Introduction to Color Theory

Students,

Your next assignment is to create a color wheel that shows 22 gradations of color and examples of color harmony palettes. You will also use an online resource to create a palette derived from a photograph and then create a complementary color palette.

Part A - Color Wheel Assignment:

                   

• Create a new document in Illustrator that is 10"X10"
• Go to File > Document Color Mode and choose RGB
• Create a ring of shapes, at least 24. You can use the rotate tool and control-d to quickly make a geometric pattern. Try different shapes like teardrops, diamonds, ovals etc..
• Open your color mixer (rgb) and mix your colors, start with red, then orange, etc...
• You color wheel should show a smooth mix of color from all the way around
• Create a copy of your color wheel, draw arrows to show two complementary colors. Draw boxes to show those colors side by side.
• Create a copy of your color wheel, draw arrows to show three split-complementary colors. Draw boxes to show those colors side by side.
• Create a copy of your color wheel, draw arrows to show three analagous colors. Draw boxes to show those colors side by side.
• Create a copy of your color wheel, draw arrows to show four quadrilateral colors. Draw boxes to show those colors side by side.
• Post your results to your blog

Part B - Color Palette Generation From Photograph:

In the study of color theory, primary colors refer to the 3 or 4 color combinations that all other colors can be derived from. In photography, an image can have cool, warm, light, dark, saturated or unsaturated primary colors. In this short project we will extract the colors that make up our image. From that palette we can choose pleasing color combinations for layout purposes.

Step 1: Pick a photo you like from one of the free photo websites below:

http://www.freephotos.se

http://www.morguefile.com

Step 2: Navigate to this online palette generator, and upload your image as a JPG file. Here is the link : http://www.cssdrive.com/imagepalette/

Make sure you click "choose file" and upload your image....

Look for this link near the bottom of the page...

Step 3: After your image is done uploading, look at the palette it created for you, then download that palette as a Photoshop ICO File.

Step 4: Now switch over to photoshop. Create a document about 1000X900 pixels at 72 dpi. Copy-paste your photo into it, scale it down and leave some room on your document for your color palette. You will be creating shape layers and filling them with color from your custom color palette.

Step 5: On your Color Swatch / Sub-Menu, choose Replace Swatches...

Step 6: Navigate to the Photoshop ICO file you downloaded from the palette generator website.

Your color swatch tab should show your custom color palette loaded up, with no other colors available (you can change it back by choosing "reset swatches" from the submenu later on).

Step 7: After your palette is loaded, use a shape tool to draw a square, circle etc...

Step 7: Draw 1 object, then switch to the Move Tool and Option-Drag a copy....

With the Move Tool selected, and your object Layer selected... hold the option key and drag your copy...

Step 8: Continue this process.. each time you create a new object, select a new color from your custom palette by clicking on the swatch. Then you can use the Option-Delete command to fill with that color, or go to the Edit Menu / Fill / Using Foreground Color...

Continue this process until you have 20 different objects... fill these objects with the most dominant colors you see in your custom swatch palette.

Final Step: Add your name and some cool title text to your assignment results and post them to your blog.

Part C - Short Writing Assignment:

On your blog, write a short summary of the principals discussed, shown and demonstrated in this color theory lesson. Refer to your lecture notes. You can search for images online and research answers also. Try to address all the questions listed below:

• What are the 3 primary colors? 
• How are secondary colors created? Cite an example 
• How are tertiary colors created? Cite an example 
• What is the difference between subtractive and additive color models? 
• How can color affect our perception? 
• How does one color affect another? 
• Find an example or show an example of a greyscale image. 
• Find an example or show an example of a monotone image. 
• Find an example or show an example of an image that uses complimentary color.

- Mr.W

GIF CHALLENGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Students,

Your newest assignment will challenge your animation and creativity skills to the max! Choose one of the challenges below to complete, but choose wisely!

Gif Animation Challenge:

Choose one of the subjects below to animate in the most awesome way ever:

• A cat is typing on a computer keyboard and knocks the computer off the table in frustration
• The Washington Memorial transforms into a rocket ship and launches into space
• Godzilla is a DJ spinning records on a turntable in a dance club
• Find a short video clip of a sword fight and replace the swords with Light Sabers (The shorter the better)

LASER CAT COMPELS YOU TO COMPLETE THE GIF CHALLENGE!

Good luck!

- Mr.W

New Assignment: Making Animated Gifs

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is an introduction to making animated Gifs, and harnessing your skills to create a more elaborate animation or a cinemagraph style gif.

What is an animated Gif? A Gif file is a web safe file format that has a cool feature, it can have different frames like a video, you can also change the playback speed and duration per frame. Unfortunately they can't have sound. You can do some really cool stuff with Gif's, for instance check out this previous students blog with an animated banner.

What is a Cinemagraph? A Cinemagraph is just a fancy digital photography term for an animated Gif that has the appearance of a still image (graph) with small portions of the image appearing to be moving or appear to be animated (cinema). Some Cinemagraphs will loop the animation constantly, some repeat with a delay to give the viewer a surprise when the photo they are looking at suddenly turns and looks back at them or blinks.

This cinemagraph is made from the frames of a movie and has a very short loop of just the eyes blinking...

This Cinemagraph was created by a photography student in Mr.Wilson's Digital Photography Class at SCHS

Gif Assignment:

Part A

• Create an animated gif, you can use photographs to make a timed slideshow, or a short animation with sequential drawings
• Follow the instructions below as a rough guide only. There are several ways to make animated gifs in photoshop
• This is just a quick project to get you used to creating gifs. The final gif must display on your blog full size in order for animation to work, so make sure the image size is small enough
• This Gif should have at least 10 frames of animation

Part B

• Create a longer animation this time that loops perfectly. Try creating a character and animating them, you can use photos or cartoons or draw your own with the brush tool in photoshop, just create individual frames of animation as layers, 1 layer per frame... then you can use the layers to frames option in the animation palette sub-menu.
• You can use photos. Use the Continuous Shooting mode on a camera for rapid fire shooting of frames. A Video camera on a tripod may also be used, photoshop can read some video files
• tor a Cinegraph style animation Try to create an effect where just one part of the image is moving, such as eyes moving/blinking or the head turns and looks at the camera.
• Check out http://fernandojbaez.com/cinemagraph-tutorial/ for tips on making cinemagraph style images.

How to make an animated Gif with Photoshop CS5:

• Launch Photoshop
• FILE / OPEN a new document at your desired size, I made mine at 200X180 Pixels. It's a good idea not to make Gif files too large, otherwise they can take along time to load over an internet connection.
• Your animation can be a series of images, photos etc. You can hand draw each frame the animation also. The key is to set up separate layers that you will turn into frames of animation. Im using some pictures I took of my dog.

• Click your top Layer, then while holding SHIFT click on your bottom Layer to select all layers
• On your Animation Palette Sub-Menu select Make Frames From Layers
• If you don't see individual frames in your Animation Palette, go to the Sub-Menu and select Convert To Frame Animation
• You can now designate individual durations on each frame.
• Go to FILE / SAVE FOR WEB AND DEVICES to export your animation as an animated Gif file. Make sure to set your looping options to forever.

• Open your Gif file in a web browser to test it. Here's my result:

Previous Student Work Samples:

Understanding File Formats

Hello Students,

In this exercise you will practice using the "save for web & devices" feature in Photoshop, a media industry standard when creating compressed images.

Take notes during todays lecture and post your notes to your blog before completing the exercise below.

File Format Exercise

• Right-click on the two images below, save them to your computer and open them in Photoshop
• Go to File / Save for Web & Devices
• Photoshop has 12 presets, save 1 example of each. Use proper self descriptive file names
• Compare the results
• Repeat using the circular gradient graphic
• Write a short paragraph about your results and answer these questions. Which image has the best quality? Which has the best file size? Which has the best balance of file size and quality and why?
• Assemble your results, group images by format and compression level (high to low) and post to your blog. You should have 24 final images to upload. 

Photoshop Collage: Juxtaposition Theme

Juxtaposition Collage:

A collage is a work of art created by combining different imagery for different sources. Your assignment challenge is to create a collage from different photographic sources to convey the concept of Juxtaposition. Use the selection tools in photoshop to combine different images, you can use other tools like the eraser tool to blend two photo's together. Use whatever tools you need to complete your image.

Assignment Details:

• Your image must be created in Photoshop at a size of 10"X8" with a resolution of 72 DPI.
• You must have a minimum of 6 objects you have cut out and composed.
• Your design must adhere to the concept of Juxtaposition, the arrangement of conflicting elements, ideas or concepts. Such as a car driving on water, or football players in the antarctic, or penguins in outer space.

Have fun!

- Mr.W

Don't Feed The Trolls

Hello Students,

Please change your blog settings to block comments and set all comments to be moderated always.

Your comment settings should look like the one shown here...

To change your comment settings:

• Log into your blog
• Click on the "design" tab
• Go to "settings" and then "posts and comments" and change your settings to the example above
• Save your settings before finishing

Thanks! - Mr.W

Developing Your Photoshop Skills: Using Selection Tools and Layers

Hello Students,

Having good Photoshop skills is a standard in almost all digital media careers. Our next project will require the use of photoshop selection tools and layers to create an interesting collage of images. Work through these two tutorials below, download a sample image to work on and try out the steps yourself. Only proceed with these tutorials when you have completed our previous assignments from this week.

Tutorial 1: Using Photoshop Selection Tools

Tutorial 2: Using Photoshop Layers

- Mr.W

It's Bloggin' Time!

Hello Students,

Despite all of the hype with blogs in recent years, a blog is just a means for publishing work on the web in an easy to read and update format. Some blogs are very personal, resemembling a diary, while others seem more akin to newspaper or magazine, design styles vary. For our class this term, you will keep a blog to post your graphic work and writing examples, work must be posted to be eligible for grading. You are encouraged to customize your blog and use it as a platform to display your design skill progression and evolution of personal style.

Your Assignment:

• Create a personal blog using blogger.com
• Customize the appearance of your blog to make it your own
• Post the results of your first projects: Icon Art, Box to Car, Place and Trace
• Email the URL of your blog to your instructor so it can be included in the new link list

A Rough Guide to Setting Up a Blogger Blog:

This is a snapshot of one of my class blogs, I started with a basic template and customized the colors and banner art to suit my style. I have 5 different blogs for the classes I teach and one to show my professional work... a little customization will go along way in making your blog standout.

Step 1: Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a blog

The setup is easy, read each screen and explore the options. The guide below is a rough outline to setup of your blog, it may not be 100% accurate.

• Blogger now is part of Google, so if you have a Google account (which allows for things like gmail) you should use that to set up your new blogger account. If you don't have a Google account, now is a pretty good chance to set one up. Otherwise, it is just a matter of following the instructions on this page. Sign In or Sign Up and create your blog
• Be sure to check the "terms of service" box; of course, you might actually want to read through it a bit first, though the rules are pretty standard for these sorts of services.
• Save your username and password some place. In fact, I would encourage you to write it down some place. Don't lose this!
• The "Blog Title" will be what appears in the title portion of your blog site itself.
• For the address of your blog don't have any spaces, it can be different than your "Blog Title".
• The "word verification" section is a security set-up the blogger folks have; simply type in the word you see in the funky font into the provided box. Click "continue" when you're done.
• You can choose any template you want for your blog, and you can also change the template later if you would like. Click continue when you're done.
• After waiting a few moments, you should get a screen that says your blog has been created. Good for you! Click on the "start posting" arrow and get to work!

Step 2: Get posting!

• The posting screen for blogger is pretty straight-forward. Give your entries a title, type in the appropriate window, and use the editing tools for your blog entry as you want. We'll talk about more advanced options for your posting later, but if you know any basic html, you can incorporate most of that code into your blog posts.
• To post or "publish" your post, click the button at the bottom of the screen "Publish Post." If you start writing something but you don't want to post it until later, click where it says "Save as Draft."
• When you publish your post, blogger will process the information and then, if everything worked (and it usually does), it will give you the option to "view blog." Take a look at it; you should notice a couple of things:
  • The address for your blog-- something like http://stevendkrause.blogspot.com-- is the address for your blog. Send this URI (web address) to me! I will link to your blog from the class web site.
  • Readers should be able to post a comment to your post by clicking on the "comments" link.

Step 3: Do some adjustments to your account

There are a number of different things you might want to do to make your blog a bit more useful. But here are a couple of things you really should do no matter what.

Blocking blog spam. I know, hard to believe, but yes, the world of spamming extends to blogs too. Fortunately, Blogger has a pretty decent security feature that will eliminate almost all spam posts from your blog. Here's what to do:

• If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
• From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
• Click on the tab "Settings."
• Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled "Comments."
• Set "Who Can Comment?" to "Only Registered Users." It isn't essential that you do this, but I'd recommend it.
• A bit further down, set "Show word verification for comments?" to "Yes." This is a security feature that requires the comment poster to type a specific word that shows up as slightly distorted text in a window.
• Select "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.

Time zone. It'd be nice if the time was right on your blog, right? Here's how to do that:

• If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
• From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
• Click on the tab "Settings."
• Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled "Formatting."
• Under "Time Zone," select the right time zone (and if you're reading this as part of one of my classes, that'd be "Detroit." Duh.)
• Select "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.

Doing things to customize your blogger blog. There's lots of stuff you can do customize your blog. At a minimum, I'd recommend including some links to your classmates' blogs or other blogs you like to read, but there are a lot of other things you can do, too-- include pictures, lists of stuff you like, etc., etc.

• If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
• From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
• Click on the tab "Template."
• Make sure the "Page Elements" tab under this is selected, and click on "Add a Page Element." From here, simply follow the instructions. Be sure to save you page element additions and double-check that it worked.

Trouble-shooting:

"Hey, what should I do if it didn't work?!" Well, blogger really is pretty easy to use, try asking the person to your left or right and I bet you can figure out the issue. It's important to collaborate and share information. 

Have fun!

 - Mr.W