Step by step, Compositing birthday card design

Ok so my moms 60th birthday was coming around the corner, and i couldn't think of anything to buy her beeing last minute and all. Pulled an all nighter and put together this designed birthday card for her.

Some people have already told me it looks too harsh and cold to give to your mom. Just want to point out that we're a family of German ancestry, we're like that.

Started fiddling around in 3D Studio Max because of superior text tools until i landed on something i found fitting design-wise, then exported it over to Maya. Made a ton of shaders and layers. Then exported everything to Images.

After working up a result i was decently happy about, I concluded that the image lacked flare. Lens flare to be specific.

As it is usually frowned upon to use lens flares I hid it by making the general image a tad overexposed.

Leaping headfirst into ExtendScript 2.0

Today we ran into somewhat of a problem at my job. One of our clients had stuffed a server chuck-full with uncompressed TIFF-images. The payload weighed in at the modest amount of 10GB.

Our ability to deliver a somewhat stable way for our customers to deliver content to us vanished, as the veritable meat-pile of images just sat there, customer-satisfaction-blocking us all afternoon.

So i whipped up a quick way for me and my co-workers to quick batch those images into leaner shape.

What we needed for web availability was no more than 1280px-sized images and RGB (sRGB) images.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Extrude Weightcutter, v1.1, Extrude Interactive, 2010
// Author: Sven-Erik Jonsson, svenerik@extrude.se
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
bringToFront();

var oldUnits = preferences.rulerUnits;
var startDisplayDialogs = displayDialogs;

preferences.rulerUnits = Units.PIXELS;
displayDialogs = DialogModes.NO;

var files = File.openDialog('Choose files to resize', '*.*', true);

if (files)
{
 var userImageSize = prompt('Target image size','Enter image size');
 var targetImageSize = (!isNaN(parseInt(userImageSize))) ? parseInt(userImageSize) : 1280; 
 
 jpgSaveOptions = new JPEGSaveOptions();
 jpgSaveOptions.embedColorProfile = true;
 jpgSaveOptions.formatOptions = FormatOptions.STANDARDBASELINE;
 jpgSaveOptions.matte = MatteType.NONE;
 jpgSaveOptions.quality = 8;  

 for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++)
 {
  var currFile = files[i];
  if (currFile.exists)
  {
   open(currFile);
   
   try 
   {    
    if (activeDocument.mode != DocumentMode.RGB) activeDocument.changeMode(ChangeMode.RGB);
    if (activeDocument.bitsPerChannel != BitsPerChannelType.EIGHT) activeDocument.bitsPerChannel = BitsPerChannelType.EIGHT;
    
    activeDocument.flatten();   
    
    try { activeDocument.convertProfile("sRGB IEC61966-2.1", Intent.PERCEPTUAL, true, true); }
    catch(e) {}
    
    var portrait = (activeDocument.height > activeDocument.width);
   
    if (!portrait) activeDocument.resizeImage( targetImageSize, null, 300, ResampleMethod.BICUBIC );
    else activeDocument.resizeImage( null, targetImageSize, 300, ResampleMethod.BICUBIC );    
    
    var asCopy = (activeDocument.name.toString().indexOf(".jpg") > -1);
    
    activeDocument.saveAs(activeDocument.path, jpgSaveOptions, asCopy);
    activeDocument.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
   }
   catch(e)
   {
    alert(e);
   }  
  }
 }
}

// Leave no crap behind
displayDialogs = startDisplayDialogs;
preferences.rulerUnits = oldUnits;
purge(PurgeTarget.ALLCACHES);

Download Script

Installation

Put the script in:
Program Files > Adobe > Adobe Photoshop (CS-version) > Presets > Scripts

Restart Photoshop if needed

Activate from:
File > Scripts > ex_weightcutter

Use with caution around jpeg files.