Virtually every image you bring into Adobe Photoshop—whether it be a stock image or from a scanner or digital camera—will need at least a little bit of sharpening. This is just something we, as designers, have to deal with in the digital age. Many photographers will balk at such a statement: if they’re good and take pride in their work, the photo is close to perfect in their eyes to begin with. However, once the photo is brought in to your Mac and your image manipulation is complete, a loss in sharpness is almost always present, no matter how perfect the original photo, negative or slide was. A recently published article at Macworld.com titled Photoshop Sharpening Tips for Designers offers some tips for sharpening your images.
Tagged: tips
Typography tips: Using Em, En and Hyphens
Most designers don’t know squat about typography these days. Heck, most people in general know very little about typography and grammar. While these things will most likely go unnoticed by 95% of people, it’s the 5% who do notice that may be the deciding factor in you getting that next job or assignment. Here are a few tips to make you look smarter. You should use an em dash, which is the width of an em space, as punctuation — usually as a pause in your text and a change of topic. You make an em dash by hitting Option+Shift+Hyphen. En dash is used to set the phrase one through ten like so: 1–10. You make an en dash by hitting Option+Hyphen. And of course the hyphen is the most common “dash” in typography. It’s used to separate words and note the break in syllables of words. They hypen is simply the Hyphen key by itself (generally with no space on either side of it).
Tips for digital photography beginners
If you’re new to digital photography (welcome aboard!), Canon has a nifty little site that discusses all the basics about your digital camera (regardless of the brand) and how to take great pictures. Some of the topics covered are:
- Bright & dark shots
- Controlling depth of field
- Freezing or blurring motion
- ISO speed effects
- Creating depth
- Setting image quality
- Focusing a moving subject
- Shooting dark subjects
- Shooting bright colors
- Using white balance
Again, this site is mostly for beginners, but there may be some interesting tips for hobbiests who simply refuse to read their camera manual! 🙂