Beginners guide to producing Graphics- Original

Article.

As many of you may know Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are highly used pieces of software used all around the world for thousands of different things. I personally think that it can be very easy and very complicated and as an educated media student i am here to show you some of the various ways that it can be used which can help you in your work with Photoshop and Illustrator.
In the past i have created such things like a movie poster,DVD sleeve and a cartoon version of myself in which i had to use different aspects of photoshop and Illustrator to create these things. I will be explaining how and why i did certain things in my DVD sleeve and poster.
If you are thinking about entering the world of graphic design then you will need to know how to use the two main systems: Photoshop and Illustrator, with these you will be able to develop a range of products as photoshop is used for image manipulation it can take photos and pretty much change them to what ever you want within consideration whereas illustrator can be used to do logos and logo designs.

Within Photoshop i did use it to take a picture of a girl which had blotches spots and impurities and to a picture no body wants to be looking at or wants to look like that right. So because i wanted her skin to look silky smooth; i also did my Poster. Photoshop uses Bitmap graphics also known as BMP it is a raster graphic, a digital image composed of a matrix of dots, when viewed at 100% each dot corresponds to an individual pixel on display, in a standard bitmap image each for can be assigned a different colour. There are several different bitmap files for example: Standard uncompressed bitmap file BMP, the independent file DIB which includes a header which defines the size of the image and the number of colours the image can contain. Other bitmap files are JPG, GIF and PNG as they all represent an image as a grid of pixels; if an image is enlarged it will become blurry.


But before i go into this i want to explain just like i did with Photoshop that
Adobe illustrator is a vector image, by using vector images you can create beautiful, clean works of art that can be scaled up and down without losing quality. Unlike JPG,GIF,TIFF, etc images- known as raster images- vector images are not made up of a grid of pixels. They are instead created by paths - a combination of a starting point and an ending point with a combination of shapes, angles and lines in-between. These paths relate to each other by mathematical formulas which allows them to be scaled and rescaled infinitaly. When finished this allows and is mainly used for company logos and and some personal work mainly in print and digital as if this image is enlarged it does not lose quality or look blurry as it is composed of paths and not dots.

Illistrator:

To create this picture i took a picture of myself and imported it into Adobe Illustrator to make myself look as much like a cartoon as i can, i took my photo and outlined my different features such as: hair, face, body, lips, etc with the pen tool i joined the lines and outlined the different sections of my picture. By doing this i have then got all the different features to work with, with every time i outlined a different feature i created a new layer and by the end of it i had a substantial amount of layers with the different outlines. To make the picture look more natural i then click the layer with the direct selection tool in which allowed me to see and click each specific point as they all became obvious when layers are selected, after this i then choose convert tools which allows for the jagged edges to be smoothed out and the points to be manipulated and moved around for such things like hair, face, eyes to look a lot more natural and normal. After this i was then able to select different colours for the different parts of my picture, i did this easily as i have a layer for each little thing; by selecting the layer i was able to select what colour i would want it by clicking on 'fill' down the left hand side which showed the various colour options to pick from.
I used Photoshop for a girl that had spots and a oily skin, i got rid of her spots and moles with the spot healing tool which is really cool right? This got rid of all the imperfections on her face. I then made a copy of picture and after this i then inserted a new layer in which it blurred out the image
added a mask which enables me to erase through the image i did this by using smart blur which stops her face from looking oily. I then used the brush tool which i focused her eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth and hair to look more in definition. By doing this it helped me and will help you understand that many things that you see on your day to day life are most likely manipulated and changed within Adobe illustrator, remember you never know whats real or not unless it is intact your own image.

Once this image was saved it was saved as a PNG which is a compressed raster format, it uses 'lossless' compression which means that it does not lose quality of image or have any blurring; later in the article i go into more detail about a PNG.

As i have just shown you one example of Illistrator which is pretty cool i think, i will now teach you more wonders of Photoshop in which i use everyday for an easy alternative to creative media and once you have got the hang of it I'm sure you will feel like its a walk In the park on a sunny day.

Before.

By using Photoshop it has just made my life so much more easier and actually quite fun watching the girls face change to now look a lot more air brushed which is what everyone wants, am i right?

OK, now its time to talk file types… there are many different file types that can be used for certain images for example to you the picture of the girl is a JPG which means that it is a 'lossy' compression, now remember this file type is one of the most used within digital pictures and you will defiantly be using this the most BUT remember some of the quality will be lost when decreasing the size of the file type, boring but useful to know!

Now i will show and teach you more examples of photoshop and by doing this i will show more tools and options used in my Poster development.

This is the picture i have chosen for my horror theme poster as it has the horror feeling with the dark essence around the edges of the poster, ooooo spooky. The swing looks dark and even abit deadly which is a main factor as to why i choose this layout.

This photo is a JPG or JPEG if you want to call it that, JPG is saved as 'lossy' compression which really only means that some of the quality of the picture can be lost the smaller the image becomes but it is still the most used file going used with digital cameras as i does allow for some size reduction. You will come to learn that a lot of your pictures will end up being JPG. Easy.

For my title i have put it at the top of my poster with a shadow effect, the font that i choose was "mother in law" as it gives the sketchy feeling to my horror theme. I wanted to have a font that gave off the horror effect that incorporated its self with the backing, it was so simple and easy to put the text onto my back picture and obviously even i thought that it was going to be hard but just like work you click the button that shows the text and just type what ever you want, simple!

I changed the effects of my title by using the layer style box which allowed me to give my title a stroke, inner shadow, pattern overlay and a drop shadow. This has given my title font more of a scary theme to it and helped it look more like it should be apart of the back picture and make it fit into the theme of the film. Really all you do is click the different things and you can potentially change your whole picture/font with just this little box and we all want the most easy way to do things and this is a very good tip to remember.

Now obviously i didn't just want to have a picture of a swing for my poster as that would just be plain BORING right. So i thought up the idea of putting three little girls onto it just as they stand next to to each other this could potentially make my poster amazing.

I took a picture of  my sisters, yes my sisters scary! Then imported them onto photoshop and cut them out to add to my swing picture, i used the "magnetic lasso" tool (do not forget this it will come in very handy and will be used a lot with you work as it is mine) which cut my sisters out of the original background. By doing this it made them incorporate into the background of the swing picture. As i have so understandingly explained before this picture is also a JPG - JPEG.

This shows the "Magnetic lesso tool" that i used to cut out the girls and boy from the original background.

I then put them onto my photo with the swing and edited them to make them look apart of the photo naturally and this gave them more of a old horror look to them which makes them apart of the film and not look like they have just been placed into the poster. This can help you a lot when producing pieces of work like this as it can be the different from a photo that looks oddly placed and far to a photo that looks natural and real and when doing graphics the main aim is real and looks professional with this it can help you achieve this look.

I edited the picture of my sisters by using the layer style and adding an inner shadow and changing the colour of my sisters to look more cold and apart of the poster. Yes yet again using the layer style which i said before 'very important'.

For my poster i added my 3 girls to the background that i choose with the boy edited into the back ground i then started writing up my titled bar that i would input into my poster. The title bar was yet again using the text option, very easy. All these options are down the left side of the Photoshop.

Before i decided on my final font i choose many different ones, i did not choose the one in the poster because it had blood dripping from the title this did not link with my horror theme as it is not a gory poster which means that the title should not be gory.

Layer style YET AGAIN!

 Once i had found my font i used the layer style to change the effects for the title such as a drop shadow and an outer glow to give more of a mysterious and horror feel to my poster.

This is very important for my poster! we want it to be professional now don't we.

Right back to file types, this is NOT a JPG as the previous but is a PNG although it sounds the same it means something very different please don't get these mixed up… so a PNG then; meaning portable network graphics, it is a compressed raster format which s commonly used in web and for application graphics. It uses 'lossless' compression which is not the same os 'lossy' it means that it does not have any blurring or loss of quality this is a lot like a GIF but thats another matter…

More on PNG because its a big one and a lot of information to be obtained by your collective minds, well a PNG 24-bit colour like a JPG but also includes 16,000 million colours; by supporting Alpha channel it provides 256 levels of transparency which is very very good. It is good because a JPG does not support transparent pixels and a GIF ONLY supports transparent pixels whereas PNG can be put onto any transparent backgrounds instead of just one block colour. This in easier context means that it can be used for nearly everything with every type of background.

BBFC: I used a bbfc rating of 15 and added it to my poster, i added it to Photoshop and cut it out using the magnetic lesso tool and then imported it onto my poster. Just for added advice on how i did this incase you were wondering.

This is the final product of my poster which has got the characters of the film, title, sub heading, poster blurb, BBFC age rating and horror companies in the bottom corners. very easy right?

Now before i finish there are a few things to be added, this whole photo is a PSD which stands for Photoshop document file, it is a layered image file used in Adobe Photoshop it is a default format that Photoshop uses for saving data. A PSD is a property file that allows the users to work with the images' even after the file has been saved. When an image is complete, Photoshop allows the user to flatten the layers and convert the flat image into such files like JPG, GIF or TIFF or any other non property file format so that it can be shared. However, it cannot be converted back to a PSD and the user can no longer work with the images layers. Therefore it is important to save the PSD file and not over wright it during conversation.

This picture also includes at the bottom right hand corner a logo of 'ghost house' a horror company that i included into the poster to make it look more professional i did this my getting the image of a website and adding it into Photoshop by doing this i allowed for the image to be manipulated in which i cropped using the cropping tool and then inserted it onto my poster. This image is a JPG - 'lossy' compression which i have previously explained.

The file types that i have not explained were WMF and TIFF:

WMF: 

In Windows, a metafile is a file that contains information regarding one or more other files. Called a Windows Metafile Format (WMF), it is commonly a graphics file format, containing information for vector graphics or bitmap files. The WMF contains a list of function calls that Windows uses in its Graphics Device Interface (GDI) layer to display images on a computer monitor.

The WMF was originally released around 1992 as a 16-bit format file for Windows 3.0. A 32-bit version was released in 1993 and called an Enhanced Metafile (EMF). For Windows XP, the Enhanced Metafile Format Plus Extensions (EMF+) format was released. There are also compressed WMFs, called Compressed Windows Metafile (WMZ) and Compressed Windows Enhanced Metafile (EMZ).

TFF: Tagged image file format 

TFF can also stand for TIF and TIFF, they are a common file for images especially in graphic design, they can be saved without compression or they can be compressed to a low file size which is a lot like the JPG. They are mostly used in print design and desktop publishing this is because they can store large high quality images such as photos.

The TIFF files are raster images and platform independent this means that they can work with different operating systems such as Mac and Windows. It can be lossy and lostless compression.

Creating portraits on Illistrator

Illistrator:

To create this picture i took a picture of myself and imported it into Adobe Illustrator to make myself look as much like a cartoon as i can, i took my photo and outlined my different features such as: hair, face, body, lips, etc with the pen tool i joined the lines and outlined the different sections of my picture. By doing this i have then got all the different features to work with, with every time i outlined a different feature i created a new layer and by the end of it i had a substantial amount of layers with the different outlines. To make the picture look more natural i then click the layer with the direct selection tool in which allowed me to see and click each specific point as they all became obvious when layers are selected, after this i then choose convert tools which allows for the jagged edges to be smoothed out and the points to be manipulated and moved around for such things like hair, face, eyes to look a lot more natural and normal. After this i was then able to select different colours for the different parts of my picture, i did this easily as i have a layer for each little thing; by selecting the layer i was able to select what colour i would want it by clicking on 'fill' down the left hand side which showed the various colour options to pick from.

Editing, selection and processing - research in simplified form.

In my own words of my research:

JPG: Joint photographic experts group

The work JPG can also be known as a JPEG, when saved they use 'lossy' compression this means that the quality of the image can get lost as the image itself decreases. the JPG/ JPEG file is the most common file type used for images that have been taken with digital cameras, JPGs allow for some degree of file size reduction without losing a lot of the image quality but when the file sizes get to a low point they can become 'muddy' and out of focus this is why when sending an image people have to choose between size and quality. JPG also uses a 24-bit colour.

TFF: Tagged image file format 

TFF can also stand for TIF and TIFF, they are a common file for images especially in graphic design, they can be saved without compression or they can be compressed to a low file size which is a lot like the JPG. They are mostly used in print design and desktop publishing this is because they can store large high quality images such as photos.

The TIFF files are raster images and platform independent this means that they can work with different operating systems such as Mac and Windows. It can be lossy and listless compression.

PNG: Portable network graphics

PNG or ping is a compressed raster format it is commonly used in the web and for application graphics. The PNG uses lossless compression much like GIF which means that they do not have any blurring or loss of quality, it also supports 24-bit colour like JPG and also include 16,000 million colours. Unlike JPG and GIF formats PNG formats support alpha channel, the alpha channel is added to the three standard colour channels (red, green and blue also known as RGB) this then provides 256 levels of transparency. JPG images do not support transparent pixels and GIF images only support transparent pixels this means that by PNG having this it can be put onto any transparent background rather than a specific colour. The PNG images are normally saved as JPG as they take up more disk space.

BMP: Bitmap image file

BMP also known as a raster graphic is a digital image composed of a matrix of dots. When viewed at 100% each dot corresponds to an individual pixel on display, in a standard bitmap image each for can be assigned a different colour.

There are several different bitmap file formats: the standard uncompressed bitmap file BMP, the independent file DIB format which includes a header which defines the size of the image and number of colours that the image can contain. Other bitmap image formats such as JPEG, GIF and PNG which each format uses different type of compression but they all represent an image as a grid of pixels. 

If you zoom into a bitma image it will look blocky because each dot will take up more than one pixel, therefore bitmap images will appear blurry if they are enlarged. vector graphics on the other hand are composed of paths instead of dots and can be scaled without reducing the quality of the image.

PSD: Photoshop document file

A .PSD file is a layered image file used in Adobe PhotoShop. PSD, which stands for Photoshop Document this is the default format that Photoshop uses for saving data. A PSD is a proprietary file that allows the user to work with the images’ individual layers even after the file has been saved.

When an image is complete, Photoshop allows the user to flatten the layers and convert the flat image into a .JPG, .GIF, .TIFF or other non-proprietary file format so it can be shared. However, it cannot be converted back to PSD and the user can no longer work with the image's layers. It is important, therefore, so always save the .PSD file and not overwrite it during conversion.

AI:

Adobe Illustrator is a program used by both artists and graphic designers to create vector images. These images will then be used for company logos, promotional uses or even personal work, both in print and digital form. So what is Adobe Illustrator used for? It is typically used to create illustrations, charts, graphs, logos, diagrams, cartoons of real photographs, and more.  Creating vector images allows you to create clean, beautiful works of art that can be scaled up and down infinitely without ever losing quality.
Unlike the familiar gif, jpeg, tiff, etc images – known as raster images –  vector images are not made up of a grid of pixels. They are instead created by paths – a combination of a starting point and an ending point with a combination of shapes, angles and lines in-between. These paths relate to each other by mathematical formulas, allowing them to be scaled and rescaled infinitely.

WMF: 

In Windows, a metafile is a file that contains information regarding one or more other files. Called a Windows Metafile Format (WMF), it is commonly a graphics file format, containing information for vector graphics or bitmap files. The WMF contains a list of function calls that Windows uses in its Graphics Device Interface (GDI) layer to display images on a computer monitor.
The WMF was originally released around 1992 as a 16-bit format file for Windows 3.0. A 32-bit version was released in 1993 and called an Enhanced Metafile (EMF). For Windows XP, the Enhanced Metafile Format Plus Extensions (EMF+) format was released. There are also compressed WMFs, called Compressed Windows Metafile (WMZ) and Compressed Windows Enhanced Metafile (EMZ).

Article Layout On Word

This shows my article in which I produced in blogger put into word which allowed me to change the mistakes such as spelling and sentancing, By doing this I was able to print out the initial article text without having it on the article layout, which made it easier to read and have a a document before.

These are just a few photos off the articles text and pictures that were put into it with the pictures of the research and the file type information in them which helped me make the article to help others with media Photoshop and Illustrator.