Assignment Unit 5

Photoshop is a noun-not a verb… but we’ll still use it that way.

Photoshop

3 Photographs  uploaded via assignment submission link.

If you were physically in my classroom version of this course, we’d be talking about Photoshop, and Camera Raw, and maybe Lightroom, each week.   But here I need to let us take a pause, since you have gotten some basic camera controls under your belt, and give you some basic information on image editing and an assignment to check in on that skill.

In Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom, there are a few basics you need to grapple with.   One is the Histogram (which your really need to watch when shooting, and then work with again later in editing).   This is the tonal information about a photograph, and let’s you judge accurate exposure.   The next is how to control changes to that histogram, and the look of your image, with the “Curves” tool.   And finally I want you to at least take a beginning tour of the editing workflow in Camera Raw (or Lightroom).

To accomplish this I am putting a series of videos from YouTube here.   Please watch them all.   At least to the point you “get it.” (The histogram gives a very thorough set of examples, so you might not need it if you understand quickly.)   If you already are familiar with all this, they likely will give you some information you didn’t know.   But really the goal is for you to be able to globally edit you images, and turn in good looking versions of what you shoot.   In density, color balance, contrast, etc.   That’s where this all comes in handy.

So:   Take any three photos you have made this semester, particularly ones that are too dark or too light.    Make a copy of the original and edit it using curves and the other controls in one of the editors, and turn in both the unedited original and the edited copy.   Name them, for instance, “Charles-5-1original” and “Charles-5-1edited.”   Etc.

Feedback to Charles: cwmason@alaska.edu