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Things I have learned

I have learned alot this year in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I feel like I have accomplished alot through these programs and progressed, especially since I knew very little when I started. I feel like I am more knowledgeable in editing pictures and creating my own objects. My hopes for the last few weeks of the semester are to successfully finish my projects and create some creative things. I think I have grown in understanding illustrator because I thought that was more difficult than Photoshop. Even towards the end of Illustrator I found some of the lessons difficult, but asked others for help and eventually figured it out. The projects I'm considering for my final project are a collage, another panorama project, a CD cover, or possibly another logo creation.

My Logo

Logo Design

I found the coolest website for help with logo design at http://logopond.com/. At this website you can look through a logo gallery for ideas and there are some really cool ones to look through. Also, you can read blogs from other people that have great photoshop tips! This website is also connected with flickr and you can look through the logo images on that, too. You can create your own account and upload your own logo images for people to look at of comment on them. Another thing logopond.com has is a search bar, in case you are looking for a speciffic thing or idea. You can also advertise you own logos by registering through the website. I was glad to come across this website.

Panorama Picture

This is the panoramic picture I created through photoshop. I made this by putting three pictures together and matching the saturation on each. It was a really cool project!

13 lessons about photography

After reading about the 13 lessons of photography I saw some things I knew and some things that I didn't know about before. Some of the things I already knew about photography were: experimenting, taking lots of pictures, holding the camera straight, the rule of thirds, and finding a point of interest. I thought the focal look was interesting because it talked about knowing how the work the focus and shutter so you can focus before taking the actual shot. I agreed with different modes for different situations because if it's an action picture it will come out alot better of you switch to your sports mode or change the mode of the camera if you're in the dark, too. Expose settings is another lesson I thought was helpful. In one of the lessons they talked about going on vacation and only taking pictures of buildings and places intstead of people in them pictures, I agreed with this lesson alot. I think it's important when you go on vacation or a new place that you don't just take pictures of scenery, but with your own travelers too. Finally, the other tip I thought was useful was to check your background. A background is part of a picture and it's important, by checking the background for clutter it helps you get a better picture.

Logo Assignment- Unappealing

A logo on a product that I found unappealing was the Saltine cracker box above. The layer of different texts and pictures are organized well, but aren't very exciting to me. I like logos that have alot of creativity and colors. This only have a few colors and looks like it was easy to create, compared to the Trix cereal box. I just think this design is too boring for me.

Logo Design Assignment-appealing

One logo design that I really like is the Trix cereal box. The colors and designs are so colorful and appealing! If I was walking through the halls of a store, looking for a cereal, this would definatley be one that I would stop to look at because the great colors and creative design that jump out!

My Exploration of Photoshop.com/express

I visited the website https://www.photoshop.com/express to compare it to Adobe Photoshop CS3. I found out that the photoshops are very similar to eachother. They have some of the same tools, just in different types layouts. In photoshop.com/express you can look for tools under basics, tuning, and effects. This site is something I find very beneficial! Users can edit their photos easily without installing all the Adobe Photoshop software. Another great thing about this website is that you can add your own photos to a gallery and have an account. An accont allows you to veiw other people's galleries for ideas and more photoshop tips. You can also sort your pictures and decide where you want to put them. A difference between the website and the actual Adobe Photoshop CS3 is that Photoshop CS3 has a few more tools to use. I was glad to discover this helpful website!

Themed Collage

Movie poster

This is my movie poster! I got the idea from the movie Stepbrothers. I chose this movie because I thought it'd be fun and easy to do! I kept all the text the same except for the names of the people and changed the name to StepSisters. To create this background I just found a pink background off the internet and saved it so I could us it. Then, I cut out the picture from one of the pictures I had that I thought looked like the poses from the actual StepBrothers poster. Next, I added text and the affects I wanted to the text and added a background effect, too. I did all of this project through the helpful Adobe Photoshop!

My Second Picture

The second picture I chose referred to the word challenge. I also used picnik for this picture. Even if you don't have an account on picnik you can sample it by uploading pictures and using the demo. The nice thing is that you can us the demo free without an account as many times as you want.

1) After up loading my picture I clicked the create tab

2) Then I went to the effects tab and looked through possible ones that I might use

3) I picked the Loomish effect and blurred the edges to what I thought was appealing

4) The I clicked the text tab and chose the font type I wanted

5) After typing the text I wanted, I resized the words and added the colors I wanted by clicking the pop-up menu that came up after adding the text

6) Finally I clicked save and share to save my finished photo!

My Interview

One of our assignments this week was to interview a professional who works in a feild involving Digital Design. I interviewed Crystal Kahle, the Human Resource Manager at St. Anthony's Hospital right here in O'Neill. Part of her job is creating marketing material for the hospital.
When I asked her about basic design principles to follow she gave me two that she goes by. One of them is to know your demagraphic. This is knowing who you are advertising to, so you can appeal to them and catch their interest. An example of this would be using bright eye-catching colors for the youth and more uniform and symmetrical documents for an older population. The other principle Crystal goes by is to have a focal point to draw the eye of the people that you want to notice your advertisement.
Tips that Crystal gave me were to know who you want to reach out to. The eyes likes lines and creative things. If you had three different text bullets on your paper it would be more appealing to line them up, rather than scatter the around the paper. Think outside the box for more ideas.
The advice that Crystal would give to a novice designer would be to take any classes you can to learn about design. She said to go out and experiment with things, trying different colors and effects. It also helps to look at other works for ideas, such as magazines of newpapers.

Thank you for your time, Crystal! :)

Word Picture Assignment

Above is the picture I chose for the latest assigned project.

The steps I took to edit this photo are the following:

1) I uploaded my photo on picnik the I clicked the create tab

2) On the left hand side under basics I clicked Black and White

3) Then I changed the brush size in the effect painting tab that popped up to size 17

5) Using the brush, I went over the things I wanted to show up in color

6) Then I added text and chose the type of font I wanted

7) From Picnik I saved my photo and uploaded it in adobe photoshop, so I could crop it to the size I wanted and save the edited picture!

Pictures that caught my Eye!

As I was looking through pictures on flicker these are five that I found.

Feel free to take a look!

This was a cool action shot if found and the color scheme is also unique.

Wow, this picture gives me the chills just looking at it, but it sure is neat.

The silouette in this picture is really cool and the shot overall is amazing.

Pictures of animals and nature really appeal to me. I thought this guy was cute!

I thought this was a really interesting layout!

Photoshop Podcasts

While searching for a photoshop podcast I found one that I thought would be very helpful. It's published by Justin Seeley an Adobe certified photoshop expert and graphic designer. He created the Photoshop Quicktips and Gradient Mesh video podcasts that you can subscribe to in the Itunes store. I went through some of the Photoshop Quicktips videos. It has around seventy episodes right now and more to come. I watched episode sixty five about color change. I didn't know that it could be that easy! I also thought twenty-nine, lighting made easy, would be something I could use often because my camera doesn't have a very good flash on it. There are so many episodes to choose from that could be easily learned. I'm not very experienced with photoshop so I find these tips helpful to myself. The episodes can greatly help someone looking for fast ways to learn about editing photos. The episodes vary from two to around seven minutes at the most. I reccommend you check them out!

Exploring Apple Student Gallery

I found the Apple Student Gallery to be very interesting. You can look at videos, pictures, music, and presentations. It shows all these things in a toprated category. It also lets you look at new projects. You can search the gallery for ideas, too. When you look at different projects you can give your own rating of what you see. Whether you like what you see or if you see room for improvement. If you really like what you see you can comment on the project or tell a friend, which emails the project to the friend that you think will find it enjoyable. However, you have to be eighteen to have a valid account. I think lowering the age will benefit the site and users. It will benefit the site because more users will be able to have accounts. It can benefit the users by provinding the site to do things for school or other outside activities.

Things I learned about Photoshop

After watching five videos I leared many things. One thing I learned was using camera raw to crop. To do this, you need to use your crop tool and select the things you want in or out of the picture. Another thing I learned was how to straighten an image. You can fix tilted pictures to straight, from a horizontal or vertical line. Finally, I learned how to use the eye-dropper tool. This tool selects a certian color value in your picture.

1st Blog Post

My name is Molly Gallagher and I'm a 16-year-old at St. Mary's High School. I have little experence with Digital Design. I would like to be able to edit photos with photoshop and add text and color schemes. I do enjoy taking pictures on my digital camera so when I learn how to edit photos with more experience it should be fun. Hopefully, with the help of this class, I will be able to desigin graphics, photos, and successfully complete other projects.