Barack Obama came to my church today to give his testimony. I was able to fire off a few pictures of him with my cell phone’s built-in camera, but as you can imagine, the quality was a little less than spectacular. I want to be able to post these to my MySpace page, but they need some serious work before I’ll be satisfied enough to show them off. So here’s a few easy steps to quickly tweak your cell phone photos.

First, open up your picture in Photoshop. Click and hold the Eyedropper Tool until the tool’s option window pops up select the Color Sampler Tool. Move the Color Sampler tool over your image until you find the darkest black in your image (Tip: the Info Palette displays the corresponding RGB values for the pixel the Color Sampler Tool is hovering over. To select the darkest value in the image, look for the lowest RGB reading in the Info Palette. 0 is the lowest value for any RGB output). Click to set the value which will appear on the info palette as RGB #1.

Next we want to select the whitest white in the image. Using the Color Sampler tool again, find the lightest white value in your image. In the Info Window, light colors will have a higher RGB reading - 255 is the highest value for any RGB output. Click again to set this value which will appear as RGB#2 in the Info Palette.

Now to correct the color of the image. Go Layers>New Adjustment Layers>Levels and then click OK. You should be looking at the Levels dialog window now. Change your channel from RGB to Red. Enter the R value from your RGB#1 reading top left box to set the image’s black point and the R value from your RGB#2 reading in the top right box to set your white point. Now you can use the sliders to fine tune these settings to your liking and hit OK.

Flatten the images next Layers>Flatten Image.

Now let’s sharpen the image a bit to add a little clarity. Choose Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. A good place to start with sharpening a photo is Amount - 120%; Radius - 1.5 pixels; Threshold - 10 levels. Every photo is different so feel free to adjust these settings to your liking for your photo.

And finally, it’s time to sample different color variations. Go Image>Adjustments>Variations. The resulting window will show you several different color variations of your image, from here just pick the one that you think is best.

Heres my final product!

It may not be as good as a pic coming from a hi-res SLR camera with a good zoom lens, but it certainly looks better than the original!

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An effective marketing strategy identifies and targets your customers and prospects with the appropriate materials to communicate your company’s “value added” proposition. A strategy that, when it is well articulated and clearly charted, ensures that all your marketing and promotional materials are on target to your audience, have a consistent look and feel appropriate to your brand, and have the correct tone and tenor to communicate your unique selling proposition. If these elements are in place then all the oars of your marketing boat will be in concert, pulling your marketing efforts in the right direction.

The first step in developing a comprehensive marketing communications plan is to write out and clearly articulate what products and/or services your company is selling, to whom, why and what differentiates you from your competition.

Having a firm grasp on these concepts is a requirement to creating a strategy that will elevate your marketing effort to the next level. Capitalizing on this strategy what successful marketing is all about.

With so much competition and an uncertain economy, raising the visibility of your brand above the clutter is key to growing your business. In a constantly changing business environment, measuring results and charting successes and failures of your marketing efforts will show you how to adjust and react to this changing environment. Being armed with measured results and being flexible, you can reinforce the winning efforts and rethink or abandon ineffective and under performing ones. Go with the winners!

Periodic reevaluation of your entire marketing effort will enable you to stay on top of the changing business environment with an active rather than reactive approach. It is far better to be setting the pace rather than chasing your competition. By constantly monitoring and assessing the results of your program and then making adjustments as appropriate with updated and fresh ideas and images, programs and initiatives, you can make sure your company puts its best foot forward with customers and prospects.

Often overlooked and just as important as your customers and prospects, your staff and employees must understand your brand, internalize and deliver on your unique selling proposition. Without buy-in from your staff, you will not have a level of delivery on your value added proposition to keep true to your brand and keep you competitive in the market place.

How much should you be spending towards your marketing efforts. You should consider committing 2%-7% of your gross sales towards your marketing efforts. If this seems like a lot of money, remember this is an investment that will keep the orders and sales coming and keep you profitable.

Finally, get some professional help.

Professionally prepared ad copy, an excellent website, or a great brochure all require the expertise of professionals. While you or your staff may be able to create some of these materials, truly professional marketing can make all the difference in how your customers and potential customers view your company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Gellis

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Marketing is not a one time solution where you go all out and stop at a certain point. Rather, it is an on going process to sustain regular customers or to expand your market. It’s not enough to acquire the services of a large format poster printing company at one point and stop as well. It is a relationship you must keep - both as your business partner and service provider.

• The same thing cannot be said truer with your marketing strategies. It is too a relationship you must keep with your clients and build new ones with your prospects. Sending out a few brochures every now and then or handing out flyers when you feel like it isn’t enough.The only way to retain your hold on your consumers is to remain visible. Planning the right time, for the right products and services, to the right audience are just some of the several things you should consider. Communication is always the key and with which will propel your large format posters well.
• Large format poster printing is a way to anchor your advertising materials. It is the backbone your marketing can build upon. Large outdoor advertisements create the visibility you need to stay on top of your customer’s consciousness. Although it barely scratches the surface, it places a big foot in fast closing doors.

Marketing with Posters For whatever purpose you may think of, large format posters can generally do it for you. Brand your products well, build up your image, announce your promotions and increase your sales.

1. Use posters as a spring board to your marketing plan. Nothing would help establish your campaign better than large posters that can effectively dominate any landscape. Large posters give your other marketing materials a sense of credibility. Being viewed by a large audience, it is accountable to more people to get their facts right and promotional legitimate.
2. Call your clients to action. Poster slogans might be short, but it can be powerful. Suggest actions they can do immediately and conveniently. “Ask your Doctor (or dealer, mechanic, etc)” or “Visit our website”.
3. Use posters as your foot in the door. They can be patterned not just to make or promote direct sales. As illustrated in the previous paragraph, you can use posters to motivate your clients through more information, increase your visibility, and drive clients to your websites or events like trade shows and more.
4. Hammer in the message with repetition. It may be the same message over and over, but it works to build your brand and your customer confidence in your products. Consistency translates to dependability, and dependability sooner or later becomes trustworthiness.
5. The beauty of large format posters is that it is a very low maintenance advertising solution. You have it printed, you put it up and you forget about it, but it still keeps advertising.

Achieve these and more through the expertise of a large format poster printing company who can give you a variety of possibilities - from materials, designs, print options and more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_San_Gaspar

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Favicons aren’t new in the web design world, they do however add another level of professionalism to your site. It only takes a few minutes and easily extends your brand one step further. Favicons are relatively simple to make, essentially all you need is a 16×16 pixel image saved in the correct “.ico” format (more on that a little later) and then the proper code inserted in the head tag of your web pages.

To start your favicon project, first grab the image you’d like to use as your favicon and open it an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop. Keep in mind that your favicon will be small, so it’s better to choose a simple graphic rather than something like a photograph, which could end up just looking like a blob. Create a new file in RGB colorspace with the dimensions of 16 x 16 pixels. Copy your image into your new document and using your transform tool, scale your image to fit into the new 16 x 16 pixel document.

Once you’ve got your image into the new document and positioned just way you’d like, save your image using the name “favicon.” SIDENOTE: Incremental saves are crucial to not having to repeatedly recreate work that’s been lost due to a software or system crash or some other catastrophic event that would cause you to lose your work. See our previous posts on autosaves and backups.

Now, from this point there are two schools of thought. If you don’t have an image editor that can save to the .ico format, you can save your image as a .bmp (bitmap image) and then after saving, simply change the file extension from .bmp to .ico. This will work for this project, however won’t work for some uses, such as if you’re making a call in a C app and your filetype needs to be .ico, even though the file was renamed with the correct extension, the call will fail. The alternative here (and the one I prefer) is to use an image editor that will allow you to save as an .ico file. Photoshop users can download this nifty plug-in from telegraphics that will allow it to manage .ico files natively.

With our new .ico file saved, all we need to do now is upload it to the site. Using your favorite FTP client or website development tool such as Adobe Dreamweaver upload the image to your site’s root folder (usually “www” or “public_html”)

Now that the favicon is in place you’ll need to add a small snippet of code just after the </head> tag of your page:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>

Pasting this code into the head of a template is a good idea. This will make sure that any new pages you create with your template will display your new favicon.

Make sure to save your changes and upload the new page to your site. You may have to clear your browser’s cache and reload your page to force your browser to reload the link to the favicon.

That’s it! Enjoy your new branding extention!

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Every organizer aspires to throw parties that are the talk of the town for weeks to come, but when word-of-mouth is a little slow to spread, it may need a little push. Send full color club flyers as an invite to tease your guests and create the buzz.

These are a cross between a postcard, a flyer, and an invitation. It looks like a postcard, sounds like an invitation, and are handed out like flyers. It is printed in full color and made of the same cover paper stocks postcards are made of.

Here are some ways club flyers help stoke the fire to create raging events.

1. Two important things to remember when designing your club flyer: people are quick to judge and they have a short attention span. They can decide in a glance whether your event is worth dressing up for and going to or not.

2. When you want to win people’s confidence, sometimes you have to strut in like a peacock and display what you’ve got in full color. Beautiful, professional looking invites give a preview to the amount of attention and sophistication the party has. Design them to make the knock-out first impression that will seal the deal.

3. Give your clients confidence. Word-of-mouth happens because people want the reassurance that in that moment, they have confidently made the right decision. Asking around is simply to confirm that other people feel the same way.

4. Never underestimate the power of curiosity. Flyers tease and flirt with the guests. Giving them enough to spike their curiosity in one effective way of reeling your clients and other interested parties in. Include a little introduction about the DJ you hired for the party or about the popular chef you made delectable and exciting hors d’ oeuvres for this even alone.

5. Club flyers are the perfect visual aid and conversation catalysts about your party. An intriguing and captivating invite is quite irresistible, more so a unique one. Discover plenty of ways you can enhance your club card flyers and edge out the rest of the competition. There are a variety of materials and accessories you can work with. From envelopes to accompanying stationary and more.

6. Always remember to make yours consistent to your event or themes. Make sure that all details embody the concept you had planned out for the party. This helps your recipients gather in what sort of event it’ll be, the type of atmosphere present, and just an overall feel of who the crowd will be.

7. His and hers invitations aren’t exactly new but keep in mind that strategies such as this can help make your parties or events more interesting. Personalize invitations in this manner and more.

Club flyers go a long way to get the conversations about your party going. It is something they can carry around or tuck into their planners or pin on their cork boards. Let your guests know just how hard you intend to party. With your club flyers, you’re party can be as good as done.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_San_Gaspar

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By: Jo Han Mok

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The Good:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The Bad and the Ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

Article Source: http://www.articlestoreprint.com

Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses at: www.InternetMillionaireBlueprints.com

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Many people mistakingly believe that Adobe Photoshop is the end-all program for graphic design.Wrong.True, Photoshop is an incredible graphics app, there are many instances where other apps are better suited to the work you’re doing. For instance, you wouldn’t want to use Photoshop for:

• Layouts for multiple page documents such as booklets, brochures, magazines or catalogs.
• Logos
• Spot color work
• Designing items that need to be resized later…
the list goes on. 

There are many apps that are much better suited for this type of work. They’ll make your job easier, as well as save you time and money with the vendors you send your art to.If you have questions on when to use which app for your project, don’t hesitate to contact me! 

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With the costs of process color work on the decline (or maybe it’s just that fewer designers these days know the ins and outs of spot work), spot color seems to be more and more of a mystery to the average print designer.So what is the difference between spot and process color?

Process color, (or CMYK, or full color, or four-color, or photographic color - depending on your background and who you’re talking to) uses four ink colors to create full color spectrum. The inks used in this process are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (Key). These inks are semi-transparent when applied to the paper on a printing press and are combined in various densities to closely reproduce photographic (or natural) color.

I say “closely reproduce” because due to the color combinations available as well as the press operator’s eye for color (and the fact that the CMYK color spectrum is considerably smaller than gamut of color the human eye can interepret), it’s not always possible to get the exact color reproduction as you may see on your monitor, or from your inkjet printer.Spot color, on the other hand, includes only the color inks specified in your print document. For this method of print to work correctly, you must first specifiy your colors correctly in your document. This is most commonly done by specifying Pantone colors as “spots” in InDesign or Quark (and can be done in Illustrator and other applications as well).

Why print Spot instead of CMYK?Many businesses have certain spot colors assigned in their logos (for example, Mercer University’s branding colors are Pantone 158 and Black) to ensure that they are printed with consistency from printer to printer, project to project.Costs is a factor as well. It doesn’t make too much sense to pay for color when printing a letterhead… Only the two colors used in the branding piece are going to be used, no photography, etc. With these types of projects, it’s generally cheaper to print using the two spot colors instead of the more complicated four-color process (and color printing sometimes cannot reproduce Pantone colors).

The process of spot differs a little from full color printing as well. With spot printing, pre-pigmented opaque inks are used to print. So if your business’ branding piece used Pantone 300 (a light blue) and Pantone 032 (a bright orange), these color inks would be used on the printing press instead of the being built using the translucent CMYK inks.

So to recap, when to use spot vs. CMYK printing?

CMYK:When full color is preferred.

Spot:When creating a piece that uses only a company’s branding colors.
Cost.

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Again, it’s been a little longer than I would have liked since my last post, however things have been rather busy in the studio lately. My new family and I were cotemplating a move out of town, however, decided otherwise. I’ve also been working on a quite a number of projects. Since my last posting, I’ve left my day job and am now pursuing studio work full-time.

Running from meeting to meeting, doing a good deal more self-promotion and sales work has cut into my computer time, but it’s time I get back on the bloggin’ wagon and update the rest of my site as well.

Though I try to provide a good mix of advanced marketing and design tips, it never hurts to go back to your basics and remember the fundamentals. So this installment is all about the things we should know when beginning a design project, but may have forgotten after getting in our daily routines…

Know Your Colorspace

An oversight here can easily ruin any print project, or cause a web projects colors to look funny. Always work in CMYK for print projects and RGB for web work. For photography work that’s going to press, I’ve found it’s best to make the CMYK conversion after doing any image manipulation or color correction. For fine art reproduction, talk to your printer first, some printers prefer to do the conversion themselves.

Resolution, Resolution, Resolution

Just like the relevance of the three “L’s” of real estate establish property value, resolution determines the quality of your reproductions. When starting any project, know it’s final output and set your resolution accordingly. This is primarily in relation to working in Photoshop. If you’re producing a graphic that is to be used in a print project, 300 dpi is generally the minimum resolution you’d want to use. Once again though, it’s never a bad idea to check with the company that going to be doing the printing for you. For example, newsprint generally prints at a resolution of 150 dpi because the paper that’s used in newsprint won’t hold an image much clearer than that, at the opposite end of the spectrum, some fine art publications request resolutions as high as 600 dpi. There are also some oddball requests out there as well. One printer I work with for glicée work requires 302.6 dpi resolution. Why? I have no clue, but just goes to show, when in doubt, ask your output provider what they prefer. It’ll save you money and headaches in the long run.

Use the right Program

Simple. Use a photo editing program such as Photoshop for editing pictures. Use a page layout program like InDesign for publication layouts. Each program is catered to a certain type of work. Sure, you can lay out a brochure in Photoshop, but that’s not what the program was designed for and as such, you’ll be causing yourself to do more work to get the project done than if you did it in a page layout application such as Quark or InDesign. The same goes for logo work, this is Illustrator’s forté, not Photoshop’s. I’m always amazed at what designers try to do in Photoshop when it’s clearly not what the application was designed for.

Remember the Bleeds!

If your document has color that is supposed to run to the edge of the finished sheet, you need to make your artwork bigger than the actual finished size. For example, if you’re creating an 11 x 8.5″ trifold brochure that has a graphic taking up the entire background, your artwork should be 11.25 x 8.75″. The reasoning for this is that your printer will be printing your brochure on a piece of paper larger than 11 x 8.5″ and then cutting it down to size. The .25″ allowance is called a bleed and ensures that should the paper shift during the cutting process, there will be no white fringe at the edge of the paper.

Preflight, Package, Send

Probably the biggest faux pas I’ve seen from a disappointly large number of designers is submitting artwork without preflighting. All page layout programs worth having include a Preflight tool. Preflighting simply checks your document to make sure you’ve got all your art in the right colorspace, resolution, all fonts are either embedded or available for packaging (not copyright protected) and all links are up to date. Running a preflight on your document will instantly tell you if there are any problems with your files and what you need to do to fix them. Again, saving you time, money and headaches with your output provider. Packaging is done after preflighting. Packaging your document places a copy of your working page layout file, all included fonts and graphics as well as a .txt file containing any special instructions and your contact information in one folder. Essentially creating a copy of all your working documents in one location for you to stuff (or zip, depending on your platform preference) and send to your output provider.It may seem elementary to the seasoned professional, but in my experience working with other designers and marketers, these are the steps most often overlooked in many, many projects.

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“Can you make this more blue?” “I saw this nice purple on a shirt, can you make this part of the logo that color?” “My company’s colors are orange and blue, let’s do that.”

All of these requests are fairly common in the graphics world, unfortunately, not very effective when trying to communicate color in the business world.

Because everyone’s eyes are slightly different and everyone experiences color a little differently, not to mention the numerous factors that can influence how an individual perceives color (ambient light, mood - yes, mood, blood sugar, medication, adjacent color… the list goes on), making something “more blue” to me may look completely different (like purple) to you. In the business world, this can be disasterous.

Many businesses have a specific color they want used for their logo. A good designer will work with a company to set color standards for their branding piece. Part of the reason for this is to prevent consumer confusion. If Company A advertises in 30 different publications, has all types of signage, printed marketing collateral, promotional products, etc. without specifying exact colors, it’s entirely possible that the logo will appear in an endless number of different shades of the color that the logo is supposed to be. This can confuse potential customers; Are there two companies with the same name? Is this ad from the same store I was just in? Is there a Company B that is trying to copy the look of Company A? Leading to the ultimate conclusion: “I’m not too sure about Company A, I’m going to buy from their competitor instead.”

Not good.

The advertising dollars you spent on establishing a brand can easily be as good as wasted if you’re not protecting and extending your brand. This includes not only the physical characteristics of your logo, but also how its colors are reproduced as well. Luckily, there’s a solution to make sure you get the exact colors you’re expecting.

The Pantone Matching System is the universal guide to communicating color. Every marketer should be aware of what PMS colors are used in their company’s brand. This system relies on pigmented inks being identified as numbers so that designers and service bureaus are speaking about the same colors.

The crucial link in this system are the swatch books manufactured by the company. Each book is printed with the various inks available and printed colored swatch has a corresponding number associated with it. There are more than 1,100 available inks to choose from, which without a matching system would make for a nightmare for designers to keep colors consistant.

To acheive expected results when reproducing color, it’s imperative that your designer consult with you during the branding process and choose the exact colors for your business’ logo or marketing pieces. During this process, you should ask to see a swatch book and pick out the colors that appeal to you or specify the exact colors that your company requires. This way, when you have your collateral produced, you’ll get the exact colors you’re expecting instead of something close…

Pantone swatchbooks are an essential tool to have in your arsenal. They can be ordered direct from Pantone and generally run about $120 for a three book set. www.pantone.com. Always specify PMS colors for any project that is color critical (and when it comes to your brand, they all are!)

If you have additional questions about how to effectively communicate color, or have a few projects you’d like to discuss, contact me.

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