Archimedia Studios

Some Photoshop tips that we would like to share with you

Duplicate, duplicate, duplicate. Make copies of your layers after each successful stage. It can be frustrating to get near the end and find there was a mistake early on in the process–but if you have an earlier version to return to, you can correct your errors far more easily.

Name each layer as you create it. If you use a filter, consider naming it with the settings you used – such as “Unsharp Mask, 2, 150, 0”–so you know how the effect was achieved.

Always experiment on a copy. Photoshop is ideal for tinkering and trying out new ideas–but make sure you keep a copy of the original before you start down an unknown path.

Be creative with filters. The Plastic Wrap filter doesn’t just wrap objects in plastic, it can be used to create liquids of all sorts. The Clouds filter may produce lousy clouds, but it’s a great random texture generator. And give the Wave filter another chance, it’s better than it looks.

Don’t erase anything. Use a Layer Mask instead. That way, you can always reveal pat of a layer you’d previously hidden. Once it’s erased, it’s gone.

Rather than applying a Curves or Color Balance adjustment to a layer, use an Adjustment Layer instead. The effect will be the same, except that we can go back and change the adjustment at any time–or copy it to a new layer.

Learn to use the Pen tool. It’s the single scariest Photoshop tool, and many users just give up on it. Take a day to master it and you’ll value it for the rest of your life.

Don’t forget the shadows. Shadows on objects, shadows beneath objects, shadows on the wall behind objects. Once the composition is finished, it’s the shadows that really bring it to life.

Convert layers to Smart Objects in complex compositions. Each time an object is scaled, rotated or distorted, some quality is lost. With Smart Objects, we can tinker as much as we like without losing any quality. It can be heartbreaking to see an image looking soft or ragged, simply because we changed our minds one time too many.

Similarly, convert layers to Smart Filters, you can now apply Gaussian Blur or Unsharp Mask, or any of Photoshop’s many other filters, and go back at any time and change the settings we’ve applied without harming the image quality in any way!

                  Most Common Amateur Video Editor Mistakes

                  #1: Poor Soundtrack – One of the first mistakes beginning editors make has nothing to do with the image. The soundtrack often makes or breaks a video production. No amount of excellent video can overcome a poor soundtrack.

                  Even the most basic video editing programs provide at least some means of audio editing, volume control, and equalization. Use them. For videotaped interviews where the person is heard but not seen, edit out distracting “uhs,” “ums,” and other audio “fluff,” including awkward pauses. This technique applies when supporting images or footage (called “B” roll material) is displayed while the person talks. This helps the person interviewed appear to be a better communicator than they actually are, and will improve your video and shorten your program (a good thing). A sure sign of a beginning editor is an ignored soundtrack.

                  #2: Wrong Music Selection- Music moves people. The wrong music (or no music at all) can move people to tears—of boredom. Take the time to seek out or create the music which will literally underscore your program. When mixing music with narration or interviews, be sure the music complements the spoken words in style, tempo, and volume.

                  #3 Poor Organization – Every video editing software program offers some means of organizing the elements of your video: titles, audio, video clips, pictures, sound effects, etc. The organizing tools include digital folders, sub-folders, clip bin icon display options, and file naming/renaming features. Master their use. Decide not to allow yourself onto the timeline until all your raw material is well organized and easy to locate. If you know you have the perfect shot or picture somewhere but can’t find it, then you really don’t have it. And don’t even think of leaving unlabeled videotapes lying around. An unlabeled videotape is crying out, “Erase me, please!”

                  #4 Too Long – Everyone, without exception, during the early stages of their video editing journey creates scenes and video programs that could be improved—sometimes dramatically—by simply making them shorter, tighter, and more concise. Keep only the essentials. Shorten, shorten again, then shorten some more. “When it doubt, cut it out” is the video editor’s eternal chant. The over-used phrase “less is more” is never truer than when editing video. Edit mercilessly (but remain merciful).

                  #5: Weak Start and Weak Finish Spend three to five times as much time on your opening and closing 60 seconds as you do on any other portion of your video. Like every good book, movie, or message, the importance of your video’s opening and conclusion is impossible to overstate. Pull out all the stops for your start. That doesn’t mean going on “visual overload” with all manner of purposeless digital transitions, over-the-top soundtrack, in-your-face computer graphics, and 70s-music-video special effects. It means you have thought long and hard about how you are going to grab your viewer’s attention for what’s coming next. Simplicity can be very dramatic.

                  #6: Overused Special Effects Only the few, the brave, the strong, and the wise avoid the trap of sprinkling all manner of special effects throughout their videos. Sure, your editing software (not to mention your video camera) has dozens, even hundreds, of ways to manipulate your titles, pictures, and video clips. Flips, spins, tumbles, squeezes, zips, zooms, and fly-a-ways are only a few of the usual suspects. Then there are the video fillers such as strobe, monochrome, motion blur, old movie, sepia, etc. Arrest them. Ignore them 95 percent of the time. They can be appropriate and downright fun in a few (a very few) youth ministry videos, but you would do well to avoid them for the vast majority of your ministry video productions. Don’t be seduced!

                  #7: Overused Fonts- You can smell this miscue coming. Like the aforementioned overuse of special effects, beginning editors too often fall into “fontmania.” Not only does misuse of onscreen text distract viewers from your message and your story, it is a sure sign of a production without a purpose, or at least an editor without a purpose. Use one or two different, easy-to-read fonts for your well-designed, onscreen text. Maintain consistency in color, size, screen placement, drop shadows, and motion. Sans serif fonts such as Eras Bold, Impact, and Franklin Gothic are much easier to read on-screen than serif fonts such as Times Roman, FreeStyle Script, and Bodini MT.

                  #8: Wrong Tempo- The pacing of a video must fit the purpose. A memorial tribute video is going to have a very different pace than a youth ministry summer camp highlight video. The wise video editor determines then controls the pace of the video from start to finish. This doesn’t mean the pace never changes. Changing pace throughout a video program serves to renew the viewers attention, refreshing their interest. The video editor has several primary tools for controlling the pace of any video production, including:

                  • Music tempo, style, and volume, and also it’s absence.
                  • Duration of scenes and individual shots.
                  • Transitions from scene to scene.

                  Faster-paced programs may have little or no visual transition between different scenes. Slower-paced productions often incorporate a slow fade-to-black or cross-dissolve between scenes and segments with accompanying change in music.

                  The pause is the editors “invisible tool.” A pause is nothing. No thing. Yet it can prove to be a powerful tool for communicating when properly used. There is no way to teach the “magic of the pause” in an article such as this. Not unlike most of life, the learning arrives through the doing. You might want to pause and think about that.

                  #9: No Speed Changes Overlooking the power of changing the speed of a clip is a common Misstep among beginning editors. Just because our raw footage is all real time doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. We’ve all been powerfully moved by a video editor’s artful combination of music, close-up imagery, and slow motion. On the flip side we’ve all laughed out lout at the comedic effect of high-speed video. Granted, the editor may not have control over how close-up an image appears (although the ability to zoom-in on high definition footage without noticeable loss of quality has overcome even this limitation), but the speed at which a video clip is played is under the editor’s control.

                  #10: Unnecessary Commentary- Video is a powerful medium because of its ability to combine images, music, and sound. Although text and the spoken word can be part of a video, those elements do not play to video’s strengths. Good editors assume viewers are smart—they honor the audience’s ability to interpret scenes, expressions, and sounds without spoon feeding information through the unnecessary use of titles and commentary (“Here we are at the swimming pool!”). Honor your viewers and give them the satisfaction of discovering the nuances of your program. But make sure the nuances are present.

                  Best practices in Marketing ROI and Analytics

                  One of our favorite marketing sayings is:

                  “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”

                  Below are what we feel are best practices in marketing analytics and measuring and improving marketing ROI.


                1. Marketing reporting is less important than making the marketing DECISIONS that improve ROI. Don’t measure just what you can – measure what you can ACT on.  Ultimately marketing ROI should not be about “who gets credit”, but instead about what decisions the measurements allow to improve overall profitability of the program – and the company.
                2. Measure to find not just what works, but what works better; focus on “improving ROI” not “proving ROI”. Measuring marketing programs should not be a pass / fail exercise. Instead, focus your efforts on learning what you can do that will improve ROI. This isn’t about dropping low-profit programs; it’s about a holistic view of what works and where profit comes from. The best ROI may come from improving targeting or optimizing sales conversion.
                3. It’s possible to measure just about anything in marketing, but impossible to measureeverything in marketing. Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should. Marketing measurement costs time and money, so focus your time and energy on the metrics that will support the most profitable decision-making.
                4. Don’t be an “arts and crafts” cost-center; marketing should be a revenue driver worthy of investment. It’s easy to measure marketing activity (inputs such as budget and programs), but hard to measure marketing results. Contrast this to sales, where activity is hard to measure but results are easy to see. Given this dynamic, is it any wonder that Sales tends to get the credit for revenue but marketing is perceived as a cost center? To build credibility, focus your measurements on the metrics your CFO cares about – things like revenue, cash-flow and profit – and position your budget in terms of investment instead of cost.
                5. Avoid “vanity metrics” that sound good, but mean little if anything about real marketing ROI. Many common marketing metrics – such as names gathered at a tradeshow, Twitter followers, and press release impressions – sound good and impress people, but don’t really have any strong correlation to revenue. It’s OK to track these internally if they help you make better marketing decisions, but avoid sharing them with executives outside of the department unless you have previously established why they matter.
                6. Focus on effectiveness (doing the right things) more than efficiency (doing possibly the wrong things well). The best ROI gains come from focusing time and money on doing the right things (such as targeting the right segments) more than on how well or cost-effectively you do them. Metrics that show a CFO that marketing is impacting revenue are more likely to protect the budget than metrics that show how well the marketing department is operating internally.
                7. Program planning includes ROI planning:  1) what to measure 2) when to measure and 3) how to measure. It’s important to quantify the expected outcomes from any marketing investment being planned, and to know exactly how you will measure the program against those goals. You can also take specific steps to make marketing programs more measurable, such as setting up control groups or varying spending levels by geography to measure relative impact.
                8. True marketing ROI requires understanding all the costs involved, not just top-line impact.Sometimes a marketing program that appears profitable won’t be if sales expenses and COGS (cost of goods sold) are taken into account. Even better, incorporate the full lifetime value of a customer into your calculation. The more your metrics can correlate to the net-present value of lifetime profits from incremental closed revenue, including all marketing and sales costs, the better.
                9. Fundamentally, marketing measurement is about sales effectiveness, not marketing. The two most important questions you can answer about marketing’s results are: (1) what effect is marketing investments having on sales effectiveness and productivity and (2) how are marketing activities lowering the combined expense to revenue ratio for sales and marketing combined? By focusing not just on marketing is isolation, but on how marketing impacts sales productivity, you will get a much more comprehensive view of the true ROI of your activities.

                  10. Brand Idenity not to be confused with Brand Image

                  Brand identity is the outward expression of a brand, including its name, trademark, communications, promotion, and visual appearance. Because you develop the brand identity, it will reflect how you want the consumer to perceive the brand, the company, and the product or service. Don’t confuse this with the very important brand image.

                  The brand image is your customer’s mental picture of your brand. If you have executed your strategic marketing plan properly, the customer will have a brand image similar to what you attempt to project.

                  The Power of Brand

                  What is a brand?

                  What does a brand do for you?

                  Why do you need a brand; or do you need a brand?

                  How can a brand help drive business your way?

                  Is all of this talk of brand overblown?

                  Think of your company, what is its brand, how do customers know you? What do you stand for? How can you improve your company’s perception?

                  A brand is the cornerstone or anchor point of your customer experience, it seasons all dialogue about your organization, and it focuses your advertising efforts and promotional activity. The positioning and strength of your marketing framework flows from your brand. A strong brand is about truth and it must tie into your company’s strengths. A brand creates a distinctive and durable perception in the minds of consumers. It’s a unique business identity intertwined with associations of personality, quality, and desire.

                  Think of a brand as a structure that holds your customer’s goodwill and your reputation. It’s your company’s identity and for what you stand. A brand can change the positioning of your product or service from a commodity, to a premium product or service so instead of appealing to low-price shoppers you attract buyers willing to pay more for your goods than for those of competitors. Ask yourself this, why do people willingly pay $3.00 bottle for water when they can get it free from the tap? That’s what a brand can do for you.

                  People particularly like brands they know; they feel comfortable buying a brand named product. Cadillac and Mercedes Benz have been fighting for the number one spot in the luxury car market for years, and then along came Lexus a few years ago and it has slowly chiseled away at their market. A few years ago, you might not have considered buying a Lexus but now, it has become a recognized luxury brand.

                  Branding your business works. Visit a local supermarket and look at the generic labels. If you check the generic brand of canned corn, compared to Green Giant brand, you will see the black and white label priced much lower. If you look at the nutritional label, you will find out that there is no difference what so ever. However, the brand name sells equal to or better than the generic one because people will pay a premium price for a known brand because consumers perceive it as better.

                  It takes time, money, and effort to build a brand name from scratch. Franchising is big business; people will pay large fees to purchase brand named businesses. Think of McDonalds, 7-11 stores, True Value, Do-It-Best, HobbyTown USA, and many others, people buy into these franchises, because they are a known brand with a business plan that all but guarantees success.

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