Posts tagged photoshop
Man On A Horse
Feb 12th
Urgh. Today is shaping up to be…awful. I got caught in the hall right as I was walking in and told something bad happened to our web app that needed fixing. But the e-mail saying what was wrong was total gibberish to me (except for the phrase “the customers are demanding answers!!!!”). So that’s getting sorted out and I’m taking the lull in the morning to post here…
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been working on a project for my lone class this semester, as I’ve mentioned previously. It’s coming along pretty well, I think. It’s a composite image of two chess pieces playing a game of chess with little people as the pieces on the board. On Monday I was able to finally grab a good park bench type shot to act as the scene, so that was the last big hurdle.
During class Tuesday the professor mentioned how it would be cool if I could have a guy on a horse (to act as one of the knights) but he didn’t know if it would be possible to get the shot or not. Well, I happen to know a guy with a horse (my uncle) and they were able to provide some nice pictures to use which should really add to the quality of the piece. I’m kinda regretting not taking more pictures at the Renaissance Festival the last couple years I’ve went because they’d be extremely useful right about now.
I’m also going over to my grandmothers house this weekend hopefully to look through some of her black and white pictures for something that could have color added to it (as is our next assignment for the class).
I’m also starting to go all out on my 2010 City of Heroes FArt competition entry for this month. The theme is romance and I’ll be doing an advertising poster for a super hero oriented dating service. I’m trying to work out the copy on the poster right now (jotting down ideas as I think of them while I work). Oh, I just realized I never posted my entry for last month here! What If? The Rogue Isles Olympics. (Make sure you click the image to see the full sized view) You’re probably not going to get a the in-jokes unless you play City of Heroes, but I’m really happy with how that particular design turned out (still).
Photoshopping 101
Feb 4th
As mentioned previously, I’m taking another class this semester, Digital Imaging which is basically a Photoshop course focusing on the manipulation of photographs.
I was dreading the first few weeks of this course since I’ve gotten fairly familiar with the basics of Photoshop in the past 6 months of me fiddling around with it. So taking a course explaining what all the selection tools and stuff do…ugh. Not exactly an interesting time in the classroom. The actual instruction has been about what I was dreading when I went in, but I have picked up a few little things that I didn’t know about previously. The teacher is good, thankfully. He’s very knowledgeable and actually excited about photography and image manipulation. And he knows how to teach. He’s a bit of a sticker for rules (no music while working during lab time?? What’s up with that??) but I can live with it.
Our first project is to do a composite image. Basically, we take one photo (the host image) and take elements from other photographs and add them into the first one to create an entirely new image. I was really stuck on an idea for something cool to do (I really didn’t want to just do a boring “take a random image and toss stuff into it” sort of project). Wassy, who was originally taking the course with me but has since dropped due to the demands of the rest of her schedule, mentioned an idea involving a chess board with pictures of monuments that I had from Washington DC. But all of the pictures that I had were from below looking up which wouldn’t work on a chess board at all, so I had to scratch that idea.
I was kinda floundering around again until, the day of class I woke up at roughly 5:30am before my alarm went off but with a cool idea: Two pawns playing chess with a board full of little people. I had to scramble around to get the pictures I needed (and I need to retake my host image because I threw it together fast and didn’t have quite what I was looking for), but I got enough to get the project improved by the instructor.
This course is another reason why I’m considering picking up my own DSLR. It seems like it’s going to require a lot of original photography (especially for the final two projects) and even though I can borrow Wassy’s camera, it’d be really nice to have my own. Especially since some of my shots might require me to travel around a bit and I don’t feel comfortable doing that with her camera (I’m deathly afraid I might break it or something). I’m going to need to take basic photography next semester too…
Whoops, there I go, rationalizing again. Anyway, I’ll post up the finished piece (if it’s not crap anyway) once it gets done.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Nov 25th
4:00. The day before Thanksgiving. Sitting at my desk at work…watching the clock tick slowly by…
Yep, it’s that time again. The long wait before vacation begins. And after what I did today at work I could really use all 5 days that I took off (took off Monday just for good measure) to recover.
I had to delve into one of our old programs that’s technically unmaintained (it was never migrated over to our new development platform) but still in use to add a feature somebody requested. This program is held together by the coding equivalent of duct tape and chewing gum. In fact, when it was overheard that I would be working in this program, I was instructed to not go anywhere even remotely close to the printing code. Because, and I quote this exactly: “You’re just better off not going there…” spoken in a tone of voice suggesting some deep rooted trauma, suppressed by the ages suddenly bubbling to the surface.
So after getting the morning trying to get the program to actually run properly on my machine (setting the tone for what was to come), I set about trying to wedge a new feature into the 5 year old, horribly documented and strung together code.
Can I go home now?
I spent last night poking around photoshop and trying some things out. I ended up creating a neat looking (in my opinion anyway) outer space nebula/star field background that I’m not quite sure what to do with. I was thinking of trying to transform it into some sort of desktop wallpaper for the heck of it. Maybe put in a (bright) star and a couple planets or something. See if I can turn it into an artsy type project as a break from bashing my head against the wall with web design things.
It’ll expand my photoshop skillz at any rate, even if it ends up sucking. I’m already using some stuff I never got into before (adjustment and clipping layers, specifically. Extremely useful little features). I’ll probably spend some time over my vacation poking away at it and seeing what I can do.
Layout
May 27th
Well, I said I'd post this yesterday, but I ended up being extremely busy so you're getting it today.
Like I mentioned on monday, I've decided that I finally want to get around to working on my graphic design/layout skills a bit more. Ever since I started doing website work, I've really enjoyed creating a good, clean site layout but I've been lacking the necessary graphics skills to really get that stuff done. I've always wanted to get around to learning more about photoshop and some of the techniques used in graphic design so I can broaden my skills out a little bit and not get stuck on the graphics side of the site design.
Well, this came up at the end of last week when I was searching for a photoshop tutorial to help Wassy out with something. I came across a cool site that had a tutorial for a technique that was really cool and I could have used in the past. Which eventually got me to thinking that I should actually get around to learning how to do this stuff.
I took a graphic design course when I was in college as one of my open electives and aside from the fact that the instructor wasn't really a good instructor (he was in the business and had a lot of good information to share, he just didn't know how to share it) it was a good experience. I've been told that I seem to have a knack for this stuff, I just need to explore it further. I can't really draw in the traditional sense, but this area of it is focused on some different skills…so it could work out.
So, with now being a time where I'm sorta in a long period of transition in my life, it seems like it might be something to look into. At worst, I'll find out I don't like it or can't do it…no big deal. But if it's something that works out it makes me more of a complete package as far as web design and development is concerned. I know I need to be careful because I tend to get all excited about learning new things and then 1-2 weeks in lose interest. But this feels kinda like the right step for me to take at this point so we'll see how it goes…
I've been looking across the internet for some technique tutorials to give me a starting point and I'm also considering possibly taking a few courses at the local community college, but that depends on a lot of factors, most of them financial. I'd need to wander down there and talk to some people to gather information about that before jumping in further.
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