Digital Photography and Imaging - Project 1

31/3/2022 - 28/4/2022 (Week 1 - Week 5)

Anna Chin Siaw Fong / 0354370 
Digital Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Project 1

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LECTURES

Week 1 - Introduction to Digital Photography & Imaging

The importance of Photoshop for Graphic Designers

1. Express creativity
2. Create graphic design
3. Restoration of old images
4. Integrate graphics with text artistically
5. Make use of brushes
6. Change photo colour
7. Rectify mistakes in photographs

Photograph Manipulation

• Involves transformation or alteration of a photograph using various methods and technique

Fig 1.0 Photograph manipulation with negative

Digital Imaging

• Converts the printed text, artwork, and photographs into digital images using a digital scanner or another imaging device

Fig 1.1 Techniques for digital imaging

Top 10 Tips of Succesful Graphic Designer

1. Follow the tutorials
2. Experiment
3. Memorize all keyboard shortcuts
4. Try to replicate others work
5. Do participate in design competitions
6. Subscribe to online galleries
7. Smart objects for smart designers
8. Scaling artworks and proportions
9. Use actions to personalize work
10. Organize the files properly

Week 2 - Introduction to Composition

Basic Composition

1. Focal Point - Help viewers set their eyes on important pieces of the design
2. Scale & Hierarchy - Scale is used to communicate hierarcy by drawing attention towards and away a certain element
3. Balance the Elements - Balance elements with different weights
4. White Space - Balance up main focus of the composition and help designs to breathe

Rule of Thirds

• The Rule of Thirds is the process of dividing an image into thirds, using two horizontal and two vertical lines. 
• It yields nine parts with four intersection points.

Fig 1.0 Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is a way to: 

• Use composition techniques that are in line with what’s naturally pleasing to the eye.
• Creatively use negative space.
• Create conversation between the subject and background.

Golden Ratio

• The Golden Ratio is a mathematical ratio. 
• It fosters organic and natural-looking compositions as it is commonly found in nature and used in designs. 
• It is a useful guideline to determine dimensions of the layout.

Fig 1.1 Golden Ratio

Week 3 - Introduction to Photoshop 2

Tool Box

Fig 3.0 Tool Box

Marque Selection Tools

Select and Mask

Fig 3.1 Marque Selection Tools

Lasso Tool

• Allows you to draw and pinpoint specific areas of a document
• Has 3 different tool options (Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, and Magnetic Lasso)

Fig 3.2 Lasso Tool

• Best to use with graphic tablet to achieve better flow when drawing and selecting

Pen Tool

• Most common option to create a path from scratch
• To create extremely precise shapes and paths using manually placed anchor points

Variation of Pen Tool

1. Straight line paths

Fig 3.3 Straight line paths

2. U shaped curves

Fig 3.4 U shaped curves

3. Simple S curves

Fig 3.5 Simple S curves

4. Complex S curves

Fig 3.6 Complex S curves

Layering

• Layers are different imagse stacked on top of each other
• Adjustments can be made within each layer without affecting the other layers
• Layers can be used for non-destructive editing

Week 4 - Introduction to Photoshop 3 Adjustment Layer & Filters

Adjustment Layer

• A group of a super useful, non-destructive image editing tools that add color and tonal adjustments to your image without permanently changing its pixels
• Can edit and discrd adjustments or restore original image at any time
  

Basic understanding of Adjustment Layer

1. Brightness / Contrast

• Makes adjustment to the tonal range of your image

2. Level

• Modify the tonal values in an image by adjusting the levels of the shadows, midtones, and highlights

3. Curves

• Adjust as many points as you want throughout the entire tonal range of the image 

4. Exposure

• Adjust exposure levels with three sliders: Exposure, Offset and Gamma
• Exposure will adjust only the highlights of the image, Offset adjusts the mid tones and Gamma will adjust the dark tones only

5. Selective Colour

• Selectively modifies the amount of a primary color without modifying the other primary colors in the image

Filters

• To change colour, add blur or create completely new image effects

Week 5 - Double Exposure

Double Exposure 

• Refers to merging multiple images
• Goal is to make them surreal, emotional, or humorous 
• Usually feature silhouettes

How to create double exposure?

1. Using the Tilt-Shift effect
2. Create fake reflection
3. Experiment with simple portraits and details textured
4. Convert your results to Black & White
5. Work with silhouette
6. Pick two random photo
7. Make simple objects look fascinating
8. Use shadow

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INSTRUCTIONS

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EXERCISES

Week 1

1. Share 3 Photoshop Works

We were to choose 3 photoshop works from Pinterest and explain what we like about them.

Fig 1.0 by Lukas

I like this photoshop work because it tells a story. It tells a story of how people can be easily absorbed into their phones and lose track of reality. 

Fig 1.1 by Josh Dunlop

This photoshop work is simple. Although it is simple, it gives people a sense of mystery to it as the little girl enters the wall into a myterious forest.  

Fig 1.2 by Eugene Smith

This is a really nice photoshop work as the artist used newpaper to create a face. It is really creative and interesting as people don't get to see these kind of work often.

2. The Bezier Game

We were to play the Bezier game to learn and familiarize ourselves with the pen tool.

Attached below is my score for the game: 

Fig 2.0: Bezier Game Score 

Week 2

1. Choose and identify your collage's design elements to be cut out and compose it into your own concept & story.
2. Pre-compose your collage design elements into a composition.
3. Take 3 photo of your collage pre-composition and insert it down below. 

I cut out elements from a food magazine. After cutting out all the elements that I want, I created 3 pre-compositions for the physical collage. I used the rules of third and focal point to create my pre-compositions.

Fig 2.0 Collage Pre-Composition 1

- 7/4/2022 -

Fig 2.1 Collage Pre-Composition 2

- 7/4/2022 -

Fig 2.2 Collage Pre-Composition 3

- 7/4/2022 -

Final Physical Collage Submission 

Fig 2.3 Final Physical Collage (JPG)

- 14/4/2022 -

Fig 2.4 Final Physical Collage (PDF)

- 14/4/2022 -

<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zBGwkW6FeZ_sVhwB6jNY4pxAAMsogqJ9/preview" width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>

Week 3

1. Create 3 different composition digital collages from the images that you’ve downloaded. 
2. Create A4 canvas size  (vertical) on Photoshop and start to do the compositions. 
3. Insert 3 photos of your digital collage compositions in the section below. 

I downloaded the images and created 3 compositions for the digital collage. 

Fig 3.0 Digital Composition 1

- 14/4/2022 -

Fig 3.1 Digital Composition 2

- 14/4/2022 -

Fig 3.2 Digital Composition 3

- 14/4/2022 -

Week 4

1. Attach your best composition from WEEK 3 digital collage exercise below.
2. Using the same Photoshop file, improvise your WEEK 3 digital collage into WEEK 4 by using Adjustment Layers & Filters on Photoshop.
3. Explain what you’ve learned in the description section.

I chose digital composition 2 as my best composition. I increased the brightness and decrease the contrast of the digital collage.

Fig 4.0 Adjusted brightness and contrast

- 21/4/2022 -

After that, I adjusted the curve and exposure of the digital collage. 

Fig 4.1 Adjusted curve and exposure

- 21/4/2022 -

Lastly, I also added photo filters to warmen the tone of the digital collage.

Fig 4.2 Added photo filter

- 21/4/2022 -

Final Digital Collage Submission 

Fig 4.3 Final Digital Collage (JPG)

- 21/4/2022 -

Fig 4.4 Final Digital Collage (PDF)

- 21/4/2022 -

<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/109lm3QeHn8pFFdZ3CpMRQ3-nlTx6dLq6/preview" width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>

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FEEDBACK

Week 3

• Pre-composition 3 is nicer as it has some sort of depth

Week 4

• Digital composition 1 looks really nice. It has an interesting perspective.
• However, digital composition 2 looks more interesting than digital composition 1. Go with digital composition 2.

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REFLECTION

Making the physical and digital collage was really fun. It was tiring making the physical collage as I had to cut out a lot of elements from the food magazine. I cut out a lot of elements which I did not use in the end. It was fine because I had a variety of elements to choose from to create my pre-composition for the physical collage. As for the digital collage, I had fun playing with the adjustment layers and filter. I never really used the adjustment layers and filters before in the past, so I got to use it and experiment with it for the digital collage. Hence, I was able to learn more about Adobe Photoshop.