Yay! Go me!

So I survived another half-week. Just two more days. And one more week until the March Break.

There isn't much new news. I've posted my very first article in the Wiki (yay) and I've finished my digital painting. That's all. I don't know if we're starting on anything new.

Been So Long

Somehow I just don't find the time to do my blog anymore. I have lots of things to do, and it's just piling up on me like a ton of bricks. My health project had been very upsetting lately, plus I have an art project, and I have to explore more on Wiki. Tomorrow, I have a Science test.

I really don't know what I should be doing right now. Everything is confusing. Anyway, we're making a digital painting on Photoshop Elements. I'm trying my best to make it look interesting, but see, I'm used to the tools in Photoshop and making things look really nice there. However, there are some tools that are missing in the Elements one that I think would be really useful in making my painting.

Wiki Wiki Wiki! Wiki forever!

Well, my computer teacher decided to make a community site for us. It's really interesting. I roamed around a bit and there are some good features in this wiki site. There was a chatting room. It was really cool because I've never chatted before. My parents don't allow me. It was a bit confusing though, because everyone was talking about different things at the same time. There was also a forum there for anything we want to discuss, like things we don't understand in our lessons or other things we want to ask about. It has to be BTT related though. We can also have a personal blog there, but then I don't want to use it, because people would probably still rather use their blogger account. I know I would. I'm used to this one. Anyway, I don't know much about the wiki site yet, so I'm planning to explore it further.

Zoom...Bam!... Kaboom!!

Well, we talked more about other techniques in the Photoshop. Okay, here are the other features:

Automate- Batch: This is where you can convert what type of picture it is. (jpeg, gif's, etc.)
Automate- Contact Sheet: This arranges all your pictures into one page according to how many rows and columns you want
Automate-Picture Package: This will arrange your pictures into the sizes you want

There are also other features in the Filter section. What these tools do is sort of 'deform' your picture in a way that you want it. You change a bit of your picture each time you put it under the filter. The ones that we focused on more are: pixelate, sharpen, and blur. We also learned how these tools can help you improve a picture. It depends on what kind of picture you want. There really is no right or wrong.

Catch up Period!

Well, today there really isn't much to do. We're supposed to catch up for anything we missed or didn't finish. Actually, I finished most of the things we're supposed to do. The only thing I didn't finish is the essay due next Wednesday. I decided to change my topic again. This is the third one I'm doing. I just can't seem to be satisfied about any of the notes I did for the previous ones. I learned a lot though.

So the topic I chose to do it on is phising. Right now I have no clue to what it is. My sister just mentioned it a couple of days ago or so. I intend to find out more so that I can do my essay. There's really nothing else to talk about. Today is grad pics day. I got my hair straightened out and I got bangs. People said I look good, but my Dad said my bangs didn't suit me. I've had bangs in elementary school but I got rid of it around grade 6. I just got it again right now. I'm sort of happy about it. Hopefully, I'll look good in the grad pictures.

Harvesting the Crop

More photoshop for today for me. Not like I mind or anything, this is actually more interesting than talking about computer ethics. I like doing photoshop.

We learned all about pixels today. Pixel is a single bit of information on a computer image. A picture is made up of thousands of pixels. Each of this has their own hexadecimal code. When you change the number of pixels, you change a bit of the image every time. A good number of pixels for printing out a picture is 1800 by 1600. A good number of pixels for posting in the internet is 72 over all. This is just because when you reduce the number of pixels, you're reducing the megabytes. This way, it takes the pictures to load faster and cheaper to send it over from one computer to another. The more pixels you have, the more detailed your picture would be.

You can always change the number of pixels you have. However, when you're going from a low number of pixels and increasing it, the computer can only work with the number of pixels present so when you increase it, the resulting picture would become blurry. The computer would just think of what codes it would make for the picture to have more pixels. It doesn't know what really looks nice. When you go the other way around, when you decrease the number of pixels, the computer throws away the pixels it thinks it doesn't need.

Another thing we learned is cropping. Cropping is simply just taking a part of the picture and making that the whole picture.

Levels is the other thing we talked about. We can change the levels of each picture to what will satisfy us. By this, I mean that we can change the level of each of the colors red, green, or blue. When we do this, we either make a picture brighter or darker in each of the color. It's a good way of editing a picture.

Snap Snap! Wow...

Today we talked about a new topic. We're starting Photoshop Elements and we need to know several of the rules for photo composition. We're beginning to learn about graphics because my teacher said it comes in handy when we're doing advertising especially in business.

Well, there are a couple of rules I want to mention.

One of the most important one is the 'Rule of Thirds'. This rule is essentially about not making the focus of your pictures directly at the middle. It's much more interesting to look at rather than just staring at the center of the page. The horizon line can be two thirds on the bottom or the top of the page.

Another rule that you can follow is contrast. Placing the object of interest in a background that contrasts its colour so that it is brought out more. One other rule that brings out the point of interest is blurring the background. This would make the audience's focus on what you want them to.

For horizon lines that are perfectly straight, you might want to take them at an angle, most likely diagonally on the page. This just makes your picture a bit more appealing because it poses something that would usually look straight horizontal or vertical in a different view.

To know more, you can go to this site:

http://www.azuswebworks.com/photography/ph_comp.html

This is also where I got my information from.

The Month of Love

Well, now we enter the month of February, when the theme is about love and chocolates and caring and soft and fuzzy things. Unfortunately, that's not the case about computers... or more like math and art for today.

Yesterday, I started on my research folder. Just a heads up about it because it's due next next Tuesday.

What I learned today is the hexadeximal system. It's sort of like the binary code or even our regular tens system. It's really easy once you know it. Instead of using ten's or two's, we use sixteen. With 1 and 16, you can show the different 255 colours that a computer is capable of showing. Let me explain it further.

Okay. In binary we use numbers and multiply them by two. So our place values would be: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64... However, in the hexadecimal system, our place values is by 16. So, it would start with 1, 16, then 266... and so on. Now, our computer screens are capable of producing 255 levels of each of the colours red, green or blue. We only use the place values 1 and 16 because 266 is one more than 255. But since numbers can only go up until 9 before having a place value added, we use letters instead of numbers.

So A= 10
B= 11
C=12
D=13
E=14
F=15

Let's say we want the number 53 to be translated in the hexadecimal system. Its code would then be 35. This is because it would take 3 16's and 5 1's to make 35. Just check. 3 x 16 = 48. and 1 x 5 is obviously 5. 48 + 5 is equal to 53. That's just basically how it works. There are 255 different combinations for the three colours using only those two numbers and six letters.