips . The key is subtlety.

Repeat the same process on the forehead with a slightly larger and slightly softer brush. We want to gradually emphasie the lines across the brow . Once again, the key is subtlety. It is almost unnoticeable but when all these are combined there is a clear difference in mood etc.

Repeat the same process on the bags under the eyes with its relevant layer selected using a larger and much softer brush.the aim is to sink the eyes further into the head and create a slightly tired / deshevelled look.  Don’t forget, the key is subtlety.

Now above the desaturated layer, insert a new layer and name it two face, setting its layer blending mode to soft light. Get a very large soft brush and lower its opacity and flow. Select the colour black in the tools palette. Now paint one side of the image, softly and gradually with the brush until you have an effect as below. It may be beneficial to paint without soft light set so that you can see the areas affected as in the second image. The effect should be as in the first image.. very subtle but evident.

Now, with all the effects and processing we have done, the eyes have become somewhat blackened and lost. So lets add back some of their sparkle. Create a new layer and name it eye detail. With a thin hard brush, select the colour white. Create spaced iris like lines radiating from the center as below. They do not have to be perfect but try to prevent traveling into the white of the eye.

After completing this for both eyes. With the eye detail layer selected; navigate to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and you should see the dialogue box below. We want to remove the hard edges of the lines and create a somewhat sparkle like glow, so the blur does not need to be harsh.  I selected 4.

Once the blur is complete, set the layer blending mode to soft light.

Select the desaturated layer as we want to add an adjustment layer above it. Now select the adjustment / fill layer icon as earlier but this time select Channel Mixer… and enter the settings as in the second image. Once configured set the layer blending mode to soft light and we should see the dark side and areas of the face made slightly darker, increasing the contrast.

After completing this I noticed the whites of the eyes were slightly dull. So as earlier lets use our 50% Gray technique. Select the shoulders layer and insert a new layer above it. Name it eyes and fill it with 50% Gray, setting the blending mode to overlay. This time, instead of the Burn Tool we want to use the Dodge Tool. Now with a soft, applicable sized brush begin to re-whiten the whites of the eyes, zooming out and back in to ensure you do not over do it.

In the latter stages now, you want to select the uppermost layer – eye detail and holding shift select the black and white glow layer. Then right click on the selection and select ‘Duplicate Layers’

The new layers should remain selected. with them selected hit COMMAND+E to merge them.  Then re-name this layer which should be a reflection of what we have done thus far to ‘blur pop’. This should indicate what were are going to do now.

With the blur pop layer selected navigate to Filter ->Blur -> Lens Blur . This blur is going to be slightly over done to help make our chap pop out from the background and try and achieve somewhat of a 3D depth to the image. I used a value of 39.

After hitting OK, you should see a heavily blurred image. With the layer selected, add a layer mask.  This can be done by clicking on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette or by navigating to Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All. Now equip a large soft brush with Opacity of about 65%. Select the white panel that has now been added to your blur pop layer. With your brush begin to paint on your image and you should witness your sharper image below begin to come through. Do not reaveal the background, nor the edges. It’s ok if its quite rough, it will add to the natural effect  – which is what we want!

Hopefully You should have something like the below:

A full resolution version of the final image here: FINAL IMAGE

The final next to our boring chap here: SIDE BY SIDE IMAGE

Video

Part 1

Part 1 – Photoshop tutorial – Boring Photo to Emotive Portrait from Acuity Designs on Vimeo.

Part 2

Part 2 – Photoshop tutorial – Boring Photo to Emotive Portrait from Acuity Designs on Vimeo.

Part 3

Part 3 – Photoshop tutorial – Boring Photo to Emotive Portrait from Acuity Designs on Vimeo.

Hopefully You should have something like the below:

A full resolution version of the final image here: FINAL IMAGE

The final next to our boring chap here: SIDE BY SIDE IMAGE

Hope this was helpful!!

Related Posts:

• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
• December 8, 2009 -- Give Old Photos A Punchy Stylistic Feel – Photoshop Tutorial – with Video (6)
• September 11, 2008 -- Adding A Rainbow To A Photo in Photoshop Tutorial (1)
• September 7, 2008 -- Photoshop Adjustment Layer and Retouching Tutorial with Video (8)
• September 7, 2008 -- 30-Second Sepia Effect Photoshop Tutorial (2)
• July 27, 2010 -- 70 GigaPixel Photo of Budapest (2)

1) Just Creative Design – Bad Graphic Design
Yes, this is a controversial topic, however I hope to raise awareness of some mistakes you may be making in your graphic design pieces that are making you look amateurish, but please keep in mind that none of these are hard and fast rules, this is only a general guide of things you should be aware of.

2) Smashing Magazine – 10 common mistakes in Logo design

A professional business should look professional. New business owners often invest a lot of time and money in property and equipment, but do not often match it by investing suitably in their logo.

3)Noupe – 10 Common design mistakes

Below are ten of the most common mistakes web designers make, along with examples of sites who do things right. Some of these are easy to correct if you’re aware of, others might take a bit more time. But all are fixable and worth the time and effort to correct. While this is by no means a comprehensive list of common errors, it is a good starting point.

4)Daily Blog Tips – 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should avoid

Some of the points are common sense, others are quite polemic. Most of them apply to any website though, whether we talk about a business entity or a blog. Enjoy!

5) Crestock.com – 7 common design mistakes that clients love

From flash intros, to logo theft, to information overload, clients often ask a design team to do a lot of stuff that’s just plain wrong. Here are 7 of the most common mistakes clients might ask you to make — and how to talk some sense into them.

6) Desin cubicle – 10 common typography mistakes

The goal of this post is to help designers and clients understand the importance of good type skills, while avoiding some of the common mistakes. Please keep in mind that most of these mistakes are subjective and can be changed varying on the project, goals or circumstances.

Below is a list of 10 common mistakes used in type design/layout that can make a large impact in the effectiveness and appearance of your designs, in addition to saving you time and money when dealing with printers.

7) Web Pages That suck – Biggest mistake in web design

These ladies are laughing at you. Why? You designed your web site for your needs, not their needs. It gets worse. After they stop laughing, they’re going to one of your competitors’ sites and buy something.

8 ) Andbreak.com – 101 common designer mistakes

A lot of people are nowadays starting a new web site, may it just be personal blog or your own ecommerce site. With a growing number of web page we also see a growing number of web site designs.

The main stream of web sites are flawed with mistakes that are easily avoidable. Here is a list of what I found the most important mistakes made by web designers.

9) Articulate – 5 common visual design mistakes

I was working with a student intern the other day. We reviewed his first attempt at a rapid elearning course. For this review, we focused on the course’s visual design.

Overall, he did a great job, especially for someone just starting out. However, he made some mistakes that are common to many of the courses I see. I thought I’d do a quick rundown of what they are and provide some tips on how to prevent them.

10) Turbomilk – 10 mistakes in icon design

It is much easier to criticize somebody else’s work than to create something cool yourself. But if you apply a systematic approach to criticizing, make a numbered list and prepare illustrations, it will be regarded as a fully-fledged analysis! In my opinion, icon design is undergoing a transitional period. On the one hand, screen resolutions are increasing, hence enhancing icons. On the other hand, we still have good old pixels. Icons sized 16×16 and even smaller are still widely used. And so, here are the most commonly observed mistakes in icon design…

11) Smashing Magazine – 15 common mistakes in E-commerce design

Selling online can open up huge new markets for many businesses. When your store can be open 24/7 and you can reach a global market without the costs of mailings and call centers, it can be a huge boon to your business. But there are plenty of things to consider when designing an ecommerce site. It’s not as simple as throwing up some shopping cart software and plopping products into a database.

Related Posts:

• April 6, 2009 -- Designing for Print and Designing for Web Differences (2)
• September 26, 2008 -- 10 Resources and Tutorials to Understand and Create Corporate Identity (2)
• November 11, 2009 -- 10 Ways To Score and Evaluate A Client (6)
• November 9, 2009 -- How To Deal with Non-Paying Clients (29)
• October 1, 2008 -- Print Design Templates (Bleed, Trim, Guide’s) (6)
• September 22, 2008 -- 10 Resources to Help You Decide What To Charge for Design Work (22)

Morning All,

I recently got some of my photographs printed at A1 size ready for sale for the very first time. At the printers, I was lucky enough to catch some advice from some more experienced photographers who were printing their work, involving post-processing images ready for print.

Add Noise – 5%
- Filter- Noise – Add Noise – 5%
Adding 5% worth of noise to my image, actually brang out some of the details in the image I was getting ready to print. It appears to give the illusion of sharpening the image. Furthermore, it gives a bit of ‘texture’ to areas of flat colour, that otherwise were a bit lifeless. Obviously the grain you witness below is one section of a much larger photo, so the grain is much less pronounced when going to print. Experiment with this, print some photos and see if it will help your images!

The first image is the original with no noise added… The second image below has 5% worth of noise added.

Feel free to view my photography portfolio.

Related Posts:

• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
• July 27, 2010 -- 70 GigaPixel Photo of Budapest (2)
• November 30, 2009 -- Turn A Boring Photo Into An Emotive Portrait – Photoshop Tutorial – with video (10)
• July 5, 2009 -- 5 Amazing Photo Manipulations & Digital Art (deviantArt) (4)
• September 11, 2008 -- Adding A Rainbow To A Photo in Photoshop Tutorial (1)
• September 7, 2008 -- 30-Second Sepia Effect Photoshop Tutorial (2)

Google Analytics Explained, well almost… sort of

As i continue my transition from flash to html, SEO/Web Stats has become a topic of increasing interest, and one that ha the rare ability to at times dumbfound me. Installing Google Analytics on our site, has for the most part just been used to count our visitors and look at our traffic, so over the past week i thought I’d find out what some of the other lovely little percentages and numbers mean….

Unique Visitors
The Unique Visitors figure you have represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period(the date range you specify). A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.

Bounce Rates
In my forum hunting and web searching for a simple and clear definition of bounce rate, I’ve found people throwing formulae around and others telling me to dismiss it all together if the site is not ad based. However, as with anything there is hope and I worked bounce rate to essentially be: when someone enters my site, lands on one page, and then leaves (exits) the site without ever visiting or looking at any of my other pages. Apparently, the general consensus I have found is that a site-wide bounce rate of over 40% is cause for concern. So for the past week, I was concerned, but the changes I am beginning t implement have brought my previous bounce rate of 71% to 38% in the space of a week. Mainly my navigation made it effort’ for people to just have a peruse, so making things easier for the user, they seem to be staying more. Pretty basic logic.

Exit Rates
This fell into place after figuring out bounce rates. Exit rates detail the amount of people who navigate away from your site entirely from a particular page. So for instance, if your home page has an exit rate of say 100%, this would be disastrous, as 100% of people would look at your home page and go away, not good! Although, there are situations where a high exit rate makes sense, lets say a ‘completed transaction page’ or a ‘thankyou for contacting us’ page. This is because the user has used your service and has no further reason to stay.

Visitor Loyalty
Bar a few certain site scenarios, wanting visitors to come back after they’ve visited in the past is a given for the majority of us. This tool is a decent indication of whether your blog is boring or not and how popular it is.

Visitor Recency
This stat looks at the number of days that have passed since a person’s last visit to your site. So you get to see how often people are coming back to read your blog ramblings. The ’0′ field means they have never visited before as there is no stored tracking cookie on that computer. This will probably be the highest number by a good margin.

Depth of Visit
In short the depth of visit report shows how many pages of your site, the user took the time to view. The depth of visit 1 goes to constituting your bounce rate. A high depth of visit, basically means user’s are enjoying whatever it is you have or are doing, as they are taking time to navigate through your pages.

There are flip sides to most of these analytic statistics that will be relevant to your website and what it is your trying to achieve, but as I delve further into Google Analytics, I am beginning to realise what a marvellous tool it is. Until next time…

Comments from others:

Related Posts:

• March 20, 2010 -- 5 Articles to Help with Goals in Google Analytics (3)
• December 7, 2009 -- 5 Articles To Understanding Your Websites Bounce Rate (12)

Below, find some tuts that we have found useful. Click the images.

1)How to Draw eyes

2) How to draw human poses

3) How to draw hair

4) How to Draw Anime

Related Posts:

• January 26, 2010 -- Aurora Borealis Typopgraphy Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial (18)
• April 14, 2009 -- Speed Up Adobe Illustrator Performance (3)
• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
• July 31, 2010 -- Interview with Illustrator, Designer, Musician Joel Gonsalves (3)
• May 13, 2010 -- 5 New & Amazing Features in Adobe Illustrator CS5 (4)
• March 3, 2010 -- Interview with Illustrator and Artworker – Liam Barry (2)

Speed Up Adobe Illustrator Performance on Windows

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=320782&sliceId=1

Speed Up Adobe Illustrator Performance on Mac

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=326405&sliceId=2

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• January 26, 2010 -- Aurora Borealis Typopgraphy Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial (18)
• May 12, 2009 -- 4 Tutorials to Improve Your Drawing (0)
• August 5, 2010 -- WorkSnug – Finding Places To Get Design Work Done On The Go (3)
• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
• July 31, 2010 -- Interview with Illustrator, Designer, Musician Joel Gonsalves (3)
• May 13, 2010 -- 5 New & Amazing Features in Adobe Illustrator CS5 (4)

After some time you are likely to have built up a fairly decent size list of people who are at least a little interested in your services or what it is you get up to. It is essential to keep these people informed about how your progressing, recent projects, pricing deals etc. An effective means of doing this is a periodic (e.g monthly, quarterly) newsletter.

Firstly, below are some links that help to explain and understand what constitutes spam and how to keep your newsletters out of the recipients junk box:

• Send Blaster
  
  Nowadays most mail servers have built-in antispam filters; they are quite smart, but sometimes they fail and delete (or mark as spam and redirect to some “spam” folder) perfectly legal messages; this is a common problem with Hotmail and other very popular free mail services. If you feel a lot of your messages are filtered out and not delivered, here are some basic rules to avoid being named a spammer by mistake.

• Ezine: Spam
  
  If you send emails to or from the United States, then you may need to comply with the anti-spam requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act). This article contains the basics of what a small business owner or internet marketer needs to know to get started with their email compliance.

• Good Practice for Mass E-mails
  
  E-mail provides a quick, convenient way to get through to a large audience for a variety of purposes. However, while most users will be in agreement about the nuisance of receiving spam mail, many may not consider adequately the consequences of sending mail to a large number of addressees.

Help in Sending and Evaluating the Success of your Newsletters

How to manage, design, evaluate and record the e-mails you send:

• Campaign Monitor
  
  Campaign Monitor is a great service that will automate, most of the technical aspects of sending and monitoring newsletters. They also have a great resources section that should guide the most adventurous of you: Campaign Monitor Resources

• iContact
  
  The Email Marketing Service That Allows You To Easily Track Sends, Opens, Clicks, and More! iContact is Trusted by Small Businesses, Fortune 500 Companies, and 398,692 Users! Use one of our 300+ professionally designed email newsletter templates or one of your own for beautiful permission-based email marketing campaigns.

Other Posts

• January 30, 2010 -- 5 Free Non-Disclosure Agreements (4)
• April 9, 2009 -- 5 Ways To Copyright Your Work (3)
• November 19, 2009 -- Should You Find a Niche To Stand Out From The Pack? (3)
• October 14, 2008 -- Free Invoice, Receipt, T&C and Privacy Templates (1)
• May 13, 2010 -- 5 New & Amazing Features in Adobe Illustrator CS5 (4)
• July 1, 2009 -- Interviewed by Crazy Leaf Design Blog (2)

Users running Mac OS X are often stumped when trying to write onto most external hard drive’s as normally they are bought, they usually come in the NTFS File System format which you can read the drive natively in Mac OS X but not write onto it. This is because this is the file system that Windows uses, and whether us mac users like it or not, that is the bigger market. Instead of reformatting the hard drive to FAT32 and being stuck with the annoying 4GB individual file limit, that is a pain, if like me you have HD Movies and the like which can be anywhere from 2GB to 30GB, FAT32 is not ideal.

Recently Amit Singh, a Google employee, releases a implementation called MacFUSE which makes it possible to use any FUSE (File-system in USErspace) file systems in Mac. And the most useful FUSE is the NTFS-3G Read/Write Driver, which ables system to load NTFS with read and write capability. This is truly the greatest news for dual booting Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista.

Without going into great deal of technical details and compilation of the source code, I found out users around Internet already came up with binary version (in DMG) of MacFUSE and ntfs-3g, ready to install (credit to ShadowOfGed at AppleNova). Here are the instructions on how to use MacFUSE and NTFS-3G.

Simply:

1) Download macfuse and install
2) Download NTFS-3G and install

MacFUSE/NTFS-3G works for me, but as this is an experimental software, so back up your data, and try it at your own risk.

Other Posts

• November 9, 2009 -- How To Deal with Non-Paying Clients (29)
• July 27, 2010 -- 70 GigaPixel Photo of Budapest (2)
• July 26, 2010 -- 14 Great Design, Marketing and Freelancing Blogs (4)
• July 31, 2010 -- Interview with Illustrator, Designer, Musician Joel Gonsalves (3)
• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
• May 25, 2009 -- Bus retrospective Illustration Animation (0)

Designing for print, and designing for web are two different kettles of fish, and learning some of the basic considerations between the two can save you many of the traditional rookie mistakes that plagued us, in our teething process. this little article should hopefully stop you from making any huge mistakes early on.

Firstly, lets seek to define the two:

Typically when designing for print, I am talking about the following medium:

• Business Cards
• Brochures
• Magazines
• Flyers
• Posters
• Packaging

Typically when designing for web, I am referring to the following:

• Flash Websites
• E-mail Newsletters
• Banners
• Advertisements
• HTML Websites

When designing for web, the common goal is to keep the user on your website for as long as possible or for them to be able to access and process the information they have come to seek as quickly and easily as possible. When designing, for print however, you generally have an aim of catching the demographic’s eye to pick up/read/interact with your print. An advantage of print design is that you are designing for an eventual physical result, so physical properties such as texture , shape, paper weight, size can help you achieve the desired outcome.

Colour Considerations

One must first understand that colour can be segmented primarily for ease in this article into models called RGB and CMYK. When designing graphics for the web, you will need to set your relevant graphics program (e.g Adobe Photoshop) to RGB Mode. This is because the RGB model is used in computer screens. Thus, when designing websites (and other on-screen projects such as presentations), the RGB model is used because the final product is viewed on a computer display and as such the colours you design with will be able to be output accurately by these devices and in these situations. The CMYK color model is used when designing for print. To understand it, it is best to start with RGB color. The RGB color model (made up of red, green and blue) is used in your computer monitor, and is what you will view your projects in while still on screen. These colors, however, can only be viewed with natural or produced light, such as in the computer monitor, and not on a printed page. When designing for print , dependant on your relevant software, you will be working in RGB or in CMYK if your program can. All completed digital files should be converted to CMYK before sending to printers. Because of this issue, it is important to proof prints. (i.e print a copy to test how the colours are produced on paper, so that you can then adjust and correct your colours). Furthermore, designers often use swatches, to show clients what colours look like when printed onto different kinds of paper.

It is also very important to consider that colours which work well in print, do not always work well on the web and vice a versa. If your client, comes to you with a set of pre-determined colours from say a successful print campaign and wishes the same colours to be used on their website; you have to consider whether a bright yellow background with pink text is appropriate for a users bright computer monitor and whether they will find that setup attractive on the web etc. Much of it is trial and error, common sense and a general appreciation for the difference between print and web interaction with the user.

Layout Considerations

When designing for print, you are given a determined an exact size – as such you are 100% per cent sure on how the end result will look and be structured for all who encounter it. When designing for web it is is important to note that people have different monitors, and as such different resolutions. A common early mistake is to design a website on your great spanking high resolution graphic smonitor and then wonder why it does not fit on the standard home users screen. The most common screen resolution is 1024×768 pixels; as such this should be a huge consideration when designing websites. When designing, many web designers use maximum widths of 960 pixels, or alternatively in flash – one can also design sites that resize acording to the users screen resolution/browser area. Another key consideration when designing for web is to place your navigation in a clear and easy to find area. Also, striving to keep it as simple and straight forward as possible. There is no use having great information on a website, if your users struggle to get to it! When designing for print, it is essential that an appropriate trim and bleed is left around the edge of your design to accomodate for the prinitng process. Outside this area, you should avoid placing any vital information such as text which may be trimmed/binded/lost away after printng.

Summary for Print:

• Work in or convert all files to CMYK so you know how colours differ from normal RGB model
• Print a proof before sending to the printers/ or ask for a proff from the printers before the main run
• Leave an appropriate trim or bleed around the edge of you design, free of important information. The size of this will depend on what you are designing. Some already configured Photoshop documents with guides already set for you can be found in this post: (for free download) Print, business card, flyer, poster templates
• Check how colours print on different weights, finishes and textures of paper

Summary for Web:

• Design with the common monitor resolution of 1024×768 in mind
• Check colours you have used are web friendly for accessibility and usability. For information on accessibility and usability click here.
• Ensure you are designing using the RGB colour model.

Further Reading and Sources:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html

http://graphicdesign.about.com/od/printvsweb/a/print_vs_web.htm

http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/printweb.html

Related Posts:

• November 5, 2009 -- 11 Articles To Stop You Making Designer Mistakes (7)
• April 16, 2009 -- 5 Great Web Design Resources (5)
• September 26, 2008 -- 10 Resources and Tutorials to Understand and Create Corporate Identity (2)
• September 17, 2008 -- Using Humour Effectively in Design (5)
• September 13, 2008 -- 10 Tutorials and Resources to Teach You CSS (4)
• September 11, 2008 -- Adding A Rainbow To A Photo in Photoshop Tutorial (1)