Monday, January 12th, 2009
Photoshop has features that adjust your photographs at the click of a button, one of these being the shadow and highlight correction tool that is under the adjustments menu. The shadow and highlight correction tool is a tonal editing option and makes adjusting pictures much easier.
The tool has a set of sliders for shadows and highlights that you adjust until the balance of tones is correct. I have found using sliders is much easier than levels and curves and gives better results.
Match Colour is another feature that will help you to make two pictures that need to be combined look like they have similar colour tones. For example if you have had a portrait taken with flash and want to combine another photograph of someone taken in sunlight. To do this you need to open both images and select the target and destination and then adjust the sliders until it’s as close as you want. The match colour tool also works if you are copying and pasting parts from one image onto another and it is ideal for people who shoot panoramas and want a natural colour transition from one frame to the next so that the entire image blends together perfectly.
Photomerge is another feature that is good for people who want to piece together panoramic photographs. The feature has been programmed to stitch together photographs that have been taken in a series such as a panorama, it automatically finds the edges where a blend should occur and merges them for you without you having to cut and blend the photos yourself.
Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Design, graphics, Photographs, Photoshop, Photoshop Features
Posted in Photoshop, Tutorials | No Comments »
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
I think it is clear that a machine can design and there will come a time when all the human designer does is supervise the work of the computer which will be programmed to be able to complete design work whilst supervised by a human designer, perhaps computer aided design is actually the future of the digital world?
If this is the case then there may come a time where the human designers are not even needed to supervise the design process because the work completed by the computer is somewhat better than the human design and human input into the computers work.
Computers continue to shock us with what they are actually able to do, machines are now being able to do things which humans thought only they would ever be able to do, all of these are factors which prove the development of technology and artificial computer intelligence. I think that the design industry doesn’t necessarily want computers to be able to do everything that human designers can do, but setting certain challenges for computers can help to aid the human designers so they can focus on work that needs more human input and information from a human source.
If machines do become as creative and intelligent as humans, in the future will there actually be any need to further education after school? Education is there to help broaden a persons knowledge of a subject with exploration of certain topics and issues, in order to have an advantage over others when it comes to getting a job, but within the design industry if it is machines that do all the work and there is no need for human input, post-graduates regardless of their knowledge, fresh idea’s and possibility of input to a brief will not be needed, machines may be used for all aspects of the process of design causing knock on effects within the vacancy for jobs in the creative industry.
Tags: Computers, Design, Design And Technology, Design Process, digital design, graphics
Posted in Design And Technology, Visual Communication | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
The design process in terms of design on the computer at present uses the human designer to complete the majority of the work, and the computer helps throughout this process by correcting any mistakes and providing a range of tools to help with the design, also giving suggestions as to where things should be, colour palettes, sizes, layouts etc… the computer is merely a clever tool used to design on and helps to produce the human designers expectations.
As technology and computers become more advanced I believe the role of the human designer and the computer will change dramatically, the computer will be given the job of completing a design and the human designer will be an observer ensuring the design was produced correctly. This way the human designer suffers no stress and simply has to provide small instructions to the computer of they need to – the computer does all the hard work.
Computers will have a far more active roll in the production of the design and will ask questions of the designer to problems which the computer believes it cannot handle itself, so the designer will still be making small decisions but only when needed, drawing work will be being completed by the computer and small changes will be being made by the designer if they are needed, computers will be participating more in the design process and this will also help the human designer to stop producing similar work over and over, making them to stay out of ‘routine’ work.
Tags: Design, Design And Technology, Design Process, graphics, Technology
Posted in Design And Technology, Visual Communication | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Machines and their developing technology are now used so frequently in the design industry I believe there will come a time in the near future where the machine is the only tool used in design, and humans may not even be needed anymore to help with the design process. As newer and more advanced programmes are introduced more artists and designers are using them as their ‘tool’, this is also because a computer, colour printer, scanner, modem and design package can cost as little as £1,500, and the majority of artists take advantage of this and the creative possibilities it can offer.
Gallery owners, they people who are commissioned to sell design/artwork are uncertain whether it is right to sell computer-generated work, they question if it is ethically correct to sell computer-generated work as fine art. The question is will technology become so clever that it can design everything itself, or for the final design to be successful does the computer also be able to think – like a human. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.” Donna Haraway’s interpretation of our time to come and that we as humans will develop to become part of the world of technology ourselves.
Will there become a stage where computer can also think? Research has already been done to determine whether or not a computer can ‘think’, part of this research was known as the “Turing test” provided by Alan Turing, he blinded folded a group of humans and told them to ask questions, these questions were then answered by either a computer or a human being and if the human could not distinguish the difference between a answer from a human or a computer then the machine was showing intelligent known as thinking.
Tags: Creative, Design, Design Industry, Future Design, Technology
Posted in Content, Design And Technology | No Comments »
Monday, January 5th, 2009
The format GIF’s can be transformed to create a transparent background or element to the image, meaning a background colour or image of the website you are using your GIF files on can be seen through the particular areas which you define to become transparent. To create transparency first you need to –
1.) Open the image that you would like to add transparency to, if the image has already been highly compressed to prepare for use on the web when you zoom into the image you will notice all the pixels are distorted around the edges, pixilation will be especially high if the compressed image was originally saved as a highly compressed JPEG format. If the image was originally created in Photoshop and saved as a PSD then pixilation wont be a problem but if the image has come from another source then it will more than likely have this problem.
2.) Before you can start working on the image you will need to get rid of all the extra dots around the edges so you can make a clean selection around the image itself, the cleaner the edges of a image the easier it will be to later get a perfect selection with the Magic Wand Tool. The same applies if your image is part of a larger image; everything surrounding it needs to be removed
3.) Using the Zoom Tool zoom into your image so you can see all the edges clearly and then use to Eraser Tool to remove the extra pixels from the edges of the image, including any extra white space, the more precise you are the better your final transparent GIF will be, especially if your final outcome is going to be placed on a contrasting coloured background.
4.) Once you have cleaned up your image use the Magic Wand Tool to select the white space around your image and you should have a perfect selection around the white space (non image) area of the document, drag this layer onto the New Layer Icon and this will make a copy. Select the new copy of the layer and press Delete which will remove the surrounding white space, then click onto the background layer and go Select > All > Delete, click on the eye icon on the background layer and this will hide the layer and show you the transparent areas – CTRL & CLICK on the new layer and your selection will appear back around the image.
5.) In Channels make a new channel and fill the selection of the image with white, then press CTRL & D – this will deselect.
6.) Return to the layers palette to make your image layer active, go to Image > Mode > Indexed Colour and click OK, then go to File > Export > GIF89a. A drop down will appear called Transparency from, choose Alpha 1 and you should see your image turn greyed out in the preview, showing the areas which will be transparent, click OK and then test your image on your web page.
Tags: Design, GIF files, graphics, Images, transparent
Posted in Tutorials | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
This tutorial is to help you learn how to create a silhouette from a photo that didn’t quite have the right exposure for it, or to create a silhouette from any photograph that you would like to have the silhouette effect.
If a photo was supposed to come out as a silhouette but it was a little too overexposed this technique will work well for any photo that has a bright light source in the background. The tutorial is for work that is being done in Photoshop.
1. First you need to open up your image in Photoshop and then create a new layers adjustment layer (Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Levels).
2. Adjust the outside sliders so they fit the whole color range.
3. Adjust the exposure so it is more balanced and on the verge of being a silhouette.
4. Create a New Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer (Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Brightness/Contrast).
5. Decrease the Brightness and then you need to increase the contrast, usually the number that works best for this is roughly around 40.
The process and the amount of adjustment that needs to be made will be different for other photographs, but once you have got used to this technique you will get a good idea of which level of settings work best and create the most realistic silhouettes.
Tags: Design, Images, overexposure, Photoshop, silhouette, tutorial
Posted in Photoshop, Tutorials | No Comments »
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Before machines became so advanced and mechanical reproduction was introduced, duplicates of art works high in demand were made by being copied by hand, the artists would sometimes create numerous versions of a painting or made very similar replicas, but the usual occurrence would be that students, apprentices or assistants produced the copies.
Handmade copies were using just as sort after as the original, but there were obvious drawbacks to this technique being the artist would have to pay the person who produced the copies a good wage, so it was expensive, time – consuming and involved hard labour. And still there is only a few of the copies made and they were never exact but usually just a translation or an interpretation of the original.
The need to multiply an image or a design has become more popular as the design world and industry has developed, it is hard to believe that people would actually sit and reproduce the same thing over and over by hand now we are living in a world full of high quality colour printers and photocopiers, we take for granted the easy method of reproduction, you can scan a piece of work into a computer and print it 1,000 times over in a matter of a few minutes.
This also is a example of how the digital era is making us as human creatives lazy, and the appreciation of an original piece of artwork or design is becoming almost unheard of due the fact artwork is repeatedly reprinted in art books, on canvas and even onto cups and mouse mats, all these factors result in loosing the ‘special’ element of seeing the artwork.
Tags: Design, graphics, handmade, Images, machines, original
Posted in Content, Design And Technology, Visual Communication | No Comments »
Friday, December 19th, 2008
With digital reproduction becoming more popular is any work actually produced as a ‘one off’ anymore? Pieces of contemporary fine art which have survived for hundreds of years still do exist but alongside thousands of images which are produced and then reproduced with the aid of machines.
Fine Art and contemporary pieces are now available for everyone to view, one form of this being the introduction of the internet, another development in technology, where you can just type in a name of a piece of work and it appears there in front of you on screen, you don’t have to go and visit a gallery or a museum, although sometimes it takes seeing the original piece there in front of you to appreciate just how special a ‘one off’ piece or original is.
There now appears to be a secondary system of recording where artworks can be reproduced and put into books, journals and magazines, shown through moving image in the form of films and television shows, advertisements and replica’s of sculptures sold at museum shops, art is available to more people than ever and in many more forms than the original due to the development in technology.
Tags: Design, digital, fine art, graphics, Images
Posted in Visual Communication | No Comments »
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
The digital revolution which is continuously taking place all the time has made it possible to encode any information which makes up a image, sound or a piece of text, so anything can be broken down and taken ‘back to basics’ due to the development of technology, clever use of technology can make it possible to manipulate, break down or connect any electronic images, sounds or texts.
This digital revolution makes grids, colours, formats and typefaces easy to process and then store and then these could be broken down and joined together with other pieces of information. As this evolution of technology continues more devices are produced which supports the electronic screen, which leads to more possibilities for information to be exchanged and re-produced, the sound of something can change e.g. a tone of a voice can be changed or modified so it is mixed with another voice.
Images can be broken down and put back together using parts of other images and photographs can be changed by manipulation if the pixels, the impact of electronic procedures are continuing to change the original outcomes and the culture of visual and verbal communication.
Tags: Design, digital design, formats, media
Posted in Visual Communication | No Comments »
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
In the world of writing and the media, objects of design and design works have created opportunities for the construction of books and essays and developed the use of verbal as well as visual communication. This not only being the actual writing itself but the punctuation which comes with pieces of writing e.g. paragraphs, symbols, pauses, silences, comma’s, question marks, brackets, visual signs all relate back to design in some aspect even though they are part of verbal communication.
Writers verbally communicate using a typeface that was once designed in order for them to be able to write, the entire processes of visual and verbal communication link in together and compliment each other, different grids, typefaces and symbols in a piece of writing are important for their formal qualities but also play a symbolic role and help us to regulate our interpretation of the text as we read.
All of these aspects used in verbal communication have been produced by a designer to visually communicate within everything from magazines, books, journals, dictionaries and encyclopaedias, and as the development of design and types of media used continues to progress, these graphic symbols are also being seen on corporate images, posters, television and the internet.
Tags: Design, media, Visual Communication, writing
Posted in Visual Communication | No Comments »
Photoshop has features that adjust your photographs at the click of a button, one of these being the shadow and highlight correction tool that is under the adjustments menu. The shadow and highlight correction tool is a tonal editing option and makes adjusting pictures much easier. 
