Web Navigation

This week's lesson focused on web navigation - making the layout for web pages using the tools of Photoshop. The first part of the assignment was to create a navigational system using the colors and instructions provided.

The second part was to redesign a web page's navigational structure.

And the third part was to creat an image that could be used as a background tile, and then to lighten it enough so that text could be placed on top.

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File Compression

The assignment due tonight was to evaluate 5 images and to determine how they can best be compressed. Compression of images for the web is an all-important topic. Both the style and the quality of the compression determines how fast the images download, and hence how user-friendly is the website. It does no good to have quality images if they take so long to access that no one sees them! That being said, I must admit that this is my weakest skill in photography. Well, almost...

The problem I had for this assignment is that my "eye" is not that good! I really couldn't tell the qualitative differences between compressing a jpg photo at quality-60 vs. quality-70, or compressing a gif file with selective vs. adaptive reduction. I found this exercise excrutiating. Even when I enlarged images 200%, I couldn't always tell whether A or B was the better choice (kind of reminds me of the difficulty of the eye doctor's exam...).

As I said, this is my weakest photographic skill - almost. That's because the whole arena of color-correcting a photo is another difficulty, and it's just as, or even more, critical. What this essentially means is that my visual skills are not all that great! Sigh. It's a sad thing to have to admit, but there it is. What I have going for me, in the field of photography, is more than anything my interest and my eagerness. With that, I keep trying to get better photos, and to improve my editing skills. But I've also discovered that it's great to have a live-in editor! What I don't see may be obvious to my partner, and that really helps a lot.

Meanwhile, I'll continue taking classes and learning about photo editing - and hope that someone else will do it!

Here's a link to the images we evaluated.

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Depth of Field

Here's a useful looking tool - a depth of field calculator.

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Web Photo Gallery

The assignment for Lab 5 of "Images for the Web" was to create a photo gallery using Photoshop's tools for automation. Mine is part of a long-range plan to post online selected photos from our recent Summer Road Trip 2006.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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Photoshop Slideshow

I found a GREAT example of making a slideshow using Photoshop: Postal Museum Slideshow. I like the layout, the color, the size of the images - and, to top it off, the images themselves!

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Tutorials

I came across some good links for Photoshop tutorials that I'd like to share. Here's one on Photoshop Tools. Here's the site from where I found it: Photoshop Lab.

I also came across a really cool podcast: Terry White's Adobe Creative Suite Podcast. Here's a blog reference to that podcast: WebLogs Inc. And,here's a link to the Unofficial Photoshop Blog.

Please feel free to suggest any other photography tutorial sites, including blogs, podcasts, and other instructional presentations. Probably the easiest way is to simply add a comment to this posting. Otherwise email me...

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Image Preparation

The assignment for Lab 4 was to color correct and sharpen 3 images (taken by Instructor Andrea Massalski), to resize the images to be 200 pixels wide, give them a 5-pixel black border, put the images onto a Layout page, and then add a copyright to our work. Above you see my results!

This assignment was a lot more challenging than I expected. I still feel awkward with the layers principle used by Photoshop. Basically what happens is that every element on this image (such as each area of text, each individual photo, the bar of color at the bottom, and even the copyright) is on a different layer. This allows you to make changes to each layer separately, and to go back and forth between different layers. However, it's an awkward way to work if you're not used to it!

Anyway - that's what this whole class is all about - learning new techniques and getting used to them. As you can imagine, I'm expecting this process to have big pay-off for me as we work on the photos I took on our European vacation this year. Hopefully I'll have some of these photos to show soon...

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Something to Show

Finally, I have something to show for my work in Images for the Web!

It seems like it's taken me a long time to get anything worth seeing - the labs for the first two weeks weren't very interesting, but I think this 3rd assignment is. Check out my homework at: Martha's COIN 82.

By the way, the images and design are from our instructor, Andrea Massalski. We had to make adjustments to the images, and add them to the layout we created last week. My rendition still has a few errors (the brown lines are too short, and too close to the edge), and I'll hopefully correct them soon. Nevertheless, I am proud of my accomplishment. It was NOT an easy chore!! The hardest part was transferring the clouds from one photo into the village photo, which had no sky to speak of.

Here's the instructor's version:

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COIN 82 class begins

Today I started a new class online at Foothill College. It's called "Images for the Web", taught by Andrea Massalski. COIN 82 (Images for the Web) is a class I've considered taking several times, so I'm really looking forward to finally getting the chance. Besides, I've got LOTS of photos from our recent vacation... We drove cross country to Kansas, and then down to Texas. From Houston, we flew to Europe, and spent a wonderful 2 weeks touring by bus through 10 countries. Then, after another week visiting family in TX, we drove back to SF via Interstate 10. Since our return, we've spent hours analyzing and editing our photos, and preparing to put some of them on the web. I'm hoping this class gives me the tools to maximize the beauty and accessibility of these photos. Hope you enjoy the results!

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