T354 - Week 2

Agenda:

• Review homework & look at clips
• Aesthetics & color
• Photoshop Odds & Ends
• Aspect Ratios
• Mixing Images & Image Processing
• Scanning
• In-class exercises: output for DV, merging two images, making & managing selections

Short Homework/Classroom assignment review

• Make a folder in the Oncourse Week 2 folder called "your IU login name" (mine would be called jarkraus)
• Copy your homework files into your folder. Make sure everyone has permission to read it. (Check under permissions)
• Look at note/samples while students upload work
• Remember to follow assignment criteria and check the web site if you have any questions.
• When making graphics, always keep the message crystal clear. For instance if you are going to design a graphic to promote a TV show, you need to include all the necessary info. Hook (appealing reason to watch), show title, time, etc.
• Remember the safe text area and not to "crowd" important foreground elements. Do they have room to "breathe"? (enough space around the edges)
• Good, bad & average samples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8

Burrows & Wood reading

(Chapter 10 from Television Production Disciplines and Techniques)

Three fundamental aspects of pictorial design:

1. Balance and Mass
2. Lines and angles
3. Tone and color

Balance and Mass:

Understand difference between symmetrical balance and asymmetrical balance.

Symmetrical balance	Asymmetrical balance

Symmetrical balance is rigid and formal

Asymmetrical balance usually is more interesting and dynamic- resulting in a more fluid and creative mood, while just as balanced aesthetically
An unbalanced picture can result if care is not taken to position the asymmetrical elements with respect to their weight and mass. Temporarily this may be desired.

(The parallel in music is the V7 chord wanting to resolve to a I or tonic chord. In terms of animation, this might be the start of movement to a balanced layout)

Heavy weight in the bottom tends to give more stability and security.
If the top of the picture contains more mass than the bottom, the result is a feeling of uneasiness and suspense

Lines and Angles

Horizontal lines are restful, inactive and stable. Vertical lines suggest solemnity, dignity and dominance. Diagonal lines represent action, movement and impermanence.

Curved lines imply change, beauty, grace and flowing movement. An upward flowing curve suggests freedom and openness. A downward, open curve has more of a feeling of pressure and restriction.

Tone and Color

Light tones result in a delicate, cheerful, happy or trivial feeling.
Dark tones result in a feeling that is heavy, somber, serious and forceful.

Tone also affects balance

A dark tone carries more mass, weighs more and can be used to balance a larger mass that is light in color or tone.

A dark mass at the top of a picture tends to induce a heavy unnatural feeling of entrapment and depression, while a darker tone at the bottom gives it a more stable base.

A lighter tone or color at the top gives more of a feeling of solidarity and normalcy.

Color:

Hues are subjectively classified as warm (reds and yellows) or cool (blues and greens)

Warmer colors tend to be heavier than cool colors.
To go further we can examine graphics with two more aspects:

1. Texture
2. Depth

Both of these imply 3-dimensional characteristics.
Texture might be a coarse burlap or fine sandstone
Depth shows us that we aren’t looking at something flat- but something that occupies 3D space. Lines or shapes that converge towards the horizon can provide the illusion of depth. Drop shadow under text or objects can present the illusion of depth.

Robin Williams recap

• Contrast
• Repetition
• Alignment
• Proximity

 

LOOK and CREATE - To get better at graphics you need to start critically looking at commercial graphics and animations.

A writer needs to write every day in order to hone his or her craft and build a body of work. You need to do the same. As often as you can, make graphics and save them into an archive. Share them with people whose opinion’s you trust, refine them, and look at them on a TV monitor.

Graphics always look crisp on a computer monitor. The trick is making them look good when encoded to video.

Color Systems

Review additive & subtractive color systems:

Additive Color

The RGB system can reproduce almost all visible colors by adding varying amounts of Red, Green and Blue light. Because the system uses combined quantities of light to make colors, it is called the additive color system. This is the system used by television, computer monitors and lighting designers.
The primary colors, (or light sources) are Red, Green and Blue

Subtractive Color

In the subtractive color system, colors are determined or created by varying amounts of inks or pigment.

A little physics: The color of an object is determined by the colors of light it absorbs and the colors of light it reflects. When white light falls on a red object, the object appears red because its surface subtracts (absorbs) all colors of light except red.

The light that is absorbed (subtracted) is transformed into heat. This explains why a black object, which absorbs all of the colors of light hitting it, gets much hotter in sunlight than a white object, which reflects all colors.

In theory, if you were to mix equal amounts of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow ink you would get black. But because of the impurities in the ink we'd end up with something resembling mud. That's why black ink is used. (The letter K is used for black because B could be confused for blue.) So in the subtractive color system, the primary colors (think inks) are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.

The two systems together

The two color systems work in opposite ways, but are connected. If you look at a color wheel, you’ll see that Cyan, Magenta & Yellow can be found directly between Red, Green and Blue. Colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel are said to be complimentary. If you look directly opposite R, G or B, you’ll find a complimentary C, M or Y.

Open color wheel graphic along with on-line examples

On-line color examples:

http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Documentations/gimpdoc-html/color.html
(has nice pictures of color models)
http://mc2.cchem.berkeley.edu/Java
(cool interactive additive light java example)
http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/
(nice 216-color web color wheel

Color Bars

Color Bars contain the primary colors of both the additive and subtractive color systems.

On-line color bars:

http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm (Hal Landen’s site)
http://www.mivs.com/technical/colorbars.html

Photoshop tour (continued)

Be sure you know how to do the following:

• Copy a layer
• Delete a layer
• Link & unlink multiple layers
• Adjust a layer's brightness, hue & saturation
• Adjust a layer's opacity
• Rename layers (You can either Click the layer's title or Change the layer properties by right, or control clicking the layer)
• Apply layer styles (double click on the layer, but not the name)
• Create editable & rendered text
• Rasterize vector objects
• Resizing (image size verses canvas size)
• Select a brush
• Edit -> transform -> scale, rotate, etc.
• Holding down shift key retains the item’s aspect ratio
• Apply a filter to a selection or layer
• Make a selection with the Magic Wand tool (tolerance setting)
• Change the pixel aspect ratio (Under "image" menu)
• History

Web output.

It's easy to save a graphic in a web-compatible file format. One way is to use the "save as" command and save as a ...________.

 

 

GIFs can only contain 256 colors. If you want to make "websafe" color images for the masses you can have Photoshop only display certain colors (websafe colors) by clicking on the button in the bottom left of the color picker.

Make a graphic with a nice gradient in it. Save it as a GIF and as a JPEG. What are the differences between the GIF and the JPEG? With the Save as JPEG options on-screen, drag the slider left and right to note the impact of various amounts of compression. A small amount of compression results in a larger file, but of higher quality. A lot of compression results in a smaller file, but of lower quality.

Vocabulary

• Landscape oriented - Visual pieces that are wider than they are tall (like a movie screen)
• Portrait oriented - Visual pieces that are taller than they are wide.
• Bit Depth: (Color depth or pixel depth) is the amount of color information in an image file. The more bit depth, the more colors you can reproduce.
  • 8-bit - 256 colors
  • 16 bit - thousands of colors
  • 24-bit - 16.7 million colors
  • A three-color RGB channel actually consists of 3 separate 8-bit channels. When you add an alpha channel (another 8 bits) it adds up to a 32 bit image
• Rasterize - Rasterizing takes vector objects and converts them into pixels or bitmaps. If you rasterize a text layer so that you can apply effects, you will no longer be able to edit it as text.
  • One of my favorite ways to rasterize layers in Photoshop is to create a new (empty) layer below the one I want to rasterize. Then I merge the layer I want to rasterize down into the empty one.

Aspect Ratios and Square pixels vs. non-square pixels

One job of the graphic artist is to be able to create and transform graphics for a variety of different video editing systems. Before making any graphics or animations, it's important to know the video system or format is and what the aspect ratio is. Some video systems or codecs use square pixels while others use non-square pixels.

Examples of square pixel formats include:

• Original Media100 editing systems used pixel dimensions of 640 x 480.
• Full-frame HDTV codecs, which will either use 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720.

Examples of non-square pixel formats include:

• Any DV-based video, which uses pixel dimensions of 720 x 480
• HDV uses 1440 x 1080
• DVCProHD uses 1280 x 1080

HDTV programs are always produced in a 16 x 9 aspect ratio. However, standard definition television (SDTV) can use either 4 x 3 or 16 x 9.

• Standard "full frame" TV: 4:3 (1.333)
• Wide screen TV 16:9 (1.778)

Fortunately Photoshop has easy to use presets for most common formats. Use these presets whenever you can as they make your job easier. Photoshop's presets will put you into the proper color mode (RGB), will automatically display your artwork with the right pixel aspect ratio proportions, and even provide safe text and action guides.

Pixel aspect ratio: As mentioned above, Photoshop usually selects the proper pixel aspect display when you use a preset. However sometimes Photoshop doesn't know what to use or display a graphic with the wrong pixel aspect ratio. You can check or change the pixel aspect display ratio- look under the "Image" menu where you will see "Pixel Aspect Ratio."

If you are working in square pixels and make a circle or square in Photoshop or some other drawing program, and rotate it 90° you still have a circle or square. If youHowever most of today’s digital video systems use codecs with non-square file formats.

How does this impact graphics? Assume you are editing DV footage in Final Cut Pro (the DV codec uses the non-square pixel dimensions of 720 x 480). If you were to output a frame from your video and view it on a computer monitor, it would look squished.

Your DV footage may look like this on an NTSC video monitor.	But will look squished when output to a still frame and viewed on your computer monitor.

Similarly, if you create a graphic in Photoshop at 720 x 480 of say a square and a circle, (Note that the aspect ratio of your graphic isn’t quite 4:3.) and then import it into Final Cut Pro, you’ll find that the objects are elongated.

Your 720 x 480 artwork may look like this on your computer monitor.	But will become too skinny when imported into your DV editing system.

So given that information, what is the best way to make a graphic in Photoshop for use in a digital video editing system?

If you have Photoshop CS, you can work directly in non-square pixel dimensions letting the software re-size the image so it displays correctly on your computer monitor. However, many times you don't know what video system the graphic might be used with.

Oftentimes this is enough and you can simply make your graphic with the right aspect ratio and not worry about it. Most video editing software is smart enough to import your graphic into the right dimensions. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. As professionals it’s your job to make sure your graphics are the right format and size for the job.

If you need to make graphics for a video, try to find out what type of editing system is being used. If it’s for DV, the pixel dimensions will eventually need to be 720 x 480. If it’s for Avid Xpress or most other D1 systems, your graphic will end up being 720 x 486.

DV & D1 (ITU 601)

Digital video editing systems often use the DV codec or some form of the D1 (ITU 601) standard. Both use non-square pixels.

• DV uses non-square pixel dimensions of 720 x 480 (4:3 or 16:9)
• D1 uses non-square pixel dimensions of 720 x 486 (4:3 or 16:9)
• HD 1080 uses square pixel dimensions of 1920 x 1080 (always 16:9) *
• HD 720 uses square pixel dimensions of 1280 x 720 (always 16:9) *
  • Note: Remember that while the full pixel dimensions of HD are either 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720, the many variants of it (HDV, DVCProHD, HDCam, etc) use smaller pixel dimensions and scaling. For instance 1080 HDV is actually 1440 x 1080.

In-class exercise (3 points):

• Resize one of your week 1 assignment graphics and convert it to a PICT. Size it to be used with a DV editing system, such as Final Cut Pro. Label it "DV"
• Resize another PICT copy to use in a D1 system. Label it "D1"
• Place both PICT images (DV and D1) in your week 2 folder on the server.

 

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In class tutorial: Merging two images

Use the IU - UITS Photoshop tutorial files. They ought to be on the CFS Scratch volume or you can download them from:

http://www.indiana.edu/~ittedev/exfiles/PHOBA.hqx

In-Class Exercise (7 points)

• Create a standard-sized (4:3) TV graphic made up of two images seamlessly merged together.
• Name your combined graphic "merge"
• Save a full-size JPEG version of your "merge" in your week 2 folder in Oncourse/Resources/.

Scanning

Printed or hand-drawn images can be input into a computer through a scanner. This produces much better results than by using a video camera.

Because scanners can capture images at such high resolution, a common mistake is scanning at too high a resolution. It’s easy to end up with files that are 50-100 megabytes. These would quickly overwhelm most storage devices and be awkward to move around in After Effects.

How high a resolution should you use? It depends mainly on two factors.

• How small or large is the original image?
• How large will the image appear when output through the video display?

A standard video display is approximately 720 x 486 pixels. Imagine you have a piece of artwork that is 3 inches tall by 4 inches across. You would like it to fill the entire video display. In other words, you want it to eventually take up 720 x 486 pixels. If you scanned the artwork at 100 dpi, it would result in a 400 by 300 image. This isn't quite large enough for the video display. Scanning it at 200 dpi would result in a piece of artwork that is 800 x 600 pixels. This is much closer to what you need.

So when scanning always consider the size of the artwork and how large it will be displayed.

The easiest way to get started scanning images for video graphics would be to do the following:

• Create a template (empty document) in Photoshop sized for your needs. (720 x 480 for example) Try using 72 dpi.
• Scan your image at the appropriate dpi for the artwork. (See above if unsure of the dpi setting or just use trial and error) This will create a new file in Photoshop.
• Copy the image and paste into your template.
  Was it too big or too small? If the image was too small, scan at a higher resolution. If the image was too big, simply scale the layer down in Photoshop.

Once you’ve nudged and sized the image in your Photoshop template, use the “save as” command to save it as a new file. It will be the right size for video and not be too large. Be sure to keep your template intact if you have more images to scan.

Homework:

Create two different 4:3 TV graphics for a fictitious show. The two graphics should have the same objective (message). At least one of them should contain two images seamlessly merged together. For instance, you could make two different versions of a promo or title. You can use the same images in both if you'd like, or choose entirely different images altogether.

Turn in the original artwork (or the scan files) along with your two graphics.

Save them both at 720 x 480 as JPGs. (Be sure to keep your original PSD file so you can re-edit the images as needed.)

Be sure you fill out a critique form for each piece!

 

 

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