21 january '10 + homework

Nature Magazine!

In todays double lesson, were taking our images which we took last lesson and editing them using photoshop, to create a front cover for a nature magazine.

We began by uploading our images onto the school system and opening them in photoshop

Heres my orignal image:
The next task was to edit our images, to add the given effect and emphasis we wished to create. I began by enhancing the lighting of my image making certain shadows darker but also enhancing selected highlights. My next task was to adjust the saturation of the image using the enhance tool, so to bring out the aspects which i wished to stand out. I then edited the image as a whole by selecting; Filter->Filter Gallery. I spent a while using trial and error methods to test which filter i wished to use i eventually decided upon using the Film Grain filter here is a capture of my image at this point.

Several moament after reaching this point my computer malfunctioned and all further final improvements were lost. I made an effort to retreive them but failed to do so. My computer then completely crashed therefore at a later point when ar home i had to use picnik an online photo editing software to try to complete my front cover. This means that the 2 hours of lesson which were set aside for editing our previously taken images were lost, and therefore in a way wasted.

After uploading my image to picnik, i began by adding the title of my magazine "Spring Watch" to the image, the picnik font i used for this was "prefix", font colour white. The next step was adding main story titles around the page, the font used for this was "arial black", bold, font style white. When reviewing another magazine i noticed another main point of a front cover was the bar code, issue number and price. Therefore this was the next action i made. Lastly i added boxes behind the text so to make them dominent, at first the boxes were horizontal and looked to flat on, therefore i experimented by setting the boxes on diagonals. Which made the image not so flat and boring.

Here is my final completed, front cover: NatureMagazineEvaluation!
The first image at the top of the screen is my original image which was taken on wednesday 20 january 2010 at netswell pond using a cannon digital compact 8.2 mpx camera at around 3.45pm. The image reflects nature from several perspectives with the natural colours of grey and green being of focal point. The image shows, a running stream to the left of the picture and an emerging bush from the right. The effect which i used on the image, allows the water to attract more attention whilst giving it movement and definition. I did also crop my image ever so slightly to hide the bare path which was dim and littered, it showed a different meaning to my image rather than the one which i wished to exspress, the litter reflected negativitiy whereas my magazine aimed to focus on the positivity of nature. The colours i chose are all relativly natural, Greens, Greys, Creams, Black and White.This selection of colours reflect earth and growth, all which are aspects of nature. The editing of adding the filter effect of "FilmGrain" highlighted the bush of the right of the image. When choosing text i made sure the chosen fonts reflected the style of the overall compersistion the main title of the magazines font "SPRINGWATCH" was etchy and unfinished which reflected that although nature is beauty it represents somthing which is never perfect and is a constant life cycle and is therefore unfinshed. The Denotation of an image is what we actually see, in my image we see a river which is flowing in the foreground and stretches forward to the bottom center. The image also has branches with green leaves to the right of the picture. Connotation is the meaning or message which the author or photographer in this case is trying to portray to the audience. The connotation of the orginal document is narrow. All we get from the image is the beauty of nature, it is not clear the message the photographer is trying to portray the season he wishes to exspress. However in the final document after we added text we can understand more clearly by combing the two the image is reflecting beauty of nature but in the sense of the beauty of spring itself, although the image is taken during the period of winter the editing features show the nature to be crisp, new, green as if just in growth. The image shows nature to be bright and full of emotions of happiness. If i was to recreate my final document i would possible think of using a different image which would be more versatile. The image i chose was awkward when adding text as the text was never clear enough no font nor colour would stand out alone to reach my audience which is the reason for which i had to add, blocks behind the text so the text was not lost in the business of the background. I would also wish to use photoshop for the complete of my document. Another point i would improve on would be possibly to impose another image into my image of a living naturistic being, a bird or and animal or possibly a fish.