Damien Symonds

Have you read this? What leaps out from your photo and smacks me in the face is the terrible mixed lighting. You MUST get that under control if you desire beauty in your shots.

You have to have them running as independent screens. In the Display control panel, have them set to "Extend" not "Duplicate".

Oh! Shit!!! No wonder!!!!!!!!! When you do that, both screens assume the calibration profile of the first screen (the laptop one).

Yes, great job.

Channel Mixer will help it a tiny bit, but there will still be a fair bit of Handyman required afterwards. Channel Mixer: Red +100/0/0 Green +120/0/0 Blue +160/0/0

Download the PSD

I think this would suffice. How about you?

Ok, and you're dragging the PS window from screen to screen?

What do you think it is that characterises the photos you like?

You painted that, then scanned it, I assume? Or photographed it at least? Then added the text afterwards?

Oh crap. No, vectors won't work here. I love what you've done, but you've inadvertently chosen the hardest design to work with.

Good job.

Great! So first, I'd duplicate the Background layer and use the Clone tool at 20% opacity to very gently clone the ends off the band, and a bit out of the middle too. Patience is the key here, and using colour from both above and below the band, to get a good blend with the result: Then it should be easy to use the Patch Tool to remove the remaining two sections:

Before we start, have you made it clear to them that this will incur an extra fee?

I assume that light-medium grey would be best, but I'm going to move this question into Brian's area, since he knows a lot more about studios and lighting than me.

This is such an annoying thing, and it happens to a lot of people. You might need to completely uninstall and reinstall the Spyder software.

Well, that's good news, at least. For my reassurance, can you tell me how you're comparing the screen to the prints? I mean, what program are you viewing the files in on both screens?

Did those help?

A couple of relevant articles ... http://www.damiensymonds.net/art_facebook.html http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/10/how-ive-been-sharpening-for-web-lately.html

Hi Jacquelyn, before we get into the calibration issues, have you checked your screen against some older prints that you know were ok? What I mean is, have you established if this was a rogue batch of prints?

Oh, great question! Technically speaking, as long as you design it properly (that is, entirely made of vectors) the size shouldn't matter. However, to be safe, it would be a good idea to make it reasonably big - maybe 4000px wide. The first step is to literally sketch some ideas with pencil on paper. Have you done so? If so, may I see? Here's some related reading: http://www.damiensymonds.net/2012/01/creating-saving-and-using-watermark-ps.html This is also relevant: http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/05/making-pdfs-from-photoshop.html

The laptop that Brian linked you to has an IPS screen (I own the same laptop, it's awesome) so angles aren't an issue. However, yes, running an external monitor off a laptop is great.

I've moved this into the Lightroom section. Christina will be along in a bit to help you out.

I think it looks great! So much colour!

Yeah, that's more like it! Well done. I think you have a little further to go, though. Always remember to periodically zoom out and look at it smaller, it will give you renewed perspective.