Revisiting the Main Ideas of the Project

Think about the main idea of your project. What is the message or idea you would like the viewer to consider?

How can you visually create this main idea so the viewer understands?

• ephasize important areas or details
• create a focal point
• create a flow or movement for the viewer to follow
• play with brightness and contrast or saturation
• explore different color choices

Remember this is a landscape. Create a sense of space and depth by:

• overlapping
• small things far away, larger things up close

Develop a visual paradox, or contradiction with the images you choose. Play with opposites

• extisting/ non-existing
• traditional/ unorthodox
• beauty/ ugliness
• man-made/ natural
• positive/ negative
• urban/ rural
• near/ far

Getting Started on Your Landscape

1. Open a new Photoshop file. The size should be 8 x 10 inches and the resolution should be 300. This means there are 300 pixels per inch making it a very clear, high quality image. It is important that you are working with other large images to avoid pixelation.

2. Rotate canvas so it is landscape, or horizontal.

3. You may want to create a new layer and fill it with a sky color to start. This way you will not have to work with all white space. This layer can always be deleted later if you find images to use for the sky.

4. This is a collage project: at least 15 different found images must be used. Also, do not use the pen or brush tool; drawing is unnecessary for this project.

5. For every image you are working with, you must open it in Photoshop to work from. Make a selection with the lasso tool to cut out a part of an image you wish to use. Copy the selection and then paste it in landscape file that is you project. You do not have to save any of the images you open in Photoshop. Below is how I got started on my project:

I wanted to take the grass from this photo to use in my project so I used the lasso tool to select it. Then I copied it and pasted in blank/project file.

I realized it was too small so I pasted anonother image of the grass and combined them together.

I used the blur tool to make to blend the two images together so you could not really tell where one image ended and the other started.

The New American Landscape

• Create a landscape that contains a combination of man-made structures and natural elements.
• It should be based on things that do exist in your neighborhood and things that do not exist but you wish did
• You may also include things/scenes that you see from your route from home to school or other things that are in Chicago
• This is a digital collage: use pieces from the images you find on-line.

The New American Landscape

For this project you are to create a digital collage depicting an invented landscape/environment. Think about your own neighborhood or areas of Chicago you frequent as a place to start. Consider the scenery and surroundings of your neighborhood and Chicago, the positive aspects, man-made structures, natural elements as well as the things that are negative, unnecessary or do not improve the quality of life for a community. Create a  juxtaposition by combining images that do not seem to belong together to develop a visual paradox.

Step 1: Brainstorm! What type of images do you want to look for? Make a list if needed.

Step 2: Image Search. Using Google image search or other search engines or photo sites to collect 20 high quality images. When using Google image search, only use medium and large images to make sure they do not become pixelated in your project. Also, do not just use the images that come up first, look through several pages to find a variety of images.

Changing Images Book: Rubric

Images are sequenced in an order that clearly shows a change, growth, progression or a regression (first image is drastically different from last)  20

The background shows a clear relationship with the image in the foreground. (color relationship, environment or setting, etc) 15

Complexity and originality (did you push yourself? images are strong, drawing is proficient) 25

You utilized a variety of PS tools and techniques (lasso, copy, paste, move, transform, fill, paint brush) to create complex images 25

You included details that enhance the image (color, different values of the same colors, shading to show depth, texture, etc) 25

Total                                                                                                                                                      100 points

Creating the Pages in the Book

1. Open a new document in Photoshop. File-New-type in the height and width in inches instead of pixels. Choose the size of the document that makes sense with your book (square or rectangle). This size will be the size of the images in the book and should not exceed 5.5 x 8.5 inches.

2. Go back to your other PS document with your image in it and use the lasso tool to draw and trace the part of the image you would like to work with first.

3. Copy your selection. Then click on your new blank PS document and paste the selection. The image will be very large in this new document so you will need to resize it. Control-T (transform) and descease the size of the image by dragging a corner in while holding down shift to keep the image proprtionate.

4. When you have made changes to the first image and are ready to save, go to File- Save As and name the document Book_p1 to keep everything organized. Continue to use Save As as you work to create the different pages in your book and keep them numbered.

Changing Images Book: Getting Started

To Make Your Image Whiter & Brighter
1. Open your drawn images in Photoshop.
2. To make the photo brighter and less yellow: Layer- New Adjustment Layer- Brightness and Constrast and adjust the brightness and contrast to desired result.
3. To get rid of the yellowness in the photo: Layer-New Layer- Photo Filter- Click on Color and change the color to black
4. Merge all these layers together by highlighting all the layers in the layers window and right click and go to Merge Layers. This will make all of the changes to the image in the same layer.