Double Help......

[jeyelle]

Hi Everyone

Really enjoy reading everyones coments, you are so kind with the help and advice given.
So from the start a big THANK YOU to the advice and help and time, given to those of us, who are lets say "less experienced".....

To start I am a "self" trained framer, though have been doing this for approximately 12 years, mainly for family and friends, and have gained quite a lot of experience along the way, and guess I am now at a point where I would like to take it to the next step, and venture into the "big bad world" of framing, though I am not naive enough to realise, there are still lots of things I need to learn, and find this along with other things to be part of the appeal.

Anyway, on to the questions

1. I am in the process of setting up a website, which is no problem, but am struggling photographing examples of my work, as all the photo's I take with my digital camera, have what are best descibed as curved sides.
Is there a way round this......?????

2. I know this has been asked before on many occasions, but hoped someone could give me a "rule of thumb" guidance on pricing.
As mentioned the majority of my work has been for family and friends (And for some reason I seem to attract a lot of shadowbox framing), and to be honest have really only charged for materials.
I understand there are various ideas on this subject, and that particular circumstances can determine how things are charged.i.e. hourly rates, material costs etc........
Obviously I don't want to price myself out of the market from the outset, but also, don't want to undersell myself either.........

Anyway, hope I can attract some help/advice on both points.......

Once again many thanks to everyone that share their thoughts and opinions on this board, and I hope to keep everyone updated over the coming months as to how things are going.

Oh, and no doubt I will have another question or two to ask as well......

Best Regards To Everyone

Jeremy[/i]

[Coxby]

Hi Jeyelle, in answer to your digital photos having curved sides, better known as Barrel distortion. It is a lens defect that causes straight lines to bow out toward the edges of the image. Pincushion distortion is the opposite effect, where straight lines bend inward.

This is common in most compact digital cameras with a zoom lens as they tend to give a wide angle perspective when the zoom is at it's minimum. There are two ways to solve this, 1) stand further back and use the zoom on your camera to fit the object in the view finder and 2) Use a software package like Photoshop CS2 which has an inbuilt filter to correct this problem.

Hope this helps, Coxby.

[jeyelle]

Hi There Coxby

Many thanks for your advice. Will try the first method too, but I do have access to CS2, any chance you can point me in the right direction regarding the filter you mentioned......

Many thanks in advance

Jeremy

[markw]

Hi Jeyelle
Cant beat coxby's answer on barrell distortion - Pricing - try the sponsors pricing program - it comes with preloaded pricing figures - they probably wont suit your needs (they might) but they are a good starting point. You will find a lot of posts on the forum about the subject - its not easy as a lot of the factoring involved has to be based upon your fixed costs. You may well find the biggest problem is that family and friends have got used to your material based costs and wont be very impressed by the realistic commercial based costs - we all have to earn a living.

[John]

There is a good item here that outlines techniques for eliminating barrel distortion using Photoshop, including the use of a free plug-in that is supposed to do the job for you. Luckily I have not had to make this correction so have no first hand experience. If you follow Coxby's advice and avoid the wide angle end of the zoom, the chances are that your pictures will not need to be corrected for barrel distortion.

As to pricing, download the software via the link on the forum, there is no charge for this and you are welcome to use it for a trial period. The prices produced by the initial settings will be a bit on the low side for a High Street bespoke framer, but will give you a guide to the sort of charges you should be making for your work.

Good luck with the website, don't forget to post a link (or better, update your profile with your www).

[Coxby]

Jeremy, John's link is spot on and this method does work on the example photo they've used; however when you're dealing with photos with two sets of parrallel lines i.e. a framed picture with a mount, the 'pinch' command tends to concentrate on the centre of the photo and therefore proves quite difficult to correct both the frame and the aperture parrallels [sp.] CS2's filter found under Filter>Distort>Lens Correction and set the 'Remove Distortion' slider to +2 or +3 should do the trick. Then do what John's link says and use the Crop tool with Perspective to get the frame to fill the window nice and squarely. Good luck! Ed

[John]

Even when taking pictures for the web, keep your camera set for good quality images, do not fill the image right to the edge where the distortion is most noticable. Then, when you crop down to the area of interest, you will find that there is much less distortion (maybe even unnoticible), and also the picture will still have more than enough resolution to be viewed clearly on screen.