Creative teams consistently work under the pressure of deadlines, and risked revenue should the concept and execution miss the mark. To make things even more challenging, factor in audience participation from idiosyncratic clients, associates or the boss. After all, everyone is an art director, right?

Managing the production of the live design theater dynamic is often the hardest part of the project process. I've seen, first hand, the pain on many faces as great concepts get mutilated under the guise of collaboration. One of my favorite creatives refers to this as "pouring water into wine".

Creatives take on many roles to facilitate getting the job done - innovator, artist, writer, thinker, peacemaker, renovation specialist, multimedia genius and exceptional service provider to name a few. You truly are a talented lot.

Our team's mission is to deliver image content and services that contribute to and support creative projects. We welcome your feedback at any time. It helps us build better products.

Best regards,
Kim Dixon

CEO and president

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One of the many rules of Murphy’s Law is: “The perfect photo for a layout will not have the necessary dimensions to use it.”

Here is a great trick using a floating selection with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to expand a photograph like the one shown in Figure 1.

This photo is almost square but to use it for a title page, it needs to be widened to allow room for the text.

Figure 1:This photo needs to be widened to allow room for a title.

1. Use the Canvas Size (Image, Resize, Canvas Size) to extend the right side of the photo two inches as shown below.

Figure 2: A floating selection covers the expanded area of the photo.

2. Choose the selection tool called Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and drag a selection over the part of the photo you want to duplicate to add on the edge of the photo. The edge of the selection is marked by a flashing black and white marquee that has come to be called “marching ants.”.

Tip – Many of the commonly used tools and features have shortcut keys which are indicated in parentheses. Learning to use these keys saves you from the need to select features and tools using a mouse cursor.

Figure 3: Use the Clone tool to remove the appearance of a seam.

3. Change to the Move tool (V) and while holding down the ALT (Mac: Option) key, drag the selection (now a floating selection) over the new extension of the image shown in Figure 2.

4. The new area is pretty obviously a duplicate. You can use the Clone Stamp tool to remove the seam as shown in Figure 3.

5. Delete the selection (CTRL+D/Command+D), and the floating selection is merged into the photo. You can now crop the photo to the desired size, and add a title like the one shown in Figure 4

Figure 4: A rectangular shaped floating selection is used to expand a photo so it can be used as a title page.

Bio
Dave Huss has been involved in photography for over 40 years and was an early advocate of digital photography He has authored more than 15 books on digital photo editing and just finished his newest title How to Do Everything with Digital Photography. Dave has taught workshops in both the US and Europe, been interviewed on both CNN and TechTV and also served as a Photoshop World instructor.

You’ve surely heard the line “Less is more” and if you’re like me, you’ve thought, “Not when it comes to chocolate!”. But less really can be more when it comes to images.

“Cropping” is the technical term for “trimming” an image. Cropping can improve poor images by removing the extraneous and visually focusing on the subject, and makes good images even better for your specific purposes by changing their meaning.

Here are five good reasons why you can show less to say more:

1) Focus

Sometimes there’s just too much of a good thing. Cropping lets you cut out the distractions and focus in on your subject.

Here’s excellent portrait of a ballerina in a theater. But all those cables in the background are distracting. It’s easy enough to crop them out, like this:

The cables are still there, but now they’ve been reduced to a background pattern. Simple cropping let us focus on the foreground—the subject of the picture.

Here’s a pleasant photo of a couple at the movies:

But crop out the guy, and the focus changes, it’s no longer about them, it’s now about her:

What started out as static is now more dynamic.

2) Zoom

You can think of cropping as the ability to “zoom in” on existing images—and there’s almost no limit to how close you can zoom in. Here’s a photo of a neon-lit hotel in Miami Florida:

You can “zoom” in on an image in a number of ways:

Figure 6: Now the neon “NY” make it seem like a building in New York.

Figure 7: Now it looks more like a hotel room in New York—perhaps one where you wonder what’s going inside that room.

Figure 8: And now it’s merely a neon sign that says “Hotel” and could be anywhere in the world.

2) Tell a different story

As you can see from the hotel neon examples above, cropping can change the entire meaning of a picture. Cropping the couple at the movies even changed the way you viewed the woman’s expression.

Here’s another example: this picture is about Venice.

Figure 9: This picture is about a romantic couple:

Figure 10: They could be anywhere—now it’s about the people, not the place.

4) Landscape to portrait

What happens when you find a great photo, but it has a landscape orientation (horizontal) and you need a portrait (vertical) image? The solution could be as simple as a snip.

This image started out as a landscape, but with a simple crop, it becomes a portrait:

Doing this has also focused in on the subject by cutting out the distractions. We know he’s an usher from his outfit, and the few chairs on the right, we didn’t really need all the dark chairs on the left. The original image is excellent, but the cropped version is better for your purposes.

5) Cropping out the box

In the past, cropping only meant trimming, but now it can also mean cutting a subject from its background.

This is a good image, but sometimes the subject can get lost inside the rectangle itself.

Here’s the exact same image, but with the hands cut out of the background. When you cut an image out of the background, it helps to “feather” the edges so that they’re antialiased and smooth.

Resolution requirements

In theory, the amount you can crop is limited only by your imagination. In practice, however, it’s limited by the resolution of the image. If you crop too much, your image could be too small to print sharply or view crisply on screen.

Because the high-resolution images on AbleStock.com are bigger to begin with, they can be cropped more than the smaller, lower resolution images from Hemera Image Express.

Images for the Web can be cropped more than images for print, because images on the Web require lower resolution (96 dpi) than images for print (200-300 dpi).

So remember—cropping is a valuable creative tool that helps you focus, zoom, and even change the meaning of existing images.

Bio
Daniel Will-Harris is a freelance writer and designer who lives with his wife and a large family of chipmunks in Northern California. His clients include Bitstream, Corel, Microsoft, Prentice Hall, Xerox and small businesses around the world. His Web site, www.Will-Harris.com, features his design work, and you can sign up for his entertaining email newsletter at www.SchmoozeLetter.com.

Like most public schools, Woodcrest Elementary School in Port Neches, TX, is working with a very tight budget. After salaries, books and supplies, there’s not a lot left for building maintenance and other projects. Last year, the school district decided to try to raise more money by attempting to pass a community bond. A Bond Committee would assess the needs of each school in the district, then use the data to promote the passage of the bond. With just under 300 students in grades K-3, Woodcrest is one of the smaller schools in its district, but it clearly needs a new parking lot and other costly items. Donna Guidry, a Teacher’s Aide at the school, knew she would have to come up with something impressive to catch the attention of the Bond Committee. Armed with only her creativity and Hemera’s The Big Box of Art® 615,000, she went to work…

“Many of the buildings in our district need repairs, so everyone knew there would be some intense, but friendly, competition among the different schools,” says Donna Guidry, from her home in Port Arthur, TX. “Each school was asked to prepare a ‘wish list’ for the Bond Committee, which would review the situation.”

After assessing all the schools in the district, the Committee would then determine which projects would be given priority status if the bond was passed and funds made available.

“I knew we needed to do something to stand out from the crowd, and I felt like I had just the tool to do it with: The Big Box of Art! I own a personal copy and I asked the school to buy me a copy for use in my classroom. A first grade teacher asked me about Hemera and immediately bought a copy. The secretary saw my Hemera graphics and loved them, so she quickly bought a copy for use in our school office...perhaps I should work for your company?” says Donna and laughs out loud.

In addition to her job as a Teacher’s Aide, Donna Guidry is also the founder and editor of the school newsletter. Needless to say, she’s quite computer literate and familiar with various illustration techniques. “I wanted something to make the requested items on our “Community Bond Wish List” stay in the committee members’ minds after they left our campus.”

She sat down and created a simple background image of the schoolyard, using pen and paper. After scanning the background image into her computer, she inserted several clip art images from The Big Box of Art 615,000 into her document to make it catchy and memorable.

“I knew that a visual statement would grab them a whole lot more than a simple, typed list,” says Donna. “If you look at the parking lot scene, a new illuminated parking lot is guiding a young boy to safety across a crowded street. Isn't that so much more effective than just saying we need a lit parking lot to keep our children safe? I think so. I felt like Hemera had come through for me, and began to feel even more confident when one of the committee members sent me an email complimenting me on the graphics in our wish list. Other committee members also sent praise to our school principal, who guided the campus tour, so I felt Hemera and I had certainly done our part,” Donna says.

“I simply love using Hemera’s products, in particular when you have the collections on just a few DVDs rather than over 20 CDs. It’s both fast and convenient, and it was no surprise to me that I could count on The Big Box of Art to meet my clip art needs once again. I was really thrilled that our presentation conveyed exactly the right message and tone to accompany our wish list.”

The Bond Committee is still working out the final proposal that will go to the community for a vote soon, and it will be some time before the educators at Woodcrest Elementary School find out whether or not they will receive the funds for the parking lot and other items on their wish list.

Donna concludes: “Regardless of whether or not the bond passes and we get our wish list, I'll be satisfied knowing I created the best presentation possible.”

Mats Lindeberg is Communications Manager at Hemera, and the Editor of Hemera News.

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