I posted a few possible banners on the wiki last night. Let me know what you guys think.
Possible Banner
November 18th, 2006 by jdsmithWriting Work Load
November 13th, 2006 by jdsmith      Hey guys. I know it’s an uncomfortable subject, and although it’s been brought up, we haven’t quite tackled the issue for certain yet, but it’s about time: Mia’s not coming back, and we have to adapt to the loss.
Since my procedure load is relatively light, and Mia was my partner for the two tutorial suites, I am prepared to undertake both of them myself — I’ve already finished Rendering the Planet of the Apes. Painting Outside the Box is next.
Unfortunately, it means we have to come up with the rest of the procedures she had. We should talk about this in class tomorrow.
Related items
More troubles
October 12th, 2006 by jdsmithSo I agree that we need to show people how to make headers and banners for their website.
The problem I’m having is figuring out *new* tutorials to do this that we won’t have already covered in the button designing tutorial. So how about this?
First, we integrate the header/banner tutorial into the button making suite.
Second, we design the APE main page using the *same* techniques we are teaching people to use. Some critical people — including the professors judging this project — are going to wonder why we are giving a tutorial on these techniques, and how great they are… when we don’t use them ourselves.
Related items
Followup
October 11th, 2006 by jdsmithFor the other replacement tutorial, what do you guys think?
Do you want to teach people to make images similar to my sumi-e bamboo style? It combines brush shapes, sizes, opacity, textures, text, using the burn/smudge/dodge tools.
Or do you want to do a laser beam? I’ve figured out how to do one using brush shapes, gradients, and layer properties.
Related items
Troubles
October 11th, 2006 by jdsmithOkay,
So I’ve been tossing around possible ideas for what we can do to replace some tutorial suites all day. Although I’ve played around a lot with Photoshop, aside from my Sumi-e creation, I’ve never designed anything unique. That gives me the interesting conundrum of, “I have all kinds of shiny tools. I know how to use (most of) them. What do I build?”
I did manage to come up with a suggested replacement for our lightning effects. The moon uses two layers, the shape tool, the paint bucket and gradient tool, difference clouds, the lighting effects lense (very cool, by the way, play with it if you haven’t) and several different layer blending properties.
I think we can split the tutorial up into:
1: Creating and coloring shapes (this lets us get the basic idea of using the shape tool out of the way, along with the gradient and paint bucket tools — since gradient is a right click on the paint bucket, we also get info about the right click out there for people to play with)
2: Applying multiple filters to an image to create even more special effects
3: Adjusting layer blending properties to modify an image
4: Creating rendered planets using filters
______________________________________________________________
Sound good?
Related items
First Tutorial Suite
October 6th, 2006 by jdsmithHey guys.
I propose for our first tutorial suite that we aim for the lightning design I’ve used in some of the images I’ve uploaded to this blog.
This is the tutorial that I learned the technique from: http://www.stephenwhitehead.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9 — I did have to adjust some things to make it conform to PE, but not much.
There are a few major reasons I propose this idea:
1. It combines many different techniques, some which we definitely need and want to focus on: layers, duplicating layers, filters, rendering, gradients, adjusting hue and saturation, adjusting opacity, merging layers, and moving one layer around over a background layer.
2. It is kind of fun and interactive. Even as someone who isn’t a huge fan of Star Wars, it inspired me to try variations of the technique, to experiment, and I learned a ton of stuff. This tutorial is actually what finally got me to understand layers.
3. This is an excellent opportunity to teach keyboard shortcuts. Nearly every action of every step in this has a very easy to remember shortcut. (Ctrl+f repeats your previous adjustment, Ctrl+i inverts color, etc.)
This will give us many different tutorials to work with — many of which will build and reinforce more difficult concepts, like layers. And since overall, this isn’t a really complex thing, anyone sitting down at a computer will be able to produce results if they learn each of the building blocks.
On a side note, I propose we try to use Robert Frost as a model in our photo adjustments. Although our banjoes are… musical, Robert Frost has become a symbol of PSU — I think it is a touch that will appeal to professors as a symbolic thing, and to students as a “I can turn Robert Frost into Darth Robbie, yay!” I think even his ghost would be pleased at that….
In fact, I’ll give it a shot later, just for fun.
______________________________________________________________
Okay.
For tutorials in our first suite, I suggest we do the following –
1. Layering (Let’s face it. We need to knock it down fast. Beginner.)
2. Filtering (Another basic thing, and fun to play with. Beginner.)
3. Using shortcut keys (We can implement the lightning here. Medium-Advanced)
4. Changing the hue and saturation of colors (change the individual lightning bolt colors. Medium.)
_______________________________________________________________
I am very unfamiliar with claymation… or any animation for that matter, even Flash is above my head.
I do think that we will need tutorials on:
1. Using the marquee tool, the magic lasso, and the magnetic lasso to cut out individual images to work on them.
2. Using the frame animation mode of Photoshop to create an animation. (Does PE even have a frame animation mode? I know regular Photoshop does. How do they do this project?)
3. Importing backgrounds into Photoshop.
Need to learn more on this to work it out.
_______________________________________________________________
Okay, finally, I think people really need to be shown the unique things that can be done with their brushes. It really opens up worlds.
1. Changing brush size and shape.
2. Altering opacity for effect.
3. Importing layer styles into PE. (Here’s my thought on this: instead of showing people how to create one style of brush — for example, the water drop brush — we can show them how to import a layer style from .psd files, and learn how to copy the effects from that.) You can give a n00b a brush, and entertain them for a project, or you can teach them how to steal others, and get them out of your hair…. 
I mean, you can teach them ways to further explore.
To accomplish this, we’ll have to design our own .psd files with brushes for students to use, unless this guy with the water drop tutorial kindly gets back to me… I asked him already for permission to possibly use his .psd in our project if we need to.
On that note, I just learned how to make an interesting design from this tutorial… http://www.photoshoptower.com/tutorials/life-beam/create-realistic-photoshop-special-effect-sfx.php?p=1
To create small steps on how to build up into that wouldn’t be so hard. What do you guys think?
_______________________________________________________________
We have a few other things that Dr. Stiller wants us to convey to students: specifically the wonders of right click, and saving an image to the web. Should we create a complete newbie tutorial for this, or leave it to procedure?
Another option would be to show students how to create buttons to use on their web pages. That would be an easy tutorial suite. In it, we could use these tutorials:
1. Using the shape tool (beginner)
2. Using the gradient and paint bucket tools (beginner)
3. Using the text tool (beginner)
4. Using lighting effects (drop shadow, emboss, etc.) (medium)
_______________________________________________________________
Anyway, will discuss more in class tomorrow. That is my temporary list, and we can add, subtract, and alter as needed.
Related items
Tutorials
October 4th, 2006 by jdsmithPlease post your tutorial ideas here!
Related items
Swirly oooooooo
October 3rd, 2006 by jdsmith
Another variation on techniques I learned through tutorials this weekend. It was shiny, so I decided to upload it.
Related items
Tutorial
October 3rd, 2006 by jdsmithFor my part in the tutorial, I added bolding, some italicization, and I changed some of the wording such as “Re-sizing” and “Re-shaping” to fit uniformly with PhotoShop’s “Resizing” and “Reshaping”. I think it looks cleaner anyway.
I might have gone a little overboard on the bolding… I’m not sure. I tried to bold the key points in each step. If we have a step that doesn’t have a part that needs bolding, in my theory, that’s a step that we don’t need. I think maybe we can get away with the apostrophes surrounding the bold words.
First PE Tutorial
Overview
Reshaping and resizing photos is a basic skill, and key to successful photo editing. Here are a few easy steps to help you learn: (Christine a little. Modified by James.)
Importing the ‘banjo’ Image:
Click ‘File’ at the top of your window
Select ‘Open’
In your ‘M’ drive find the file called ‘banjo’ and select it
Click ‘Open’
(Nate)
*Once open your screen should look like this
(Nate)
Rotating the Image
Click ‘Image’ at the top of your window
Select ‘Rotate’
Select ‘90 degrees Left’
(Nate)
Resizing the Image
(Nate)
Click ‘Image’ at the top of your window
Select ‘Resize’
Select ‘Image Size’
In the dialog box, change the width to 400 pixels and the height to 400 pixels
Click ‘OK’
Changing the Canvas Size
Click ‘Image’ at the top of your window
Select ‘Resize’
Select ‘Canvas Size’
In the dialog box, change the width to 8 inches and the height to 8 inches
Click ‘OK’
Reshaping the Image
Click ‘Image’ at the top of your window
Select ‘Transform’
Select ‘Skew’
Grab points will appear around the ‘banjos’ image: click and drag one of them to skew the image
To Save the Image
Click ‘File’ at the top of your window
Select ‘Save As’
Click the drop down arrow next to ‘Format’ and select ‘JPEG’
Save the image as ‘banjos2′ in your M-drive
Congratulations!
Now that you know how to import, rotate, resize, reshape, and save this banjo image, you may want to experiment with your own creations. Try designing an image in Photoshop Expressions using the tools you learned today You can use your new image in a variety of circumstances, such as in a school project, on your website, or in a brochure. If you get stuck and need help, don’t worry — just to return to the en4090: ATC tutorials for Photoshop Expressions. (Christine)
Related items
Lightning
October 2nd, 2006 by jdsmith
I created this lightning effect based on the tutorial I read earlier — I modified it to create this. It’s actually very easy to do, and requires a minimal number of steps. Everything was done in Elements.
