Due January 18 Architecture 411 Objectives To learn the basic concepts involved with raster-based images, including: pixels, RGB color, indexed color, layers, rasterization, and the sorts of operations that can be performed (magic wand, eyedropper, rubber stamp, etc.). To learn techniques for using basic Photoshop commands. Exercise 1. Start the Photoshop program and begin a new drawing. The program is probably listed under the Start button on the screen, but this can vary from lab to lab. Don t worry if you receive warnings about Network registry editing has been disabled by your administrator. 2. Begin work on a new image. Choose New from the File menu. (In the future, menu selections like this will usually be written as File->New ). Use the settings shown below, except that you should come up with your own file name for Name:. 1
2 3. Experiment with some of the tools shown on the tools palette or floating toolbar below. For the time being, just play around with the tools, experimenting with some of the techniques demonstrated in class. Also try changing settings in the options bar (usually located just below the pull-down menu) and the history palette. It is not necessary to save the results of this experimentation, but you can do so if you wish. 4. Begin another new drawing. Use the same settings as in step 2. Remember, as you proceed through the following steps, that if you make a mistake, you can use Edit->Undo to back up a step, or you can back up several steps by moving the pointer in the history palette. 5. Draw a pair of circles enclosed in a rectangle, as shown below. Use the pencil tool for this. The pencil tool may be behind the paintbrush tool; if so, click the paintbrush icon and keep holding the mouse button down. A menu should fly off to the side. Select the pencil tool from this menu. The circle and rectangle need not be precise, but make sure that the shapes are closed.
3 Zoom in on the lines (by clicking with the magnifying glass tool) and note the jaggies. Zoom back out again with the magnifying glass tool, by holding down the Alt key and clicking with the mouse. (The magnifying glass tool should have a - instead of a + in it when you hold down the Alt key. 6. Fill the circle on the left with another color. To do this, you will first need to set a new foreground color by clicking the foreground color on the toolbar. This will bring up a dialog box where you can select or specify a new color. Then, select the paint bucket tool and click inside the left circle. It should fill up with the selected color. Photoshop does this by changing the color of the pixel you clicked, and searching around for other contiguous pixels that are (approximately) the color as that pixel was. The pixels comprising the circle act as a boundary for this process, because they are not the same color as the pixel you clicked. 7. Use the eraser tool to erase a small portion of the right circle, so that the circle has a gap in it. 8. Choose another foreground color and fill the right circle with it. The color should leak out and fill the rectangle. 9. Select a portion of the filled rectangle, and change the color of it using the paint bucket tool. Use the rectangular selection tool to select some but not all of colored rectangle, as shown below. The image below is just an example. It does not matter which part of the rectangle you select, just make sure not to select the whole thing. The selection tools (the rectangular selection tool, the lasso, and the magic wand) limit the scope of tools and many menu commands. If a region is selected, tools and certain menu commands only affect the selected region. Use the paint bucket tool to change color in the selected area, leaving the rest the color it was previously. You are done with the selected region, so go to Select->Deselect to deselect everything.
4 10. Save your image and continue ( File->Save ). It is best if you save your work on the hard drive of your computer (not the desktop), and copy your work elsewhere (e.g., to both your IFS space and a USB flash drive) when you finish. You can save your work as a.psd file for the time being. Whenever you work on projects, it is a very good idea to save your work periodically. Every time something works right, it is a good time to save your work. Remaining tutorials will assume that you will save your work occasionally between steps. 11. Use the lasso tool to select another part of the colored rectangle in the image. An example is shown below. Feel free to select whatever part of the rectangle you want. Your image doesn t have to look like the one shown below; just don t select the whole image. 12. Select a paintbrush. With the lassoed area still selected, select the paintbrush tool (it s probably behind the pencil tool now) from the floating toolbar. Then go to the Window pull-down menu, and make sure that Options has a check mark by it. This displays the options bar, which is probably located immediately below the pull-down menus. Then go to the options bar, pull down the brush palette (see below), and select a brush. A size between 3 and 13 pixels across should work OK. Click on the title bar of the window (or some other safe place) to make the brush palette go away.
5 13. Use the brush to scribble inside and outside of the selected area. Note that only the scribbles inside the selected area have any effect, as shown below. This is behavior is sometimes useful; it can help you avoid drawing something where it shouldn t be drawn. Deselect everything by choosing Select->Deselect from the menus. 14. Use the type tool to add the text Arch 411 to the image. Use at least 36 point font. Font size can be set in the option bar. Notice that this adds a layer to the document; it is now listed in the layers palette. 15. Select part of the Arch 411 text using the lasso, and try to use the paint bucket to change its color. Notice that when you move the paint bucket tool onto the image, the paint bucket symbol goes away, and is replaced by a No symbol (a circle with a line through it). If you click on the image, a dialog box appears, informing you that This type layer must be rasterized before proceeding. Its text will no longer be editable. Rasterize the type? Press the Cancel button. An alert box will appear, telling you that the paint bucket can not be used. Click the OK button. 16. Read about type in the Photoshop help. To do this, go to Help->Photoshop Help on the menus. When the help window appears, go to the left panel of the window and select Using Type from the Contents list. This will cause a list of type-related topics to appear in the right-hand frame of the window. Read the page titled About type and other related help entries that you find interesting or helpful. You should refer to these help pages any time you need help with Photoshop. Basically, the About type page is saying that when you add text to an image, Photoshop does not really integrate the text with the (pixellated) image. Doing so would cause the text to look pixellated when printing, and would prevent you from doing things like changing the spelling later. So instead, Photoshop puts the text on a separate layer and treats it differently. This lets you continue to treat the text as text, but it prevents you from making pixel-oriented changes (like changing the color of part of a letter). In this case, you want to treat the text as being a bunch of pixels 17. Rasterize the text. Select part of the text (if it is not still selected from before). Choose the paint bucket tool, and click on the image. When the dialog box appears, click the OK button. The history palette should now indicate that the most recent operation was Rasterize Layer. 18. Change the color of part of the text, using the paint bucket on the selected portions of the text. This would be a good time to save your file again.
6 19. Use the type tool again, to add your name to the image. Do not rasterize your name; leave it as is, on its own layer. You should notice the difference later, when you print the image. 20. Select a new foreground color, and try to use the paintbrush. You should once again be shown the dialog box asking you if you want to rasterize the type. Click Cancel. 21. Switch to the Background layer. Go to the layers palette and click on the word Background. That row on the layers palette should become highlighted, and a paintbrush symbol should appear in the box next to it. The paintbrush indicates that Background is now the current layer. Anything you draw now will appear on the Background layer. 22. Draw a roughly vertical line with the paintbrush. The line should be about twice as tall as the A in Arch 411. Remember this line. You ll be coming back to it later. 23. Switch to layer Arch 411 by clicking it in the layers palette. 24. Switch to a new foreground color, and draw a roughly horizontal line through your name with the paintbrush. Notice that the line appears to go behind your name. Why? Because your name is on its own layer, and that layer is stacked above or in front of the Arch411 layer. 25. Make Arch 411 the topmost layer. Do this by going to the layers palette and dragging Arch411 above the layer with your name. The horizontal line in the image should now cover up part of your name. The layer palette lists layers in order from front to back. Things drawn on layers in front block things drawn on layers in back. Now move the Arch 411 layer back to its previous position. Keep Arch411 as the current layer, however. 26. Hide the background layer. To do this, go to the layers palette and click the eye symbol to the left of Background. Everything except your name, a horizontal line, and Arch411 should disappear. Most of the image should be filled with a grey-and-white checkerboard pattern. This checkerboard pattern is how Photoshop indicates that the color of these pixels is completely transparent. Both of the two remaining layers are transparent in most places. That s why the horizontal line can be seen in the spaces between the letters of your name the spaces between the letters of your name are transparent. 27. Make the background layer visible again, and select it as the current layer. To make it visible, go to the layers palette and click the box by Background where there used to be an eye. The eye, and your work on the image, should reappear. Don t forget to select Background as the current layer. 28. Use the rubber stamp tool to clone part of your work into an empty portion of the image. Select the rubber stamp tool, then position the pointer on part of the image where you have drawn something. Hold down the Alt key on the keyboard, and click with the mouse. Release both the Alt key and the mouse button. This sets the copy from location. Go to someplace in your image where you haven t drawn anything yet. Press the mouse button and hold it down. Wiggle the mouse around a little, while still holding the button down.
7 As you will see, whatever was at the copy from location gets copied to the place where you next clicked the mouse button. As you then move the mouse, both the copy from spot and the copy to spot move in parallel. 29. Draw another vertical line like the one from step 22. Use the eyedropper tool and click the vertical line from step 22. This should set the foreground color to be the same color that was used to draw the line. Draw another vertical line, roughly parallel to the one from step 22, next to it and about the same length. 30. Move the parallel vertical lines to a spot behind the A in Arch 411. Start by selecting the magic wand tool. The magic wand tool selects the pixel where you click, and any contiguous pixels that are (approximately) the same color. With the magic wand tool, click one of the vertical lines. The vertical line should now be selected. Hold down the Shift key on the keyboard, and click the other vertical line with the mouse. Holding down the Shift key when you select something causes the selection to be merged with the previous selection. (In a similar manner, holding the Alt key causes the new selection to be removed from the previous selection.) Both vertical lines should now be selected. Use the move tool, and drag the vertical lines behind the A in Arch 411. If you used a brush style that faded at the edges, a halo from the vertical lines might remain behind after you move the lines. This is OK. 31. Print your image. Go to File->Print. At the Print dialog box (shown below), select an appropriate printer, and click OK. Note: Examine the contrast in your print. If your colors look the same in black and white, you should print to a color printer, such as one of the color printers in the Media Union, or Fiery in the Art & Architecture Copy Center. You can use your own color printer, if you have one, but if you do so, examine the print carefully. Also make sure that your non-rasterized text (your name, from step 19) looks smooth, compared to the rasterized text (the Arch 411 ). If your printer rasterizes all text when printing it, use a different printer. Your text is more likely to look correct if you use a Postscript printer.
8 If you print to Fiery, you will need to go to the Print and Copy Shop, let the staff know which file is yours, and pay the price for a color print (about $1 per sheet use their cheapest paper). University color printers will probably likewise charge you around $1. 32. Save your work when you are done. 33. Acquire an image file. The above tutorial steps should introduce you to the most basic Photoshop commands. Now that you have tried them a bit, you should apply them to an actual image. You can get an image for this step of the tutorial by saving a picture from the World Wide Web. Most browsers have a command for doing this. In Internet Explorer, right-click the image, and select Save Picture As from the menu that pops up. In Netscape Navigator, right-click the image, and select Save Image As from the pop-up menu. Another way to get an image is to scan a photo. You could also try scanning a magazine picture, but beware of this approach magazine images are often comprised of a grid of dots, and this grid can interact with the scanner to create a sort of interference pattern. Your scanned image can wind up looking sort of plaid or checkered. It is safer to scan a photo. There are too many scanners and scanning programs to be able to describe them in this tutorial, but you may feel free to scan an image for this step if you already know how to scan or can learn on your own. You can also acquire an image for this step using a digital camera and transferring the image file to a computer. This is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but you may use this approach if you are familiar with it and have access to a digital camera. 34. Print the image you acquired. As with the other prints for this assignment, you may need to print the image in color. However, you must indicate where you got the image! Write on the print to indicate the URL (web address, starting with http: ) that you got the image from, or the bibliographic information for an image scanned from a book or magazine. If you scanned a photo, write a brief note indicating the subject of the photo and where the photo came from (e.g., This is a
9 scan of a photo of my friend Jane Smith in New York in 2003. The photo is from her personal collection. ) Note that in the case of web pages, it is not sufficient to merely say a web site about churches in Paris. It is not even sufficient to say http://www.cnn.com if the image came from some other page at the CNN website. You must state full bibliographic information, including the full URL of the web page that the image actually came from (not merely the site s home page, and not the search engine used to find the image). You will be counted off if you do not correctly mention where your image came from. 35. Modify and embellish the image you acquired. Take your image and modify it. The more realistic-looking the modifications are, the better. Convincing modifications are difficult to achieve and they demonstrate an understanding of how and when to use Photoshop tools. As a bare minimum for this step of the assignment, you could do something like paint a mustache on your favorite (or least favorite) celebrity, politician, or friend. However, a cartoonish modification like this, using few tools, would earn few, if any, points for embellishment. For more than the minimum grade on this assignment, you should modify/embellish the image more extensively and convincingly. For instance, convincingly remove your ex-boyfriend/exgirlfriend from your prom picture. Move people from one part of the image to another. Remove someone s glasses and change the color of his sweater. If you are more ambitious, you can combine two images, by copying from one image and pasting into another. You can show yourself with a celebrity you ve never met, or in a place you have never been. For a more architecturally oriented project, you can place an architectural model in a photo of an actual site. Note: if you combine two or more images together, you should print each original image and describe where the image came from, as you did in step 34. For this assignment, more extensive, convincing, and masterful modifications will be considered embellishment. Avoiding cut-and-paste seams, care in matching brightness and contrast, consistent shadow direction, using the rubber stamp (clone) tool without obvious pattern repetition, etc. will contribute to a higher grade. Note that the subject matter of the image does not necessarily need to be realistic, but you should do your best to make your modifications look like they are actually part of the image. For instance, an image of a dinosaur pasted into an image of downtown Detroit could earn high marks if the final image looked like there was really a dinosaur in downtown Detroit. Feel free to explore some of the Photoshop tools not covered in the tutorial. Exploration of tools will generally be considered to be embellishment and extra work throughout the course. Keep in mind, however, however, that you are trying to make a convincing image. Make sure that you save the modified image with a different name, so that you do not overwrite the original image. 36. Print and annotate the modified image. You will probably need to print the modified image in color. Annotate the image! Write notes on the image (using pencil or pen for the annotations is fine), indicating what changes you made, and what tools you used to make the modifications. Circle things you did, or draw arrows pointing to them. 37. Save your work when you are done. 38. Copy your files to a Zip disk, CD, USB flash drive, and/or your IFS account. You should make sure that you have at least 2 copies of your work: 1 in your IFS space and 1 on some sort of portable storage medium.
10 39. If you are working on a University or College machine, be sure to log out. What s due: The print made in step 31, with scribbles, your name, Arch 411, etc. The unmodified image(s) you acquired. Be sure to indicate where you got it (them), as described in step 34. If you combine parts of several images, print out each of the original images, and indicate the source for each. The modified image. Be sure to indicate the changes you made, as described in step 36.