A Cool Community Site Design

The mid-term for Visual Journalism at Columbia College Chicago is to create a website design with all original pieces.

The design started as just a sketch for a community photography website. The design called for eight original photos and one ad. The nine items were cropped and toned in Photoshop. Before that the photos were changed to 72 dpi, RGB color and jpeg because it's for online.

  

Now it is time to start the design in the program InDesign. The mock-up called for nine rectangles to shape the photos, sidebar, navigation buttons and the search boxes.

In the most complicated project, the typography was the most difficult part with seven fonts, numerous sizes and four colors.

Red was chosen to be the primary because it is a warm color and home reminds viewers of a warm place.

Cropped and Toned to Perfection

During a Photoshop CS4 exercise for the Columbia College course, Visual Journalism, the students were asked to crop and tone photos for their mid-term website design.

The original photo is just average, it is too far away and the color is dull. I used the crop tool to cut out the road and bring the focal point of the photo forward. Next adjust the contrast and brightness on the photo to show the texture of the clouds.

 

Bringing Life Back to Art

In a restoration project, Columbia College students had to fix a ruined, old piece of art in Photoshop CS4. The original photo was messed-up, it had many holes and smudges from wear and tear. The colors in the photo had faded and it took away from the art.

The first step is to use the clone stamp tool to plug up those holes, smudges, and stains. To make sure the texture of the picture look untouched, use the healing brush tool to have a perfect transition between the new and old parts of the restoration.

Then add a new adjustment layer. From there select the levels option, you'll see a histogram. Continue by adjusting each channel until the picture looks acceptable. Last I slightly adjusted the contrast and brightness of the picture to make it pop.