Welcome to Tyler!

Tyler Pre-College Summer Workshop 2012

Digital Illustration and Design (2D)

The world has become increasingly digitized. By integrating digital photography, existing images, and found objects, students will explore visual organization to discover new design solutions. Technical and aesthetic skills will integrate design elements of color, form, typography and composition. This workshop will focus on introducing the computer as a design tool. Students will create visually stimulating work using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on a Mac platform. Basic computer skills are recommended.

This ten-day workshop will allow artists to examine the basic tools and abilities of both Illustrator and Photoshop with a certain degree of depth, and will facilitate future ease of use.  While ten days isn’t enough to really break through and learn it all, artists will feel comfortable exploring details and options on their own, and will have a good idea how to use the computer as an artmaking tool as well as integrating design principles.

The following course outline shows chronology and tools used, though the projects may vary to provide a little wiggle room.

	Program	Tools used, skills learned	Project
1	Intro to Mac, intro to Illustrator	Navigating the Mac, design basics, getting online, understanding vectors, navigating Illustrator
2	Illustrator	Shape tools, color modes, outline, fill, pattern & gradient – desaturation, repetition & scale impact on focal point	Still life w/variations
3	Illustrator	Pencil tool, transparency, stroke, brushes, grouping & locking shapes; more advanced shape & line tools – picture planes & visual path	Framed illustration
4	Illustrator	Pen tool, autotrace, layers	Self portrait with alter ego
5	Illustrator	More sophisticated tools	Self portrait with alter ego
6	Photoshop	Basic digital photography, taking & downloading photos, levels, color adjustments, contrast & brightness, resolution & file size	Basic photo alterations – diptych, saturated & desaturated color, b&w
7	Photoshop	Selecting, feathering, layering, creating a composite image	The mashup
8	Photoshop	Filters, stamp tool, cropping, scanning, print size, printing	Collaborative composite image
9		Bringing Illustrator into Photoshop	Vector & texture
10		Bringing Illustrator into Photoshop	Vector & texture

All projects, topics and tools will be posted online at http://nat-at-tyler.blogspot.com/ for your perusal.  If you forget a particular detail, feel free to email me at that.nat.bard@gmail.com and I can refer you to a blog post, or explain things more fully.

importing illustrator to photoshop

You can open an illustrator file in photoshop, and then combine that image with other pixel based images, including the addition of texture -which is a great look.

In photoshop, go to file - open and select your illustrator file. In the following popup window, adjust your resolution to 300dpi and hit open. It'll take a moment as photoshop rasterizes your vector file, and then it's open. If your file opens and it doesn't include your entire composition, that's because it opens only what fits on the artboard of your illustrator file - just go back to illustrator and resize your composition so it fits on the artboard, save it and then open again in photoshop.

At this point, you can add other files and play with blending modes & opacity. Use the magic wand to select areas on your illustrator drawing - it's really easy for the wand to select areas since the vector drawing is so clean and has distinct edges.

photoshop panorama

There are 2 ways to combine several photos and create a panoramic photo.

First:

open all your photos

check the image size (image menu - image size)

create a new file with enough space for all 3 (3 photos that are 8x10" means you need a new file that's 8x30")

copy and paste the first 2 photos

drop the opacity on one photo so you can see through to where it matches up (50% or so)

use your transform tools (skew, distort or warp) to make it match

play with the puppet warp (edit-puppet warp) to add pins and adjust multiple anchor points

clean the seam (if it's really obvious) with the erase tool, and adjust the opacity to nibble

adjust color balance or brightness/contrast if color or values differ

keep adding other files

use the crop tool to tidy up the borders and delete unused negative space

Or:

go to File-Automate-Photomerge

select the source files (I use 'add open files' to keep it simple) and hit OK

this merges things automatically, but it doesn't always do the best job, so you may need to use the steps above to tidy up

figure/ground...

For the next project, we'll consider the figure/ground relationship. Take a whole mess of photos of people and places - think about things that are specific to your time here at Tyler, and things that come from your everyday life at home. We'll combine the two in a panoramic image tomorrow.

Come with several photos of space (landscape, buildings or micro-zoomed objects) in order to create a panoramic image.

Meanwhile, take a look at Kahn & Selesnick's website to see how they create montage work of people in space.

photomontage tools

Adding to the basic selection & adjustment tools from yesterday, you can create more subtle & unified compositions by playing with the following tools:

copy & paste (layers & move tool ‘auto select)

blending modes (shift + and - to cycle through options)

clone stamp (option click to set target, play with opacity & brush size)

healing brush

patch tool

free transform & transform options (edit menu, experiment with warp, distort & skew)

filters (use sparingly & with caution)

liquify filter (better than most filters, as it allows you to be selective with your changes)

blur/smudge/sharpen

burn/dodge/sponge (allows you to fine tune small light & dark areas, or de/saturate - helps create a focal point)

refine edge: after a selection is made hit the refine edge button (on the top menu bar) and tinker with your options - feather, smooth etc

masking layer (on layer palette, create a masking layer, use the paintbrush tool; black hides, white reveals)

history palette & snap shot - a great way to save multiple versions, so you can return to it later

Create a new file (8x10" at 300dpi) and paste in your photos - 3 figures, curious object, furniture, architectural element, map/diagram/chart. Take a look at Jane Hammond'spaintings to see how she unifies multiple objects through scale, color & transparency. Create a composition that avoids a central focal point, use repetition & variety and at least 20 layers for the final image.

photomontage prep

For tomorrow's class I'd like you to bring a bunch of photos to work with. Bring extra, just in case!

Bring:

3 (or more) expressive & dynamic human figures

an antique architectural element

a curious object

patterns/textures/abstractions

rectangular & circular shapes

The more you have, the more flexibility you've got.

basic photoshop tools

Basic tools:

Paintbrush (adjust size, opacity & hardness on menu toolbar)

Paintbucket (adjust opacity & tolerance)

Eraser (brush options just like paintbrush)

Color replacement brush (set the color in the foreground color picker)

Inverse selection

Use basic Image-Adjustment options to fine tune your images before you get started:levels, brightness/contrast(use legacy for more dramatic effects) color balance, hue & saturation
Use selection tools to grab areas - either to copy/paste or to manipulate color or light levels:marquee rectangle, lasso (polygonal & magnetic; delete to back up an anchor point at a time), magic wand(quick select is a mixed blessing) change the feathering options or refine edges afterwards for a smoother look
You can add to or subtractfrom a selection as well; hold shift & select to add more, hold option & select to remove an area. Remember that you can save a selection (select menu, save) and reopen it at a later date without losing any work.
Each layer has its own opacity & blending mode options on the layer palette.

For now, clean up 3 photos with the color & level options - one of each genre; landscape, portrait & abstraction. Then, create a new file and make 2 diptychs where the combination of 2 photo files makes a new relationship. Start by creating a new file, 8x10" at 300dpi (make 300 your default resolution), create a new layer (on layers palette) and use the selection marquee to draw out a border; fill it with the paintbucket tool.