Design Aglow®

Essential Portrait Studio Policies For Success

Elevate your business practices, create a superior impression for your customers and solidify a foundation for the utmost success in your craft with Design Aglow’s Essential Portrait Studio Policies for Success. Our comprehensive guide illustrates the implementation of best-practice policies for client relations, and is one of the most valuable resources of any Portrait Photographer.

Learn procedures for challenges like strategizing session fees, methods for heading off cancellations and tardiness, how to handle retouching requests, and what the best in the business are doing to sell digital files. 15 key topics provide essential procedural information for before, during and after the portrait session.

Each tip is followed with clear instructions about WHY the particular practice is important and HOW it helps with your success. The guide additionally provides sample verbiage to maximize ease of emulation for your immediate use.

Essential Wedding Studio Policies For Success

Possibly the single most valuable resource for any Wedding Photographer, our Essential Wedding Studio Policies for Success is a comprehensive guide to the implementation of policies and client relations. Elevate your business practices, create a superior impression for your customers and solidify a foundation for the utmost success in your craft.

Learn the best practices for challenges like wedding cancellation protocol, pre-handling potential pricing issues, clarifying smart image delivery policies and even avoiding common wedding studio disasters. 15 key topics provide essential procedural information for before, during and after the wedding.

Each tip is followed with clear instructions about WHY the particular practice is important and HOW it helps with your success. The guide additionally provides sample verbiage to maximize ease of emulation for your immediate use.

Click to see each of the comprehensive guides in the shop: Essential Portrait Studio Policies For Success and Essential Wedding Studio Policies For Success.

Complete Baby Plan

Oh Baby – Marketing Set

Complete Online Branding Kit: Oh Baby

Photographer’s Social Media Bundle: Oh Baby

Today we have the Complete Baby Plan and Coordinating Marketing Materials as our product spotlight! With fresh new colors, these full marketing sets and baby plan will have you dazzling and ready to bring your talent to the world of baby photography.

Complete Baby Plan Description:
The Complete Baby plan is everything you need to create a profitable baby plan campaign for your studio. A detailed formula balances comprehensive tools for success with elegant professional design for maternity, newborn, and baby photographers. The fully customizable templates include professionally crafted text (including emails, website and brochure information) and eye-catching designer graphics that can be used as-is, or customized to suit your brand or colors.

From tips and thoughtful advice for a successful baby business, to marketing tools to get your name and great services at the top of your market, the included guide and templates in the Complete Baby Plan have you covered.

Complete Baby Plan At a Glance:
• 16-page comprehensive Baby Plan Success Guide for the photographer
• Simple and effective steps for sales and marketing, including easy-to-use brochure and business card templates
• Surefire posing suggestions for memorable maternity, newborn, and baby sessions
• Brilliantly designed, coordinating (and customizable!) items to offer your clients at every stage
• Coordinating baby announcements
• Baby Plan client contract
• …and much more!

Click to see all of these products in the shop: Complete Baby Plan, Oh Baby – Marketing Set, Photographer’s Social Media Bundle: Oh Baby, Complete Online Branding Kit: Oh Baby

We love when products are customized to create a completely new product while incorporating the same amazing design elements. Today we have a lovely share from Jennifer of Jennifer Lee Weddings who shares how she created two products from the same template, “I used the 70 Reasons to Love Me template to create a 20×20 print and had it mounted in on white styrene and framed. I offer this collage to my brides and they love this pretty and unique offering! I also offer it as a 40×40 to my clients.

Add a nuance of charm to your favorite images with Design Aglow’s collection of 31 wedding overlays. Our wedding photo overlays mix and match flawlessly to make your portrait offerings even more relevant. Each easy-to-apply design is instantly resizable to any size, which means you can customize portraits, cards, albums, and even gift tags beautifully, without losing precious studio time.

PERFECT FOR:
• Engagement sessions, valentines, weddings & wedding thank you cards, save the dates, custom portrait designs, large artwork, blog posts

A special thank you to the following photographers for providing us with the lovely images: Our Labor of Love, Untamed Heart Photography, Tinywater Photography, Kate Harrison Photography, and Simply Bloom Photography

Click here to see them all in the shop!

We are excited to announce that Design Aglow contributor Kim Wylie is on the cover of Professional Photographer Magazine this month using the Stroke of Genius effects!

In less than 10 minutes and with 10 easy-to-follow steps you can take your photographic images and turn them into beautiful one-of-a-kind pieces of art. Each of the included Fine Art Overlays were created by hand using a combination of painting techniques and various brushes to add another layer of depth and dimension to your artwork.

These are unlike any other overlays you have ever seen and can be used alone or in various combinations to take your imagery to a whole new level of art. We have set this product up so that a beginner in Photoshop can easily use it yet we left it in a format where the more experienced Photoshop user will have full creative control. We encourage you to play with the blending modes, opacity, hue, contrast and lightness/darkness of each layer to create your own unique looks.

You can now easily transform your photography into gorgeous and unique artistic pieces. What’s more, as your top level offering, you can sign each portrait, an assurance of attention to detail and care to even your most discerning clients. Add this unique, upscale offering and get your studio noticed!

This is one truly creative and amazing product that will be a great addition to all photographers’ creative toolboxes.

Created exclusively for Design Aglow by Kimberly Wylie and Richard Sturdevant to help you bring your images to a whole new level.

Click here to see more details in the shop!

We interviewed Kim about the Painterly effects and here’s what she had to say:

How do you choose an image to apply this ‘Painterly’ effect to in order to turn it into a piece of fine art?
I usually find myself wanting to use this effect on images that have more art appeal rather than just a straight portrait. It can really enhance that feeling of art in a way unlike anything else and will get your clients just oohhhhing and ahhhing all over the place.  It can be done really subtly or with more strength in the effect.  Here are some of the things that I have found helpful in using this effect:
- I tend to look for images that have space around the subject that will allow for the effect to show without getting onto the subject itself.  It is very important to not have the textures or brush strokes on the skin/hair or clothing.  I simply erase the effect from the texture layers on any of these critical areas.
- I think it looks amazing on dynamic images with a  lot of color and or texture.  The painted brush strokes really add to the image bringing out the best of these areas making the image that much more striking.  Some examples would be greenery, a textured colored wall, an urban scene and the sky looks incredible with it!

How do you present it to your client? Is it their favorite piece or one you think would work well with the effect?
We have a few examples of this effect on some of our sample displays in our studio.  Sometimes a client will ask about it and request it specifically or sometimes we will see an image that is perfect for it and will make the suggestion.

One thing to note:  A lot of times we use the effect on an image we love even if the client doesn’t want it and use it on Facebook, newsletters or our website.  Because it is so unique and eye catching, it is a great way to set yourself apart and stand out from the crowd.  It makes people stop and look a little harder and a little longer and well… Isn’t that what we all want?  This gets them engaged more with you and your work and will help you in your marketing in very subtle but powerful ways.

How do you determine price compared to a regular portrait?
You can take the approach two different ways.  If you charge a lot for it, then you can make it really special and market the effect from an exclusivity angle.  On the other hand, you can add an upgrade fee to wall portraits to cover your time to complete the effect making it more affordable for people to do.  This will get it out there more in your community making you more memorable and visible.  Just make sure either way to price it to include the time you take on average to complete a piece.  (Hint!!! Because it is such a simple and easy to use product, it doesn’t usually take longer than a few minutes to do! )

Do you hand sign the piece; how do you differentiate it from a regular portrait?
We do not treat it any differently than any other piece and I hand sign all of our wall portraits.  I would like to also mention my preferred printing option is to have it done as a metallic gallery wrap.  It really just makes the whole effect sing.

Created exclusively for Design Aglow by ProSelect to boost sales exponentially and make client ordering sessions a breeze with these amazing companions to our fabulous Inspire Guides. Incorporating powerful presentation and sales tools into a clean and elegant design, ProSelect presents images attractively as they will appear on a client’s walls, but right inside your own studio for an amazing interactive experience that will tickle your clients pink. Clients will love watching their galleries come together in seconds before their eyes. This amazing interactive experience will not only take your sales through the roof, but make it easy and fun too!

What is ProSelect?

As the perfect companion to our editable, Photoshop compatible Inspire Guides, ProSelect, with its powerful plug-in, is a completely interactive drop and drag, multimedia experience that is easy, fun, and rewarding to use. No more guesswork– now clients will appreciate being able to visualize the amazing possibilities with their own favorite images.

With just a click of a mouse button, ProSelect quickly inserts images and customizes them effortlessly, whether flipping a wall horizontally, changing pictures to black and white, or any of the other numerous options available. What’s more, clients will be amazed at how simple it is to create and purchase a beautiful designer gallery in just minutes, right before their eyes.

Start with the coordinating Inspire Guide wall galleries as inspiration before a session to help clients envision the stunning possibilities of wall displays of their own images. After the shoot, share sample wall galleries using client portraits. At the sales meeting, fine tune or create new wall galleries from clients’ favorite images quickly and easily using the plug-in for ProSelect. After the sales, simply export the high-resolution files for printing in the sizes displayed in the program!

Since we started using ProSelect with the Inspire Guides in our own studios, our average orders have multiplied significantly– and we have heard hundreds of similar success stories from both portrait and wedding photographers.

Click on the following to see all four of our ProSelect Plugins in the shop:

Inspire Guide for Pro Select Multimedia Plugin

Inspire Guide II for Pro Select Multimedia Plugin

Inspire Guide: Canvases – ProSelect Multimedia Plugin

Inspire Guide 4: Fine Art Photography Galleries – ProSelect Multimedia Plugin

Your image is all about the associations your clients make with your products, so why not make each piece a work of art? This collection of six 16×20 vector mats with image-ready layer are perfect for wall art, album covers and cards. Best of all, these patterned mats are fully layered, so instead of a flat graphic you can customize elements and colors of these lovely designs until your hearts content.

PERFECT FOR:
• Large canvases
• Albums or image box covers
• Marketing and advertising
• Special events
• Newborn decor
• Save the date cards
• Framed collages and canvases

Special thanks to White Linen Photography, Sheryll Lynne Photographers and Leesia Teh Photography for providing the amazing images!

Click here to see them in the shop!

Today we have a great example of how to use the Photo Overlays in creative ways. This wedding tree was made using the Engagement Photo Overlays: Haute Romance and printed through ProDPI. Instead of a guestbook (or in addition to), guests simply add their fingerprint and name to create a lovely piece of art to hang on the newlyweds’ wall.

Have you made something fantastic using our templates? Want to be featured on the Design Aglow blog in all of your creative glory? Well we want to feature you and love to see what you are creating with our products!

Please send your 8h x 12w @ 72 dpi images of finished products to us here. If you have more than one image, we would like you to put it in a zipped folder before you upload. The best part? If we use your images on the blog, you will receive a $75 credit.

Here are some great tips for successful product photos:
• use good, natural light, a simple background and avoid glares
• prop up flat pieces, like cards, instead of laying them flat on a table
• use a variety of angles and crops
• sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp. oh – did we say sharp?
• avoid using too many props; some props can add a nice pop of color, but products can get lost very fast with tons of props

We can’t wait to see what you have to show us. Get sharing!

Today we have a fun share from Becky of B2 Photography. She writes, “I really wanted to create an online pricing guide that clients could flip through rather than sending them files through email or a paper copy. I used the Sweet Child of Mine Brochure to create a bright and colorful guide for my potential clients and customized the patterns in the guide to match the patterns and colors used in my blog and branding. I host the PDF file on my site and send clients the link to view the document.

It was so easy to alter the product to have it match my brand that it looks like it was made just for me! I love how it makes my job so easy and quick when referring my clients to all the information they need before booking a session, I even customized one for newborn sessions too!”

Thanks for the great share, Becky! Enjoy your $75 gift certificate on us~