VIDEO

A Visual History of Adobe Photoshop (3 min) 👁️

Photoshop Overview

• Making sense of a document size 

• Using Image size to change document dimensions 

• Saving and Exporting Documents 

• Using the Crop tool in Photoshop 

• Crop and change image size in one step 

• Auto-fill with Content Aware Crop 

• Exploring Layer Basics 

• Introducing Adjustment Layers 

• Adjusting color and tone with Levels and Curves

Bring your photos from the camera to Photoshop

VIDEOS

4 Framing & Composition Techniques for Beginners | Photography & Video Training (5:30 min) 📸

How to Shoot Manual in 10 Minutes - Beginner Photography Tutorial (12:14 min) 🖼️

LAB WORK
Cropping and Resizing Images & Tonal Range

DUE, at the end of the class.

Based on the composition and framing concepts that were covered in the lecture, take at least five photos with the cameras available in the lab (or if you have your own). The goal is to adjust your camera settings so you are taking photos at the highest resolution pixel width and height. 

Choose the two images that you think are compositionally the most compelling and save a copy of both images in their original pixel dimensions (keep a backup of the original file on an external drive or Google Drive). 

Crop two images with the following dimensions: 

• One image to 1920 px by 1080 px 

• One image to 5”x 7” inches 

The next step of the assignment is to adjust the tonal range of the two images using an adjustment layer. 

Tonal range determines what pixel information is revealed or concealed within an image. 

Export these as .jpg images and make sure they are under 2 MB in file size. 

🏡 Homework 2: Cropping and Resizing Images & Tonal Range due 9/13

Required Reading: “In Plato’s Cave” chapter 1 from On Photography by Susan Sontag, 1977 available as PDF from Blackboard, 1-3 paragraph reflection due Fri 9/13

Required Viewing: From LinkedIn Learning “Photoshop 2024 Essential Training” (please try following along with your own images):

ch 4. Digital Image Essentials sections (all tutorials)
ch 6. Cropping, Straightening, and Adjusting Cavas Size (first three tutorials)
ch 7. Layers (first tutorial)
ch. 12 Adjustment Layer Essentials (first three tutorials)

Part 1) The opening chapter from Susan Sontag’s On Photography reflects upon the power of image taking. Well before the advent of the smartphone, Sontag discusses the ubiquity of the camera and image-taking. This is the longest reading of the semester for this course. The reading is assigned to place image-making in a critical context.

- What does it mean to you to capture images and create graphics?

Though quite different from the other as you are asked to use various tools. Although each project is distinct, please consider them as a body of work; consider how one may relate to the next and how you as a media maker can build from one to the next.

Please write a one to three-paragraph reflection on how you use photography and image making. How could you represent our world visually through photography or illustration or the combination of image and text notions at this moment? 

Create a new html page for this reflection, title it “readings.html” and link to it from your class homepage (index.html).

Add a link back to index.html on your readings.html page. Update the readings.html page with each reflection – project or reading reflection.

Part 2) Based on the composition and framing concepts that were covered in the lecture, take at least five photos with lab DSLR cameras.

Choose the two images that you think are compositionally the most compelling and save a copy of both images in their original pixel dimensions (in other words, keep a back-up of the original file).

Crop a copy of one of the images to 1920 px by 1080 px and crop a copy of the other image to 5”x7”.

Now, modify the Tonal Range of the two images using an adjustment layer following the steps in chapters above.

Export these as jpg images and make sure they are under 2 MB in their file size.

Now, add each photo to two new pages on your website. Place each of the cropped images on a separate page and connect them with links to the home page and to each other. Make sure that all pages can navigate back to the home page.

On your image web pages, add a paragraph tag to explain why you chose these two images and what compositional ideas you were using to create visual interest.