When marketing your business, it’s important to have promotional material that packs a real punch. Whether it’s a flyer, business card or poster, your print products should be unique and eye-catching, while containing the relevant information of your services. Besides, a good-quality leaflet may be the thing that wins over a potential client. Taking high quality photos for print is a must!
In order to create a truly unique print product, you may want to consider taking and using your own photos. Not only will your material be individual, it will be personal, too. That being said, creating the perfect photo to market your business can be quite difficult, so we’ve put a few tips together to help you out.
Use a good camera
If you want a good quality photo, you need to use a decent camera. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you must own a state-of-the-art DSLR, just a modern camera with enough megapixels to snap clear and concise images.
Carefully consider the subject of your photo
The next step is thinking about what you want to take a photograph of. Bear in mind that the photo should visually represent your brand and its values. You may choose a subject that literally represents your services; if you were a window company you could take a photograph of a picturesque house boasting your products, for example. Or, you could photograph something a little more abstract that doesn’t necessarily illustrate what you do, but works well as a promotional and eye-catching image.
Once you’ve decided on your subject, pay attention to framing. If you have a small subject, like one of your products for example, zoom in to cut out unnecessary background objects that could distract people from the intended focal point. If you have a digital camera, there’s no harm in taking numerous photos and later deciding which ones work best. You can afford to be creative – play around with angles, lighting and distances.
Editing
Most photos will need a little editing to make them truly picture-perfect, and there’s plenty of software that can help you to achieve this. If you consider yourself a bit of an editing novice, you can find plenty of guides on the Internet. When editing the image, you should be enhancing your chosen subject to make it really stand out. This could be through changing colouring or shading, by erasing other objects, or by cropping the background, for example. This can be a tricky process, so you may want to use a graphic designer to help you out.
Sizing the photograph to print
After you’ve edited your chosen photos/photographs, you need to think about sizing it to your chosen print products. An image that works well on an A3 flyer may not work as well on a small business card, and so you may need to drastically alter the image. You must also consider borders and cropping of the material. Again, it may be more beneficial for you to hire a graphic designer to help with the process.
Printing
By this point, you would have spent a long time creating the perfect photograph for your print products, so it would be a shame to fall at the last hurdle. It’s essential to choose an excellent-quality printer so that your photos make the intended impact.