In today’s class we covered the basics of Adobe InDesign, which is a package designed to facilitate page layout and the production of print-based materials. Here’s what we covered:
We started off by opening up Adobe InDesign and talked about how it is designed to give artists & developers unparalleled control over the layout and placement of type and graphics destined for print media.
Upon opening an InDesign document you are given the ability to declare your “intent” for the document. This can be either Print or Web. Web based documents are measured in Pixels and use the RGB color space. Print based documents are measured in Picas and use the CMYK color space.
CMYK is a color system that mixes four distinct inks – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK, to create colors.
Picas are the measurement unit used by InDesign for print document. 1 pica is equal to 1/6 of an inch. Picas can be further broken down into points – 12 points = 1 pica.
Next we talked about how almost everything in InDesign is based around the idea of “frames,” which are nothing more than “holders” that allow you to orient and place text and graphics. We demonstrated how to use a text frame by creating a text box using the Text tool and entering text into the box.
You can also create non-rectangular frames using the Shape tool. These frames, called “unassigned” frames, can hold either text or graphics. Entering text into an unassigned frame will cause it to convert to a text frame. Text will obey the contours of a shape-base frame and will wrap according to the geometry of the frame.
We also talked about how InDesign breaks down interface components into Panels that can be activated via the Window menu. The toolbar along the top of the screen replicates most of the functionality that is present in the panel sets. The toolbar is contextual and operates much like the Photoshop toolbar.
The first panel we took a deeper look at was the Character panel. This panel lets you adjust the look and feel of individual characters. Some of the features we discussed included:
Converting text to all capital letters and small capital letters.
Superscript and subscript text
Ligatures (connecting certain letter combinations – i.e. the “F” and “i” in the word First)
Underline options (increased size, placement, coloring, line styles)
Leading – the space between lines of text
Kerning – the space between individual characters
Tracking – relative space between characters (which obeys / retains any kerning changes you have made to a set of characters)
Vertical and Horizontal scale – stretching text in the X and Y directions. Not recommended by typography purists!
Baseline shift – moving text up or down from the midline of a given line of text.
Skewing – simulating “false italics” that let you “tilt” text in one direction or another.
Next we discussed the Paragraph panel which lets you adjust entire paragraphs and their behaviors. This panel allows you to do the following:
Set paragraph alignment modes (left, centered, right) – also setting up justification modes and spine orientation.
Setting left and right indentation of a paragraph
Setting a first line indentation
Setting space before and after a paragraph
Defining a “Drop Capital” which lets you make the first letter of the first word of a paragraph much larger than the rest of the text.
Auto hyphenation control
We then moved on to talk about how to link frames together. You can click ont he small box at the bottom right side of a frame to begin the linkage process. From there you can click on another text frame to define the linkage. Linkages allow text to “flow” from one box to another within your document.
You can draw lines by using the line tool – holding down the shift button will ensure that the lines stay straight.
When drawing shapes you can hold down the shift key to keep them in proportion. You can also hold down the ALT key to draw a shape from its center point (rather than from its top left point)
You can select a frame by using the Selection tool (black arrow) to click on the frame border. You can also “draw a box” marquee around a group of frames to select multiple frames at the same time. Frames can be dragged by holding down the left mouse button, and you can ALT-drag a frame to duplicate it.
When actively drawing shapes or frames you can use the UP, LEFT, RIGHT and DOWN keys on your keyboard to invoke the “gridify” commend. Gridify lets you convert the current shape into a grid that contains multiple copies of that shape.
You can draw multi-faceted frames by using the Polygon shape tool. Select this tool and click once on the background of your canvas – you will be asked to specify the number of sides in your new frame as well as the “inset” angle – inset angles allow you to “bevel” a shape, creating one that curves into itself (think of a five pointed pentagon vs. a five pointed star)
Once you have a frame on the stage you can use a variety of transform tools in the toolbar (11th from the bottom) to adjust the look and feel of your frame. The rotate tool allows you to rotate the selected frame, and the scale and skew tools allow you to stretch the frame out of shape. In addition, you can use these tools to change the “center point” of a frame, letting you rotate the frame around another point rather than the true center of the shape.
InDesign supports layers like Photoshop – you can turn on the Layers panel by clicking on the Window -> Layers commend. You can also use the Object -> Send to Back / Front tools to force objects to appear in front / behind other objects on the same layer.
The Align panel allows you to adjust the placement of multiple items, allowing you line up their horizontal centers, make them the same height or distribute them evenly across your canvas.
The Color panel lets you select colors for your items. InDesign will limit you to a CMYK color palette, and will alert you when you have selected a color outside of the acceptable range supported by CMYK. You can apply a color to a frame by dragging it from the color palette and into the frame – dragging a color to the edge of a frame alters the border of that frame rather than its fill.
It is recommended that you use the color palette to add colors to your InDesign color swatches panel. Swatches allow you to easily reuse colors, and are the only way to apply color to text inside InDesign.
We finished off by taking a look at the ‘Presentation Tips’ slide deck (located under the ‘Lectures‘ tab at the top of the screen). We talked about a variety of design topics, including color choices, typography and composition, all of which are described in greater detail in the embedded presentation on our Lectures page.
The anaglyph extra credit assignment has two parts. Here’s how to get started if you’re interested in participating:
Create an anaglyph from a photograph. This will require you to take two images that are slightly offset from one another and adjust them in Photoshop such that they appear 3D when viewed through a set of red / blue 3D glasses.
Create an anaglyph from Photoshop layers. Each layer will need to be adjusted accordingly in order to simulate the 3D effect.
Submit your work (PSD and JPG files, Zipped) to Blackboard. There are two assignments set up in BB – one for your photograph and one for your collage. Good luck!
Hi everyone – just wanted to share a few resources to go along with our very brief lesson on 3D images & Photoshop. Good luck on your Anaglyph extra credit assignment!
And here’s a quick overview on the basic steps to create an anaglyph image:
Take two photographs that are horizontally separated by about 2 inches (i.e. take a picture and the move your camera about 2 inches to the right and take another picture). Note that your subject is very important – try and have objects that exist in the foreground, mid ground and background of the image. Try and keep your closest subject about 4 feet away from the camera.
Open up both images in Photoshop.
Copy both images into the same document. Name the layers “left” and “right” accordingly so you don’t forget which is which!
Put the left image on top of the right image.
Remove the Red component from the right image. You can do this using the Image -> Adjustments -> Levels window. Select the Red channel and type the number 0 into the box that says “Output Levels” (so that it outputs from 0 to 0 in the red channel)
Do the same thing for the left image, but remove the green and blue channels.
Click on your left image and set the Layer Mode to “screen” – the layer mode dropdown is at the top of the Layers panel.
Put on your glasses! It probably won’t look great the first time You may need to adjust the position of your image to get it just right.
You may also need to desaturate your image if your subject has a lot of red or blues — you can do this by clicking on Image -> Adjustments -> Hue Saturation and dropping the saturation way down (-50 or so)
An anaglyph image is one that has been specially prepared to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect when viewed using colored glasses. Anaglyph images actually two distinct pictures that have been “merged” into one single image. Each of these distinct pictures is slightly offset from each other in order to mimic the way our eyes see an image (each eye is slightly to the right or left of your other eye, giving us the ability to see two versions of the space in front of us at the same time). Once combined into a single image, each of these distinct pictures is “filtered” using one of two colors (usually red and blue) – ff you were to wear a set of glasses that contains lenses that matched the colored filters using in the image you would be able to see the image in 3D, since the lenses of the glasses will, in effect, supply a different image to each eye.
In class I distributed standard 3D glasses that contain two different colored lenses – one red and one blue. Put these glasses on and look at the images below with the red filter over the your left eye.
It’s actually fairly easy to create an anaglyph image in Photoshop. For extra credit you can figure out how to do this and submit your creation to Blackboard. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
The following items are, in my opinion, the most important characteristics to consider when purchasing a digital camera for personal use or use in your classroom.
Megapixel Rating
In a nutshell, Megapixels = quality. Megapixels are rated in numbers from 1.0 and up, and this value represents the maximum size of the image that the camera can produce. Megapixel ratings around 10.0 are commonplace these days, though most people don’t need nearly that level of quality. Quality is generally important if you are planning on printing your images out – web delivery of images generally requires a much lower level of quality. The actual number is derived by taking the resolution of the maximum size of an image produced and multiplying the two numbers together. For example, if a camera can produce an image that is rated at 640 x 480 pixels, it would have a megapixel rating of 0.3. An image size of 1440 x 960 would have a megapixel rating of 1.3.
Optical Zoom
Digital cameras boast two types of zoom – optical and digital. Optical zoom describes the mechanical act of the lens zooming in on a subject. It produces a very high quality image and is completely dependent of the hardware in your camera. Digital zoom is handled by software and is created by the onboard computer in your camera – it uses complicated algorithms to “guess” what the zoomed in region should look like. It produces a lower quality image than its optical zoom counterpart.
Storage
Cameras are generally dependent on external storage as most cameras don’t come equipped with much onboard memory. Most cameras these days use a standard sized SD chip which is rated in gigabytes, though some older cameras use other chip variations such as XD.
EyeFi has produced a SD chip that has integrated wireless capabilities. This means that your pictures can automatically upload themselves to your blog, website, flickr account or home computer as soon as your camera comes in range of a public wi-fi network.
Today we concluded our discussion of intermediate Photoshop concepts. Here’s a recap of what we discussed:
Photoshop contains an impressive array of built-in filters that can be used to render a host of different effects. Filters can be applied to entire layers or specific selections on a layer. Photoshop designers routinely come up with ways in which filters can be combined to create unique effects. Here’s a listing of useful filtering techniques that can get you started.
To begin working with Filters you can click on the ‘Filters’ menu. In class we looked at the ‘Filter Gallery’ menu which lets you graphically experiment with all of the built-in Photoshop Filters.
Photoshop Filter Gallery
Remember that filters are applied to the currently selected layer only. You can also select a portion of a layer (using a selection tool such as the rectangular marquee tool) to apply a filter to a specific portion of a layer.
We also talked about the ‘Convert for Smart Filters’ option under the Filters menu. This option lets you non-destructively apply filters to a layer. You can turn on and off filters by using the visibility toggles in the layers panel.
Visibility toggles in the Layer panel (only available when using Smart Filters)
We then moved on to talk about the ‘Liquify’ filter which allows you to apply different types of “warps” to an image. Liquify is available under the ‘Filters’ menu and opens up a new interface in which you can “pucker”, “bloat”, “twirl” and “shear” pixels within a scene. Here’s an example that exaggerates the facial features of a model:
Using the Liquify Tool
We also talked about 3rd party filters that can be downloaded from a website and installed into your personal copy of Photoshop. The filter we discussed in class was the ‘Flood’ filter by Flaming Pear which lets you submerge an image.
Washington Square Park submerged!
We then moved on to discuss brushes. Photoshop has a ‘Paint’ tool (8th tool down) that lets you draw on the canvas as though you were using a real-world paintbrush. The pain tool has a number of options that can be set using the properties bar along the top of the screen, including the brush shape, its opacity and how much digital paint to apply at any one time (called “flow”)
We also discussed how Photoshop allows you to work with colors by way of the ‘Foreground’ and ‘Background’ color swatches at the bottom of the toolbar. These swatches pull up a robust color picker that lets you works with colors in a number of ways, including through Red Green Blue color space (RGB), Hue Saturation Brightness (HSB) and Cyan Yellow Magenta Black (CYMK).
The color picker in Photoshop
We talked about how the computer can use a series of 0′s and 1′s to quantify colors, and we experimented with inputting values into the R, G and B fields to show how to generate different types of colors. Remember that Photoshop generally uses 8 bits per channel, meaning that the #’s you enter into the RGB blanks should be between 0 and 255 since 8 bits can yield a maximum number of 256 distinct combinations (2^8 = 256)
Next we went out to the web and explored how colors can be expressed as Hexadecimal color codes. Hexadecimal, or Hex, is a number system that uses 16 as its base (as opposed to our base 10 number system or binary’s base 2 number system). Hex numbers go from 0-9 and then from A-F, yielding 16 possible “digits”. It just so happens that exactly two digits in Hex can represent 8 bits, so most colors on the web are expressed this way for simplicity’s sake. When reading a Hex color code you should break down the number into three portions to determine the amount of Red, Green and Blue present in the color. For example, “00FF00″ can be read as ’00′ Red, ‘FF’ Green and ’00′ Blue, making this color a pure shade of green. An incomplete listing of hex color codes can be found here.
You can also determine the Hex color value of any pixel on your screen by using your computer’s built in Digital Color Meter. This program, available on every Mac, can be found by going to the Spotlight at the top right side of the screen and searching for ‘Digital Color Meter’ – it allows you to isolate pixels on your screen and analyze them in terms of their RGB color value.
The Digital Color Meter analyzing a white pixel (FF FF FF)
We also talked about some web-based resources that let you work with colors in a more meaningful way. Colr.org lets you upload photos and extract color palettes from them, and Colorscehemedesigner.com lets you use an interactive color wheel to design color schemes based on a specific base color.
Next we discussed the Text tool and how to add text into your projects. We also talked about Fonts and how to find and install new ones that you find on the web. Some sites we mentioned were dafont.com and 1001freefonts.com . Keep in mind that fonts can be adjusted using the Free Transform tool just like any other element of your composition. In addition, you can use the ‘Puppet Warp’ tool to stretch out letters of your font if you first convert your text layer to a ‘Smart Object’ (right click on the layer and select ‘Convert to Smart Object’
We unfortunately didn’t get a chance to discuss the following tools, but we will take a look at them during our next class meeting.
The ‘Color Replacement’ tool lets you substitute one color for another in an image. It is useful for altering color values without having to worry about compensating for shadows and other environmental conditions that may make it hard to perfectly match a certain color.
Pyramids of Giza re-colorized. My shirt was originally white and blue, and the pyramid on the left was never that color!
Photoshop has other retouching tools besides the “content aware fill” tool, including the ‘Clone Stamp’ tool that lets you take a digital ‘skin graft’ from one area of an image to fill in another area. This technique is useful for retouching old photographs and covering over regions of an image that need to be hidden. The tool works by by setting a “target” region and then copying pixels from that space to another area of the screen.
Photoshop also contains a simliar tool called the ‘Healing’ brush which is exactly the same as the Clone Stamp but with the added feature of being able to “blend” the source and destination pixels together in a smoother way.
We started off by reviewing the various ways you can work with layers and selections inside Photoshop. See the Class 3 Wrap-up posting for an overview of these techniques.
Next we moved on to talk about sources for digital images. Here are a few that were mentioned:
Google Images (http://images.google.com): Let’s you search for images by keyword. Be mindful of the size of the image that you are working with (the larger the image the better) – in addition, not all images that you find are in the public domain, meaning that you can’t just grab and image and use it in a project without the permission of the author.
Flickr (http://www.flickr.com): Flickr lets you search for images by keyword, but it also has a ‘Creative Commons’ (CC) filter which lets you find only images that have been legally released for use by other artists and designers. You can perform a CC search by clicking on the ‘Advanced’ search option.
We talked about using the Mac operating system to take a screenshot using the Command-4 key combination. Simply hit Command-4 and draw a box around a region of the screen – when you release your mouse you will hear a “camera” sound and the image will appear as a PNG file on your desktop.
We alko talked about Jing (http://www.jingproject.com) which not long allows you to take screenshots but also lets you record short video segments of what is happening on your screen.
We also talked about the “Content aware fill” feature in Photoshop CS5 which lets you selectively erase portions of your image using “samples” from neighboring pixels. Here’s a great video that gives you an overview on how to get started:
Finally we walked through an advanced demo that brought together a number of today’s topics, including selection, the Content-Aware fill tool and the Puppet Warp mesh. Here’s a video that I found from Lynda.com that goes over what we talked about (and more!)
Here’s a brief recap of what we discussed today during our first formal “Introduction to Photoshop” lecture:
Opening Photoshop and a general orientation to its layout (menu along the top, toolbar along the left, panels along the right)
How to resize an image (chapter 7 in the Photoshop textbook, pages 121-125)
Opening Photoshop and a general orientation to its layout (menu along the top, toolbar along the left, panels along the right)
How to resize an image (chapter 7 in the Photoshop textbook, pages 121-125)
How to change the canvas size of an image (chapter 7 in the Photoshop textbook, page 126)
How to crop an image (chapter 7 in the Photoshop textbook, page 127-130)
How to rotate an image (chapter 7 in the Photoshop textbook, page 131)
How to straighten an image using the ruler tool (chapter 7 in the Photoshop textbook, page 132)
Next we talked about the idea of layers in a digital imaging file. Layers allow you to control the “depth” of a element in a digital image. Layers that appear at the top of the layer stack appear in front of layers below them. Photoshop displays layers within an image using the ‘Layers’ panel. You can turn on this panel by clicking on the ‘Window’ menu and then on the ‘Layers’ option.
We began our discussion by looking at a Photoshop image that was already organized into layers (click here to access that file). In this file we discussed the following:
Only PSD files support layers – files saved as JPG, GIF, PNG, etc. do not have the ability to retain layers.
PSD files cannot generally be viewed on the web. If you want to share a PSD file you should save a copy of it as a JPG or PNG.
You can use the ‘eyeball’ icon in the layers panel to make a layer visible or invisible.
You can right-click on a layer and select ‘Layer Properties’ to rename the layer.
You can right-click on a layer to duplicate it as well – this is useful if you would like to make a copy of the layer before you make a big change to it (and you’re not sure that you will be happy with the change you’re about to make!)
You can delete a layer by selecting and clicking the backspace / delete key on your keyboard.
You can only interact with content on a layer if that layer is selected. Simply click on the layer and the use the Move tool (top tool in the toolbar on the left side) to move the content on that layer.
You can reorder layers by dragging and dropping them in the layer stack.
You can merge layers into a single layer by selecting them (using the Command key), right-clicking and selecting the ‘Merge Layers’ option.
Next we moved onto layer effects.
We created a new image and drew some rectangles using the ‘Rectangle Tool’ (looks like a rectangle near the bottom of the toolbar).
As rectangles were drawn they were automatically added to new layers.
At the bottom of the layers panel is a small button that looks like the letters ‘fx’ – this is the Layers Effects button and brings up a dialog box that allows you to add in a number of effects to a layer, including drop shadows, embossing, inner and outer glows, etc. We explored the Drop Shadow effect in detail and talked about how Photoshop supports a ‘global light’ feature which allows you to coordinate the angle at which all drop shadows are applied to your objects.
Our next topic involved combining elements from multiple images into a single image.
We started off by opening up a deep-sea image and an image that contained a number of multicolored fish. Our goal was to extract the fish and place them into the underwater scene.
Click to download the full-size image
Click to download the full-size image
To extract the fish we used a number of tools, including:
The ‘Rectangular Marquee’ tool (second tool down) allows you to select a box-shaped region of the screen. From there you can copy and paste the image from the fish file into the underwater file. This resulted in a fish coming over plus its white background.
Next we used the ‘Lasso’ tool (third tool down). The Lasso allows you select pixels in a “free-hand” manner. It’s very difficult to use and almost always results in a choppy selection.
We then moved on to the ‘Polygonal Lasso’ tool (third down as well). This tool lets you lay down ‘points’ around an image – every time you click you add a new point to your selection. Clicking on your first point will ‘close’ the selection. This tool works very well but it can be a little tedious, especially for images that have lots of corners (but it is necessary at times!)
Next we looked at the ‘Quick Selection’ tool which attempts to “guess” as to which pixels you wish to select. It’s pretty accurate and dramatically speeds up the selection process. You can adjust its sensitivity using the sliders on the tool properties bar at the top of Photoshop.
The general procedure we used in moving images from one canvas to another was to use one of the selection techniques outlined above, click on Edit -> Copy, switch to the destination canvas and click on Edit -> Paste. The selected item will appear as its own layer at the top of the layer stack.
Once we had our extracted image in the new canvas we used the Edit -> Free Transform tool to adjust the item’s rotation, scale and orientation. We also used the ‘Move’ tool (first tool) to reposition the item on the screen.
We also talked about how you could use the Warp tool (Edit -> Transform -> Warp) to “stretch” out an item using an draggable mesh.
We began class by talking about general computer concepts — the slide deck I used is posted under the Lectures tab above. Here’s a brief recap:
We discussed how modern computers can only really do a very small number of things, and that everything “under the hood” works using a language called “binary”.
Everything a computer does can be reduced to binary. There are just two “letters” in this language – “0″ and “1″. We call a single “0″ or “1″ a “bit”, and a collection of 8 bits is called a “byte”.
1,000 bytes are referred to as a “kilobyte”
1,000,000 bytes are referred to as a “megabyte”
1,000,000,000 bytes are referred to as a “gigabyte”
1,000,000,000,000 bytes are referred to as a “terabyte”
Binary is not something that an average human being can understand, so we have developed “input devices” to translate human experiences into zeros and ones (such as keyboards, mice and microphones)
In order to translate a computer’s internal world of zeros and ones into the “real world” we have developed “output devices” that convert binary information into more manageable forms (such as being displayed on a monitor, printed by a printer or played by a set of speakers)
Next we moved on to talk about how a computer understands visual information. We talked about how a computer can interpret a group of zeros and ones as colors.
We then moved on to talk about the two families of images – Bitmaps and Vectors.
Bitmaps are exactly what they sound like – maps of bits that tell a computer how to color a series of pixels on the screen. When bitmaps get very large it gets very difficult to transfer them across the Internet due to the overwhelming number of bits that they contain. We spoke about how we’ve gotten around this problem through the idea of “compression” – that is, using a procedure to remove information from an image to reduce its size while maintaining its integrity. The two types of compression we spoke about were “lossy” and “lossless”. Lossless compression allows you to remove information without permanently destroying it (see the demo on the GIF image in the lecture for more information). Lossy compression destroys information in order to reduce file size (see the section on JPEG images for a more detailed explanation)
Vectors use mathematical expressions to describe images (rather than maps of pixels). Vectors can be enlarged infinitely without becoming distorted, but they can’t easily handle extremely detailed images such as photographs.
Just wanted to report back on the skills assessment survey that you all took as homework for today’s class. Here are the most requested topics based on your feedback — I’m not sure we can cover all of them but I’ll do my best
Web Development
Build a website from scratch
Customizing existing websites
Setting up your own domain (.com)
Marketing and selling content online
Online advertising
Using multimedia on the web
WordPress and other blogging frameworks
Effectively using Dreamweaver to develop a website
CSS for laying out content on the web
Computer Principles
Technical understanding of computers and how they work
How the Internet works
Evolution of the Internet
Using digital media as a medium for creative expression
You may need to adjust the position of your image to get it just right.
