Notes on Margins

Learned in Book School* to always design for the finished product -- then work backwards. Am making sets of photo art prints, but only planned as far as the various paper sizes.

Then brought home some inexpensive frames to see how the proof prints look framed and behind glass. Margins around the images either really worked or really didn't work.

Didn't work: anything where a little white strip of paper shows all the way around.

Really didn't work: narrow margins that are different top/bottom and right/left, leaving unequal thin white strips all around.

Worked: one inch margins. They give the print a matted look without the mat. And the wider borders give the images an intimate,  jewel-like quality.

Really worked: equal left-right margins with extra space at bottom. Mini art prints. Very nice.

Will have to do test prints close to the edge as the printer will go, so when framed there aren't any margins at all. This should have been the first step once I started making proof prints.

Also have to go back though the images and rethink crops and re-do templates -- all because I forgot what I learned in Book School.

*RIT School of Print Media

Keeping files neat and tidy (and safe)

If you have digital image files you care about, in a significantly large quantity, here's one strategy for protecting them -- and yourself -- from loss:

1. Purchase Adobe Lightroom and a book to help you learn it

2. Buy two of the biggest hard drives you can afford

... sooner or later it will save you from headaches and heartache.

Less than two months after getting my photo catalog in order using Lightroom -- and organizing the files into two identical (mirrored) sets on two different disk drives -- the time and money paid off when one of the disks failed.

All that was needed was to reset the Lightroom catalog to point to the set of backup photos on other drive. Just like that, everything was back up and running. Of course I was on pins and needles until I made another mirrored copy of the files. With a new set of my image files safely on a new drive, I was through the most pain-free hard drive crash ever.