Sticks and Stones Anti-Bullying PSA

Diversity Response Re-Do

For my PSA, I am considering talking about the limitations of free speech. A lot of people believe that just because we have this freedom as Americans, they are entitled to say whatever they want, regardless of how offensive it may be. I would most likely bring in stereotypes and how debilitating they can be and how they cause serious effects. I would want to show how just regular people are branded with awful stereotypes that haunt them for the rest of their lives. There are a number of different ways I could present this information. If this were an audio story, I could have someone who has been the victim of bullying talk about their experiences. If it was in print, I could take a photo of someone and have hateful slurs around their body in speech bubbles. Over top of the image, I would have "Words can hurt, do yours?". This would provide the audience with a question that challenges them so they would be more likely to consider it after the ad has passed. This could also be used to fit a wide range of demographics. Every group of people has negative stereotypes about them, and this PSA could be changed easily by redirecting the statistics used, changing the stereotypes, etc.

The Dark Lion Rises

Here is my Fair Use mashup of The Lion King and The Dark Knight Rises!

Audiostory

Here is my audiostory!

Color Swatches and Fonts

This week, we worked with Color Swatches and Fonts in InDesign. This is the swatches and hues that I created. 

We also worked on finding fonts. Here are the examples of a Fancy Font and a Normal Font

At first, I had a hard time deciding what my colors should be.  I looked on colourlovers.com, Tumblr and on pinterest.com to aid my search with no ideas popping out at me. Finally, I was inspired by the month of February in general. The purple colors come from the Amethyst gemstone, which is the birthstone for this month. The blue comes from my memory of what the sky looks like. I like how it is a hazy color of blue because it reminds me of foggy days or icy roads. 

Using the Curves, Levels and Vibrance tools in Photoshop

     In this week's set of Lynda tutorial videos, we learned how to use the adjustment layers in Photoshop and then how to navigate InDesign. For this assignment, I wanted to display the Curves, Levels and Vibrance Photoshop tools in being able to enhance the way that a photo looks. 

     This is my original photograph. As you can see, the colors are extremely bland and this is just an overall poor quality image. I will use the above mentioned Photoshop tools to enhance this shot. 

     First, I used the Curves tool, which can be used to increase the contrast of the image. This is, in a way, what I did here. I used the Enhance Per Channel Contrast auto tool which can also be considered "Auto Tone". This tool balances each of the RGB tones and creates a more balanced color contrast. The Snap Neutral Midtones tool helps to remove a color cast, which tries to bring out a neutral color. These tools helped to neutralize the photo but also make the color and quality more clear. 

     Next, I used the Levels tool to darken the image. The Levels tool is also a Toner and it displays all of the color pigments on a histogram. Within this histogram, it shows how dark the colors are versus how light they are. For this photo, I used the midtone slider to darken the image and push a majority of the values closer to pure black.  

   Finally, I used the vibrance adjustment layer to subtly bring out the colors within the shot. I slid the slider up to +30, which brought out the green in the grass and plants and it made the little girl's skin and hair look more sun kissed. The Vibrance adjustment layer is an alternative to the Saturation tool because it is not as intense and it will not ruin your photo by adjusting the sliders up or down. 

Differences between JPEG, PNG and GIF files

     There is a multitude of ways in which an individual can save image files. In this week's set of Lynda tutorial videos, I learned about the most common image file formats and how to save them as such in Adobe Photoshop. For this blog post, I wanted to explore the ways in which JPEG, PNG and GIF files change the way a semi-transparent cloud is depicted post-save.

     This is an example of a JPEG image file. JPEGs are flattened files, which means that they do not support layers, or transparency. They are also compressed and utilizes lossy compression. Lossy compression is when the formatting software selectively discards, or throws away, information data of the image. The amount of information that is thrown away depends on which quality is chosen to save the file. JPEGs are often used on the Internet for posting to websites and for sending in emails and text messages.

     This photo is an example of a PNG file. Similar to JPEGs, PNGs are flattened files, however, it supports 256 layers of transparency. Therefore, PNG files are great to use for businesses and for creating logos because watermarks can easily be added onto them. As you can see in this image, some of the lighter shades of gray and are less visible than in the JPEG file. Quality-wise, they are pretty similar. 

     This image is an example of a GIF file. GIFs are most often seen as animation-style images. They are flattened, compressed files and they use lossy compression, much like JPEG files. Like PNG files, GIFs have some form of transparency, but it's not as freely used as in PNG files. GIF files compress their file so they are only able to use 256 colors within the image. Therefore, before saving, the software has to convert any unknown colors into "blanks". Also, transparency can only be used for one of those 256 colors, and transparency will only save with one layer, so you will often see pixelization or jagged edges if it is on a curved edge, like you see in this image of a cloud.