Sometimes our country does not take care of it's own people.

I after a bit of trial and error, I corrected the peace be upon him that I had written by hand using the pen tool, by finding the arabic text for these words online. Using the magic wand tool, I was able to select the detailed text and add it to my book cover.

* My mentor told me that the way that the text was placed before made this cover look like an advertisement. So I changed it, rotated and made it a a point smaller. (July 10, 2012)

Rethinking Digital Art and Design

   I cannot believe that I completed this assignment. When will I ever learn to pick simple projects? We had to re-design a book cover ,didn't seem like a big deal, I love books so I figured that this shouldn't be a problem. Wrong. First it took me days to choose a book that I really enjoyed, there were too many to list. So I chose a book that could have an updated cover, Cheaper By the Dozen. I began to visualize how I'd redo this cover. Then one night, I took a good look at a book that I had just purchased 101 Diamonds. A very simple cover,  red and gold text on a white background. This would be easier and faster, so I thought.
   I understand how to use most of the tools in Photoshop CS5 now, and I was going along smoothly until I hit the Arabic. It took me days to find the name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) clear and large enough to use for my idea. It turned out that I had one in one of my own photo files. Working with that was crazy, until I remembered the magic wand tool, checked my textbook and saw that all I had to do was select similar layers (of course this took a day before I figured this out). I decided to stick with the same text style or close to the original cover. Fitting and aligning was another story, until I realized that it was better to create an new layer for some of the more difficult words ( I actually omitted one word because the text was out of sync).
   The part that make ask the question "why on earth did you choose this book?" was the small Arabic writing on the end which translates to "peace be upon him". This took days to try to add and I simply could not get it right until I remembered that I have been writing Arabic for almost my entire life and I could simply create a new layer and write this myself. Why did I think this was better? I had to use my finger to control the brush tool (yes I tried my pen) and this was very difficult. After countless restarts, I wrote directly on the main background layer and was successful.
The diamonds were not that hard but shaping the drop at the bottom was, I didn't know which was the best way to do this so I warped.

Digital Design..... me and my big ideas. The original cover is at the top. Guess what? I forgot to create the book binding. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!  I had to fix it again.

So you wanna make a poster

   For this assignment we had to create a poster, simple right? I think not. I suppose that one who is quite familiar with Photoshop CS5 would likely think "piece of cake". I learn by doing, so I can read through a textbook to gain an understanding, but the information means nothing to me unless I am applying it somewhere. I am getting better and faster.

   This really wasn't that difficult. It seems that the hard part is to come up with an idea and figure out how to present it. While searching through posters online to get an idea of how I should approach this project, it seems that some them were just TOO chaotic. I prefer simplicity, that is how I live my life. So I think that most of my designs are likely to look plain and boring. Maybe they'll be jazzed up here and there, then again to each his own.



\

Photo Montage Redo

I promise that the headache is very light this time, and the earache has been tamed by Ibuprofen, but none the less, the thought of pursuing a degree in graphic design beginning to seem so distant. This lesson is about using layers and text, but the frustration over choosing the best text for an image can make your skull crack.

Following my teachers suggestions I straightened the text and added an effect to make it more pronounced. I used 3 people on instead of 5 because it seemed a bit crowded.Then I added the image of the universe to make the image as a whole look a little more interesting. So what do you think?

Photo Montage plus headache

Photoshopping

So, I am finally learning what all of those symbols and tools are for in PS CS5. I did know a few basics, after all I attend YouTube University, and I have learned a few techniques. I tend to stick with what I know until I learn a different way to do something through experimentation, video or book. Of course there is also the internet.

Somehow hopefully I will no longer be intimidated by Photoshop. I will learn every aspect of this program and use it to edit everything,including my life.

Did you know that there is a PS CS6? sigh.....

I've Done it Again

So once again I have created a blog. Hope that I can find something interesting to blog about.