maxchallis

[maxchallis]

Fundi's Review/Reflection

In this course we have covered a range of different things, focusing in on the 3 different types of software that we need to learn and become masters at, for this overall course. Those three softwares are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. I have had a decent amount of experience in Illustrator and Photoshop from past courses so I was already familiar with a large amount of these things learnt though there was a lot of helpful things still. To give a brief description of these two softwares, Photoshop is very useful for doing things like image adjustments and editing because of the fact that PS works in pixels whereas Illustrator is very handy for creating graphics from paths, shapes and text as Illustrator works with Vectors. You can also work between the two to create even nicer looking graphics. The last software we learnt was InDesign, in which I had had absolutely no experience with so this was the first time i had used it. It is very helpful to make layouts and spreads and format them nicely.

In each of these software apps, we learnt specific process and functions with-in each of them respectively which will all be very useful in our courses overall. Some examples of these functions that were learnt in Photoshop that are useful in image adjustments are the Curves, Hue/Saturation and Color Balance menus. We learnt and experimented with these menus to familiarise ourselves with how to use them and what to use them for. Other useful PS functions that we looked at were the use of masks, the use of layers and how to use them, smart objects and object selection to name some of the more important skills. Some of the functions that were learnt in Illustrator was the use of anchor points and handles, how to draw paths more specifically curved paths, how to make shapes and color them as you wish from these paths or just in general, and what I feel is extremely important skill to have in AI, the use of the pen tool. Finally some of the useful things we learnt in InDesign was how to make, edit and apply paragraph/character styles, how to use images in InDesign and what you can do with them (as it is not the same as the other two softwares) and, how to use columns/parent pages when making a spread. I also became familiar with a large amount of new Keyboard shortcuts in each of these applications

Though I am overall quite happy with how this course has gone, there has still been a few problems along the way and a few things I could have done better. One main thing that I could have done better was managing my time especially with going away and being absent from a few classes which has always been a bad habit of mine. I mean this in terms of writing these tumblr posts directly after the lesson instead of letting them build up for a few weeks as this is what I had done a few times throughout this course finding myself procrastinating trying to write that weeks blog post, and I was also adamant to have my posts in order so most of my posts sat in my blog archive until I had done missed homework tasks in between class work posts. Another thing I wish I could have done better would be to have spent more time on a few of the homework tasks as I have quite obviously rushed one or two of these and have now no time togo back and do a better job of them. Something that I feel like I have done well in this course that I have not done well in the past was the management of my files in my folders, I feel I kept these folders neat and orderly making it easy to go back and find any files that I need.

I feel like I have gained a large amount of knowledge from this course though and have a whole new skill set for my courses to come. If I was to choose a part that was most useful for me personally, I would probably say the InDesign section, more specifically the formatting parts of this in terms of paragraph styles and parent pages as I had never used this app before and we were required to use it for one of our DT1 projects so learning all these things just before starting this project I found extremely useful. Thanks

[maxchallis]

Last Day

We quickly looked at some output things in PS by exporting your InDesign book as a PDF today. We downloaded some preview pages as seen in the first image. From there we could open those pages displayed individually from the layers tab and place our pages onto them. You can paste them on by simply opening my pdf of my book in photoshop, choosing what page you want, selected it all, copying and pasting it on to the edited smart object layer and finally clicking save to see it change on the preview. As you can see in my second image this is what it looks like with 2 of my spreads look like. We repeated this process for the cover page as you can see in the last image.

[maxchallis]

Assignment - Nursery Rhyme Book

I did not really end up getting to spend a large amount of time to do this book as I was away for the first week of doing it. Though I still did get some brief chances to make adjustments to it, like for example finding some fonts that fit the theme for the book which I feel I have done very well as I am especially happy with the cover text as seen below. I then created some paragraph styles to add to the text for specific values on things like leading, text-size, space around and alignment for each of my 5 selected rhymes as you can see in the screenshots below of my spreads. I also played around with different amounts of columns on some of the pages as well. I also brought in my pattern from last weeks class, making some slight colour changes to it and adding it the the front and back spreads of my book. If I had more time I would most definitely want to add a lot more detail to it, maybe using some text wrapping but i did not as I had multiple other assignments due around the time of doing this. I have incorporated my two different personally drawn images, in the form of my plane that is on the contents page and my penguin that is on the back page. I am relatively happy with the outcome of this book though it is very much on the simpler side of things, I thing it displays my basic knowledge of how to use and layout in InDesign. Sorry for no screenshots of the process but heres what it looks like.

[maxchallis]

Week 11 - Illustrator Pattern Making

Today we learnt how to make a pattern in Illustrator. Firstly we created a black box, drew something on top of this box with the pen tool and filled it with white with my box below on the left. We then selected both the box and the drawn shape and dragged it into the swatches menu found under the swatches tab. We also created a curved shape with the pool tool, using shift to keep the handles square of the shape as seen on the right below.

We then selected the created shape and set the fill to be our created box forming a pattern out of it. If you move the shape around the pattern doesn't stick to where it is inside the shape but instead moves around as if it is there behind the background.

We then brought up the pattern options menu by double clicking our box in the swatches menu. The menu brings up what is in the screenshot below on the left with many different options I had a play around with altering the appearance of the pattern. You can also change the shape of the patter to a hexagon which is also very visually pleasing.

Once I had created a hexagon version and a normal pattern out of my square I played with the color of the hex pattern to make it look nicer by simply dragging the color onto where you want it to go. You can also expand the pattern which turns everything in it into an editable object meaning you can edit individual parts of the pattern.

You can also expand text and edit it as a shape by selecting the create outlines option.

[maxchallis]

Week 10 - InDesign Continued

I was away overseas for this class though I have since learnt how to do the things that we were taught in the class and have put some helpful screenshots on how to do some of the things I missed. First of all, parent pages were learnt and and how they work with the menu being the top image. They are extremely useful because you can put certain things like page numbers on these and it will apply it to all of the pages. As seen in the bottom right image on where you can find the option to add page numbers to the parent page with the result on the right.

The image on the right shows the margins and columns menu. You can see that you can adjust the number of columns on the page quite easily with the result on the right of what the page looks like with more than 1 column. You can create multiple parent pages which is helpful because you can make different parent pages for different numbers of columns instead of having to go through each page and do it individually.

Once you have made multiple parent pages you can apply them to individual pages by simply dragging them onto the pages below to create a layout with different amounts of columns throughout your spread.

File Management

The following two screenshots show how I have managed my files nicely and orderly in both my project and image folders.

[maxchallis]

Week 9 - Intro to InDesign - Part 2

Images

We then looked at Images in InDesign bringing in this image by placing it. In the second picture you can see the links menu open found under the windows tab as this is a linked PS image. We opened the image in photoshop and drew something simple on it. Once doing so we went back over to InDesign and pushed the circle arrow button at bottom of the links tab, second to right and this updated the image as it is live seen in the photo on the right.

When you try and scale an image in InDesign, it is unlike PS and AI as it scales the frame of the image not actually the image itself as seen in the left image. You are able to scale the actual image inside the frame though by simply selecting the direct selection tool and clicking on the image, the border of the image should go yellow as seen in the middle image. In the last image you can see that I have correctly scaled the frame by holding option when scaling as it scales the image inwards around the main part of it so that it only shows the frog without actually cropping the image.

You can then add a text wrap to the image so that the text molds around the image by clicking that option in the properties tab under text wrap as seen in the bottom screenshot. You can then add padding to the image in any direction from this menu as I did to the right so that the text was not so close with the finished wrapped frog on the right hand screenshot.

I then duplicated the frog, removed him from his frame and deleted the frame as seen below on the left. You can seen create any shape as a frame, cut the image of the frog and right click onto your new created frame and select paste into as seen on the right below.

Once it is pasted into the circular frame you can add a different text wrapping and padding to it different from the rectangle frame wrapping options. You can then choose to wrap both right and left sides to give it a circular wrap and it works well as you can see in the screenshots below. I think that the circular frog sitting in between two columns looks quite nice.

This screenshot below shows my fundi's folder file management.

[maxchallis]

Week 9 - Intro to InDesign - Part 1

InDesign Keyboard Shortcuts

W = Preview Mode

Cmmd + Click outside of text box = Escapes text editing

Cmmd + A = Select Everything

Shift + Return = Soft Return (On Bullet Points)

Hold Shift and Cmmd = Scales Frame and Image at same time

?/ = Remove Stroke

Cmmd + E = File Export

Today we moved away from Illustrator and Photoshop and started learning the ropes of adobe InDesign which I am going to find very useful because I have never used this application before and am going to need to use it in an upcoming project in one of my other classes. The first image on the top left below shows what the menu looks like which is still relatively similar to AI and PS as it is still adobe. The screenshot on the top right shows what happens when you create a textbox from the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen and fill it with placeholder text by right clicking in the text box and selecting 'fill with placeholder text'. The image on the bottom of this group shows where you can find the styles menu for certain text adjustments such as adding paragraph styles or character styles to text which is very useful as it means you have have certain text setting that you can apply to different parts of your layouts.

Paragraph Styles

Firstly we opened the paragraph styles menu finding it in the toolbar as shown above. Once doing this we created a new style by clicking the plus on the bottom of the page and then double clicking this new style to bring up the bigger paragraph styles box. We then changed the name of the style to body text as this is what it is going to be applied too. Now all we needed to do what click ok, highlight some text and click the basic text style to apply it to the text.

After doing this we created another paragraph style and named it headings. We then clicked on the basic character formats tab of the menu which brings up some of the basic changes you can make to the text seen on the left below. We set the text size to 14 as it was going to be a heading as well as making it font 'Arial' and setting it to bold. After making these changes we clicked on the indents and spacing tab of the menu and set there to be a 1 mm gap below the text. We then clicked ok, highlighted the headings we had created earlier ready to be edited and applied it and the result is the bottom image below. Notice how the gap after the headings has changed as these headings are still the biggest elements on the page they already create a bigger gap before and after them because of their size.

This is the hyphenation menu showing how you can use this by simply checking the hyphenate button off as quite often words are cut in half in text boxes so this is a useful function to have.

This is my finished paragraph styles document in preview mode. I made one more final adjustment by adding a 3mm gap above the headings in the paragraph styles menu and it automatically changed them all.

Character Styles

We then brought up the character styles menu. From this we created a new style and named it italic and set it to make text go italic in the character style menu. After doing this we highlighted some text and selected italic and watched as it turned the text italic as seen in the image on the left. We then created another style by dragging the existing italic style onto the plus at the bottom of the menu. Once opening the duplicate style we set it to be bold as well as italic and clicked ok. We then applied this to some of the headings we had already made. The bottom image shows the document in preview mode.

Bullet Points

I changed the document so that it has two columns and added some given text to my document. After doing this we created a new paragraph style and went to the bullets and numbering tab of the menu. From here we selected list type and set it to bullets. We then previewed it but realised that the bullet points were very close to the text so we went back into the menu for the style and added an indent so that it looked nicer as seen in the second image. We then used the helpful keyboard shortcut to soft return some of the words on these to make the text flow better and to format it correctly. This soft return function allows us to send text to a new line without creating a new bullet point.

[maxchallis]

Week 8 - AI Challenge - Graphic 2

For my second graphic we were to do the same sort of thing but with a coloured graphic so I went with a photo of peter griffin. I did not take screenshots of my process of this all that well so I only have these few screenshots of cutting the path around the outside of him and lowering the opacity on this fill so that I can edit all the other parts. The cut out i have in that right hand image is quite a rough version of it but it shows it beside the original. In the end I just made different coloured shapes for each of the different parts of the body and layered them in an order that made them work on top of each other.

[maxchallis]

Week 8 - AI Challenge - Graphic 1

Today In class we were given an AI challenge to create two graphics in illustrator, one just a vector drawing of something and the other the same but with a colored fill to demonstrate what we have learned in class.

For my first graphic I decided to make a simple silhouette of a cartoon airplane, the image below is the original image.

First of all I printed out the original image and hand drew it myself by tracing it against the window, I then photocopied this and plotted around the paths where I think the anchor points will go to create the curves in the shape that I am creating.

The 4 screenshots below are from during the process of drawing the shape in Illustrator as I scanned my drawn version into the computer to construct. I did so by simply using the pen tool and going round all the lines from my traced version using a fair few hybrid points in the process especially on the wings to get them looking curved but having one sharp edge like the original image. The bottom right image is from me drawing the windows which I got to look like they do by adjusting the handles in a way that give them this shape.

The two images below are my original finished drawn shape with the image on the left having my traced version sitting behind it.

The two screenshots below show where all the anchor points and handles are along my paths and what they are doing, I feel like I have put anchor points in all the necessary spots to where they should go and not too many extra's.

This Image if my finally product, making some minor adjustments in the stroke menu like making the weight slightly more so that it suits the sort of style it has been drawn in.

I believe that I was very successful in my final product as I feel that it closely resembles what the original image looks like if nit better, I felt pretty confident throughout the process of constructing it as well so I would say I am feeling very good about Illustrator.

[maxchallis]

Week 6 - Homework Task

Our homework task for this week was to add a few more elements onto this guy. For this I took advantage of what we learnt making the purple stroke in terms of it being a live object by making a more complex stroke with other lines coming around it. I also played with adding different filters to our jumping man, creating random looks and also placing it on other backgrounds like seen in the right image with him on a neutral background.

[maxchallis]

Week 6 - Using Photoshop and Illustrator + Smart Objects

Started off today by refreshing myself with the different object selection tools in photoshop especially the pen selection tool which is a new tool for me and I find it very useful when needing to cut out or put a mask over specific things, and also with masks and adding a hue to this mask and as you can see I was successful.

We then went on to the image below on the right with the goal to cut him out, for a start I used the quick selection tool as best to cut him out into a mask.

Once I had him selected I put him on a mask and set it to this view to see what was there and what wasn't. As you can see on the mask on the left image, I got the the outline reasonably well though there is still some parts around the hair that might need more attention. I then put him on a colored background for the cutting out process as it makes it easier to see what extra bits may be there.

I then used the the eraser tool in the mask on low opacity and strength to fade out around where his hair is to give it an almost fuzzy real life motion look as well as removing any extra parts around this hair.

We then placed the image into Illustrator and drew a large stroke over top of the jumping man. You then turn this stroke into a smart object so it can be edited further live. After doing this we placed this linked illustrator file back into photoshop and put our cut out jumping man on a higher layer after duplicating it for further editing.

I then used the polygonal lasoe tool on the highest layer to select the section of the jumping man that crosses in the middle of the body where it crosses him and remove it by making it a mask. As you can see below, the result of this creates an interesting looking visual with the stroke crossing his body in front of him but being behind him in other parts giving the illusion that it is wrapping around him, all from using a mask and cutting him out.

After this I finally put my originally cut out jumping man with my new live object onto a background I found on the internet that I thought would somewhat suit it. I found todays class extremely interesting as I had never really used live objects before so I found this pretty cool using both Illustrator and Photoshop together to create graphics. I also found the layer management side of this class as this was often a weak point of mine.

[maxchallis]

Week 5 - Homework Task

For this homework task we had to cut two objects out and place them on a different background. I chose an image of a pineapple pot with a plant coming out of it and a vase. The selections for both of these were quite straightforward as I just used the object selection tool and then got the extra parts by using the quick selection tool. As you can see I have selected them both in the top screenshots. Lastly I copied them and pasted them onto my new kitchen background, transformed them both so they look relatively in proportion and placed them where I wanted them to go.

[maxchallis]

Week 5 - Layers, Masks and selecting

We then went on to start editing some images keeping in mind what we had learnt with the marquee tool but bringing masks into it. Masks in photoshop are extremely useful as they are a nondestructive way to hide parts of an image or layer without erasing them which can be very handy when trying to make things like image compositions. We downloaded some images of moodle to learn and practice how to use these masks, first we did this image of a boat as seen below starting by using the marquee tool selecting the boat and turning that selection into a mask as seen on the bottom right image. To create a mask you simply make a selection and push the small square icon with a clear circle in the middle of it at the bottom of the layers menu.

The image on the right shows what it looks like when you go in to edit the mask by simply clicking it in the layers palette. Once you are in this view you can see what is displayed in the white and what isn't in the black. For this image I chose the eraser tool and went around the outline of the boat as seen in the image on the right.

After doing a rough outline on it I went back into the mask and touched it up as best I could. After doing this I make a copy of this layer and mask and positioned it beside the other boat to make it look like there is 2 of them.

In the next Image we learnt how to make a selection this time using the pen tool. I did so by simply drawing an outline around the middle leaves of the plant using the pen tool, dragging at each point to create a curve and using broken points at the points and ends of the leaves. Once I have made the selection you turn it into a regular selection.

Next I turn this selection into a layer mask. This is just another way to make a selection and turn it into a mask. I then just played around with the color of the mask to see how it alter the image.

This is the next image that we are going to practice making a selection and using a mask.

In this image I made a selection around the orange using the ellipse marquee tool and cut the part out where the lemon is in front of it with what we learnt earlier in the class and put it in a layer mask. I then changed the hue of the orange to again see how it would alter the image.

I then played around with the other selection tools that are offered in PS. First of all the magnetic lasoe tool in which you draw around the path of the shape and for the most part it will snap the selection to where it thinks the shape is though this tool is not always the most reliable. You can also use the object selection tool in which you click on the object you want to select and it will highlight it for a start if it picks it up as seen in the image below on the right though like the magnetic lasoe tool though this tool is very efficient and easy it is not always accurate on certain objects.

I then had a play around with all of these different selection tools and changed the color of the fruits in the bowl as you can see.

This is the last image that we tried to cut out. In this screenshot I have selected the bird using the object selection tool as it worked for this bird.

I then used the pen tool to cut out the edge of the wing to give the bird a more genuine look as there is a bit of motion blur on the inside of the wing due to using the object selection tool making it too straight. The image below on the right shows the bird with a more genuine looking wing.

I then went into the mask editor and used the blur tool in photoshop and turned the opacity on the brush down so that it is not too strong and used it down the inside of the wing to give the look of the wing being in motion fluttering as seen on the right image below. In the image on the right I used the eraser tool on the mask to clear the little gaps around the birds feet.

I then put the bird onto a different background, apply the mask which flattens it all once it is on the new background. This last image has been very helpful as it has brought in all the different types of object sections into one. The image on the right is my finished image on its new background

[maxchallis]

Week 5 - Playing with Shapes and Brushes

Today for a start we refreshed layers and brushes and how they can be used in photoshop and had a play around with this as you can see below. We were shown all the different types of brushes and how they can give different textures and sizes. Also how you can use these brushes on different layers so you can non-destructively work.

In the following images I am just playing around with certain useful tools in Photoshop. The Image on the left is the result of using the rectangular marquee tool which can be be found in the PS tool bar as the dotted line forming a rectangle and other shapes and gives you the opportunity to cut parts out of certain layers and move them around. The middle image shows the transform tool in which you push the command key and t and it gives you the option to scale what you have selected. You can add a selection with the marquee tool by pushing shift or remove by pushing option to form things like half circles as seen in the image on the right below.

A very useful shortcut to also move fragments is using option and delete with the marquee tool. The Images below just show me playing around with this tool forming random shapes.

[maxchallis]

Homework Image Adjustments

For this homework task we had to find 4 bad images, 2 underexposed and 2 overexposed and adjust them to look better

underexposed

I found this very dark image of what looks like a beach early in the morning and did my best to adjust it to look better. I found it was quite hard trying to get the land visible as it kept lighting up the sky well too much for my liking so after making some adjustments in the different menu's this is what my final outcome looks like on the bottom right, though it is still dark, I feel that it is nowhere near as underexposed as I did my best to make the elements on the land visible without lighting the sky up too much.

This one similar to the last was an image that is underexposed but already taken at a dark sort of time so it is almost meant to look dark in a way. I made some curve changes that the viewer can make out everything in the forefront of the image, though you can probably not really tell in the bottom right image as it is quite zoomed out, you can actually make out the things that are in this darkness as it it a desert like surface. I also made some color balance changes to make the sky in the background pop more but not too much.

Overexposed

In this overexposed image I felt like the cliffs in the background were almost polluted with white because of how overexposed the image is so I first of all made some changes to the curves to make it ever so slightly darker but without losing any of the elements in the image, and also a hue/saturation adjustment to make the colors on the cliffs and sky pop more and I feel like I have achieved this nicely.

Lastly, I found this image, though it is not all that overexposed, I felt like the colors in it could be much brighter so in saying that I made some more minor adjustments to this in terms of the hue/saturation menu to make the sun covered areas much more golden.

[maxchallis]

Week 4 - Image Adjustments Self Tasks

Image Adjustment 3

There was also 3 of the downloaded images each needing an adjustment from one of the three learnt image adjustment menu's to do on our own. First of all there is this extremely dark image of a cat. The adjustment to make this image not so dark is just a simple curves adjustment, dragging the top of the curve left along the x axis till where the spike of light occurs on the histogram. I am happy with the image on the bottom right as an adjusted image.

Image Adjustment 6

This is the original image for the 2nd image adjustment that we had to do on our own, and off first glance I feel that it is way too blue.

So going along with thinking it looks too blue, I made an adjustment to the mid tones in the color balance menu dragging the slider away from cyan and towards red to counter this blue sort of tint that was on the image.

This one adjustment has almost made the image good enough though I thought I would make some minor changes in the curves and hue/saturation menu just to make every element in this image visible. For example making the curves adjustment though very slight makes the tree line in the background of the image more visible and not just and black line across the image also giving it texture. The adjustment in the hue menu was one of putting the saturation up as it almost looked a bit sad and gloomy whereas after it is adjusted it looks more warm and I also noticed the river in the center of view also popped out of the image more after doing so.

Image Adjustment 8

This is the last image on our self adjustment tasks that we had to do. Looking at it for a start I felt that it looked very dark and you could almost not really make out what was going on in the lower layers of the building so I did some slight curve adjustments.

After doing this I made a color balance adjustment so that the buildings in the forefront of the image don't look so dull and boring and look more browny yellow to what they would actually look like without all the darkness that is in the original image making them pop much more.

Lastly, I made a saturation change to just brighten the image up and make the sky in the background more blue as I felt it still looked a bit dull.

After doing these three tasks on my own I am feeling pretty confident in terms of Image Adjustments in Photoshop.

[maxchallis]

Week 4 - Image Adjustment - Colour Balance

We then started to learn about the color balance menu and how it can alter your images and allow you to change the colors in your image specifically like for example if you had a very green looking image you could counter this by using the color balance menu. It can adjust midtones, highlights, hues and shadows

Tasks

Image Adjustment 5

This is the original image for the 5th Image adjustment we have done today but the first using the color balance menu. As you can see it deals with opposite on the color wheel so I will try make this image look not so one colored.

As you can see this is what happens to the image if you were to change these drastically but this was just me playing around with the menu to get a feel for it and what it does.

Below is my finished image adjustment, though I do not believe it looks much different to the original image. I made some minor changes on the slider like for example slightly taking away from yellow as I feel that this image is very strong in terms of yellow without giving it a blue sort of tint, I am happy with the result though.

Image Adjsutment 7

This is the original image for the 7th Image adjustment we did and I feel this one was very interesting and good to do as it has a lot of colors going on yet it still looks very dull so I will see what color balance adjustments so can make to make all these colors pop more.

First of all I adjusted the mid tones as I feel the original image had a very dull yellowy pink tint to it so the image below on the top left is what happened when I made some adjustments in the color balance menu dragging the slider towards cyan on the top slider to get rid of these red mid tones on the image as well as doing the same on the bottom slider to make the image have less of a yellow mid tone. I then did my best at adjusting the highlights (top right) of the image and the shadows (bottom) so that all the colors in the original image get to their full potential instead of being dulled or tinted. Though I feel the last image in this group looks a bit dark so I am not done yet.

To counter this darkness, I did a small curves adjustment like I usually would dragging the curve to where the light starts and ends on the graph so it is all even. After this I made a slight saturation adjustment just to round the image off which I am happy with the final image seen on the bottom right. I have found that the color balance menu is very useful to counter certain colors on images.