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Quick Photoshop Tip: Seperate Layer Effects Onto Their Own Layer for Editing

Separating Photoshop Layer Effects onto their own layer

Simple tips are often the most useful. In Photoshop, I’ve found this one to be very handy for editing Layer Effects in the Layers palette. Finding it is not the most accessible or intuitive – so hopefully this can be helpful.

Layers in a Photoshop file allow us to manipulate and edit different parts of the image individually, using transparency, masks, blends and filters to alter and manage how the finished photo will appear. The Layer Style palette allows you to add different effects to that specific layer: drop shadow, bevel and emboss, Outer Glow, Gradient Overlays, etc.  But often, designers find a need to edit the Layer Effects seperately, beyond the controls within the Layer Style window. I often find a need to adjust the drop shadow independently of the layer to which it is married, reshaping it in order to give the desired perspective.

Tip to edit layer effects on their own layer

Photoshop of course provides a way to do this, but it isn’t a simple function listed under the Layer Style drop-down palette: from the top menu bar, choose Layer – Layer Style – Create Layer. Notice in your Layers palette that the effect has now moved onto it’s own layer and can be manipulated individually from its Master layer. Photoshop also conveniently names the new layer after the effect you applied. Some effects, such as Bevel, require multiple layers to be created in order to maintain the effect. You can then edit as needed. In this sample we distorted the drop shadow down into a shape that appears to be a more realistic cast shadow from a standing zebra.

Moving a layer effect in PhotoShop to its own layer

 

Photoshop is constantly changing, but Adobe provides great tutorials online to help you learn new tips and techniques. Also, stay abreast of latest news and inspiration from industry insiders at the photoshop.com blog.

 

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Newsweek’s Prophetic 1993 Vision of the Future

Cover story on Interactive Technology from Newsweek

We came across this magazine recently in our shop. Twenty years ago, the May 31, 1993 edition of Newsweek featured a cover story that envisioned what the future might hold once information began to race along a looming “superhighway.” While this fast approaching digital revolution was undeniable, the details of how it would change everyday life for all of us were largely unclear. Change on that scale is both exciting and intimidating, as we all have learned over the past two decades. With speculation rampant, Newsweek journalists Bill Powell, Anne Underwood, Seema Nayyar, Charles Fleming, Barbara Kantrowitz and Joshua Coooper Ramo envisioned a surprisingly accurate overview of how technology was preparing to change our lives.

Arguably the most impressive techonological accomplishment during my early childhood was the NASA moon landing. I remember being aware in 1969 that my grandmother, who lived with us and was born in the 1890s, had been my age at a time when even flight seemed a ridiculous concept. Now she was sitting beside me watching a man step out onto the moon’s surface. That fast pace of change in one lifetime has of course continuted to accelerate. The world of 1993, only twenty years ago, stood on the cusp of the digital revolution, although the term “internet” was still largely unknown. 27% of American households had a home computer, but many admitted to using it less than 5 hours a week! Fiber-optic cable was far from universal, movies were rented at brick-and-mortar stores to be viewed on VCRs. The CD ROM was an amazing new invention that could store video, music or text on one disk but needed a specialized player to be accessed.

In their focus on the potential of what was about to happen, Newsweek chose the concept of “interactivity.” The future would allow consumers to be participants in their consumption of entertainment and services, no longer just a “couch-potato” who passively viewed and absorbed information. The missing pieces in 1993 for this sea change were the expansion of fiber optic cable networks to connect us, and huge investments in infrastructure, technology and content that the major players in the cable, communications and entertainment sectors were deploying. Looking ahead from this landscape in 1993 with amazing prescience, Newsweek envisioned:

  • Video phones with clear pictures (and lens covers to ensure privacy)
  • “New age goggles” and virtual reality that a “mighty computer” would be able to deliver
  • Lightweight, compact laptop computers. “Work will never be more than a keystroke away.”
  • HDTV with a sharper than ever screen picture
  • Software to be used for education.
  • “Viewer-directed” movies and video games where the user can choose alternate endings or direct the entire action.
  • On-demand movies and channel selections. (In 1993, only one network in California offered “interactive TV programming” where you bought a device for $199, then paid $15 to interact with game shows or predict sporting events.)
  • An early concept of “icons” on a computer screen that search the “superhighway of information” for news uniquely tailored to a person’s interests…. and then connect to other people with those same interests – social media in it’s infancy!

A central concept our 1993 world had trouble envisioning was through what devices in our households would we be accessing this interactivity, and who would be paying to do so. Would it be through our TVs, phones or personal computers? If these “smart boxes” as Newsweek calls them, grow too complicated, would people want to deal with them after a long day’s work? How much would we be willing to pay to access banking, entertainment, or investment information?

This article also accurately foresaw the dilemnas and coming ethical conflicts our new interactivity would generate:

  • Al Gore was advocating for a “scheme to build a nationwide fiber-optic network,” and is quoted as saying this “data superhighway” will be the ” ‘most important marketplace of the 21st century.’ ” – He got that right.
  • “It’s quite possible that some entrepreneur in a garage is coming up with a really new idea that will forever alter the best-laid plans.” – A premonition of Zuckerberg and Facebook, perhaps?
  • “Who will protect the privacy of consumers whose shopping, viewing and recreational habits are all fed into one cable-phone company data bank?” – an early understanding of the complexity of privacy issues that abound today.
  • “The government could electronically spy on individuals; bosses could track employees.” – Edward Snowden was about 9 years old when this was written.
  • Of the major players in the industry in 1993 – U S West, Time Warner, AT&T, TCI, Microsoft, Intel, General Instrument, Sega, MCA – Newsweek realized these would “live or die based on the decisions they make in the next decade…. Not everyone is going to make it. Those that do could change everything.”

With all they got right, what is the most surprising thing Newsweek missed in their look ahead? That their magazine itself would, in twenty years time, cease print production at the end of 2012, becoming an online-only digital publication.

Interactivity and the future of technology

Related BLOGPOST: 15 Years of Rapid Change for the World of Print

 

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Retro Print Artifact: Still Going Strong in the Bindery

 

Lassco-Wizer Model 20

So what is this thing pictured above, anyway?

 

A true workhorse in the bindery, this manual contraption has been going strong for an untold number of years. While there is no information on the piece to date it, the instruction panel on the underside does include “celluloid” as one of the materials that can be processed by it! To my knowledge, it has also never needed any major maintenance or parts replacement, and is still used in our shop today for small jobs… no internet or digital hookup needed. Heck, there’s not even any electricity needed – just a strong arm!

 

Lassco-Wizer Bindery Equipment

This is a manual corner cutter or rounder. Less expensive than a custom die cut, rounded corners can add some style to business cards, invitations or other print pieces by smoothly rounding off the corners after printing. This machine can be set for different degrees of roundness. On small quantities of a quick turnaround job, it is still earning its keep today in our bindery. In some cases, hand-finishing print is still the way to go!

Printed samples finished with rounded corners

printed label for bindery corner rounder

 

This particular model, which has no doubt paid for itself many times over through the years, is a Lassco “CorneRounder®”. Lassco-Wizer in Rochester, NY is still in the business of making quality industrial bindery tools like drills, paper joggers, perf-score-numbering equipment, staplers and press equipment. New models of their corner rounding machinery operate pneumatically on large quantities, yet they still produce a manual model very similar to this one above – though it appears to have a few more plastic parts these days.

True quality design and construction stand the test of time.

 

 

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing with FSC certified products. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Buy Local, Buy the Book – Indie Asheville and Print Go Together

 

print, bookmarks and promotion

Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe is the flagship, downtown, indie bookstore in Asheville, NC, and always does a great job in outreach and marketing to the community. With an award-winning events program, website and social media plan, a sister-store at Downtown Books & News, and a bustling café with local pastries and house blends, Malaprop’s is nationally recognized as a leading independent bookstore. Even their free bookmark shows me why they are such a success.

Last week I bought a book at Malaprop’s and the associate stuck a free giveaway bookmark into the volume – a simple, direct way to reach your customers. The bookmark (see above) promotes shopping at local, independent establishments like Malaprop’s and Downtown Books & News, and spells out 10 clear reasons why doing so helps you, helps your community and helps the larger world as well. Click the photo above to see a larger version and read the 10 great effects of your choice to buy local and indie.

What makes this marketing piece so effective?

  • It is useful, and will therefore have longevity. A printed bookmark will stay around to mark your place while you read, getting notice each time the book is opened – a much longer “life” than for most printed direct mail or marketing pieces.
  • The message is clear. The card draws a clear connection between the act of choosing to spend your dollars locally and 10 specific results of that choice.
  • It is thought-provoking. Issues of job creation, environmental sustainability, choice, local economics and growth and more are effected by the decision to shop locally from independent merchants.
  • It rewards the consumer. The free bookmark is positive reinforcement for a smart choice.

And all from a small piece of printed paper! Print and paper are the perfect marketing fit for a bookseller, but if a bookmark is not a natural fit for your business or product line, consider the huge selection of promotional products that you can brand with your logo and message to use in a similar way. Think creatively about new ways your business can reward customers while establishing in their minds the message you want to promote. This little bookmark can help get you thinking about ways you can do that in your own style.

 

Don’t forget to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Blow-In Some Creative Direct Mail Ideas: What Catches Your Eye?

blow-in and bind-in insert cards for direct mail

Blow-ins and Bind-ins: ever thought about why those insert cards in your direct mail work? If they didn’t, they would not be showered with so many. “Blow-in” cards (as bindery machines blow the inserts into the printed pieces during manufacture) are most famously successful for magazines and newspapers to advertise their subscription offers. Their size makes them perfect as business reply mail, coupons for in-store and online sales, or to call out special offer from within the larger print piece. “Bind-in” cards stay attached to the piece, usually with a perforation to allow removal.

Normally inserts prove bothersome by falling out inconveniently and making me stoop to pick them up, or as I browse the rest of the magazine or catalog I am trying to keep them from falling out again. Bind-in cards annoyingly cover up part of the page that I want to see. These “aggravations” are in fact part of the reason insert cards work for marketing – they force us to stop and potentially, in those extra precious seconds, notice the name or information on the card.

direct mail advertising insert cards

I recently received a catalog from Pier 1 imports, and while several blow-in cards came falling out, the one above caught my attention above the others – and prompted me to think about why. It is actually a bind-in card, but three things, in retrospect, stood out enough to make me stop and look at it, flip it over and see what it was about:

  • The design: specifically the colors. Like the type, they are loud but pleasing. The designer knew the visual had to stand out in front of a busy page full of advertised merchandise, and this design does.
  • The die cut: that icy pitcher of tart lemonade looks like it could almost be lifted off the page. Maybe I was thirsty at the time, but it made me take notice, and the outlined shape caught my eye over all the other rectangular inserts, which I totally ignored.
  • The anonymity: If the front of this card had the company logo emblazoned on it, I think my initial reaction would have been to assume I already knew what it was pushing and need not look any further. Because it looked more like a big flavorful offer for lemonade, I flipped it over and saw an offer for $50 off a purchase at Pier 1. Good marketing.

When you are planning your print marketing, take a few minutes to think about the ways direct mail or other advertising has influenced you, caught your eye, or directed your behavior. Pick up your stack of mail today and notice which piece attracts your notice the most – then try to state three reasons that particular item got your attention while others were bypassed. Learning to incorporate those sound and creative ideas into your own promotions can make your marketing dollars do a lot more work for you. Creativity will get you noticed.

 

 

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Gradient Banding in Wide Format Printing: Can You Prevent It?

 

A quick check online convinces me that a lot of folk – designers, artists and printers – are frustrated with gradients that print with banding, or clearly dileneated “steps” of color visible in both digital and offset printing and which can be even more dramatic in wide format output. The bottom line is that those sweet gradient tools in your design software do not come with warning labels to prepare you for the resulting output in print. Gradients will normally (but not always) look good onscreen, but the technology to print them with similar ease falls short. The current best solution is to apply PhotoShop effects to minimize or hide the banding. The drawback is just like a great medication with a not-so-great side effect, this can produce unwanted results: colors can shift and the image may print “grainier” than originally planned.

A radial gradient should ideally look smooth, like a sunburst. The sample below, however, shows how it generally prints like the Looney Tunes logo.

banding problems in gradient printing

 

 

 

There is no fix for the banding problem when saving your Illustrator files. We’ve often searched for that magic button, with no luck. Below are a few photos from a recent experiment where a stubborn orange-to-yellow gradient in a client’s wide format pop-up display printed with visible, distracting banding regardless of file type, compression or other options used. Saving the file as eps, pdf, opening in PhotoShop, increasing resolution, optimizing with PitStop…. no luck. Each resulted in the same diagonal “steps” in color.

banding in gradient printing

 

The reason these efforts fail lies in mathematics and the physics of print, and I will admit to having only a shady understanding of these technical causes. For the scope of this post, let’s just point out that there are only so many “shades” or steps between one color and the next that are renderable in print. Your goal is to make a smooth transition from one color to the next, and the CS software makes that very easy in the design phase. However, the factors at play when you try to print your creation are the size or amount of space over which that transition occurs on the printed piece, the colors you have chosen to blend, and the resolution of the printer. Mathematically, at some point the printer has to go from one “step” to the next – and often the result to the human eye are bands or lines at which those changes occur. If you have chosen colors that are close together, you have even fewer “steps” between them with which to work. While PhotoShop, Illustrator and InDesign generally render smooth gradients onscreen, the science behind image rasterization and both offset and digital printing is not so forgiving to the viewer.

The fix for our wide format print in this case was to take the gradient portion of the job into Photoshop (it was originally created in Illustrator, we think!) Step one: we applied a Gausian Blur. The amount? Well that completely depends on the image. I just decide visually, bearing in mind whether or not the image I am working on is viewed at full-size onscreen or will be enlarged when printed out. A small grain visible now will be twice as large if printed at 200%. Next we created a layer with the mode set to Overlay and checked the box “Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray).” To this layer we added Noise. Again – I decide visually how much noise to use (that’s an odd statement if you think about it!). Unfortunately, it is a guessing game, but with experience you will know best how much “graininess” or added texture will be acceptable without being enough to distract or compromise the output image.

Overlay mode in PhotoShop to prevent banding of gradients

gradient banding, Illustrator Photoshop InDesign

The result here was a minor shift in colors and a slight visible texture or graininess that wasn’t there before. But both served to hide the banding problem! Both were acceptable results as the overall appearance of the gradient was smooth and pleasing.

Tips to prevent or minimize banding in gradients are easy to find online, but often your individual design is built in such a way that many of the tips seem unworkable. Like ours, the most common banding-buster tips require you create (or recreate) your gradient in PhotoShop as we did above, and then add noise to the image. However, you might have other elements in your design such as type, vectors or other effects applied in either Illustrator or InDesign which prevent you from moving the entire file into PhotoShop. If the file has been received from another person or client, then you might not have access to the individual pieces of the file and would be stuck trying to put the entire document into PhotoShop as an image in order to play around with possible filters. Apparently there is no “one size fits all” fix for this frustrating problem. Designers should be aware that gradients present difficulties and often require cooperation with your printer ahead of time to avoid unpleasing results.

 

 

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Share a Coke with Your Name on it: Getting Personal with VDP and Integrated Marketing

 

Update:

Personalized CokeAfter success in Australia, South Africa, the UK and dozens of other countries, Coke is finally releasing personalized Coke in the US this summer of 2014 – and it seems to be a social media hit (at least judging by my Facebook newsfeed.) 250 of the most popular names for millenials and teens will be found on 20 oz. bottles of Coke, Diet Coke and Zero. You can check online to see if your name will be on the bottles, and you can personalize virtual bottles to share via social media as well. But don’t get too creative – to avert potential viral disasters, the website will not generate any name not in their approved database! 😉
So why not get variable?

(The following article was first posted in 2013.)

Variable Data Packaging?
(Source link: www.marketingmagazine.co.uk)

Variable Data Printing is a proven catalyst in effective marketing – when properly executed, research indicates that response rates can be increased by as much as 30% with VDP. Now corporations are discovering creative new ways to combine personalized content with both online and print communications for a truly integrated marketing outreach. With the dominance of social media, consumers are beginning to expect (or in marketing-speak, “demand”) a personally targeted appeal from their advertisers. And who is more successful at branding and effective marketing than Coca-Cola?

But, VDP packaging? Well, in a way…. In Australia, and now the UK, Coke is putting out millions of bottles bearing, rather than their iconic logo, 150 names as a way to “personalize” their packaging. Coke enjoys such a universally established brand recognition that they can even remove their logo from their products and still count on consumer loyalty. The campaign is called “Share A Coke”, and as a truly integrated concept, it combines the product packaging with an online site where you can create a “virtual personalised Coke can” if you are unable to find the name you are looking for among the 150 choices. Outdoor ads, and social media also drive the campaign. The video below shares how Coke anticipated the buzz generation on Twitter to further build consumer interaction:

After a successful run in Australia, Coke is repeating the project in the UK. Now, a true VDP product packaging would require the Coke bottles to be printed with the customer’s name before rolling out of the vending machine – an expensive proposition – but the success of this semi-VDP approach highlights some important ideas:

  • the power of variable data personalization in affecting consumer choice,
  • an increasing consumer expectation that we can share a personal interaction with what was previously an unreachable corporate entity when it comes to our consumer purchasing power. The buzzword is “engagement,” and consumers are realizing their new role involves more than passive consumption, but can also include interaction and influence.
  • the value of finding ways to initiate the power and outreach of social media outlets like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to your marketing advantage

 

Share a Coke campaign
Image Source: thisisnotadvertising.wordpress.com


 

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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“Pencil to Pixel”: Exploring the Physical History of Typography

 

UPDATE: While the exhibit only ran during the first week of May 2013, you can still enjoy scenes from the show. The amazing installation has been preserved in photographs by Esto, an architectural photography firm. You can access the pristine images of the Pencil to Pixel exhibit in their searchable, purchasable stock-image library, which includes over 100,000 photos in their archive.

UPDATE 2: Check out this blog post from printmag.com with some photographs showing close-ups of several of the exhibition’s artifacts and participants.

 

Entering the world of print and graphics in the mid-90s, type for me has always been a digital experience. I often forget how typefaces, then and now, begin on someone’s sketchpad. The rich history and craftsmanship behind well-known typefaces of today is on exhibit in New York right now thanks to the British firm Monotype‘s “Pencil to Pixel” exhibition. This show features the tools, artifacts and artworks of typographic innovation. The website explains that the exhibit “…brings together the past, present and future of a unique typographic institution. Spanning over a hundred years, the expertise and craftsmanship of Monotype has shaped the way in which we see and read the everyday world around us.”

It looks like an intriguingly rich show for anyone who enjoys the craftsmanship and design of great typography. My personal favorite: Eric Gill’s 1928 pen and ink drawings for Gill Sans Italic. (photo source: Wallpaper.com)

Gill Sans Italic, original pencil and ink drawings

The exhibit runs May 3 – 9, 2013, after it’s original installment in London during November of 2012.

 

 

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.