- Open your images in Phoptoshop.
- Set the background as a layer (right click the
background and selecting “layer from background” or
Layer/New/Layer from background).
PREPARING YOUR HONOURS
PORTFOLIO DISPLAY
I have had the pleasure over many
years of printing exhibition images
for photographers and none more
challenging than an honours portfolio
for PSNZ honours.
By John Botton
APSNZN
eedless to say there is always a huge emotional
investment when showing your work and
especially if it’s to be scrutinised at close quarters
by a judging committee. Here are a few steps that I hope
will help you visualise your images before you go to
the expense of printing and mounting the final portfolio
set. For this exercise you will need access to Adobe
Photoshop and your final selection of honours images.
- Set the canvas size to 50x40 cm for landscape or
40x50cm portrait. - Create a new layer, drag it bellow the image layer and
set the fill colour to 50% gray. This will represent your
presentation matte. - Select transform (Cmd + T) and hold down the Shift
- Alt keys and resize the image layer until you are
happy with the proportion of the borders. Hint - an
info box on the top right corner will display the size.
6. Save your image as a .psd file in a new folder titled
“Display” to preserve the layers for possible future
editing (and so you don’t over write your hi-res file).
Leave all the files open for dragging into the display.
7. Do the same for the rest of your honours portfolio. Hint- create an action to do the basic setup.
- Create a new blank file with dimensions 594mm x
420mm and fill the background with white and save
as “display layout.psd”. Set some equally spaced
horizontal guides according to how you want your
portfolio to be displayed (in my case three rows). - Go back to each image tab and flatten the layers. Then
drag this to the master display image. - Resize each image (cmd + T) so that the long ends are
all the same (in the example I’ve used 120mm).
- Alt keys and resize the image layer until you are