In the next window, you’ll see your image on a stamp see Figure 9.7.. When you’re finished making your stamp template and you’ve chosen which shipping option you want, the stamps are sen
Trang 1Creating Custom Postage Stamps with
Your Photos at Stamps.com
When you arrive at the window after clicking PhotoStamps at the bottom of the stamps.com window, you can personalize your stamps with one of your own photos Just click on Create PhotoStamps, and you’ll be taken to a dialog box where you browse for the picture you want on your computer After you’ve found the photo you want, you click Choose and then click Next
In the next window, you’ll see your image on a stamp (see Figure 9.7) It is here where you can customize your stamp (edit it) using drop-down menus for border, color (of the number value
of the postage), and postage price You can also rotate and/or zoom into your photo When you’re finished customizing, click Continue In the next window, your cart (your invoice) for
20 stamps (1 sheet worth) for $18.99 comes up Click on Check Out Now to pay (or to register
if you didn’t when you got to the site; registration requires that you give your home address) When you’re finished making your stamp template and you’ve chosen which shipping option you want, the stamps are sent to you by mail
146 ■ Personal Accessories
Figure 9.7 Put an image of yourself on a stamp.
Trang 2Personal Accessories ■ 147
Trang 4C HAPTER 10
Getting Published
There are many venues for having your photos published these days Did you
know that there are probably thousands of websites that could use your pictures? There are magazines and newspapers all over the world that devote a page (or pages) to amateur photographer photos They also accept submissions from new freelance photographers (though you usually have to submit a portfolio and get it approved first) Then there are your own blogs and websites There are easy things you can do to get search engines to list your photos to result in more hits (visitors) to them—things as simple as naming your photo files a certain way If you’re selling your photos, the more people who see them, the more who are likely to buy them Publishing ideas are detailed in this chapter, with many novel ideas you can use right now
Trang 5Making Your Photos Web Ready
In the “Resizing Your Photos for Different Uses” section in Chapter 1, the resolution for web-ready photos is discussed, as well as how to resize them in Photoshop (or Elements) to make them web ready After you resize an image, there are a number of things you can do
to make it look good on the web
If you shoot in Raw format, it’s best to tweak your image as much as possible when you are viewing it in the Raw window (See the “Using Image Processing Programs to Tweak Your Photos” section in Chapter 1.) However, you won’t be able to resize it at that point because the Raw window contains no options to do that It does, however, have options for cropping and rotating your photos After you’re finished tweaking in that window, you click on Open Image, and your image appears in a new window where you can tweak using the tools of Photoshop’s main program, including the Resize option
Once your photo is open in the new window, or if you’ve opened your image as a JPEG or TIFF file, you’re ready to start post-processing to prepare your image for the web If you’ve already edited your photo in Raw, you shouldn’t have to do much tweaking of color, brightness, and exposure before you resize for the web
Now, if you’re opening an existing JPEG or TIFF file, you’ll have to tweak using Photoshop’s (or Elements’) tools If your image is fairly decent (meaning it’s well exposed), you probably won’t have to do much
The first thing I do after opening an image and resizing it is make adjustments in the levels (Image > Levels) I can make the image have more contrast and/or make it brighter or darker using these options Figure 10.1 shows the histogram, which you tweak by moving the right, middle, and left sliders To get the image ready for the web, this particular picture has to be lighter I made adjustments to do that by clicking and dragging the slider on the right to the left at the beginning of the histogram (see Figure 10.2) If I wanted to make the image darker (bring out the shadows), I’d click and drag the left slider to the right The middle slider also can
be adjusted, usually to the left to add tones in the midrange
If the image doesn’t look good (if it’s soft or has too many blown highlights) after I’ve made adjustments in levels, I usually toss it and find a better one
The last thing you want to do is save your photo for the web To do that, navigate to File > Save for Web & Devices Check Optimized and then pay attention to the Quality setting When you move the Quality slider, check the size of the file (in KB) at the bottom left of the window You’ll notice that the file size gets smaller with diminishing quality If you’re working in an online platform that gives you a choice of photo sizes, that number matters
150 ■ Getting Published