Portfolio Production Blog

To start designing my portfolio template I created a new document within Adobe Photoshop CS6. As you can see from the image above, I set the size to 420mm wide and 297mm in height which is the exact dimensions for a landscape A3 page. I set the colour mode to RGB and with 8 bpp as this would give me a wide variety of colours to use in my portfolio.

 

I have decided to use a ‘Bokeh’ effect as the background for my template. As you can see from image above, I created this effect myself in Adobe Photoshop. To do this, I put a gradient of blue’s which would influence the colour of the circles. You can choose any colours to use as your background, this is just personal preference. I then used the brush tool to create the circles. However, I altered the brush tool preferences slightly by changing the ‘scattering’ option to the maximum it could go (1000%). This made it easier to create the circles as it spread then evenly and randomly across the page (see image below). 

Once I had put one layer of circles using the scattering effect, I used a filter called ‘Gaussian’ filter, which blurred the circles into the background. For the first layer I used a high radius, which blurred the circles a lot, but for the second layer of circles I used a lower radius, which didn’t blur the edges as much. This filter helped create the Bokeh effect.

 

Below is a screenshot of my finished Bokeh background:

 

 

After creating the background that I was happy with, I went onto design my template which would be the basis of the majority of my pages with some slight alterations in the layout depending on the content.  I made a template as this would keep my portfolio consistent which makes it look more professional. As you can see from the screenshot below, I have used rounded rectangles in the background to make the context stand out more. However, in order to see the design of my background, I lowered the opacity to around 50%. I also added a headline at the top of the template which I can simply edit the text to the appropriate page.

 

After completing my template, I moved onto creating my front cover of my portfolio. I wanted to really show off my creativity on my front cover, as this would be the first page any employers would see and would make a first impression on. I wanted to include a picture of myself, which also expressed my passion for media and to show my creative side. I decided to combine a picture of myself and one of my favourite hobbies within media, which is photography. Therefore, by using the studio in college, I got a peer to take a picture of me whilst I was looking through the lens of another camera. I used this picture of the basis of the front cover and added a crosshatch effect onto the picture to give it a sketchy effect. I am happy with the design of my front cover as it is simple but gives off a strong message of what I am interested in and also my creativity.

 

The screen shot below is the page based on my stop motion animation. This page has the same structure as the majority of the other pages such as my magazine production page, comic book production page, promotional products page and the inforgraphics page. However, on this page, I created an animation filmstrip which would display some still screenshots from my animation. I made the filmstrip by creating a rectangle and adding small white circles to the upper and lower edges of the rectangle. I thought this would be a good idea to include as it is relevant to the pages content,  adds a hint of creativity and is makes this page unique. I also added a photo of the scenery from the place that I shot my animation in, which also shows my photography skills as well. I then finally added a brief summary of what the animation was about.

 

Next, I began to design the layout for my CV page as this had a different layout to my template. I based my CV page on my creative CV I created earlier on in the unit. I included a timeline in order to show my qualifications and work experience as I felt this was a more interesting way to display this information. I tried to add a creative aspect to my CV by including a table for my skills which shows how I judge myself on certain topics to do with media. I did this by using circles which, according to shape theory, are friendly which can also represent my personality. I also included a collage of words that I think are relevant to my personality. I did it this way as I think this is more of an interesting and creative way to display words that describe me.  I again used a transparent box to make the timeline stand out but at the same time being able to show the background.

 

For the interests and inspiration page, I created a collage of picture that resemble what I am interested in and who/what inspires me. Due to the image being different sizes, it was quite difficult to get a combination that worked well together. By using the transform tool in Adobe Photoshop (Ctrl+T), I rotated some of the picture and made them different sizes in order for them to fit together.

 

In my portfolio I included three photography pages. In our photography unit, we had the opportunity to explore Barnsley Town Centre and take photos of the surroundings. This is one of the simplest pages in my portfolio as I wanted the picture to fill the page to make it as clear as possible. I also rounded the edges of the picture to make it look friendlier and to make it not look like it has just been stuck on the page.

 

Colour Space

Colour space is a way of displaying a range of colours on a series of different digital devices such as cameras, printers and monitors. Colour space can be referred to as a digital colour palette that links numbers to colours. Each colour combination will have its own unique number, which makes these combinations identifiable. Different aspects can influence the colour space such as the lightness, darkness, saturation and hue.

An image can also be set to grey scale; this process takes sections of the colour image and applies the equivalent shades of black or white depending on the intensity of the light and dark areas in the original image.

YUV is a colour mode that can also be used in Adobe Photoshop, which takes into consideration human perception to make images more efficient for humans to look at. YUV is split into two sections to define the colour space. The ‘Y’ stands for luma, which represents the brightness in the image and then the ‘UV’ that stands for chrominance, which represents all the remaining colours.

RGB is made up of three different colours, red, green and blue. They are combined together in order to create a wide variety of different colours. Red, green and blue are all primary colours and therefore they are able to produce and secondary and tertiary colours when added together.

Optimising

When displaying images on the Internet, there needs to be the correct balance between the file size and the quality of the image. Normally, when a webpage is loading it is due to the images on that page, and this is why it is important to get the correct balance, as you don’t want the webpage to take a long time to load but also want the image to be of a good quality. There are certain areas within an image that can be reduced slightly in order to decrease the file size, such as the bit depth, resolution and the dimension of the image.

There are also several other ways that can help to reduce the file size of an image but keep some of the quality. There are different formats in which an image can be saved as in which some have smaller file sizes than others. The two main formats that are generally used are GIF’s which should be used for simple line drawing that are not too complex and the other is JPEG’s which should be used for photographs. There are other techniques that can be applied as well such as cropping out certain areas of the image that are not needed; this will help reduce the size.

Image Capture

Once an image has been taken on a camera, it can be transferred onto a digital device which allows the image to be seen on a larger scale and also it can be shared with other people or used on a piece of work etc. There are several ways in which images can be imported onto a digital device, such as, a connection lead straight from the camera to the device or also the memory card from the camera can be removed and put into the device that also has an available memory card slots. People tend to use the memory card way as this makes it easier to keep organised of images. However, people do not always want to get images off a camera onto a digital device, sometimes, they have a hard copy of an image in which it needs to be scanned onto the device via a scanner. Once the images have been successfully transferred onto the digital device, it is a case of sorting out the file format of the image which will have an effect on the file size; however, the lower the size of the file tends to have an effect on the quality (resolution) of the image.