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Tuesday, February 23, 2016

DES16-14 - Smart Objects / Filters and Adjustmens

Topics Discussed:

  • Smart Objects
  • Photoshop Filters
  • Adjustements
  • Color Balance
  • Levels
  • Hue / Saturation
  • Gradient Map


Smart Objects

 
Levels



Hue/Saturation



Color Balance



Working Non-destructively in Adobe Photoshop

  

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Project 3: Photoshop Project Sketches

Poster Sketches
Assigned: February 18th
Due: February 23rd

Students will due basic research on the leader of the arts of sciences.  The student will use that information to plan out a basic premise or concept for the poster.

Students will present FIVE different sketches that are based on the concept. Students will present these sketches to one another for a critique as well as a short one-on-one meeting with me.

After the critique on February 23rd students will revise the design to choose ONE of the designs and then turn in a revised sketch on February 25th.

Project 3: Photoshop Poster

Photoshop Project
Assigned: February 18th
Due: March 3rd

Conceptual goal 

Create a poster featuring a leader in the arts or sciences who is no longer living. Design something that might be used on banners with an exhibit or in print, perhaps as a memorial feature of this person’s life and work. Select the best quality photograph or other image of this person and combine it with two or more images that illuminate the very best of the person’s life work, along with their name.

Assignment

The poster must include color, though you may start with black and white imagery. Color may be subtle, but integral. Use three or more blended and/or combined images that you have scanned/input and manipulated in Photoshop. Make the colors/tones of all your imagery work well together. Become familiar with Photoshop, coloring and styling the type of the leader’s name appropriately for your photo collage/montage. Use what you have learned about type and typography. You may want to explore tools for altering and blending photographic images and raster/bitmap type (vs. vector type). Consider the following when making your composite image: similarity of contrast, magnification of image (print size), light direction (shadows), color consistency. You may choose to use transparency (layer opacity), masking (paste into…), blending modes, gradients, feathering or other techniques for blending your images or portions of images together. Do not simply paste and reprint three separate images; they must be integrated, connected and relevant to the subject. You may scan fabric, textured papers, or 3-D objects placed on the flatbed scanner as some of your image sources. Explore suitable effects or textures for your type, and make sure your typeface is legible and the style and colors are compatible with your images and overall poster concept.

Progression

1. List name(s) of leaders you might feature, what you want to feature in the poster about this person, and which venue you might feature for your final project poster. (Include birth-death years?)
2. Consider the availability (or lack) of suitable images to highlight her/him & his/her work.
3. Select best 2 different refined digital mock-up/comps of your poster for pre-critique review
4. Critique of finished version, color digital version, at the beginning of class.

Specifications

Size: Approximately 16” x 20” (vertical or horizontal orientation), 300 dpi, designed in color (if square, 15” minimum size). Turn in a copy that is flattened, approx. 8 x 10 inches (or screen size) and 100 dpi in .pdf format, and one letter sized, b/w (cheap) laser print for marking changes/suggestions. Keep your larger, 16 x 20 (approx.) 300 dpi file with layers for your final project poster design & printing.

Use RGB mode for your Photoshop file. Do not flatten your original, but flatten large copy for printing and smaller copy file to turn in. Always keep your original file in the native Photoshop format w/layers, for later editing, changes or reworking.

Use photographs / images from a variety of sources. Many images from websites will not be of high enough resolution for quality poster size printing (unless you pay for them). You should scan quality images printed in books or magazines, but you will need to minimize the moiré pattern after scanning. All images must be of high quality and resolution. We should see no jaggies or pixelation in your color print. The combined images should all have the same resolution sufficient for poster printing.

Calculating scanning resolution: Start with the end. The resolution of the scans and file must be determined by considering the print size (in this case, a large-ish poster) and the capability of the color printer you plan to use to print your poster. Resolution for printing in Cruess is 200-300 dpi Use just enough resolution to get the needed print size and quality needed (without creating huge files).



Elections!!!!!

https://elections.ucdavis.edu/

Lab: Photograph Retouch

Photo Retouch
Assigned: February 18th
Due: February 25th

In this lab students will take a personal or found photograph and retouch it within Adobe Photoshop. Students will take a photograph and retouch it to improve the image. The image may be their own or one that they find online. The retouching may be fixing tears and scratches or removing unwanted content from the scene such as removing unwanted trees from an architectural scene or graffiti from a wall. Students will use retouching tools such as the smudge, blur, burn, dodge, clone stamp, patch tool and retouching brush

When touching up the image students should consider tonal information such as brightness or shadows. Students should be aware of texture to help the retouching appear 'natural. There should be noticiable different between the original and the retouched photo.

Students will submit both the original image, which will be named 'student-name-original' and the retouched version that they will label "student-name-retouched'.




DES16-13 - Brush Tools / Special Effects

Topics
  • Blur / Sharpen / Smudge
  • Clone Stamp / Patch Tool / Eye Color
  • Layers
    • Opacity
    • Blend Modes
    • Sets
    • Merge Layers
    • Lock Layers
  • Layer Masks
Daily Inspirational Quote
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
- Ayn Rand


Clone Stamp

The Clone Stamp tool is the oldest and most widely known of the cloning tools. The basic concept is that you duplicate certain portions of an image using a source, destination and brush.



























The Clone and Healing Brush



Layer Masks



Blend Modes in Adobe Photoshop



 Dodge and Burn Tool Photoshop



Red Eye Tool

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Lab: Self-Portrait

Lab: Self - Portrait
Assigned: February 16th
Due: February 23rd

In this lab students will create a self-portrait of themselves in Adobe Photoshop. Students will start with a drawing of themselves or can use a photo / 'selfie' of themselves as a reference. Students will then use the Photoshop brush, paint bucket, eraser and gradient tool to draw themselves. Students may import brushes/patterns or make their own if they wish.

Students should separate areas of the drawing into separate section using layers and sets. This will make the process a bit easier. For example, create a layer to draw the eye, draw a layer for the hair, etc.

The project should be saved as a PSD ( photoshop document) and have the following dimensions
  • 1000px x 1000px
  • RGB Color Space
  • 72 dpi

Photoshop Drawing

Topics
  • Paint Brush
  • Brush Palette 
  • Install Photoshop Brushes / Photoshop Patterns
  • Paint Bucket
  • Gradient
  • Swatches / Eyedropper
  • Define Patterns / Define Brushes
Photoshop Brushes
Daily Inspirational Quote
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

- Thomas A. Edison


Many times instead of importing content like a photograph into your composition you'll want to draw your own. Adobe Photoshop has a bunch of different drawing tools that can draw, paint and add elements to your composition. These include the brush tool, paint bucket and gradient tool.

Brush Tool


 Paint Bucket


 Gradient Tool

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Lab: Winter Scene

Lab: Winter Scene
Assigned: February 11th
Due: February 18th

Students will create a photo collage that represents the concept of winter. Students will combine images that they collect online and from their own taken photos to create a visual interesting scene that conveys the concept of winter. Students will use a combination of rectangular marquee, elliptical marquee, lasso, magic wand, quick selection, color range and selection modification tools for this assignment.

The composition should be set to

  • 1000px x 1000px
  • RGB Color Space
  • 72 Pixel per inch (pixel density)

Students will use a MINIMUM of ten images for this composition. Students MUST organize layers by LABELLING them.

Below are good resources for finding stock photos. I strongly encouraging scanning photos or taking your photos to complete this lab.

Morguefile.com
Unsplash
New Old Stock
Cupcake
Flickr Commons
JE Shoots
magdeleine.co


DES16-11: Photoshop Selections

Topics
  • Selections
  • Marquee selections
  • Elliptical Selections
  • Lasso Tool
  • Polygonal Lasso Tool
  • Magnetic Lasso Tool
  • Magic Wand 
  • Quick Selection
  • Color Range
  • Inverse
  • Copy / Paste
  • Layers Basics

Daily Inspirational Quote

"You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good." 
- Jerry West 




Selection Tools

While working in Adobe Photoshop you'll want to do things such as making photo adjustments, adding elements, adjusting contrast, adjusting colors and much more. In order to let Photoshop know which elements of the photo you would like to work with we must first select the part of the image we want to work with. To do this Photoshop has a large range of selection tools to choose from.

Some of the selection tools are personal selecting tools meaning you physically drag out the areas that you would like to work with. These tools include the marquee, elipitical marquee, lasso, polygonal lasso and magnetic lasso tools. Each tool works a bit differently, but each requires that you select and drag the part of the image you would like to work with

Marquee Tool/Elliptical Marquee Tool


 
Lasso Polygonal/Magnetic Lasso Tool



Magnetic Lasso Tool




Magic Wand/Selection Tool/Color Range Magic Wand 

Some selection tools are not based on the user's hand movements but rather the colors of the image. For instance, you can select all of the red areas of an image, or all of the blue areas. There are a few selection tools that allow this including the magic wand, selection tool and color range option.

Magic Wand




 Color Range

  

Photoshop Layers

What makes Adobe Photoshop such a power photo-editing tool is the ability to separate your composition into layers. With layers you can separate different aspects of your composition to different layers. This allows your composition to be easily editable and managed. For instance you could quickly remove an element without affecting other elements in your composition.

Layers

Thursday, February 4, 2016

In-Class Lab: Expressive Imagery

Expressive Images

It is important to remember how important images play in the emotion, tone and feeling of a design piece.

Assignment

Look through Web sites, especially those of well-designed magazines and newspapers and find images used in articles or advertisements that express the following five categories: 
  • bold
  • intriguing
  • tragic
  • uplifting
  • shocking
Narrow it down to THREE per category

Turn In:

Take your best 3 examples examples of each expressive category and rename the file w/your last name.

The format should be .jpg or .gif and large enough to show detail.

Place your best examples in a folder with your name labelled "lastname-firstname-expressive-imagery"

DES16 - 10 - Photoshop Basics

Topics
  • Photoshop UI basics
  • Raster vs Vector
  • Resolution
  • Color Space 
  • Image Size
  • Canvas
  • Resampling
  • Upsampling
  • Downsampling

Daily Inspirational Quote

"A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on." 
- Anonymous 



Color Mode/Resolution
When creating a document in Photoshop there are certain factors to consider Dimension: Define what size you want your document to be. You can use inches, millmeters, centimeters and pixels. Resolution: Resolution means how many pixels there are per inch or per centimeter. To have good quality for your image you'll need a minimum number of pixels per inch/centimeter. If you are working on a project that will be broadcast on a screen (such a tv, computer screen, cellphone screen) you'll need a minimum resolution of 72 ppi (pixels per inch). If you are going to print the design you'll need a minimum of 300 ppi (pixels per inch) Color Mode: There are two main color modes. RGB and CMYK. RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue. These are three primary colors of a screen. You should use this color mode when designing media projects for the screen (websites, tv graphics, video game graphics) CMYK stands for Cyan, Magneta, Yellow and Black. These are the four primary colors of a printer. You should use this color mode when designing media projects that will eventually be printed. This includes posters, business cards, book covers.

RGB vs CMYK color Mode



Raw Files

camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor such as Adobe Photoshop. More

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Letter Sketch

Assigned: February 2nd
Due: February 11th
equipment needed: A ruler, pencil

Autonomy of Your Type
  • Download the Viscom fonts from Smartsite
  • Install the font that you choose for your Typography project
  • Use Microsoft word to write out the phrase "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog". Make sure that that each word is capitalized.
  • In Microsoft Word go to Layout > Orientation to change the page from portrait to landscape mode
  • Resize the text to fit roughly 2.5 - 3 line in Microsoft Word.
  • Print the page and use a ruler to put a baseline under each line.
  • Use a ruler to set the x-height for each line.
  • Use a pen/pencil to denote the following at least ONCE in your page. Use the slides for assistance in labeling
    • ascender
    • bowl
    • cap-height
    • descender
    • stem
    • axis
    • aperture
    • counter
    • spine
  • Make sure to write your name on the sketch and list the name of the typeface 



















Letterforms of Your Type

  • Do some research about your assigned typeface and what makes it's letterforms unique compared to other typefaces.
  • Choose 3 characters that demostrate what makes your typeface unique. Print large versions of these three characters using Microsoft Word or related software. Have the characters to be as large as the page itself.
  • Use paper and pencil /  pen to trace the letterforms. Make sure to capture the angles and straight lines that define the shapes.
  • Make sure to write your name on the sketch and list the name of the typeface
  • Scan or take a photo of the traced letter forms
  • Create a document in Adobe Illustrator that is 10' width by 7.5'  height
  • The pen and related vector tools to trace the letterforms into vector shapes.
  • Save the file as "lastname-firstname-letterform.ai





























 


Formal Response

Write a short response in Microsoft word about how the letterforms of your typeface compare to the other three typefaces. What aspects make your typeface unique when compared to the others.
Compare and contrast your typeface with typefaces of two other students. What characteristics of your typeface letter forms stand out from theirs?

On February 11th you'll turn in the anatomy sketch, letterform sketch, letterform AI files and written response.