Web207: Topis 1.5: Photography

Notes from lecture:

• 1839 saw the invention of daguerreotypes - images exposed onto film. The photograph told the truth and was about co-presence - you had to be there!
• In the 20th century photography switched from 'evidence' to 'art'
• Comparing analogue and digital cameras - a 14Gb camera will still not produce as a good a quality as a good negative
• 1889 saw the introduction of hand-held cameras
• Facebook is the largest photo sharing site in the world compared to Flickr which is more suited to amateur - professional photographers
• Flickr is a very social site and encourages photography. It uses tags and comments to encourage communication and offers groups for people with similar photography interests
• Instagram is a very well known and popular free sharing site for amateur photographers. It is an architecture of participation and membership grew 15x in one year!
• Where Flickr is web based - Instagram is mobile based
• Photography is no loner about truth and all photographs are open to manipulation (Leaver, 2012).

Here is a one and a half minute video showing a model being made up with hair, makeup and lighting for a photo shoot then manipulated in Photoshop for a billboard...

no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted!

Reflection:

Is Pinterest the new Napster? Will photo sharers face copyright infringement lawsuits for sharing other people's images on Pinterest? Should we trust the photos we see in today's advertising? I believe the only photos we can trust are the ones we take ourselves!

References:

Leaver, T. (2012) ... Topic 1.5: Photography [Lecture]. Retrieved from http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/lectopia/casterframe.lasso?fid=794620&cnt=true&usr=not-indicated&name=not-indicated

NED11: Module 8

Images

• It's best to scan images as RGB colour at 72-150dpi PSD format, then crop it, resize it then re-save it as a different name. This results in richer colours
• To clean up your images, use a dust/filter tool and rubber stamp/cloning tool in your photo editing program then sharpen the image
• JPEG = Joint Photographic Experts Group
• GIF = Graphics Interchange Format
• PNG = Portable Network Graphics
• Baseline Standard is the most common form of JPEG
• Baseline Optimised uses a better compression technique but may not be supported on earlier browsers
• Progressive allows your JPEG image to appear as though it's coming into focus as it downloads on your webpage
• Adobe Image Ready allows you to visually compare various JPEG compressions

Images and web-safe colours

Although 256 colours are enough to fool the human eye into thinking it can see more, it does pose some problems in displaying colours outside of the 256 colour gamut. As a result it is quite possible your JPEG images may appear 'dithered' or 'speckled' on older computers. To make matters worse Macintosh operating systems and Windows operating systems use a different set of 256 colours. Most are identical, however 40 of them are different leaving you with only 216 colours to work with. In your swatch pallet in Photoshop, click on the black triangle to see the 'Wide Spectrum' palette. It is best to stick to the 216 colours in web design.

Another way of selecting web-safe colours is through the use of your Colour Picker. Double click on either colour swatch in your palette, tick the box that says 'Only Web-safe Colours'.

GIF's support a variety of special effects including interlacing, transparency and animation.