Altered Photos

The history of changing photographs dates back to the beginning of photography.  Some historic pictures have been altered, and maybe at that time, the touched photographs went undetected for quite some time. Newspaper photo didn’t travel far and took time for some people to see.   Some news was several days old when they saw a picture for the first time. And, with the quality of photography in a newspaper, many touch ups went undetected.  Some pictures historians are the first to find changes on photographs.

Many years ago, hand brushing of the photograph was done. Sometimes it was done to achieve better print quality, and some time is done to send a message of power and deception.  Pictures of leaders, both in the military and political, was by far the most popular type of photograph that was re-touched.

As time passed, certain celebrity photos, mainly pictures of movie stars have appeared as brushed and altered. The photos which are normally on the covers of magazines help market and sell that product. If a competitor does not utilize the same process to market their item, it will lose business and possibly go out of business. So, brushing photos simply has become a widely used marketing tool!

Web Design Styles

There are so many different designs of websites with each of them trying to sell or explain their product.  I particularly like ones that have a 3-D design to them.  I think with an image standing out from the web site, shouts out at you! The image itself can sell the product.

An example of this is at http://www.guifx.com/. It s style is known as “The Drafting Table/Transformer Style”.  With all the web design software that is available including Photoshop, this style of design grabs the user!

An example of the “Paper Bag” style of web site is located at http://www.innostudio.net/. It uses a funny cartoonish character. The web site illustrates a playful approach to selling their product.

A coffee shop web site uses an uncluttered, simple approach. This “Mondrian Poster” style has an elegant cup of coffee with only three links at the bottom of the page.  This site is simple but effective. Its link is http://cafepoint.com.au/

A dark site is located at http://www.przeznaczenie.eu/.  A used bullet with a darkened shed that needs torn down in the background, illustrate a Gothic Organic approach designing a web site.  Most of the people shown at the bottom of the page look cold and frightened!

The Grid-Based Icon approach uses style with precision. It utilizes high tech design software to design the site. It also uses high tech software such as flash to provide another high tech interface to its site.  An example of this style is at http://mobileroadie.com/.

Web sites need to sell their products and services. They do so in many different ways. Matching up their product with the proper style of web site is crucial!

Histogram

The histogram tool in Photoshop is called Histogram Panel.  It is a tool used to improve a scanned copy of a picture. By software default, the histogram opens in a smaller view, compact view, for easy quick check.  For a greater detail view, the histogram panel can be opened up in the expanded view.

A histogram panel allows you to change the images for brightness and shades of gray. The user slides a bar for an easy change to the photo, while leaving a picture of the original photo compare. These two sliders, one for black point and the other for white point, make the histogram panel very user friendly.

The two views can be easily switched while working with the image. The expanded view is 256 pixels wide, which makes it easier since most images has 256 shades of gray.

Gaps in the histogram panel indicate not enough brightness.  Smaller gaps are not noticed, but gaps that are larger than three pixels wide are clearly noticed. White gaps within the vertical bars indicate a problem with brightness. These gaps or posterization can be easily detected and repaired by using histograms and Adobe Photoshop.

Resizing versus Re-sampling

Taking pictures or scanning pictures with the correct resolution is important! Most cameras today advertise the amount of pixels that the camera has the ability to offer. If you take it somewhere to print, that is great, but to use it on a web site may not be the best alternative. If a JPEG has a large number of pixels, it will take longer to download to a computer. Not a problem unless your computer uses a dial up service, in which that picture could take minutes to download. Compressing a photo to a smaller size, yet utilizing a larger count of pixels would create the same problem, as compressing or image resizing does not eliminate pixels, rather crunches them more closely together. A more versatile way of using images is image re-sampling. This method resizes the JPEG so you are using average amount of pixels for the size of the JPEG. By using the re-sampling method, it is easy to eliminate too many pixels and losing the quality of the photo. Also, eliminating pixels will decrease the size of the photo to be printed. It is always better to take pictures in a higher resolution, since software can eliminate them easy. It comes down to a basic requirement. How much quality does the photo need?

All about logo’s

A logo is very powerful! It represents a company with an image that is not easy to forget. Sometimes a logo stands out more than the name of a business.  This is particular true when it comes to children.  A set a McDonald’s arches are known long before its name.  It is also easy to recognize when driving down the highway.  Other restaurant logos that stand out are for me are Arbys and Dairy Queen. They are also easy to recognize from the road.

The clothing industry also has some well known logos.  The Nike swoosh is very recognizable.  A horse with someone playing Polo, is another great logo.

The sporting industry has great logos.  The Indianapolis Colts upside down horse shoe to the Boston Celtics green leprechaun are two logos that people remember.

The successful logos always stand out and are describable, are memorable, they are effective without color, and can be scaled down in size and still be recognized.

Many logos do not stand out from the rest. During the development stage of a logo, one needs to design, do research on style, sketch a few examples and prototype for sampling. A review process is required, revise it if necessary, and then supply your clients with the proper files for advertising. It needs creativity and several reviews for it to be successful.

Adobe Illustrator is a great way to design a great looking logo, but also to modify it after brainstorming ideas from the review process.

The Color Wheel

A color wheel is a logical display of colors in a circular format.  Each color is broke down into categories, so that a color can chosen to match up and compliment other colors.  Colors are broken down into five categories or schemes. When using a digital computer, the colors are broken down into hexadecimal equivalents, so that they can be defined properly when designing a web page.

The primary colors include red, yellow and blue. Colors do not need to be mixed to configure these colors. When mixing these colors together, it creates a new color. An example of this is red plus yellow is orange. You may also add color to change the colors tint, tone, and shade.  On the digital computer, mixing the two hexadecimal numbers creates the new color.

When selecting the proper tint, tone and shade, also illustrates the mood in which the site provides.  The proper combination of colors physiologically changes the user’s attitude.

A complementary color lies directly across from the other color. This provides a contrast to a web site, and helps the user locate other important information on the page including links to other sites.

When designing a web site one can pick and choose colors that they like, or they can use a color wheel to help complement their choice. A designer with little experience in web design should always keep one handy!