Article Updated.

Once i had looked over and proof read my first draft i then looked and various different magazines for extra ideas to make my article look more presentable, from this i learnt that by adding colour and extra text boxes with information about the pictures that i have input into my article it will make it look more professional and modern.

For my first page i changed the font of my title and changed the colour of the text to white and the text box to pink to add effect and become more eye catching, i also moved the spacing so that they would be closer i did this by decreasing the size on the 'leading' option.

I added a subheading underneath to make it look more like an article in a magazine by doing this it gives more information to readers on what is in the article, i changed the writing to white and the text box to orange, by doing this is contrasts with the pink for an attractive look to the article.

I then resized my illustration size of my photo so that i could add a text box next to it explaining what the picture is about, which i did in the bottom right of the page by moving the picture down and adding a blue background it shows that it is not apart of the initial text but is an added extra for people to get a deeper understanding of the pictures given.

On my second page i made the pictures bigger and added more text boxes with information in then about the pictures, by making the pictures bigger it has brought attention to them more and made them more relatable to the text. I also made the changes to the mistakes that were made in the original draft after i had proof read it.

On the last page the text has been moved down this meaning it has taken up more Columbus this mean that i had to resize the images so that they would fit into the page. I also changed the text box colour to blue and orange, i added the orange text box as it is talking about the prices of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. This helped as it added effect to that particular text and made it more eye catching as it was something different.

Once i had added the information into the coloured text boxes i then highlighted the text and selected the object option and went to text frame options which let me select 'centre' by doing this it moved my text into the middle instead of it being at the top and looking squashed by the top of the text box.

First Draft For Article - Proof Read

This will show my first attempt of my article for 'beginners guide to graphics' and i will also explain how i did certain things and what i will have to change after i have found the incorrect aspects of the article from my proof reading.

To start i made a new document and then added how many Columbus i want on each page and how many pages that i wanted to insert at the beginning; to start i added 5 pages but then coming to the end of my article i realised that i would have to add another page which i did by clicking insert and inserted a 'new page', this action could also be done with Columbus. Once i had my basic layout i then wanted a section in which i could insert my title which would be big and eye catching enough to catch attention, i did this by clicking on the text option which is down the left side of the screen. when clicking this is allows you to create text boxes in which you can type your information in, i used this for all of my title and all of my information as it allowed me to move the text around and let me line it up with the already situated Columbus.

PAGE 1

For effect i wanted to add something to the beginning of paragraphs to make it look more professional and eye catching; i created a text box in which i added a capital letter, i then made the writing white and the background black this allows for more depth in which i will be able to catch the attention of the public when published. I also made the text box 3 - 4 lines big which means that it goes over to some of the other writing but gives an impact to the article and makes it look more professional.

PAGE 2

I added pictures to my article so that it could give a visual impact swell as being text based, i wanted to do this as most articles you see now a days have pictures in them to help the public have a deeper understanding of what you are talking about. I had to make my own folder on my desktop and get the pictures of my computer and insert them into a separate file, by doing this it allowed me to drag and drop the pictures onto my Adobe InDesign which i could then scale them into size and place them where i wanted on the pages. I made some of the pictures bigger than the actual Columbus which meant that some span over two Columbus and half of the page, i did this to add impact and create a more professional look to my article, it also gave the pictures more attention to the ones that i was speaking about more in the article.



PAGE 3

After i had finished my draft article i printed it off onto A3 paper and then proof read it, by doing this it allowed me to see the things that needed changing and improving, such things like certain words that did not fit right into the sentences, spelling mistakes and wrong placing of paragraphs. I also saw that i needed to label some of my pictures as the text does not have an image labelled to it which could become confusing to a reader. By proof reading it allows me to improve on my text based work so that it was up to date, after this i can then focus on the layout and all over look of my article to move things and add things to make it look more presentable and eye catching.

Beginners Guide For Graphics- Improved version

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 poster and cartooned self.

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 for a picture no body wants to be looking at that or wants to look like that right so because I wanted her skin to look silky smooth I used Photoshop which 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 color. 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 colors 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.

Before I go into Illustrator 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 infinitely. When finished this allows and is mainly used for company logos 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.

Illustrator:

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 colors 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 color I would want it by clicking on 'fill' down the left hand side which showed the various color options to pick from.

As i have just shown you one example of Illustrator 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.

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 defined. 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 what’s real or not unless it is in fact your own image.

By using Photoshop it has just made my life so much 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 a bit 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 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 lasso 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 color 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 background 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 is 'lossy' it means that it does not have any blurring or loss of quality this is a lot like a GIF but that’s 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 color like a JPG but also includes 16,000 million colors; by supporting Alpha channel it provides 256 levels of transparency which is 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 color. 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 lasso 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 that 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 lossless compression.

Article - Research

This shows the research that i conducted before conducting my article, this shows the different file types that i was going to insert into my article.

This shows the picture research that i did,  by doing this i found out every picture that i had used in my Illustration and Photoshop work. By doing this i was able to use these pictures and incorporate them into my article, by researching them i was able to find out what file type that they were which could have been a JPG, TIFF, PNG, by doing this with the additional research i could talk in depth about the pictures which could help the understanding of others in my article.

These four pictures show Research that i got off the internet which i looked up the various different file types that are conducted in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop : JPG, TIFF, PNG, WMF, BMP, AI. All of these file types have been researched and highlighted, i highlighted various paragraphs sentences and words as i also did a document of the file types in my own words with help from my research.