Unit 3: Grade 10 Communications Technology

Unit 3, Act. 1: Images with Photoshop

This unit will introduce you to photo image editing with Adobe Photoshop. There are a lot of things you can do with images and because images of this type are made up of pixels, file sizes will be larger based on resolution of image files you work with. Previously working with Illustrator, all images were saved in vector formats, i.e. lines, shapes, and fills, therefore file sizes a lot smaller..

Course Units and Descriptions

Use this table for an overview and navigate to each of the course unit pages.

Unit	Description
Review course outline for more details
1	Careers and Safety- Intro, organization, software, and careers
2	Vector Production- design, create, and edit illustrations
3	Raster Production- design, create, and edit photo images
4	Audio Production- design, create and edit audio files
5	Animation- design, create, and edit vector animation

Unit Content Activity Quick Links, Click to Jump to Specific Activity!

Unit 3, Act. 1: The Tourist Brochure

Challenge, Photoshop Intro, Resources, Main Steps, Evaluation

Unit 3, Act. 2: Web Page Background Design
Unit 3, Act. 3: DVD Movie Poster

Unit 3, Act. 1: The Tourist Brochure

Situation:

Using Adobe Photoshop is one of the biggest components of graphic communications and can be used to do a lot of things with raster images. It is for this reason that learning about this program and how to edit, manipulate and enhance photo images, is an important and crucial learning experience in communications technology.

Problem/Challenge:

Create travel picture for use as a possible travel web brochure or splash page. Find an exotic unique vacation destination image as your background and insert a current happy action shot of yourself in this picture as a tourist. You are required to enhance the picture with a related on-the-person and off-the-person "personal tourist accessory", a related structure, and an enticing title of the Country and local location (suitable type font, colour, effects) with a marketing slogan promoting the vacation spot. Your picture must show at least half to a full body shot taking up about 25% of final image size. When done add your logo bottom right, 100 pixel high as your signature. The image size is to be a landscape1440*900 pixels at 72 dpi in RGB colour mode. The text, yourself, and the background to be evenly balanced and emphasized with the focus priority on travel scene, yourself, and then the text/type. Remember to take in account your composition which includes the Rule of Thirds, symmetry, leading lines, and our previous review of the Elements and Principles of design.

Your goal is to create accurate selections and colour match the picture of yourself with your chosen background. Using adjustments, layers, masks, colour, and brightness control to familiarize yourself with some of Photoshop's tools. Careful attention to accurate object selections (your mask cut-outs), perspective, blending, layers, colour matching with hue, saturation, and brightness (luminosity), contrast/blur and shading, of objects to fit the composition scene, to make as realistic as possible.

Investigation/Ideas:

Photoshop Intro

As this is the first time using Adobe Photoshop, you will need to familiarize yourself with the program and its image edition tools. Here are a some images showing the interface of this program:

Main Interface

Tool Bar Icons

Some Pallets

Layer Pallet

There are several components of Photoshop that you need to be familiar with. Fortunately having some experience with Illustrator, you already have some experience because of the overlap of similar tools and operation. The list of Photoshop tools, panels, process, and info below is to be reviewed, so that you can work effectively with raster images to edit, modify, and change images effectively.

Interface
Tool Bar Icons
Tool Pallets
Application Menu
Workspace
Adjustments
Preferences
CMYK vs RGB
Photo Resolution
Dots Per Inch, dpi
Selection Tools
Inverse
Viewing Tools
Transformation
Image sizing
Canvas sizing
Cropping
History Pallet
Layers
Smart Objects
Save As

Workspace and Setup

Setting up your workspace similar process as in Illustrator with your panels and you can adjust settings in Preferences, tool-bar, Keyboard Shortcuts, etc. from the Edit menu. By default, you already have a general set-up, but you will want to review all of these settings and panels to how you like it. Check out the Settings and Workspace 11.14 video to get some ideas on what you can do for your set-up and workspace.

Composition

Composition refers to the way the various elements in a scene are arranged within the frame. It is how the artist puts those elements within a frame that help a scene become more or less interesting to the viewer. A good scene/photograph will take in-account many different parts and combine them into an aesthetically pleasing image whole. The Rule of Thirds is a great place to start, then start to look at the symmetry, leading lines, framing, etc to control the viewers eye and create a pleasing image to the viewer. Below are some videos you can check out reviewing these key elements.

Resource Links

Below are some linked resources introducing you to Photoshop, its interface, workspace, tools, panels, layer control and colour adjustments, brightness, masks, subject placement, perspective, colour matching, etc.

From our last unit you may remember several online resources such as Dribbble, Behance, Unsplash, Designnspiration and colour.adobe are all great graphic resources, but you may want to try some other sites such as Pixabay, Pexels, Freepik, Unsplash, and/or Vecteezy. Remember to respect copy-write laws and protecting the rights of others with respect to images. Keep in mind this may also include learning about and following through with attributions and acknowledgments of the source of an image when required.

It is always a good idea to edit images in higher resolution if possible, such as masking out a person from the background, do this with the original larger file first, then scale and/or down-size to size you will need. Because this brochure is for the web, the image only needs to be 72 dpi, but you are better to edit images in their native original higher resolution first. Crop what you don't need then use a mask (non-volatile) to separate your images from there background.

Student Samples

Here are some samples past student work showing themselves inserted into a travel destination with a hat related to the destination, although you will be focused more, on bringing in several objects with colour image matching:

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

Create/Construct:

Steps To Take

Use the following steps to as a guide to complete the project. Each of the steps will be chunked down to smaller assignments to ensure you are on track and will be able to complete with the proper steps.

steps

Familiarize yourself with Photoshop by checking out the support intro tutorials, videos, first-hand familiarization of the interface, exploring the different tools, panels, and then complete the Photoshop Introduction and Interface work sheet , (refer to Adobe Reader commenting) to be later peer evaluated/taken up in class for marks
Decide and get two vacation backgrounds to start with, then have someone take some quality happy action tourist pictures of yourself (whole body in focus with clear face shots) taken in various positions and angles (3 minimum, so you have something to work with) with a solid colour wall or door behind you for easy masking later on. Keep in mind an interested exotic tourist location location, action, clothing and body positions.
Ensure your travel, body, and object images you collect for this project will fit and have good size and resolution so there are no pixelation issues on your final product
Attain and collect all of your required asset resources: - 2 possible backgrounds, 3 different images of yourself, 2 accessories, 1 structural, and the text and font type you plan to use (Country, location, and travel slogan) to create a 1440*900 PPI mood board submitted as a PSD and JPG. All images embedded smart objects spread out evenly on page with 20 PPI edge guides and 60 PPI header space for centre title and owner info top right. Remember to name your files before placing your embedded images into Photoshop
Create and save a practical workspace that you will be able to use, to complete Photoshop assignments and show/submit a workspace screen capture with the manage workspace drop-down window open showing your saved workspace, and also include in your capture the Help Discovery window showing first 4 orientation tutorials completed, as a JPG
Using your mood board, hide your layers and create a Rule of Thirds grid, then select your final travel image and fitting to your full page, keeping in mind rule of thirds and picture composition as you start to build your travel tourist scene
Decide on which image you will use of yourself, use the crop tool, if needed to crop yourself, then using selection tools and fine tuning, mask yourself from the background so you can insert yourself into your travel scene
Do the same for other objects you have decided to bring in, while keeping your layers organized and named, and keeping, scale, emphasis, and design composition in mind
Working with the colour and brightness adjustment tools, do your best to match/blend your individual images with your scene.
Add your type: Country and location with a marketing slogan, taking in account colour, font, size, brightness, and effect to suite composition and consistent visual expression
Add your logo in the bottom right of the screen, as your signature, 100 pixels high
With your finished picture, save the PSD and also a JPG with proper file naming convention to submit, and also share the JPG in the JamBoard for class student project share showcase

Evaluation:

Double check instructions in each of the chunked assignments before submitting work. Remember to use the proper file naming convention for work submitted.

Photoshop Interface Assignments	Marks
Always double check that you have completed all components for full marks.
Interface Tool bar Answers - what the tools does, what you could use it for in this project	10
Interface Menu Answers - commands explanation and example of use in this project	10
Mood Board - all asset images on one page, country, location, slogan	20
Custom Workspace - 4 tutorials done, organized, panels, tools with managed window	12
Tourist Brochure
Travel Background - image size, travel destination, colours	5
Person(you) - accurate masking, colour and brightness adjustment blended with background	10
Accessories and structure - Related travel object fit, masking, colour, realism	15
Type - Use of colour, font, size, fit, emphasis, effects, etc.	5
Technicals - Layers named, tools, colour adjustment, PSD and JPG handed in, file name	10
Design - image placements, colour, brightness, blending, emphasis/balance, logo	10
JamBoard- Placed and sized correctly on board 7 with 3 for class integration	10