Artist’s Books Ideation Cards by Julie Chen and Barbara Tetenbaum

Such excitement when something goes viral in the book arts world! The first edition of Barb Tetenbaum and Julie Chen’s inspiring Artist’s Book Ideation Cards sold out quickly and are now available in an improved second edition. A new supplier brings a better, slightly textured finish to the cards plus a few new cards to round out the decks.

If you missed out and were worried about getting your deck, click here to purchase yours today.

You can read our blog post about how the Portland Book Arts Group used these cards as a lively group assignment. Post a comment to share what the Ideation Cards have done for you or your group or classroom assignment. We’d love to hear more.

Happy creating,

Laura

Tomorrow at midnight is the deadline for Book Power Redux. Our jurors, Jane Carlin and MalPina Chan are going to be thrilled to see the stunning books you’ve created for this show. So many excellent entries have been submitted already. But, the last 24 hours are when things really get hot and heavy. Amazingly we usually receive around 60% of our entries in the last 24 hours. Can’t wait to see what else rolls in!

A complete call for entries for Book Power can be found here.

Good luck,

Laura

The Image Size dialog box in Photoshop.

Sizing your photos can be a bit frustrating and mysterious. You can’t measure pixels with a ruler and the numbers are confusing. Here are a few tips to help you think about sizing.

• These notes apply to any photo editing software. You do not need Photoshop to resize images. Most any photo editing software will do. If you have a Mac computer, the built-in Preview app will size photos well as crop and rotate images very easily. Click here for a step-by-step tutorial on how to size images using Preview.
• What are the size and resolution requirements for the show or gallery submission? Some venues require web-ready images, which are much lower resolution than print-ready images. If a juried show will be producing a print catalog, they may require “hi-res” or print-ready photographs. Web-ready images will generally be 72 dpi or ppi (dots per inch or pixels per inch, which are used interchangeably). Print-ready photographs will need to be 300 ppi.
• Using your computer software, you can always make a photograph smaller in size or resolution, but you should not increase the size or resolution of a photograph. The quality of your image degrades noticeably when you attempt increases. You must capture your image with sufficient resolution and size and then size it down to what you need.
• To achieve print-ready (300 ppi) images, your photographs must be shot with a camera that captures 8 Megapixels or higher. Any less than that and your image may not work for print catalog reproduction. Shoot a “master set” of photos of each work at large size and full resolution and then make copies for future sizing needs.
• To change size or resolution in Photoshop, use the Image Size command under the Image menu. When keeping the size the same, but changing the resolution, uncheck Resample. When changing the size, if you want to keep the same resolution, check Resample. To use any other photo editing app, google for instructions.
• The tricky thing is that you are really trying to do two different things in one dialog box. If it helps, break it into two steps. Set the resolution first (with the resample button unchecked) and hit OK. Then go back into the same dialog box, check the resample box and set the size. Eventually you’ll become familiar enough with sizing to do both steps in one pass.
• For a good article on how to resize or change image resolution, go to this link. I’ve avoided giving you step by step instructions in this blog post since this article tells you everything you need to know.
• When editing for size and resolution, be sure to keep “constrain proportions” checked.
• For your 23 Sandy juried show entry the photos you upload on our entry form cannot be more than 25 mb in total size for all four images. But, this should be no problem. Correctly saved JPGs will average 1-4 mbs each for the 2100 pixel size we specify in the call for entries.

Good luck!

Laura

This photo is nicely cropped leaving a comfortable amount of background for future uses, and it shows off the book properly.

Cropping is an often overlooked, yet very simple part of editing photographs of your artist books. Here are a few tips for cropping that will help present and document your work most effectively.

Cropping is done using the Crop tool in Photoshop (or whatever photo imaging software you have). It is a very easy and straightforward tool to use. As mentioned in a previous tip in this series you can also rotate your photo with the crop tool to save a step.

Crop your photo to show all of the work but leave enough background to give your book some room to breathe. Good photos of your work will be used for juried shows, in print catalogs, on web sites and more, for years to come. Leave enough background so that the photo can be cropped as needed by future users, but not too much that the book gets lost. The image above shows a comfortable amount of background allowing plenty of flexibility.

This horizontal photo should be cropped vertically to better show off the book.

You may need to change the orientation of your photo to best accommodate the vertical or horizontal shape of your book shape. The image at right shows a book that was photographed horizontally, but the book is actually very tall and narrow. It would look much better if the image was made vertical and the excess background is cropped on the left and right.

Keep the overall image area in roughly the same rectangle that your camera shoots in. Do not crop your photos to a square shape. That may be difficult to use in print catalogs for juried shows depending on the design template. Keep all images you are submitting to a show to a consistent size and shape. It’s okay, though if some are vertical and some are horizontal.

This photo is cropped too tightly. Never crop into your book. Perspective and scale get lost.

Do not crop too tightly and definitely do not crop into the physical book. Too tight of a crop doesn’t leave the catalog designers any flexibility for layout purposes. If you crop off the corners of your book thinking it looks arty or mysterious, you will loose the dimension and perspective of your book. The photo shown at right is cropped too much and the book looses impact. Believe or not, this happens a lot. If you cannot fit the entire book in the viewfinder of your camera you need to step farther back from your book or set up your photo studio in a bigger space.

Be sure to crop out irrelevant or distracting background. Sometimes part of your studio may show behind your backdrop and should be cropped out.

One last thought. Always work on a copy of your photograph by using the Save As command or the Duplicate command. That way if you crop out too much you can always go back to the original.

Click here to see the article in this series: Photographing Your Artist Books Tip #5 – Sizing Your Photos

My favorite Unsharp Mask settings for sharpening photos of books. Start here then move the Amount slider left to right until you get the best results. Make sure the Preview box is checked during editing so you can see the effect on screen.

Almost all digital photographs benefit from some “sharpening” in your photo editing software. It can be especially important if you want to show crisp text on the page of a book. This is one of those basic steps that is easy to overlook but can make a huge difference in the quality and accuracy of the photos of your artist books.

Here are a few of my best tips for sharpening:

• Different cameras perform different levels of sharpening during “capture.” Some more than others. If you figure out how much sharpening is needed for your camera when you are shooting photos of your books you can most likely apply that same level of sharpening to all of your future book photos. Every camera will be different when it comes to this subjective subject.
• Play with the different Sharpen commands under the Filter menu to see which ones you like best. Look for sharp words or letters or crisp page edges.
• Sharpen with your image viewed at 100%, even if you only see a small fraction of your image on your screen.
• My favorite sharpening filter in Photoshop is “Unsharp Mask.” I always start with the numbers in the Unsharp Mask dialog box set at: 85 for Amount, 1 for Radius, 4 for Threshold. Then I slide the Amount slider back and forth until I get the result I want. Click the preview button on and off to see how things look before saving.
• Don’t try to sharpen an image that is out of focus. That never works. Reshoot instead.
• Don’t over sharpen your images You will get a “grainy” image or you may see “halos” around objects. Halos are a red/purple line that runs along a high contrast edge. Dark type on white paper is a great example of an area that is at risk of a halo.
• Always remember, for the best final product, it’s best to start off with the best quality image right out of the camera and make as few edits as possible. Too much sharpening will make your book look terrible. Even though Photoshop is magical, you are always one extra edit away from losing image quality.

You can find a very easy to understand in-depth explanation of sharpening here on Photojojo.

Click here to see the next article in this series: Photographing Your Artist Books Tip #4 – Cropping