Project 1 Warhol Reflection

     Hello internet. I've just completed the first project for my Visual Design course. The name of the project was Warhol. The name is like this because Warhol was a leading figure in pop art and we were making a Warhol portrait of ourselves.
     The first thing we did was take a picture of ourselves with both of our hands in the frame. Then we opened a new file in photoshop and put our picture in photoshop. We used the quick selection tool to select ony ourselves. Then we made  layer via copy. Some parts of the background still remianed so in the new layer we used a combination of the quick selection and lasso tools to get rid of any remaining parts of the background. Then we desaturated our image. In the cutout filter we adjusted the levels of the photo so it had 3 tones of grey or more and increased edge simplicity. This made our photo look mare simplictic and dramatic. After that we created a new canvas. We divided it up into 4 parts. We took our modified image and brought it into the new canvas. It was resized to fit in one quadrant and copied so the other 3 quadrants would be filled with the same image. At this point we created folders for each individual quadrant. Using the Rectangular Tool we created a background for each quadrant and the background color was changed for each quadrant. To make sure our image appears abuve the background we dragged each background down beneath the image layer so we see ourselves on top of the background. Then we changed the image's color in each quadrant. To do this we created a new layer and put it on top of our image layer. Still in the layer of our image we used load selection to select ourselves. The we selected the new layer and choose a color using the paint bucket. We made sure the color we used to paint ourselves was adjacent to the color of the background on the color wheel. After that we were done.
    These skills are important for a web designer because a web designer must know how to use color in their work. Knowing what proper colors to use is important in creating appealing designs. In this lab I learned how to make individual sections in photoshop. We created quadrants in this project with their own separate backgrounds and with what I learned I feel like I can make a 3x3 grid. I also learned that colors oppposite to eachother on the color wheel are complementary color and adjacent colors  blend welll together.

Career Party Reflection

    Hello internet. I've just had my second WBL workshop where we got to do surveys about our career interests. The survey asked us questions based on the Holland Code. What the Holland Code is basically a theory of personality that focuses on career and vocational choice. People are gropued based on their suitability for six different categories of occupations (pictured below). Questions in my survey asked me things like if I enjoy working with other people or if I like math. Based on how we answer the question we can see which categories we are interested the most and which categories we are interested the least. We list the top three areas of interest and form our unique career code. This code can let us see careers we may be interested in. In addition to taking a Holland Code survey we took a Career Cluster survey. Career Clusters are a grouping of occupations and industries based on commonalities. Taking the career cluster survey let us see which occupations and industries we might be interested in working in.
     So after I took my Holland Code test the code I got was CIA. This ment that the top three areas that I'm interested in are Conventional, Investigative, and Artistic. This means that careers that may interest me can be management, orginizational, and numerical careers; scientific and intellectual; and/or creative, imaginative, and intuitive careers. So when I look for careers in the future I can use these categories to find something I'll most probably like, assuming my areas of interests don't change over time. So in the future I could choose to be the manger of a company, a business card designer, an astronomer, or perhaps the manager of an astronomy company that also designs the business cards. My Career Clusters told me the three clusters I might be interested were in the business industry, the educational industry, and/or the IT industry. This tells me that whatever career I look for in the future I will most probably enjoy a career in any of the industries above.

 

Lab 4 Reflection

     Hello internet. I've comleted the fourth lab of this marking period for my visual design class. The name of the lab was Lab 4 Melon Head. In this lab we created a head out of various fruits and vegetables in photoshop. We used various selection tools to select the friuts and vegetables we were going to use to make our head.

     The first thing we did was open a new filein photoshop and opened the base of the project in photoshop. The base contained all the fruits and vegetables we were going to use: a blueberry for the pupil, a carrot for the eye, a pear tomato for the nose, a radish for the eyebrow, a mushroom for the hat, maccaroni for the bow tie, a kiwi for the mouth, an orange for the ears, and of course a melon for the head. The various selection tools were used for the project were the marquee tool (both eliptical and rectangular), the lasso tool (normal lasso, polygonal lasso, and magnetic lasso), the quick selection tool, and the magic wand.
     We used the normal lasso to select the pear tomato, since it had curves and with the normal lasso the human is is control and curves can be made. However there were imperfections were an area was to jagged or we left out too much of an area. So we learned that we can add to our selection by holding down shift and do the opposite by holding down alt. The blueberry and carrot were circular objects. To select them we held down shift while using the eliptical marque, which makes the marquee select a circular area. The magic wand was used to select the radishes. However I used a shortcut. I used the rectangular marquee the select the radishes and the area around it, then used the magic wand to select the radishes, and finally made a layer via copy. For the mushroom and orange I used the magnetic lasso. The magnetic lasso makes a selection based on color difference. The orange had two distinct colors, redish-orange and white, so the anchors the lasso layed down were in the right places I needed it to be, in the junction between the pulp and husk. The mushroom had more than two colors. The lasso still worked fine but for some parts I needed to set the anchor to stop it from selecting the wrong things. The eliptical marquee was used to select the kiwi and melon.
     The radishes and oranges were special since there needed to be two of them and they needed to be mirror images of eachother. Copying was easy, right click the layer and copy. To make the mirror images we needed to go to edit in the menu bar. Then we needed to go to transform and flip horizontal. The oranges needed to be rotates so in edit free transform was selected for this purpose. The layers needed to be arranged appropriately. The mushroom was supposed to be behind the melon so it was the bottom layer. Next was the melon. All the fruit and vegetables were going to be layed on top of the melon so the melon was placed after the mushroom so the other objects don't get blocked by it. Finally, all the other objects were arranged to form a face.
     These skills are important for a web designer because a web designer must know how to properly edit their work. Selecting things and placing things are skills that need to be learned to make appealing peices of work. In this lab I learned how to add and subtract from my selection. I learned that if I don't make the perfect selection the first time it's okay because I can add or subtract to it. I also learned that you can make interesting and good peices of work from unexpected things. We made something that looks like a face from fruits and vegetables. This shows us that we can use unexpected things to make our work more appealing.

Lab 3 Reflection

     Hello internet. Today I completed my third lab for my Visual Design course. The name of the lab was Image Adjustments Part 2. So we were still exploring how to do image adjustments. Our task was to open an image of a red car in photoshop, resize it to the requested dimensions, copy it 4 times, and alter some property of 4 of the copies.

     We first opened a new file in photoshop. Then we opened up the image and used free transform to change the size of the image. After that we made 4 copies of the car's layer. When then moved each car in an arrangement such that 4 cars slightly overlapping each other are in a diagonal going from the top left to bottom right and one image of the car is at the top right. The car at the top right went unaltered. The cars in the diagonal were altered. The layers of each car were rasterized. Then we went to Image in the menu bar and selected Adjustments. From there we altered various things. The first image I altered to be black and white. The second image was altered so that the saturation was slightly different. The third image was altered so the color of the car would be different. I made it into a blue car. The last image was altered so the hue was different. By altering the hue I made it look like a purple car. The layers were renamed to reflect the alteration made on them. Then using the text tool I types the alteration done under their image. Finally I handed in my work.
     These skills are important for web designers because, just like in the second lab, web designers must know how to alter their work. Some aspects of images don't always look good but knowing the different types of adjustments can let a web designer experiment with the different adjustments and find what's right for their piece of work. In this lab I learned a bit more about image adjustments. I learned about rasterizing layers and how I can make adjustments to an image a lot easier, by going to Image in the menu bar and selecting adjustments. Other than that I pretty much practiced many of the things I learned in the previous lab.

Lab 2 Reflection Journal

     Hello internet. I've completed the second lab of my Visual Design course. The name of the lab was Image Adjustments. In the lab we explored various ways to change some properties of our image, mainly relating to color. Our task was to open an image of our teacher's puppy in photoshop, make 10 copies of only the dog and resize them so they fit in one frame.  After that we were supposed to change some property of each individual dog, mainly color, using the image adjustment options avaliable in photoshop.
     The way we adjusted the color of each dog was long, but once you got the grip of it the sequence of steps didn't feel to strenuous. After opening the picture of the dog we used the lasso tool in photoshop to select only the dog. We had multiple option when using the lasso. The normal lasso allowed you to hand pick what is selected and what's not. However since a human is controlling what the lasso gets it could be innacurate. Next is the polygonal lasso. It also needs a human to hand pick what gets selected or not but it draws straight lines. You basically set a vertex, draw a straight line to another vertex and continue until you come aroung the object being selected and close the shape by connecting to the first vertex set. Last was the magnetic lasso. Unlike the other two lassos, the magnetic lasso selects an object based on color differences. All you have to do is drag the lasso around the object you want to select and let the program select where the lines are drawn for you. I ended up using the magnetic lasso for my project mainly to save time and energy.
     After we selected the dog we made duplicate layers of only the dog by right clicking and selecting duplicate via copy. We resized the copy to proportion and repeated the steps 9 more times to make a total of 10 copies. We placed the individual dogs in different places and turned off the background. To edit and individual dog we selected that dog's layer, used the magic wand and clicked a blank space, when to select in the menu bar, clicked select inverse, and then did whatever we wanted to the dog. We did that for all 10 dogs. Each layer had a mask so we merged the layer and mask. We turned the background back on and turned in our finished lab.
     These skills are important for a web designer because a web designer must know how to alter something so it looks good. Things or aspects in the design of a website might not look good at first. But knowing how to alter a property of that image, like hue and saturation, may make it look good. In this lab I learned how to edit specific objects in photoshop as well as make duplicates of an object. I learned color of an object can be altered in photoshop and that an object can look nicer with some image adjustments.

Lab 1 Reflection

     Hello internet. So I've just completed the first lab for my Visual Design course. The lab was simply taking a hike somewhere and taking pictures. However our photos had to demonstrate photography concepts we learned in class as well as well as techniques. The 5 concepts our photos needed to demonstrate were high point, low point, landscape, eye level, and close up shots. The techniques we needed to use were framing, balance, emphasis, and rule of thirds.
     High point shots are shots where you point your camera down at your subject, making it look like the picture is taken high off above ground. Low point is the opposite, where the camera is pointed up at the subject from a down position. Eye level photos are photos where the camera is not tilted up or down, the shot taken from the natural position of ones eyes/head. Close up shots are taken when the subject is very close to the lens or with the subject zoomed in on. Landscape shots are photos with the width of the photo larger than the length. Framing is a technique of drawing attention to the subject of the image. Emphasis further brings attention to your subject, making it stand out from the rest. Rule of thirds is breaking an image into a 3x3 grid and placing points of interest along lines and intersections. Balance is commanding attention evenly, either symmetrically or asymmetrically.
     There's more to what we had to do on our hike. We were supposed to take a total of 24 photos, but there was a catch. Those 24 photos needed to be taken from one spot. We could only move up o a few feet but not more than that. Each of the photos were supposed to be unique and were supposed to demonstrate the concepts and techniques previously mentioned. Finally we chose 6 of the photos that demonstrated all of the concepts and techniques and submitted them. The way we submitted them was quite simple. We created a new file in photoshop, imported the pictures from our camera and put 6 good ones in the photoshop file, resized the pictures and labeled their layers in photoshop, and finally submitted them to our teacher.
    These skills are important for a web designer because a web designer must know what is appealing to the eye to make their web sites attracting. This lab took us out on a hike with our purpose to take good and appealing photos using common techniques and concepts present in great photographs. This lab also made us use limited resources to their fullest potential. We could only stand in one spot and we had to take 24 UNIQUE photos. As a web designer you may have limited resources or little to work with but you need to make the most out of it anyway.
      In this lab I learned a different way of taking pictures, now I don't just point and shoot but put thought into my shots. I also got to use photoshop a bit and learn a few things about it. When we put our photos into photoshop I learned photos are put in layers. To edit a particular photo, such as resizing it, we were editing that particular layer. So overall I feel like I learned a lot and I got to experience a lot as well.