Lab 13 Reflection

     In our 13 lab for our VD course we were learning new skills in Illustrator. We were discovering new ways to curve lines, make curved vertexes, and scale objects. We were basically expanding the newly learned knowledge from the previous lab.
     There was really only one new tool we used in this lab and it was the anchor point tool. What it does is let you reshape and edit a path by letting you select a path and adding/subtracting points. It is useful in making lines curved. Other tools we learned but didn't necessarily use are the scale tool, shear tool, and reflect tool. The scale tool lets you scale objects, making them bigger or smaller, from an origin point if you so choose to use a origin point. The shear tool slants an object, like turning a square into a parallelogram. The reflect tool will reflect an object.

     The first thing we did was create two mountain points with the sides of equal length and only 5 points. To get the equal length the grid was turned on from View in the menu bar. Then using the grid 5 anchor points were set using the pen tool making sure the segments in between were of equal length.

     The next thing we needed to do was turn out mountains into hills and make a bow. The first thing we did was copy the original mountains and using the anchor point tool the peaks of the mountains were made curvy. Then a copy of the hills was made and reflected from Object/Transform such that the peaks faced the opposite direction of were they were pointing originally. It was placed directly under the original hills but wasn't connected to them yet. Then using the pen tool the two sets of hills were connected and the fill color was set to grey in the properties bar.

     After that we recreated the Paralympic Games logo using 3 shapes and one circle. To the left is my best recreation. I used 3 rectangles of relatively equal size and used the curvature to warp the rectangles at certain points to get the best result.
     Our next task was to create a tear drop. We used guides to get a perfect shape. To set our guides we first made sure rulers was turned on by going to View/Show Rulers. Then we used the mouse to drag from any point from the rulers into the workspace to set a guide. Using the guides I made made a triangle using the pen tool and using the anchor point tool rounded two of the corners.

     Finally we needed to make a pattern out of 4 tears and a square that looks like what is shown to the left. First a copy of the original tear was made. It was re sized to 50% original size from the transform menu. A copy of the re sized tear was made and rotated 90°. A copy of the rotated tear was made and it was rotated by the same amount was made. I rinsed and repeated until I had a total of 4 tears. A square was made and it was rotated 45°. The tears were then placed inside the square such that the pointed ends faced the center of the square.
     These skills are important to a web designer because it allows a web designer to be more creative. With the ability to draw curved lines or make equal and proportionate lines/shapes the possibility of what a web designer can create in Illustrator increases. So instead of a web designer needing to worry about what they can do within the limitations of only using straight unequal lines they have the option to make outstanding work with the ability to create curves of different degrees of curvature and have equivalency in their work. It overall enhances a web designers work and gives more options to what a web designer can do.

Lab 12 Reflection

     So far in VD I have been using Adobe Photoshop to complete my labs. In our 12th lab we were introduced to a new software called Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is a graphics editing program where the user can design and create artwork. It can be used to do things like draw cartoon to making business logos. This lab was an introduction to Illustrator so we used the basic tools to complete this lab.
    The tools that we used in the lab were the selection tool, the pen tool, the curvature tool, and the rectangular tool. The selection tool is used to select objects. Selecting objects let you change many properties of that object and move it around. The pen tool allows you to draw a straight line using anchor points. The curvature tool simply allows you to edit smooth or corner points. The rectangular tool allows you to draw rectangles as well as other vector shapes like ellipses or polygons.
     The first task was to draw a circle with perpendicular lines in side it. First I drew

2 lines of equal length using the pen tool. One of the lines was angled using the selection tool so it was perpendicular to the other line. A circle was then drawn by using ellipse tool (this is an alternate tool selected from the rectangular tool). Using the selection tool the circle was placed on top of the perpendicular lines. This covered up the perpendicular lines so with the circle still selected I went to Object in the menu bar and went to Arrangement/Send to back. This then sent the circle to a bottom layer and the perpendicular lines could be seen again. Using selection tool again I was able to align the center of the perpendicular lines with the center of the circle.
     The next task was to make a red dotted line with a few specific properties. So first the pen tool was selected but the color of the stroke was changed to red in the properties bar. Then going to the stroke menu in the properties bar I selected the box that said dashed line and set dash to 12pt and gap to 18pt. The weight was changed to 8pt. A line was then simply drawn.
     Our next task after that was to create a square using the rectangular tool. Shift was held down to

get  a perfect square. Then using the curvature tool one of the corners was brought closer to its opposite corner. Another square was made and it was modified the same way.  The two quadrilaterals were then positioned so that the right angle of each were opposite to each other. The two shapes were grouped together by going to Object/Group object. A copy of the group was made and a 45° angled line was made and placed between the two quadrilaterals.
     The final task was to create our own design using what we leaned in this lab. I used the pen tool and ellipse tool to create my design below. As you can see it is a crown with thick strokes and a circle

at the top, which is yellow, and two orange regions with red circles, made to look like pepperoni pizza.
     These skills are important for a web designer because a web designer needs to be fluent with many different programs. Different programs do different things. Photoshop was used to edit images. You could create artwork in photoshop but illustrator is probably the more sophisticated program of the two to create art. If a web designer knows how to use illustrator with photoshop the web designer could create art work for their website in illustrator and edit photos for their websites in photoshop instead of being limited to only photoshop for everything. Being fluent in illustrator in addition to photoshop allows to use the different features illustrator has that photoshop doesn't to enhance what your doing.
   

Lab 11 Reflection

      Lab 11 was a continuation of Lab 10. In this lab we explored more editing tool and used them to fix and make some photos look better. The tools that were used in this lab were the color replacement tool, clone stamp, healing and spot healing tool, and patch tool. The color replacement tool allows you to replace the original color of an image, the clone tool allows you to sample any area and paint it over other areas, spot healing and healing brush clones an area of an image and replaces a target area with the clone, and patch tool lets you select an area of an image like the lasso and allows you to move that selection over another area to either replace it with the area it's over or replace the area it's over wit it.

Before

After

 
 This was the first photo we edited. As you cans see it is a photo of a girl playing the park. What we did in photoshop was change the color of the girl's cap and touch up the wall. Using the color replacement tool we simply change the foreground color to green and painted the cap green. Then using the clone stamp we cloned portions of the brick wall to cover up some hot spots or graffiti not part of the art on the wall. Using the spot healing brush the dark spots of the wall in the top left were covered up. The crack in the wall was covered up by selecting it using quick selection and filling it using content aware.

 

Before 

After

   
 

Before

  The next picture was a statue. In this picture there was a portion of  the picture ripped out and missing which would be grass. Using the clone stamp we cloned samples of grass already in the photo and replaced the void with cloned grass. There were circular sprinklers in the photo which we covered up using the spot healing brush.

After

  We then needed to edit a picture of a rock climber climbing rocks. There was a carving in the rock which we covered up using the healing brush. There were many holes and chips in the rock as well. We used the patch tool to cover them up. There was a major chip in the right side of the rock which required both patch tool and spot healing brush since the color didn't match up with the surrounding rock.

     The last image was of a man that had aged just a little bit. He had wrinkles on his forehead which we covered up by using the healing brush. Wrinkles were around his eyes which were covered up using the patch tool. Wrinkles inside the glasses were covered separately from those outside.
     These skills would be helpful as a web designer because these skills can help a web designer patch up undesirable things in their work. For example, if a web designer took a picture of a park and wanted to put it in the parks website some things may make it look unattractive. Maybe trash on the ground or a pigeon in the wrong place. We can use these editing tools to remove those things and make the picture look better. Son in short, these skills help remove the undesired to make your work more appealing.

Before

After