I received a newsletter today from the Photoshop Cafe which I frequent and have purchased some CD products from. I was asked to contribute any suggestions about future tutorials or videos and thought I would share my response here. If anyone has any knowledge of some great tutorials or templates about photo layouts for photo books, please contact me. For now I’m going to crack the Photoshop books that I have and try to learn how to create some templates on my own.
I want to hear from you! Let me know what training you would like to see on video. I want to hear what you think would make a great title for a video. What would you like to learn and what do you think others would like to learn?
Hello,
My name is Jim Atwood and I’ve been a customer of some of your CD/DVDs. I thought I would respond to your question above.
Lately, I’ve been going gang busters in Photography with a purchase awhile back of a Nikon D200 and several lenses. As you know Photoshop CS2 is a leader in working with RAW and for post processing images. As the DSLR revolution expands, I am finding a particular area in greater demand is the idea of creating layouts or templates for photo pages. One such popular and famous wedding photographer has created some software called “Yervants Page Gallery” at http://www.yervant.com.au/. Another is called “Pixel Creator Pro” found at http://www.pixelcreatorpro.com/ .
Both of the above programs mainly use Photoshop action sets to create layouts for your photos. I currently use a printing company called http://sharedink.com for printing my photo albums and use Photoshop CS2 to create my own custom layouts. I have noticed that more and more people involved in photography seemed to be interested in how to create nice looking photo pages to display their photos either with photo books or simply in printing them out with a printer.
So, my suggestion would be to consider creating a tutorial or video program about the basics of creating your own photo layouts. Perhaps topics might include the following.
1. How to setup page dimensions and proper resolution which is usually 300dpi for printing.
2. Masking Techniques for creating interesting page layouts.
3. Border and Line Techniques.
4. Basic Layout Techniques for displaying multiple photographs on a page.
5. Working with text to maximize quality for printing.
6. Perhaps some review of layers.
7. Info about blend modes to help with interesting backgrounds for fading photos for example.
8. Tips for creating actions or even providing actions that will help speed up workflow.
9. Tips for resizing or working with photos to be dropped into your photo page layout. (ie workflow )
10. Tips for single, double, and/or panaramic style photo pages.
Finally you could even provide some sample layouts for general use or even create some themes such as “weddings” or “a new baby” for example.
You will notice that the above programs were designed to specifically work with Photoshop CS and/or CS2. The pricing for both packages are also very expensive mainly because photo pages are perhaps new and the fact that Yervant is a famous photographer and designer. However, many people on various forums are quick to point out that simple knowledge of how to build your own templates along with understanding the basics in masking or actions in Photoshop can be very beneficial.
Anyway, perhaps this suggestion might come too soon, but eventually I think the demand for information about creating page layouts in photoshop to enhance the display of your photos in print or albums will no doubt continue to escalate. Lately there has been a ton of tutorials about photo retouching, enhancement, and restoration, but very little about how to display photographs on a page to help make them pop!
I also have a tutorial suggestion. Attached is a photo I found from some gentleman’s signature on a photo forum. I thought the idea was fabulous and would love to know how to do something like this. Perhaps a variation of the attached photo could be implemented into a tutorial. I also think the example is a perfect idea for a photo page that could be either printed or used as a page for a photo book. The possibilities are endless perhaps.
Thanks very much and keep up the excellent work. I enjoy visiting your site often.
Sincerely,
Jim Atwood
Nagano, Japan
Here is the attached example photo. I’d like to know how to create something like this.
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By the way, I haven’t heard back regarding my suggestion. I simple thanks for the suggestion would have been nice. Photoshopcafe is starting to go downhill regarding communication in my book. Oh well.