Photoshop Day 1: Chris, Tony and Ryan

Today was the first day of our Freshman Photoshop session, and it showed. Everyone was a little sluggish, a little tired and a little cautious about being here on what is arguably a beautiful day. Chris, being the unit coordinator and the lead for today's session, was having none of this negativity. Chris is able to work a room, and help people learn at the same time,which are both great skills in a teacher. Trying to get the students interested, Chris made sure to crack jokes, keep things educational but not too stuffy, and the students were able to catch on and get to work.

During the Education section, the students were told about the wide variety of ways Photoshop skills could be useful to them, including a great inspiring list of possible careers that Photoshop could be used in. Following their brief and general Photoshop intro, the students were introduced to the Design Concept of the day (The Rule of Thirds), as well as the Best Practice of the Day (Keeping Files Organized). In those lessons, students were taught the importance of the composition of an image to make it more visually pleasing. Students also learned the importance of keeping their files organized so that they can easily keep track of all of their Photoshop files and projects to refer back to/edit/re-edit any time!

Natalia did a great job of saving a version of her project in the original .psd format as well as in a finished .jpg format. This will not only allow her to always have a backup of her original project, but also to go back and re-work/re-edit her project at any time!

After those two short lessons, the challenges for the day were introduced and explained, and the students were released from their ITA work mind-frames with a 10-minute break (during which time it should be noted that a lot of students already began/continued exploring different things in Photoshop anyway!)

During the Exploration section, the students had 3 project challenges to work on/ choose from. The first challenge incorporated skills they learned from the Rule of Thirds lesson which was called "Crop Down A Big One" where they were to pick 3 to 5 photos from a folder provided, and crop them down using the Rule of Thirds in order to make them more visually pleasing. Unfortunately there are no examples to show for this challenge because none of the students chose to do this project (which is totally understandable seeing as how much more exciting the other two projects were).
The second challenge the students could work on was the "Pacman Fix." In this one, students were to use the distorted image of the Pacman game screenshot provided, and fix up/edit/manipulate various parts of the image (such as fix the broken blue borders, bring some of the pac-pallets back, move some the ghosts around, etc) using the list provided.
The third challenge was "Lil' Wayne's Road to Redemption" where, using the image of Lil' Wayne's tattooed face, the students were to use the same knowledge of Photoshop tools and navigation to completely remove all of Lil' Wayne's tattoos from his face ad make it appear as if they were never there. As an added bonus, the students could replace his "grilled out" diamond teeth with a full set of pearly whites!

Below are examples of the challenges that students did. Check 'em out!!

Pacman Fix Challenge

Provided Image

Dylan's Pacman Fix Project

Dylan did a great job of not only regenerating the boards and pac-pallets, but he also did well in mimicking how the original Pacman game begins (all of the ghosts in the center box, the number of lives, etc.)

Erica's Pacman Fix Project

Erica really demonstrated her knowledge and understanding of the assignment and how to use the tools introduced not only in the way she successfully rebuilt the Pac Board and pallets, but also in how effective she was with moving the Blue and Pink ghosts from their original placement and seamlessly re-patching the area to make it seem as if they were never there.


Lil' Wayne's Road to Redemption Challenge

Provided Image

Sarai's Road to Redemption Project

Sarai did an excellent job of removing the tatoos from Lil' Wayne's face as well as replacing his "grill" with a full set of pearly whites. She even began removing the other visible tattoos from his chest and arms!...which wasn't even part of the assignment, so way to go up and beyond in demonstrating your Photoshop skills Sarai!

Chris, given the insane amount of work to cover during our class period, has done a great job covering the material and the students, with all of their hard work, really got to create some great projects!