Adding a Realistic Rainbow to a Picture

For this project we added a realistic rainbow to our picture. We took a picture on a dark rainy day and decided to put a rainbow in it. Below is the picture we used, and what it turned out to be. We followed the steps listed to create our "rainbow picture."

Before                              After

The steps we used to create this effect were:

1. Open the picture in Photoshop.
2. Add a new blank layer and name it rainbow.
3. Select the rainbow gradient
-click the gradient picker in the options bar at the top of the screen
-click on the small arrow on the top right.
-click on special effects then click append.
-choose Russell's rainbow.
4. Select "radial gradient."
5. Drag out a rainbow with the gradient tool.
-holding shift will make it easier to drag horizontally.
-drag out a radial rainbow gradient from right to left in the image.
-when you let go of the button on your mouse, the rainbow will appear.
6. Change the blend mode of the rainbow layer to "screen."
-go to blend mode options in the top left of the layers panel.
-change it to screen. This blends the rainbow into the picture.
7. Apply the Gaussian blur filter.
-go to the filter menu in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
-choose blur.
-then choose Gaussian blur.
-drag the radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box towards the right to increase the amount of blurring being applied to the rainbow. The rainbow should look more realistic.
8. Add a Layer Mask.

-click the layer mask icon.

9. Choose the black to white gradient.

-right click on the picture.

-click on the black to white gradients thumbnail to select it.

10. Choose "Linear Gradient" from the options bar.

-go back to the options bar and click the linear gradient, the icon.

11. Drag a black to white gradient on the layer mask.

-hold down shift and drag the black to white gradient form the base of the rainbow to the top of the image.

-the rainbow no longer extends all the way to the bottom of the photo because of the layer mask.

Advertisements: Reading Between the Lines

The advertisement at the right was created to invite anyone to the Mercy Academy vs Assumption game at Mercy for their senior night. I created this poster to get fans to attend the soccer game. The target audience is girls from any age and their parents. I would put this advertisement in the JagWire magazine. I used ten tools in Photoshop. The ten I used were transform(scale), text, text color, paint bucket, changing a picture from one page to another page, swatches, flatten image, move tool, center text, and the brush tool that made the paint look like grass. I used transform(scale) to change the size of the picture. By holding shift in this option, I made them move to either make the picture bigger or smaller. I used text to simply add text to the advertisement. I changed the text color to make the advertisement "pop." I used the paint bucket tool to paint the background of the advertisement to make it not as boring and to add more color to it. I had to move my soccer ball logo from one page to another. When I did this, I had to hold control so it would move. Once I moved it, I had to scale it to fit the page. I used swatches to color my advertisement. I flattened the image so that I could make it one layer instead of having many different layers. I used the move tool to move things around on the advertisement. I centered text to make my advertisement look more balanced. Lastly, I used the brush that looked like grass to add grass at the bottom just for looks.  

My logo is advertising Mercy Soccer. This logo communicates its purpose because you look at it and see a soccer ball but it also has "MERCY" written around it, meaning it would have to be Mercy Soccer. I used white, black and baby blue as my colors because white and black are the colors of a soccer ball and baby blue is Mercy's school color. I used shape in my design. I had to make a perfect circle for the ball shape and I also had to use hexagons to make the shapes on the soccer ball. I used lines to connect the shapes to make it look even more like a soccer ball.

From Kayla to Sandra!

With the overall transformation, I feel pretty confident. Although this does not exactly look like Sandra Bullock, I feel it is pretty close to it and you can kind of tell it is my face on her body. This changes my perspectives on magazine adds because now I know that most pictures in magazines are photo shopped and very rarely are they the real picture. Many things in magazines now come across as "fake" to me. Today's view of a "perfect image" is all fake to me. In order to have a perfect image in today's world, you have to be fixed up to look perfect. Two things I think I did really well on are my eye makeup and matching my face with hers, like matching my eyes with her eyes and my mouth with her mouth. One thing I could improve on and spend more time on is matching my skin tone with her skin tone. It took me so long to match our skin tones because I would get close but it would not get to the exact same skin tone as hers. Another thing I could improve on is making the Opacity lower so it would make the effects on my face look more realistic.

Feel, Tests, Laughs, and Friends: A Day in the Life of A Mercy Girl

Using Photoshop for me was not that difficult. It has difficult parts but in general it wasn't that hard. I liked when we made our collages because I got to put all of the pictures I took and change them anyway I wanted. Photoshop will probably be my favorite project we do the whole year.

While doing my collage I used many different tools but I used the cropping, brightness, color balance, lasso, and magenta tint the most. I cropped almost all of my photos to go where I wanted them. I used the brightness tool to make the picture brighter and to make it stand out. I used the lasso to make the picture a certain shape. I used the color balance to balance every color in the picture to make it better to see. I used the magenta tint to make it a different color other than just black and white or the normal colors. Photoshop was overall very fun and I would definitely use this again to edit pictures.

Elements of Photography in My Everyday Life

 

In the picture to the left, I used the element of Framing. The window and curtains frames the truck outside. In the picture to the right, the branch and the bush frame a yard and a house. The branch and bush forms frame like features.

In the picture above, I used the element of Simplicity. Simplicity is used here because although there are things in the background, the image still focuses on the soccer ball. You can spot and tell what the things in the background are but your eyes do not visit those objects first, they automatically visit the ball in the grass. In the picture to the right, I also used Simplicity. There is a cat in the background. However, the cat is blurry so the ring catches your eye first. The ring is clear and you can see it better than the cat. Although the cat is larger, it is in the background so the ring sticks out.

My Opinions On Pirating and Copyright Infringement

In the podcast that my friends and I created, most of the work we did was ours.  If we had used a clip of something that was longer than thirty seconds, we would have cited it. Almost all of the things we used in our podcast was shorter than thirty seconds and we used our own voices, therefore nothing needed to be cited.

In my opinion, downloading music is wrong in some cases because if you pirate music, you have no idea what you are taking away from the music industry. You are costing artists money. However, in some cases, downloading music isn't always wrong. Buying music is not an example of piracy because you are using your own money to pay for songs. An example of piracy is the website Frostwire. Frostwire is similar to Limewire in the sense that you are sharing music documents with many different computers and sometimes, you get viruses from these different computers. Using iTunes solves many problems with the piracy issue.

I think copyright laws should exist because I don't think it is right that people should be able to just take someone else's work without the owner's permission. I think that it is right if people ask permission to use certain things if they are in the Public Domain. Copyright laws scare people but they also do not intimidate many because people tend to think "oh, that will never happen to me." but those are the one's who usually get caught. Many people never think that the punishments for piracy or committing Copyright Infringement would be as bad as they are.

Piracy is prevalent in our society because people don't like to pay the money for iTunes. The music on iTunes is getting to be expensive and many people find it difficult to pay for money cards. They take the easy way out and never think about the things that could happen to them by downloading songs illegally.

If someone used my graphic or podcast without my permission, I would be mad. I would feel like I did all the work for other people. It would make me feel like they just want to take my stuff so they do not have to do the work for themselves. I feel like they would be very sefish because they're only thinking about themselves and not thinking of how it would affect me if they took my work and used it as their own. I would be very upset if someone used my work and called it their own.

Copyright: Nothing Good About It

In my original opinion of the Copyright Law, I stated that nothing good comes of it. My opinion now has not changed because its a person's own decision on whether they copyright or not.  Everyone knows that committing Copyright Infringement and Pirating is illegal, yet most people still have the nerve to. This is mainly because people tell themselves, "oh, it'll never be me". They don't think it will be until they receive a letter in the mail asking for $250 per song they illegally downloaded.  Committing Copyright Infringement and Pirating music is illegal, end of story.  Downloading someone else's music illegally is illegal and you can get caught doing it!

Here's an example of Copyright Infringement. Vincent Peters accused Kanye West of stealing the song "Stronger" from him.  Peters said that he gave a copy of the song to one of Kanye West's associates.  Peters

claims that there are significant lines from his original song in West's song. West would be considered breaking the law because Peters claims that West stole parts of Peters' original song.  This is illegal because West took Peters' lyrics and claimed them as his own.  No punishment was stated for this case, but standard punishment for a Copyright Infringement case is jail time.  I don't think West commited Copyright Infringement because in the end, the judge declared him innocent and the case was released. Copyright isn't worth the consequences!

-Kayla!

Blog Entry #1- Technology Autobiography

In kindergarten, I was introduced to a computer. Although I didn't know much about them, I could still play a game called Jumpstart. It was a "game" designed to teach young children how exactly to use a computer.  As I grew up, I started to experience using the Microsoft Office to type papers and do fun projects. Often times I enjoyed playing on the program called "Paint". I learned that PowerPoint works best if you want to give a presentation and Excel works best for spreadsheets and mathematical situations. Many people don't realize how important it is to learn these programs as a young kid so you excel in technology as the years progress.

Outside of school, I like to get on many websites.  The Internet helps me with a bunch of my homework.  I use search engines such as Google and Ask.  However, I don't just use the Internet for research for homework but I also use it for entertainment purposes as well.  I get on websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and sometimes Twitter.  Facebook is the highlight of every teen's life.  Many teens use Facebook to "stalk" and chat with other people.  Facebook is becoming very large in today's society.  YouTube is the ultimate website to use if you're looking for videos.  Many teens use YouTube for attention such as Justin Bieber who is now a teen singer who's career was started on YouTube.  Twitter is just a simpler version of YouTube.  "Tweets" on twitter are similar to "statuses" on Facebook. Internet today has a huge impact on today's society, as does most technology.  Who is a teenager without their phone?

Technology in the future will involve no keyboards.  I believe that eventually many technology companies will give up on the keyboard slowly.  Many "smart phones" are touch screen now with very few buttons.  I think phones will be everything in the future and everything will revolve around Facebook.  Facebook can do it all from posting statuses to posting videos.  Businesses will be able to advertise easier through the Internet because everyone is always on it.  Facebook hasn't been around for very long, yet there is already a smart phone with a Facebook button on it.  With the push of one button, you can upload anything to Facebook.  Since this is already happening, I think the world will be a more lazy place than it already is because you don't have to communicate with anyone in person, you can do it through a phone or Skype.

-Kayla