Beginning Adobe Photoshop • GCOM 330 (all sections) • Fall 2010

Week 3
Tuesday, September 7 -or- Wednesday, September 8

First things first! Our GCOM 330 Online Community is here!

Screen shot 2010-02-22 at 3.36.53 PM - Feb 22

JOIN NOW.
http://gcom330.ning.com/

All 330 students are required to join and participate.
This is part of your “Attendance and Participation” grade.

When you join, you must upload a face pic (or avatar or favorite pet etc.). You are given the freedom to create your own blog, go for it, feel free to post photoshop-related stuff too! ALSO, check in every few days, see what your fellow GCOM 330 students are up to, check out their profiles, their blogs, and COMMENT, join in, PARTICIPATE! ...and help each other....

Powered by Ning, it all begins now...
http://gcom330.ning.com/

Lecture: Watch it live, (in person or on TV) or on the internet video stream anytime.

Lecture Topics covered:
images


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 these:

Principles of Design: Balance

Principles of Good Design: Balance

repetition - Google Search

Birds on the Wires on Vimeo
hans



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.”
Screen shot 2010-01-29 at 8.05.23 PM - Jan 29







Assignments:

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?

Create your own "chap3L1_yourname.psd" (repeat: put your name on this “saved as” document!) per the chapter through Page 52 and email to me. ALSO, read pages 53-57, and for lab practice (no need to send in) do some more photoshop practice by doing the "exploring on your own" at the bottom of page 53.

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.

Watch this video on Photoshop's Blending Modes, very cool.
(it was made for CS3, it is virtually the same in CS5)

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0012

Hey check these links out, TONS of resources for the designer...

http://www.positivespaceblog.com/archives/pdf-documents-designer/

but wait!!! there's more!

http://www.positivespaceblog.com/archives/30-more-pdf-documents/