FIT 100: Fluency with
Information Technology
LAB 6: Seeing is
Believing--Or is it?
Image Alteration using Adobe Photoshop
Table of Contents
4. Removing
objects from an image
5. Selecting
an area of an image by color
7. Inserting
an image into a layer
In Lab 4 you learned the
basics of creating a HTML document to post on your web page and Assignment 2
helped you search for sites.
Today we will focus on
issues of authentication by learning the basics of Adobe Photoshop to alter an
image and make the alteration appear as authentic as possible. The images given to you to work with have no
copyright associated with them. You are
allowed to use them because each comes from a government agency that does not
hold copyright or require copyright fees to be paid for non-commercial use of
images. The agencies where these images
were found do have a copyright policy that indicates this information. Make sure you look for one on any site where
you find an image you wish to use.
Adobe has a great deal of
functionality in the area of graphics and image creation and manipulation. However, today’s lab will focus on using
certain tools to eliminate and alter areas of an image. Tools not explored in Lab today will require
you to play with them on your own if you wish to use them as part of your project.
·
Use
Adobe Photoshop to select and manipulate areas of an image
·
Remove
and add selections to an image
·
Through the manipulation
of photos, create awareness about issues of authenticity and misinformation in
photographic displays.
Adobe provides a work area for images that includes a Selection Tools Box. Hover over each tool with your mouse for the name:
Marquis Tools:
The marquee tools let you select rectangular or elliptical areas in
an image. Crop Tool: This tool allows you to select an area
of an image and crop it. Move Tool: Lets you drag a selection or layer to
a new location in the image. Lasso Tools: The lasso and polygon lasso tools
let you draw both straight-edged and freehand segments of a selection
border. Magic Wand Tool: The magic wand tool lets you
select a consistently colored area (for example, green grass) without
having to trace its outline. Clone Stamp Tool: Takes a sample of the image,
which you can then apply over another image or part of the same image. Each
stroke of the tool paints on more of the sampled image. [Also called Rubber Stamp Tool] Eyedropper Tool:
Sample color from an image to indicate a new foreground or
background color. Paint Bucket Tool: Fills adjacent pixels that are
similar in color value to the pixels you click.
Tool Descriptions for this Lab
You will be using the Crop, Lasso, Move, Eyedropper, Stamping and Magic Wand Tools for this lab.
The first thing to do is get a copy of the images we’ll work with and save them to a disk or a local drive. When we finish the lab, use SSH to send the finished images to your Dante account for access later on.
· Click on the link to the StHelens.jpg image
· Right click on the StHelens.jpg image and select Save Picture As…
· Save it to your disk or on the Desktop
· Do the same with the second image, RedSquare.jpg
·
Start>Programs>Adobe Photoshop
· File>Open… open up both of the images you just saved by navigating to the Documents folder on C.
· You don’t want to work on the original, so create a copy of each:
i. File>Save As… and give them each a different name.(ex. StHelensCopy.jpg)
ii. Close the originals.
iii. Open up the copies you just created.
·
Image>Adjust>Levels….
Using the slider bar on the right and left sides of the Input Levels, decrease the amount of darkness in the image, without making it too bright. When you are satisfied, click OK and go back to your image.
B. Save your changes
b. File>Save
Remove some of the many pedestrians from the Red Square image.
Using the Magic Wand Tool, you
can select whole areas by their similarity in color.
A. Select the Magic Wand and click in the area of the Red Square image where there is sky. Not all of the sky area may be selected at one time. To add to the area, hold down the shift key as you click on other areas of sky. (Use the ALT key if you want to subtract selected areas one at a time)
B. Once you have selected the entire sky area, go onto the next step.
In a few moments you’re going to put
the image of St. Helen’s into the backdrop of Red Square. To make sure there is color continuity in
the photo of Red Square, let’s fill the area you just selected in Red Square
with the blue in the Mt. St. Helen’s image.
The selected area should now match part of the sky color from the StHelens image.
You’re going to copy the cropped image
so that you can insert it into the background of the Red Square picture.
In order to save our new image as a
.jpg or a .gif, we need to flatten the image.
To do this you will combine the two layers that currently make up the
image into one. This reduces the size
of the file. Once an image is
flattened, the layers can no longer be modified.
Now is the obvious time to give
a little background and advice about the use of images on the web. Most of you don’t have any intention of
using the images created for your project or here in lab for anything other
than completion of a homework assignment.
Regardless of your intentions for the use of this material, it is
your responsibility to understand the laws surrounding copyright and the
ethics of photo manipulation. http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm#top
Images and
Copyright:
· Add text to the image
· Change the size of an image
· Find help on working with multiple layers
The obvious choice for a picture in the background to replace Mt. Rainier would have been something like the Mt. St. Helen’s explosion. On your own, for more practice, go find a photo of a volcano, or a famous city skyline, and insert it into the image the way you inserted Mt. St. Helen’s. Use the copyright free images in the same folder as Mt. St. Helen’s and Red Square for practice.
This lab is focused on the use of Adobe Photoshop for photo manipulation. There is a great deal of functionality of the software that we are not covering. Search out different ways to use the tool to manipulate images for your project. You may even find you need to use a different tool completely if you do a lot of work at home. Try to do many of the same things done in this lab with another image manipulation program, like MS Paint.