Prepress Production

Enthralled in the LeBron James buzz that is “The Decision,” Widen has been part of the “madness” that follows the announcement of the NBA's marquee free agent to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami HEAT.

The Widen digital sampling process and web-based digital asset management technologies allow the adidas Sports Licensed Division (SLD) and retailers of NBA jerseys and apparel to start selling LeBron James hot market products within 12 hours of the decision going public. Sources report that the LeBron James number 6 Miami HEAT jerseys are selling like hotcakes and are expected to produce record numbers within the first week.

The LeBron James jersey samples you see on e-commerce sites like FansEdge.com and ESPNShop.com were digitally created by Widen’s digital sampling premedia production team. This saves the adidas Sports Licensed Division time and costs of photographing the physical product samples and beats the need to mass produce the products before they can be sold. In cases like this where the jerseys and apparel are being marketed and sold within hours of “the decision” going public, Widen’s process and expertise plays a key role in meeting the hot market demands.

Here’s the breakdown of the steps for the LeBron James hot market orders surrounding the special telecast of "The Decision" on ESPN Thursday, July 8 at 9:00 PM Eastern time:

1.  Widen received digital sampling orders from the adidas SLD on Thursday 7/8/2010 for all scenarios to James’ decision.

2.  Widen prepared digital samples of the blank team jerseys (front and back) for each possibility including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami HEAT, New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls, New Jersey Nets and Los Angeles Clippers.

3. Widen digital sampling technicians added the player name (JAMES) and number (6) to the appropriate team blank (Miami HEAT) at 4:00AM CST on 7/9/2010.

4. The final digital samples were added to the adidas SLD Media Collective web-based digital asset management system and images were sent to the customers by 9:00AM CST on 7/9/2010 to be marketed and sold worldwide.





For more information about Widen apparel marketing technology and premedia services, check out the Widen Digital Sampling blog or download the DAM as SaaS 2.0 white paper  featuring a Reebok case study.

Names are a big deal with marketing and creative groups; especially when it comes to the everyday business systems and applications you depend on to do your job. Choosing a name for your digital asset management system is key to a successful deployment in building user adoption internally and externally. Not all users of your DAM system will understand what “Digital Asset Management” is, so it’s common to choose a different, more identifiable name. This post will help you understand how to go about naming your digital asset management tool and provide some helpful ways of building a short list of possible names.

Best practices in naming your Digital Asset Management System:

• Choose a name that fits the department or functional area leading the project – e.g. marketing communications, creative, public relations, sales, etc.
• Choose a name that fits the primary group(s) of users of the system – internal or external – e.g. marketing partners, sales channels, dealers, etc.
• Choose a name that fits the types of assets that are most common – e.g. images, photos, videos, and marketing materials. If it’s all of the above, use a more general term such as media or brand assets.
• Choose a name that fits your organization, brand(s) or mission. ** The most important best practice because your DAM solution is the single point of management and access to your brand assets.

Quick Tips – Be Creative, Realistic, Memorable and Simple:

• Be Creative – Names that are catchy and fun are easier to remember.
• Be Realistic – Names that fit the purpose of the system set clear expectations.
• Be Memorable – Names that are easy to remember improve frequency of use.
• Be Simple – KISS. (You all know what that means...) Confusion turns users away.

Two and three word combinations work best in achieving the goal of being Creative, Realistic, Memorable and Simple. Typically, you will want to attach your organization or brand name to the front of the two-word or three-word name for your DAM system. For example, “Widen Video Library” or “Widen Brand Asset Portal.”


Chart for Picking a Two-Word Name for your DAM System:

Asset Type Descriptor	System Type Descriptor
Brand	Bank
Creative	Collection
Digital	Database
Image	Resource
Marketing	Tool
Media	Library
Photo	Toolkit
Video	Source
	Gallery
	Portal
	Collective
	System
	Center

Sample Two-word Names (Not including the Customer/Brand name):
Creative Library, Digital Gallery, Digital Toolkit, Image Library, Marketing Library, Marketing Toolbox, Media Database, Media Library, Media Source, Partner Portal

Sample Three-word Names (Not including the Customer/Brand name):
Brand Asset Library, Creative Resource Bank, Digital Image Gallery, Digital Media Library, Image Management System, Marketing Resource Center, Video Asset Library



The Widen Media Collective® Brand Name

Media Collective® is the trademarked name for the Widen digital asset management software suite and serves as the default name for Widen customer DAM systems unless you choose your own. Generally, the name will appear in the title of the web-based DAM system, login screen and header within the application. The standard web address is https://customer.widencollective.com.

What if we want a vanity web address?

There is no cost to select a custom name, however additional charges may apply for maintaining a custom vanity URL. Here’s an explanation of the vanity web address options:

Vanity Web Address Redirect: Organizations not wishing to use the standard web address of https://customer.widencollective.com may opt for a vanity web address that is redirected to the standard address. For example, you can direct users to http://WidenMediaCollective.com and they will be redirected to https://demo.widencollective.com when they arrive on the page.

Vanity Web Address: Organizations not wishing to use the standard web address of https://customer.widencollective.com may opt for a vanity web address that is NOT redirected to the standard address. For example, you can direct users to https://WidenMediaCollective.com and that will remain the core part of the URL string throughout their use of the system.

All About Curves
Using curves in Photoshop CS4 for prepress production can be intimidating to newbies so here are a few tips to help make color manipulation with curves a more enjoyable experience.

Display Options for Curves
If a Curves Adjustment layer is targeted in the Layers panel, selecting the flyout on the Adjustments panel reveals the "Curves Display Options". Here, you can choose to show your numeric values on a scale from 0-255 (light) or 0-100% (ink), Channel Overlays, Histogram, Baseline and Intersection Line.

Adding a Point on a Curve
With the On-image tool selected on the Curves Adjustments panel (that's the one that looks like the hand with the up/down arrow), hovering the cursor in the image area will display a preview circle (bouncing ball) over the corresponding value on the curve.
• Click in the image area to add a point to the curve.
• Click and drag up/down in the image area to add a point on the curve to lighten/darken the targeted value or
• Use the up / down or left/right arrows to move the selected point. (Add the shift key to move it in larger increments.)

Selecting Points on a Curve
With the On-image tool selected on the Curves Adjustments panel, Shift + (plus) will select the next point on the curve and Shift + (minus) will select the previous point.  Shift -click multiple points on the curve to select more than one and move them all at once. Command + D will deselect all selected points.



Deleting Points on a Curve
To delete a point on a curve, select the point and do any of the following:
• Press Delete/Backspace
• Command + click on point (on the panel or from the image area)
• Click and drag the point off of the grid

Curves Grid Preference
In the Adjustments Panel, Option-click in the grid area to toggle more/less grid lines. (10% vs quarter-tone increment)

Adding Color Samplers in Curves
When the Curves Adjustments panel is active, shift-click in the image area to set a Color Sampler. Shift -drag to reposition the Color sampler. Option + Shift-click on sampler to delete it.

Hope these tips help you to gain photoshop enlightenment. Using curves for color manipulation is one of the best ways to control color in your images. An even better way is with camera raws non-destructive color manipulation! Does it get better than this? I think not.

xxjoy

Many of my premedia / prepress clients have digital assets that require image extensions based on different uses. Their photo studio might have shot a certain scene in horizontal format, and the image is now needed in vertical for a different purpose. Another scenario may be a picture box in a page layout program ( Quark / InDesign ) is expanded by a graphic designer. The newly formed "white space" needs image data created. As is the case below. My client had a very nice legacy image that was retrieved from the image management system. This image needed to be versioned for a new purpose. My job was to use my high end Adobe Photoshop retouching and color correction skills to expand the bounds of the digital image, filling the new required space. The extension of this room scene wasn't as difficult as the image I posted in the prior blog. The wooden floor boards were easily stepped and repeated as necessary. You can see I did some selective masking and color correction on our clients amazing products.

Many of my premedia / prepress clients have digital assets that require image extensions based on different uses. Their photo studio might have shot a certain scene in horizontal format, and the image is now needed in vertical for a different purpose. Another scenario may be a picture box in a page layout program ( Quark / InDesign ) is expanded by a graphic designer. The newly formed "white space" needs image data created. As is the case below. My client had a very nice legacy image that was retrieved from the image management system. This image needed to be versioned for a new purpose. My job was to use my high end Adobe Photoshop retouching and color correction skills to expand the bounds of the digital image, filling the new required space. This particular image may have been the "trickiest" background extension this post processor has ever tackled. Using tricks such as vanishing point, content aware scaling, healing brush, and good ole' fashion cloning. The contour of the tile, light fall-off, and scene elements made this image fierce competitor, but in the end, the results were superb.

Many of my premedia / prepress clients have digital assets that require image extensions based on different uses. Their photo studio might have shot a certain scene in horizontal format, and the image is now needed in vertical for a different purpose. Another scenario may be a picture box in a page layout program ( Quark / InDesign ) is expanded by a graphic designer. The newly formed "white space" needs image data created. As is the case below. My client had a very nice legacy image that was retrieved from the image management system. This image needed to be versioned for a new purpose. My job was to use my high end Adobe Photoshop retouching and color correction skills to expand the bounds of the digital image, filling the new required space. This was on of the more tricky images I have worked. Using tricks such as vanishing point, content aware scaling, healing brush, and good ole' fashion cloning.

Careful selections, masking, and photo composition skills made this image possible. We now have a new media asset repurposed via high end prepress production.

A Few Tips to Make Life Easier



Production artists face many challenges throughout a day. Maybe you need to clone grass from one document to another or quickly shift between brushes and sizes.

All of this can be done super simply with your keyboard, stylus, or mouse. Try these tips to make your life easier!


Resizing Brushes

Tapping the left and right brackets to increase / decrease your brush size is so last year. Try using the new Drag-resize brush cursor keyboard shortcut in Photoshop CS4 to make changes to the brush size. Ctrl + Option (Mac) / alt + right click (win) -drag will increase/decrease brush size. Add the Cmd (Mac) /shift (Win) to change hardness.


Changing Brush Opacity

To change the opacity of a painting tool, use the number keys on the keyboard. Tapping one number assigns the percentage of the hit number (1 = 10%, 2= 20% etc. and 0 = 100%). Hitting two numbers quickly will give you that exact amount (5 + 4 = 54%). Note: If you have a tool selected that is not a painting tool, these shortcuts will affect the Opacity on the Layers panel.


Heal and Clone Between Documents

You can use the Healing brush and Clone Stamp tools between two open documents: Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) -click in the source document and then clone in the destination document.


Heal and Clone Stamp to Multiple Layers

For added flexibility, use the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools to clone to blank layers by checking Sample "All Layers" in the Options bar. In addition, you can choose to Sample the "Current & Below" layers. This can be extremely helpful when cloning image layers and adjustment layer information simultaneously.


One More Tip

I recently became a fan of Adobe Photoshop on Facebook and you should too! They post fun stuff and everyone gets involved. From "What's Your Favorite Shortcut" to some interesting posts from NAPP!

Happy Photoshopping!!
xx joy

Todays tip will involve using Lab color space in Adobe's Photoshop CS4. We'll make a curves adjustment layer, tweak the a / b channels, adjust the layer opacity, and BAM! Your photo just got more color than a new 64 pack of Crayola's ! Prepress color management and color manipulation done fast.

Step one, open your image and under "Edit" menu, use the Convert to Profile command, and choose Lab.

Step Two go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves

Photo Composition Tips

If you work in prepress production you are going to have to create a photo composition sooner or later. So I thought I would give you a few tips on how to make two images become one.

Even Lighting and High Quality Masks

It takes a bit of artistic know how and a dash of creativity to pull off a quality photo composition. This first thing I do is bring the two images into the same document. Now compare the lighting, tone, and "style". The final look might be directed to you from an art director, client, or it might come from your own artistic style.

Dancing in the Street

In my example image I used a stock street scene and a model shot taken in my studio. I wanted the final image to look like the model was dancing in the street. On the model I added more hair, tattoos, make-up, a grounding shadow, some light rays in her new hair, and then to achieve a grunge look I added contrast, noise, and desaturated her slightly. 

A High Contrast Background

For the street scene I added lens flare, highlights via a white layer set to overlay, noise and a simple S curve for contrast.

Bring it All Together!

Placement was key as was the grounding shadow for the model. Get these two things wrong and the final comp will just look like a great big cut and paste project. The key is to make it look like you photographed her right there on that street! So how did I do?

Have you made any photo comps that you just HAVE to share? Send me a link or a tweet (@PremediaArts) I 'd love to see what your creating!

xx joy

One of the many purposes of a Digital Asset Management system is to provide controlled access to an organization’s library of approved digital assets. Note the key word here is controlled! There are many types of marketing software systems that provide some sort of repository services for centralized storage of documents, images, and other files. However, only a true DAM system should suffice in a sophisticated marketing environment where you want to deliver tiered levels of control for the collaboration, management, and distribution of digital assets. In Widen’s world of DAM, tiered levels of control are managed via Roles and Permissions.

Without Roles and Permissions, you may as well post everything you own to a public-facing website for the whole world to access. In a web-based DAM system, every a user has a secure login which authenticates them into a Role with a predefined set of permissions.

Roles and Permissions determine 'who' has 'what' level of access to 'which' assets and 'how' the user can interact with the assets.

Roles and Permissions allow…

• The marketing team to prepare a campaign that will launch in six months.
• The product team to produce training materials for a product that doesn’t hit the market until next year.
• The regional field reps to only access current collateral and promotions created for them.
• The marketing team to ensure assets for products that have been taken off the market are not accessible by the sales teams and partners.

Although it can be a very complicated aspect of DAM to administrate, Roles & Permissions can be as simple as can be for a four-person workgroup or as complex as a multi-national enterprise with several departments, divisions, brands and channels for access and control. Maintaining the Role & Permissions structure is critical when rolling out updates and a key point in selecting the right partner. More than that, working with Roles & Permissions that allow for adaptability, flexibility and scalability with ease is vital to the ongoing success of your DAM system.

Read the article in E-Commerce Times: Whose Fingers Are in Your DAM?

Contact Us to learn more or to see the Roles & Permissions structure in Widen’s online DAM system.

Saints Win! Saints Win! The 2010 Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was watched by more than 106 million viewers, surpassing the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H" to become the most-watched televised event in American history. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Super Bowl has averaged more than 90 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

That’s a lot of football fans and a lot of consumers that want to be the first to have the apparel the champions wear.

Minutes after the big game, I received this email from DICK’s Sporting Goods announcing the availability of the official Locker Room Merchandise from Reebok, the authentic outfitter of the NFL. No doubt, there are a lot of fans out there who want the Super Bowl XLIV Champion hat and t-shirt worn by their champagne popping locker-room heroes as soon as the outcome of the big game is decided.



How do retailers like DICK’s Sporting Goods get their hands on these images to have their emails and websites ready to go as soon as the champion is declared? More importantly, how does the Sports Licensed Division of The adidas Group make this process efficient, accurate and cost-effective?

With the help of Widen Digital Sampling and Digital Asset Management services, adidas can get official product images in the hands of their retailers who, in turn, get marketing messages in front of the eyes of the consumer as soon as a buying decision is ready to be made.

Widen digital sampling processes and digital asset management tools help ensure the entire digital supply chain is equipped with compelling, consistent and cost-effective content for commerce.

The Widen Digital Sampling process assists in the creation of digital apparel samples and the Widen web-based digital asset management system is used to manage, distribute and provide access to authentic image assets. As the official provider of licensed apparel for the NFL, NBA, and NHL, the adidas Sports Licensed Division (includes adidas and Reebok brands) uses Widen premedia services and DAM technologies to meet hot market demands for the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and Stanley Cup Finals.  

Widen-powered technology and processes help retailers such as DICK’S Sporting Goods market championship apparel merchandise as soon you see the players wearing the hats and t-shirts after the big game is over.



What’s all included in the Widen Digital Sampling process? This premedia production process generally begins with photography of one neutral grey apparel sample. Next, digital sampling operators digitally create all color swatches according to league approved team colors. Lastly, graphics are applied according to Reebok/NFL technical guidelines and the final approved images are loaded into the image database where they can be centrally managed and available for download in a working file format.

All Reebok / adidas digital samples are loaded into the Widen-powered web-based image library, which holds the all apparel and headwear styles for the current and coming sports season for the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Since many of the physical apparel styles are not yet available in stores or online (or even physically produced en masse), many of the images are on hold and are tightly controlled using Widen’s governance tools. Styles and logos are often determined 6-7 months in advance of the coming season for the major sports leagues.

When it’s time for these assets to go to market, orders are placed in the DAM system and retailers can download the files according to exact specifications for print or web use. All users are required to sign off on a rights release agreement before they have access to the images. For example, DICK’s Sporting Goods was granted permission to access championship apparel images for the Saints and Colts so they could prepare their email marketing templates in advance of the Super Bowl.

As you can guess, the digital apparel sample production and distribution process shaves weeks off the time to market versus the process of physically producing, photographing and shipping physical samples. Plus, it streamlines a very difficult process—particularly when meeting hot market demands such as with championship merchandise. Besides the time savings of digital sample creation, adidas is able to drastically reduce costs of physically producing each item and team combination and the photography and shipping costs to go along with it.
 
Benefits of using hosted Digital Asset Management:

• Accelerated search and retrieval time in accessing official imagery
• Increased real-time collaboration of assets and approvals
• Cost savings through the elimination of physical delivery of samples
• Elimination of the cost of lost or misplaced work
• Reduction in time-to-market through digital delivery

Here’s an inside look at the market preparedness leading up to the Super Bowl:

1 week before the NFL Conference Championships – Conference Championship merchandise was created for the eight teams in the Divisional Round (Baltimore, Indianapolis, N.Y. Jets, San Diego, Arizona, New Orleans, Dallas, and Minnesota)

2 weeks before the Super Bowl – Super Bowl Champion merchandise was created for the four teams in the Conference Championship Round (Indianapolis, N.Y. Jets, New Orleans, and Minnesota)

What happens to the images for the losing teams that didn’t make it, you ask? Quite simply, those are destroyed.

The worst-kept secret in consumer electronics history was finally made public last week as Apple introduced us to the iPad. Yeah, it's a funny name, but the iPod sounded a bit strange back in 2001 too. Now that name is woven into the fabric of our technological lives.

And just like the iPod changed the way that many of us listen to music over the last decade, the iPad will change the way many of us read books, newspapers, magazines and maybe even catalogs in the decade to come.

As I covered in the blog I wrote last July called, Pulp Fiction: Is Print Dead? the e-reader concept is absolutely in our future. Amazon's Kindle was not really the first e-reader to the market. E-readers were introduced about ten years ago, but the timing wasn't right for a number of reasons. So they never took off. Speaking about the Apple iBooks application during his speech, Steve Jobs showed a photo of the Kindle and said, "Were going to stand on [Amazon's] shoulders and go a bit further here." 




I believe the introduction of the iPad is on scale with the introduction of color in magazines and catalogs. Back in the 60's and 70's, the body of most magazines were in black and white. Most newspapers did not use much color in their production. The desktop publishing and digital prepress revolution of the 1980's made color in publications as common as sequins and feathers on Lady GaGa. And the brilliant, colorful display of the iPad will make dull black and white readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader show up on eBay faster than you can say "16 shades of gray."

It is not a stretch to imagine that in the not-too-distant future, the heavy backpacks filled with textbooks that our kids tote around will become as odd-looking as a CRT monitor. Five of the worlds biggest book publishers are already online, and as Jobs put it, "We're going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the publishers in the world, starting this afternoon... We're very excited about this."

I'll tell you some that aren't very excited about this... Book printers. Book binders. Magazine printers. Barnes and Noble. Borders. Look at the music industry. Certainly there are many people that still purchase CDs and DVDs. But lots of record stores that were around in 1990, are no longer in business because so many people download their music from sites like iTunes. When was the last time you walked into a Musicland or Sam Goody's? Traditional paper back and hard-cover books, textbooks, and glossy magazines will have a market for some time to come. But each year more people feel right at home downloading electrons in front of a glowing screen instead of buying atoms at a brick and mortar store. Perhaps because they literally are right at home. 

Of course let's not forget that this device is not just for reading. It is a true multimedia player (albeit without support for Flash right now)... It's a web browser, a photo viewer, an email device, a video player, a gaming device, a music player, a calendar, an art canvas, and a lot of other things not yet realized. The iPhone has over 140,000 apps available to download. And it's only been about a year and a half since the SDK release. Expect lots of apps created specifically to take advantage of the iPad. 

But it's the iPad as an e-reader that is perhaps most important from the standpoint of changing cultural habits. When was the last time you touched a photo in a book and something amazing happened? Like a digital equivalent of a pop-up book. Or imagine this... You receive a digital catalog in your inbox, and as you flip through the glowing pages and touch a photo of a model wearing a jacket, a window opens and a video begins playing with the model wearing that jacket in some cool location. A voice-over describes the jacket's details as music plays in the background. It's a mini infomercial that came to life on the pages of a digital catalog. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing...


 

The last several years have seen a dramatic shift from traditional media to digital media such as online marketing and social media. The move to digital media has led to an exponential growth in digital marketing content, which has in turn created bottlenecks and inefficiencies in managing this content and difficulties in measuring the performance of campaigns and in maintaining a consistent brand image.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) technology can overcome these problems by automating the process of ingesting, archiving, searching, managing, repurposing, sharing and publishing content in a seamless and collaborative environment. DAM adopters achieve substantial return on investment including reducing time to market, improving the performance of marketing campaigns, reducing marketing costs and improving brand consistency. This article will examine in detail how DAM can rapidly generate ROI by improving the performance of digital marketing efforts.

In order to give power to your marketing programs in 2010 and be more efficient in doing so, Digital Asset Management should be your first technology investment.

Widen has released a new whitepaper that addresses 5 key benefits that DAM provides to marketing operations, including:

1. Generate additional revenues by reducing time to market
2. Reduce costs of finding assets
3. Reduce costs of distributing assets
4. Save money on physical samples
5. Improve brand consistency

This whitepaper is an interactive PDF containing videos of customer interview segments from InSinkErator, Brady Worldwide, Knaack and Sub-Zero and Wolf.

Download: Why Digital Asset Management Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010.

With the season of “lists” upon us, here are the top ten Widen Premedia blog posts of 2009 in the Widen prepress services world of digital photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management, and wide format printing.


1. RAW Presets for Photoshop CS4 & Lightroom: Canon 5D Mark II Nikon D3 Nikon D300 Nikon D700 Nikon D3X, posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)

2. Call Me Mr. Biv, posted on Friday, October 24, 2008 by Mark Pajari (The Color Space)

3. Digital Asset Solutions: Adding Micro Contrast and Detail to Digital Images by Matt Anderson, posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Matt Anderson  (Industrial Retouch and Color)

4. Smart Objects Part Déux, posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)

5. A technical observation of post processing styles, posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)

6. Edward Cullen Sparkle... For All You Twilight Fans, posted on Monday, July 27, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)

7. Assigning, tagging, converting, and embedding ICC profiles in Photoshop, posted on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 by Mark Pajari (The Color Space)

8. Hair Mask Quick Tip for Color Retouching, posted on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by Joy Hamel  (Premedia Arts)

9. Into the Light, posted on Tuesday, April 7, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)

10. Wide Format Digital Printing at Widen, posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)

Watch the interview with Brian Becker, VP of Client Development for Widen Enterprises, as he talks about the prepress production processes performed for a large apparel marketer. Part II focuses on Widen's digital sampling and color retouching services in the life cycle of a digital asset.
 

Intro

Widen recently helped a large apparel company improve quality and streamline creative production processes by utilizing a blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management technologies. Widen helped the client make the move from showcasing garments currently shot on mannequins to garments shot on live models for a new women's sports licensed apparel campaign. In meeting the goal of going live inside 30 days, Widen created over 500 images with 20-25% of their shots featuring garments on live models versus mannequins.

To get up to speed with the photo shoot and Widen photography workflow management capabilities, check out Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part I - Photography Workflow Management.


Color Production
The image work for the project was done by the Widen Color Production department, which consists of six master graphic artists. They are the ones that go in and clean-up the files… They take the camera raw data and optimize it for the best environment for lighting of the flesh tones, hair color, garment color, detail and sharpness, etc. Widen’s color retouching experts have a knack for understanding the customer expectations, which was very simple and natural for them given the jobs they work on every day.


Digital Sampling
The Digital Sampling department is the group that applies the graphics to the garments shot on the models and mannequins. The color operators take artwork from Illustrator and merge them onto the actual photograph in Photoshop. There challenge and expertise is to make sure the graphics follow the contours, shapes, highlights, shadows and wrinkles in the garments as they apply logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client's technical specs.

Many people don't realize what a huge production process there is that goes on behind the scenes to get garments sent to Widen, put on models, styled, shot correctly, color-optimized, digital-sampled, posted to a database and eventually marketed on a website or print catalog, signage, etc.


Color Management
Consumers only spend a few seconds shopping for garments online, so it’s critical that what they see on the screen is what they’ll get in real life.  We don’t use our eyes to confirm what we “think” we like on a screen, we use technical data that comes from a strong color management umbrella over the top of everything we do in production. From our cameras to our proofing devices, everything is color managed for the desired output – website or printed material.

In the end, Widen created approximately 500 images, which are upload to their digital asset library also hosted by Widen. From there, the images are ordered for placement on any number of websites. Posting images via embed links will help to ensure the most current images are used across all web domains.

The Widen Advantage caters to the life cycle of a digital asset by offering all of the production, management and distribution services under one roof. The blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management solutions working together help clients in a number of ways, including:

Cost Savings - Increases efficiency in creative/production cycles plus centralization of re-usable assets minimizes efforts re-inventing every process of the creation-production-distribution value chain.

Faster Time to Revenue - Shortens time to market and increases effectiveness of marketing execution by empowering sales channels with on-demand access to use brand-approved digital assets.

Competitive Advantage - Improves brand consistency with quality representation of products and ensures compliance across targeted, multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Better Planning and Strategy - Tracking of usage patterns including reuse and repurposing of assets allows for more effective budgeting, resource allocation and planning of future marketing campaigns.

Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part I - Photography Workflow Management.

Watch the interview with Brian Becker, VP of Client Development for Widen Enterprises, as he talks about the prepress production processes performed for a large apparel marketer. Part I focuses on Widen's digital photography and photography workflow management capabilities in the life cycle of a digital asset.

Intro
Widen recently helped a large apparel company improve quality and streamline creative production processes by utilizing a blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management technologies. Widen helped the client make the move from showcasing garments currently shot on mannequins to garments shot on live models for a new women's sports licensed apparel campaign. In meeting the goal of going live inside 30 days, Widen created over 500 images with 20-25% of their shots featuring garments on live models versus mannequins.

This is a case of having a DAM customer, in which Widen provides the technology and service to manage thousands of images, take advantage of Widen’s expertise in premedia services to create their digital assets for this particular campaign.


Models and Apparel – Connecting one DAM Customer with another DAM Customer
Since this apparel customer wanted to use live models for the photo shoot at Widen, we were able to help because we have another DAM software customer that is a model and talent agency. In essence, we were able to connect one DAM client with another DAM client to complete the photo shoot. To get started, the apparel company was able to browse model shots by viewing assets from the Rock Agency online image management system and select the talent for the shoot.


Digital Photography, Review and Approval
When it came time for the shoot in Widen's photo studio, we brought in the models, photographer, and did all the make-up and styling so that we could capture a single garment before it was off to our digital sampling and color retouching departments to create all of the products and get them ready for the customer’s campaign.  (Learn more about Widen digital sampling and color retouching services in Part II.)

Leveraging Widen's online photo approval application, Widen could post the best shots for client approval before the models had even left the studio. Widen’s photo approval system allowed for same-day sign-off by the client who was over a thousand miles away.


Color Retouching, Image Management and Distribution
Once the preferred shots were selected, Widen’s Digital Sampling department created the other variations of the garments by applying logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client’s technical specs with Illustrator files. Widen's Color Retouching department also created the one-of-a-kind pieces by taking a photo of the garment on the mannequin and applying color retouching techniques to create quality digital apparel samples optimized for e-commerce websites. All of the final images were organized and managed in Widen’s online photo asset management system where the client could select the best shots for executing the campaign.


The end result helped the client achieve superior image quality and color consistency for the product images on the web to best represent the real-life garment.


Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part II - Digital Sampling and Color Retouching.

Color Retouching for Catalog Production Services



Production artists face many challanges throuout a day. Maybe you need to clone grass from one document to another or quickly shift between brushes and sizes.

All of this can be done super simply with your keyboard, stylus, or mouse. Try these tips to make your life easier!


Resizing Brushes

Tapping the left and right brackets to increase / decrease your brush size is so last year. Try using the new Drag-resize brush cursor keyboard shortcut in Photoshop CS4 to make changes to the brush size. Ctrl + Option (Mac) / alt + right click (win) -drag will increase/decrease brush size. Add the Cmd (Mac) /shift (Win) to change hardness.


Changing Brush Opacity

To change the opacity of a painting tool, use the number keys on the keyboard. Tapping one number assigns the percentage of the hit number (1 = 10%, 2= 20% etc. and 0 = 100%). Hitting two numbers quickly will give you that exact amount (5 + 4 = 54%). Note: If you have a tool selected that is not a painting tool, these shortcuts will affect the Opacity on the Layers panel.


Heal and Clone Between Documents

You can use the Healing brush and Clone Stamp tools between two open documents: Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) -click in the source document and then clone in the destination document.


Heal and Clone Stamp to Multiple Layers

For added flexibility, use the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools to clone to blank layers by checking Sample "All Layers" in the Options bar. In addition, you can choose to Sample the "Current & Below" layers. This can be extremely helpful when cloning image layers and adjustment layer information simultaneously.


One More Tip

I recently became a fan of Adobe Photoshop on Facebook and you should too! They post fun stuff and everyone gets involved. From "Whta's Your Favorite Shortcut" to some interesting posts from NAPP!

Happy Photoshopping!!
xx joy

Desert Training

While reading an on-line forum recently, I ran across an interesting quote that somebody had placed on the bottom of their post. It went something like this, "It is better to train people and risk they leave - than to do nothing and risk they stay."

In the spirit of that quote, I thought I'd devote a few words to one of the best investments in training that any company with a color critical workflow can make. Whatever corner of the industry you call home - printing, prepress or premedia services, photography, graphic design, color retouching, packaging, brand management... If it involves the need for accurate color reproduction then you should consider a presence at the upcoming PIA Color Management Conference.

To be held again at the beautiful Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort overlooking the sparkling desert city of Phoenix, The 11th annual PIA Color Management Conference runs from December 6th through the 8th, with a special pre conference program on Saturday the 5th. Each year the advisory board, working with the PIA (Printing Industries of America), assembles some of the top speakers in the industry that address all aspects of color reproduction and color management. Among the many excellent speakers scheduled to present this year are Steve Upton president of Chromix, Don Hutcheson from HutchColor LLC, Dave Hunter, president of Pilot Marketing, Steve Smiley from Vertis, Dr. Abhay Sharma from Ryerson University, and Kelly McCathran from Adobe Systems. 

The conference this year includes almost 60 sessions and hands-on labs. Among them...

Color Meets the Frontier of Electronic Paper
Dr. William Ray with NthDegree Technologies Worldwide, discusses how color management is applied in the developing field of Printed Illuminated Paper which lights up and creates the illusion of motion. He has created a unique color model for emissive color that draws on both RGB and CMYK.

How to Compete in the Global Marketplace with Monitor/Softproofing
This session covers how adopting soft proofing will help you save money on materials, labor, time and transit costs. This session will give examples of companies that made the switch from contract proofs to soft proofs and saved themselves and their customers money.

Real World RAW from Large Format to Digital SLRs
Steven Johnson, world renown photographer and last year’s excellent keynote presenter takes a look at where we are in color management and where the technology is going as it relates to the uninterrupted stream of data in RAW workflows. 

RGB Working Spaces
Don Hutcheson discusses the difference between RGB working spaces and how to choose the correct space for Web, publication, fine art photography, RAW export, image archives, etc. He will talk about the benefits to wide-gamut spaces, and if there is one perfect RGB space for all work.

The program this year also includes two great keynote sessions...

Delivering the Color for Broadway
Representatives from King Displays, a Manhattan printing company, will discuss how they produce 90 percent of all the signs and displays for the Broadway theater market. Everything they produce is color critical and they will show how they meet the needs of a distinct clientele with demanding color needs and quick turnaround times.

Forecasting the Right Colors
James Martin, the president of the Color Marketing Group, will discuss how his group of color designers comes together each year to collaborate and then interpret their shared information into salable colors that will ultimately make up the color directions for all industries, manufactured products, and services.

I can speak from experience that this valuable, one-of-a-kind conference is very much worth attending. Color management technology is still in a state of evolution. Whether you live in the world of print or the Internet, every year new products, best practices and procedures are developed that benefit everyone involved in the exchange of color. See the PIA Color Management website for more information.

Follow my tweets and updates from the conference December 5-8 on twitter @widenpremedia.

Mark