Post-production lessons

1:
Our first lesson of post-production included revisiting programmes from last semester such as InDesign, Bridge (and Camera Raw) and Photoshop. We were given an example image to work with.

• Camera Raw:
• White balance: select the colour picker tool, click on a neutral colour (white/black), the colour balance will automatically set to what it should be. Sliders for hue/saturation, vibrance, etc. can be set to your preferences
• Sharpening: alt. key + 'masking' shows area of sharpening
• Select brush tool to add shadow to cheekbones or alter/brighten eye colours 
• Shift key > open object (in Photoshop)

• Photoshop:
• Image > image size > unlink width and height > set width to 97%(ish) to thin face slightly
• Liquify: (filter > liquify) use Bloat tool to enlarge eyes, use Move tool to make features even - use large circle brush sizes!
• Window > actions > [menu icon] > load actions > FMS404 > frequency separation > [play button at bottom] > continue, etc > Low frequency + high frequency layers > feather = 20px > filter > blur > gaussian blur
• Clone stamp tool

This lesson was a lot to take in after a few months without I.T. lessons! However I was really pleased with how the example image looked once I had applied all the filters and changes that we were showed. I definitely need to play around with the programmes again using my own photos, as there is a lot to remember and apply to my own work. Despite this, I am excited to see how my own images look once I work on them. 



2: 
The second lesson of post production was focusing on InDesign a little more. We got shown the templates for our brand images, so I downloaded the MAC one. 

• InDesign:
• By going to templates > links > layers, the visible layers were shown, and could be selected or deselected to display the layers that were wanted. For example, various pictures of make-up products, or placement and colour of the brand name. 
• To insert my own image instead of the example one, file > place > image
• Set frame to fit content
• Pages > insert 4 new. This creates the five page document needed for the hand-in. To create landscape pages, right click on 'A-master' > create new master > landscape > drag 'B-master' to where landscape pages are wanted
• To change the colour of the product to suit the product I am promoting: Select image > edit > edit with Photoshop > adjustments > hue/saturation > change 'master' to 'reds' > slide hue bar
• To save all: InDesign > links > relink button > select edited image

3:

In our third lesson we learnt about typography in InDesign, preparing us for the evaluation page. We learn how to insert columns to make the writing more readable, how to change the font and writing size, how to use 'paragraph styles' to create different bodies of text, how to make sure no text is lost off the page, how to remove hyphens, how to move a title to the centre of the page, and how to widen line spacing. We touched on SWOT analyses, and also inserted a box at the bottom of our page for a hyperlink to our blogs, which we were shown how to create.