name: Dominik Bartenstein
email: c00db@dmu.ac.uk
module: ISYS3074
Assignment #1: Business Cards
Prologue
By doing this assignment I have probably learned more about image manipulation than I have ever before. I haven't used Photoshop a lot before - it was just a tool for converting my scanned images from TIF to JPEG. This time I have made heavy use of the more advanced features of Photoshop - these are the results.
It took quite a bit in order to reactivate my right brain hemisphere after such a long time of logical thinking and totally neglecting my own creativity. The book "Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book" supported me in getting a better understanding of Photoshop. In the following paragraphs I describe where my ideas came from and what features of Photoshop I have used. The step by step description is far from comprehensive but it gives you an idea of how I came to the results.
Glassware Products
Initially I started with image #2 which is the Business Card for Glassware Products. The first association which came to my mind had to do with glass - what big surprise! That is the reason why I used the glass-filter for the background of this image. The background I have used ships with Windows 2000 and is called "Ocean Wave". The colours of this image have reminded me of a glass window my grandma has got I her house.
I manipulated the font according to the instructions given in the book "Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book" but I wasn't able to follow all the instructions so it turned out to look quite different. Nevertheless I was quite content with the outcome. The background of the font stems from the inverted image background. By accident I used the shortcut Ctrl+I instead of Ctrl+Shift+I which inverted the colour of the selection instead of inverting the selection. The image seemed to dark by then, so I decided to create the sun to illuminate the darkness.
- Copy+Paste the background "Ocean Wave" (PrtScreen)
- Resize the background
- Make copy of background (->Layer #2)
- Apply filter Gaussian Blur+Glas to background
- Create text "Glassware Products" (->Layer #3)
- Activate Layer #2 and Ctrl+Klick on Layer #3
- Invert colours + selection (Ctrl+I, Ctrl+Shift+I)
- Delete selection
- Apply layer effects on Layer #2
- Create a new layer (Layer #4)
- Use Marqueee to create a circle
- Use Gradient to fill circle with yellow/orange
- Apply filter Gaussian Blur to this layer
Second came image #3. Since I didn't encounter a nice font on my Windows system 'Haettenschweiler' was the font I chose. Instead of creating a colourful image I decided to limit myself to all shades of grey. Sometimes I make photographs with black-and-white films and the results are very impressive. That was my consideration when limiting myself to black-and-white. By using black and white in the text 'Typographer' I tried to ephasize on that particular part of the image. As a logical? consequence I decided to fill the background with grey - the colour which is in between black and white. The blurred text below was just an experiment with the blur filter but it turned out to look pretty nice so I kept it.
- Fill the background with grey (->Layer #1)
- Create texts "Typo", "grapher", "design and more" (->Layer #2, #3, #4)
- Skew all three text-layers
- Use filter Plastic Wrap o Layer #2
- Apply Gaussian Blur to Layer #2, #3+#4
- Apply several layer effects to Layer #2+#3
- Create new layer (->Layer #5)
- Activate Layer #5 and Ctrl+Klick on Layer #2,#3+#4
- Invert colours and selection (Ctrl+I, Ctrl+Shift+I)
- Move selection and apply filter radical Gaussian Blur
The last image (#1) is for Wahuu. Wahuu is an association my friends and I have founded to support the Bregenzerwald (the region in the western part of Austria where I come from). First I have choosen the background - 'Boiling Point' is its name and it also ships with Windows 2000. The background is very impressive especially the structure apealed to me. It looks so natural and therfore matches the Bregenzerwald perfectly. I blurred it and started to create the font layer. Due to lack of fonts in standard Windows 2000 I had to choose the font I have chosen. Again I applied several filters and other techniques according to the instructions given in "Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book". Because the font and the image background were of the same colour I set up a layer to manipulate the colour but preserving the structure. The brown horizontal stripe is intended to improve the overall image impression.
- Copy+Paste the background "Boiling Point" (PrintScreen)
- Apply Gaussian Blur to background
- Copy this layer (->Layer #2)
- Create text "WAHUU" and the flower (ITC Zapf Dingpads: a)
- Store white-and-black graphic of texts in an alpha channel (#4)
- Duplicate alpha channel (#5)
- Apply the filter "Plastic Wrap"
- several more steps ...
- Apply several layer effects to the text layers
- Insert a special channel which layer options->modus = hue
- Fill this layer with desired colours
"Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book" by Linnea Dayton&Jack David
ISBN 0-201-35371-7
created 10/10/2000 by Dominik & Emacs