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Snapshots are among our most precious
possessions. Always in the top five things to be removed from a
burning or flooding home.
After the initial sessions of being shown to
friends and relatives, snapshots quickly lose a lot of our
interest. A favorite may get plugged onto a refrigerator door
beneath a Pizza Hut magnet, the others fade into obscurity in a
shoe box or behind the front cover of an album, to "someday be
sorted."
Alas, huddling among its brethren in the shoe
box is a real winner or more. An image that deserves more
respect, deserves to rise above a magnetized 'fridge door or a
tacky drugstore frame.
Here's a simple Photoshop/inkjet printer
technique that will turn a snapshot image into a minor
masterpiece you'll be proud to display or give to a loved one as
a gift. For my step-by-step I've chosen an image of my
granddaughter sharing a breakfast moment and another piece of my
donut with me.
The finished image will be printed on a
letter-sized sheet to fit in an inexpensive frame.
This is truly a snapshot: direct flash and
unposed. The first step is in Photoshop: resizing, color
correction and fixing Madison's red-eye. I resampled the image
to about 6x8 inches at 300ppi. (See my previous column on
resizing images.)
Nearly all photos can benefit from some
cropping. In this case, my hand holding the donut was a
distraction and my uncombed hair was unruly at the top. Using
Photoshop's Crop tool (C), I made the image tighter.
With the cropped image on the background, I sent
it to a new layer Command/PC CTRL+J, then selected the
background and erased it to white Command/PC CTRL+Delete.
The secret to this presentation lies in the
white background and a new canvas size. Under the Image menu, go
to Canvas Size and leave the selection area in the middle
square. I selected a new canvas size that provided about an inch
all around the original image size.
In Figure 5, you can see the image layer
hovering over the larger white background layer.
There are those of us who think the application
should be called PhotoDropShadow, and the effect is really
useful here. Under Layer Effects (Layer menu item in 5.5 and
earlier – layers palette in 6.0), choose Drop Shadow. I pulled
the shadow down and right about a quarter inch (try using the
mouse to physically position the shadow, it works). Then I
dropped the opacity to about 45 percent and gave it about a 15
percent blur. You might want to create an Action for this effect
(or in 6.0 save it as a Layer Style) to ensure uniformity if
you're going to create a set of these photos.
A little-known and seldom-used Photoshop feature
is the Border button in Page Setup. Make sure your inkjet is the
chosen printer and go to Page Setup (Edit Menu>Page Setup or
Command/CTRL+Shift+P). Orient your paper correctly, choose your
highest resolution for printing, then click on the Border
button. In the dialog box, enter 1 (pixel) for a thin border or
a higher figure for a thicker border (6 is ideal for funeral
portraits for memorial service display).
The border will not show up on-screen, only when
it is printed. And in this case, the border will appear around
the Canvas Size measurement, about an inch outside the image
with its drop shadow. Note: if the image size and canvas size
are identical, the border will print as a keyline on the edge of
the photo. Very effective for images will light or bald skies.
The final step is to make a print and trim the
letter-size paper to fit an 8x10 frame. I used my current
favorite paper: Epson Heavyweight Matte (about 23¢¢ per
letter-sized sheet and available everywhere. If you really want
to be classy, you can title and sign the photo below the border.
The frame I chose was a once-piece Lucite job (about $6 at a
craft store) into which the finished print easily slips.
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