DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGING - Week 3

WEEK 3 (23/5/2023)

Lectures: Introduction to Photoshop 2

Lasso tool: 

• Allows you to draw and pinpoint specific areas of a document.
• It is great to use with a graphic tablet because it is similar to a pencil. 

How to use the lasso tool:

1. Open Photoshop and select the Lasso tool from the toolbar. It's located in the same section as the Magic Wand and the Quick Selection tool.
2. Click and drag the cursor around the edges of the object or area you want to select. Try to stay as close to the edges as possible.
3. Once you've made your selection, release the mouse button. You'll see a dotted line around the selection.
4. If you need to refine your selection, you can use the Add or Subtract from selection buttons in the toolbar to add or remove areas from the selection.
5. Once you’re done with your selection, you can copy and paste it into a new layer or use it to apply adjustments or filters to just that area.

Pen Tool: 

• The pen tool is the most common option in creating a path from scratch,.
• The way that you add these points and the way you drag the tool as you create the points determines how they will look.
• The fewer points, the smoother a path will be.

1. Open Photoshop and select the Pen tool from the toolbar. It's located in the same section as the other shape tools.
2. Click on the canvas where you want to start your path. This will create the first anchor point.
3. Click and drag to create a curved path, or click to create a straight path. The path will appear as a series of anchor points connected by straight or curved lines.
4. To create a curve, click and drag one of the anchor points. The direction and length of the handle you create will determine the shape of the curve.
5. To adjust an existing path, use the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow) to select one or more anchor points. You can then move them, adjust the handles, or delete them.
6. To close a path, click on the first anchor point. The path will be complete and you'll have a closed shape.
7. You can fill the shape with a colour or gradient, stroke the shape with a brush stroke, or create a selection from the shape.
8. To create a selection, right-click on the path and choose "Make Selection" from the context menu. You can then use the selection to apply adjustments or filters to just that area.

Layering

• Layers are different images stacked on top of each other. 

• You can use each layer without affecting another one to make adjustments. 

• You can use layers for non-destructive editing.

• Your adjustments in Photoshop will never destroy the original image.

• The layers contain all the extra information and/ or images you want to add to the original file.

Tutorial:

Mr Fauzi provided us a demo video of how to do the digital collage, and teach us how to use blending mode, paths, masking, layering in photoshop.

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Practical: 

1. Download all of the images here to your computer:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cGcbENrjSksAaMQK9np2jb6ZaM7Y-81l?usp=sharing
 
2. Follow this tutorial demo as reference to create your digital collage: https://youtu.be/BlW7F-fTsbE

3. Create 3 different composition digital collages from the images that you’ve downloaded.

4. Create A4 canvas size  (vertical) on Photoshop and start to do the compositions.

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Work-in-progress:

Once I've downloaded all of the images provided by our lecturer, I wen to photoshop to use he magic wand tool to select and mask objects from the images.

Figure 2.1 Magic Wand Tool Example

These are the cut out images that I'll be using for my digital collage.

Figure 2.2 Masked Images

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1. COMPOSITION #1

2. COMPOSITION #2

3. COMPOSITION #3

Links: Project 1