Dash of Inspiration – Selecting Digital Backgrounds
A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen
Selecting Digital Backgrounds
Last week we talked about Digital Background Removal and that sparked a request for Part 2 this week to chat about what characteristics to look for when choosing a replacement background for your image. So I’ll pass on my thoughts in the hopes they may spark some great inspiration for your own imagery.
The first step is to identify the purpose of your final image.
- Is it a portrait of a pet or loved one for a customer? If so, you may want a more ‘studio’ feel to your final image such as you would find in a portrait studio using muslin drops and background lighting.
- Are you creating an image with a theme; such as Easter specifically for a greeting card? If so, then you’ll want to be sure to stick with your theme to ensure your colors, textures and subject matter create a harmonious blend.
- Is your final image intended to be a digital composition created of many pieces? Digital composition typically are created from a vision you already have, so you will know what you are looking for when you see it and in these types of images, the background is often the glue which holds the other elements together.
- Do you just wish that when you took the photograph the surrounding environment had less distraction? In which case your results would want to look as if you took the image that way; replacing the background with an image from the same or similar photo shoot for a very natural look.
- Or is your goal to set your subject apart from a distracting background and have an impact on the viewer as a stand alone subject with no competition from the background elements? Great choices for this type of result is soft grunge, bokeh, Gaussian blurs, or often even a solid white or black will create great that WOW factor for you, with or without a light texture effect.
The second step is to match the qualities that your subject has such as; emotion, lighting, and color to a background that blends rather than competes with your subject.
- Look at the direction of your light source on your subject and choose a background where the light source is the same. Shadows on a subject that are physically impossible from the light source on the background will cause your imagery to not work.
- If your subject has feet, then usually you will need to find a background that will allow the animal or person to have something to stand on that takes away the appearance of them floating.
- Match the emotion of your subject to a background. If you’ve captured a child in mid-jump who is laughing and full of energy, then you want to keep that emotion throughout the image. Same applies to a somber emotion, putting a sleeping dog on a brightly colored background as a sympathy card, may contradict the emotion of the subject and message.
- Watch for colors and textures which ‘fight’ each other and/or the subject. Remember, we photograph something because the natural composition drew us in, if you remove the background and replace it with one that contradicts the subject such as; placing a giraffe on a snow-covered mountain or a child in a swimsuit on an ice-rink, you are creating imagery that will most likely not be accepted by your audience; these examples are drastic, but they are meant to get my point across.
- Watch out for adding distracting elements back in to your image such as; trees or poles sticking out of the back of heads, elements which get cutoff unnaturally by your subject, hot spots, etc . . .
- If you are creating a greeting card, then you must keep in mind when choosing a background to pick one which offers a good compositional space for adding your text to the front without creating an unbalance of elements and/or illegible text.
So, where do you get backgrounds?
Photographer’s have an advantage in being able to photograph their own backgrounds to have on hand. Here are some tips for the photographers:
- When you are out on a shoot, take the time to find one or two spots that just offer the best possible background scene for the subjects you are shooting at that time and set up the camera properly to capture the right DOF for these background shots. Doing this on-site offers you replacement backgrounds that have the same environmental elements, textures, colors and lighting conditions of your subjects – so if you need to swap a background out to save a great subject, you have great matches on hand.
- While out photographing, always keep your eyes open for opportunities to capture backgrounds for your collection. Walls of all kinds (except graffiti which is someone’s art) can often make great textures and/or backgrounds, meadows, landscapes and such can come in handy.
- For a studio environment such as; muslin backgrounds there are some affordable choices already available for purchase with a CU License included for those who may have a steady need for the more ‘formal’ portrait backdrops. Visit EZ Backgrounds.com and XSight below for some lovely and affordable choices.
- For theme related backgrounds there are lots of choices. You can browse for public domain images that may offer you what you need, but I caution you on Public Domain imagery; much of the photography that is truly PD is there because of technical faults such as focus or lighting issues, and has low resolution so choose wisely. You are better off purchasing backgrounds or following the rules of use in Derivative Works from a source such as the Morguefile.com
Etsy has great digital backgrounds and you are supporting a fellow artist
Look for theme/holiday Digital Background Sources like those available at Photo Backs or Artco Design.
- For something like a grunge or bokeh effect to set your subject off, I’m all for making your own by experimenting with watercolor, grunge and bokeh brushes or blend a texture into a plain color for a unique background. Look through my posts for the past year to see some great links to brushes of this type.
I hope I’ve given you some good ideas and gotten your creative juices flowing.
EZ Backgrounds has an affordable Muslin selection
High Resolution Digital Backgrounds With Adjustable Lighting Effects by XSight
Holiday Themed Packages at Photobacks.com
Themed Backgrounds at Artco Design
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Critique Clinic – March 30-April 1, 2012
How does it work? For three days a week (Friday-Sunday midnight), I will open the clinic to any artist who wants an honest peer review and critique of a card which gets plenty of clicks but no sales, so something’s probably not quite right, or you’ve got a new design you want to test drive, or you’re unsure about the marketability of a card. Or perhaps you’re a newbie who isn’t sure if a recently submitted card is up to a marketable standard. Anyone is welcome to participate. In fact, I encourage everyone to at least look at the cards in question and read the critique comments – you may learn something. The purpose of the clinic is to help artists improve the commercial appeal and marketability of their cards.
THE RULES
- ONE card per artist only.
- Card must be for sale at Greeting Card Universe.
- We will take an unlimited number of artists, including those who have submitted recently, HOWEVER I reserve the right to close a clinic for the day if the submissions become overwhelming. If the clinic has been closed, and you submit a card, your comment will be deleted.
- To submit a card for critique, post a link to the card at GCU in the comments section of this clinic post. Allowances will be made if you’ve had a card declined, or made a new design you’d like advice on. Give us the link where we can see the card, such as your private gallery, Flickr, etc.
- Any artist is free to comment and/or give a critique of a submitted card. HOWEVER, post-and-run comments like “great card” or “you suck” will not be tolerated, nor will abuse. Criticism should be constructive, not destructive. Play nice or you will be banned.
- I also won’t tolerate temper tantrums if you decide your “artistic integrity” is being stepped on because you asked for a critique, and someone told you the photo you’re using isn’t in focus. If you can’t take honest criticism, don’t submit. Once gets you a warning; twice and you’re banned from submitting in the future.
- Artists who critique may do so by giving their opinion, posting an example of another card, or pointing the submitter to a video, on-line article, or other helpful suggestion.
- Don’t forget that artists who are giving you tips and helpful advice are volunteering their time and trouble. Be nice. A link back to their store on your website or blog is appreciated (but not mandatory).
- You are free not to take any advice offered. There’s no guarantee any card will be a bestseller, so don’t come into the clinic with unrealistic expectations.
- Rules may change as we go along and we see how things turn out, okay?
So without any further ado, I declare this week’s Critique Clinic open!
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Nuts & Bolts: Faster Review Times
An evergreen topic of interest on GCU is review times. We’ve all been there, waiting several days, sometimes a couple of weeks or more, to find out if the card we submitted has been approved or declined.
Why does it take so long? Part of the answer lies in the sheer volume of submitted cards that must be gone over each day. However, another part is in the artist’s control – making fewer mistakes and following GCU’s guidelines. In addition, artists who make consistently near-perfect submissions might achieve Star Submitter status, which means (in many cases) getting same-day card approvals.
Bottom line: error-free cards will eventually result in shorter review times for all artists, most especially yourself.
Here are some tips that will help you out as you try to achieve perfection:
USE SPELLCHECK: It seems like a no-brainer, but spelling errors and grammatical errors are common mistakes that are easily correctable before your card is submitted for review. Check the spelling and grammar on the front of the card as well as the inside verse. If you have a program like MS Word, just create a new document with your intended text, and check the spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
HOLIDAY NAMES: Before you put, for example, “Happy Nurses Day” on the front of your card (or any other holiday, for that matter), check how the holiday is spelled in GCU’s category list. Is it Nurse’s Day? Nurses Day? Nurses’ Day? On GCU, it’s spelled Nurses Day. So always check the preferred spelling at GCU ’cause if you don’t and you get it wrong, your card will be kicked back to you.
READ THE GCU WIKI: And pay attention to the Image Guidelines. And use your common sense, please. It is simply not possible for GCU to give artists a 100% comprehensive list of what they will and will not approve, but following the general guidelines provided should result in less declined cards.
LEARN HOW GCU WORKS: It is especially critical that you learn how to properly categorize a card. Improper categorization is a major reason for resubmits. Go read a previous Nuts & Bolts article on Categories – it will explain a lot and probably help you make better choices. In fact, all the Nuts and Bolts articles contain information on various aspects of GCU including keywords, Artist’s Notes, etc. Go read. We’ll wait. 🙂
LEARN YOUR CRAFT: Whether you’re an illustrator or a photographer, one of the greatest things you can do is learn your craft before you submit cards. We have a lot of information on this site, other artists have provided tutorials or links to tutorials and resources elsewhere, and there’s the GCU Forum, too. There’s no excuse for poor performance. “Good enough” isn’t good enough. Strive for perfection by actively learning how to take pictures or draw that bunny before you go through the agony of review – it will save you time and energy, not to mention angst. Oh, and keep in mind that “outside the box” and “challenging the rules” designs only work if you first understand the fundamentals of design. You have to comprehend the rules before you can break them.
BE SELF-CRITICAL: This will be hard for some artists, but you need to learn to look at your cards with a critical eye and a consumer’s eye. The best way to do this is to study cards for sale in the racks at the grocery store, or go on-line to Hallmark and other retailers and check out their offerings. This will give you the best idea of what sells and what doesn’t. If your submission doesn’t equal what you see, maybe you should go back to the drawing board. There’s a reason why the big greeting card retailers are at the top of their game. It’s because they make designs that shoppers want to pay for.
USE THE NOTES TO REVIEWERS: If there’s something the reviewers need to know, tell them! This field is very useful for letting them know the submitted card is a variation of a card already approved (give the PID#), tell them you have a model release for that photo or that clip art is in the public domain + your source, etc. This is probably the best way to communicate with the review team, so use it!
REMEMBER WHAT GCU IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT: I’m going to be blunt – Greeting Card Universe is a business. A business selling greeting cards for profit. GCU is not a place to experiment with your new point and shoot camera, to throw some images together to see if you can make a card, to slap together a snapshot of your cat with a piece of 90’s clipart that’s been moldering in your hard drive for decades, etc. If you want to sell your designs or photographs as greeting cards to shoppers who are not your relatives, act like a pro. Do your homework so you can do the best possible job. Be serious about what you want to get out of GCU Don’t just fart around in Photoshop and hope for the best.
And finally, don’t forget that we have a Critique Clinic every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday right here on the Community blog. It’s open to all artists. We accept not only currently approved cards, but also cards that have been declined or new designs you’d like vetted before you submit.
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Design Contest: Hanging With Your Peeps
And the results of the voting are in! Everyone who voted, I just want to say: thanks for participating.
Despite the extra votes earned by some artists, it’s clear that Donna Collins has won in a landslide of 99 votes! She will receive her choice of a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate or 5 free card credits. Congratulations, Donna!
As for the mini-contest for Pinterest users, our winner by random drawing is Janet Lee! She will receive a $5 gift certificate from Amazon.com. Congratulations!
Instead of a contest, next week we’ll have an Easter themed Blog Carnival AND the prize will be … (drumroll, please) a $10 gift certificate to MyFonts.com! Watch this space for the announcement.
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Design Spotlight: Shoaff-Ballanger Studios
We’re putting the Design Spotlight on Shoaff-Ballanger Studios today – I always enjoy their creative creations!
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Shoaff Ballanger Studios is a creative collaboration of the husband and wife team of Susan Shoaff-Ballanger and Jay Ballanger. Both of us have been in the art education field for over 20+ years. We live in Kirksville, Missouri with our two Siamese cats and three miniature poodles. Our animals are a constant inspiration for many of our cards as you can imagine.
This is one of our favorite cards because our poodle beau looked so regal and the patriotic hat fit perfectly on his head (with some digital magic of course). We enjoy creating cards for Greeting Card Universe because of the multitude of categories GCU offers to its customers.
Both of us are fiber artists with interests in surface design, textile printing, and quilting. We have a variety of cards with our personal fiber arts work used as backgrounds or the main subjects of our cards. We have also exhibited internationally in Korea (Pojagis from American Friends, Art Factory, Heyri, Kyonggi, Korea). You can see some examples of our pojagis (Korean form of patchwork) by using the keyword “pojagi” on the GCU website.
We’ve been inspired by the many wonderful artists here at Greeting Card Universe and wish GCU continued success in the future.
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Dash of Inspiration – Clean Background Removal
A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen
Clean Background Removal
Removing an element from the background; no matter what you call it, can be done in a variety of ways; but ALL of them are time-consuming and take a tremendous amount of practice to get professional results. This will be short and sweet since there is not a lot to say about this other than IF you are going to attempt this in your digital creations, then you MUST look out for the ‘artifacts’ which can be left behind when performing background removal leaving you with unprofessional results.
As shown in the example below, when done in haste, this technique leaves behind some unwanted effects such as;
- Bits of background which can look like blotches, spots or blurry areas
- A halo effect around edges when your element is placed on a darker background.
- Jagged/rough edges left around the subject
Courtesy of Joshuas583
The key to great background removal is patience and learning how to combine various techniques to ultimately get clean smooth edges around your subject and when you place this newly cutout subject on a dark or contrasting background as shown in the example below, there are no leftover bits of background or jagged edges. You have to have a smooth blend that looks natural as if photographed that way.
Courtesy of the Yale Library
There is no single tool, no magic wand that will work all the time for all subjects and offer great results so don’t count on using your Background Eraser tool or Quick Selector as a full-proof, one-time removal tool. Here are some really good articles and tutorials on a variety of methods to accomplish background removal. I hope that I’ve inspired you to experiment with some of these tools. When done well, this type of digital work can be very rewarding when you have a great looking subject, but a cluttered background – just remove it and place it in paradise!
5 Great Background Masking Techniques in Photoshop by Corrie Haffly
Masking 101 by Chris McVeigh, Macworld.com
GIMP Background Removal by 3Tut.com
Working with Selection Tools by Eric Z Goodnight
BRILLIANT! How To Remove Background Around Difficult Subjects by 1stoptutorials
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Critique Clinic – March 23-25, 2012
How does it work? For three days a week (Friday-Sunday midnight), I will open the clinic to any artist who wants an honest peer review and critique of a card which gets plenty of clicks but no sales, so something’s probably not quite right, or you’ve got a new design you want to test drive, or you’re unsure about the marketability of a card. Or perhaps you’re a newbie who isn’t sure if a recently submitted card is up to a marketable standard. Anyone is welcome to participate. In fact, I encourage everyone to at least look at the cards in question and read the critique comments – you may learn something. The purpose of the clinic is to help artists improve the commercial appeal and marketability of their cards.
THE RULES
- ONE card per artist only.
- Card must be for sale at Greeting Card Universe.
- We will take an unlimited number of artists, including those who have submitted recently, HOWEVER I reserve the right to close a clinic for the day if the submissions become overwhelming. If the clinic has been closed, and you submit a card, your comment will be deleted.
- To submit a card for critique, post a link to the card at GCU in the comments section of this clinic post. Allowances will be made if you’ve had a card declined, or made a new design you’d like advice on. Give us the link where we can see the card, such as your private gallery, Flickr, etc.
- Any artist is free to comment and/or give a critique of a submitted card. HOWEVER, post-and-run comments like “great card” or “you suck” will not be tolerated, nor will abuse. Criticism should be constructive, not destructive. Play nice or you will be banned.
- I also won’t tolerate temper tantrums if you decide your “artistic integrity” is being stepped on because you asked for a critique, and someone told you the photo you’re using isn’t in focus. If you can’t take honest criticism, don’t submit. Once gets you a warning; twice and you’re banned from submitting in the future.
- Artists who critique may do so by giving their opinion, posting an example of another card, or pointing the submitter to a video, on-line article, or other helpful suggestion.
- Don’t forget that artists who are giving you tips and helpful advice are volunteering their time and trouble. Be nice. A link back to their store on your website or blog is appreciated (but not mandatory).
- You are free not to take any advice offered. There’s no guarantee any card will be a bestseller, so don’t come into the clinic with unrealistic expectations.
- Rules may change as we go along and we see how things turn out, okay?
So without any further ado, I declare this week’s Critique Clinic open!
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Design Contest: Hanging With Your Peeps VOTE!
We’re opening the voting for our latest Design Contest: Hanging With Your Peeps. Here are the submissions made by our artists, and below you’ll find a poll. VOTE for your favorite Easter card until March 27th.
Whoever receives the most votes will win a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate or 5 free card credits. Every vote counts, so be sure to promote on Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites, forums, groups, etc.
On March 28th, I’ll announce the winner. Good luck!
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Design Spotlight: Jenny Fenlason
Today, our Design Spotlight falls on Jenny Fenlason of JenGogh Designs – very cute stuff!
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I’m a full time wife and mother who began dabbling in greeting card creation after winning some card contests. I’ve always enjoyed being creative in writing, drawing, painting and most recently photography. I have no training in any visual arts but I do have an English degree (which I try to keep quiet, because I know I don’t write or speak properly.)
Until two years ago, I never considered combining those interests to designing greeting cards. I also enjoy humor, and have a very difficult time creating cards of a serious nature, but I occasionally try. Designing cards is a hobby that provides me with a creative outlet and I’m thankful for GCU and the opportunities I have to put my creations out there.
I have a strange tendency to take pictures of food so it’s fitting that one of my most popular cards, and a personal favorite, features an egg. I originally designed this as a friendship card, but it has also been popular as a “sorry for your accident” card. When I created this card, I drew his face with a marker, but my technology has improved (I was given a pen tablet for Christmas 2010) so now, I can create all food facial features digitally.
Unfortunately, I have more ideas than I have time to create. My involvement with church, leading a mom’s group, homeschooling, and attempting to keep the people in my house clothed and fed (which is more difficult than I ever thought it would be some days) doesn’t always leave much time for design work, but I try to update my store when I get the chance. I also suffer from a debilitating Facebook addiction, which doesn’t help my work ethic. So please, stop by JenGogh Designs on Facebook to say hi and remind me to get to work.
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Dash of Inspiration – Artifacts … the Facts
A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen
Artifacts … The Facts
This has been an interesting topic of discussion, so I thought it might be fun to further investigate the Definition of Artifacts and how it relates to those of us creating high-quality imagery. So let’s start with the definition of Artifact in the context we are referring to:
Here are two definitions of Artifact appropriate for digital mediums since artifacts are usually the result of something we choose to incorporate into our creation; either during camera setup for a photograph or during digital scanning or processing.
The Science Dictionary Definition:
An artificial product or effect observed in a natural system, especially one introduced by the technology used in scientific investigation or by experimental error.
Computer Desktop Encyclopedia:
A distortion in an image or sound caused by a limitation or malfunction in the hardware or software. Artifacts may or may not be easily detectable. Under intense inspection, one might find artifacts all the time, but a few pixels out of balance or a few milliseconds of abnormal sound often go undetected.
Part of the reason we are seeing more and more ‘artifacts’ in imagery these days is that digital cameras often shoot in JPEG format which is a compressed file format. From the the moment of capture, compression of data begins and every time that file is saved in a JPEG format it compresses more and more data, and every time that JPEG is opened, it has to try and recreate missing data which is where the artifacts come from – pieces of data CREATED TO REPLACE MISSING IMAGE DATA – ouch!
Courtesy of Harvard.edu
Today most DSLRs are offering a RAW File Format to shoot in, as do all Pro-Level Cameras. This is definitely the way to go if your camera offers it. Though I won’t get into all the reasons why, let’s say reducing the artifacts from compression loss by not shooting in a compressed format is one very good reason.
Okay now, let’s look at many of reasons that artifacts end up in our imagery so we can better recognize it in our own images and work to avoid it:
- In JPEG captured/saved images there are several types of artifacts which can haunt your image:
- Posterizing in areas which should be smooth gradients
- Staircase noise (jagged) around edges with curves
- Buzzing or what some call “mosquito noise” around edges
- Blockiness/busy areas sometimes called quilting or checkerboard effect
- A blurring or smudged appearance and/or light halos around dark areas of an image
- Color distortion, known as color noise or in a gray-scale image it can appear grainy or patchy
Courtesy of the Yale Library
It’s important to keep in mind that these types of artifacts can appear in ANY DIGITAL ART form, regardless of whether it began as a photograph or not. If you save your work in JPEG format as you work on it, you are doing irreversible damage to the data. When artifacts appear in other image formats (other than JPEG) it usually is because they have been converted from a JPEG somewhere in the history of the image file.
In photography under certain conditions, the image captured by your DSLR can have too much information, creating color noise and digital artifacts in the photo; particularly when you’re shooting at low-light levels (under-exposure) and/or shooting with an ISO higher than 100. Color noise artifacts can also be a found in images captured by low-end/low-resolution digital cameras.
Courtesy of Darren Rowse
- Generation Loss refers to the loss of quality between subsequent copies of data such as; saving a compressed digital file over and over again. Anything that when copying (like making a copy of a copy on a copy machine) results in a further reduction in quality which is considered a form of generation loss. Here is another example: For those of us who have shot photographs on film, that negative becomes the First Generation. We then make a print, that is the 2nd Generation. Now if you scan that print in order to get a digital file, that is Third Generation. The greeting card or print from that digital file is the FOURTH Generation. You will see a significant loss in quality from the 1st generation to the digital version.
- In digital cameras, artifacts may be produced when performing digital zoom. When analog material is converted to digital, tiny discrepancies (quantization errors) may result (see below for links to learn more about digital vs optical zoom).
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Courtesy of Mobil Phone Reviews
Scanned images – whether scanning a negative, photograph or artwork into digital file format, they all can have noise caused by the scanning sensor. Scanners are difficult tools to use to truly create a hi-resolution, artifact free, color-balanced file worthy of using on your Print-on-Demand sites. You really need to use a good quality photo-scanner, so you can make use of the extensive software they come with which allow you to correct color noise in specific channels while preserving the edge and image details for a fine-tuned noise reduction scan.
You can and should learn to recognize these effects in your own images, plus you will know how they got there and how to avoid them in the future. Though there are many ways to reduce artifacts in images out there, there is really no way to remove them entirely and in most cases this means that the image quality is just not good enough to be considered something you would print and sell. So I have not offered any links to ways for artifact removal. Instead I’ve offered some links to avoid them by making better choices.
How to Choose the Right ISO for your Digital Photography by Darren Rowse
Understanding JPEG Formats from the Yale Tutorial Library
How CNET Central Tests Digital Cameras
Learn About Orb Artifacts Caused by Light Sources
Optical vs. Digital Zoom by Photoxels
GCU Community 