Monday 2nd October - PhotoShop

Most of the day was taken up with photoshop training. I think like me, everyone in the group had used photoshop before. But luckily the training was quite fast moving and I picked up a few useful tips and shortcuts. There were also a few features which I was aware of but had not really used, for instance, in the past I have always fiddled around with the contrast, hue, intensity etc of the image straight through the menu bar. But I realized the benefits of using adjustment layers, its useful to work in a non-destructive way, always retaining the original image.

In the afternoon we were free to use the skills we had learnt to alter an existing image. I was quite pleased with my attempt although the monk in the door way still doesn't quite fit, I think he is too bright.



Before


After
the monks are from some photos I downloaded from flickr.com, our trainer Ben Griesley (sorry if thats spelt wrong) provided the original doorway image. The training enjoyable and useful.

At about 4pm we went to visit S4C (channel 4 Wales), they had a regular team of 3 people working on the channels web site. Their biggest design problem is the need to make everything in both English and Welsh, If they design a page in English and then translate it the design can be destroyed due to welsh having more and often larger words. This is an issue with all company's in Wales who have to produce dual language material in everything they do.
It was an interesting visit, S4C don't actually make any programs, they are all commissioned or they use English channel 4 programming. This creates a problem with copyright, and getting permission to promote programs though the web. In the past a programs web site and presence on the world wide web has not been considered until after its was completed and all the crew had gone home. This makes it hard to gather material for the web site. There is now a move toward producing the web site whilst filming so that extra material can be produced and the site is not just repeating what the program has shown.

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Tuesday 3rd October - illustrator

The whole of Tuesday was taken up with Adobe illustrator training. Its a great package but I found it harder to use than another vector graphics program I have used - CorelDRAW. The benefits of illustrator are that it has a layers system similar to photoshop and transferring things between photoshop and illustrator is easer. Also, having the same shortcuts on both programs is very useful, If im not concentrating I sometimes try to use photoshop tutorials within corelDRAW. The main drawback with illustrator is the very large and confusing menu system, things seem to get lost very easily and for a novice user you spend a lot of time hunting through menu's trying to find the tool you need. The other problem I have with illustrator is working with curves and lines, You have too be very precise with your clicking and always keep an eye on which type of tool you have selected. CorelDRAW seems too be more forgiving and use fewer tools to achieve the same ends.
But, I will switch to illustrator because it seems to be the industry standard and IM sure that as I become more comfortable with the software I will find it less frustrating to use. I played around with a few ideas but I was generally felling uninspired. Here is an orange and a cup, sorry not very exiting.



It was another useful training session and I don't hate illurstator as much as I did.

We were also given a new brief today, to produce a mock up using graphics software of a game or website with the theme of lunch hour. School dinners spring to mind with an educational element inspired by Jamie Oliver but maybe that's a bit dull and obvious.