report:
Audience/Purpose: describe the intended audience of your photo edited image(s); what are you trying to communicate to this audience?
The intended audience of my photo edited images is young adults in the age range of 18 to 25, whether the are currently in college or not. My main purpose with these edited images is to encourage and inspire young individuals to get outside and explore the world. Assuming that these individuals have at least a small amount of "extra" spending income, I want to show that you can go to amazing places while still having a smaller budget. One of the ways I represented this through this photo editing project was by selecting cities that are less touristy and traveled to, therefore they may not be as expensive to visit. Also by sharing the beauty of these places I bring attention to cities that young people may have not even heard of since they most likely don't have prior traveling experience. As someone who fortunately grew up traveling a bit with my family, I want others my age to feel empowered to go out and experience the many beautiful places the world has to offer and hopefully learn and appreciate other cultures and perspectives. My hope is that these photo edited images would catch the attention of young individuals who have at least the smallest inkling or desire to travel and motivate them to just go out there and do it. Image(s): how do features of the image(s) effectively convey the message to your audience? One of the main features of the images that I have created is a layering effect. Personally I think this effect is eye-catching because it almost causes you to do a double-take and consider whether or not the image is real or a compilation of multiple pictures. By doing this hopefully someone would stop and take a closer look at the full image to understand the purpose behind it. In my photo edited images I chose to layer images of monuments, destinations, or even just wildlife and nature found in that country. This conveys my message that there are undiscovered places out there with natural beauty. By showing these interesting images hopefully my audience would be inspired to research more about this place and maybe even visit there. I also decided to create a "swirly" font, as well as include a sort of slogan for the travel destination in order to catch the attention of a younger audience. I know that film and vintage inspired images are very popular with younger audiences these days, so I decided to add grain to the images so it would almost even look like an old postcard or film picture. I also included a "slogan" to draw attention to the travel destination, but there aren't just cheesy sayings. I wanted to write something unique that would catch the attention of a younger adult. For example in my Croatia graphic I layered over silhouettes of swimmers divers, giving the idea for travelers to swim in the sea surrounding the country. My hope is that the sparkling blue water layered in the background would catch someone's interest. In the slogans I gave the audience an idea of something unique and free you could do while visiting the country, instead of just highlighting the tourist attractions someone could find with a simple Google search. Process: what did you do to create the photo edited image(s) in this project?
To create these photo edited images I first started off by finding images of different buildings, landscapes, wildlife, and features of the countries I was encouraging my audience to visit. Once I gathered several images, I then cut the main object in the image using Photoshop's many selecting tools like the Magic Wand and Lasso Tool. I created layers from these images and then placed them in various areas of the edited photo. For the background images I layered landscapes. I attempted to choose an image that had a good amount solid colored space so that way the images layered overtop would not look crowded. In my Tanzania edited photo the sky and desert landscape actually came from two different images that I cropped and then layered over. I especially enjoy the sky background in this image because of the beautiful colors and light coming from the clouds. Next I added a grain filter to all the images to add the desired effect I mentioned prior. Finally I played around with texts and fonts and added the name of the country as well as a catchy saying, so that there would be a textual message displayed on my images ensuring that my message is clear. My hope is that the saying would catch someone's attention and help them to understand the purpose of my project, encouraging others to find affordable ways to travel and see the world. To create the text effects I used Liquify, Color Stroke, Color Overlay, Inner Glow, Outer Glow, and possibly a few more. Learning: what did you learn from working on this project–for example, about Photoshop, about design, about communication, about yourself? About design in specific I learned to "criticize" and be more skeptical of my own work. What I mean by this is that sometimes I have a vision in mind for a project, but once I execute it in Photoshop I assume it's the best it can be. I think I get somewhat lazy after creating a draft, and instead I should be asking myself if I actually like all the design choices I made. I've learned that it's important to always have reasoning behind design decisions, whether that be the placement of an image or the color of a piece of text. In regards to Photoshop I definitely got a lot more comfortable cropping and selecting images with Photoshop's tools, such as the Magic Wand and Object Select. I utilized these a lot because I cropped parts of images and then overlayed them on top of each other. I also learned more about filter and text effects, such as shadowing and outlining. Something I learned about myself through working on this project is that just because I might be creative in some aspects, it doesn't mean I'm going to be naturally good at Photoshop and editing photos in general. It's important for me to understand that creating graphical designs takes a lot of time and practice. It will also take me a long time to discover my preferences when it comes to design and ultimately create my own sort of "theme" or "brand". Next: what will you do the same/differently on the next project? On the next project I think I would like to spend more time creating my vision and plan before just going straight into creating it. I've realized how important it is to have reasoning behind each design choice and ensuring that it always relates back to my message and purpose. By having a strong established purpose and goal for the project I can always have a place to go back to when actually working on creating it. I would also like to get more feedback and advice while working on my next project because it's hard to only have one set of eyes and one person's opinion critiquing a piece of work. It's important that I make sure my audience and not only myself will enjoy what I create. Something I will do the same for the next project is learning from online tutorials. In this last project, tutorials were very helpful because they not only taught me new concepts in Photoshop, but they also gave me inspiration on what to include in my actual project. By learning new techniques I have more to work with when it comes to designing the project and making it unique. Also if I'm able to learn these skills ahead of time it'll be a lot easier and less time consuming to create my project because I don't have to go back and learn some technique.