White House Custom Color is a favorite of many photographers. They offer great quality products, outstanding service, and continue to introduce new products that cater to the needs of photographers in various markets. One nice, new addition is their Premium Packaging. In this new What’s in the Box, we provide a quick look at this packaging and how it can enhance the presentation and delivery of your client’s professional prints.
WHCC always impresses us with their great products and services Overall:Quality: Finishing: Customer Service: Innovation:
DoodleDo is having it’s busiest season yet, and demand has increased Lead Times and delivery, so we just want to take a moment to thank all of you for you patience and continued support. We have a lot of designs both in production and scheduled for production, but rest assured that we will not lower our standards for exceptional design work just to get through it. It has been and always will be important to us that each and every design be unique and satisfying to you and your clients.
Our What’s in the Box series of reviews remain popular, and we have several new ones in the works and a few ready to post. Next up is a look at the great new Premium Packaging from White House Custom Color. We’ll have this on the blog shortly.
The release of our new Refine services is coming. Photographers are already expressing interest in DoodleDo’s Business Coaching, Album Intensive workshop, and practical Resources. We will be looking for folks interested in hosting the Album Intensive in their city during 2010. You are always welcome to email us for more info. We will soon have all the information available here on the DoodleDo website.
For those of you who visit regularly, you may have noticed some changes to our menu items. The Refine section and Refine FAQs have been taken offline as we prepare to launch an exciting new selection of services under the Refine heading. We are excited to share the news!
From the start, DoodleDo has primarily focused on album design. The post-processing of image collections was a natural addition, since we were receiving enough requests to include it as an option. Over the past year the success of our design services has been fantastic, so we finally made the decision to drop the full image processing services. We still offer processing for clients who need additional image work for the design images. These include balancing corrections, artistic enhancements, retouching, and tonal conversions. The former Refine services are no longer offered.
We will be launching a new set of services under the Refine heading. The goal is to help photographers refine their business practices and achieve greater success. Both a response to many requests from our clients, and a natural extension of our passion and industry experience, these great new services have been in the works for some time and we can’t wait to tell you all about it.
So stay tuned for the release of DoodleDo’s all new REFINE services!
Some of you probably know that Robin’s precious Shih Tzu, Alexander, was the inspiration behind our business name, DoodleDo. Well, Alexander is in a heated contest for the Cutest Dog award. There are 12 weeks of chances for him to take the weekly prize and go on to the semi-finals. We thought it appropriate to ask our DoodleDo clients and fans to put in their vote for, obviously, the cutest dog of all! Remember, every Saturday starts a new round of weekly voting, so be sure to come back and place your new votes. And if you’re really into it, you can vote once each day. We appreciate your support of Alexander. :)
There are those certain suppliers who, while consistent in quality and service, still surprise by going above and beyond to satisfy.
This is evident by the equally consistent raves they receive from a long list of happy customers, especially from us very picky photographers! Pixel2Canvas is one deserving of much praise. Not only are their canvas products outstanding, their customer service is top-notch. To find out why we think so, check out our newest What’s in the Box as we describe how they met an urgent need for an important event. Higher standards, higher quality, exceptional value – just like their website claims!
Pixel2Canvas is a must for professional canvas prints Overall: Print Quality: Finishing: Customer Service: Packaging:
Color is such a fascinating subject, so I will spend a couple of posts discussing this important element in our Style series.
First I think we should take a look at color theory just a little. At its core, color theory relates to choosing a palette of aesthetically pleasing tonal relationships. In short, it is deciding which colors work well together. When developing an album style you will probably be drawn to a certain background color. I think there are three basic directions you can go – black, white or chromatic. I define chromatic as a color found in the images themselves that will be used for the background.
Understanding color theory will help you choose your palette by knowing what colors go well together. It also allows you to be more creative without making a color mess. There are three color harmonies that, I believe, lend themselves well to album design and creating a style: complimentary, analogous and monochromatic. You’re certainly not limited to these three relationships, but based on our experience, they’re the most effective for developing your style because they are clearly defined.
Even if you switch up your album background colors, your color harmony can really give you a distinct album style. Let’s look at each of the harmonies.
Complimentary – Color pairs that are opposite one another on the color wheel as shown here.
For example, red and green are complimentary colors, as are yellow and violet. Using complimentary colors makes for a bolder design.
Analogous – Colors that are adjacent to one another on the color wheel. These tones have similar light ray wavelengths, so they are easiest on the eye.
Monochromatic – Color schemes made up of shades and tints of the same color. By changing opacities, you can use the same color to layer tones and create depth and complexity.
Your background color choice is important for obvious reasons. I find that summer weddings tend to be complimented by light tones and shades, or white backgrounds that allow the images, strokes and graphics to really dominate the design. Fall and winter weddings tend to look great on darker colors. Black seems to always work and is very popular, but try to stretch your creativity a little if your photography style allows.
Multicolored backgrounds in an album can be tough since this can overwhelm the images. The image collection must be considered first and foremost when choosing your background so, again, your image style will be important in setting the stage. I tend to choose one or two colors to work with, and then add a stroke color for accent.
Always take a close look at your images and determine which of the three color harmonies would best compliment the collection and your style. If you have preferences, be sure to indicate them on the DoodleDo Design Order & Preferences Form so that we create a design using the colors you really love. If you leave it to us, we will certainly choose colors that will compliment and enhance your image collection in a beautiful design.
In our next Style post, we’ll take a look at actually choosing the color for your next design and discover if it works for emphasizing the style you want to portray in your albums.
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