Monthly Archives: April 2011

Although pictures are worth a thousand words, it doesn’t hurt to use a few once in awhile! This set of multipurpose cards uses cutting edge typography in a variety of styles to let your loved ones keep track of your life’s milestones. To satisfy all your design needs, this set comes with six different and fully customizable designs that announce everything from your new bundle of joy to your high school graduation, to your engagement!

PERFECT FOR:
• Birth announcements
• Event invitations
• Marketing materials
• Thank you notes
• 5×7 note cards
• Holiday Cards
• Save the Date

PRODUCT DETAILS:
• 6 distinctive two sided designs
• Fully layered PSD files for unlimited customization, including color changes
• Designed using WHCC’s flat 5×7 card templates for easy printing
• Cards can be customized to be flat or folded
• Compatible with CS2 and newer, Photoshop Elements 6 and newer, Windows and Mac

*Special thanks to Simply Bloom Photography and Wildflowers Photography for the lovely images.

Click here to check it out in the shop!

Struggling for the right words when writing to everyone, from future brides to disgruntled clients, vivacious vendors and hopeful assistants? Design Aglow has partnered with professional photographer and wordsmith extraordinaire Heather Rivlin to create this extensive collection of 20 professionally crafted letters to deliver the perfect prose for any situation while establishing your studio’s solid business policies. Whether you draw from this complete catalog of correspondence for emails, phone scripts or mailed content, you’re sure to appreciate these time savers while your clients and contacts appreciate your customer service and attention.

1. Email response to price shoppers.This welcome email aids you with responding to price shoppers/hagglers and provides a strong education in the value of wedding/portrait photography.

2. Style and Session. This email explains the photographer’s shooting style, the session, the ordering process and payment.

3. Pre-session email. This email sets the rules for the shoot and reminds customers via key bullet points what’s included in the session fee.

4. Second Photo Shoot Rescheduling. This email sets forth studio policy regarding rescheduling for a second time.

5. Second Order Appointment Rescheduling. This email sets forth studio policy when rescheduling for a second time.

6. Photographer as client. This email shares how to approach a local photographer who wants a shoot with you.

7. Addressing post session digital files and sticker shock. This email shares how to handle a miscommunication regarding digital file inclusion, or when a client experiences cost concerns after the session.

8. Economic concerns post session. This email covers how to address reticence in ordering after a session when a client asks to postpone ordering.

9. Unauthorized internet use of an image. This email addresses how to approach a client who has scanned/copied your images to or from the internet without permission.

10. Mentor request. This email shares how to address a request from a local photographer wishes to be mentored by you or wants to assist you

11. Client order session preparation. This email prepares clients for the upcoming order session.

12. Client session clothing choices. This email outlines practical suggestions regarding clothing choices for the upcoming photography session.

13. Difficult client returns. This email shares how to respectfully handle a difficult former client who wishes to hire you again.

14. Vendor barter request. This email addresses a vendor who has requested a free shoot in return for future referrals/word-of-mouth in lieu of payment.

15. Money past due. This registered letter shares correspondence for money owed on a session or order when the client is unresponsive.

16. Creating potential bride interest. This email illustrates how to respond to potential brides in order to compel them to continue the conversation.

17. Pleasing anxious clients. This email outlines how to reassure excited clients whose continued queries regarding the status of their order are drawing your attention away from processing orders and handling other business in your studio.

18. Session Follow-up Email. This email shares gratitude to a client for a wonderful session and shares an incentive program for referrals.

19. Client Questionnaire. This email shares a sample questionnaire to send to clients to get to know them and their needs before the session begins.

20.  Client Reshoot Request. This email shows what to say when a client requests a reshoot for reasons that are not due to studio negligence (clothing choice, hair not brushed, child not cooperating, etc.).

Click here to check it out in the shop!

There’s nothing like a delicious spread for weary eyes. Design Aglow brings this fresh smorgasbord to the party, with an amazing Backyard Picnic – Marketing Set chock full of flavor. Including everything from an accordion brochure to a 2-sided business card, a gift certificate, letterhead and envelope templates, packaging stickers and a price list for offerings, this fully customizable set sets the stage for successful studio marketing.

Thanks to Design Aglow’s easy, customizable templates and gorgeous, intuitive designs, you’re assured more fun in the sun and less time strapped to your office computer.

PRODUCT DETAILS:
This colorful set includes:
• Two-sided 4×5.5, 8 panel accordion brochure to market studios
• Two-sided business card
• Two-sided 5×7 gift certificate
• Letterhead and envelope
• Packaging sticker for client DVDs or anything else
• Price list for offerings
• This set is fully customizable, consisting of fully layered Photoshop PSD files to easily change the look
• Compatible with Photoshop CS and newer, Photoshop Elements 6 and newer, Windows and Mac.

Even better, you can couple this product with our comprehensive Backyard Picnic – 8 Page Brochure for a complete spread.

Fun and fresh, this shimmery marketing sampling of your studio services comes completely designed in this 8-page brochure from Design Aglow. Share everything from your stunning images to client letters, to pricing, packages and an FAQ, for a marketing tool that shares your business with clients and vendors.

This beautiful template includes:
• 8 professionally designed pages complete with patterned backgrounds, design elements, and space to insert own images, packages, faq, and letters from clients
• A full tutorial

PRODUCT DETAILS:
• Fully customizable, consisting of fully layered Photoshop .PSD files to customize all colors, text, fonts, and images
• Brochure is 8.5 x 5.5 inches
• Compatible with Photoshop CS and newer, Photoshop Elements 6 and newer, Windows and Mac

*Special thanks to Jagger Photography for the lovely images.

For the Marketing Set, click here, and for the 8 Page Brochure, click here!

This guide will serve as a tutorial to answer any questions you may have about using and printing your marketing set.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of these marketing sets is to give all of your customer materials a professional, clean, and consistent look.  We professional photographers have to stay on top of our game and any materials given to our clients must be stellar.  We believe these marketing sets are just the ticket.  Not only are they gorgeous, but they are easy as pie to implement right away.  Similar custom designs done by a professional graphic artist would cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars (euros, yen, pesos, loonies, or pounds – depending on where you are, of course).  With these sets, not only are you eliminating the cost, you are eliminating all of the time involved in contacting a designer, laying out an idea, revamping that idea, and of course, figuring out what to do with the designs once you have them.  Trust us – it’s not pretty.  With these templates, 90% of the work is already done for you.  All you will have to do is drop in your best stuff, customize your colors, text, and graphics, and send the set off to be printed.  The estimated time to complete a marketing and client materials package is only a few hours.

Now that the purpose is out of the way, let’s take a look at what came in your download.

In your download folder you will see all of the templates that will make up your marketing and client materials set.  These include:

An quad-fold marketing brochure

Business card

Envelope

Letterhead

Gift certificate

Sticker

Price list

Each item has a .jpg preview so that you may easily identify what you are looking for.

These templates are designed for Adobe Photoshop CS or newer.  This is not to say that they don’t work with previous versions – they very well may.  The files are un-flattened, fully editable Photoshop PSDs that offer literally limitless opportunity for customization and creativity.

In order to take full advantage of these templates, you should be relatively proficient in Photoshop.  Not an expert, mind you.  But you should have a general knowledge of layers, shapes, text and image manipulation such as using the transform tool, layer masks, etc.

If you are less familiar with Photoshop, don’t fear.  We will try to be as thorough as possible with the tutorial – and hey, you might just learn something new!

GETTING STARTED

When you downloaded your marketing set from the Design Aglow website you should have saved it in an easy-to-find location somewhere on your hard drive.  Take a moment to locate the folder.  Ready?  Great!  Let’s move on.

First thing’s first – you must unzip the folder before using any of the templates.  This is very important as Photoshop will not be able to work with the files in zipped format.  Use your favorite extraction program for this, such as WinZip (www.winzip.com) or StuffIt (www.stuffit.com).

After you have successfully unzipped your folder you should strongly consider backing up everything just in case you ever accidentally over-write one of the original templates.  This is always a good idea as re-downloading these huge files can be quite a bummer.  Use a blank DVD or portable thumb drive to save a copy, and put it in a safe place.

Printing your materials is always a tricky topic because, quite simply, there are an astronomical number of great printers out there.  And so many printers means a dizzying variety of sizes, crops, bleeds, formats, rules, and upload instructions.  You are welcome to look into any printing service and use whomever you wish.  If you choose to do this, be absolutely sure that you contact them for their own templates before printing your marketing materials.  You will need to resize everything to their specs BEFORE sending them to print.  Remember, everyone is different, so check first.

For this set we’ve chosen to use White House Custom Color’s (www.whcc.com) templates.  This is because their printing is beautiful, turnaround time is miniscule, and you can order almost everything for your set in one place.  (The letterhead and envelopes will have to be printed elsewhere.  But we’ve taken care of that too.)  But most of all, we like the fact that with WHCC you can do very small print runs (usually as little as 25).  That way, you do not have to commit to ordering thousands of something and getting stuck with them like some of the larger commercial printers require.

Ordering your materials in small batches will allow you to mix up your marketing for seasonal events and target certain customers with different looks without breaking the bank.  And of course, a photographer’s prerogative is to change his/her mind.  So you can tire of last year’s look and make a brand new look in the blink of an eye.

For the letterhead and envelopes, sorry to say, but you are on your own.  There are enough printing companies out there to create marketing materials for a small village.  We have used templates from 48 Hour Print (www.48hourprint.com) because we have worked with them in the past and haven’t been disappointed yet.  The turnaround time is – as the name very succinctly implies – 48 hours and the quality is good.  They also have some of the best prices out there.  We are in no way endorsing 48 Hour Print, so please contact them before you order just to check ‘em out.  We don’t want an army of angry photographers with pitchforks showing up at our door because of botched printing jobs.

As we said before, your templates can be customized in any way imaginable.  You can change nearly everything about them including the fonts, colors, image placement, borders, and so on.  Here’s a little info on how to customize a few key things:

Fonts:  We cannot include fonts in our downloads, as fonts are protected under copyright.  In order to keep the look of your materials the same as the original template, you will have to have the fonts we used installed on your computer.  If you do not have the fonts we have used, a quick Google search should turn up a resource in no time.

The font used for this set is:
Memphis

To change the wording on your templates do the following:
1.  Select the Text Tool from your tools palette (keyboard shortcut “T”)
2.  Click on the line of text that you would like to change.
3.  Highlight the text by dragging the tool across it.
4.  Type to your heart’s content.

Changing the colors of your templates could not be easier.  Here are a few tips on how to change the text, background, and stroke colors:

Text – Perform the same steps as if you were to change the text – text tool, click and highlight.

1.  Double click on the top color box in your tools menu.
2.  Choose the color for your text.
3.  Click “OK”

Background – You will see that all of the graphics are in the form of shapes.  This makes it very easy to change the color on the fly.  Here’s how:
1.  Choose the color block that you would like to change in the Layers palette.  If you cannot see the layers palette, click the “Window” dropdown menu at the top of your screen and choose “Layers”.
2.  Now, double-click the small box of color next to the name of the layer.
3.  Choose the new color when the dialog box appears.
4.  Click “OK”

The background is textured, and therefore has a different method for editing the color to keep the textured look. To change the color of the background, follow these steps:

1.  Open Layers Palette and Double Click the “BACKGROUND” folder.
2.  Click the arrow next to the “fx” icon that is located to the right of the Layer title “PAPER BACKGROUND”, this will show you the effects that apply to the layer.
3.  Double click the “Color Overlay” option under “Effects”.

4.  Double click the color box next to the Blend Mode option to choose a different color.
5.  Use the color selector to find the color you want.
6.  Click OK, change the opacity as desired, and click OK again.

This is an area where any new Photoshopper could get a little confused and frustrated.  We’ll try to make it as easy on you as possible.

These templates are set up in a very simple way.  All of the text is grouped together, as is all of the graphics, and what we call “image layers”.  An image layer is basically a gray box that represents where your image will fit in.  Each image layer is numbered to make it easy to locate in the Layers palette.

Picture a framed photograph.  The gray box “IMAGE LAYER” is the matte and your image is the photograph beneath.  When you insert your image, the gray box will represent where the image will be located and what the bounds of that image are.  You will not be able to see any area outside of the matte, as in a real framed photograph.

There is no need to pre-crop your images before inserting them into the image layers.  We will tackle how to place, crop, and resize in the following tutorial.

HOW TO ADD YOUR IMAGES:

1.  Open the template that you would like to work with.
2.  Choose the location you would like your image to appear in the Layers palette.  Example: IMAGE LAYER 1.
3.  If you cannot see the image layers, try expanding the Group “Image Layers” by clicking the tiny triangle next to the group name.
4.  Open the image that you would like to insert into the template.
5.  Now, choose the “Move” tool from your tools palette. (Keyboard shortcut “V”)
6.  Drag your photo onto the marketing template.
7.  Go to the Layers palette and right-click on your image.
8.  Choose “Make clipping mask”.  This will create that bounding box we talked about above.

Notice how your image is now positioned within the frame and how you can still move it around without disrupting anything around it.  Pretty cool, huh?

You will probably also notice that your image is waaaaay too big.  That’s fine – we’ll now resize the image so that it fits perfectly into the opening.

To resize your image:

1.  Choose Edit –>  Transform –>  Scale from the top dropdown menu. (or you can just hit “Control+T” on your keyboard)
2.  Your image will now have handles.  If you can’t see the handles you will need to zoom out quite a bit.  Hit enter to cancel the transform, zoom out, and then hit Control + T again.
3.  When you mouse over a corner handle of your image you will see a double sided arrow.  Click the handle of your image, and drag in toward the center to scale down.  You may also drag out diagonally to enlarge your image, if need be. Hold down the Shift key while you are dragging to maintain your image’s perspective.
4.  When you are satisfied with the size, hit the Enter key.

You are all set!  A little practice makes perfect – the more you do these steps the faster and easier they will become.

Remember, wherever that gray box lies in the template is where your image will be positioned.  If you need to move your image, you will want to move the gray “IMAGE LAYER” box first.

Welcome and thank you for giving our 8 page studio brochure a try!  Now, instead of dozens of hours of painstaking design and computer work, you can simply slip in your images and text and have a wonderful brochure that is ready to go – which means you can get back to shooting, or better yet, lounging at the beach.

This guide will serve as a tutorial to answer any questions you may have about using and printing your brochure.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this brochure template is to give your images a clean, beautiful, professional look.  We professional photographers have to stay on top of our game and any materials given to our potential clients must be stellar.  We believe this brochure template is just the ticket.  Not only is it gorgeous, but it is easy as pie to implement right away.  Similar custom designs done by a professional graphic artist would cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars (euros, yen, pesos, loonies, or pounds – depending on where you are, of course).  With this template, not only are you eliminating the cost, you are eliminating all of the time involved in contacting a designer, laying out an idea, revamping that idea, and of course, figuring out what to do with the designs once you have them.  Trust us – it’s not pretty.  That being said, 90% of the work is already done for you.  All you will have to do is drop in your best stuff, customize your colors, text, and graphics, and send it off to be printed.  The estimated time to complete a complete brochure is under an hour.

Now that the purpose is out of the way, let’s take a look at what came in your download.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

In your download folder you will see all of the files you will need for your brochure template. These include:

1. JPEG previews (a folder contained a small preview of each page)

3. Fully Layered PSD files

4. Tutorial

5. Copyright statement

SOFTWARE YOU WILL NEED

These templates are designed for Adobe Photoshop CS or newer.  This is not to say that they don’t work with previous versions – they very well may.  The files are un-flattened, fully editable PSD files that offer literally limitless opportunity for customization and creativity.

In order to take full advantage of these templates, you should be relatively proficient in Photoshop.  Not an expert, mind you.  But you should have a general knowledge of layers, shapes, text and image manipulation such as using the transform tool, layer masks, etc.

If you are less familiar with Photoshop, don’t fear.  We will try to be as thorough as possible with the tutorial – and hey, you might just learn something new!

GETTING STARTED

When you downloaded your marketing set from the Design Aglow website you should have saved it in an easy-to-find location somewhere on your hard drive.  Take a moment to locate the folder.  Ready?  Great!  Let’s move on.

First thing’s first – you must unzip the folder before using any of the templates.  This is very important as Photoshop will not be able to work with the files in zipped format.  Use your favorite extraction program for this, such as WinZip (www.winzip.com) or StuffIt (www.stuffit.com).

After you have successfully unzipped your folder you should strongly consider backing up everything just in case you ever accidentally over-write one of the original templates.  This is always a good idea as re-downloading these huge files can be quite a bummer.  Use a blank DVD or portable thumb drive to save a copy, and put it in a safe place.

PRINTING YOUR BROCHURE

Printing your materials is always a tricky topic because, quite simply, there are an astronomical number of great printers out there.  And so many printers means a dizzying variety of sizes, crops, bleeds, formats, rules, and upload instructions.  You are welcome to look into any printing service and use whomever you wish.  If you choose to do this, be absolutely sure that you contact them for their own templates before printing your marketing materials.  You will need to resize everything to their specs BEFORE sending them to print.  Remember, everyone is different, so check first.

For this set we’ve chosen to use Copy Craft’s templates (http://designaglow.copycraft.com) because their printing is lovely, their turnaround time is good, and an 8 page brochure is standard fare on their menu of offerings. We are in no way endorsing Copy Craft, so please contact them before you order just to check ‘em out.  We don’t want an army of angry photographers with pitchforks showing up at our door because of botched printing jobs.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR SET

As we said before, your templates can be customized in any way imaginable.  You can change nearly everything about them including the fonts, colors, image placement, borders, and so on.  Here’s a little info on how to customize a few key things:

Fonts:  We cannot include fonts in our downloads, as fonts are protected under copyright.  In order to keep the look of your materials the same as the original template, you will have to have the fonts we used installed on your computer.  If you do not have the fonts we have used, a quick Google search should turn up a resource in no time.

The font used for this set is:
Memphis

To change the wording on your templates do the following:
1.  Select the Text Tool from your tools palette (keyboard shortcut “T”)
2.  Click on the line of text that you would like to change.
3.  Highlight the text by dragging the tool across it.
4.  Type to your heart’s content.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR BROCHURE – COLORS

Since our recommended vendor is Copy Craft, we’ve included the templates in a CMYK color space.  If you choose to use a lab that uses RGB, make sure you change the color space before adding your images.  (In Photoshop, click IMAGE->MODE->RGB COLOR, and don’t let it merge the layers.)

Changing the colors of your templates could not be easier.  Here are a few tips on how to change the text, background, and stroke colors:

Text – Perform the same steps as if you were to change the text – text tool, click and highlight.

1.  Double click on the top color box in your tools menu.
2.  Choose the color for your text.
3.  Click “OK”

The graphics are in the form of shapes.  This makes it very easy to change the color on the fly.  Here’s how:

1.  Choose the graphic that you would like to change in the Layers palette.  If you cannot see the layers palette, click the “Window” dropdown menu at the top of your screen and choose “Layers”.
2.  Now, double-click the small box of color next to the name of the layer.
3.  Choose the new color when the dialog box appears.
4.  Click “OK”

The background is textured, and therefore has a different method for editing the color to keep the textured look. To change the color of the background, follow these steps:

1.  Open Layers Palette and Double Click the “BACKGROUND” folder.
2.  Click the arrow next to the “fx” icon that is located to the right of the Layer title “PAPER BACKGROUND”, this will show you the effects that apply to the layer.
3.  Double click the “Color Overlay” option under “Effects”.

4.  Double click the color box next to the Blend Mode option to choose a different color.
5.  Use the color selector to find the color you want.
6.  Click OK, change the opacity as desired, and click OK again.

HOW TO INSERT YOUR IMAGES INTO THE TEMPLATE

This is an area where any new Photoshopper could get a little confused and frustrated.  We’ll try to make it as easy on you as possible.

These templates are set up in a very simple way.  All of the text is grouped together, as is all of the graphics, and what we call “image layers”.  An image layer is basically a gray box that represents where your image will fit in.  Each image layer is numbered to make it easy to locate in the Layers palette.

Picture a framed photograph.  The gray box “IMAGE LAYER” is the matte and your image is the photograph beneath.  When you insert your image, the black box will represent where the image will be located and what the bounds of that image are.  You will not be able to see any area outside of the matte, as in a real framed photograph.

There is no need to pre-crop your images before inserting them into the image layers.  We will tackle how to place, crop, and resize in the following tutorial.

LET’S GO OVER HOW TO ADD YOUR IMAGES:

1.  Open the template that you would like to work with.
2.  Choose the location you would like your image to appear in the Layers palette.  Example: IMAGE LAYER 1.
3. If you cannot see the image layers, try expanding the Group “Image Layers” by clicking the tiny triangle next to the group name.
4.  Open the image that you would like to insert into the template.
5.  Now, choose the “Move” tool from your tools palette. (Keyboard shortcut “V”)
6.  Drag your photo onto the marketing template.
7.  Go to the Layers palette and right-click on your image.
8.  Choose “Make clipping mask”.  This will create that bounding box we talked about above.

Notice how your image is now positioned within the frame and how you can still move it around without disrupting anything around it.  Pretty cool, huh?

On some of the image layers, you will see a white border.  To change the color of this border, simply double click the desired IMAGE LAYER to view the “Blending Options”, then select “stroke” at the bottom left, which will have a check in the box next to it. Double click the color box, and choose a new color.

You will probably also notice that your image is waaaaay too big.  That’s fine – we’ll now resize the image so that it fits perfectly into the opening.

To resize your image:

1.  Choose Edit –>  Transform –>  Scale from the top dropdown menu. (or you can just hit “Control+T” on your keyboard)
2.  Your image will now have handles.  If you can’t see the handles you will need to zoom out quite a bit.  Hit enter to cancel the transform, zoom out, and then hit Control + T again.
3.  When you mouse over a corner handle of your image you will see a double sided arrow.  Click the handle of your image, and drag in toward the center to scale down.  You may also drag out diagonally to enlarge your image, if need be. Hold down the Shift key while you are dragging to maintain your image’s perspective.
4.  When you are satisfied with the size, hit the Enter key.

You are all set!  A little practice makes perfect – the more you do these steps the faster and easier they will become.

TIPS AND NOTES

Remember, wherever that gray box lies in the template is where your image will be positioned.  If you need to move your image, you will want to move the gray “Image Layer” box first.

Seniors are ready for what comes next, and the party’s just beginning with these six, trendy and fun senior graduation card templates from Design Aglow. With amazing designs to please every senior, these luscious, two-sided cards can be tailored for as many uses as you can fashion. Easily customize to suit the shoot, the senior, the style or the school and create a product terrific teens will put at the top of their ‘must have’ list. Order today and send seniors off in style!

PRODUCT DETAILS:
• Six lovely, ready-to-print designs
• Set includes full designs on the front and back of each card
• Fully customizable, layered Photoshop PSD files
• Easily change colors and text. Use the illustrations or customize
• Separate image layers make inserting photos a breeze
• Designed using WHCC’s flat 5×7 card templates for easy printing. You may, however, use your own lab or any print house.
• Compatible with Photoshop CS and newer, Photoshop Elements 6 and newer, Windows and Mac

*Special thanks to Sandi Bradshaw Photography for the lovely images.

Click here to check them out in the shop!