Affordable DVD Packaging

Affordable DVD Packaging was – amongst others – the topic of yesterday’s exciting Photoshop Ycademy Workshop and great Web Graphics Tutorial.

Affordable DVD Packaging

Is there a way for affordable DVD Packaging?

Well, there is the long way to elaborate all this in hundreds of little steps on Photoshop – that’s what I’ve learned and practised over quite a while based on studying the early Adobe Photoshop Bible 5 – and then there is today’s fast and spiffy way by using Actions or Action Scripts, where basically the whole process is extremely compressed into automatic processes with occasional ’stops’ to insert personalized data like a title, a name, a copyright… that deliver astonishing end products.

These Action Scripts allow even people who are no artists and who don’t intend to go that route… but who have equipped themselves properly with Photoshop and who wish to present their photos and images on Blogs and Websites in a professional and appealing way… to produce great results for say CD wrappers, attractive DVD Jewel cases and many other forms of packaging.

Of course, this is only possible because some professional Graphic Designer has gone the whole route of many little steps to create an Action Script – that basically recorded all these complex steps and wrapped it all up in a PRO Action product at a price or gives it away for ‘free’. Suddenly, anyone can get an eye-catching result at one or two mouse clicks. What’s important here is to find the real good actions between the many thousands out there on the Internet… but for this we have:

Photoshop Ycademy

Whenever working professionally, it is important to be properly equipped.

A good tool may have its price, but it’s all worth it as it saves us time and – if we know how to use it – it definitely gives us an edge over the competition.

Those Photoshop Ycademy Workshop participants who wish to reach the top – and with it a highly sophisticated clientele – have to continuously invest in high quality tools and their knowledge and skills to use them. However, this will allow them to focus on Productivity, get better results and have more music in their PayPal account at the end of the day.

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Working with Lightroom Presets

Presets are of great help to adjust images in Lightroom. For easy editing it is necessary to get familiar with terminology and some technical features. Most Lightroom presets find their equivalent in Photoshop.

Tonight at the Workshop we will play with some Lightroom Presets and Photoshop actions.

praz-sur-arly

Praz-sur-Arly

Get your materials from here-below:

[download_box]Presets and Actions Download[/download_box]

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Presenting Web Design Graphics

In today’s madly media oriented virtual world it’s important to integrate good quality pictures and images into our Websites and Blogs, ideally based on our own digital photography and/or Graphic Artwork.

Within that context and with improving Internet streaming and connectivities even down here in the sticks in South Africa, the ‘packaging’ of anything we present gains in importance. Just as in the ‘real’ world… the ‘look’ is what counts most. This means that we as Web Designers and Graphic Artists have to adapt our skills to be Presenting Web Design Graphics in a professional and appealing way.

Presenting Web Design Graphics

Presenting Web Design Graphics can be done the long and more elaborate way – depending obviously on the effect you wish to achieve as some are really just done in a few mouse clicks if you know the brilliant tools in your Adobe Photoshop CS4 – but for those who want to present their photos and images in a clean and pleasant manner without having to dig through complex Photoshop Tutorials, there is a smart way saving lots of time: Actions or Action Scripts.

Well, it’s what today’s Pro’s use anyway… as time is money and why reinvent the wheel?

How to Create a Reflection

In my Photoshop Series on “How to Create a Reflection” in September 2009, I introduced you to the more complex route – although this one was easy enough.

In the above example I simply used an Action Script to create a Reflection. This example is a simple one and I would say I personally would do it just as fast the ‘normal’ route, however, when it comes to automating hundreds of steps for items we don’t necessarily do every single day… WOW! this is just Magic!

One point I want to emphasize though: we always need good material to work with – sharp big photos, good quality images. It’s jsut a rule and not to be disputed.

Photoshop Ycademy Workshops

In yesterday’s Photoshop Ycademy Workshops we looked into additional Action Scripts and did some Action Script Troubleshooting.

One important point to remember was to not change the image size until at the end. Don’t even try this! I did… and had a beautiful product at the end of Step 1 – however, there was no way to render it!

Why did this happen?

Dali Through My Eyes

I had a specific picture in mind, however, as the Artwork I wanted to integrate – Dali Through My Eyes – was of much smaller size than what was dictated by the Action Script, I just decreased its size so I had a perfect fit!  Well, so thought I !!!

But that made the rendering via the Action Script impossible and, seeing that I cannot enlargen my original Artwork without losing pixels and quality, I have to abandon the idea alltogether. Yeah… any Actions Pro may have a laugh here… but this is part of the learning curve and we will get there!

Of course, I could do it in the ‘old’ way – however… as we approach different markets now – including Printing – , we need BIG pictures of HIGH quality. It requires a different way of thinking and planning… and it’s very exciting!

For the time being, I tested another Action in terms of a Cast Shadow on that well intended DVD Cover… and, of course… that attractive reflection :)

In tonight’s Photoshop Ycademy Workshop we will look into ways of dealing with Portraits and Landscapes – so look into your image folders and have some good, big pictures ready to be ‘manipulated’ for better presentation within your websites and blogs.

And to answer your question: YES! I am and have always been a fan of that great Surrealist painter… Salvadore Dali!

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How to use Photoshop Actions

Do you know Photoshop Actions and how to use them? If you think that we may be able to share with you some new actions, join tonight’s YORGOO call at 9 pm London Time.

We will show you, how you can quickly and with just one mouse-click transform your images to have the same look as the samples below.

Photoshop Action Scripts to increase productivity

The few samples below show day to day actions you may come across and which can be reduced to just one mouse-click: tonight is the night to learn all about it and to get started with our first small Action Pack.

See you there, tonight at our Web Design Photoshop Workshop.

Action Frame for Bianca

PS Action Frame for Bianca 2

Photoshop Action Recognition for Bianca

PS Action Script Rounded Corners

PS Action Drop Shaddow

Book covers and Jewel Cases with Photoshop

Learn how to create Book covers and Jewel Cases with Photoshop at this week’s Ycademy Pro calls.

Additional optional Materials: $10, free for Ycademy Pros, get the coupon from Bianca.

Advanced pack: $30, discount $10 for Ycademy Pros.

(Information about the content of the packs at Monday’s YORGOO call.)

Professional Presentation of your e-products

The presentation is of the utmost importance when you sell a product. Creating clean wrappers and marketing materials is a must. Today’s screens render images with a high resolution. For this reason you won’t get away with images from second zone. The same applies to marketing materials.

Photoshop quality is a must.

At Ycademy we will this week dig into an important application of Photoshop: create Book covers and Jewel cases with Photoshop to present your digital products.

Please find here below two examples of the quality you will be able to produce after this weeks trainings. To keep white clean is the most difficult task; the samples below demonstrate quality, even if you look at them with the magnifier.

The Ycademy Trainings

Sure, we will show you step by step how to create a book cover right from scratch using your Photoshop skills. But there is no reason inventing the wheel; we will focus on learning how to use one of the most popular plugins to create efficiently professional looking wrappers. For this reason we have prepared two packs of commercial action scripts for Photoshop which you may grab for as long as available.

Check it out at the YORGOO Pro Shop.

Ycademy E-Wrappers Basic

Ycademy E-Wrappers Pro

Ycademy DVDs

Ycademy Seminar DVD

Ycademy Books

Ycademy Books