Publications

Rubber Stamper

The Rubber Stamper was launched in January of 1997 and was published quarterly. This 96 page issue was circulated to 30,000 consumers across the country. The magazine grew to a bi-monthly frequency with 176 pages and circulation over 50,000...including major newsstands across the country. The front cover photography for every issue from the first to the last was by Zugcic Photography.

When we first started doing the cover photography, we did all of the layout and composition using a Mylar overlay with the masthead, UPC label, etc, exposing 4x5 Polaroids and transparencies. Using this method allowed us to use all of the transparency with a minimal crop. All of the scans and CMYK conversions was done in-house.

As we moved to digital capture, we made a digital capture cart, equipped with a 17" MAC Powerbook, LaCie hard drive and DVD burner. For the digital system, the client made a Digital Overlay that we would drop over top of our digital captures. Using this system, we could again use all of the available pixels with a minimum amount of cropping or enlarging.

Post Production System:

We sent the publisher full frame FPO JPEGs that were used for the final design steps. Once the design and layout were completed, we prepared the final CMYK TIFF files and Contract Proofs that were sent to the printer for color match.

This process and proofing system gave the publisher complete control over the reproduction

Picture Framing Magazine

Hobby Publications, the publisher of the Rubber Stamper and Picture Framing Magazine called upon us in December 2005 and 2007 to do the photography, digital retouching, CMYK file preparation and proofing for their PFM Holiday covers.

The art supplied for both of these covers was a very complex combination of 13-15 layers of computer cut 32 x 40 matt boards laying over top of hand crafted shaped blue satin fabric.

The assignment called for us to bring out all of the texture, highlights and shadows of the blue fabric and show the detail in the many layers of the computer cut matts. The only way to accomplish this was to capture two separate images, the fabric and matts. Using our custom built ZLight, we brought out the maximum amount of detail and beauty of each component.

The final stage, was to seamlessly blend these two images together. All of this computer work was done by hand using a Wacom 12x12 and retouching pen.

For both covers, we supplied the final sized CMYK TIFF files @ 300ppi and 13x19 CMYK Random Proofs for their approval.