Adobe Bridge

Bridge is an entirely different category of program than Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop. Bridge is not made to produce images at all: it is simply a very high-end program for organizing image files and documents. As you’ve seen throughout the semester, working in Photoshop or Illustrator generally involves producing a lot of files, often of many different types: PSD, JPG, TIFF scans, .AI files, PDFs, etc. Bridge is designed to help you keep these files organized and labeled. Not to be corny, but it literally does provide a ‘bridge’ between the various Adobe CS programs. Knowing a few basic things about Bridge might be helpful as you’re working on organizing your semesters’ worth of work. Let’s take a look at the program.

File Organization

When you open up Bridge, it looks like a complex version of the standard Finder window you’re familiar with in Mac OSX. On the upper left, you see a list of locations on your computer’s hard drive, including your user home folder and the desktop, as well as icons for any external drives you may have connected to your computer.

1) Start by clicking on your thumb drive. This will bring up the folders on your drive in the main Bridge window. Navigate until you have reached a folder that contains multiple images.

2) Once you are at this point, you can go to File: New Folder and create a new folder. Just like in Mac OSX, you can rename the folder, and drag items into it manually. For example, you might want to have one folder for your Bending History assignment, and then individual subfolders named PSD, JPG, TIFF, etc. based in the different file types.

3) You can also go to File: New Window and drag items from one folder to another across the windows. So far, you could accomplish all of this with Mac OS, but let’s take a look at some of the other functions Bridge offers.

File Labeling

One of the best features of Bridge is its capacity to sort and label files. For example, if you’ve just shot a batch of digital photos, and you now need to import them and select the images to use, Bridge can make this process very easy.

Let’s say you need to capture images from a camera. Rather than using the Mac Image Capture software, you can do this directly in Bridge. Go to File: Get Pictures from Camera. This brings up a dialogue that allows you to choose the location and filenames of the images as they’re captured.

Once you have a set of images open in Bridge, go to the Label menu. This allows you to label some images as rejects, and assign star ratings to others. You can then use this information to sort the images later, saving time over manually sorting through the images again and again.

Metadata

One final note: Bridge has many, many functions, but the one I’d like to leave you with is creating and assigning metadata. Metadata literally means ‘data about data.’ In practice, metadata is a packet of information that you can assign to an image file to indicate its ownership and copyright status.

When you begin posting images of your own creative work online, it is vital that you assign a set of metadata to them. This indicates that you created the work, and either retain or surrender the rights to it. No matter how many generations a file goes through, it retains the metadata (for example if a file is saved as a PSD with metadata, and you then save a JPG of it, the JPG has the same set of metadata). For files with copyright information, Photoshop shows the circle-C copyright image next to the filename at the top of the image window.

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a metadata template. Go to Tools: New Metadata Template, and fill in the information you’d like to include. I generally include only my name, email, website and phone number, and type ‘all rights reserved’ in the Copyright Notice box. This is enough to indicate I created and own the file.

Once you have a metadata template, you can select any number of images in the Bridge browser, and then go to Tools: Append Metadata. The name of your template should appear in a pop-up menu. Select your template. Bridge will ask whether you want to append the metadata of all the files: hit Yes, and then Bridge will write your metadata to all of the files. I make this step part of my usual workflow in working with images: as soon as I have a new batch of images, I open them in Bridge, write my standard metadata to them, and proceed with editing the images.

While this may seem esoteric at the moment, if you do continue working with digital images, it will become very useful. I didn’t get this information until much later in my experience with digital imaging, and wish I’d had it sooner.

Introduction to Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is the last program we will cover in the course of this semester. Unlike Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, InDesign is not primarily for creating and editing graphics (bitmap or vector). Instead, InDesign is used mostly for layout of existing text and images. It combines much of the layout functionality of Illustrator with advanced text-layout capabilities and the ability to work on a large number of pages at once. This makes InDesign an excellent program for creating both electronic and hard-copy publications, including brochures, PDF pamphlets, newsletters, and books.

We will be using InDesign to create a multi-page PDF portfolio of the work you have done in Digital Studio this semester. As you are preparing to make your portfolio, you should gather all of the images you have produced in class this semester, preferably in their high-resolution versions (for bitmap images), and make sure they are clean, flattened, and ready to insert into a PDF. Similarly, before starting to lay out your PDF, you should prepare your text for each project in Microsoft Word or another wordprocessing program, so the text will be ready to insert once you start assembling your PDF. I will outline below the basic steps to creating a professional PDF using InDesign.

Getting Started- Creating a New Document

Start up Adobe InDesign (you may want to move the application icon to the Dock for easy future reference). Go to File: New, and select Document. This will bring up the New Document dialogue.

1) First, select the number of pages in your PDF. You can always add more pages later, but start with an estimate of what you will need. The minimum for your portfolio is seven pages.

2) Uncheck the Facing Pages box. This function is for creating print documents which are laid out like books: we will simply be building a multi-page PDF for viewing on a computer.

3) Select Letter under Page Size: we will be using standard 8.5” x 11” pages for your PDF.

4) Hit OK.

This creates a multi-page blank document: InDesign shows you the first page initially: you can scroll down to work on subsequent pages.

Adding Text and Images

Initially, the InDesign interface looks quite a bit like Illustrator: in many respects, the tools in InDesign behave the same way as those in Illustrator. However, there are some important differences to bear in mind. Unlike Illustrator, InDesign functions by creating ‘frames’ for text and images. This means that rather than simply drawing or placing an image, you first create a space for that image in the InDesign document. You can then place the image, and adjust its size to fit the frame you have created for it. InDesign does this so that documents can be laid out before all of the content is finished: by laying out the fields in advance, you can simply plug in content as it is completed. Let’s give this a try with an image.

Inserting Images in InDesign

You can insert an image in several ways. First, let’s try the simplest way.

1) Go to File: Place. Like Illustrator, this brings up a dialogue which allows you to select an image from your hard drive.

2) Select an image, and click OK.

3) InDesign shows a pointer and a thumbnail of the image. Click where you would like the image to be in your document. InDesign then creates a frame and inserts the image at its finished dimensions into your document.

4) You can then use the Move tool to relocate the image.

Let’s try inserting an image in another way, this time by creating a frame first, and then inserting the image.

1) Click on the Rectangular Frame Tool in the Tools palette. This looks like the Rectangle tool in the palette, except with an X through the rectangle. Click and drag to draw out a rectangular frame of the size you’d like for your image.

2) Select the Move tool from the Tool palette, and click on the frame you just drew. Now, go to File: Place.

3) As before, select an image from your hard drive to place into the frame.

4) Hit OK. This will place your image in the frame.

You will probably notice that you’re seeing only part of your image. This is a key difference between InDesign and Illustrator. You have a few options at this point. First, using the Move tool, grab a corner of your frame and drag out until you see the entire image. This does not change the size of the image: instead, it just opens up the frame so you can see more of the image.

If you need to change the size of your image, as opposed to just changing the size of the frame, select the image with the Move tool. Then, select the Scale tool from the Tools palette. (this looks like a series of shrinking rectangles with an arrow). Click and drag a corner of the image to change the size of the image.

Hint: If you’d like to maintain the proportions of your image, hold down Shift as you’re dragging the image to scale. This will prevent it from becoming distorted.

If you’d like just to display part of an image in your InDesign document, you can also use the your frame to ‘crop’ your image, by leaving the frame smaller than the finished image. Similarly, the Circular and Polygonal Frame Tools allow you to show a circular section of your image.

Using the Fitting Tools

InDesign also has a set of tools which allow you to fit an image exactly to a frame, or vice versa. Once you have placed an image in a frame, go to the Object menu, and roll over the Fitting section. This will bring up some options for fitting your image to your frame.

Selecting Fit Content to Frame will stretch or shrink your image to fill the frame you have selected. Conversely, selecting Fit Frame to Content will stretch or shrink your frame to fit your image. You can also use the Center Content in Frame function to center an image in a frame.

Adding Text to Documents

Adding text to an InDesign document works a lot like adding an image. You must create a frame for your text prior to inserting or typing it. Once you’ve created a frame, the text you add will automatically wrap to fit your frame. So, you can easily create a small, paragraph-shaped body of text to fit above, below or beside your image. Again, there are several ways to do this.

First, let’s try creating a frame using the Type tool.

1) Click on the Type tool in the Tool palette. Unlike Illustrator, you cannot simply start typing with the tool: first you must click and drag to create a rectangular field for the text. Once you’ve created a field, you can simply click inside it and start typing, or copy and paste text from Microsoft Word or another wordprocessing program. That’s it. You can use the Move tool to scale your frame to fit more text if needed.

2) You can also create a text frame using the Frame tools, much like we used the Frame tools to create frames for images. So, you can create circular or polygonal text frames as well. In essence, any shape you draw, whether with the Pen, Pencil or Shape tools, can become a frame: just click in inside it with the Type tool and start typing, or paste in text from another program.

Creating a Background

You can use the Rectangle tool, as in Illustrator, to create a field of color for the background of your PDF. Once you’ve drawn it, go to Object: Arrange: Send to Back to place the rectangle behind all of the other frames in your document.

Adding a Page

If you need to add another page to your portfolio, go to the Layout menu, and select Add Page. This inserts a page above your current page. Similarly, you can use this menu to delete pages you do not need.

For Next Week:

Start gathering images and text for your portfolio PDF, and begin layout.

Online Postcard Ordering Made Easy

We will be using OvernightPrints.com to order postcards for this project. As mentioned previously, they offer a short run of 25 postcards for $8.95 plus shipping. We will order the postcards in enough time to avoid paying for rush shipping or fast turnaround- this is a good practice, as it saves money and leaves you the option of re-printing the postcards in case something goes wrong the first time around.

There are numerous considerations in ordering postcards, but the most important thing to keep in mind is the standard resolution of 300dpi for print. The finished image for the front of your postcard must be 300dpi at 4.25” x 6.25”. You will be ordering 4” x 6” postcards- the extra quarter inch will allow for ‘bleed’ in the postcard. More on that later. Here are the basic steps to start creating your postcard.

1)             Go to www.overnightprints.com

2)             On the main page, click on Design Guide on the header menu.

            This will bring you to a page with a list of possible design programs for your postcard. Click on Adobe Illustrator in the list of programs.

3)            Scroll down to 4” x 6” Postcard in the menu of templates. Click on “Download Start File.” This will download a copy of the Illustrator template file to your computer, which you can then modify to create your postcard.

4)            Open the 4”x 6” Postcard file in Adobe Illustrator. There are lots of useful instructions embedded in the file. Make sure to read them over. The file is built with multiple layers, each with a different set of information. Depending on the design of your postcard, you will use these templates to lay out your design, and then delete the layers with the template information once the design is complete.

5)             Initially, the template opens showing the Safe Zone (red), the Trim Mark

(blue), and the Artboard (black). Overall dimensions for your design on the front of the postcard should be 6.25” x 4.25.” This will allow your design to seamlessly cover the front of the postcard. Your entire design should fit within the red Safe Zone, but you should extend your background image or color all the way to the edge of the artboard to ensure the edges are uniform.

6)            If you are simply using a bitmap image for the front of the card you can produce a file in Photoshop that is 6.25” x 4.25” at 300dpi, and upload it without using a template.

7)             If you are using Illustrator to create the front of your card, turn off visibility for all layers except Design (the eye icon in the Layers menu) and lay out the front of your card in the Design layer. When you are finished, turn on the Safe Zone layer to check that your design fits in the Safe Zone, make any changes needed, and then delete all layers except the Design layer by dragging them into the trashcan at the bottom of the Layers menu.

8)             Go to File: Save As and save your file as “PostcardFront.ai” or something similar.

9)             Open the “4x6” Postcard” template file with Illustrator again. This will bring up the file so you can lay out the back of your postcard. This is slightly more complicated, as the back of the postcard must meet USPS regulations in order to go through the mail.

10)             Turn off visibility for the Safe Zone layer

11)            Turn on visibility for the Postal Regulations layer. This will show you the area you can use for text on the back of your postcard. You cannot place text or designs in the red area of the card. Yellow areas can be used for your design. All images and text on the back of your postcard must be black and white.

12)            Turn off visibility for the Postal Regulations layer, and lay out your design in the Design layer. Once you’ve completed your design, turn on the Postal Regulations layer again to check that your design fits in the yellow area. Make any changes necessary, check again, then delete all layers except the Design layer, by dragging them into the trashcan at the bottom of the Layers menu.

13)             Save your file as “PostcardBack.ai” or something similar. Now you’re ready to upload you files and order your card. We will cover this in class next week, and I will go over the process again on November 18th when we order our cards in class.

Illustrator Part 3: Output from Illustrator

Illustrator can output files in numerous ways. Preparing your artwork for output is the final stage of a project in Illustrator. The type of output you choose will depend on the nature of your project and the intended use of your output files. For your Small Packages project, the two types of output you need to employ are printing directly from an Illustrator document, and creating a PDF document of your poster.

Printing from Illustrator

The print dialogue in Illustrator differs from the print interface in Photoshop. Still, some of the information in the printer’s print dialogue is similar. Your main concern is ensuring that your document is properly oriented on the paper you will be using. Make sure to click the vertical or horizontal icon as appropriate, so that your document is properly aligned. Once this is done, hit Print. This will bring up the printer’s print settings dialogue. Under Print Settings, make sure to set the media type to the appropriate type for the paper you’re using. If your poster has large bitmap images in it, use the ‘top-quality photo’ setting under ‘advanced’, if not, use the ‘text and graphics’ setting in the Print Settings dialogue. Double-check that you’ve got the settings right, then hit print.

Saving PDFs from Illustrator.

A PDF is a fairly universal document format that accommodates both text and images in a compact, read-only form that can be viewed on most computers. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. You will need to create a PDF of your box layout at a web-friendly size in order to email it to me.

Creating a PDF in Illustrator is a little more complex than simply hitting Print and then PDF (for those used to Mac PDF output). To create a PDF, go to File: Save As. When the dialogue pops up, select Adobe PDF from the drop-down menu. Name your file, and select a location to save it. Click Save.

This will bring up the PDF dialogue, which allows you to adjust the settings and size of your PDF. Under General, there are a few settings to adjust. Make sure ‘Preserve Illustrator Editing Capacities’ and ‘Embed Page Thumbnails’ are unchecked- you don’t need them for a one-page PDF, and they will increase your file size.

Click on Compression. This is the most important setting for getting your poster down to web size. Under Compression, you can set the resolution for bitmap images in your poster. Under Color Bitmap Images, select “Bicubic Downsampling To” and set the resolution to 72 dpi for images over 100 dpi. This will ensure that the images in your poster are close to 72 dpi, the standard for web viewing. Then, select JPEG under Compression.

If you have grayscale images in your poster, use the same settings under Grayscale Images. Do the same for monochrome images if you have them.

Finally, make sure the “Compress Text and Line Art” box is checked at the bottom of the dialogue. This will ensure that your text is compressed, minimizing the size of your final file.

Hit Save PDF.

This should generate a PDF that’s of a reasonable size for web viewing.

Please note that a web PDF with images in it will not give good results if printed: if you intend to print your PDF, you need to have all of the images in at 300dpi, just like printing from Photoshop. When saving the PDF, select Do Not Downsample in the Compression window- this means all your images will stay at 300 dpi.

For Next Week:

1) Print two copies of your box for critique on November 4th

2) Cut out and assemble one copy of your box layout (Use glue, not tape, please!)

3) Email me a web-friendly PDF of your box layout by Thursday the 3^rd at 8pm.

4) Bring both the flat layout of your box, and the assembled version with your object inside to critique on Friday the 4^th.

Illustrator Part 2: Images, Background, Arrangement of Objects

Now that you are familiar with the basic drawing tools in Illustrator, it’s time to discuss some of the tools Illustrator has for layout and arranging the objects you produce, as well as for adding raster images from other sources to your layouts in Illustrator.

Layers in Illustrator

Layers in Illustrator function much like layers in Photoshop. You can create a new layer using the icon shaped like a page of paper at the bottom of the Layers menu. Each layer has a color swatch beside it: objects on that layer are outlined in that color when they are selected. Unlike Photoshop, you can edit objects in all layers at once in Illustrator. This can become confusing: in Illustrator it is generally more important to lock layers you’re not using to make layout simpler. This can be done by clicking in the empty box next to the Eye icon in the layer menu. If a padlock icon shows up in this space, that layer is locked. Click it again to unlock and edit that layer. I generally advise having at least three layers in Illustrator: a background layer with a base image, a layer for your Illustrator graphics, and a top layer for text if you’re using text.

The Arrange Tool

It is easy to move objects from layer to layer in Illustrator. To do so, simply select the object you’d like to move, then select the layer you’d like to move it to in the Layers menu. Then go to Object: Arrange: Send to Current Layer. This moves your object to the active layer. You can also use the Move Forward or Move Backward commands: these move your object forward or backward within the current layer.

The Align Menu

Illustrator can also precisely align objects for you. Go to Window: Align to get the Align palette. This palette shows you a series of rectangles, indicating how you can align objects. Try selecting two or more objects, then clicking on these options. Illustrator will then automatically align the tops, sides, bottoms, middles, centers, etc. of your objects.

Grouping Objects

Another useful tool we touched on last class is the Group function. Grouping objects locks them together, so you can move multiple graphics or text blocks at once. To group objects, simply select the objects you’d like to group (by dragging a marquee over all of them, or clicking on them and holding down Shift) then go to Object: Group. Once objects are grouped, they will all automatically be selected when you click one of them. To ungroup objects, simply go to Object: Ungroup.

Placing Raster Images

You can also easily add bitmap images to layouts in Illustrator. Make sure you do not copy and paste them from another program, however: this gives poor results. To place an image in Illustrator, go to File: Place. This will bring up a menu which allows you to select an image from your computer to place in Illustrator. Illustrator then lets you scale and transform the image in your layout. Bear in mind that an image must be at 300dpi resolution at the size you’ll print it to look good: the same resolution rules apply for raster images in Illustrator as in Photoshop. So, this function would allow you to use a photograph as a background image with your letters or graphics over it.

The Live Trace Tool

Once you’ve placed a raster image in Illustrator, you can also easily convert it to a vector image. Converting full-color photographs in Illustrator can be done, but I generally advise using the Live Trace tool with more graphic, monochrome images: it produces more consistent, editable results. The Live Trace tool has many settings: generally, it is necessary to play with the settings and preview their results before producing a final vector graphic. It may also be necessary to edit your image in Photoshop before converting it for better results. In particular, increasing the contrast in an image can help before converting it. To use the Live Trace tool:

1. Place a raster image for conversion in your working Illustrator file, using File: Place

2. Go to Object: Live Trace: Tracing Options. This will bring up a dialogue that allows you to adjust settings for tracing.

3. Adjust settings.  Select the Preview box, as this will allow you to see what your final traced image will look like. There are numerous preset tracing options in the drop-down menu, which allow you to select for color and some basic settings. Move through them to see which might work best for you. Once you’re close, you can adjust the settings manually.

4. Adjust the Threshold number. Higher numbers capture more information and produce denser vector images.

5. Select whether you’d like to create Fills, Strokes or both- this will determine whether you’re creating shapes as well as outlines (remember paths and fills from last week?) These settings change the look of your image dramatically.

6. Adjust Path Fitting and Minimum Area: these settings control how accurately your tracing follows the pixels of your raster image.

Generally, you want adjust your settings until you have a vector graphic that looks good to you. Converted vector graphics are generally messy in terms of the paths they create, and become very big very fast. Once an image is converted, you can go to Object: Expand, and then select portions of it to edit individually. Still, this editing is tedious and complex: feel free to try it, but generally I would advise getting as close as you can with Live Trace and minimizing editing. Once you see what your image looks like traced, you can also go back in Photoshop and alter the original to produce better tracing results.

Editing and Joining Paths

Going back to our discussion of paths, you can also ‘build’ paths from multiple shapes. For example, you can join segments of a circle and a square to produce a complex shape. To do this, draw out a circle and a square as paths, with ‘no fill’ selected. (do this from the shape tool). Then, select the Scissors Tool (under the Eraser Tool). The Scissors Tool allows you to ‘cut’ a path in sections. Click on a section of your circle to cut it- click again on another point to cut it into two sections. You can then take the Move Tool, and select part of your object- move it away or delete it of you don’t need it. Do the same cutting process with your square. Move your circle next to your square. Then, take the Direct Selection tool, and click on one of the end points of your circle, hold down Shift, and then click on an end point of your square. Go to Object: Path: Join. This should join the two paths into one long path. You can use this process to produce complex and precise paths.

The Pathfinder Menu

Go to Window: Pathfinder to activate the Pathfinder palette. The Pathfinder is another method for creating single paths around complex objects. By experimenting with the different settings, you can trace the outline of shapes you have drawn, add shapes to a path, or subtract them from a path. Experiment with layering objects and selecting the various results. The Pathfinder comes in particularly handy when designing paths for output to machines other than regular inkjet printers.

Gradients

Finally, you can also create gradients to as fills for your objects. To do this, click on the Gradient box beneath the Stroke/Fill menu. You can then select the two endpoints and select colors to fill them. This creates a gradient between the two colors.

For Next Week:

Make a final Illustrator line drawing for your box. Plan graphics for your box, and locate any images you will be using for your layout.  

Illustrator Basics

Vector vs. Raster (bitmap) graphics

Instead of a grid of pixels, Illustrator works by creating vectors, or mathematical equations which represent the shapes you draw. This means that it is poorly suited for work with photographs, but works well for graphic design and creating drawn illustrations. Any image or shape you draw in Illustrator can be scaled infinitely up and down, because there is no pixel-based information associated with it. Your shapes will stay crisp through any transformation. Additionally, text is represented as a vector in Illustrator, making it easy to graphically transform text in Illustrator. Vectors can be used for different types of output- laser cutters, or other CNC (computer-numeric-control) machinery. Finally, vector graphics are easy to move around, take apart, and re-assemble, without all the messy pixel-based work that these transformations would require in Photoshop.

Making a New Document

When you open Illustrator, the first thing you’ll need to do is to create a new document.  Go to File: New, and then input the size of the document you’d like. You can select Letter to create an 8.5”x11” sheet of paper. Use the horizontal and vertical images to select the orientation. Finally, verify that you are working in inches (or millimeters if you’d prefer), and hit OK.

The Anatomy of Illustrator

While Illustrator works very differently than Photoshop, the interfaces are largely similar. Across the top of the window you’ll find menu bars, which make global adjustments to your work. Immediately beneath the menu bars you’ll find a second tool area, with buttons that change based on the tool you have selected. Along the left side of the window you’ll find a toolbar just like Photoshop (but with some different tools). Finally, on the right, you’ll find a series of palettes which you can show or hide based on the tools you’re currently working with. Illustrator also has layers, though unlike Photoshop, you can edit objects on multiple layers at once in Illustrator.

The Artboard

In Illustrator, you have a bounded box which is the size of your finished product- for example, an 8.5 x 11” sheet of paper. This is the artboard. Illustrator CS5 allows you to have multiple artboards to lay out multiple pages of a document at the same time- you’ll stick to one artboard for now. Outside your artboard is space to store objects and images in progress, because working in Illustrator typically involves assembling many components into a finished product. When you print from Illustrator, only the area inside your document bounds will print. However, Illustrator does save the entire area and anything on it in your working Illustrator file. So, think of the area outside your artboard as ‘scratch paper.’

Illustrator supports multiple artboards. This is much like working on several sheets of paper at once. You will likely not have need for this function this semester, but it comes in handy when working on large projects.

Paths and Anchor Points

On the simplest level, an Illustrator drawing consists of a large number of lines, or paths. These are lines which can be joined to make up shapes. Any path you work with in Illustrator has a series of anchor points along it. Usually these occur at corners (say the corner of a square), but they can exist along straight or curved lines as well. Think of anchor points as ‘handles’- you can grab them with the Direct Selection tool to distort or change an object’s shape.  My favorite metaphor for paths is a rubber band stretched over pegs. If you remove a peg, the band will snap straight between the two pegs nearest to the one you removed. Anchors work just like these pegs, creating hard corners or curved corners.

A path has a ‘stroke’ or line weight, which you can change. With a path selected, look in the upper toolbar. You’ll see a drop down menu, from where you can select various line weights to create a thin or a fat line. Bear in mind, however, that this is just a ‘graphic’- the path itself is just the line at the center of your stroke. Think of the stroke as decoration applied to the path.

Path vs. Fills

When you create a shape in Illustrator, it has two basic parts: a Stroke and a Fill. A Stroke functions like an outline. Once you have closed off an area using a path, you can fill it with a color or texture from the Color Picker- in the lower left hand corner of the toolbar. Shapes that Illustrator creates also have stroke and fill information. You can select the colors of your strokes and fills at the bottom of the tool palette. Every shape, letter, or object in Illustrator has a path which outlines it. There are two boxes in the lower left of the tool palette: one is solid, the other is open inside.  The solid box selects your fill color, and the open box selects your stroke  color. By using the three boxes beneath them, you can pick colors, gradients (more on this later) or ‘no fill’. The ‘no fill’ selection makes your shape empty (this is different from ‘white’, because you can see objects below an object with ‘no fill’, but not a white one). Making your paths ‘no fill’ reduces them to a line which is only visible when you select it. You can select the thickness of your strokes from the top menu bar- but bear in mind that this will simply expand your stroke on both sides of the actual path line.

Selection Tools

The Move Tool

The first tool to become familiar with is the ‘move tool’- this is the first arrow tool in the palette- a solid black arrow. This tool selects entire objects by clicking on them (notice how an object becomes outlined when it is selected), and can be used to move objects around the artboard.

The move arrow tool can also be used to transform objects- try grabbing a corner of a rectangle or circle and distorting it with the move tool. The Move Tools the first and simplest of the selection tools. It is generally used to select and move an entire object at once.

The Direct Selection Tool

Next to the Move Tool is another arrow tool, but this one is hollow. This tool lets you select and alter individual ‘anchor points’ on an object. This is useful mostly when editing a specific path, or moving one anchor point on the path. Use it when you’d like to distort a shape from one specific point.

Drawing Tools

The Shape tool

Find the tool in the tool palette that looks like a rectangle. Click on it. It defaults to a rectangle, but you can also select the Rounded Rectangle, Circle, etc. from the menu. This tool produces a closed path with a fill inside it- just click and drag until it’s the size you’d like. Now that you have this path drawn, try altering it. Get the Move tool, and grab one of the corner anchor points. This will scale the entire rectangle up or down. Try grabbing a side anchor point- this will stretch the rectangle up or down. You can do the same thing with any object in Illustrator.

The Pen Tool

The Pen Tool is probably the most important tool you’ll use in Illustrator. It is the simplest tool for editing paths. When you’re drawing a path, the Pen Tool puts down an anchor point every time you click your mouse- but it tends to generate jagged paths, as it draws straight lines from point to point. However, you can use the Pen Tool to add anchor points to a line (place the cursor over a path segment without an anchor point), or delete anchor points from a line (place the Pen Tool over an anchor point). Deleting points will radically change the shape you’re working on, but adding points will not- they just become additional points for you to use in distorting or editing your object. Try using the Pen Tool to create an irregular shape, and make sure you connect your shape with its starting point. You can then fill the shape with any color you’d like. If you have a Fill color selected, the Pen Tool will attempt to fill in your lines as you go- it is often better simply to set it to No Fill when you’re drawing and then fill your shape when you’re done.

The Pencil Tool

The Pencil Tool is a simpler version of the Pen Tool, which lets you draw curves freehand. Instead of putting down anchor points individually, the Pencil Tool simply ‘guesses’ and puts down anchor points along the curve you drew with it. You can then edit these points with the Pen Tool.

The Type Tool

Illustrator is great for type, because it not only lets you type normally, but also lets you edit your letters as vector graphics. Click on the Type tool (the large T) and you can type anywhere on your page. Just for an example, because this will be useful as you’re working with letters, type one word in a large font (you can either stretch an already typed word, or select a large font size from the menu above). Then go to Type: Create Outlines. Once you do this, you can’t edit your text anymore with the Type tool, but it transforms your text into a shape you can edit with your Pen tool- see the anchor points? This is very useful for transforming letters.

For Next Week:

Make a final paper prototype for your box.

Composting Part Two

There are as many ways to composite images in Photoshop as there are people who composite images. After a while, you will develop a set of tools and tricks that you will use repeatedly. For now, we’ll discuss a few more advanced compositing techniques, which will help you produce more convincing images. These may or may not be relevant to your specific application, but they should serve as a useful point of departure as you’re working on your images.

Using Filters

Filters can be very useful tools in compositing. However, it’s very easy to over-use filters: they’re among the top causes of ‘bad photoshop.’ There are a few that are useful in our specific case, however. One of the big problems you’ll run into as you try to make a digital photograph resemble an image you’ve scanned is the grain of the images. Grain means the fine texture of the image, when you’ve zoomed in very close. Mass-produced images printed on an offset press have what’s called a Moire pattern- it’s the fine distribution of dots you’ll see when zoomed in very close. Digital photos look much smoother when you zoom in. Here’s a useful process for making the grain match slightly better:

With the background layer selected, go to Filters: Blur. Select Gaussian Blur, and input a radius between 1 and 2 pixels (see what works best for your image). This should smooth out the Moire pattern, but it leaves a soft, undefined quality in the image. To fix this, go to Filters: Sharpen: Unsharp Mask. Use these settings: Amount: 20 %, Radius: 50 pixels, Threshold: 0 levels. This should get you close, and help sharpen up your softened background.

Another possible method is to add grain to your digital images. To do this, select the layer with your digital image on it. Go to Filter: Noise: Add Noise. Start with a small amount (10% or so) and use Gaussian distribution. You’ll see this adds some grit to your image. Working on both the background and foreground, you can obtain a fairly close match in grain.

More Useful Tools

There are a few more tools in the Toolbar that can help with compositing. First off, I’ll cover some more advanced settings for the Clone Stamp tool.

With the Clone Stamp tool selected, click on the Brush menu in the Control Panel at the top of the window. The two main things to play with here are the size and hardness of the brush. If you’re doing a fairly extensive cleanup process, my general principle is to start with the brush small and hard, and fully opaque (you can adjust opacity in Control Panel as well. Once you’ve gotten the rough work done, decrease the hardness of the brush, increase the size, and drop the opacity. This will allow you to smooth out and blend your copied area into the image. This process is particularly useful if you have to remove the ‘gutter’ of a book from the center of your scanned image.

Burn and Dodge Tools

The Dodge tool looks like a black version of the Zoom tool. It’s used to lighten an area of an image. It’s useful for opening up dark areas in your composited image. Use it carefully: make sure your brush is set rather soft, and start carefully, with Exposure around 50%. Notice that it lightens the area quickly: the trick is getting an even-looking lightened effect.

The Burn Tool is the opposite of the Dodge Tool- it darkens an area of your image. This is useful for adding shadows to your composited image. Use it the same way as the Dodge Tool, but again, go easy at first. It’s located under the Dodge Tool in the flyout menu.

Blur, Sharpen and Smudge

These tools work similarly to the Burn and Dodge tools, but do slightly different things: rather than darkening or lightening an area, they blur or sharpen the area slightly. This is useful for adjusting edges of a composited image, to make them clearer or softer and help blend them into the background. Again, start with Strength around 50%, and adjust as needed.

Using the Transform Tools

We briefly mentioned the Transform tools in the Edit menu, but they bear a bit more discussion. Many of them function similarly, but the Scale tool is the most commonly useful, followed by Perspective and Warp. The Perspective tool is particularly handy if you want to adjust the way your composited elements ‘sit’ in the image: it allows you to tweak how the image sits in a one-point perspective plane. Warp works by creating a grid of ‘handles’ over the image: grab any one of them to distort that portion of the image.

Use Scale and Warp carefully though: if you blow something up much larger than it originally was, you can end up with a pixilated image. Generally, to use the Transform tools, select the layer you’d like to transform, go to Edit: Transform, pick the type of transformation you’d like to use, then adjust the image using the handles which appear around it. If you don’t like your transformation, click outside your image, and a dialog box will ask whether you’d like to apply the transformation. Click ‘no’, and your image will revert to its original state. You can do the same to apply a transformation, or you can simply double-click on the image.

Capturing Digital Images and Beginning Compositing

This week, we will discuss the basics of capturing digital images on Macs, as well as beginning to composite images. You will need to shoot a few digital images to composite into your scanned images. This can be done with any digital camera that provides high-enough resolution- even your phone if you can make that work. If you don’t have access to any form of digital camera, there are digital cameras that can be checked out from the Library.

At this point, we aren’t going to get too involved with techniques for shooting digital photographs- just set your camera to Auto mode and point-and-shoot. If you have more experience with digital photography, feel free to shoot however you’d like, but don’t feel like you need special photo skills to complete the assignment. One tip: If you can set resolution on your digital camera, set it as high as possible, and shoot in TIFF mode if you can.

Once you have your images on your camera, the next trick is getting them onto your computer. The technique for doing this varies depending on the camera, but the principle remains the same: your camera functions like a remote hard drive (like your thumb drive) from which you can select and copy files to your computer.

If you have a dock, or another system for capturing images, go ahead and use it. If not, most digital cameras have a USB adapter cord. These instructions are based on using a USB cord and the Mac program Image Capture.

Here’s what you do:

1) Make sure your camera is turned off.

2) Connect the USB cord to your camera and your computer.

3) Turn on the camera.

4) Go to Macintosh HD/Applications/Image Capture, and start Image Capture

5) In the dialog box, select Download Some

6) Choose the folder you’d like to download to (Desktop is fine)

7) Select the images you’d like to download, and click Download.

Beginning Compositing

Now, I’d like to start discussing the basics of compositing images. First, we’ll go over the basic areas in the Photoshop window. They are as follows:

1) Across the top, we have the drop-down Menu area. Each of these menus has many options associated with it: generally they are global commands that affect the entire image.

2) On the left side of the screen is the Toolbar. Tools from the Toolbar are generally used to select or change only a portion of an image.

3) Underneath the Menu area is another palette: this changes based on the tool you select from the Toolbar. Generally, the items here will give you more control or allow you to access special features of the tool you’re using.

4) On the right, you will find a selection of palettes. You can customize the palettes displayed here by going to Window and selecting the palette you’d like. For now, go to Window: Layers and make sure your Layers palette is visible- we’ll be using this a lot as we start to edit.

5) In the center you will find your image. Note that there is some additional information displayed around it: the file size, the level of Zoom you are currently set to, etc.

Compositing images in Photoshop is a complex task with many subtleties. It’s a bit more of an art than a science, but we’ll cover some of the basic principles to make compositing easier. First, we’ll go over some basic adjustments and cleanup for your scanned images- it’s easier to composite if you start with a good image.

Basic Image Cleanup

After you’ve finished rotating and cropping your background image, the first thing to do is get it to print size. Don’t ever start working on a composite without knowing the print size: knowing your print size tells you how big your finished image needs to be, and can save you a lot of unnecessary work. Generally, if the image looks OK when you’re zoomed in to 100% in Photoshop, it should look OK printed, in terms of resolution and composited effects. Color is another matter entirely, but we will discuss this later.

So, go to Image: Image Size and size your image to the largest dimensions that will fit on an 8.5x 11” sheet of paper (leave yourself about a ½” margin all around), and reduce your resolution to 300 dpi. You should already have these saved as 300dpi PSD files, with 10” as the longest dimension.

If your scanned image is rotated oddly, here’s a handy trick to get it perfectly aligned. Find a line which should be horizontal. Grab the Ruler tool from the Toolbar (it lives behind the Eyedropper, in the flyout menu). Draw a line with the Ruler over the line you’d like to be horizontal. Then, go to Image: Adjustments: Rotate Canvas: Arbitrary. In the rotate menu, the number of degrees you’ll need to rotate to make your line horizontal will pop up. Hit OK. Once this is done, you’ll need to crop the image. Grab the Crop tool, make sure all your values in the menu bar are empty, and crop out any white space which shows up after rotating.

The Layers Palette

You’ll be doing a lot of work with the Layers palette as you’re starting to composite in Photoshop, so let’s take a minute to look at it. You should just have one layer at this point, labeled “Background.” Layers in Photoshop allow you to ‘stack’ images to create a finished image. Layers in the Layers palette are arranged from the top down- so the top layer in the Layers palette is the top layer in your image. If you can’t see something in your image, the arrangement of your layers is the first thing to check.

To make a new layer (with nothing on it), click on the little page of paper at the bottom of the Layers palette. You can also rename layers if you’d like. Clicking and dragging layers allows you to change the order of layers. Finally, clicking on the eye next to a layer hides its contents- so you can ‘turn off’ a layer if you don’t want to see it.

The big thing to remember with layers is that you can only edit one layer at a time. If Photoshop won’t let you edit part of an image, it’s probably because it’s not on the layer you’ve selected. This is really important, and can get confusing fast. So, make a habit of naming your layers right away- so you can click on the Astronaut layer when you want to edit the Astronaut, for example.

As a first step, go to Select: Select All, then Edit:Copy your image. Go to File: New. This will make a new document which is the same size as your image. Go ti Edit: Paste. This will place your image on a new layer in your new file. This is now your working canvas. This allows you to edit your background more easily- unless it’s copied, you can’t move it around.

General Image Corrections

1) In the Image: Adjustments menu, you will find a large number of adjustment controls for your entire image. Say you don’t like the colors, or the contrast, or would like increase the saturation- you can do all of these things here. At this point I’m more interested in familiarizing you with the options, than giving all the really technical details- play with these if you’d like. If you don’t like something, you can always hit Command-Z and undo it.

Some Useful Tools

In the Toolbar, there are several tools that are useful to know right off the bat. Always remember: if there’s a little arrow at the lower left of a tool, click and hold down on it for more tools hiding underneath it. We will discuss a few more of these tools next week.

1) The Move Tool. This is the top tool on the menu, with an arrow. You can move objects back and forth in the varied layers. Just select the layer, and click + drag, or use your keyboard arrow keys to move objects around. Remember: you can only move objects on the active layer. Select the layer with the object you’d like to move before moving it.

2) The Lasso Tools. These are great for selecting and copying an area of an image. They work slightly differently- the regular Lasso tool just lets you draw an area to select, but the Polygonal Lasso works well for outlining objects, as you can click on a series of points to outline the object. The Magnetic Lasso is good for isolating people or objects- it ‘snaps’ to edges of color variation. Use it carefully.

3) The Healing Brush tool. This looks like a band-aid. The Healing Brush eliminates small defects or spots in an image by sampling the pixels around the point you want to clean up. In order to use it, hold down Option and click a ‘good’ area of the image near the spot you’d like to clean up. This gives the Healing Brush a point to sample from. Then, click on the point you’d like to clean up, and it should be ‘healed’ away. Bear in mind that the Healing Brush doesn’t work well near edges or areas of sharp contrast, as it will bring too much of the contrasting color into the sampled area.

4) The Brush Tool. Painting or drawing with brushes doesn’t usually help too much with compositing, but for now, be aware that it’s there. Same goes for the Eraser tool. These do have applications in advanced compositing, but we will discuss that later if needed.

5) The Clone Stamp tool- this looks like a rubber stamp. The Clone Stamp tool works a lot like the Healing Brush, but think of it as an actual rubber stamp. Rather than blurring together pixels from the sample area with pixels from the healed area, the Clone Stamp just copies the area you select onto a new part of the picture. Option-Click on the sample area, then click with the Clone Stamp to replicate part of the image in a new place.

6) The Zoom Tool. This one is key. It looks like a magnifying glass. Whenever you do something by hand in compositing, zoom in to 100% to check that it looks OK. The Zoom Tool defaults to zooming in (it shows up with a plus sign in the magnifying glass): hold down Option, and it will toggle to a minus to zoom out. Just click on the area of the image you’d like to zoom in on.

Selecting and Copying Images

Now we’ll take a look at a few tricks for selecting and copying images. Generally, think of this as copying and pasting text, but just with images. The one thing to bear in mind is that images have to be of the same resolution if you want to copy and paste them together and have them end up the same size. You can certainly copy and paste a 300dpi image into a 72 dpi image, but it will end up enormous in the 72dpi image- so it’s easiest to start out with images at the same resolution. If you do end up with a scale problem, check resolution first- it’s a common cause.

To select an image, start with the Lasso tool or the Polygonal Lasso tool. Draw entirely around the object you want to copy. This should bring up a blinking marquee around the object. You could just go to Edit: Copy and then Edit: Paste the image into your background, but let’s try to make it look at bit better.

Go up to the Select menu, and then Modify Selection. This brings up a wide range of options- generally, you want to slightly feather your edges to help blend the image into your background, and there are numerous other controls you can play with to refine your edges.

Finally, if the scale of a pasted image is wrong, you can tweak it by going to Edit: Transform: Scale. This will let you perform some basic scaling on your image.

Also, note that Photoshop automatically creates a new layer whenever you paste into another image- this helps a lot as you’re building up a large composite image.

A Helpful Note:

Please, please, please, feel free to experiment with Photoshop. This is truly the best way to learn.  I will be introducing you to the set of tools I usually use to composite images in Photoshop: but there are many other ways to do it.  Always experiment and play with new features and menus: if you don’t like the result, just hit Command-Z. So, if you’re stuck, try poking around the menus or looking at different tools: come with questions, and I’ll help out.

For Next Week: Shoot and capture your digital images. Start playing around with compositing them, and bring how-to questions to class next week.