Introduction to Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a graphic and picture editing tool. It enables the user to alter, manipulate and create images either from existing photos or found images. Photoshop CS2 is the package we use here.

This week we learned the basics of the program, including how to upload raw images and use the tools available in order to manipulate them for a particular purpose or effect.
Particular tools which we learned how to use include the marquee tool which is used in order to cut a box out of the raw image, usually so that it may be copied and later pasted elsewhere. This brings us to the lasso tool which is highly similar by definition, however this tool is far more accurate as it allows the user to outline specific shapes and areas of the image freehand, allowing for more adventurous opportunities in terms of the overall editing of the image.
 One tool which i found that i could make particular use of is the clone stamp tool, which creates a perfect copy of a particular highlighted part of the image, this proves useful when attempting to capture a sense of the background matching the foreground.
 I had previously worked on Photoshop before I started my media course. This gave me a brief knowledge on the basic foundations of the programme which allowed me to be more confident in using it in the task we were set in class. The task was to combine two images together to create a film poster, each of us set the challenge to produce the best result we could. I found it difficult at first, not knowing how to use some of the more experienced tools but after we had been briefed on how to use them we were all able to achieve a fairly substancial finished product.
 I think that our growing knowledge on Photoshop will help later on in the term when we are set our task to start producing a film sequence that may need some graphic additions which we can produce on this programme.

Basic stills camera work & composition

Composition:

Photography brings a visual language that is universal in understanding. We must then understand its vocabulary which consists of shapes, textures, patterns, lines, colours, shade of light to dark and sharp to blurry images. Just as we must learn to arrange words in a coherent order in order to make sense when we write or speak, so too must we put visual elements together in an organized manner if our photographs are to convey their meaning clearly and vividly.

Composition means arrangement: the orderly putting together of parts to make a unified whole; composition through a personal, intuitive act. However, there are basic principles that govern the way visual elements behave and interact when you combine them inside the four borders of a photograph. Once we have sharpened our vision and grasped these basic ideas of principles, then we will have the potential for making our photographs more exciting and effective than ever before.

Rule of thirds: This is a 'rule' in photography in which images are mentally divided into both verticall and horizontal thirds in order to form a kind of theoretical grid over the image. The four points on the 'grid' on which the points intersect one another are known as hot spots. These are the points at which the eye is instinctivley drawn to and therefore become the initial primary focus of any image.