Week 3
Thursday, February 7 -or- Friday, February 8
Videocast to watch before coming to class this week:
Watch the Week 3 Video prior to coming to class this week.
AFTER you have watched the Week 3 video, go over the details of this Week 3 webpage below.
Assignments for Week 3 will be due at the start of class the following week, Week 4. (February 14 or 15).
Lecture Topics covered:
Image essentials; vector vs. bitmap formats; file sizes and resolution; pixels, pixels, and more pixels!
Graphic Design: The New Basics
Rhythm and Balance
Also check out this link, large portions of the Graphic Design: The New Basics book as a Google Book.
There are pages omitted, but a lot of the first part of the book is at this link!
also check out these:
Principles of Design: Balance
Principles of Good Design: Balance
repetition - Google Search
rhythm - Google Search
Birds on the Wires on Vimeo The power lines and birds show repetition and rhythm.
Rhythm, Repetition, and Visual Balance in action!
Watch this very cool Pet Shop Boys music video created by dutch digital artist Han Hoogerbrugge, who built this entirely in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and After Effects.
Music Video: Pet Shop Boys - “Love Etc.”
Assignments:
Reading for this week:
Syllabus Change - we are doing both Ch. 2 and Ch 3 for 15 points total - see below!
Exploring Photoshop: READ chapter 2: The Staging Area
Exploring Photoshop: READ chapter 3: Image Essentials; complete lesson: Playing with Pixels (page 46)
Graphic Design New Basics: READ the chapter on Rhythm and Balance (begins on page 28).
What’s Due? TWO ITEMS FOR NEXT WEEK (Week 4).
(one from Chapter 2, and one from Chapter 3)
1. (5 pts) Chapter 2: Create your own “yourname-myfile.psd" per the chapter through Page 28. Spend at least one hour on this assignment, as you explore the photoshop interface.
Important! Demonstrate the concepts of POINT and LINE in your assignment. PUT YOUR NAME AS A TYPE LAYER IN THE FILE. See above links and reading for discovery.
Complete - for practice - the rest of the chapter assignments. AND THEN... ONWARD TO CHAPTER 3!
2. (10 pts) Create your own "chap3L1_yourname.psd" (repeat: put your name on this “saved as” document!) per the chapter through Page 52 BUT USE ANOTHER IMAGE FOR THE LAYER MASK, NOT THE OCEAN.TIF. MAKE SURE YOU PATTERN ALL THE TILES TOO!
1 pt. off if you do not pattern all the tiles, and 2 pts off if you do not use another image for the background.
ALSO, read pages 53-57, and for lab practice -- do some more photoshop practice by doing the "exploring on your own" at the bottom of page 53.
ALSO, 1 Hour Practice Drill:
Go to the handouts & downloads page and download the 70 MB file Week 3 Practice Photos. Do not turn these in, these are for lab practice.
Open up the four “penny” images and the four “Norway” images, and zoom in and examine the quality of each of them. In Photoshop, go to Image in the Menu bar, then Image Size and look at the image size of the various images and see the differences more pixels make.
PRACTICE MAKING SELECTIONS WITH THE MAGIC WAND AND THE QUICK SELECTION TOOLS.
Open up the leaf images, use the tools above to extract them, and moving them over to the sky photos. Find your own pics! Try out these tools, because next week, will be a Selectalooza Extravanganza, so your practice this week will bode you well.
Both files are due next week in class (Week 4).
Place both items in your folder on the homework drive during class for grading.
What is the Best File Format to Save Your Images In?
PSD • TIFF • JPEG • GIF • PNG ?????
(Courtesy of Jodi Friedman of MCP Actions)
As a photographer you shoot in Raw or Jpeg, or sometimes both. Then you edit. You may start in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, but eventually you may end up in Photoshop doing more detailed editing of your photographs. In time, you come up with the “perfect” edit. Now it is time to save. What do you do? Do you save as a PSD, Tiff, Jpeg, Gif, Png or something else?
Here are a few of the most common formats and why you may or may not want to use them:
PSD
- You will want to save as a Photoshop PSD when you have many layers that you want to preserve.
- Saving this way will retain adjustment layers, your masks, shapes, clipping paths, layer styles, blending modes.
- Useful if you need to maintain transparency.
- The downsides to PSDs the large size and the compatibility.
- Only those with Photoshop will be able to view them, and you will need to save another way for printing.
- You cannot share on the web as a PSD.
TIFF
- This targeted file format is the highest quality and is excellent for print as there is no loss in quality
- Retains information in layers, depending how you save it.
- The downsides are the extremely large file size and you cannot display on the web in this format.
- Lossless format so you will retain information from your images as you re-open and re-save.
JPEG
- The Joint Photographic Experts Group format is the most common type. It is viewable by all and can be used for print and the web.
- When saving as a jpg, you decide what quality you desire from a 1-12.
- The biggest downsize is that the jpeg format is lossy. Each time you open and save, the image compresses and you lose a small amount of information.
- Another downside is that layers are flattened upon saving so you lose the ability to go back to past edits to tweak.
GIF
- The Graphics Interchange Format is great for web graphics with animation.
- The file size is very small so these files load fast on the web.
- The downsides are limited colors and does not handle photographs well. No recommended for print work.
- Lossless format so you will retain information from your images as you re-open and re-save.
PNG
- The Portable Network Graphics format also creates smaller file size but without the quality loss of a GIF.
- Often used for graphics instead of GIF.
- Lossless format so you will retain information from your images as you re-open and re-save.
- You can share on the web.
Week 4 Preview:
STUFF TO DO BEFORE COMING TO CLASS NEXT WEEK:
The following week’s assignments will typically be posted on Fridays each week.
Videocast to watch before next week:
Watch the Week 4 Video prior to coming to class next week. (video link will go live by Friday, Feb. 8)
AFTER you have watched the Week 4 video, go over the details of the Week 4 webpage.
It will go live and appear in the left sidebar late Friday, Feb. 8.