Photoshop & Media Literacy
Adobe Photoshop is a program used to enhance media for public
consumption. Photoshop often creates unrealistic photographs of people of
objects.
Example:
Back in 2006 the "Dove Campaign for Real Beauty" is a marketing
campaign for Dove soaps, but also an effort to address widespread,
destructive advertising which creates false perceptions of beauty among
girls, boys, women and men worldwide every day. In their advertisements
they address the following message “No one should believe that ANY
photograph on a magazine cover, billboard, or other advertisement is real
and authentic.”
Media Appropriate for Photoshop
-
High
Posters with Multiple Images
Advertisements
Brochures
History Maps
Fashion Design
Flip Books
Cartoons
Web design
Photography
Magazines
Book Covers
Title Pages
-
Medium
Posters with Plain Text
Resumes
Portfolios
Diagrams
-
Low
Worksheets
Essays
Graphs
Slide Presentations
Photoshop Basics
Open a photo or project
Open Adobe Photoshop >
File > Open > Select file
Check your layers to make sure they are not locked
If the layer is locked duplicate it to work on the photo
Layer > Duplicate layer
Layers are very important and naming and managing your layers will help organize your
graphic.
Tools Panel
Selection Tools
The Marquee Tools are used for selecting objects such as
rectangles, squares, and ellipses.
The Move Tool is used to move selections, objects, and layers.
There are several Lasso Tools which are used to make irregular
selections. There is a polygonal lasso tool for polygon selections, and
a magnetic lasso tool which automatically follows edges of objects.
The Magic Wand Tool selects an area of similar colors in a single
click (such as the white in the cloud logo).
The Crop Tool allows users to redefine their active image area but
not resize the ENTIRE image. It’s sort of like cutting out a smaller
picture from a larger photo with a pair of scissors.
Retouch Tools
There are several healing tools in Photoshop which are used to
repair imperfections in images, or handle blemishes and red-eye.
With the Clone Stamp Tool, a user may select a source starting
point somewhere on an image, and then paint elsewhere using that
starting point as a reference, effectively cloning the source.
The Eraser Tool can be used to erase parts of an image, selection,
or layer.
The Sharpen Tool is used to sharpen edges in an image, while the
Blur Tool burs edges. The Smudge Tool smudges an image, similar
to using fingerpaint.
The Dodge Tool lightens parts of an image while the Burn Tool
darkens. The Sponge Tool is used to saturate, or desaturate parts of
an image.
Painting Tools
The Brush and Pencil tools are used to paint strokes in graphics.
These tools can be highly customized for very effective painting.
The Fill Tools are used to fill entire layers, selections and areas with
a solid color, or gradient.
Vector Drawing & Type Tools
The Type Tools are used for creating and setting type in an image.
Both vertical and horizontal type can be created.
The Pen Tools are used to create clear shapes and paths which can
be used as vector objects that can be scaled to any size.
Cutom Shapes are vector objects that can be created on the fly from
a list of presets (including user created shapes).
Foreground / Background Color
A foreground color and background color can be set to be used to
paint with, color text, and fill objects among other things. This view
provides an easy way to see what colors are currently selected, and
allows for easy switching between two different colors.
Using Tools
To actually use a tool varies from case to case (again, we’ll be
covering nearly everything you’d want to know in the future lessons).
To Select a Tool from the toolbox, simply click it once. If the tool
displayed has a black arrow in the bottom right corner, that means
that there are more tools of that type hidden underneath it. To select
one of these hidden tools, hold down the mouse button while over it,
and then release once you’re over the tool you’d like to select.