Today I spent the majority of the day working on a pop up banner that the Hallmark clients want for their stand at the upcoming wedding fayres. I began by designing the layout of the banner in Illustrator. I created coloured boxes where I want photographs to go that I can later use as clipping masks when I have the photographs to add.
We had already decided with the client that it was a good idea to have a large picture of a sketch of a ring, with the finished product sat on top. I left a space for this photograph, but as it was be landscape there was a lot of space left underneath so I added three more boxes where images of the finished ring could go.
During lunch, Julian went to the shop and when he came back he had the ring and the sketch to photograph. He took a few photographs himself, but I wasn't really happy with them as they were very dark and the composition wasn't right. He then asked me if I wanted to have a go at taking some photographs and I jumped at the opportunity. I like to think I am good at photography; I got an A* at A level. However, I have also continued it as a hobby over the past three years, and really enjoy it. I really wanted to have a go at taking some photographs for the banner as it would look ever better to say that I designed it and produced the photography for it.
I spent a good half an hour taking shots from different angles and finally produced a collection of photographs that would be perfect to use on the banner. I then spent the rest of the afternoon editing them in Photoshop. While I have used Photoshop a lot, especially during my photography course, I have only ever done simple editing, and still don't know what a lot of the different features do. I looked for tutorials online that helped with editing jewellery photographs, but I couldn't really find anything useful. I did find one step-by-step guide that showed you how to cut out rings so that they stand alone on a white background, but the process didn't look very natural when applied to my photographs and as they will be printed at a large size on a banner, the Photoshop effects need to be realistic. I tried to edit them using the processes that I already knew, but nothing seemed to do the photographs justice and make them look professional enough for a banner. I then asked Adam how he would edit them and he showed me a few tricks which will be very useful in the future.
He showed me how to manipulate the photographs using clipping masks, the paint brush, the spot healing tool and the patch tool. I had never used any of these tools when editing photographs before and I was really Impressed by what I could produce. It has now made me really eager to research and understand what all of the tools do in Photoshop as I am now aware that it has a lot more potential than I have been using it for. At the end of the day Adam asked me more about photography and I said that I had an interest in the subject and he said that if I enjoy it then I should take the time to learn how to manipulate photos in Photoshop as it is an extremely good skill to help you stand out as a designer as not many graphic designers know how to professional edit photography. This had never even crossed my mind, but increasing my knowledge in Photoshop, practicing photography more often and incorporating photography into my projects are definitely things I will look to do in the future.
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