Need a quick guide change?
Here’s an easy to remember tip that comes in very handy. The situation can come up in many different ways but the basic idea is that you have a horizontal or vertical guide and you want the opposite of what you have. Rather than drag out another guide, you can quickly change the one you have to the opposite orientation by placing your cursor over the guide with a selection tool, while holding down the option (alt) key, then click and drag to the new location.
Photoshop includes some amazing tools for Sharpening, most of which are pretty obvious like Sharpen and Sharpen More. There are more ways to sharpen like Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen, but one of my favorites is not so easily found, as it doesn’t even have Sharpen in its name. I’m talking about High Pass Filter and this is a trick I learned from the “Photoshop Guys”. If you don’t know who I’m talking about you must be from another planet, but for the sake of clarity, the Photoshop Guys are Scott Kelby, Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowsky from Photoshop TV or Kelby Media and they have some great, short tutorials for Photoshop tricks that I encourage all to check out.
To learn the tip, select > (continue reading…)
So how does this lowering of standards manifest itself and what can we do about it? With the coming of digital photography, we’re being asked to use photography that truthfully isn’t very good. Of course, the upside of this is that our Photoshop skills are getting better out of necessity, but even so, it’s not the same as quality, professional photography. Not to mention those PowerPoint graphics that our clients want to use at 300%. In addition to our skills as designers we’re having to become digital repair-people. Is there no limit to the lack of quality art we’ll agree to use? I’ve come to the conclusion that unlike a pendulum that has swung too far to the “poor quality” side and will eventually swing back the other way, the “swing back” isn’t going to happen without a little help. Just say no? Well … it’s a start. Realistically, we probably can’t “just say no”, but maybe we can push back a bit for better quality. This could mean using stock photos, illustration or better yet bringing in a pro photographer once in a while or improving our Illustration skills by recreating graphics. It comes down to value and I think it’s up to us to help build it again. Show your clients what good photography looks like. I know, it won’t work all the time, but the “quality sells” argument is a good one, with lot’s of examples out there, so what do you say? Are we pros or not?
