"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.
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.
"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.
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"
"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
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.
