Wednesday Wk4 (ArtWeaver)

Wednesday night was another busy evening, a compact hour and a half filled to the brim with information about editing images, resolution, white balance and to top it all off, a little bit of theatre, wow, the course title, 'Introduction to photography' doesn't do the plethora of experiences justice.

Anyway re-cap time and I have attempted to provide a detailed account of the evenings activities in particular a walk through of the software you used, Art Weaver found at the following website artweaver.de

To view the images in more detail click on them and they should open in a new window.

As a freely available image editing program it is surprisingly advanced with lots of great features. The following presents the steps to create a Triptych using basic but frequently used tools. Most importantly it includes details about resolution which is hugely important to ensure you get the best quality output for your work.

To begin, download and install the software from the above address.

Once installed and open the screen you are presented appears like this...



It is referred to as a workspace. As well as the Menu Bar at the top you have to the left and right of your workspace boxes called Pallets. Pallets allow you to have to hand the most frequently used tools, they can be easily moved, closed, or hidden.



The main Pallet is called the Toolbox. For this exercise we will use the Move Tool (black triangle with cross sign) and the Crop Tool (looks like two 'L' shapes intersecting).




First thing to do is start a New Document. Goto File>New







Give your Document a name and set the Image Size to a Preset setting of 1024 x 768 px (pixels)



Once you have created your New Document we are going to use it as our Blank Canvas for our images.

We will be placing three images side by side so it is important to choose ones that work together.

For ease select your images and put them in a separate folder.

The next few steps are to be repeated for each image.

Goto File>Open



To make the selection process easier you can change the way you can view your images. By selecting the window icon (as shown) change the viewing option to Thumbnails.




Your image will open in a New Window. The first thing to do is change the size for what you want to achieve, in this case a Triptych to appear online.

Goto Image>Image Size



A dialogue box appears allowing you to alter the image dimensions and resolution.

Generally your camera and computer will transfer and save files at a default of 72 ppi (Pixels Per Inch) unless asked differently.

As a Rule of Thumb 72 pixels in an inch is the maximum quality required for the screen, no matter how big the screen. But for print it is recommended you change the quality to a higher setting, somewhere between 200 and 3oo (ppi) pixels in an inch - on paper more pixels squeezed into an inch the better quality your print will be.



However the number of pixels you have to play with is determined by the quality setting of the camera hence why the other Rule of Thumb applies, Small is considered suitable for the internet and e-mail, anything bigger will not only take longer to upload or send but provides a higher quality image for people to download and print.



An image shot on quality setting Large will be enormous when there are only 72 pixels in the inch. If you change the default measurement from pixels to centimeters you will get a better idea how big, they can be anything upto 1.5 meters wide - to fill a screen only requires an image measuring approximately 20-30 cm.

So...Keep the Resolution at 72ppi and change the dimensions to approximately 300px wide (about 7cm). Note the chain icon keeps the dimensions proportional. Click Apply to accept the changes.

Next. Goto Select>All



Goto Edit> Copy

Select the Window with your blank canvas.

Goto Edit>Paste.



Note the size in proportion to the canvas size we had set.

Follow the past few steps so all images are at the correct dimensions and appearing on your canvas.

Now we want to ensure the images are laid out with an even border. A useful guide for completing this task is the Grid.

Goto View>Show Grid

Set your border at 2 boxes deep and arrange the images accordingly.

Remember to select the relevant layer to correctly adjust the image.






Having set our border we can change our canvas size to make it all even.

Select the Crop Tool.

Note, by hoovering over the Tools with your cursor will reveal a label with the name of the Tool.

Drag the Crop Tool over your image. On release of the Tool a bounding box will appear. By clicking on the anchor points (small boxes) allows you to fine tune the size you want the canvas to be.



Once you are happy. Click Apply.



Goto View>Hide Grid

If you are happy Goto File>Save As and save your image as a Jpeg

Note, the file format for Art Weaver is AWD, to retain the layers or be able to make further adjustments save in this format. For output to your blog or to print use Jpeg.



Brilliant. Now Show off your work on your Blog.