Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature by Matt Kloskowski

Who Should Buy It?

Anyone who needs to learn about layers. Beginners and more seasoned users of Photoshop will benefit from this book.

the Cost

$39.99

the Good

Basic instruction as well as advanced tips and tricks.

the Bad

Wish there would have been even more layout tips!

I’m an avid reader of Matt’s Adobe Lightroom Killer Tips blog so I was expecting a lot from his highly publicised book. It didn’t disappoint!

Like his good friend and best selling author Scott Kelby, Matt’s writing style is engaging and easy to follow. The book is full of screenshots and step-by-step instructions that users new to Photoshop can easily follow.

While I knew a good amount of the information in many of the chapters, even the repetitive sections provided enough tips and tricks to keep me reading every page. Matt was also able to include a nice number of more advanced techniques (and some basic stuff I never knew), showing how to create effects from beginning to end.

The book also does a nice job balancing information for photographers and graphic designers, providing chapters that would appeal to one, the other and in many cases, both. I really enjoyed the end of each chapter as well – a summary of shortcuts and tips from the chapter are summarized nicely on a single page, which is a great way to reinforce what was learned.

The book is what it claims to be – a comprehensive guide to what is truly a great feature. I would recommend this book to anyone learning or trying to master Photoshop.

I recently created a 78″x33″ stand-up banner (the kind you’d see at a trade show). I used one my photos in it and had to blow it up to fit in the 78″ tall requirement. In many cases, this can be a pretty scary proposition. In many cases making images larger than they start at can be a BAD thing. I hadn’t blown up an image that much in the past and had to do some research/experimentation on a few different tools/techniques to make sure it didn’t look like a blurry/pixelated mess on the very expensive banner.

I listed the three best approaches I found and brief instruction on how to do each. I preferred OnOne’s Photoshop plugin, Genuine Fractals, but any of these options will provide usable results when followed correctly.

Where to Start

It’s important to always start with as high quality image as you can. Ideally, you can use a RAW file or JPEG right out of your 6 or 7+ megapixel digital camera. You don’t want to grab a 800 pixel wide, been compressed multiple times image off of Google. The old addage is true here: Garbage in > Garbage out.

Also, when doing this, keep in mind that most folks are going to view a large print or poster from at least 3 or 4 feet away. As a result, they won’t need to be quite as sharp as an 8×10″ print.

The Options I Tried

I did some research and tried three different options. #1 and #2 were done directly in Photoshop. #3 was done with a Photoshop plugin.  Here’s how they work. Note that each one will make the file substantially larger (several hundred MB in some cases, so make sure your hard drive is ready to handle that). Also, in many cases I would apply a bit of sharpening to the photo after enlargement to crisp things up a bit (more on sharpening in a future post).

#1: Increasing 10% at a Time with Bicubic Smoother

Open the image in Photoshop and choose Image>Image Size. Uncheck the Resample Image checkbox and change the resolution to 200 and click OK.

Go to Image>Image Size again and re-check the Resample Image checkbox and change the option to Bicubic Smoother. Choose Percentage from one of the document size drop-downs and change the percentage to 110. Click okay.

The image will now grow by 10%. Repeat the Image>Image Size, percentage, 110 steps until your image is at the desired size.

#2: Increase all at Once with Bicubic Sharper

This tip is directly from Scott Kelby’s best selling book The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. He mentions in the book (and I’ll second it here) that this seems like the most non-traditional of the options. But, it seems to do the trick! The one downside to this option is that it produced the largest file size, which can get tricky when you start to consider Photoshop’s 2 GB file size limit.

Open the image in Photoshop and choose Image>Image Size. Change the settings in the box as shown below and click okay. It’ll process things for a while.

#3: Increase with OnOne’s Genuine Fractals Plugin

This is the only option of the 3 that requires an additional dip into the bank account (past the already pricey Photoshop). Make sure OnOne’s Genuine Fractals plugin for Photoshop is installed (it retails for around $160, unless you need to resize CMYK images and can be found here).

Open the image in Photoshop. Click onOne>Genuine Fractals>Scale Current Image…. The image will open in a new window, with new options. Set the desired resolution (around 200) and size and click okay. One benefit to Genuine Fractals is that it provides advanced previewing and sharpening options while in its resizing dialog box.

The Results

As I mentioned before, the results were all fairly decent, although they varied a bit. Of all, I preferred Genuine Fractals – it provided slightly sharper lines and less noise. I also listed the final file size for each.

Original File: 53 MB

#1: 10% at a Time: 934 MB

#2: Bicubic Sharper: 1530 MB

#3: Genuine Fractals: 928 MB

About a week ago, I posted on some of the top online training resources. What I didn’t go into much were blogs.

In my opinion, blogs are some of the best training available and they’re free! Blogs are a great resource for finding a very wide variety of information from industry leading experts. The only caveat being that it is important to verify information – after all, anyone can be a blogger!

I just checked my feed reader (more on feed readers soon) and I currently read around 35 blogs on photography, graphic design, technology and more. Each of the 35 provide something interesting, but I thought I’d highlight my top ten.

My Top 10 Favorite Blogs

• Photoshop Insider (www.scottkelby.com/blog): Written by the infamous Scott Kelby, Photoshop Insider provides a nice blend of photography how-tos, industry news and more.
• Strobist (strobist.blogspot.com): This is the photography lighting site on the web. The Strobist (David Hobby) has a regular readership in the 6-7 figures and provides amazing how-tos for off camera flash lighting. If I could only read one blog each day, this one might be it.
• Presentation Zen (www.presentationzen.com): Garr Reynolds provides resources, instruction and links to GREAT examples of communication. If you ever present in from of a group, this is a resource you shouldn’t pass up.
• PhotoWalkPro (www.photowalkpro.com): Jeff Revelle has created a nice following with a nice, general photography blog. I like this blog because of its variety. Posts include everything from gear to tutorials to HDR.
• Canon Blogger (www.canonblogger.com): Jason Anderson heads up another of my favorite photography blog. Like Scott Kelby and Jeff Revelle, Jason blogs on a number of topics. His regular posts, pleasant writing style and regular tutorials make this site worth visiting.
• Moose News Blog (www.moosenewsblog.com): Want lots of great wildlife photos? Check out this site. Moose posts tons of great photos almost every day.
• Flash Flavor (www.flashflavor.com): Matt Adcock, famous wedding photographer, brings a great set of stories and photos of unique and creative ways to light weddings. He’s also done some great trash the dress stuff. If you are into wedding photography, event photography or just great lighting inspiration, you should out Flash Flavor.
• InDesign Secrets (www.indesignsecrets.com): If you use InDesign (a page layout tool from Adobe), this is THE place for information, tips and tricks. It has a handful of contributing authors, all of which are industry experts and all of which provide great content.
• Lightroom Killer Tips (www.lightroomkillertips.com): Do you use Lightroom? If so, check out Matt Kloskowski’s blog. It’s all Lightroom all the time.
• Layers Magazine (www.layersmagazine.com/blog/): Layers magainze rounds out the top ten with a strong presence. R.C. Concepcion and others provide graphic design news and tips and tons of information about Adobe products.

Recently, I endorsed MPix.com, an online photo printer. As a small business owner (I also do a lot of professional printing for the graphic design-related job I do when I’m not doing photography) I’m always on the lookout for a good general collateral printer that can do things like postcards, stationary, flyers, brochures, etc.

I just tried a new printer, Zoo Printing Trade and thought that I’d provide a comparison of it against other online printers I’ve used.

I didn’t include any more high-end local printers. I’ve found that in most cases local printers have higher prices, but much better customer service (it’s always nice to have a local person that you can work with, receive support from, yell at when something goes wrong, etc.). As with most things, you pay more, but you get more.

The Comparison

The three online printers we’ll take a look at are: Zoo Printing, Print Pelican and PrintingForLess.com. (One thing to note – I signed up for a trade account from Zoo Printing and received slightly lower pricing as a result of that.)

Criteria	Zoo Printing	Print Pelican	Printing For Less
Price
Quality
Speed
Printing Options
Service
Website
Overall

Choices

Printing for Less (www.printingforless.com)

Printing for Less provided the best customer service of all three sites. I sent several questions via e-mail (and one that was unrelated to my order) and they were answered very quickly and politely. Their delivery speed was average – they did, however, have the highest prices in the comparison printers.

Print Pelican (www.printpelican.com)

Print Pelican had the second best price and the best set of options (they have a better selection of brochures, printing much longer brochures and a few other products the other two didn’t have), yet they still finished in third place overall. I rated them so poorly because their customer service responses were slow and, in some cases, a little rude. Also, their time to delivery was very long. In some cases, I had to follow up several days past the time they were supposed to ship and they still weren’t done (they did end up expediting things at that point – but they were still way behind their already lower-end delivery times).

Zoo Printing (www.zooprinting.com)

Zoo Printing has prices that blow the others away. That, their solid selection and great web site (it has a feature that allows you to automatically track your printing through the different stages at the press) make them a great choice. The one area that they suffer is their customer service. I sent a few e-mails and didn’t even receive a reply. I haven’t tried the support line – but in the future, if I had a problem, I would definately go that route instead of the e-mail.

My Choice

Amazingly low prices, a reasonable selection and a solid web site make Zoo Printing Trade my favorite option. But, watch out for their poor customer service. If it’s important to you, you may want to consider Printing for Less.

Criteria

• Price: Almost always one of the top factors – how attractive are the overall prices? All three choices provided similarly priced shipping. Check out the in-depth comparison here. It details specific prices from all three companies on some standard printing projects. (You won’t believe how much lower Zoo Printing is!)
• Quality: Are there any quality problems? I gave all four options 4 stars in this area – all delivered a product that fully met my expectations. Printing, trimming, etc. were all perfect.
• Speed: How fast is the product at your door from the day you ordered? See the in-depth comparison for more specifics on quoted turn times.
• Options: How many different printing products are available to choose from?
• Support/Customer Service: How responsive was their customer service? How quickly were e-mails answered? How complete/helpful were the answers?

Simply put, the web has transformed the way people can obtain and share information. The change in the last few years since I’ve graduated from formal learning has been incredible.

The sheer number of blogs and online training has skyrocketed and those that want to learn can do so more quickly, effectively and inexpensively than ever before. I’ll dedicate a post next week about my favorite blogs, but I thought for today I’d share my top online training video resources. The videos are on application training and, in some cases, are videos of studio photography shoots, etc.

KelbyTraining.com

Launched recently, Kelby Training has quickly established a significant presence in online training for photographers.

Cost: $20/month or $200/year. Try the first 3 lessons of each course for free.

Reasons to Choose: Kelby Training provides one of the best collections of photography/Photoshop and Lightroom courses available. The top-of-the-line instructors allow you to learn from the best each and every time. I also like the nice mix of application training and photography training. With Kelby Training, you’ll be able to learn everything from Photoshop retouching to wildlife shooting with Moose Peterson.

Areas for Improvement: The content quality is great – one of the only rooms for improvement is to continue increasing the quantity.

Lynda.com

Lynda.com was one of the first big online training players on the market. As a result, they’ve done a great job providing a large number of courses to a large number of people.

Cost: $25/month, $250/year

Reasons to Choose: Lynda.com provides an amazing library of technical courses. Learn Microsoft Office, intense programming or graphic design software. All told, Lynda.com offers over 750 separate courses.

Areas for Improvement: I’d like to see additional courses on programming practices, graphic design practices, etc. to better complement their stellar selection on software training.

Free Online Training Resources

While Lynda.com and KelbyTraining.com have a lot of breadth and depth, you can find lots of great videos focused in particular areas all over the web.

Cost: $0

Reasons to Choose: It’s priced right!

Areas for Improvement: Most sites provide a specific slice of training – primarily Photoshop, primarily Lightroom, etc. The first vendor that can keep quality high and provide a variety to compete with Lynda.com will garner lots of traffic.

I frequently visit the following.

TV.Adobe.com

PhotoshopUserTv.com

LayersMagazine.com

Do you use other online training resources? If so, post them in the comments.

Well, Photoshop World week is over – what a week it was! This was my first Photoshop World so I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect. I am pleased to report that it was excellent. It had the most bang for the buck of any conference I’ve ever attended.

The folks at NAPP do a great job putting together a conference. I wanted to summarize some of my overall impressions of the week. (Also, the picture above is one of the ducks at the hotel I stayed in – they are a bit of a celebrity there and walk a red carpet each day). If you’re interested in information about the Photo Safari pre-con I attended, check out the lessons learned here.

Overall Impression

As I mentioned above, my overall recommendation for the conference is high. Anyone intersted in Photoshop or photography would gain an incredible amount of knowledge by attending.

A little more specially, all the pieces were well arranged. I’ll talk more about the sessions/expo in a moment, but both were top notch. The help desks and other details were also handled nicely. The theme for the conference was Star Trek – the opening keynote was a Star Trek spook movie with the likes of Scott Kelby, Matt Kloskowski and others staring in it – it was great! Another great thing about the keynote was the opportunity to hear about upcoming Photoshop news directly from Adobe. We saw some demos of Lightroom 2 and Photoshop Express (both had been announced previously) as well as some new CS4 features!

Another valuable piece was the ability to get a ‘feel’ for the industry. One of the things I like most about attending conferences is that they allow me to get a better understanding about what people are doing, where the trends are going, etc.

The conference is well worth the $600 price tag (this is actually one of the least expensive conferences I’ve been too – most conferences at this caliber at $1,000+).

Sessions and Instructors

The reason most of us go to Photoshop World are the great sessions and instructors. I attended as many sessions as possible and learned much more than I can easily summarize here. Over the next few weeks (and months) I’ll begin sharing the specific tips and tricks I picked up along the way.

I can say, though, that the few top things I heard over and over were about how to make selections (using channels, specific tools, etc.) and Smart Objects. Tons of other information was shared, but in the sessions I attended, these seemed to come up as a common theme.

My favorite instructors included Moose Peterson, Joe McNally, Ben Wilmore and Scott Kelby. All had a good combination of expertise and presentation skills. Their presentations stunned me and I’ll be reviewing my notes for a while to come.

Also, there was one suprise at the end of one of the last sessions by Scott Kelby. Peachpit Press came in and gave him an award for being the top computer book writer in the world for like the 4th year in a row. Congrats to Scott! I have several of his books and the honor is well deserved. If you haven’t read one of his books, you should. His writing style is clear, concise and very engaging. I especially recommend the Digital Photography Book (vol. 1 and 2) and the Seven Point System.

Speaking of books, I was very impressed by the session manual we received. As expected, it was huge. But, unlike many seminars where I receive a reiteration of PPTs, this one actually had step-by-step instruction on what happened in the classes. It is a great companion to a great set of instructors.

Tech Expo

The Tech Expo had a large number of vendors – everyone from training to printing to plugins were there. Some of the booths that interested me the most were:

• 3D Vendors: This was a bit of a suprise. More and more companies are providing 3D products that integrate with CS3 Extended’s ability to do some 3D stuff.
• Plugins, Plugins, Plugins: Most of the vendors had flat panels in the their booths, allowing them to display the use of their products. My favorites were Nik’s offering of Viveza and a few other cool products.
• Hardware: I was able to finally put my hands on some equipment I’d been looking at for a while. Lensbabies and their selective focus were very cool, as were Wacom’s selection of tablets. I also got to look at some of Epson’s new large format printers and Drobo’s cool storage device.

The other great thing about the expo was the continuation of learning. There were something like 4 booths that had training sessions going on – the learning never stopped!

Area for Improvement

Really, there weren’t many areas for improvement. One thing I would change (if I were running the show) was nicely put by Jason Anderson (over at cannonblogger.com) when he mentioned Photoshop World. After looking at the schedule he mentioned that it might be better to offer fewer classes more often.

I couldn’t agree more. While it is nice to have some variety, I would definately be a proponent of scheduling about 20% fewer classes and repeating the more popular classes. In a few cases, I had to choose between 2 great sessions held at the same time, which was a bit of a disappointment.