Good to Know Archives - Page 36 of 200

March 18, 2015

Preview all your installed fonts at once!

I am sure there’s a zillion ways to preview all your fonts at once but I honestly don’t know how to do them. I use my Font Book that came with my Mac, but I have never figured out how to print out my fonts (and I do have so many to choose from!) So I found a couple of resources for browser based font previewers to try if you were in the same conundrum as myself!

Wordmark.it-This was simple enough, I just went to their site, typed in a word where indicated and poof, y entire font library appeared on screen!

Flipping Typical– This doesn’t use flash so you should be able to view on your phone. Downside it doesn’t show all your fonts.

Font Picker-This took a little while to load, but it has good reviews!

If you have the urge to add more fonts so you can preview them of course I did find these this morning that looked pretty swell:

Nice brush lettering font

Casual, boho script

Retro vibe script

P.S. I am doing a series of Dark & Dramatic magnolia’s on Instagram today and mentioned Michelle’s awesome tutorial, for those that want to give it a try you can find it here!

Author / Miss Tristan B

Miss Tristan B. is the co-creator of the world’s best + easiest product photography tool-Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.

March 17, 2015

How-to get whiter backgrounds in your product shots-the quick + easy way!

Has obtaining those beautiful white backgrounds in your product photography alluded you? No matter what type of light you shoot in you feel like you upload to your computer and your whites are either too blue, too yellow, too gray or…? We completely understand your frustration, trust us we have been there too, that’s why we developed what we believe to be the quickest + easiest way to get those whites nice and bright without effecting your exposure and still maintaing your shadows! We toyed with the idea of just selling this one action as the set, it’s that much of a product photography game changer, but because we love you so we included a boat load of other cures for your malady stricken photos. Your product photos on-line are your first ‘in’ with potential consumers and we all know how many choices there out there, you only have that one second to grab someone’s attention, speaking of seconds, wouldn’t it be nice to edit in them? We think so! If you have questions about Shopkeeper’s Helper just leave them in the comments. If you are having trouble just getting started with your product photography we created a mega list of tutorials here and if you need a quick overview on Photoshop we have some great tutorials here and free Photoshop courses here.

Of course you don’t need a shop to partake in the editing goodness, we think this set with the ‘paint on whiter background’ action would be perfect for bloggers especially if you do a lot of DIY’s on white backgrounds and yes, you can even use this action to clean up your lettering! Just bring up a scan or photo of your black and white lettering and paint over the entire image, it’s how I cleaned up this lettering piece!

We can’t wait for you to try Shopkeeper’s Helper, we want you to be able to make great photos for your shop, we think healthy photos = happy $hoppers!

March 16, 2015

Product Photography Editing made easy!

Wow! I thought prepping our first Foto Rx launch was a lot of work, but this one was, oh this one, what a doozy! Hooray, today is the day, we can celebrate we are officially launched and the interwebs will be a much prettier place! There are so many little details behind the scenes that came into play to make Shopkeeper’s Helper a reality, creating the actual actions themselves was taxing for my tired Mommy brain (but a welcome challenge), but all the support materials? Michelle had never made a video until the last launch and now I must say her Shopkeeper’s Helper promo video is aces! I keep telling her she needs to teach a class on it (even if it’s only so I can learn how). All the witty copy? Miss Michelle to thank. In fact I should publicly thank her, because if it wasn’t for Michelle we all know that this project would not have come into fruition. Anyone with a toddler and no help knows that you spend all day constantly running around, at night you are a bedraggled, tired mess, even eating/bathing takes too much energy let alone developing the world’s greatest (humble opinion), simple + easy to use product photo editing tool in a very complicated program (thanks M!). We have our fingers, toes, legs and eyes crossed that you are as wowed by these Photoshop actions as we are, we are a bit chuffed with ourselves and that never happens with two perfectionists on a project.

We are confident that this will cut your product photo editing time to seconds versus hours, even when you choose to use our surgeon precision-like actions which take an eensy bit more effort you still can get an edit done in under 60 seconds! Oh the joy of having more time to do what you love and less of the tasks that make you want to rip your hair out! Maybe that should be our tagline? I am going to keep this short today because seeing is believing and I think that once you take a peek your eyes are going to do a happy dance! And of course you can pick up your very own set of Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper Photoshop actions here. Thank you very much!Read More

March 15, 2015

Appointed by Suann Song

Last week we received an email from the very talented Suann Song that she was launching a new project-Appointed. First, let’s preface this by saying pretty much everything Suann designs is completely up my alley, Appointed no exception. Within one week Suann had exceeded her original Kickstarter goals (but of course!), they are still raising funds though so if you are just seeing this for the first time and want to be one of the first to receive your Appointed goods, I say head on over to the Kickstarter donate and place your order! As far as my professional opinion as a branding expert everything is spot on-Name, logo design, product, collateral, it’s all A+! From my own experience as a graphic designer I can tell you how very difficult it is to work on your own brand and nail it, it’s like the cobbler with no shoes. I do have to give props to the props, Maria and Kellyy did a fantastic job of styling and Kate, oh Kate, sigh. Here’s to wishing Suann tons of success in her endeavor, I do hope you stop by and visit her!

Author / Miss Tristan B

Miss Tristan B. is the proprietress of Besotted Brand and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. She lives in sunny Seattle with her handsome husband, wonderful baby girl and two pups. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.

March 12, 2015

Product Photography Tutorials + Resources-A mega Collection!

If we had our druthers we would be able to sit down with all of you and give you the best darn product photography class + product photo editing class ever, making it super accessible and easy as pie! Perhaps, one day in the near future we can make live classes happen, would you like that? We would! Until that mystical, magical day comes we have sleuthed high and low to bring you a collection of useful Product Photography tutorials, tips and resources. We know having them all in one place is much easier than hunting them down all over the interwebs yourself and we are all about the easy. We hope this helps in assisting you get the best shots ever making your photo editing even easier!

//TUTORIALS//

Easy DIY Jewelry set-up

Product photography low light? no problem!

15 video tutorials for product photography

Product Photography and styling

Top tips for Smartphone product photography

Food photography with a smartphone (this tutorial could apply to products too!)

Understanding ISO

DIY Photo lightbox

$20 photo studio

DIY product photography

Product Photography on a shoe string budget

How to take professional photos of crafts

How to take better photos of print design work

How-to product photography backgrounds

Product photography fro beginners

//PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS//

The 4 essential shots you need to get

8 tips to improve your product photography

9 Great Photography tips

//ADVANCED TUTORIAL//

Lighting with strobes (nicely explained though!)

// RESOURCES + EQUIPMENT//

Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper Photoshop Actions (coming soon!)

Tabletop Photography Class

No macro lens? No problem!

Tripod (smartphone)

Photoshop + Lightroom Photographer’s bundle

Awesome used cameras!

P.S. A lot of the tutorials linked stress natural light, but I rarely use natural light for my product photography because it hasn’t worked with my schedule, (I need to shoot after baby gets to bed!) So I use artificial light for my product shots about 95% of the time! Both the tabletop lights (Lowel Ego Lights) and Speedlite. This photo taken by moi was shot in a totally dark room, but the light is beautiful, even and emulates natural light, here’s the tutorial for you!

Author / Miss Tristan B