Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A 3D Effect

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I found the image I wanted, cropped it down the an appropriate size and then changed it to grey scale as I personally think grey scale images work a lot better when turned into 3D because if you use a colour photo, sometimes there can be a bit too much colour on the scree and it gets confusing.

The next thing I did was duplicate the layer. After this, I double clicked on the new layer and opened up Layer Style. I went to 'Advanced Blending' and un-ticked the box for R in the R G B options.

After this, I simply selected the Move Tool and slightly moved the top layer to the left slightly, creating this awesome 3D effect. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be but I found the results very satisfying!

Creating A Logo Design From A Photo

before

after

Sadly, when I was creating this logo, I didn't think to take screen shots for what I did. However, I know what I did step by step in order to achieve this out come.

My friend's band wanted me to design them a logo. They gave me a breif summary of what they wanted: the band's name, a growling wolf and blood. After thinking for a while, I took these ideas and this is what the out come was.

1) I went online and searched for stock images of growling wolves. Eventually, I found the right

one and saved it to my computer.

2) I then opened it up in Photoshop. I removed the background by using the Magnetic Lassoo Tool and drawing around the wolf and simply deleting the background. The wolf was now left on

a white background.

3) I went online and used an online vectorizing website to change the image into a 'posterized' vector. (www.vectormagic.com) After it had been vectorized, I saved it back onto my computer and brought it up again on Photoshop.

4) I decided to change the colour of the wolf. To start off with, the wolf was brown. I went to Hue and Saturation and turned the saturation down to about -65. I then went to Colour Balance and turned the blue up a little bit, as I felt that the blue would go nicely with the grey.

5) After this, I changed the background colour to a very very dark grey, almost black colour. However, because of the background and my wolf being the same colour, the wolf didn't stand out very much anymore. To resolve this, I double clicked on the layer of the wolf and applied a Layer Style of 'Stroke'. I gave it a white outline of about 8px thick, now making the wolf stand out against the background again.

6) As I had been told they wanted 'blood', I went online and searched for blood brushes. After finding a pack that I liked, I installed it and then selected the Brush Tool in Photoshop. I selected one of the brushes from the pack and changed it to a crimson colour to match blood. On a new layer, I applied the brush to the wolf's mouth to make it appear as if it had blood on it. I changed the layer setting to 'overlay' so that it looked more realistic.

7) I then added the text. As the band's name was Empathy, that's what I used. I chose the font Varsity as this was the font that they had previously used for their band logos and I thought I should stick to that. I chose the colour black and then put a white stroke on it like the wolf as it didn't stand out very much against the background.

8) After looking at it for a while, I thought the background was very plain. I made a new layer and then went to my downloaded brushes - a galaxy brush to be precise. I got quite a large brush, and changed it to a very light grey, almost white. I simply applied this to the layer and immediately it had the desired effect. As it was a galaxy brush and was meant to resemble twinkeling stars, I decided to apply a Layer Style to it and I gave it a little Outer Glow of white.

All in all, I think that I did a pretty good job with creating this logo. It's a shame that I didn't take screen shots for this tutorial but hopefully I have described it in enough detail.

Aperture Settings

In lesson, we learnt about how to use the Aperture Setting on the cameras and how the function of the f-stop works. Essentially, the opening behind the camera lens that lets the light through is called an aperture. The way you can control the size of this opening is by setting the f-stop to an appropriate number. By changing the size of the opening, you are changing the amount of light that is allowed in through the lens, therefore controlling the depth of the field. The larger the f-stop, the smaller the lens opening which allows more light in. Esssentially, the larger the field of depth, the more the background is out of focus. However, the smaller the field of depth, the background is more in focus. I took 3 photos to illustrate this.

The f-stop on this photo was 4. As you can see, the background is completely in focus and the object at the front is out of focus.

In this photo, the f-stop is at 14. It is a middle range number meaning that generally, everything in the photo is as equally focused. It appears just like a normal photo without any point of focus.

And this photos f-stop was at 30. As you can see, the object at the front is in focus whilst the background is blurry and out of focus.

All in all, the f-stop can come in useful for a lot of different reasons. For example, one situation that you could use aperture settings in is when you are taking portrait photos of a model and you want the focus to be completely on them. In the case, you would set the f-stop number to 30 and snap away in the comfort of knowing your model is in focus!

Downloaded Font

In class, we were all appointed the task to download a font and then make a magazine masthead out of it. I went onto www.dafont.com and browsed through the fonts, looking for ones that caught my eye in particular. I eventually came across 'Varisty', the font in which I have used for this magazine masthead. I downloaded it, extracted it and then installed it onto the computer. (save > extract all > my computer > local disk c: > windows > fonts > paste)

After installing the font, I opened up Photoshop and began to play around with the text. As we were supposed to be making a masthead for a music magazine, I thought the name 'RIOT' would be appropriate for a punk/rock music style magazine and I also felt that my downloaded font went well with the general look I was going for.

All in all, downloading a font and installing it onto the computers was very easy, quick and definitely worth it in the end. I personally prefer downloaded fonts as you can get a lot more option with them as opposed to the standard ones already installed on the computers.

Photoshop Tutorial - Avatar Transformation

Mock Up Magazine Front Cover

shutter speed photos

SLOW SHUTTER SPEED

FAST SHUTTER SPEED

In this lesson, we got into groups and each took a camera. We played around with the shutter speed of the cameras to create and capture different effects through the same lens. Shutter speed is basically what it says -the speed of which the shutter on the camera is opened and closed at. The longer the lens is open, the more motion you will capture. The shorter that the lens is open, the more freeze frame effect of the action is what you will get.

Shutter speed can be used to create different effects for different purposes. If a photographer for a sports magazine wanted to capture the motion of a person running, they would set the shutter speed low so that they could capture the full movement, including the moving of the legs, arms, etc. If a magazine that endorsed trampolining wanted to get an action shot of a girl doing a flip, they would set the shutter speed to very fast so that they could catch the core action and freeze it in time.

Above, you can see an example of both slow shutter speed and fast shutter speed.

The first picture is of a Slow Shutter Speed. In order to achieve this effect, we had to turn the shutter speed on the camera down to a very low and slow shutter speed. As we all took different pictures and made different shapes, we changed the shutter speed accordingly but made sure to keep it slow. For my picture, we turned the shutter speed down to 4 seconds, to give me enough time to actually draw the shape and not run out of time. Other people's though, such as people who wrote their names, had to have a slightly longer time such as 6-8 seconds depending on how long their name was. I think we did the effectively as we picked a dark spot to do it in with the flash light. If we hadn't chosen a dark place and used a brightly lit area, the effect wouldn't have been anywhere near as striking. The only thing that we could have improved was to plan it out a little bit more so we knew exactly what we were doing and where to 'draw' certain parts of the drawing. The outcome would have been a lot more 'professional' looking if we had done so.

The second picture is of a Fast Shutter Speed. Unlike the other picture, in order to achieve this picture and not to have any motion blur, we had to turn the shutter speed up to it's maximum of 4000. This means that the length that the lens was open for was a very, very short amount of time, therefore being able to capture the motion perfectly with all of us mid-air. As you can see, it's a clear picture and if we hadn't of changed the shutter speed, it would have been very motion blurred and chances are, we wouldn't have captured this picture in one shot like we did. The strength of this picture is that the photographer managed to get us all at the right time of jumping. The one weakness about this is that even though we are all in the air, we did not all jump at the same time. Once again, it would have been good if we were given time to plan it out and to organise it so that we could have as many shots needed to get the correct outcome and to all jump at the same time.

All in all, I reckon that in the future this skills will definitely benefit me. It gives me more control over the camera so that if for instance I do wish to take a freeze action shot, I have the proper means to do so. So many times in the past I have tried to capture a piece of action but missed it because I didn't know how to use the shutter speed function. The same applies for wanting to capture the motion itself - I can imagine using this quite a lot within Unit 3 especially with the idea of lights etc. I would obviously have to expand my knowledge on how to use shutter speed effectively but so far I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on it.

Introduction Project

Skills Development

1) The first and probably most important skill that I have developed is how to create a Flat Plan. Seeing as I have never created a flat plan before, it was good to learn what they did and how they were important. Without a Flat Plan, I don't think my advert would have turned out anywhere near as "organised" as it did. By using the Flat Plan I knew exactly what I needed to do and how it was supposed to look without having to improvise on the spot.

2) Another important skill that I developed was learning how to correctly target an audience. Once again, I had no skills or knowledge of how to do so and after taking notes and watching presentations, I feel that I have at least a slight understanding of how to target a correct audience, but I still have a lot to work on in order to get it perfect.
3) Despite already knowing the basic tools on Photoshop, a skill that I picked up whilst creating my print advert was how to move cut one image out from another and transfer it onto another sheet by using 'save selection'. I had always taken a much longer, drawn out process of doing this but being able to simply save selection and drag it across really made things a lot easier for me.

Skill Weaknesses

As I have only just learned how to create a Flat Plan for an advert, I think that I still have a lot more things to learn and therefore this is one of my weak points. By no means was my Flat Plan 100% perfect and I was a little bit confused about what had to go in the Rationale, but I did try my best. Linking in with this is the fact that I also don't 100% know how or what I need to do in order to decipher my target audience and how to appeal to them. I believe I can learn a lot more in both of these fields and that it will be really beneficial to my work when I do. These are the two core things that will help me create better adverts.

Key Questions

1) Obviously, in order to create my final print I had to create a flat plan for it. In fact, for my print advert, I had to use all of them: flat planning, targeting and audience and in the final steps of my advert, 'save selection' on Photoshop.

2) I have used them all relatively effectively, as my print advert did turn out the way I had planned it on my Flat Plan. It wasn't 100% exact but it was fairly similar, the models in similar positions and pulling similar expressions, the main theme of the advert being the smiley face created from the blu-tack. As for a targeting and audience, I think that I probably could have done better if given more time to think about it, but generally, I think it does appeal to the target audience I had chosen. The target audience was 16-20 year old males who enjoyed a bit of humour and I believe that our advert captures this.

3) Because before I began Media this year, I had no knowledge of target audience, flat planning or anything like that. Simply by creating a flat plan and being able to appeal to a certain audience is proof that I am already starting to develop some skills.

4) The main weakness with our storyboard and advert was that fact that the pictures from the camera came out very blurry. When they were on the camera, we didn't really pay attention to it but as soon as we loaded the pictures onto the computer it was obvious that they were very, very blurred. This was because we had some how managed to change the SLR settings to 'manual' instead of 'auto'. Apart from that, we probably could have taken a few more photos too, so we had a wider selection of what to put in our storyboard in particular instead of having to deal with the bare minimum that we already had. Perhaps if we had a little bit more time to plan and base our product around an idea the final product would have been more professional-looking but apart from that, I think it came out very well.

5) As said before, I would make sure that I took a range of different photos, maybe even some of the same thing but at different perspectives and camera angles so when looking over the photos I could choose which one was more effective. A bigger selection would make my choice vaster and would mean that I wouldn't have to just deal with what I had. It leaves less room for mistakes and having to re-do things.

6) It would easily be working out how to target and audience properly. I struggled with coming to terms with all of the requirements for targeting an audience but I think within time and me learning the proper way to go about things, it will become a lot easier. Another thing that would help me move towards a more professional outcome would be more skills in Photoshop, such as using the Pen Tool to cut images out more precisely and learning more tricks with the fonts.

Additional Questions
1) Beforehand, my product (Blu-Tack) was probably aimed at an older audience, such as 25-30 year olds, who are home owners and wanted to keep their walls clean and intact whilst hanging things up.

2) Our new target audience is aimed at 16-20 year old males who have a sense of humor.

3) The main feature of our advert that I believe would attract our target audience was the "male humor" within the advert. The advert shows a young couple sat a couch. The boy is holding his arm across the screen and holding grinning lips shaped out of Blu-Tack to his grumpy looking girlfriend's mouth. This would tap into the male sense of being more dominating whilst also being funny.

4) I probably could have used different, more "mainstream" looking models compared to the ones that I did use in my advert. The problem with using models that are more alternative looking means that it immediately cuts out a whole section of target audience based on purely appearance. If I used more mainstream looking models, then I could appeal to the whole range of teenagers instead of a small proportion of them.

5) Apart from changing the models, I would probably change the setting purely because we had to make use of the couches in the Arts Centre. I would probably set it in an actual room and have a long-shot instead of a close-up shot, to emphasise that they are just a regular couple in a normal room.

6) I would say that yes, it is, but not 100%. As stated before, there are quite a few things I could change to make it even more appealing to my target audience, such as different models, setting, ect, but apart from that I think that it does appeal widely to 16-20 year old males who enjoy the 'humor' factor out of adverts instead of the 'facts' side of things. It plays directly into the idea of a "nagging girlfriend" and then having a quick solution for it. Although you couldn't really shut your girlfriend up with some Blu-Tack, the suggestion is funny and therefore makes the viewer more aware to what you could do with it.

7) It demonstrates it simply by me saying what skills I have developed, my weaknesses and what I thought I have done well. By being able to explain myself and my choices I hope that it shows that I have at least a vague understanding of what we have been doing and what I have done with my advert. I have tried my best to appeal to my targeted audience and hopefully I have managed to pull it off well, especially with playing into the humour side of things. By creating my Flat Plan and sticking to it means that I know what I have to do in order to stick with my original ideas and not to go off on a tangent with random out-of-nowhere ideas.

Print Skills Audit