Photo Retouching

Elements & Design

Photo of my mother when she was young
My father kept this photo beside his bed for many years and mom had one of dad on her side of the bed.  Over the years the photo became damaged from sunlight and thereafter faded.  After my mother passed away Dad asked if I could fix it so we could reframe it.  I took the worn out photo home.  I realized that a good portion of my moms hair and shoulder needed to be replaced along with fixing her fading image.  I never did ask dad what was cut out of the photo that was next to mom.  Photo retouching is fun work because your bringing an image back to life that you may have thought to be lost.  I've retouched photo's to remove or add elements depending on the request.  I have also retouched photo's that were once thought to be trash because of the fold mark on the families faces.  Almost nothing is impossible!

Basic Steps to photo resizing using Photoshop

Elements & Design 
Photos are resized for various reasons;
A.) To resize a high quality photo (300 dpi) to share with family/friends over the internet.
B.) To crop out unwanted items in a photo.
C.) To use a photo on a promotional item.

Advertising - Elements and Design

Elements & Design

Businesses located in Big Bear Lake, California.

Get the Burger, a local hamburger and milkshake hangout, needed a custom ad.  By-the-way I love their burgers and fries.  They needed an ad to take you back to a time when we went to malt shops to grab a burger and washed it down with a soda pop.  The bubble was a cute way to advertise the use of REAL ice cream.  If you come to Big Bear you have to try out this place.

Below are more ads I've developed for various companies in Big Bear.  First Mountain Bank, Team Big Bear, Silver Pines Escrow, and Holloways Marina.

Magazine - Elements and Design

Elements & Design

Businesses located in Big Bear Lake, California.
This is a  64 page magazine I designed for the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce.  All elements for the layout, artwork, content, photography and ad work were either designed or processed by me.   Some photography and text were provided by the Chamber.  All design elements for this magazine worked around a historical theme of times past in Big Bear.  Many of the pictures were given to us by a local history buff to use free of charge.  This magazine became a keeper showing various historical points of interest in Big Bear.  Many old pictures were from postcards and contained written notes to loved ones, these were included to provide interesting notes about the weather or vacation activities people were enjoying at the time.  This made the magazine a fun read.  I've designed a total of 3 magazines for the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce since 2007.
To view a pdf of the 09/10 Guide click here and navigate to Business Guide.

Signs and Banners - Elements and Design

Signs and Banners 
Elements & Design

Business located in Big Bear Lake, California.

I designed this banner for the City of Big Bear Lake.  The banners hang on the light poles in Big Bear Lake Village.  Also when entering the Village from either Village Dr. or Pine Knot Ave. on Big Bear Blvd. you will see rectangle signs with the same design.  These banners are designed to be used over and over in fall or winter.  Simple and Clean.

Vector Art - Elements and Design

Vector Art
Elements & Design

 

This is an example of using my Wacom Tablet to create vector art.  The design on the left took 2nd place in a local Big Bear art contest.  I re-designed some of the elements to go on a t-shirt. Below is a close-up of the elements inside her eyes.  To see more vector art designed with my Wacom Tablet view blog; "Logos Elements and Design".

Marketing - Elements and Design

Marketing  
Elements & Design

Business located in Big Bear City, California.

This business wanted a whole new look and marketing strategy to promote their business.  They had the oval with the words Dave's Auto, Inc.  They requested a caricature of Dave, the owner.  They also wanted something to denote they service automobiles and tires.  They wanted some dirt, mountain and tree's.  With that I was able to create the above logo for them.  The red and orange give them lots of color and the thumbs up on the caricature denotes trust.

But this was not the most important feature of this logo.  The marketing strategy...

Logo - Elements and Design

LOGO  
Elements & Design

Business located in Temecula, California.
This company logo was designed with the idea of keeping our environment clean by removing debris from commercial and residential properties, and disposing of it at centers that recycle.  In addition our company designed the website, brochure, signage, car magnets, work shirts and all other promotional items. To find out more visit http://888wehaul.com.

I used two simple cool colors to create this logo. The truck has world wheels, the bed of the truck denotes new growth by keeping our environment clean. These elements can also be used separately. For instance the work shirts have the logo & business telephone number embroidered on the front and the back was silk screened with the black truck and tag line. To create logos I always use Illustrator to create my vector graphics and my Wacom tablet to draw elements like the truck, leaves and wheels.

You may wonder why...