IWA-HWG Photoshop Course. Lab 7-8: Weeks 7 & 8

Weeks 7 and 8

• Final project: Self-portrait
  

  Right click on the thumbnail below to save the "target" zipped Photoshop file.

  

  Click on the thumbnail below to see a large jpg file.

  

  or the thumbnail below to see a medium sized jpg file.

  

• Required elements:
  
  1. 5 Scanned Objects: A sound card, a wooden ball (3D), a spring (3D), a hard drive, and a resistor.
  2. Selections of my face. Selections of my face can be seen superimposed on the ball(s). In a separate Photoshop file, I used a Color Burn layer blend and then switched the Image Mode to grayscale. Other selects can be found in the lower left-hand and right-hand corners. These were basic selections: feathered elliptical and rectangular.  The selections were taken from GraphicFace.jpg, PhotocopyFace.jpg, and Face.jpg (snapshots of me taken by Peggy McCoey and Heather Fischer with a low resolution digital camera). The face selects were simple selects; the spring, on the other hand, was a rather involved select.
  3. Layer Blending Modes.
     
     

     Layer	Blending mode	Opacity
     Sound card	Exclusion	60%
     Sketch face 1	Luminosity	42%
     Sketch face 2	Multiply	41%
     Photocopy face	Normal	100%
     Incline	Linear burn	99%
     Vectors	Darken	80%
     Entropy formula	Hard light	100%
     Truth Table	Hard light	45%
     Projectiles	Normal	20-100%
     Spring	Normal	100%
     Resistors	Hard light	100%

     
     
  4. Feathered Selection: Photocopy face in lower left-hand corner.
  5. Filter: Sketch filter on sketch faces and Photocopy filter on photocopy face. I chose sketch because the short strokes seemed to integrate into the sound-card circuitry. I chose the photocopy filter since it seems to work with the color scheme and fit in with the technology theme.
  6. Gradient: Background layer is a vertical gradient from white at the top to light gray at the bottom.
  7. Type Layer: Entropy formula is a type layer (includes subscripts as well as a change of font to Symbol to obtain the summation/sigma symbol).  The truth table also uses type, but it was done in Illustrator and brought over.
  8. Layer styles: Drop Shadow (Resistors, Projectile balls, Spring, Entropy formula, Hard drive); Bevel and Emboss (Truth Table, Force-diagram vectors); Pattern Overlay -- Herringbone 10% Opacity, 80% scale (Photocopy face, Incline).          
   
  
  
• Discussion: I tend to over identify with what I do, which is teach computers and physics. I chose various objects associated with the subjects I teach. Of course, there's one important ingredient missing -- my students. I made this image during the summer and they're away, and anyway I don't know if they'd like to be scanned. My motivation for the various elements follows.
  1. Sound card: One thing I teach is computer hardware, which is the meeting place of the physical and the logical, the analog and the digital, and ultimately what makes computers useful that information can be put in and gotten out.  
  2. Wooden ball: I showed the ball as an example of projectile motion, which is a classic physics topic having two distinct types of motion each in a different direction.  It has constant velocity in the horizontal direction, which I tried to convey by spacing the balls evenly in the horizontal direction (along a guide line).  It has constant acceleration in the vertical direction, which I tried to convey by moving the balls downward from the guideline by quadratic amounts: 4 nudges, 16=4x22  nudges, 36=4x32  nudges, etc. Finally I tried to convey a sense of time by reducing the opacity of the balls at older times.
  3. Hard drive: The hard drive in itself represents the computer side of what I teach. However, I have used it as a "block" on an inclined plane which is a classic problem from physics.  The arrows represent the two ideal forces acting on the block that one would add together and use in Newton's Law F=ma.  It conveys that something can be very complicated (like a hard drive), but in certain situations (like having it slide down an incline) be treated very simply.    
  4. Resistors: Resistors are the simplest element in electronics, which is a physics course I teach to computer-science and information-technology majors. One role resistors play is to limit current in order to protect more sophisticated elements from burning out.   
  5. Spring: We study an idealized version of the spring in general physics.  It yields what is known as harmonic motion, which is a fluctuation or vibration about an equilibrium position, which is responsible for music and various other phenomena.   
  6. Entropy formula: The formula shown across the bottom is for entropy.  I chose entropy because it plays a role in both physics and computer science.  In physics it comes up in the field of thermodynamics and is said to be a measure of the "disorder" in a system.  The second law of thermodynamics is that entropy/disorder (of a closed system) always increases. Disorder is certainly an issue in my life -- my apartment and office are both messes.  In computer science, the entropy formula comes up in the field of information/communication theory and is said to measure the amount of information being conveyed.  As a teacher, a major part of my job is to convey information.  
  7. Truth table: A truth table is a fundamental concept in logic.  Philosophers might talk about "predicates" being true or false, in electronics we talk about "inputs" being high or low or alternatively 1 or 0.  I teach students first how complicated situations (truth tables) can be broken down into simpler truth tables.  The truth table shown is one of the three most basic. I also show students how a circuit of transistors, resistors, etc. can be made to "realize" a truth table.