Ch 1: Design Basics

Photoshop CS6 EssentialsBy Scott Onstott

Ch 1: Design Basics

Project FundamentalsThink like a journalist and employ the five W’s and one H to tell your project story:• Who• What• Where• When• Why• How

Develop your project plan from the answers to these basic questions.

Ch 1: Design Basics

Creating Task ListsFrom the project plan the project manager allocates tasks to each team member with an estimated time required for each task’s completion.

The task list becomes the basis of team member timesheets that record the actual hours spent on each task. These timesheets in turn are collected from each team member and form the basis of client billing.

Ch 1: Design Basics

The Design Process• The design process can perhaps

best be visualized as a helix because this 3D shape combines the notion of forward progress through time with cycles of design revision.

• The radius of the helix diminishes with height as you or your design team converge on final design solutions through time.

Ch 1: Design Basics

Rule of Thirds• The rule of thirds is a

compositional technique dating back to the eighteenth century used to locate subject matter within a frame divided into three parts both horizontally and vertically.

• Aligning subject matter with the rule of thirds grid can help you create more aesthetically pleasing compositions as compared with centering the subject. Courtesy of Teeks99 under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Ch 1: Design Basics

The Golden Rectangle• Known since the Renaissance, the golden

rectangle is considered the most aesthetically pleasing proportion.

• The golden rectangle is based on the golden mean which divides a line into two parts such that the shorter is to the longer as the longer is to the whole.

• Use the proportion of 1:1.618 to approximate the golden rectangle

• You can easily construct a golden rectangle using a straightedge and a compass or Photoshop’s drawing tools.

Ch 1: Design Basics

Understanding Pixels• When you stand back from a

mosaic, a perceptual shift occurs and you see the picture from the tiles. The same thing happens with pixels.

• Raster images such as photos are made of pixels, or solid blocks of color.

• Every point in a camera’s sensor array is sampled in red, green, and blue wavelengths. These wavelengths are recombined to form pixels.

Ch 1: Design Basics

Light Sensitivity / Film Speed• Film speeds in the past were measured using

various standards including DIN, ASA, and ISO.

• Increasing the ISO value in your digital camera’s menu will enable you to use faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures. However, at extremely high ISO values (above 2000) digital cameras start to experience problems with noise, or random fluctuations of light intensity.

• You should therefore set your camera to use the lowest ISO value that yields the shutter speeds and apertures you need.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, © Leonsbox, Image #9022259

Ch 1: Design Basics

Bracketing Exposures• Exposure is primarily modulated by

aperture and shutter speed.• Capturing multiple exposures at

varying shutter speeds or apertures is called bracketing.

• If you want to play with motion blur, try a slow shutter speed such as 1/30th of a second.

• If you are shooting a moving athlete or vehicle use a faster speed such as 1/500th of a second to freeze the action.

Photos courtesy Richard Trueman

Ch 1: Design Basics

High Dynamic Range Images• It is not always possible to properly

expose all parts of a single image that exhibits a great variation in brightness.

• HDR images combine multiple bracketed exposures into a single image that shows detail throughout the dynamic range.

• HDR images can show detail both inside and outside buildings at the same time. Photo courtesy Richard Trueman

Ch 1: Design Basics

Depth of Field• The width of the spatial region

in sharp focus is called depth of field.

• You control depth of field by adjusting the lens aperture.

• Small apertures tend to keep everything from the foreground to the background in focus. Large apertures tend to narrow the depth of field.

• The rule of thumb is depth of field increases with f-stop

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, ©LajosRepasi, Image #9109571