Seventh Lesson - Pictures

Finally, I could not wait for this session to come. In this session, we finally get to begin on creating our flyer. Plus, Mr Hind was here so he could help us create the final flyer. This only meant that we needed to take some pictures for our flyer.

To do this we went to Shakin' Moo's to take these pictures. This was also the place where we received our brief as well. I volunteered to take the pictures for my group. My aim was to take as many pictures as possible. I could take them inside or outside the store, take these pictures from different angles, take different sorts of lighting, plus taking different objects for our flyer. Here are some of the objects that I was willing to take:

• Shakin' Moo's cups - for the cup for our flyer
  
• Lids - for the lid for our flyer (half open)
  
• Steam - for the steam flowing out of the cup for our flyer


• A sort of boarder - for a boarder for our flyer
  
• Shakin' Moo's font - to make our flyer look attractive and professional


• Backgrounds - such as the ingredients shelves, Shakin' Moo's window, etc
  
• Shakin' Moo's decorations/merchandise - possibly to add to our flyer

I took most of these things. The reason why I took Most of these things is because I could not take a picture of, including the Shakin' Moo's font because there was bearly any letters or words in the Shakin' Moo's font that we needed. However, I told Chris Lane about this and he was going to give me the Shakin' Moo's font by e-mail. I do not usually go on my e-mail account so I asked Matiss to give his e-mail account to Chris. Chris said he will e-mail the font to Matiss as soon as possible.

After taking pictures, we had to cut down what we got from 30 pictures to at least 9 pictures. We agreed on 9 pictures and this was easy cutting them down because we had very effective ones and ones which were very bad quality e.g. blurry pictures and even pictures that did not even relate to the topic. These pictures on the right hand side of the screen are the pictures we chose as a group. The background pictures (images 4, 5 and 6) are the pictures I will be editing. On the other hand, it was also hard choosing pictures because there were so many pictures with cups and they were all good. Plus, we needed to find a reasonable picture of a lid because the recent ones we tried to crop with the magnetic lasso tool did not work. This meant we needed an easier image to crop. In the end, we chose these 9 on the right because they had all the characteristics and angles we needed.

With that all done and dusted, we settled on a laptop each where we were going to edit the pictures we have chosen. Before starting the editing, Mr Hind showed us some features on Adobe Photoshop which would come in handy for our edits. There was a tool called levels which allowed you to fiddle with the brightness for the picture and the contrast (you could use this tool to make the image appear saturated). Then there was a tool called gausain blur which blurred a curtain part of you edit (you need to select the part you want to blur first). There is curves as well which makes the image lighter or darker and you could sharpen the image as well with this tool. Mr Hind introduced the clone tool as well. This tool obviousely clones your image (copies it).

Taking Mr Hind's advise, I used these tools to edit my pictures. Here is one example I did:

This image is now warm and vibrant. This background would want to welcome customers in as it is warm and matches the 'hot shake' vibe. There were disturbing pieces of paper on the wall on the before picture. Now I cleared them away. I used the ink tool to get the current colour on the wall and colour in the paper. I also done this on the reflection. I used the gausain tool to blur the image. As you can see, I blurred a part of the image. I blurred the top half of the picture, not the reflection because this is where the cup would be on the image and that is also the bar. The cup is going to be focused. However, there was one thing I could of done. I could of used that ink tool to colour in the piping on the left hand side. This would make the image better. Overall, I think I put time and effort into this and I am pleased what I have done.

Our target would be to take time on things, not rush them. But do not spend to long on one thing. Plus, look over our work to check if you could improve anything. This could be a target for me because I have just spotted an improvement that I could of done with the picture I have edited (the piping).

Next week, we will be putting these images together to begin on our final product.