Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Original:

This is the original image, right off the camera, no manipulation:

Final:

Here is the final image. See the vast, but subtle difference:

Step 1:

Open the image and find your focal point. Using some of the same techniques that give the look of a tilt-shift image, enter Quick Mask Mode (shortcut: Q). Once in Quick Mask Mode, select the Gradient tool (shortcut: G) and switch it to “Reflected Gradient” mode.
Now draw a 90º line from the center of your focal point out to one of the edges of the artboard. This step might take a couple tried to get you exactly what you’re looking for, but tweak the settings until you’re happy. This is what mine looked like:
Once you have your gradient drawn out to a place your comfortable with, exit Quick Mask Mode (shortcut: Q) and you should see your marquee.

Step 2:

From your finder menu navigate to ‘Filter/Blur/Lens Blur…’ and enter the dialogue window. From here you will control how much emphasis you would like on your subject, but for normal photos this should remain fairly low as to not give it a “photoshopped” fakeness.
As you can see from the above image, the setting i used offer a sense of depth to the otherwise flat photo. I kept the settings subtle for the effect i was trying to create, but be creative until you achieve the look you want.

Step 3:

Next we will adjust the saturation to really make the colors and the focal point pop. First, Enter the Hue/Saturation dialogue window (shortcut: command + U) and add anywhere from 15-35 to the saturation point.
This will give the image a much more vibrant look without blowing out the colors to a ridiculous state.

Step 4:

From here we will adjust the levels of the image to make sure that our black points and white points are slightly beyond their original histogram starting points.
Enter the Levels dialogue window (shortcut: command + L) and look at your histogram. Make sure you move the Black point past the lowest point of the left graph and visa versa with the White point on the right side. For this image i’ve also moved the 50% Gray point slightly to the right as to make the image slightly darker throughout the mid tones as well.

Step 5:

By now you’re image should look pretty good. Now if you’d like to jab at those colors and depths one more time like i did you can proceed with this step.
What i’ve done in this step is to take all the work we’ve done thus far, and step it up one more time. Start by duplicating the layer you’ve been working on by dragging it to the new layer icon, which will create a copy, or using the keyboard shortcut (command + J). Once you’ve got a copy from your finder menu navigate to ‘Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur…’ and adjust your settings until you’ve got a nice smooth glow over the image, as you can see above. Now, you may be asking yourself why we just ruined all that work we just did. Well, here’s the exciting part. Set that duplicate layer you just blurred to a blending mode of “Soft Light” and watch the image shine! Adjust you opacity until you’re happy with your final image.

Conclusion:

Well, That’s it. Simple, fast and effective. Once you get these techniques down you’re on your way to editing all your photos with speed. For a tutorial on using the Levels dialogue window, see my post, Tutorial: Using Black & White points in Photoshop to clear up an underexposed picture, for a more in depth explanation of the White point and Black point and how you can color correct photos in a flash.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Click through to download the full size cheat sheet. PDF Available below image.

Follow this link to download this in a PDF format: Twitter Cheat Sheet PDF (approx. 350k)

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Title: January OCMETRO Cover, The ECOnomics Report, Special Green Issue

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 4-8 Hours

About: OCMETRO’s first “Green” issue. They wanted something to capture the feel of the large green movement in Orange County.

Designer Notes: Thanks to online tutorials (via PSD Tuts), this cover was not only fun, but also a huge learning experience. The client loved the idea from the start.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

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Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 2 hours

About: CEO Centerfold spread pages for OCMETRO, Photography by Tracie Spence.

Designer Notes: This was my 6th design of a CEO centerfold for OCMETRO magazine.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 2-3 Hours

About: Cover design for OCMETRO’s Best & Worst Issue with a special Tiger Woods feature. The Tiger Woods Learning Center was featured as one of the ‘Best’ events in Orange County California, 2008.

Designer Notes: Getting to work with a cover image of a well-known, famous face really opened the perspective up to produce a great cover.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 2 hours

About: CEO Centerfold spread pages for OCMETRO, Photography by Tracie Spence.

Designer Notes: This was my 5th design of a CEO centerfold for OCMETRO magazine and third in a horizontal layout.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

As any good designer knows, typography is a main element of design. With the thousands of typeface choices many designers get overwhelmed. Modern design dictates that type not only be treated as an element on a page, but a main eye catch as well. Graham at ImJustCreative.com created a site, lovehelvetica.com, to simplify the typeface jungle, and pay homage to one of the classics… Helvetica. Being such a versatile font, Helvetica lends itself to a world of design with it’s huge variety of weights.

This design is my homage to the great font, Helvetica Neue. The thought process behind the design was to use the ‘a hole’ (thanks Albertonomo via flickr) to “peel” back into a heart shape and convey the idea of ‘love helvetica’. The 2.0 gradient shading has been my design kick for the month, so there’s some of that in there as well.

Comments/criticisms are always welcomed. Or design one of your own and sent me the link! Fond me on twitter to let me know as well @lhodsdon

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: None, Personal Project

Program(s) Used: Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2 (for logo)

Time Span: 10-20 minutes, not including logo

About: Thanks to a GREAT, and fast, tutorial at Denis Designs, I was inspired to give my own take and twist. The tutorial is super easy to follow, and the results, as you can see, are pretty spectacular! Hey Denis, ever think about the tagline “You can’t spell design without Denis.”

Designer Notes: Easy to follow tutorial steps, great result i can’t really say much else! By the way, if you hadn’t noticed, this IS the new logo the site will be using in the re-design that is, god willing, still slated to happen mid year this year. Big plans in my brain… getting them out might be the hard part.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

Click for full resolution image

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 2 hours

About: CEO Centerfold spread pages for OCMETRO, Photography by Tracie Spence.

Designer Notes: This was my 4th design of a CEO centerfold for OCMETRO magazine and second in a Horizontal layout.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2

Time Span: 6-8 Hours, concept to completion

About: Annually OCMETRO chooses it’s “Hot 25″ business people of Orange County California. This year we wanted to try a fresh new look, with a feeling of anonymity to appeal to the readers and grab their attention.

Designer Notes: I really got to strech my design wings with this cover. Working for a business related publication, design like this is a tough sell. The image pleased enough of the decision makers and i got the green light to go ahead with the cover and cover story.

Click through for the full image after the jump.

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Client: Churm Media, in association with OCFAMILY

Program(s) Used: Illustrator CS2

Time Span: 3 Hours

About: Churm Media requested a way to show it’s readers and advertisers the success it’d had at this year’s annual PPA (Parenting Publications of America) Awards Convention.

Designer Notes: I really wanted to explore trying to make the banner really appear as if it was intertwining throughout the Masthead. Piggybacking upon the great success of OCFAMILY’s website at this years Parenting Publications of America’s Annual awards contest & ceremony. Here are what some of the judges had to say about the website itself.

Gold: OC Family; Kimberly Porrazzo; Kristen Schott; Jeff Kitchen
OC Family’s web site provided rich multimedia content for its users. The highlight of this content is the ability for OC Family’s community to contribute photos of children. The photos are tastefully incorporated into the Web site’s design and provide an engaging entry-point into the site’s additional content. The directory of community businesses provides detail with both contact information and a description of services.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 2 Hours

About: CEO Centerfold spread pages for OCMETRO, Photography by Tracie Spence.

Designer Notes: This was my 3rd design of a CEO centerfold for OCMETRO magazine.

Click through for the full size image after the jump…

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2

Time Span: 4 Hours

About: The cover story told of ways that each presidential candidate could effect Orange County, since we’re a hyper-local magazine media company.

Designer Notes: I wanted the cover to look vastly different than anything we’d produced in the past, bringing techniques and ideas which Churm Media hadn’t explored before. The idea of adding in the Orange slices was to really bring the hyper-local aspect to the cover, and to get a nice bright splash of colors.

Full image after the jump…

Post from: ninethreestudio.com

Client: Churm Media, in association with OCMETRO

Program(s) Used: Quark 6, Photoshop

Time Span: 1 hour.

About: CEO Centerfold spread pages for OCMETRO, Photography by Tracie Spence.

Designer Notes: This was my second CEO centerfold design for OCMETRO Magazine, and the first ever horizontal layout for the section.

click through for full image.

Post from: ninethreestudio.com