Below are some photos of the book along with some information on what to expect inside…

Matte finish cover, matte interior pages on premium 70lb paper.

Four projects over the course of two years explained through multiple graphical approaches.

Some diagrams you have seen and some others you have not.

Floor plans, elevations, sections, and other traditional representational techniques.

Full bleed, full resolution perspective illustrations.

Finally, something that I hope everyone will find helpful,  29 of the images have been broken down at the end of the book showing the 3D model line work, base renderings, and steps performed in Photoshop. This will allow quick references of what software programs were used and where they were implemented into the workflow.

I want to say a special thank you to Jeff Kruth and Matt Uminski for their help with getting this book ready for prime time, as well as my wife, Kim.

Basics

1. Size:  8.5 inches by 11 inches

2. Binding:  Perfect Bound

3. Cover:  Matte Finish

4. Interior:  Matte Finish

5. Number of Pages:  94

Page Setup

1. Page Bleed:  0.125″

2. Outside Margins:  0.25″

3. Fold Margin:  0.5″

4. Resolution:  300 dpi

Portfolio Workflow

1. Software and Workflow:
I used a similar workflow to Portfolio Volume 3 which is a mixture of Photoshop and InDesign to organize the pages and layout. You can see a more in-depth tutorial on this workflow HERE

2. Printing

3. Cover Design

Projects

Long Wharf Reinvented

1. Intro

2. Diagram Part 1

3. Diagram Part 2

4. Diagram Part 3

5. Diagram Part 4

6. High Res Site Plan

7. Foggy Perspective Part 1

8. Foggy Perspective Part 2

9. Harbor Perspective

10. Harbor View Illustration

11. Spreads

Culture Center

1. 3D Model

2. Intro Illustration

3. Diagrams

4. Day/Night Perspective

5. Aerial

6. Finale Image

7. Spreads

Train Pavilion

1. Intro

2. Diagrams

3. Floor Plans

4. Interior

5. Exploded Axon

6. Main St. Perspective

7. Aerial

8. Spreads

Cliff Retreat

1. Early Massing 

2. Exterior Vignettes 

3. Sections 

4. Interior Illustrations 

5. Finale Image 

6. Spreads

1. Sketchup Model

This image was composed in such a way to place emphasis on the view of the harbor with the architecture taking a secondary role. The Sketchup model therefore only consisted of the tiered seating, stone benches and light locations. The context in the distance will be added in Photoshop.

2. V-Ray Rendering

The V-Ray base rendering was basic as well showing a simple stone material covering most of the surfaces. I decided to add the grass in Photoshop because I wasn’t sure where exactly I wanted it to go. I figured I could iterate different design ideas faster in Photoshop by adjusting the mask vs baking it into the rendering.

3. Context

I used photos that I had taken a while ago for the background context. The time of day of these photos was the driving force of the overall tone and lighting of the scene. I actually had to patch several photos together to get the final background seen here.

4. Grass

To insert the grass, I first quickly masked in the general locations. The idea was that the grass strips would get less dense as the seating stepped closer the the water. Once I had the location dialed in, I selected a different paint brush shape and roughed up the edges of the mask to get rid of the sharp edges and give more dimension to the vegetation. This idea of roughing up the edges can be seen in one of my older video tutorials though I think it is time for an updated tutorial on this technique.

5. Lights

Although I modeled some lights, I ended up painting them in Photoshop so that I could have more control over their placement and density. Once the locations were finalized, I added a glow to the surrounding grass by painting in a simple color overlay. Finally, I added glow to the lights by using a soft paint brush with low opacity.

6. People

Entourage is important in defining the scale of the pier and overall atmosphere of the space. Due to the tiered seating, sizing the people properly was difficult. To solve this, I dropped in scale figures into the Sketchup model and exported an image to use as a guide in Photoshop.

7. Color

Color adjustments were minimal. I took the image to a slightly cooler range to match some of the other portfolio pages and added a slight haze in the distance. I didn’t want to deviate too far from the original photo colors used in the background photo.

Above: Sketchup Line Work

Images like this are difficult because there are so many different elements involved in large quantities: Lots of buildings, trees, cars, ground plane textures, etc. Luckily, I had much of the town already modeled from previous renderings. However, I still needed to model some houses in the distance and add proxy trees and cars. If you are not familiar with proxies, they are a way for V-Ray to render heavy meshes like cars and trees without actually placing these high poly objects in the Sketchup model. Instead, only a simplified low poly wire frame placeholder of the object is used in the Sketchup model. This means you can load hundreds of trees and cars without ballooning up your model size or using up all of your ram during the render process.

Above: Sketchup Model with Textures

Another difficult aspect of this image was the ground plane. There are lots of changes in textures happening and this was not something that I had time to model. Instead, I ended up using the aerial map as the ground plane. I modified parts of the image to remove cars and building shadows. The aerial map was not at a high resolution, but since the camera was so high in the air, this lack of detail didn’t matter much. In the image above, you can see the aerial map applied to the ground plane.

Above: V-Ray Base Rendering

The V-Ray base rendering still has a lot of things that need to be cleaned up in Photoshop, but I at least have a good start in terms of trees and context buildings. Trying to Photoshop in all of this stuff would have been doable, but would have take a ton of time and would not have been as accurate or clean.

Initial Photoshop over base rendering

Once in Photoshop, I first worked on the landscape adding some more trees, wild grasses around the site, and adjusting the tone and reflections of the reservoirs. I then moved to working on the context buildings, bringing in facade details to the main street buildings, adding textures to the train pavilion, and lighting up the buildings. Finally, I added details like people, crossing lights, water tower text, and other misc. adjustments.

Above: Final Color Adjustments

I kept the color adjustments simple with a slight atmospheric haze in the distance, some yellow and blue color overlays, and some toning and detail adjustments made in Topaz Labs.

Some final notes, I chose the view based on where the fold of the spread would have minimal impact. Since the image is an aerial and all of the detail is so small, I had to make sure the view was designed in such a way that none of the important information was getting lost in the fold. I also rendered everything at a higher resolution than normal (6,500 px wide) so that the detail remains sharp as viewers get close to the page. This meant a very large Photoshop file of over 3.5 GBs though still easily manageable on my laptop.

My new portfolio will be an 8.5”x11” in portrait orientation. This is considered a standard size in the printing industry which means I have a lot more printing options available as well as a huge reduction in cost. My last portfolio, Volume 3, was an 8″x10″ in landscape orientation and could only be printed through Blurb and Lulu. This unconventional size also meant a big cost of $35.00 to print. Switching my new portfolio to a more standard portrait 8.5″x11″ size, even though it is a larger, still dropped the prices of all of my tests below $15.00!

All of my tests were printed as soft covers with “perfect” binding. I may try out some hard cover options later but for now I am sticking with the lower cost soft covers. I tried my best to photograph each test print but you can only do so much to capture the quality and sharpness through a camera. With that said, there were some major difference in print quality that may not be visible in the photos, but that I try to explain in the descriptions.

Finally, I opted to not add shipping info into my review since each company has many different options and I paid to get test prints shipped to me as fast as possible versus going with the more economical ground delivery. Also, the companies vary in the time it takes to even print the book and get it ready to ship; some take a few days while others take a few weeks. Printing time is also influenced by how inundated the companies are with book orders. Some companies like Ingramspark give you the option to pay a little more to move your book to the top of the print queue.

Below is a quick breakdown of all test prints in no particular order.

BLURB

Blurb is the company I chose to print my Portfolio Volume 3 through several years ago. They are also the most expensive company I tested this time around. However, with the higher price comes a ton of printing options including the newly introduced magazine options. Blurb also offers many great resources such as PSD templates and a great InDesign plugin. These resources make it easy to setup files properly and help ensure there will be no formatting issues when it is time to upload. While the economy magazine printed the worst colors out of all of the books tested, their premium magazine and trade book took a big leap and had the best color and quality.

Blurb Economy Magazine

Cost: $11.19 per book and no setup fee
Cover: Matte
Interior Pages: Glossy 65lb paper
Color: Very poor quality and dull colors. Dark colors print with lots of noise.
Pros: Cheapest printing option through Blurb.
Cons: Poorest printing quality by far tested out of all of the books. 8.5″x11″ is the only size available in this magazine format.

Blurb Premium Magazine

Cost: $15.59 per book and no setup fee
Cover: Glossy
Interior Pages: Matte 80lb paper
Color: Best color reproduction tested. Very accurate and sharp.
Pros: Interior pages and cover feel high quality and durable.
Cons: Most expensive option tested. 8.5″x11″ is the only size available in this magazine format.

Blurb Trade Book

Cost: $15.42 per book and no setup fee
Cover: Glossy
Interior Pages: Matte 70lb paper
Color: Great color reproduction. Accurate and sharp.
Pros: Nice quality and feels similar to the premium magazine.
Cons: Second most expensive tested. Limited to three sizes with no 8.5″x11″ option.

LULU

Like Blurb, Lulu is also a well known print-on-demand company. Lulu also offers many print options and sizes as well as templates to download. All and all, the quality of the book felt very good, however, there were some major printing alignment issues on several pages. The graphics appeared to have shifted more than a half inch off of the page well beyond the provided image bleed. Not knowing if this was a rare incident, I still had to lower the overall rating of this book. I am still working with the company to get a new print.

Lulu Premium Paper Back

Cost: $14.23 per book and no setup fee
Cover: Glossy
Interior Pages: Semi gloss 80lb paper
Color: Oversaturated with lots of detail lost in the dark colors.
Pros: A very durable, quality feel. Heaviest feeling paper out of all of the tests.
Cons: Major print alignment issues requiring a reprint.

CREATESPACE

CreateSpace is owned by Amazon which may be why they are able to get costs down so much. CreateSpace had the best quality vs price ratio. Printing options are limited to a matte or glossy cover. You are stuck with soft covers and 60lb semigloss interior pages no matter what size you choose. When uploading your book, the approval process was daunting. I had to upload 4 different times to finally get my book approved. I finally realized all text must be inside of the .25” margins or the book will not be accepted. This required major adjustment to my book design. Brutal. The other difficulty with Amazon is that I had to provide tax and bank account info. There may be a way around this but I ended up just providing that info since I had it readily available.

CreateSpace Trade Book Full Color

Cost: $5.75 per book and no setup fee
Cover: Matte
Interior Pages: Matte 60lb paper
Color: Slightly oversaturated colors. Grays had a slight red tint to them.
Pros: Beautiful matte finish to the cover. Good quality for the price.
Cons: Colors are strong and grays are slightly warm which I had trouble looking past. The document approval process is strick and could require you to make lots of changes to the book design.

INGRAMSPARK

I added this company last second to my test but am glad I did. The process of filling out information and uploading my files was by far the most labor intensive. IngramSpark requires tax information and bank information before you can even print. Also, there is a $49 setup fee for the book. However, once you get past the headache of the initial account setup, the printing options are what grabbed my attention. Unlike most of the other companies, IngramSpark gives the option to print on the inside cover of the book, otherwise known as duplex cover printing. Other options include hard or soft covers, matte or gloss finish, and many book sizes. Although slightly more expensive than CreateSpace, the costs are still very low compared to Blurb and Lulu. In terms of quality, it really depends on whether you choose the standard color option or premium color option. The standard color test print was one of the worst I saw. But, the premium test print was one of the best prints I received. Ultimately, the plethora of print options, the affordable price, along with the color accuracy and quality of the premium option gave the IngramSpark premium trade book the gold medal .

IngramSpark Trade Book Standard Color

Cost: $5.42 per book plus $49.00 setup fee.
Cover: Matte
Interior Pages: Matte 70lb paper
Color: Poor quality with slightly desaturated colors.
Pros: Beautiful matte cover finish. Very affordable.
Cons: Colors are sub-par and the setup fee is an added cost that other companies don’t have.

IngramSpark Trade Book Premium Color

Cost: $10.32 per book plus $49.00 setup fee.
Cover: Matte
Interior Pages: Matte 70lb paper
Color: Very accurate though not as vibrant as some of the other prints.
Pros: Beautiful matte cover finish and great interior colors. Lots of printing options while still at a great price.
Cons: There is a setup fee that the other companies don’t have.

Comparison Chart

Below is a comparison chart including all of the test prints. The chart shows the ranking from best to worst based on a combination of print quality, price, and printing options.

Final Thoughts

Overall, every company had its negatives and positives. Blurb has good quality products, but they are very expensive and are limited in size options. However, if you are willing to fork over even more cash, you can test out their photobook category which has more sizes to choose from. Lulu has the most durable feeling product, but the major printing alignment issues that I ran into made me nervous to continue working with them. CreateSpace is extremely affordable, but the review process required me to make a lot of changes to my portfolio that I didn’t want to do. They also just didn’t have enough printing options to win me over. IngramSpark offered the right balance of quality, price, and printing options. Although they have the upfront cost of $49, it seemed well worth it considering how cheap the books are to print. I also really like the duplex cover printing option and the ability to print hardcovers in the future.

I still have a lot of work to do before I am ready to make the final prints of my upcoming Portfolio Volume 4. However, after reviewing all of these test prints, I am more confident than ever that I have the right printer on board to accurately convey my work.

To start, this image only uses a shadow and line work 2D image export from Sketchup, and a clay rendering from V-Ray.

1. Setup the Shadows

In Photoshop, I brought in my Sketchup shadows and line work layers. I colorized the shadows to give them a blue tint since the overall tones of the illustration will be on the cool side.

2. Overlay the Clay Rendering

I wanted to see a little more detail in the forms, so I brought in the V-Ray clay model rendering and overlaid it on top. I lowered the opacity so that the clay rendering gradients remain subtle.

3. Bring in the Color

Once I had the base images setup, I started to lay in some color. I applied the color one zone at a time, starting with the sky, moving to the context, then ground plane, and finally the design. I typically try to get all of the different color zones masked in fast so that I have more time to make adjustments to the colors and experiment with which palettes work best. I almost never get the colors right the first time.

4. Sky Detail

I struggled with the sky but finally arrived at a hybrid style of real and illustrated clouds. I was looking for something that was subtle, added a little texture, but also worked with the minimal style of the image.

5. Street Life

Next was adding life to the public realm. I brought in trees, people, and some cars. All of these elements were placed into groups within Photoshop so that I could colorize everything at once by applying a layer style. I did this by selecting the group, choosing “Layer>Layer Style”. In the dialogue box, I chose “Color Overlay” and selected a color that worked with my composition. Colorizing all of these layers removed the detail giving everything a silhouetted abstract look.

6. Noise Overlay

The last thing that I did was add some noise to the image which softens the edges, helps hide little imperfections, and give a retro look to the image. To do this, I created a new layer and filled it with 50% grey. Next, go up to “Filter>Noise>Add Noise”. In the dialogue box, I adjust the “Amount” slider to around 60%, set “Distribution” to “Uniform”, and checked the “Monochromatic” box. Finally, I set the new noise layer to “Overlay” to apply the texture to the image. I also lowered the opacity a little to reduce the strength of the effect.

The Final Image