Current Status: Stable

Lately we've all been concentrating on completing our digital paintings. I've started mine off, but there's a lot I still need to do with it. If you would like to take a look please refer to my previous post "...From Scratch!" We haven't had a new assignment since then aside from working on that Wordbook and I have already completed parts of the editing for it, and hope to do more.

I'm also going to take the time now to review some basics that I haven't mentioned about Photoshop in the past.

Terms to know:
Dock
Workspace
Tabs
Histogram
Pixel

Resolutions:
300 DPI - Printing
72 DPI - Web images

Size:
Standard: 6" by 4"


That's all for now, now it's time for me to get back to work!

...From Scratch!

Lately in class we've been working with Adobe Photoshop Elements as I have mentioned in my previous posts. We've already learned how to correct and edit existing images. The next step in our Photoshop Path Of Wisdom is creating our very own image...from scratch!

The kind of work we're doing, by creating our own image on Photoshop, is considered and known as 'digital painting'. This term makes good sense if you think about it. Digital because of the use of technology and painting because we are, just like an artist, painting on our own blank canvas (just that ours is on a monitor and not a wooden stand!). The idea is pretty simple but composing an image can be quite tough when you're not familiar with the program you are using! I strongly suggest for everyone to try out their techniques before they work on their final product! Using a lot of layers is a very beneficial idea, that way you can just delete parts of your picture that you aren't happy with without affecting the rest of your work.

We'll be posting our work on our very own Image Galleries found at our Wiki.

That's all for now!

--Amna

Every Pixel Counts!

Lately in class we've been working with Adobe Photoshop Elements as I have mentioned in my previous posts. Today we went over the general icon toolbar, and how we can use the features to enhance our own images.

**The letters in brackets are keyboard shortcuts

Marquee tool (M): Allows you to select a certain part of the image. The marquee tool can be selected to be rectangular or elliptical. When active, other parts of the picture won't be affected with the changes you make. To deselect either press ctrl +D or right click>deselect.

Move Tool (V): Used to move individual layers around.

Lasso Tool (L): Like the marquee tool, allows the user to select a part of the image, except the user decides the shape given to the marquee. The Polygonal Lasso Tool allows you to create various selections in the shape of polygons, and the Magnetic Lasso Tool grabs on to certain or similar pixels of the image so it is easier to select parts of the image.

Feather: The feather feature gives a soft edge to the selections made either by using a Marquee, Magic wand, or Lasso.

Magic Wand Tool (W): Selects fractions of the image, such as areas with the same colours or contrast ratios. You can change how many pixels will be selected by tolerance level. (If the tolerance level is higher, the Magic wand will select colours that aren't as close to each other.)

Crop tool (C): Used to select an area in the image, which is all you want to keep. You can choose from more options such as resolution, width and length before actually cropping the image.

Type tool (T): Allows you to insert text into the image. Can be horizontal or vertical.

Polygon tool (U): Allows you to draw a selected shape.

Gradient tool: Creates an overlaying layer with a blend of two or more colours.

Airbrush tool: Allows you to draw on the image with a brush that works and looks much like an airbrush.

Paintbrush tool (B): Also lets the user draw, but there are more options to what kind of paintbrush you would like to use.

Paint Bucket Tool (K): Fills a selected area with a chosen colour.

Pencil Tool: Also used to draw, works like a pencil.

Eraser Tool (E): Removes part of the image. Background eraser tool allows you to remove the background of an image. Magic Eraser tool works much like the magic wand by removing colours of similar contrast ratios.

Impressionist Brush: Gives the paintbrush an impressionist effect.

Blur Tool (R): Used to make parts of the image blurry.

Sharpen Tool: Sharpens the image by increasing contrast between individual pixels.

Sponge Tool: Softens the image, and blends the colours much like sponging a wet painting.

Smudge Tool: Like the sponge tool, it blends the colours. However, the smudge tool works more like using your finger to blend oil pastels.

Red Eye Brush Tool: Gets rid of red eyes in pictures.

Dodge/Burn Tool (O): Burn darkens parts of the image, Dodge makes the image brighter. Used for making pictures more realistic, shadows/highlights etc.

Clone Stamp: Clones a selected area. To select the area hold Alt+Click.

Eye Dropper (I): Picks up colours found in the image.

Hand tool (H): Used to move things around

Zoom tool (Z): Allows you to zoom in or out. This can be done with the Navigation tab as well.

Playful Customization

In today's class we looked at different things we can add or change about an existing picture. We've already learned how to make a picture look better so this class was focussed on making a picture look like something it actually wasn't!

The picture we were experimenting with can be considered a landscape picture (deliberately not a good one, since we wanted to 'fix' it!). We were shown how to change and add things to the sky (e.g.: moon, lightning etc.). We messed around with a few other aspects of the picture but the possibilities are left quite broad. Now it is up to our imaginations and our knowledge of photoshop to create a more interesting image out of our boring piles of snow!

Sliding into Perfection

When you take pictures you often only judge the content of the picture. We usually only evaluate the colours, quality and such only sparingly in the pictures we take. They are, however, an important aspect of any photograph or image. Sadly, a lot of pictures and images you may find on the internet, or just pictures you've taken yourself, might be very poor in these areas. Fortunately for us we can easily fix or edit these parts of our pictures using proper knowledge of Adobe Photoshop Elements. So let's look at a few common problems in images and how to fix them.

Colours:
Often a pictures colours may not have come out right, or look strange to you. To fix this problem using Photoshop Elements you alter the levels of RGB in your picture. You can do this by going to enhace>brightness/contrast>levels. From there you will be directed to a pop up screen. That will show a graphic representation of the over all RGB levels in your image and sliders that can help you alter them. You can move those around to lighten or darken your image to your heart's content, but there is also a drop down menu that let's you control the individual levels of the colours red, green and blue in your picture. Just move around some sliders and there you have it!

Image Quality:
Image quality is an entirely different issue. The quality of an image depends on its resolution. The resolution determines how many pixels there are per inch of the image. Pixel is short for picture element. Each pixel is like one dot of colour in an image, the more of these dots there are per inch the sharper, better quality you get in a picture. So when you're creating an image to print remember to always keep your resolution at 300, to get the best results. If you're just putting an image on the internet 72 is the suggested resolution so it doesn't take as much time to load and use up large amounts of bandwidth. It's hard to increase the resolution of an image once it has already been taken. Since the computer sees everything as a mathematical equation, it can only see the number of dots per inch and their hexadecimal codes. If you ask it to add more information (add more pixels), it can only stretch o ut the information it already has. The computer can only make a guess for you and thus the resolution can only be fixed slightly.

If your picture, for some reason, is too dull, bright or blurry, you can use the dodge, burn and sharpen tools to help you out.

Sharpen: The sharpen tool can sharpen parts of an image, but don't expect great results. If you have a blurry picture, sorry, you should just hold the camera still!

Dodge/Burn: The dodge and burn tools affect how light or dark the colours in your image are. If you use the dodge tool over an area the colours become brighter. If you use the burn tool the colours become darker, as if they had become "burnt", thus the name of the tool. Both of these were originally techniques used by manual developpers in the past.

So these are some ways to make your pictures look better using Adobe Photoshop Elements. Similar tools can be found in other photo-editing software so it's always good to know some basics. Now everything can look picture perfect!

lamicedaxeH?

Now...you're probably wondering what I'm talking about if you've read the title. Well the truth is that even I'm not quite sure what I'm talking about. Here let me fix that

lamicedaxeH-------->Hexadecimal

Yes, we're learning about Hexadecimal, the base 16 number system. As you all know we follow the base 10 number system and we have already explored binary the base 2 number system (Refer to "Computers? Those are ancient!" for more information.

This is how Hexadecimal works:

-Place values increase by multiplying by 16 (E.G. 1, 16, 32, etc.)
-We can place numbers up to "9" in place value columns
-Letters (A-F) are used after 9

A=10
B=11
C=12
D=13
E=14
F=15

And after F(15) you would naturally move to the next column, since Hexadecimal is the base 16 number system. To understand this concept better lets look at an example. Let's say you want to represent the number 17 using Hexadecimal, it would be done like so:



So the number 17 would be represented as "11" using Hexadecimal. Since we have 16(x1) and 1(x1).

The most common use of Hexadecimal, which we discussed in class is used to define values of RGB(Red, Green, Blue). Different values of the colours red, green and blue are what allow our computer monitors to display the wide range of colours that they do today. Different values of red, green and blue are applied to make these colours and Hexadecimal is what defines these values. The most vital piece of information that you need to know is that there are 255 levels of each colour, red, green and blue.

Another example can be used here to make this idea clear. If you want the colour pure red you would use the Hexadecimal code:

FF0000

The FF symbolizes all 255 levels of red. The first two zeros symbolize zero values of green and the last two zeros symbolize 0 values of blue. Leaving you with pure red. Using Hexadecimal you can go from 00 to FF for red green and blue. You need the right amount of each colour to create the right shade.

Since we have 255 levels of each colour. In total we have the possibility of 16.7 million colours, that's a lot to work with. Hexadecimal codes help us assign a specific code to each one of these colours making them much easier to use.

To sum all that up...Hexadecimal is just another thing that makes our already complicated lives slightly simpler!

Mail Merge

This week we started to learn about creating form letters and how to use the mail merge tool in Microsoft Word. First of all a form letter is a letter that has pretty much the same text body but some aspects of it are changed. Usually this would be the name of the person etc.

Example Form Letters:

Dear Riku,
You are invited to the Stars Banquet on Thursday night. We would really appreciate it if you would attend. Please let us know if you will be coming ASAP.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi



Dear Kyoko,
You are invited to the VIP Dance on Friday night. We would really appreciate it if you would attend. Please let us know if you will be coming ASAP.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi

As you can see the two letters here are very similar and only the name of the recipent, the occasion and date have been changed.

Form letters make it much easier for us to get people the same message without having to write or type out all the information each time. So let's say you have thank you letters, or invitations to send out you can easily send out the same letter with just a few things changed quite easily using Microsoft Word and this is how to do it!

Mail Merging Instructions:

1) First of all open up a word document and click tools>mail merge.

2) Now a pop-up window should be present on your screen. Under 'main document' click 'create and click 'form letters'.

3) After you have done that another pop-up window will open and it will ask you if you would like to create your form letter using the already active window (the one that you have opened) or a new document. Choose the one that you are most comfortable with, I myself find the active window option easier.

4) Now as you can see you have unlocked the next part of creating a form letter. Under 'data source' click 'get data' and click 'create data source.

5) Another pop-up window should be open now. This pop-up window will allow you to create the options for the changing parts of the text in your form letter. These changing parts are called 'fields'. As you can probably see in your pop-up window you are allowed to enter a field name or choose one of the existing ones. I suggest creating your own. You can make fields for the name of the person, an address or anything else that you would like to change in your text. Type in your field name and click ok to create as many fields as you wish.
*Note: Remember to remove the existing field names by selecting them and clicking 'remove field name' and then create your own!

6) After you have done that another pop-up window will open up, which you will use to save your document. Type in a name for your file that you will easily remember and press okay.

7) For this step...yes another pop-up window! What a surprise! Click 'edit data source' on this pop-up window. Now you can enter in the specifics for the fields! Each time you fill out all the fields for one letter, this one set of data will be known as a record.

Example:

Name: Cherry
Favourite food: cherries

Name: Candy
Favourite food: candy

This is an example of what you would do when you enter in specifics for the fields. Note that my fields are the name and favourite food and not the information I have entered. Above I have created two different recordsl

8) Once you have created as many of these as you want, click ok. Now you can type in your message, but wait! It isn't like any other message. You type your message but everytime you want to put down one of the things that will vary in your form letter click 'insert merge field' (this should be displayed right below all the other toolbars as an extra tool bar at this stage). You choose the field you want and click and then continue with your message placing the fields where necessary.
*Note: If you ever wish to edit your data source you can always go into tools>mail merge>edit.

9) When you're all done with that the last thing to do is click tools>mail merge>merge. A new document with all the different letters with different specifics should open up. Now you can do whatever you want with them! Wasn't that much easier than typing them all out?

--Amna