Once you have a logo designed for a customer, one of the most common jobs for a designer is to come up with a business card.

Your job now is to take the logo that you’ve designed, and come up with a business card that would suit that logo/business.

You can start from one of the templates within Illustrator for this one, but you will need to CUSTOMIZE it to match the fonts & colours that you chose for your logo.

CHECK OUT THIS PAGE FOR SOME INFO

Then, take your logo, and design a card using that logo/business. You can make up a name, address, and phone number to put on the card if you like, or use a real one (like the school’s address and phone number, for example.)

DO NOT hand in a business card that looks like the template/sample! Change the colours, fonts, images, and text to suit your project. Your creative logo should be on there somewhere. The colours and fonts on the card should ma

One of the most common jobs for a graphic designer is to come up with a company/organization’s logo. Once a business has a good logo, they can use it to help build their business, and a good logo can go a long way toward building brand recognition and helping to get the word out about a product or service.

But what is a logo and why is it so important?

There are different types of logos as well. Some are more detailed and descriptive, and some are extremely simple.

Should you continue on with Graphic Tech next year (and I sincerely hope that you do,) you’ll do a lot more logo design and there will be more to consider. For now, you can be as creative as you want.

If you come up with a great logo, it might even look good on a shirt or hat or bag or coaster or…

What makes a great logo?

You can even technically use whichever program you want. Logos could be made on InDesign, I suppose, but Photoshop or Illustrator would be the best choice. Illustrator, in particular, is what we would use to make a proper logo because a professional logo needs to be scalable, so having a vector graphic is essential for commercial use.

Later on, your logo would have to be fully original, but for now, you could incorporate elements from places like Unsplash or The Noun Project.

If you want to see samples of logos for inspiration, I recommend looking at Brands of the World.

Illustrator tips/tutorials:

Build your logo with basic shapes

Add text to your logo

Essential techniques for effective logo design

Build a logo (step by step)

Combine shapes to build a logo. (step by step)

 

If you want more logo design tips, I like this video as well:

Before we get too carried away with Illustrator, let’s slow down and practice some of the amazing tools available in the program.

You’ll work through some tutorials. Show me the completed examples when you are done.

Tutorial 1: Create with Drawing tools

You can download the practice files HERE

Tutorial 2: Start creating with the Pen tool

You can download the practice files HERE

Tutorial 3: Edit Paths you Draw

You can download the practice files HERE

Tutorial 4: Transform and edit artwork

You can download the practice files HERE

 

It’s now time to start with a simple look at one of the more complicated but important programs we’ll look at this year, Adobe Illustrator.

Illustrator and Photoshop create and manipulate images in very different ways. In order to understand this, you need to know the difference between RASTER and VECTOR images.

Here’s a good tutorial that will help demonstrate this. Click THIS LINK, then find the button that says Begin Tutorial in Illustrator

 

THIS TUTORIAL will take you on a tour of the app. CLICK THIS LINK, then find the button that says Begin Tutorial in Illustrator

Here are some tutorials that will help you get started:

Get to know Illustrator tutorial

 

Get started with shapes. Read the instructions below or check out THIS TUTORIAL. CLICK THIS LINK, then find the button that says Begin Tutorial in Illustrator

Adding and editing Text in Illustrator is very similar to Photoshop. For some great information, check out THIS TUTORIAL. CLICK THIS LINK, then find the button that says Begin Tutorial in Illustrator

 

Open Illustrator

The first step is to create a new file

Make your file 14 inches wide and 6 inches tall. You can easily change the size later if you need to.

Before you even start your work, you should always SAVE your work. In this case, clicking Save (Ctrl + S) OR Save As will do the same thing:

When you save your work, make sure it has a name that reflects the contents.

Make sure you save your work On your computer.

Hopefully you have already opened OneDrive today. If not, do that now!

Save your work into your OneDrive folder. You might even have a Graphic Tech folder to organize your work (NOT the one with your name on it that you use to hand things in. Only put your work in there when it is DONE)

You don’t need to change anything in this box:

Up on the top right of the Illustrator window, you will be able to choose the way your panels in the program are laid out. You can always change this later. I like my Workspace to be set on Essentials Classic. If you want your screen to look like mine, choose that Workspace. You are free to choose whichever one you like, but keep in mind that your screen will look different than mine.

Up across the top of the screen you will see the program menus. Perhaps the most important one is the Window menu. If you can’t find a panel or want to change your workspace, go there.

There are a couple of ways to look at your primary toolbar. For right now, mine will be set to Basic.

The basic toolbar usually shows up in one column like this:

But if you want, you can change it to two columns with the little arrow at the top:

There are many more tools that you can see by clicking the three dots at the bottom:

The tool we use the most is the Selection Tool. It looks like a grey arrow outlined with white. You can activate it by pressing the letter v on your keyboard:

NOTE: There is another selection tool that we won’t use nearly as often. It’s the one that’s filled in with white. That is the Direct Selection tool, and it works very differently. We’ll ignore that one for now:

The other tools we’ll work with for now are the shape tools. Yours will probably look like a rectangle. You can activate that tool by pressing m on your keyboard:

If you hold your mouse button down on that tool, you’ll see the other shape tools hiding underneath:

If you wish, you can Float those tools by clicking the tiny triangle on the right.

This will pop out a separate panel that you can move around

On the right side of your screen, you will find another super important panel, Properties

Each shape is made up of two parts, the Fill and the Stroke. The Stroke is the outline and the Fill is what’s in the middle.

If I draw a shape with those Properties, my rectangle will have a black outline and will be filled in with white:

To change the Fill, click on the little square next to Fill. Choose a colour to fill your shape in with:

You could also change the outline by clicking on the Stroke square (swatch)

You could also make that outline thicker or thinner

My rectangle now looks like this:

NOTE: if you want to draw a square instead of a rectangle, hold SHIFT as you drag out your shape:

I really recommend that you turn OFF the Stroke for this assignment. Pick a fill colour and turn the stroke off by choosing the empty white square with the diagonal red line through it:

To move or resize a shape, use the Selection Tool

If you look in one of the corners of a rectangle, you will see a tiny dot. If you click that dot and drag it in, you can round off the corners of your shape:

If you want to rotate a shape, move the Selection tool outside of a corner and click and drag to rotate:

Another interesting tool is the Polygon Tool. This one draws flat sided shapes but you can choose how many sides it has. Choose that tool on either the main or floating tool bar:

If you want, you can double click on your page (the Artboard) to choose how many sides before you draw your shape. You can also choose the size.

OR, you can draw the shape first.

On the right side of the shape, you’ll see a little diamond. Drag that down to add more sides:

Or drag it up to have fewer sides:

For today, just play around and draw something using these simple tools! Feel free to explore and play around. Figure out other tools if you’d like!

If you want to get to know more about Illustrator, you can click on the Help menu and go to Illustrator Help…

Click on Discover how Illustrator artwork is unique

There are many more tutorials that will help you to get to know the program. You can access those from the Help menu, then go into Tutorials…

If you’re looking for a good one to help you get started, click the link below:

Here’s a quick and easy project where you could take home a mouse pad with the design of your choice on it. Everyone will design one (for marks). You do not have to put your design on a mouse pad unless you want to and you meet a few simple conditions. Your design will only be put on a mouse pad if:

• your file is dropped off with the right name and it is the right size
• you have finished your earlier assignments and dropped them off correctly
• your parents have paid the $10 course fee
• you aren’t a pain in the neck

This same process could be used to apply a design to other items, which we can discuss.

The actual mouse pad is about 9.25 inches by 7.75 inches, but we make our design a little bigger so it covers the entire surface and there are no blank spots around the edge. Part of your design will be cut off on the finished product.

Set up your file: 9.5 inches by 8 inches, 300 pixels/inch, CMYK color

you can choose whether to create your design the wide way (Landscape):

Or the tall way (Portrait)

Once you have created the file, SAVE it in your OneDrive. As usual, make sure that OneDrive is running on your computer!

You can create the artwork yourself using whatever program you wish. As always, we want the quality of the artwork/photo to be as high as possible. If you want photos, I always recommend Unsplash, if you want icons, use The Noun Project, and if you want logos, visit Brands of the World. If you insist on using Internet images, make sure you know how to limit your Google search to Large images (REVIEW.)

Once you have created or found the images you want on your mouse pad, make sure you Place Embedded:

Depending on the image and the orientation of your canvas/background, you may need to resize the image. I’m using a tall image on a wide background, so I’ll need to resize it a bit:

Grab one of the corner handles and pull diagonally to resize. I need to make my image much smaller than my actual canvas/page:

You can add as much as you want to your design! Add other images, icons, or text, if you wish. Have fun and be creative!

Once you are done, you should, of course, save your Photoshop file, but you will not drop off the original file!

You need to drop off an image file that is not .psd. You can use .jpg or .png, but I prefer PNG. To create that image, go to File/Export/Export As…

You shouldn’t really have to change anything in the box that pops up. Yours should look like mine (with a different design, of course.)

Once you are done and have dropped off a .png, you could, if you wish, raise your hand and ask me to check that you have completed the conditions at the top of the page. If you meet those conditions and I have enough supplies available, I will print your image and show you how to apply it to the mouse pad.

Open Photoshop.

Your file should be called “Creature” and should be 8 inches by 10 inches OR 10 inches by 8 inches. Your resolution should be 300 pixels/Inch. I like a transparent background for this one.

As always, we should save the project right away. Go into the File menu and Save As… (NOTE: You only need to Save As… the FIRST time. After that, you just Save (Ctrl + S)

As always, save your work in your OneDrive folder. If you have a Graphic Tech folder or a folder for work for this class, you should use that. You should NOT put it in your hand-in folder until you are finished!

Make sure you are saving On your computer:

I like using the Essentials workspace

I always like to have my Layers panel open, especially for this project:

The first job is to place the photo of the person you are working with. In Photoshop, it’s best to choose Place Embedded so all of your files are together:

You can start with whatever photo/person you like, but make sure it is HIGH QUALITY.

You may wish to start from a photo of me, which you can find HERE

or you could just go to UNSPLASH and find your own photo

The photo will pop onto the background and look something like this:

You do NOT need to fill the entire background (yet), so just hit Enter on your keyboard or click the checkmark near the top of the window:

You need to remove your Subject from the background. The simplest way is to go to the Select menu and choose Subject:

You should see a flashing line appear around whatever you’ve selected. It’s often called the “dancing ants.”

If you need to refine your selection (it didn’t perfectly select the subject), you may need to use one of the other Selection Tools to either Add to Selection or Subtract from Selection. See the previous post about those tools HERE

Now what we’ve got is just the person selected, no background. We want to take the person and put it on a separate layer without the background. To do this, we need to go into the Layer menu and choose New then Layer via Copy (Ctrl + J)

If you look in your layers panel, you should now have a separate layer.

In Photoshop, you often end up with a lot of layers, and sometimes it can get really confusing figuring out which layer is which. For this reason, I want you to get in the habit of renaming your layers as you add them. To change a layer’s name, all you have to do is double click on  it in the Layers panel and then type in a new name.

Name your bottom layer “Original” and the new one “cutout”

You can turn off a layer so that you can’t see it by clicking the eyeball icon next to the layer. Do this with your “original” layer so you can see your cutout.

The next fun thing to do is to change your character’s skin colour.  For this one, we’ll make sure the Quick Selection Tool is activated

That tool isn’t always as precise as we’d like, but it lives up to its name as a Quick Selection Tool. Just go draw on the face:

You should see the Dancing Ants around the whole face. If not, or if you select too much, you may need to adjust by switching your tool to either Add to Selection (if you miss a piece and want to add on – like if your arms or hands are showing in the photo and you want to add those on)

Or you can use Subtract from Selection if it grabs too much. I like to remove my hair, eyes, and lips from the selection with this:

I also like to remove my mouth from the selection and leave that alone.

 

If that tool isn’t working well for you (it doesn’t really do a good job for everyone), you might want to switch to the Magic Wand Tool

The Magic Wand Tool selects an area of a similar colour. You can control how many shades of that colour you select at once by adjusting the “Tolerance” slider. For my skin, we’ve found that a number around 67-70 works well.

Now all you have to do is click on my face to select just my skin.

If your number is too high, you’ll select too much. If it’s too low, you won’t select enough. No matter what you choose, you’ll likely have to fix up a few areas, like for example my many chins.

Here it might help to zoom in a bit to get a closer look.

Some of the most useful shortcuts I know are:

• Ctrl – (control and the minus key (next to zero)) to zoom out
• Ctrl + (control and the plus key (next to backspace)) to zoom in
• Ctrl 0 (control and zero) to zoom out to see the whole image

You could also use the Zoom Tool (looks like a magnifying glass)

It can either zoom in or out, so make sure to select the right function.

With the Zoom Tool activated, just click on the area that you want to zoom in to.

There are a few selection tools that could help us here but we’ll stick with the Magic Wand Tool for now. It would be wise to turn down your tolerance for now though.

These selection tools can do 4 things. Start a new selection, add an area to an existing selection, subtract an area that you don’t really want selected, or merge selections.

You could also try the Quick Selection Tool

You may have to play with the size of your brush though

Depending on whether you want to ADD parts in that the initial selection missed or SUBTRACT things that shouldn’t be selected, you may need to adjust the buttons at the bottom.

I like to make sure that the eyes are not included (leave those alone)

 

Once you’ve perfected your selection, you may wish to zoom out. You can use the Zoom tool OR use the shortcut Ctrl + 0 (I use that one a lot)

Now it’s time to give your creature a new skin tone. Go into the Enhance menu, choose Adjust Color, and then Adjust Hue/Saturation (Ctrl + U)

Make sure that the new box that pops up isn’t blocking your creature’s face. Grab the top of the box and move it over so you can see the face.

Now basically you just play with those sliders and have some fun.

Hue changes the shade. Move it one way and the face should turn red/purple, the other way it turns green

The Saturation slider makes the face more or less colourful (it adds in or removes colour)

The Lightness slider does exactly what you’d expect. It makes it brighter or darker.

Please do NOT go crazy with any of the sliders. If you adjust any of them too much, you will lose detail and won’t be able to recognize the person any more.

The ones below look TERRIBLE:

Once you’ve got your sliders adjusted the way you like, click OK

Now we’re going to turn off that selection (those Dancing Ants.) To do that, we need to go into the Select menu and choose Deselect OR Ctrl + D

Now for the most fun part! Go into the Filter menu, choose Distort, then Liquify.

There are 3 tools that I really like, but feel free to play around with all of them and see what they do. The first (top) one is called Warp.

For all of them, you may have to experiment with different brush sizes. Warp looks better with a bigger brush, but don’t make it too big!

Once you have a decent brush size, click on an area that you want to stretch and pull on it!

It’s that simple. That’s a lot of fun, but again, don’t get carried away. We always want to at least recognize the person.

Another fun one is Pucker, which closes an area in

Again, experiment with your brush size

Click on an area and hold down your mouse to close that area in. THis works great on open eyes or mouths.

Bloat is the opposite. It works the same way, but expands an area. Again, great for eyes and mouths.

You can also twirl an area clockwise or counter clockwise. It just takes something and twists it either way.

If you get carried away, you can press Revert (try again) or Cancel (no thanks.) If you like your work, though, press OK!

Make sure you’re zoomed out (Ctrl + 0) and you have nothing selected (Ctrl + D)

Click on your original (background) layer

We’re going to put your creature into a new habitat. Figure out what type of environment might be suitable for this character.

I highly recommend a photo site called Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/)  There, you can download Creative Commons images that you can legally use in your projects. This one is great because you don’t always have to even give them credit for the photos, which works really well for projects like this.

If you wish to use another photo site, please use a Creative Commons site. You can find many on my website on the Links page, under Copyright Free Content.

If you go to Unsplash, all you have to do is search for whatever background you want. Keep it general. Things like “mountains,” “trees,” or something like that will give you good results, but something very specific (George Waters Middle School) will likely not show up.

Type in your search and look for a good image. If you find one, you just have to click the little downward arrow at the bottom of the photo to get it:

When you use someone else’s content, you’re usually supposed to give them credit. Most Creative Commons sites make this easy. Normally you’d follow the directions below, but we don’t really have anywhere to put the credit, so we’ll skip that step.

Make sure you Save your photo. It’ll likely go in your Downloads folder.

Now you just Place the image into your file in Photoshop.

Use the Move Tool to stretch it out and fill up the background

Rename your picure layer to represent what is on it:

You should also use the Move Tool to move your cutout layer into the best position on top of the new background.

If you want to, you could add some neat effects to your character as well.

On the bottom of your Photoshop window, look for Styles and click it.

This gives you a variety of effects that you can add. It opens on Bevels (which are neat rounded edges) but there are many others hiding underneath. My favorite for this part is Outer Glows:

This is a bit of a common (overused) one:

Try some others:

If you like the style but don’t like the colour, you can adjust it:

 

The last real thing that we have to do is figure out what this creature will be called. You’ll have to come up with a clever name for your new creation.

Switch to the HOrizontal Type Tool (looks like a T)

As with anything else, I always want you to make your own choices about how your text should look, so make sure you take your time and choose a font that looks good to you. Never just go with the font that the program recommends.

Choose a colour that makes sense with your background and creature.

I chose one that was close to the colour of my creature:

It doesn’t stand out very well yet and is somewhat hard to read.

Again, switch to Styles down at the bottom

And look at your various options for making your text look better. Feel free to play around with any of the options and see how they look. You can always Undo (Ctrl + Z) if you don’t like an effect.

The two I like most for Text are Stroke and Drop Shadow. Stroke creates an outline around your text, making it much easier to read:

See, much easier to read!

But maybe you don’t want it black or want to adjust the size, or something else. Click on the little wheel at the top right of that panel (right below Share)

Here you can adjust the colour, size, position, or kind of fade out the effect

Drop shadows also make your text stand out. It kind of raises the text off of the page and gives it a bit of a 3D effect:

And that’s pretty much it! Just check that everything looks good.

Open your Layers panel

And make sure that your layers are named properly. Make sure that there are no extra, unnecessary layers. If you want to get rid of a layer, just highlight it and press Backspace or Delete or press the little trash can above the layers.

 

When closing/saving your work, make sure that you save it in your OneDrive folder!

 

Once you’ve got all of that done, DROP IT OFF!

OneDrive login

Drop Off instructions

I have some videos that will show you how to do this but they are with a different version of the program. All of the same tools exist in our version, things just look a little different:
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Here are some fabulous photos that will work for this assignment: PORTRAITS

This one is clear and easy to work with IMG_1705.JPG:

Click Download, then Direct download

The photo will almost certainly end up in your Downloads folder

To open it in Photoshop, there are a couple of ways.

First, you could RIGHT CLICK on the photo and choose Open with, and then select Photoshop:

Or you could open Photoshop first:

Right on the Photoshop Home screen there’s an Open button

You could also open the File menu, then Open.

You’ll notice that things look a lot like they did in Illustrator and InDesign. Again there are Workspaces that you can choose from. I’m on Essentials:

Normally, the first step would always be to Save your work, but this is just a practice/demo, so I’m not even going to bother with this one. Feel free to Save your file if you wish.

Make sure your Layers panel is open (look at the bottom right of the window). At this point, you’ve got only one layer (Background)

We’ve spoken about Layers before, so you should be familiar with the concept, but think of them as papers piled on top of one another. You can have multiple Layers/papers and you can rearrange them in the pile however you wish, but remember that the top Layer may hide other layers below.

Also remember to select whatever layer you wish to work with! The selected layer will have a lighter grey box around it.

First off, Duplicate that Background layer. You should always keep a copy of the original, untouched photo in case you need to go back to it.

3 ways to do the next step:

Easy way: Ctrl + J

or

go into the Layer menu and New, then Duplicate Layer…

OR…

Go into the Layer menu and hover over New, then click Layer via Copy

Now you’ll have two layers,  the Background and Layer 1

You’ll notice that the Background layer is locked, so you can’t do anything with it at all. Click the lock and it will unlock

Rename your layers. Background should become original

and Layer 1 should become copy

We’ll just leave that original alone in case we mess something up, so turn the visibility off by clicking the eyeball

Make sure that top layer (copy) is selected so that we’re working with it.

We’re going to use the Quick Selection tool

If you don’t see it, your tool may look like the Object Selection Tool or the Magic Wand Tool. You can hold down your mouse button on any of those to switch between them.

Using that tool, we’ll draw on ME, NOT the wall around me to select it.

If you mess it up at all, press Ctrl + D to deselect and then try again.

Once you’ve got something selected, you are able to use the Move Tool to move that object somewhere else. Turn on the Move Tool (v)

Click on me anywhere inside the selection

And just slide it over to move!

You’ll notice that there’s now a hole in the original picture when you move the selection, though.

UNDO that move and put me back where I belong. (Ctrl + z)

Hopefully you still have me selected. Look for those Dancing Ants going around me.

We’ll look at a few fun ways of getting my ugly mug out of there.

The first thing that you could do is to fill that selection with a colour.

Go into the Edit menu and choose Fill…

Fill it with the Foreground Color

The Foreground Color is the one that’s in the top box you see near the bottom left of your window:

Right now I have black on top, so if I fill it with that, I get something like this:

Undo that (Ctrl + Z) and we’ll try something else

This time, let’s fill the selection with the same colour as the wall.

Switch to the Eyedropper Tool (I)

And click on the wall

You’ll notice that the foreground colour changes to be the colour of whatever pixel you clicked on

So we can try to remove me by filling the selection with that colour

Go into the Edit menu and choose Fill…

Fill it with the Foreground Color

Now you’ve got this:

As much as it looks like one colour, the wall is actually a bunch of shades of grey, so this doesn’t look very natural at all.

Again, let’s Undo that Fill (Ctrl + Z)

This time, we’ll go to the Edit menu and choose Fill…

And now choose Content-Aware. This is a cool tool that looks around your selection and tries to figure out what to fill it with.

Or just choose the Content-Aware Fill option from the Edit menu

This time, you get a much more natural looking fill

However, when you turn the selection off (Ctrl + D), you can still see the outline of me:

Let’s Undo again (Ctrl + Z)

This time, let’s select just a tiny bit more to get rid of that outline.

Go into the Select menu and choose Modify, then Expand

You don’t really have to expand it by much. 10 pixels should do:

Now try to fill the selection again

Make sure it’s Content-Aware

And that looks a lot better.

Undo (Ctrl + Z), Deselect (Ctrl + D) and let’s try something else.

Let’s spend some time with the Magic Wand Tool.

There are 4 options with this tool (and most selection tools), New, Add, Subtract, and that other one that I never ever use and can never remember the name of…

If you take the wand and click on the wall, it looks for areas of a similar colour. Again, the wall is not one shade of grey, so it doesn’t select everything. In this case, it doesn’t even select enough of the wall.

Deselect (Ctrl + Z)

The Tolerance setting kind of helps us to adjust how many shades of the colour the tool will select at once. Try increasing the number to 100.

Click on the wall again and you’ll see that it actually selects too much now. It’s grabbing my face as well.

Deselect (Ctrl + D)

and bump the Tolerance down a bit:

This time when we click on the wall, it selects just the wall and nothing else, which is perfect.

Deselect (Ctrl + D)

This time we’ll switch tools and select the Rectangular Marquee Tool

Click on the wall and drag out a box roughly the size of my big fat head

Make a new Layer Via Copy (Ctrl + J)

You’ll see that you now have a new layer with just a box of wall on it

Switch to the Move Tool (v)

Grab this selection and move it. It’s like patching a hole in the wall with another section of wall.

Kind of cool, but not entirely useful because it’s the wrong shape.

Switch back to the Quick Selection Tool (w) and just select my massive head:

Switch back to the Rectangular Marquee Tool:

Click inside of the selection and move the Dancing Ants to a spot on the wall:

Again we’re going to make a New Layer Via Copy (Ctrl + J)

Again we’ve got a new layer

Again click on the selection and move it

This time try to put the patch over my head.

A great improvement!

Deselect (Ctrl + D) and you’ll see that it looks pretty good

Undo (Ctrl + Z)

Deselect (Ctrl + D)

This time we’ll switch to the Clone Stamp Tool

You might have to play with your brush size a bit here. I chose 100

What the Clone Stamp does is it copies an area from one location and paints it into a new one.

To use the tool, you have to set where you want to copy from. Put your cursor over my cheek

Press Alt and click to set the copy point.

Then go click and paint over another area (like my eye.) You’ll see that it’s copying whatever the little crosshairs (+) touches into the circle. In this case, I let the crosshairs go over my nose a bit, so it started drawing me a new nose.

Have some fun with that tool for sure. It takes some practice to get the hang of it because you have to paint with little strokes (just do a bit at a time) and you have to go and set your copy point over and over again (go to a new area and press Alt then click)

Undo (Ctrl + Z) as many times as you need to restore my face (or just leave it)

Ctrl + D to deselect

One more tool that’s pretty fun is the Content-Aware Move Tool

Make sure you’re on New or Add to selection

Draw a circle completely around me and then click and move it over

You’ll see that I’m magically moved over and the previous spot is patched at the same time! Cool, huh?

Play around and make sure that you have the hang of those tools. You’ll need a good grasp of them for the next assignment, which I’m not going to show you how to do…

 

Here are a few fun tutorials that will help you build your basic skills in Photoshop:

Once you click each link, look for the button that says “Begin Tutorial in Photoshop.” Clicking that will open the file and instructions right in Photoshop

Get to Know the App

Get to Know Layers

Add Text and Shapes to a Photo

Boost your Core Skills

Completing those tutorials will help you get used to the program and will help you to complete your next few assignments. You do not need to hand these files in, but completing them will be beneficial, and you may be asked to show them to me if it seems like you don’t know the basics.

For this project, you’ll need a series of high quality photos that will help you spell out a word or two. You’ll take those photos and fill in the letters that spell a word or phrase of your choice. Here’s an example:

Start off by creating a new blank file. I’m making mine the size of a standard piece of paper,  8.5 x 11 inches, but I’m putting it in Landscape orientation, so my measurements will be 11 wide and 8.5 tall. If you want to make yours 11 x 17 or 8 x 10, that would be fine.

Don’t forget to immediately save your work with the proper name in your OneDrive folder:

This is actually pretty simple. First, find a typeface that’s pretty big and blocky. You need a nice, thick, bold letter. Start off by making a letter in the top left corner:

PUT EACH LETTER ON ITS OWN LAYER!

You can copy layers (Ctrl + J) or alt + click/drag to copy out the letters until you have something like this:

Again, make sure that each letter is on its own layer!!!

Start by selecting whichever layer/letter you want to start with. Select the letter/layer.

Go into the File menu and choose Place Embedded…

Find your first photo and put it on top of the letter. Rename the layer.

You can move or resize the photo so that the most interesting part is right over top of the letter or move/resize later!

Right click on the letter and choose Create Clipping Mask

‘

Or… use the Layer menu and choose Create Clipping Mask’

You’ll notice that there’s a little downward arrow next to the layer icon:

And the photo now takes the shape of whatever is below!

You can move or resize the photo layer to get the most interesting part right inside of the letter:

Keep doing that until you fill all of the letters

Your layers panel will be staggered, with each photo “clipped” on top of a letter

Place another photo in the background and adjust that

You’ll notice that the really colourful letters don’t contrast with the colourful background, so use those Layer styles/effects. Select a letter layer and click the little fx button on the bottom of the Layers panel

Play around and find the right layer style for you. A Stroke makes a lot of sense to me:

Putting a fairly thick, dark stroke around a letter makes the shape stand out. Make sure the Preview box is turned on and move the panel so you can see what you’re doing. Play with the settings until you get a look that you like:

Once you find a Style/Effect you like, you’ll notice a little fx on the layers panel

If you want that same look on other layers, you can hold the Alt key and drag it onto another layer!

Have fun and be creative with this one!

Once you’re done filling your letters, feel free to find more photos on Unsplash to create different Photo Letters/words or use a camera to take photos around our school to make your own Westwood letters!

 

 

 

Make sure you have learned how to use Photoshop’s Selection Tools and Layers properly by following THESE INSTRUCTIONS before you attempt this assignment!

Your task is to take 4 or more images and create a composite image (which is just an image made up of multiple parts.) You should have fun and be creative with this one! Think of 3 parts/pieces that might go together, stick them in a new background, and you’ve got yourself a fun composite!

NOTE: I want to see an untouched copy of all of the images that you use! COPY pieces onto new layers as you PLACE images/Layers into your composite.

MAKE SURE YOU USE HIGH-QUALITY IMAGES! I HIGHLY recommend using Unsplash for this! Want to incorporate a picture of me for some reason? Get those HERE
If you want to use any of the images I downloaded when putting together mine, you can get those HERE

Example:

THIS odd creation:

is made up of all of these pieces:

Again, make sure you include an untouched copy of all of the images you use! You should also rename your layers!

My file’s layers look like this:

 

examples: