Final Skills Audit

AS Media Production: Final Skills Audit Print Production

Name:                         Tutor group:              Date:

Photographic Skills

Which of the following photographic features/equipment have you used on a camera before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Manual Focus features	x		Used this while taking my different types of pictures for my composition photos. Could use more practice but a good knowledge gained.
Shutter Speed	x		Used when taking composition photos. A good knowledge gained but could be better. Could apply to different uses like a time lapse in one picture.
Aperture control		x
ISO Control		x
A tripod	x		Used a tripod to help my brother with some photo taking. We both needed to be in the picture and had no one to hold it so also used self timer.
External flash	x		Used this with soft boxes to light up my final project photo shoot.
Self timer facility	x		Used when taking shutter speed photos so me and my partner could both get in the picture, one as a model, one to move the light source around.
Light meter
Composition grids		x

Photoshop Skills

Which of the following features of Photoshop have you used before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Text control	x		Used it on my front cover to write my sell lines.
Filters		x
Brushes	x		Used them when making my Christmas card on my blog.
Layers	x		Used for all my Photoshop projects. Learned also how to rastify layers and add layers together.
Opacity control	x		Used this for my sepia effect by adding a yellow colour over the top of my picture and then making the opacity to 10% for the right hand side of my DPS.
Shape creation		x
Brightness and contrast control	x		Used this when editing my photo for my DPS to bring out the lights and make the dark tones more rich.
Gradients		x
Load selection features		x
Feathering		x
Colour curves adjustment		x
Resolution setting control		x
Magnetic lasso, polygon lasso tool		x
Cropping tool	x		Used this to get rid of the parts of the studio you could see on my photo for my from cover of my final project.
Clone tool		x
Retouch tool		x
Other skills	x		Learned how to use the magic wand tool to be able to easily select parts of a picture to move around. Helps to get only what you need.

In Design Skills

Which of the following features of In Design have you used before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Have you ever used In design ever before?		x
Margin and column guide creation	x		Used on my DPS so that I could keep a good guide to where my text needed to be.
Inserting an image ID	x		Used for my final project. Inserted the front cover as a picture and also the bottom left picture on my DPS as well as the entire right hand side page.
Resizing images in ID	x		Using the white arrow to resize images was useful as the resolution of our camera was so large the pictures were huge on the screen. Resized all my images to a smaller size.
Text manipulation – resizing, rotation	x		Used this to make a drop cap for my article.
Text manipulation – controlling kerning and leading
Text flow creation	x		Used this as my article was too long and would all fit in one box. Was very useful.
Using transparent imagery in ID		x
Shape/line creation In design	x		Used to make the borders of the columns more apparent for readers.
Exporting to PDF from In-design	x		Used to export my final project so that I could upload it to be marked.
Text Wrap	x		Used for my quite insert so that it looked more professional. Need to learn how to use it better though as it made the article around it look very square.
Other Skills		x

Number of new skills achieved:

(compare with your initial skills assessment)

Shutter speed photos

These photos show how using a slower shutter speed and using lights you can create some abstract effects. In the top photo I set the shutter speed to 7 seconds so that Andrew could draw a line around me with the light from a torch. The only thing we were worried about was the blur he might make if he walked across the frame while the picture was taking. However there were some more people in the room so they pressed the 'take picture' button. In the second picture we did the same thing except used a strobe light on my phone instead as we though this would give an interesting effect, which it did, although I thought it would have been pure blocks without the thin strands of light in-inbetween. the bottom picture we did last and showed that the blur we didn't want to happen in the top picture wouldn't have happened anyway as we all rushed into this photo after the button was pressed and the is minimal if not no blur.

In Design 2

This is my now finished first attempt at using in design. I have learned how to place pictures in the rectangle frame box. I have learned the difference between the white and black arrow. The white arrow is direct select and the black arrow selects that box's. I also learned how to place the text inside the rectangular boxes and carry it on by clicking the red expansion box and dragging into another rectangle frame box. The quote shown in the picture above is simply text made bigger and put in a more handwritten style font. I don't know if there is a way where indesign can do it for you yet so I just did this for now.

Dodge, Burn, Unsharpen mask

My version with dodge, burn and unsharpen mask applied

Original

I have managed to achieve a smoother skin tine by using the dodge and burn tools. As you can see in the original there were some heavy lines under the eyes which I have smoothed off by using the dodge tool lightly on the cheeks. On his for head and lower neck in the original there was a bit too much contrast between that and the main skin colour so I used the burn tool to bring the tone of these down. I also did this for the corners of his eyes. This gave a bit more depth to the image. The unsharpen mask was very useful to me in this image as the original that I took was blurry anyway. This meant that I had to put it up quite high but it looks much better with this applied. Overall I think I have made his skin look a lot more natural and have improved on the photograph.

Fonts and Brushes

This is my demonstration of how I can successfully install new brush packs/individual brushes and new fonts onto photoshop. I also learned how to change the rotation and size of the brushes in photoshop as well as the colour. The fonts were harder to do but I managed it in the end. I learned how to change the colour and rotation of the fonts. Unrelated to this task but while doing this it also made me realise how important it is to have most of your parts on different layers in photoshop as when i was doing this the parts were not in the alignment I'd wanted to I had to start again so that they didn't all move when I wanted just one to move.

Healing Brush

My photoshopped version

Original

To create this version of the girl I have used the healing brush tool over the spot healing tool. This is because she has a naturally red face already and with this tool you can choose the about shade of skin that you want to patch over the spots with. This was useful when trying to remove the spots from the cheeks. I also used the patch tool to take some of the redness away from the cheeks. This worked quite well in my opinion as the redness no longer stands out as much and looks much more refined and subtle. However there are some parts of the cheek which I find to be a little more blury than the original.