Damien Symonds

No, that's great!!!  Perfect.

Hi Jodie, simply add a "Solid Color" adjustment layer, white in colour, and mask it on to the background.  It should only be the work of minutes.

Oh gosh, this is such a tricky question.

The face-value answer is: They'd need to be the same number of megapixels as your own camera (I assume you're combining them with some of your own photos?) so that their quality is a good match, if you know what I mean.

However, it isn't always so.  If you're using a stock image for a background, well, backgrounds tend to be blurrier than a subject, so you might get away with a smaller file.  In fact, sometimes I've successfully used very small phone photos as backgrounds (artistically blurred, of course) for composites.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, get them as close in size to your own photos as possible.  If you can't get them that big, pay very close attention to how you use them, to make sure your composite doesn't end up with glaring disparities of focus.

Hi Donna, is this a new problem?  I mean, has it been working ok in the past?

Oh yeah, jpegs must not enter into this.  I can't stress this enough.  That vector text is crucial.

The reason they say that stuff about text is to prevent problems with black text.  But as far as I can tell from a quick skim, you don't have any black text anyway, so I think you'll be fine.  Stick with your sRGB work.

Please be sure to read this if you haven't already - it's vitally important.

My first thought with a question like this is, do you have an entirely clear photo of the backdrop you can borrow from?  Did you take any snaps of your setup without any subjects in front of it?

33 minutes ago, Jennifer said:

I hate to spend money needlessly, but should I just give up at this point and buy the Spyder5Pro? Or buy a colormunki? Not sure what the lifespan of calibrators is, and mine is about two years old.

Hi Jennifer,

There's nothing wrong with the actual calibration, though, right?  It's just this reminder thing?

1 hour ago, TaraL said:

How do I share a PDF? It's not on the list of accepted file types, below?

Just save it as a jpeg for upload here.

They'll change your life, I promise.

16 minutes ago, Erin Webber said:

I found them, it put them in a jpeg subfolder  thanks again

Yep, that's what makes Image Processor completely foolproof.  It is literally impossible for it to ever accidentally save over original files.

4 minutes ago, Erin Webber said:

I believe that I've figured out the most of it through image processor and resize the width to 900 but what do i use for the height?

Image Processor makes a "box" for your images to fit in. If you set it to 900x900, for example, it would make all the landscape images 900 wide, and all the portrait ones 900 high.

There sure is.  Do you need to watermark them too?

Just to clarify, the 72dpi part is completely meaningless, you don't have to worry about that.  Only the dimensions matter.

I think this would be a task for Frequency Separation.  I don't have any resources on it, but Google will find you some, and I'm going to move the post to the General Discussion area so that other people can suggest tutorials too.

Yay!!!

Hi Melissa, may I see a 100% crop of a particularly severe area?

The trick is to simply make the height something crazy - like 4000 pixels, or whatever - in the Fit Image dialog.

Let me know if that doesn't work, but I'm pretty sure that's it.

7 minutes ago, Pat said:

I'm really happy with the final version of this image, Damien.  I applied techniques from your layers and levels class and really made this image pop.  Thank you!  Your beer is on the way.  Enjoy it (although it might be a bit early in the day for you!)

Well, it's just after lunch, and it's really stinking hot here today, so it is very tempting!

In the footer of the main site.  But it's not necessarily, truly.  I'm so grateful to you, and other people who have been quick to embrace the our new forum home.

That should pass most scrutiny, don't you think?

PSD download link

If you're creating the PDF file in Photoshop, this doesn't apply to you.

Not to say it shouldn't - they have very good reasons for giving that advice.  But you simply aren't able to do that in PS.

May I see your design?

Had a play:

Let me know if you'd like to see the PSD file.

Do no - repeat, DO NOT - try to fix it.  The banding will be catastrophic.

Only replace it.

The solution I'm about to provide isn't perfect, I'm afraid.  Some stripiness will remain.  But it will be a heck of a lot better, and I hope you'll be satisfied with the improvement.

First, duplicate the Background layer, and immediately run Filter>Noise>Despeckle.  Then add a mask to that layer, but don't worry about masking anything yet.

Then add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer, and immediately clip it (Ctrl Alt G) to the despeckled layer.  Click the "Monochrome" button, then enter 0/80/20 for the three values (screenshot below).  This will make the entire photo black-and-white, and importantly, remove all the worst striping from that area.

Then return to the Despeckled layer, invert the mask to black, then zoom in and start carefully painting over the moire areas.  Where you paint, you should see the worst of the little texture disappear, as well as the colour of course.

Once you've done all that, evaluate how much you hate the stripes that remain.  If you hate them badly enough,  go to the Channel Mixer layer then add a new blank layer above it, and turn it into a dodge and burn layer (clip it to the others if you wish).  The with a really low opacity brush, start dodging the worst of the remaining stripes, until your patience gives out and you run for the liquor cabinet.

Can you show me how it turns out?  Let me know if you have any problems following the instructions.