Yiuphotography.com

Welcome to yiuphotography.com! Thank you for stopping by, I'm Hoyu Yiu, the creator of this weblog. Based in New York City, I'm a full-time graphic designer, and part-time photographer. I thoroughly enjoy the artistic freedom of the latter.

Primarily, I use this weblog for displaying and sharing (aka. bragging and showing off) my photographs, showcasing design projects, and sharing random bits of knowledge. You just might find some useful information for your own work. Posts are added periodically so feel free to return to my site for new stuff. I'm also a sucker for comments. Whether it's a compliment or criticism— constructive or destructive, it's all good.

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Homemade Business Cards

Post by fotolistic on September 3rd, 2008 In Category : Design, Other

Ah, 4 years of art school on a tight budget paid off. My very own make-it-at-home-because-I-am-too-cheap-to-get-them-printed-by-a-printer Business Card.

I’ve just finish designing the Business Card for yiuphotography.com and I needed to get them printed. First of all, here’s the design. It will be a front and back business card. Like it, hate it?

I decided to make them myself because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. This involved getting the right paper stock and an inkjet printer that can handle the paper. I started by going to one of my frequently visited paper shop during my art school years called Print Icon. Which is located at W18 Street between 5th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. They carry a wide selection of paper and material for invitations and greeding cards. You can really spend all day in there coming up with all kinds of paper projects in your head. They also do printing in-house so if you are not the do-it-yourself-type, you can have them do it for you. I was able to find a nice watercolor canvas paper that’s 120lb thick. Heavy enough for the feel of a business card. Textured enough to give it that nice crafty feeling in your hand.

As for the printer, which I didn’t have one. Actually, I do have an old printer that is out of ink. However, with the price of ink cartridge nowadays, you are better off buying a new printer. Which is exactly what I did. I wasn’t particularly picky at the kind of printer I wanted to purchase. All I am looking for in a printer is a paper tray feed from the back of the printer instead of the front. Why you might ask? Because heavy paper is much stiffer than regular paper. Not easy to bend around the loop of a printer that feeds the paper from the front and spits it back out to the front. Therefore, a printer that feeds its paper from the back side would allow it come through the front easily will be the most ideal.

Anyway, I’ve just wander into the local Best Buy and they just so happened to have a clearance sale on the Canon MP210 All-in-One print. And they carried only one kind of printer that has a rear paper tray. So clearly, this was the right choice.

After I arrived home, like a kid who just sucker his parents into buying him a new toy from Toys ‘R’ Us, I quickly destroyed the packaging and tested out the printer’s quality.

Here’s the result of my handy work.

This is what it looks like straight out of the inkjet:

Here’s what it looks like after 5 minutes of slicing on a rotary blade cutter:

Yup… Now I have a good handful of business cards to give out. I feel much more professional already.

Production elements:
Paper: 120lb watercolor canvas white paper. Purchased from Print Icon 4.00 for a pack of 50 sheets. Enough for 650 cards @ 13 cards/sheet
Printer: Canon MP210 All in One InkJet Printer. 69.99 plus Tax.

Design elements:
Chinese Type face “姚”: Hei Regular
English Type face: Adobe Caslon Regular, Semibold and Bold
Brush art element: Adobe Illustrator Brush Library Watercolor Stroke 6. Set Stroke as 1.5 points.

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How to get “this” to look like “this”…

Post by fotolistic on August 26th, 2008 In Category : Photography

Since posting, “Vintage and Rustic Photo Effect Experiment“, everyone has been asking, “How’d you get it to look like that?” To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember. So I started from stratch and reprocessed the original photo. Here’s a quick recipe for creating this "worn-out canvas" effect. (NOTE: For all the non Photo-choppers out there, this is nothing more than just geeky Photoshop jargon. But if you are a self-proclaimed Photoshop geek like me, let me know if there’s anything you need further explanation on.)

Updates (12/05/08):
Many people have asked about my library of texture-images that I’ve used to overlay on my photographs to create the quality and effects mentioned in this post. Due to popular demand, I’ve create a new post call “There’s a texture for every mood…” where you can download some of my most use texture-image to create your own vintage photos with.

Hope you find them useful.

So, how do we get from this…		to this?

Canon Camera Raw	Processed using Aperture	Imported to Photoshop for further editing

21mm F 6.3 1/125 Sec ISO 200 Auto WB	Camera Raw Fine Tuning Straightening White Balance Increase Exposure/Black Point/Brightness Enhanced Contrast/Saturation Lightened Mid-tone Level Recovered Highlight Value Vignette Edges and Corners (See screen shot of the Aperture adjustment)	To create that short depth-of-field, out of focus look, apply a Lens Blur filter onto a newly duplicated layer. Next, mask out the center of the image using a layer mask. The resulting effect leaves the surrounding image area slightly blurred.

Photoshop editing continues…

Finished

To create a film-like quality to the photo, apply the Add Noise filter onto a new layer. This’ll give the look of graininess, an aesthetic quality typically associated with film. Next, use a layer mask, once again, to mask out the center of the photo. I do this to avoid getting too much grain onto the face area. Set the layer to 15% transparency and layer blending as Multiply.

After that, a second image is applied onto the main image. This is image is taken from my own stock collection of photographed texures. I call this one, The Rag, for its crosshatching pattern. This layer was set to 25% transparency and layer blending to Screen.

When a traditional photograph is exposed to prolonged sunlight, it loses its red pigment, causing the image to fade. To achieve that same effect for a digital photo, apply a Color Balance Adjustment Layer between the Grain layer and the Lens Blur layer. I’m not sure how successful I was in duplicating that classic sun-faded look, however, the colors turned out quite interesting, so I kept it.

(See screen shot of the
Color Balance Value)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Coming Soon. yiuphotography.com

Post by fotolistic on August 25th, 2008 In Category : Design

Main logo for yiuphotography.com

Currently working on another website for myself. I know I know… another website. I can’t help it. I’m a design junkie. I need my web design fixing. But you know how designers are, once we have an idea, we just want to realize it on paper. Well in this case, the web.

This will be a more professional website dedicated for photography. It consist mainly slideshows of my photographs. Along with a few simple pages for contact and other informations. Nothing fancy. But this will be my online calling card for future photography work.

This image here will be the logo for the site. What do you think, like it? hate it? The chinese character is actually my last name. It is pronounced “IOU”. Like “you”. Anyway, I’m planning to design this website around this logo. Since, I’m still developing the structure of this site, it will be another week or 2 before it will be up online.

Meanwhile, stay tuned and I will do another announcement when it is up. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Good or bad.

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