Projects, large and small

Today teams completed some miniprojects (1 to 2 minute videos). The purpose of the exercise was to debug the production process: make sure everyone's team is working, with everyone contributing; make sure each team's toolchain is working end-to-end (camera and other media sources, Photoshop and Premiere Pro and whatever other authoring tools you are using, external disk drives and any other storage media, through to exporting and saving video in AVI format); and identifying any areas that need fixing.

Today's minproject videos were fun to watch and are a great start on the maxiproject: an approximately 10 minute video that will need to be delivered in AVI format by Thursday August 2 next week (exact deadline time to be announced).

Keep in mind that the Cluster 1 staff are here to help you with these projects, so let us know about any problems you have and we'll work hard to help you out.

Speaking of which: Audio Technica 835 shotgun microphones, with fishpoles, from the UCSD Media Center will be available for teams who want to record better quality audio for particular tracks. Also, the Media Center's blue-screen production studio can be reserved for an hour at a time. Let us know particular proposals for use of this equipment and we can help make it happen.

Rick Miller on Photoshop

Rick Miller took Photoshop to the next level for us today. Beyond Standard RGB and JPEG compressed images, beyond using the standard Photoshop toolbox. Rick showed us how to use Adobe Bridge for organizing images, how to use lots of keyboard shortcuts and how to define our own shortcuts, how to get images to do the work in modifying themselves by using layer masks and channel masks, compositing an object together with its transparent shadow, and ended with some interesting demonstrations of sharpening and displacement distortion. Rick handed out Adobe notebooks and pens at the start of his presentation, and it was a good thing because every minute or two he would say: "This is really cool and important! Write this down..." For those of us who weren't fast enough to write everything down, Rick will write up a summary of what he covered today and we'll point you to it when we get it from him.

Adobe Photoshop guru coming Friday

Hey everyone,

On Friday afternoon (July 20) in the B220 lab we will be treated to a presentation by Rick Miller of Adobe. Rick is a professional digital photographer, has taught advanced Photoshop courses at Cal Poly Pomona and at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, is now working at Adobe, and knows more about it than just about anyone. He will explain what is involved in using Photoshop at a professional level, and can also answer "how do you do that" questions about Photoshop tricks and techniques. Bring your questions!