Making your photographs look professional with a little help from Image Editing.

How many times do you take a photograph of a design or of decor that you have made hoping to use it in your portfolio or on your website and are really disappointed with how it looks in the picture?

I suppose the first thing we need to look at is the camera we use. I use a little compact camera, as it's so easy for me to travel with. The great thing about my little camera is that I can set it to take pictures up to 10 MEGA Pixels, giving me high resolution photos. Personally, I have not had any success using my smart phone or tablet to take decent quality photographs. Don't get me wrong, they are great for taking snaps, but when your photo represents the work that you do, maybe it's worth getting a better quality photograph?

Even with a great camera we don't always get the perfect photograph. Maybe the background is not great or the lighting is too dark?

So how can we make our photographs look more professional?

Here is a photograph of a design that I made earlier this year when I was demonstrating on the Qualatex® stand at Spring Fair.  I found the most neutral background that I could (to make it easier for editing), and snapped my photograph. Once I returned home to my office, I looked through all my pictures and started the process of 'cleaning up'!

There are several things that you can do to make your photographs look so much better!

PicMonkey - www.picmonkey.com
I discovered PicMonkey several years ago and love it! It's very easy to use and gives us many different editing opportunities. You can use the basic version free or pay an annual subscription of $33 to get PicMonkey Royale, which offer lots of extra goodies.




PicMonkey has 4 main function modes: Edit, Touch Up, Design and Collage, all of which you will be able to use for different purposes.

By simply opening your photograph in the Basic Edit function you can immediately start working on your image. You have several options to choose from:

• Crop
• Canvas Colour
• Rotate
• Exposure
• Colours 
• Sharpen
• Resize

My aim was to make my design look brighter and lighter and used the Exposure function to achieve this. I would recommend that you try out all the different editing functions and see what each of them do as you can get some really great results.

See below for the before and after results. The design looks so much brighter; you can see much more detail in the balloons being used.

Here I have used another great function on PicMonkey to make this collage! By simply clicking on the Collage function, you get several layout options; there are even specific options to create your own unique Facebook cover or layouts for Pinterest or Etsy!

I now have my image looking so much better, but I would love to lose that background!

How to edit an image using Paths Tool in GIMP.

GIMP - www.gimp.org

GIMP is a popular open-source image editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux that has slowly evolved to become a credible free alternative to programs like Adobe Photoshop. 

I've been using GIMP for a number of years now. And like anything new, it takes a little time to get use to it and all the many functions that it has to offer.

I have made a short video clip that will show you how to remove the background of an image. I will also show you how to change the background into a transparent (Alpha) layer that will allow us to add any colour or background that we want to use.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. Whilst writing this blog, I decided to do a little research and check to see if there was a better way to remove the background of an image than the way that I have been doing for the past few years, and guess what? There is! So after a few frustrating hours learning this new way, I am now ready to share this with you! It's actually very simple and quick, I just had to figure out a few simple things on my computer!




A few key step reminders:

• Open image in GIMP
• Open the toolbox if not already open.
• Increase the size of the image (bottom left) so that you can easily trace around the edge.
• Select Paths Tool from toolbox - see image on the right.
• Using the Paths Tool set pointers around the edge of the image. 
• Once you have connected the final point with the first point, click select, either by right clicking on the image or from the top toolbar.
• In Select you now want to click on From Path.
• Now click Layer and then Transparency, now click Add Alpha Channel - that will make the background transparent.
• In Select you now want to click on Invert.
• Now click Delete. That will remove the background and give it a 'Chequerboard' appearance.
• In Select, click none.
• Now Export the file making sure that you save it as a PNG file as this will allow you to save your image with a transparent background.

How to add a background colour to a PNG Image using GIMP

This next very short clip shows you how to add a background colour to your PNG Image using Gimp and Bucket-Fill.




So here it is, my 'cleaned-up' photograph with a white background! Now it's perfect to use on my website, Pinterest and my business Facebook page! Just make sure that you add your watermark to protect your image and to ensure that everyone know who created the design. 

I wrote a blog some time ago on how to create a simple logo and watermark, to read this blog CLICK HERE.

How to add a background colour to a PNG image using PicMonkey.

And finally, this last clip shows you how to add a coloured background to your PNG Image using PicMonkey. You can actually use GIMP for this purpose as you can change the foreground and background colours to different colours by simply double clicking on the black and white boxes and selecting the colour that you want to use. However, learning how to add a PNG Image to a Design in PicMonkey will give you so many exciting options!





And here is my final version of my edited photograph... just a little bit different from the original photograph. Once again using PicMonkey, I have added a frame and text; the creative options are endless!

This may seem a lot of information to learn, but I can assure you that it does not take long to perfect the techniques and the results are well worth the effort!

Have fun and happy ballooning!

Sue
www.suebowler.com

Working with Balloon Clip Art... and how to use a Image Manipulation Program to help you to present your ideas and suggestions to your clients and customers.

As a QBN (Qualatex Balloon Network) member you can get access to some great Clip Art templates that you can use to present your decor idea's to your customers and clients.

This blog is to help you to take a Clip Art design like this:

And with a little knowhow you can transform it to this, so you can show colours and pattern idea's!

Start by visiting www.Qualatex.com, if you look at the Purple headers on the left side of the homepage you will see under Qualatex Balloon Network, QBN Resource Centre, click on that and it open's the page that you can see below.

Now click on Marketing Resources

Before you can log in as a QBN Business Member and access your marketing resources, you’ll first need to read and agree to the terms of this limited license agreement. To be able to gain access to this area you'll need to have passed Test 1 Balloon Basics and have your QBN number and password. If you do not remember yours just email QBN@Qualatex.com and they will be able to assist you.

Once you have entered your QBN number and password you should reach this page:

This page offers you a few options. If you look at the top right you can download JOB COST FORMS in PDF or Excel!

But for now we are looking at Clip Art, so simply select CLIP ART from the Resources menu and leave the Theme and Item reading All, then click on search.

You will now see a selection of Clip Art templates that are available for you to use.

You simply click on the Clip Art that you want to download and save it to your computer, make a folder on your desktop and name it Clip Art so you can easily store and find it when you need it.

So, now you have a Clip Art template of the arch or bouquet that you want to show your customer, how can you add colour to it to use it in your quotes and or presentations?

After many attempts over the years trying to learn how to manipulate photographs and pictures, downloading various 'time limited trial design programs' and really not ever getting to grips with how they work (sound familiar) plus without spending huge amounts of money on a program that I would probably use less than 5% of it's capability, I finally discovered a free program called GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. 

I am not going to say that GIMP is a really easy program to use unless you are already a Photoshop and Coral Draw users , and if you are then you probably already know how to colour fill and much more!

So, if you are like me and with anything new, especially when it comes to computers, it takes me a while to fully understand how things works, and find that it is a constant learning curve!

Here is a description of GIMP from the manufacturers.

I have read a number of different reviews and in the main they are all very good, but hopefully, I can get you started on some really simple tasks.

So, to get started, you need to download GIMP there are versions for MAC and PC, visit www.gimp.org ... it's been a while since I downloaded my version, so I hi-jacked John's computer to see how easy it is.

The first thing that I will warn you about is that your computers security software will probably advise you not to download it, but that's not unusual, but it's a decision that you have to make, but from a personal experience I have never had any issues.

Secondly, because it's a free program, it appears that they have lumped a whole load of other programs ahead of the download, so just keep declining these (unless you want them) and then it will eventually automatically start the download, just read everything that it shows, so you can see what they are offering you, but I just declined everything and on the last one I un-checked the box that said that it would send me up-dates...

It's quite a large folder approx. 77mb (megabytes), but it does not take too long to download.

Now it's downloaded, just complete the set-up as instructed and then your ready to start!

When I download programs such as GIMP, I always save them into my APPLICATIONS folder, when I open the Applications folder I am looking for this symbol.

To start working on a Clip Art image, you might find it easier to right click the Clip Art image that you have downloaded and saved and  that you want to colour and ask it to open with then select GIMP, there will be several options see below (your options will be different from mine).

Once you click on this GIMP will open and look like this:

It asks you if you would like to Assign the picture to the workspace allocated, just click on the Assign button - you actually have the option to change the size of the workspace at this point, but I would not bother. If you have already opened GIMP it will automatically assign the Clip Art to the workspace.

Now your screen should look like this...

I hope that you are still with me, once you have done this a few times it will become easier and you will start to enjoy all the things that you can do with GIMP... but baby steps for now:)

Should the toolbox not appear, you can open it by clicking on Tools, which is on the command bar just above the large balloon on the column. I keep the toolbox outside of the workspace so that I can always see it. If any other boxes open in addition to the workspace and toolbox, just close these as you will not need these today.

Now you need to learn how to fill the balloons with colours.

You are going to work with a tool called BUCKET FILL

Once you have the Bucket Fill tool open you can now start to fill in the balloons.

I have made a short DVD clip to show you how to do this... I hope that it helps?

Wow...this has to be the most challenging blog that I have written to date! I hope that you are able to understand how to preform this simple task and use it within your work... let me know how you get on!

If you have any comments please do not hesitate to leave them in the comments area at the end of this blog, or email me Sue@suebowler.com

I am no expert when it comes to using programs such as this, I hope that my very little knowledge just through trail and error will help some of you to experiment where you may not have felt confidant enough to do so.

Happy Ballooning!

Sue
www.suebowler.com