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HELP! Creating blue curves and gradients image
- Thread starter tash_lee
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Tom Mann
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The image you uploaded is about 2300 pixels on a side. Unless you are going to poster size and intend to inspect it with your eye an inch away, for an image with almost no small scale texture, those pixel dimensions should be big enough for almost all print uses.
To be honest, I'm not even sure if you want this image up-rez'ed, down-rez'ed or something else done to it. For example, with slowly varying colors like this, I would be much more worried about banding than I would about resolution.
Unless you can give us lots more details, eg, final printed size, desired dpi, printing method (eg, web fed offset vs inkjet vs ???), problems you encountered when trying to do it (whatever "it" is) yourself, it will be difficult to give you appropriate advice.
Finally, I presume you have spoken to a representative from the printing company about this. Exactly what have they said?
Hope to hear back from you.
Sincerely,
Tom M
To be honest, I'm not even sure if you want this image up-rez'ed, down-rez'ed or something else done to it. For example, with slowly varying colors like this, I would be much more worried about banding than I would about resolution.
Unless you can give us lots more details, eg, final printed size, desired dpi, printing method (eg, web fed offset vs inkjet vs ???), problems you encountered when trying to do it (whatever "it" is) yourself, it will be difficult to give you appropriate advice.
Finally, I presume you have spoken to a representative from the printing company about this. Exactly what have they said?
Hope to hear back from you.
Sincerely,
Tom M
Tom Mann
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BTW, to expand my comment about banding being a possible problem in images like this, I cropped out a roughly 600 px square and applied a local contrast technique to make the existing banding a lot more obvious. The result is shown below.
Don't be freaked out: This may be totally a non-issue (eg, if the final result will be from an offset press that uses coarse half-tone reproduction). OTOH, it could be a matter of concern, but the only way to tell is if we know more about your situation. Then, if this is a problem, we can possibly recommend techniques such as (a) adding noise, (b) a higher bit depth and/or (c) stochastic dithering in the RIP should be used.
Tom
Don't be freaked out: This may be totally a non-issue (eg, if the final result will be from an offset press that uses coarse half-tone reproduction). OTOH, it could be a matter of concern, but the only way to tell is if we know more about your situation. Then, if this is a problem, we can possibly recommend techniques such as (a) adding noise, (b) a higher bit depth and/or (c) stochastic dithering in the RIP should be used.
Tom
ibclare
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I think it's reproducing the kind of shapes that the OP wants help with, but I may misunderstand.
I would make these with the pen tool. They are simple enough shapes. Look up the Vista Aura Wallpaper and see if this is the effect you want even if the arrangement and styling of shapes is different. I think the tutorials will give you an excellent idea of the techniques: Pen tool, soft brushes for highlighting along selection edges, blending mode, that kind of thing.
Maybe you would come back and post your own personal interpretation after you've given it a shot. That is, presuming this is what you have in mind. Hope this helps.
I would make these with the pen tool. They are simple enough shapes. Look up the Vista Aura Wallpaper and see if this is the effect you want even if the arrangement and styling of shapes is different. I think the tutorials will give you an excellent idea of the techniques: Pen tool, soft brushes for highlighting along selection edges, blending mode, that kind of thing.
Maybe you would come back and post your own personal interpretation after you've given it a shot. That is, presuming this is what you have in mind. Hope this helps.
ibclare
Queen Bee
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Here's a tutorial posted on this forum.
And here is a PSG Challenge we did in 2011 you might find of interest.
And here is a PSG Challenge we did in 2011 you might find of interest.
ALB68
Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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(Definitely Clare). Tash-lee,use the pen tool to make a shape, have your fill set to gradient. Choose a gradient from the drop down and draw your shape, the gradient will fill as you draw. The shape will have a layer of it's own. The draw another, use a different gradient, then on that layer, experiment with the various blending options and opacity. That's the way I would approach it initially. If your going to print with this, I create those images at 300ppi and I normally use Adobe 1998 as the profile. (sRGB will work too). If going to the web you will need to convert to sRGB.
Tom Mann
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Clare: "... I think it's reproducing the kind of shapes that the OP wants help with, but I may misunderstand ..."
Or, it could just as easily be that I'm the one that's wrong.
I was reading into the OP's statement, "... am trying to recreate the image below to use in print (image is low res) ... " that the only thing wrong with the image he posted was that it was either too low resolution, or it needed to be at a lower resolution, but was otherwise OK. I guess we'll find out.
T
Or, it could just as easily be that I'm the one that's wrong.
I was reading into the OP's statement, "... am trying to recreate the image below to use in print (image is low res) ... " that the only thing wrong with the image he posted was that it was either too low resolution, or it needed to be at a lower resolution, but was otherwise OK. I guess we'll find out.
T
ALB68
Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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Tell me that ain't so....
Clare: "... I think it's reproducing the kind of shapes that the OP wants help with, but I may misunderstand ..."
Or, it could just as easily be that I'm the one that's wrong.
I was reading into the OP's statement, "... am trying to recreate the image below to use in print (image is low res) ... " that the only thing wrong with the image he posted was that it was either too low resolution, or it needed to be at a lower resolution, but was otherwise OK. I guess we'll find out.
T
Thanks everyone for all your advice. The image is for a shop window so it will be approx 4m wide when printed. I don't know how it's being printed - I just supply the file and am expected to know what I'm doing! To be honest, I normally design much simpler things so I am punching above my weight so to speak! I am worried about banding. I was struggling with the gradients, shapes and opacity but I'm going to spend tomorrow trying it out again using all your tips. The Vista tutorial was very interesting. I will definitely let you know how it goes!
ALB68
Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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tash_lee, that being said about it being 4 meters wide, if your going to make it in Photoshop that is going to be a really big file. I trust you have a good computer with lots of RAM. To tell you the truth, it would actually be best to create this in a vector based program instead of a pixel based program. That would be Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw etc. It can be done in PS but I'm just sayin..if it were me I know what I would do.
Reason being you can work on the original in a much smaller size as a vector and then you can resize it without any loss in quality. You might be able to work on it in PS in say a file that is initially 1-1.5 meters and then upsample it and get away with it. It will not be viewed at a really close distance so it will be more forgiving as to any pixelation etc.
Reason being you can work on the original in a much smaller size as a vector and then you can resize it without any loss in quality. You might be able to work on it in PS in say a file that is initially 1-1.5 meters and then upsample it and get away with it. It will not be viewed at a really close distance so it will be more forgiving as to any pixelation etc.
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Tom Mann
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OK. Your comment that it is going to be 4 meters wide answers my question: You can't up-rez the version you posted and expect good results, so you need to start from scratch.
I strongly urge you to do it in Adobe Illustrator or some other vector based illustration program, otherwise, in Photoshop, when the vector parts are rasterized at an appropriate dpi (say, around 125), you will wind up with an extremely large file, around 20k pixels in the long dimension, and it is simply a waste of time and resources to do this.
Cheers,
Tom M
PS - Larry, I was typing when you posted. Great minds think alike. LOL!
I strongly urge you to do it in Adobe Illustrator or some other vector based illustration program, otherwise, in Photoshop, when the vector parts are rasterized at an appropriate dpi (say, around 125), you will wind up with an extremely large file, around 20k pixels in the long dimension, and it is simply a waste of time and resources to do this.
Cheers,
Tom M
PS - Larry, I was typing when you posted. Great minds think alike. LOL!
Thanks Tom and Larry. Yeah I've had psd files in the past which would take half an hour to open on a good iMac. However, if I'm a Photoshop Newbie then I literally haven't been born yet when it comes to Illustrator. I don't have Corel Draw. Anyone know of a useful tutorial!? Or would the Vista one be somewhat transferable? Just somewhere I can get started!
ALB68
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Here's a good place to start.
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/topics-cs6.html?promoid=KFOJN
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/topics-cs6.html?promoid=KFOJN
Tom Mann
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Assuming that you have copyright permission to use this image, and you don't want to re-do the whole thing from scratch in AI or some other vector based drawing program, you can do pretty well simply up-rez'ing this image by 4x (linear dimensions or 16x in area) and cleaning things up afterwards. That will yield a new file that's about 16,000 pixels on a side, which should be plenty to print 4 meters wide, even if people get close to it.
Here's an example:
I up-rez'ed it by 4x using PhotoZoom Pro - the medium graphics preset. To save on file size, I saved this as a reasonable quality JPG that was only 9 MB in size.
I then ran that through Topaz Clean to clean up the edges, banding, etc.
Below is a crop of a small area (just to the left and above the center) from the resulting file. I annotated it to show the actual size between two features, assuming the physical width is 4 meters. IMHO, as you can see, the results are more than acceptable for your application (mostly because this is such a simple image). It took me about a half hour in processing each in Photo Zoom and in Topaz Clean on my older 2 core system.
If you need more details, I can supply them.
HTH,
Tom
PS - Do NOT use the in-line preview to evaluate this image! Click on it to view it without forum compression artifacts!
Here's an example:
I up-rez'ed it by 4x using PhotoZoom Pro - the medium graphics preset. To save on file size, I saved this as a reasonable quality JPG that was only 9 MB in size.
I then ran that through Topaz Clean to clean up the edges, banding, etc.
Below is a crop of a small area (just to the left and above the center) from the resulting file. I annotated it to show the actual size between two features, assuming the physical width is 4 meters. IMHO, as you can see, the results are more than acceptable for your application (mostly because this is such a simple image). It took me about a half hour in processing each in Photo Zoom and in Topaz Clean on my older 2 core system.
If you need more details, I can supply them.
HTH,
Tom
PS - Do NOT use the in-line preview to evaluate this image! Click on it to view it without forum compression artifacts!
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ALB68
Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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Tom.
I tried this in Perfect ReSize and I just picked a 40" x 40" square at 300ppi and the thing is shocking at how good it looks. As you said, for a 4 m length it would be pretty easy to go from this point up to the prescribed length. Cool stuff this software! Downside is that the 40 x 40 is 400 MB but it only took about 3 or 4 minutes to process it. Could drop the ppi and probably still get good enough to print for that viewing distance huh?
I tried this in Perfect ReSize and I just picked a 40" x 40" square at 300ppi and the thing is shocking at how good it looks. As you said, for a 4 m length it would be pretty easy to go from this point up to the prescribed length. Cool stuff this software! Downside is that the 40 x 40 is 400 MB but it only took about 3 or 4 minutes to process it. Could drop the ppi and probably still get good enough to print for that viewing distance huh?