This article might be catering to the more landed of the gentry among us, but no matter what field of design you work in, you will eventually have to take pictures of food. This might be for an advertisement umbrellaed under your firm, or it might just be for a clients promotional materials. Either way, taking quality pictures of products that aren’t built to last long can be quite the challenge. Thankfully, we’ve had some time to think about the process, and we’ve compiled a few thoughts below on how you too can take amazing photographs of food to include in your designs. It’s not a full proof process, but if you use each of the following pointers with a grain of salt and some common sense, you’ll do fine, Pilgrim. Now get to reading just beyond the break!

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Quality photography seems to be popping up just about everywhere these days, with the price of high quality DSLR cameras continuously dropping and the cost of decent quality little point and shoots falling even faster. However, most of these photographs tend to fall into a category of “normal” or just plain “nice” instead of really standing out above their peers. The same can not be said of the work of photographer Chema Madoz. While stunning color photography holds its place in the world, a good appreciation for black and white classic pieces is a part of any serious designer’s artistic outlook. Madoz’s photography, however, is not just basic monochromatic “artsiness;” instead, the creativity of the photo sets really sets this artist apart.

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So you’ve spent hours and hours perfecting your new business card design, and now you want to show it off: Whether you’re displaying your work to other designers, potential clients, or just friends and family, you’ll want to ensure your business card photographs are of the highest quality. Sadly, shooting a business card set is not nearly as easy as you might like. There are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind when doing so. Thankfully, we’ve compiled all of the important bits below.

If you’re preparing to shoot your latest business card design for promotional photo use, be sure to incorporate the following tips during your session!

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While an abundance of Photoshop tutorials are floating around on the web today, wading through all of them just to find the ones that are really worth your time can be frustrating and time consuming. Thankfully, we’ve actually done much of the hard work for you and have compiled this lovely little list of our top 10 favorite Photoshop tutorials.

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There are thousands of blogs dedicated to the art of graphic design online, with varying quality and content. We have developed a short list of some of the better Photoshop blogs online today. Take a look at these top picks for excellent Photoshop blogs ; read, learn, and hopefully find your niche in today’s graphic design market!

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While an abundance of photoshop tutorials are floating around on the web today, wading through all of them just to find the ones that are really worth your time can be frustrating and time consuming. Thankfully, we’ve actually done much of the hard work for you and have compiled this lovely little list of our top 10 favorite photoshop tutorials.

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Capturing a quickly moving subject as if it is suspended in time is definitely a skill desired by any serious photographer. In fact, it’s a bit of a necessary skill for anyone who wants in on capturing some great “leisure diving” photos (this season’s current follow-up to the planking trend). However, as any great graphic designer knows, creativity and diversity are components of any quality profile. Because of this, taking a bit of a less traditional approach to motion photography can actually enhance the skills and portfolio of any photographer or graphic designer. “Smooth/blurred motion” photography focuses on allowing fast motion to go unfrozen, and instead creates photographs where the subject is “smoothly” moving.

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As graphic design sources such as Veer start promoting their line of summer photography for use in your seasonal works, consider using your own creative ingeniousness to shoot your own pictures. Successfully doing this will keep your work entirely unduplicated by any other designer, as well as keep your money in your wallet. While there is definitely no “set rules” to creating a useful, multi-purpose set of summer photographs to work with, here are several useful suggestions that can guide your photo shoot towards a professional direction.

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Light Painting, or Flashlight Photography, is a totally unique way of looking at light in a design—instead of being an accent, light sources themselves become the subject. This art form is brilliantly simple (though hard to master) and has an almost endless potential to liven up a design. Before diving into the nuts and bolts of how to create your own Light Painting experiments, let’s take a look at an example of the style that’s appeared in a big-house productions.

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Learning how to work with layers in Photoshop is absolutely vital for anyone, graphic designer or not. Even some of the most basic effects and manipulations in Photoshop require knowledge of the layers tool. While it may appear rather complicated at first, don’t worry as the layers concept isn’t too hard to learn out once you sit down with some of the top Photoshop tutorials.

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