Illustrator Tutorial

These are the pen tools, the first one is to make straight and curved lines and the second one is to change the line, to add a curve or to add a straight line, you would do this by selecting adding a vector or even taking it away.

To draw a straight line you click once then drag to where you want the line and let go. But for a curved line you click and then drag but instead of releasing, you hold down and drag again and then release.

Also to make it easier when you’re drawing with the pen tool, you have to make sure that the fill colour has nothing selected because then it means it’ll just be a line instead of a shape.

 

To make sure that the image is placed into illustrator correctly I went to:

1. file
2. place
3. select the image you want to use
4. place on the page you created

Once I had the image placed on the page, to make it easier to draw the lines over the image, I changed the opacity to 50% to make the image a little less bold but still noticeable so I can draw over the lines that are already there.

 

 

Then what I did was I used the pen tool to draw over the hand, to draw this it was just all curves. At first I find this slightly difficult, however once I had used it a couple of times I found it easier and easier.

To make things easier, so I didn’t have to draw the other hand all over again, I selected the hand I had already drawn and then I pressed alt  and then dragged the first hand I drew and then placed it where I wanted it, but because it was facing the wrong way I had to rotate it by 90 degrees to make it the right way.

 

 

to make the shape of the house I used the pen tool although there is a easier way of making it, I can create to shapes and then use the first tool from the screenshot below and it will join the shapes together, but because I felt comfortable using the pen tool to create the shape.

The next thing I did was the windows in the house,  the easiest way of doing this was to just select the shape tool and make a square because this is the quickest and easiest way of doing so. Then I just selected that square, pressed alt and made 3 more, this way I don’t have to draw 3 other squares which could possibly be different sizes.

 

 

The last thing I did was changed the colours, I made it so that the windows were white so they stood out from the black and then the rest of it was all black.

Conclusion:

I found using illustrator one of the easiest of the adobe softwares to use, I enjoyed designing my logos and actually felt confident enough to help other when using it, unlike photoshop or indesign.

I thought that my designs turned out quite well because I understood what I was doing and felt comfortable using the programme. I would defiantly use illustrator again because it was useful and as I said I feel more than capable of using it.

Camera Terminology

DSLR:

A DSLR stands for digital single-lens reflex. It is a digital camera which combines the optics and mechanisms of a single lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor, as to supposed photographic film.

Aperture:  

The aperture stop of a photographic lens can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor. In combination with variation of shutter speed, the aperture size will regulate the film’s or image sensor’s degree of exposure to light.

As you can see by the diagram with the daffodil on the left, the smaller the aperture the aperture the more of the photo you can see and the bigger the aperture the less you can see.

So on this image above you can see it had quite a big aperture as the leaf in the foreground is in focus but the background is blurry, this is because of the aperture. The aperture could have been anywhere from F5,6- F1,4. I would say that it was more likely F1,4 as the background is very blurry.

Shutter Speed:

In photography, shutter speed or exposure time is the length of time when the film or digital sensor inside the camera is exposed to light, also when a camera’s shutter is open when taking a photograph. The amount of light that reaches the film or image sensor is proportional to the exposure time.

As you can see  from the diagram above shows examples of shutter speed. The top right candle is letting in the least amount of light in which means the shutter speed was fast to let in the as little light as possible and the bottom right candle    shows a slow shutter speed to let lots of light.

ISO:

ISO is the sensitivity of your sensor to light. The ISO setting you use depends on the amount of light in the scene you are photographing. The more light you have to work with the lower you can set your ISO. As settings go, ISO is one of the key camera menus you need to learn.

The darker your surrounding the higher the ISO number should be and the lighter the ISO the lower the number should be.

The image above shows the lowest ISO number to the highest ISO number.

Depth of field:

DOF is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.

large depth of field means the camera lens will be wide and everything in the image is in focus.

Small depth of field means the camera lens is narrow and has a small focus point.

LIGHT ROOM TUTORIAL

WHAT IS LIGHT ROOM?

Light room is a good way to manage them; like Photoshop, it is used for editing photos. Light room works by importing as many photos as you want and one by one you can go through them and edit them.

WHAT IS A RAW FILE?

A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor.

How to start:

First you have to create a new category. You have to go to file and it is the first one at the top of the selection.  As you can see from the image below.

The second step is then to save it as a new file. It should come up with what to save it as; at this point you should name it ‘Light room’. The option to save as should look like this once you have got to this stage.

Once you have saved this file as ‘Light room’ you then have to create a new file and place it within the light room one. This file should be called ‘rhyscatolg’. This is just so you know where all of your edits/photographs are and it should be easy to find as it is one place and it is all together. Hopefully once its all done it will look like this or similar.

Once you have created the files to save them within, you can then start to import the photographs you would like to edit. To do this you must make sure you are on ‘library’ which is located at the top right hand side of the screen (As you can see by the image below).

Then if you were to look at the left hand side and the bottom you would see import; this is how you import you photos (As shown on the image below). All that is left to do is to select where to get the images from and which ones you are going to use.

HOW TO GO TO PHOTOSHOP FROM LIGHT ROOM…

To go to photoshop from within light room; you must go to the tool bar at the top and then select ‘photo’. It should then show up with another drop selection. You select edit in and then the first option, which will then send you to photoshop. Once you have edited you image and you are happy with it, you then save it like normal and when yuo go back to light room it should be all ready.

You may want to do this is you want to edit your photo in a particular way, which light room can not do or maybe you just prefer to do so in photoshop.

Histograms

A histogram is a graphical representation of the tonal values of your image. In other words, it shows the amount of tones of particular brightness found in your photograph ranging from black (0% brightness) to white (100% brightness). As shown below…

This is an example of a photograph being overly exposed. The histogram is all the way to the right and is very high, like the example.

This image shows what the exposure is like when it is set to the middle. The histogram starts off very high (but is not very thin like the over exposed image) and then goes very low. 

This example shows when an image is very under exposed as the histogram is very high but is all the way on the opposite side to the over exposed. As you can tell by the image below.

I would say that the example below is almost the perfect exposed image as it has not got too much like or dark and the image is very clear. It has a fairly low contrast and exposure.

Dark room

This was the same kind of camera I used to capture my shots.

To take a photograph you must have a film loaded in the back of the camera; in order to open the back of the camera, you have to pull the rewind lever up and then the back will open. You then have to place the film into the space designed for the film and feed the end of the film into the ‘teeth’ part (the take up stool) in the back of the camera. Once you have done this you reel it round using the rewind lever, this is found on the top of the camera, to ensure it is feeding through properly.

You take a photo by pressing the shutter release. The usual ISO  of a film is 400, this is the sensitivity of the film due to exposure to light. You shut the back of the camera and do not open it until you have finished at the end, after you have finished and rewound the film. It is ideal to write down your aperture and shutter speed for each shot you have taken so that if it doesn’t turn out the way you want, you can look to where you went wrong. These are found near the top of the camera on the front lens.

You use the view-point to look at the object you want to take the picture of, making sure the focus point is at the middle, this means the aperture and shutter speed are right. Once you have taken each photo you have to pull back the lever, to be able to take the next photo. You can also see how many photos you have taken by looking at the top of the camera where there are some numbers which represent the number of photos taken.

Once you have taken all of the photos, you must rewind the film back into its container whilst holding the rewind button; once you have heard a clicking noise you are okay to take the film out without risking it being exposed and you are now ready to develop the film.

This shows how to take the ‘perfect’ photo and the reasons for them.

The film process:

LOAD- load your films onto the film reel and place into the light tight developing tank in on of the film closets.

DEVELOP- develop films for the time indicated by the type of film it is

• mix 150ml developer per film
• shake the canister a couple of times every 30 seconds
• discard developer by pouring into larger container left at the sink

STOP BATH

• pour 300ml stop bath undiluted straight from the container into your canister
• shake the canister continuously for 30 seconds
• pour stop bath straight back into the bottle it came from

FIXER

• Pour 300ml fixer undiluted straight from the container into your canister
• shake the canister a couple of times every 30 seconds for 5 minutes
• pour fixer back into the bottle it came from
• remove film reels from canister

WASH- wash for 20 minutes

PHOTO F1O/WETTING AGENT

• Place the film reels in the tank with photos F10 just covering them for 30 seconds

DRYING

• Squeeze the excess water off the film and place a clip on either end of the film
• Hang film for 5 minutes

Health and Safety

darkroom

• make sure that your space where you are working is clean and organised, so that you know where everything is, which will make everything easier to find and use when it comes to it.
• you need to make sure thta the wet and dry areas are kept seperate
• make sure once youve washed your prints you put them in a tray when youre carrying them to the dryer
• do not empty thre chemicals down the sink because it could cause problems later on for other people and could corrode the pipes and mkae sure they go inot the aste containers
• make sure yuore washing your hands after using the chemicals because they could be irratant to your skin
• do not eat or drink in the dark room as yu dont know what you have touched
• do not run around in the dark room as you could trip over something or you could fall into someone or something
• only approved people can use thedar room because there is limited space for working
• make sure you clean after youve finished your prints to make sure its tid and ready for the next person to use

Developing Health and Safety

• You have to make sure that you know where you have placed everything like your scissors, so that you dont end up cutting yourself or your partner.
• You have to make sure that you are care and take your time while developing your film because you are in complete dark and there for cant see  what you are doing.
• While you’re in the dark room you have to make sure that you dont open the door until your film is in the light tight container so it doesnt expose your film to early
• You have to make sure that you have remembered where you have put everything because you wont be able to see where anything is as it is pitch black and if you drop something you may not be able to find it and could possibly fall over
• It is important not to panic while in the dark room because it is completely black you cant see what youre doing and may hurt yourself if youre not calm.
• make sure you dont take your phone out because it will expose the film too early
• make sure you dont fool around because youre in a small, tight area which is completely dark so you cant see what youre doing.

Objects for the dark room

 

This was the equipment i used while i was in the dark room, to develop all of my film. I had to use all of these to get my images to to the point  icould put them in the developer, fixer and rinse, before drying them.

Objects for the dark room

Test strips

This was my first test strip and as you can see not all of them had came through, so even though i haven’t got example, i re-took these photos to get them perfect, because I wasnt happy with the way that i couldn’t see many of them because they were underexposed.

This test strip went really well and from this i found that i need to expose this for about 8 to 10 seconds. So when I went to develop this photo i would expose it for 8 or 10 seconds before putting it in the developer and  rinse and fixer in the darkroom.

My film

This photo was under exposed so i re-done it to get the image to a good stage, where i was happy with it and that the image was developed well and it was clear once it came out, until i had got it to that point i would keep going until it was to that point.

This was the final result of a image that i had chosen to re-do because the first result was not good. It was unclear and underexposed. This image above was the second result which i thought was really good and defiantly an improvement from the first one.

I thought that this image was slightly under exposed which is why I decided to do it again so i could get it to the point where it was better.

This was the final result of re-doing the image and i was very pleased with the result i had achieved after re-exposing it. I think that this is a lot clearer and developed well.

 

After I had done all of my prints I decided that they weren’t good after they had been developed. So I decided to concentrate on a couple of images and get them to a point where I was happy with them.

From the original photograms I had developed I decided that they hadn’t been exposed for long enough. I know that they were exposed for around 8 seconds, so I decided to do it for another 2 seconds which made that 10 seconds. Once I had done this I found that it had come out much clearer and therefore my decision to extend the timing for these two photograms was the right choice because they came out better. Also the photo with the toy monkey was a bit blurry, I re took the shot and made sure it was in focus before I shot it, so that the same problem didn’t happen again. Once I had developed it again i found that it came out exactly how I wanted it to.

If I were to do this again, I would extend the timings for all of the photos that had been under exposed because that would get them to a stage where I was happy with how they had turned out. I would have also tried to focus the camera a bit more because some of the photos that I did not re do were a bit blurry due to them being unfocused. However once I had re done the two as you can see above they were not has blurry and they were clearer.

The photos above I experimented with ink painting, with the inks I had to make sure that I didn’t have too much ink on my brush because it would make it too dark and wouldn’t cover properly; which is why I had the strip of one of my old photograms which I tested the ink before hand on that strip. Once I was comfortable with using the inks, I decided to mix them and create a sunset with the inks and I found that the results of doing this worked really well and I would defiantly do this again.

This image has finger prints on it possibly because i left greasy finger prints on the image before i developed the image which then lead for my prints to be left on it. It could have possibly have been where i had touched it before the chemicals had dried.

This image still had water marks left on the image after it had dried, because it had been taken out of the dryer too soon which mean it left the water marks on it after being dried.

This image was taken out of the developer too early which has given it the misty look, i should have kept better timing of this image to avoid this from happening again. So next time i do this i will keep the timings and make sure i follow the instructions step by step.

This image was under developed, so I would have to re-do it because it was not developed to a reasonable standard. I need to make sure that im following the instructions carefully and right.

This image was actually perfectly developed and needed no improvements. I need to make sure the other images are in the same way to make them all good.

Once again this was a pretty well developed image and didnt need any improvements. I should carry on doing it step by step, like i did with this one.

This image was slightly too grey and maybe if i was to do this again i would expose it a bit longer to make it better. This would make the image the the best possible standard.

This image was not even close to being developed which is like the other; why i need to concentrate on the timings more because many of my images are underexposed.

This image is under exposed because you cant read what the books say on the side, so i would expose it for longer. It also looks a bit blurry, so i would re shoot this to make it more focused and exposed to the right times.

This image was also under exposed and needed to be developed further. I would have taken the shot again because its got a flash in the image which is covering it slightly.

All of these photograms were either under exposed or were not in focus when I had taken the photo. So as I said before I decided that it was best for me to focus on two photos and get them to a point were I was happy with them and thought that I couldnt get them to a better outcome. I thought this was good because it meant I wouldn’t have loads to do and I perfected at least two.

Conclusion

I was happy with all of the outcomes and although not all of my photos turnt out perfectly, I had learnt from my mistakes and I improved upon them. So by going through the processes I learnt that by focusng on one or two images I can get them to a really good standard that I am happy with.

If I was to do another shoot with a film camera I would have concentrated on the focus so none of the images were blurry and i would have made sure that they were all very clear and in focus to make sure when i developed them they would be better than my last ones.

I would have also made sure that that I developed the photos step by step to get  them to the best possible outcome. i would make sure that i expose the photos to the right time and make sure i do a test strip for each photo to get them to the best possible outcome also.

Overall i would make take my time with all of the process, including taking the photo because from going through my work i have found that i tend to rush things which means that my work isnt up to a good standard. I  need to take my time doing all the processes carefully and thoroughly and to do each step to the correct times reading them right. This would ensure that all of my photos are to the best standard i can possibly get them too.