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Making a glass award pop!
The company I work for usually receives an award every year. The award is always the same and is ALWAYS a pain in the butt to work with. I’ll attach a link to a picture of the award with a black background and a white. It is glass and usually has white or red type on it. I’ve tried various things to make this award look good in Photoshop. Until now I just did the best I could and left it at that. However, Now I am placing it on a flyer to be printed. I need to figure out how to make this thing pop and, of course, look good in general. The flyer that this will be on will have a black background.
I actually couldn’t find the original pic I took of the award on white but the one you see is that with some changes made. I can easily take it again however, if it is needed.
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5 Replies
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Hi there, I used to work for an acrylic award maker. We did our photos in house and most of the trick was just plain good photography (we had a great photographer, too). Even with great photos, the really good pix I mean, still had to be photoshopped.
For the photo you attached: make sure it’s the highest quality and resolution. Cut out the inside part (including the engraving if you have the original art for the engraving itself), use the smudge tool to smooth out the roughness in the award edges and stand – use a separate layer and set to sample all layers to get a second layer you can turn on and off. I would increase the contrast in the stand parts so there’s less white – they should have lots of black to look “clear.” Leave the background black. If you have the artwork for the engraving, use that for the photo instead – it’s cleaner, you set it to white, 75-90 opacity for a slight milky look, then duplicate that layer and offset a little bit. Add clear to white to clear gradient on it’s own layer and vary the opacity below 15% for a very subtle white gradient that will help sell the image. Add little touches like drop shadows, some little star highlights (go for subtle), make an image reflection below, etc.
Save early. Save often.
Jonathan Ziegler
http://www.electrictiger.com
520-360-8293 -
Thank you very much!
Should I retake the picture to try to get less white reflecting off of it? (Especially on the base) or remove it in Photoshop? Or Should I just leave it how it is? Just wondering what your opinion is because you have worked with this so often. I worry that no white would make the award very hard to see.
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Hi,
I think you should keep reflections on it, so it would look realistic. Using the same image you provide, you can try this:
– Use Color Range to make seletion on most of the object (grey part)
– Erase them with low-opacity Eraser (e.g. 30%)
– Then add more contrast to it (use Levels or Curves)Please see this example:
Regards,
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Dunno if it will help or not, but here’s the company I used to work for. I think some of these may have been mine, but it’s been since 2007 so they like have all new pix. Regardless, the idea is the same whether using glass or acrylic:
Save early. Save often.
Jonathan Ziegler
http://www.electrictiger.com
520-360-8293 -
Thank you very much! It’s very helpful to see an example. I ended up taking out the middle and keeping the edges and keeping the reflection for the most part. This is working on black but I will try some of the other suggestions for other color backgrounds.
Thanks!
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