Choosing and Preparing Images in Photoshop

All those sayings that you hear people repeat endlessly, such as "Image is everything" or "A picture speaks a thousand words," prove quite true in the world of advertising. Advertisers know that they have only a few precious seconds to attract people's attention before they move on to something else.

In this campaign, you're going to create a series of three ads; each will display a photograph with the caption "Relax. Revive. Refresh." The photos will be large, will have people in them, and will convey a clear message of what Sunflowers has to offer.

You'll start by using Bridge to browse through the collection of stock images you were looking at before to find the three images you want. Some of these images might already exist in your Version Cue project from previous projects, but those images have been converted to CMYK already and you want to go back to the original source files, which are RGB.

By the Way

RGB images contain more image information than CMYK images do because RGB supports a wider gamut (or range) of colors. Additionally, you might want to apply some cool filters to these images, and many of the image filters in Photoshop work only on RGB images.

Using the same method as before, you'll rate images to find the ones you like. I've chosen the images of the couples walking along a beach (29000009210.tif), a couple in a yoga pose (29000008996.tif), and a man doing a handstand on the beach (29000006679.tif; see Figure 14.1). Select all three images in Bridge and choose File, Open With, Photoshop CS2 to open these three images in Photoshop.

Figure 14.1. The three images that you'll use for the ad campaign. The Bridge window is in Details view mode and is filtered to show only images with ratings of five stars.

Create a Cohesive Look

Because each of these images differs from the others, you're going to apply a specific look to them so that you can easily identify that they are all part of the same campaign. One simple way to do that is to apply a stylized filter to all of them, or give them all similar color hues. In this case, you're going use Photoshop's Filter Gallery to find an interesting look that will fit for this campaign.

Record and Use an Action

Because you'll be applying similar settings to all three images, let's create an action to help save some time.

Start with the image of the couple in the yoga pose. Choose Window, Actions to open the Actions palette. Click on the Create New Action button and name the action Sunflowers. When you click the Record button in the New Action dialog box, you'll notice that the Record button at the bottom of the Actions palette is on (see Figure 14.2). Don't be alarmed, but Photoshop is now watching every move you make.

Figure 14.2. Photoshop's indication that you're being watched.

Let's apply a filter. Choose Filter, Filter Gallery and click on the different filters to see how the image will look with different filters applied. Take your time and have fun by trying out all the filters. Even though some of the filters you'll see won't work well for this particular task, you might happen upon some filters that would work with other projects you might be working on. After playing around with several different effects, I settled on the Diffuse Glow filter (it's in the Distort group of filters) because it adds a bit of a dreamy feel to the photo, making the image almost appear angelic like it's from heaven, which will fit very well with the ad headline. I thought the default setting for the filter was a bit grainy, so I changed the Graininess setting to 2, the Glow Amount to 3, and the Clear Amount to 18 (see Figure 14.3). Click OK to apply the filter to the image.

Figure 14.3. Applying the Diffuse Glow filter in the Filter Gallery.

After you've applied the filter, you can see that it was added to the Action in the Actions palette (see Figure 14.4). Now choose Image, Mode, CMYK Color to convert the image to the CMYK color space. The mode change is now added to the action as well.

Figure 14.4. The Diffuse Glow filter appears listed in the Sunflowers action, with all the settings.

In the Actions palette, click on the Stop button (see Figure 14.5). Now you'll be able to "replay" the techniques you just applied to the other images. First, save the current image of the couple in the yoga pose into your Version Cue project. Remember to save it as a native Photoshop file and to add a comment that alludes to the fact that this file has a filter effect applied to it. Close the file.

Figure 14.5. Stopping the recording of the action.

With the remaining two images, your job is now quite easy. Select the Sunflowers action in the Actions palette and click once on the Play button. Sit back and watch the file as it has the Diffuse Glow filter applied and then gets converted to CMYK. When it's done, save it as a native PSD file to your Version Cue project. Do the same for the remaining image.

By the Way

The action you created remains in Photoshop, and you can either modify it later for another task or delete it.

When all your images are saved into your Version Cue project, you can quit Photoshop. Before you launch InDesign to lay out the ad pages, switch back to Bridge for a minute, click on the Version Cue button in the Favorites panel, and navigate to the Sunflowers project files. The three images you just worked on will be used in a single campaign. To make working with these three images easier, you'll set them up as alternates of each other.

Select the three photos in Bridge and choose Tools, Version Cue, Make Alternates (see Figure 14.6). If you have Bridge display the Versions and Alternates View, you can choose the Alternates View and see the alternates of each file (see Figure 14.7).