Graphic Authority Slams

Before I get rolling with this post I want to make a comments about it. I did not take the image of the young man in this post, it was a screen grab and is a very low resolution at that. This may raise some objections in some circles on web ethics, but it is what it is. I normally try to use images in my library but will occasionally  jump out to the web (this is funny as using blogger, I'm already in the cloud) and snag an image. While I do not remember where this image came from I certainly will not take credit for its existence. Nuff Said!

This company has taken a different approach to photo effects than others companies. While many provide a one button click to an edge effect, Graphic Authority provides the Photoshop Jockey total control over every aspect of their creative process. Each GA file is a full fledged psd file (ok, that is a PhotoShop Document) with each element of the image on its own layer just waiting to be transformed, hacked, moved, resized or even used on other files. The options are only limited by the already limitless possibilities that photoshop encourages.

So here is the final image below of what I will now call my screenshot boy. Following are the steps and thoughts of the process.

I am not totally satisfied with the outcome but for the sake of this post it will work fine. I am simply showing the process of woking with the GA files here. Not photographic excellence. There are three files involves in this image. First of course is the image of Screenshot Boy, then an Distressed Edges file form the GA Extreme Edges collection  and finally an image  from the GA Fine Art Frames collection.

As you can see from the layers image below, the group on the left is what was done to the original image. Ultimately flattening (non-distructive by selecting the highest visible layer and contorting your fingers for  a Cmd-Option-Shft-E shortcut).

Below you can see the flattened image of the first part of the process. That flattened layer in the left stack of layers was then brought into the Frame file provided by Graphic Authority. Positioning the image below the layer "your_image_here" in the GA files makes sure all the effects of the GA file will apply to your image. Normally I would delete that layer but I wanted to have it here to demonstrate the ease of use of these files.

If the images are close in size a simple transform to resize your image works fine. If it is way out of wack, back up a couple of steps and resize the entire GA file using Photoshops Image>Image Size dialogue.

There are two bug plusses in using Graphic Authority files. First is the total control over the creative process that you retain. Secondly is the ability to grab layers from one image and apply t to here every you want. GA releases the right to use any portion of the files for the purchaser of their products. The down side is that it takes longer to decide which image and effect to use than it does to apply the effects. So it really isn't a down side.

The images come on a DVD with some really good tutorials on how to use the product. Each DVD comes with pamphlet on what images are on the DVD and a pdf file you can also print out. I must say these are a little clunky. What I ended up doing is putting them all (3000+) files on a drive and created a Lightroom Library. Yes it is taking up some 40 Gb of space but it sure is easy to brows the images and then make note of the location, go grab it and jump into PS. I do not open the GA image from LR as it makes a copy and I don't what the extra files on my drive.

Hey That will wrap it up for this week. Have a great weekend all.

Cya... Doug