Archive for the ‘Photos and Images’ Category
Stock Photo Sites
What’s the Difference Between Free and Royalty-Free Images?
Royalty-Free means simply that when you purchase the right to use an image, you can use it as many times as you like without any additional payments. A royalty payment is a payment that must be made each time an item is used or sold. So royalty-free images for sale, means you pay a one-time fee for the use of the graphic.
Image Resolution – DPI/PPI/SPI
If you are supplying image files or creating your own graphics, you need to know this.
Hiring a photographer (or artist)
It is worth the investment – a pro will make you look like a pro.
Photography techniques & tips
Try radically different concepts – including something that does not show your face on the cover. Get crazy with your poses. Let your personality come out. Have fun.
Have some funny phrases handy to use just before you take the photo for a natural smile.
Pay attention to what you’re WEARING. Avoid tiny prints. Check with each other so you don’t clash. Do you blend into the background?
Use makeup! Airbrushing is expensive.
Double chin? Turn your head to the left or right about 30 degrees.
Take many many many pictures, back to back. Like at a football game. Click click click. This is particularly helpful with group shots to get the best look on everyone’s faces and everyone’s eyes open.
Don’t rely on reviewing your pics on a tiny LCD screen.
Unless your album is a concert recording, avoid live concert pics, especially for the cover.
Avoid banners, placards, and other promotional items.
Look around for things to eliminate or tidy up in your scene. Pick up stray papers, arrange curtains, dust the piano, pick up your underwear. Outside, watch for trash and other things in your scene that you might not notice until you’re looking at proofs.
Try different angles off frontal – some slightly off, some drastically off.
LIGHTING: Avoid using flash – natural lighting is better, even if it is an extra light brought into the room. Pay attention to time of day and angle of sun. How does it interact with objects in the scene, the background or reflections on people’s glasses, car windows, mirrors.
To produce a dramatic effect, light from the side.
Try bouncing your flash or a light off a ceiling or wall.
Using something white (poster board, for example) will reflect light onto the darkened side of the face.
Photographs and Images
IMAGES can affect the way people perceive your music before they even hear it.
Scanning
Clean your scanner glass and photograph with a soft cloth before placing each item.
Do not scan at a lower resolution and then enlarge it later! This actually lowers the resolution and can turn it into garbage. For example, a 2.5″ x 2.5″ image scanned at 300 PPI that is later doubled 5″ x 5″ becomes 150 PPI. Photoshop cannot invent pixels that were never present in the image to begin with. So you need to scan something that will be used at twice the size of the original picture at twice the resolution (600 PPI at 100%). I’d rather you scan too high.