MIDTERM

You will be having your Midterm the week of January 21st. Please review the following information:

1. What is Digital? What is a digital system? What are binary numbers? What are Bits? Bytes? Kilobytes? Megabytes? Gigabytes? Terabytes? Check the PowerPoint in Edmodo. Review/study your quiz and puzzles.
2. What are Digital Cameras? Main parts of the digital camera. What is resolution? What is a pixel? Megapixel? Multimegapixel? Image sensor? LCD Screen? What does the term pixelated mean? What are bitmaps? Review the puzzles Mrs. Feld gave you. Review your last Quiz. Check the "Digital Cameras Vocabulary 2013," a Word Document in Edmodo.
3. What is Photoshop? Filters? Layers? Free-Transform (Command-T)? Desaturate? How do you change the colors of an image in Photoshop? How do you improve images? How do you add a Filter? How do you add Blending Options? How do you select images in Photoshop? Which tools can you use to select images? Commands: Deselect (Command-D), Create a Layer (Command-J), Change Colors (Command-U), Desaturate (Command-Shift-U). Review/study the other shortcuts mentioned on the first entry in this blog (September 5, 2013), and the Photoshop information.
4. New material: File Formats. You will see this presentation on Wednesday, January 8th. Copy and paste the information below in a Word Document and print it for yourselves (you can print this whole blog entry if you wish but please copy it and paste it in Word - don't print directly from the website or you'll print like 10 pages or more). What is a JPEG? Which is the most popular format? What is compression? Which is the file format mostly used in the Publishing and Printing industry? Which file format is used for small picture animation?
5. There will be a Photoshop exercise. Mrs. Feld will explain later.

Check/download the PowerPoint on "Resolution and File Formats" in Edmodo. You can find the following information and more there. Storing the images as picture files – is an important step, and a number of file formats have been devised to store digital information as efficiently as possible.

There are different file formats for different applications (you don't have to memorize what the abbreviations mean, but do remember these abbreviations):  

JPEG (pronounced “jay-peg”) – is the most popular format for images taken with digital cameras. JPEG is an acronym that stands for the Joint Photographic Expert Group (from the International Standards Organization), which created the format and devised it specifically for digital photographs. Also known as JPG. Check the file extensions on your images. Example: IMG.jpg.

The JPEG is an extremely efficient compression* format and is frequently used for images on the World Wide Web. The supreme advantage of the JPEG is that it only stores data for pixels that have color – white pixels require no data. Compression* is high, resulting in small picture files. Some of the image data is discarded in order to reduce the file size, which results in reduced image quality.

GIF: The other major picture file format and certainly the most widespread on the Web is the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). Generally used for relatively low-resolution images intended for the Web (those you want to post on a website), for graphics, logos and simple animations. It is limited to 256 colors. Compression* is very high and generally, the same picture rendered as a GIF will be far smaller than in any other format.

PNG: The PNG (Portable Network Group) file format is a Web-oriented format designed to retain picture integrity and produce small files. PNG is a bitmap image (digital image) format. PNG has become the third most common image format on the web.

Other file formats are: The TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), which is widely used in professional publishing. The BMP or DIB (device-independent bitmap), which is a bitmapped graphics format used internally by Microsoft Windows (like when you paste an image in the Paint application and save it).

RAW IMAGE FILE: A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited. There are dozens if not hundreds of raw formats in use by different models of digital equipment (like cameras or film scanners).
Raw image files are sometimes called digital negatives, as they fulfill the same role as negatives in film photography (conventional cameras): that is, the negative is not directly usable as an image, but has all of the information needed to create an image.

*  Compression: The squeezing of image data that results in smaller picture files.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask Mrs. Feld.

Being Creative with Photoshop

Once you learn some of the basic techniques in Photoshop, and once you become very familiar with the Toolbox (and all the different tools), you'll be able to create some AWESOME digital art using Photoshop. Experiment with the different filters, check the different options in the Layer's Panel, change colors (using Command-U), etc.

You can create something like this:

Audrey Hepburn

To create the top one I created a separate layer of Audrey (using the Magnetic Lasso Tool to select her). In this way I was able to add color to the background using the Brush Tool. I always suggest that you create different transparent layers for each color you use, you can also change the options in the Layers Panel (I used Linear Burn). Later I added the Star Shape and Blending Options (Drop Shadow). I also added her make up. Get creative!

For the bottom one, I placed Audrey's layer (that I created before) on a separate document. I created four different layers and added the colors you see (green, fuchsia, blue and yellow) with the Paint Bucket Tool. Then, I duplicated Audrey's layer four more times. The idea is to try to match her make up with the background color (I put the make up on separate transparent layers and use the Linear Burn option). I created four different JPEG's with the different colors and then placed them on another document as you see them here (this exercise is more involved, so if you want to do it I can guide you - it can be created in several different ways). Later I added the Arabesque design, duplicated it and turned it around as you see it. I added a Custom Shape in the middle. Get creative!