Downloading Fonts and Brushes

To practice downloading using fonts and brushes, I made a christmas card, so I downloaded a few different brushes, as you can see I added them to the picture. I first loaded a background, and I added the icicles, ribbons, snowflakes, candy cane, reindeer and robin. However the robin was just an image I found and made transparent. I changed the colour of the brushes, so the icicles are white and the candy cane is red etc. I then downloaded a font to use, this was done in a different way to the brushes as you loaded the font into the drop down menu.

In Design Stage 1

To practice using in Design, I opened a new document and used the double page spread, I created three columns and copied and pasted an article into those columns, I made the text link together and continue into the next column by dragging the smaller box into the column. I used the grid view to make sure that all columns were in line with each other and were exactly the same distance apart. I then edited the text, changing the font. I made the first letter of the article larger than the others. I then made another box and placed a quotation in it, I had to make the text arrange around the quotation box. I then covered the whole article with a large box so that I was able to change the background colour. Afterwards I edited a picture in Photoshop as In Design does not allow you to edit pictures, I made the picture transparent so there would be no white background around it and I also resized the picture before positioning it. I then played around with creating a header, by changing the colours and the fonts, and also by creating strokes around the text.

Adjustment layer- curves.

Before

                                                                   After
                         
Using Photoshop, I changed the colours of the picture by using, new layer, new adjustment layer, and curves, I edited each of the colours red, green and blue by changing the shape of the curve. I decided to make the image slightly darker and also more blue, because I chose a picture of Loki, who is a Frost Giant, and blue connotes the colour of coldness and frost.

Shutter Speed Pictures

To take these pictures, I had to change the shutter speed of the camera depending on what kind of picture I was taking. The shutter speed controls the length of time that light passing through the lens reaches the film

To improve the quality of an image you can change the shutter speed. To capture the images of throwing the leaves the shutter speed was set to 1/250  sec.

To make the last image the room had to be dark, we then used torches to draw shapes and patterns repeatedly whilst the camera captured the whole of the image. It was very hard to get these images in focus, so I think it would help if I experimented more with ISO settings and with autofocus. I think the first three images turned out quite well since they are not blurred. However I think it may be beneficial for me to experiment using continuous shoot mode to get the best possible picture of things such as the leaves falling.

Composition Pictures

Composition pictures

Shot Distance

In this picture, you can see that it was taken from a distanace since it shows the body as opposed to only showing the head. Although the feet are not shown, the picture is taken showing the body from above the knee, since I was stood far back when taking it.

                                             Framed

This picture shows the use of framing, as you can see, the face is framed in between two banister poles that I had taken from the other side of the banister. The picture also shows a very slight use of tilt as the stairs where I took this where higher up than where I was standing on the flat floor of the other side,

                                            Eye Line

In this picture, you can see that Georgia is looking directly into the camera, she is at the same height as the camera and is therefore an eye line picture.

Lines

Primarily, this picture shows use of lines, the banisters lead up to where Georgia is standing, and the lines are very clear. This picture also shows framing between the archway and the stairs, Georgia's whole body is in the picture, however I did not stand far enough away to show the left side of the archway,

Using the Healing Brush

Before

After

When using Photoshop to change the image, I used the healing brush to make the skin clearer, I had to change the brush size to be able to cover all of the spots, such as making the brush smaller around the nose to clear the spots. I used the 'Alt' button to chose the colour of the skin that I wanted to use.  I also used the magnetic lasso tool to change the eye colour, I did this by using colourise and altering the hue/saturation of the eyes. 

Vampire Tutorial

Before

After

In Photoshop, using a range of tools, I was able to create this vampire look, firstly I used a tool that allowed me to desaturate the skin to give it that grey look, I did this by using the sponge tool and setting it to desaturate at around 80%  I kept changing the size of the brush to make sure that I did not go over the eyes or the lips in the picture. I then used the burn tool set to shadows at about 60% to make the lips a brighter shade of red, and I also used it to make the outer eyes blacker. After finishing with the burn tool, I used the magnetic lasso tool to circle the colour of they eyes and then used hue/saturation and colorise to change the colour and the lightness of the eye, I made them a deep red colour. To make vampire teeth, I again used the magnetic lasso tool to circle one tooth, and then I copied it to a new layer, after I'd done this I used the warp tool to change the shape of the tooth using the grid points provided. I then did the same steps with the other tooth. To practice downloading and using brushes, I added blood splatters to the picture. I downloaded the brushes online and then opened them in photo shop, I chose the brushes that I wanted to use, and changed the colour of them to red. I was also able to change the direction of the blood splatters by opening my brush palette window. I changed the size and direction depending on where I was placing them on the image.

Magazine Front Cover

Photography Evaluation
I used manual focus when taking the photos, I learned how to use the zoom and focus rings, since I had no prior knowledge considering I usually use auto focus.
I took my images landscape when they were supposed to be portrait, however this did not create any significant problems as the dimensions of the front cover still allowed me to use the photo I wanted, but I had to position the image so that only the least important parts of the photo were not seen.
A lot of the images I took at first were out of focus, so I had to get used to using the focus rings, and then the majority of my images after this were fine, so overall I would say that they were in focus, although I do think that I could improve the focus of my images.
In terms of lighting, after experimenting with side and front lighting, I decided that side was the best to use for my magazine cover.

Side Lighting

Front Lighting

After taking images using both of these types of lighting I decided that I much preferred the side lighting, meaning that for the rest of my shots I looked at the position of the sun and moved to an area where the light was coming from the side in my images.

For the background of my magazine I decided that I wanted a brick wall to give a sort of underground look to the image. This did not cause any problems when taking the image. I also had o think about what my background would look like with the colour scheme I wanted, and I thought that a brick wall background would be appropriate for a black white and pink colour scheme.

Katie and I met in lesson, however I don't consider myself to have people skills problems so Katie and I got along fine so it was easy to take the images, however the fact that we did get along well meant that we could of been a little more focused when taking the images, but overall the shoot was good.

Photoshop Evaluation

The tools I used on Photoshop were the text tool, black and white, FX, and the shape tool. Generally I found the tools on photoshop quite easy to use once I figured out what to do with them, I did not find any of them particularly difficult to use. I would consider my text to be well controlled, I used simple colours and the strokes were easy to use and control to the amount that I wanted. My images were not cut out and the only effect I used were black and white on the image, I did this by placing the black and white layer above the image layer and then adding my text on top of the black and white layer. I did not download any fonts, I used the ones already provided in photoshop. The colours I used were black, white and pink, this is because I wanted my magazine to be black and white with some text contrasting against it, I wanted my magazine to still look quite underground, with a punk feel and I thought that using pink for the writing would be good for this effect, especially since my model is a girl and pink is associated with girls. If I were to improve anything about my magazine cover, I would improve the image because I took it landscape instead of portrait so the top of Katie's head got chopped off, and also  the sides of the image are not on the cover because of the dimensions of the A4 cover. I think the strengths of my magazine are the colour scheme and the layout.

Skills Audit

AS Media Production: Technical Skills Audit Print Production

Name:                         Tutor group:              Date:

Photographic Skills

Which of the following photographic features/equipment have you used on a camera before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Manual Focus features		x
Shutter Speed		x
Aperture control		x
A tripod		x
External flash		x
Self timer facility	x		Casual photography – no particular level
Light meter		x
Composition grids	x		Casual photography – no particular level

Photoshop Skills

Which of the following features of Photoshop have you used before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Text control		x
Filters		x
Brushes	x		Digital Drawing – No particular level
Layers	x		Digital Drawing – no particular level
Opacity control		x
Shape creation		x
Brightness and contrast control	x		Casual photography – no particular level
Dodge/Burn		x
Clone stamp tool		x
Colour curves adjustment		x
Magnetic lasso, polygon lasso tool		x
Cropping tool	x		Casual photography – no particular level
Retouch tool		x

In Design Skills

Which of the following features of In Design have you used before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Margin and column guide creation		x
Inserting text in ID		x
Inserting images in ID		x
Resizing images in ID		x
Text manipulation – resizing, rotation		x
Text manipulation – controlling kerning and leading		x
Text flow creation		x
Text effects – drop shadow		x
Drop cap insert		x
Using transparent imagery in ID		x
Shape creation In design		x
Text wrapping		x
Exporting to PDF from In-design		x