How To Resize An Image In Photoshop CS5 And Upload It To The Web

Because I did not attend the Creative Quarter in London, I had to go to college and do a session with Claire. We were based in the computer room behind CJ's FLA and were told to bring sketchbooks and photographs to prepare for our digital portfolio. It was a really good few hours where we spent time resizing images to upload to the internet and shown how to use the printers. I learnt a lot and thought It would be a good idea to put the process on my blog so I can remember for later references.

1. First find the image you wish to resize and make smaller to upload to the Internet. Right click on the image and highlight "Open with" and select "Adobe Photoshop CS5"

2. A new Photoshop window will appear with the selected digital photograph on canvas. To start resizing go to "Image" and click on "Image Size". A box will pop up.

3. You will then need to change the pixel dimension to "Percentage" from the small drop down menu as shown. Change the top box to 50 and the bottom box will follow. This means you are halving the photograph. Hence it now saying 50 percent. Click OK when complete.

4. The box will vanish and you photograph on canvas will appear smaller. Next you need to select "File" on the top left of the toolbar, and scroll down to "Save for web & devices". Click and another box will appear.

5. Select "4 up" at the top toolbar of the new box. You will then need to manually do the next step. Start to zoom in by selecting the preferred distance to capture distortion from the bottom left corner. Move around the image by dragging and finding a good bit of detail. You should then try and create an image that is similar to the "Original" shown on the top left. The other three images are there to compare to each other. Change the quality of them by selecting JPEG or GIFF near the top. You can then play around with the compression quality situated below. It is best to use a JPEG file and try to keep the image size below 2MB to upload to the internet. Once you are happy with the comparisons click Save and select a destination. You are now ready to upload this digital photograph to the web.

Portfolio Preparations

Today I was learning at college how to upload a digital file to the internet and my blog. I was taught how to resize an image in preparation for when I have to do an online portfolio after applying to my chosen universities.

An image captured using my digital Canon 500D SLR camera. I took this photograph looking up a wool jumper whilst it was hanging on the washing line. I love the bold vibrant colours and the abstract patterns created. I am impressed by the outcome because it has not been edited in anyway; the sunlight from the outside of the jumper made it perfect. I possibly conclude using this photograph as part of my online portfolio for universities as it is an unusual way to create art, and could be considered as mixed media from a photographic aspect as well as an instillation piece.

What Northbrook Has To Offer (Part 1)

After leaving class early on Friday 4th November from the last day of the life drawing week I felt I needed to consider my UCAS options. Therefore I felt it was just as important to check out BA (Hons) courses on my doorstep as well as other courses throughout the country.

I hadn't completely made up my mind at the time what area I wanted to specialize in next year. I wanted to make the correct decision. I had been looking at all courses of interest at other universities; such as art and photography. I was considering trying to do a broad degree that I could use both elements upon, a course that wasn't too specific in the area chosen.

I left the main studios at roughly 12:55 on a mission to aim at finding the fine art talk room for 1:00pm. Surprisingly there were a considerate amount of people, few of which were late comers from our art, design & media course. 

The courseleader, David Blackaller, gave us a brief undertsading of what it was like to be a student studying at degree level in Northbrook. He mentioned that the fine art course was very broad based and you could quite easily take a non medium specific approach to things. The course provides flexible working areas and a wide range of media could be used. Some examples of these were sculpture, drawing, photography, painting and printing etc. This sounded brilliant to me; not having to stick in a dedicated allocation of an area. This meant  that I could also be able to possibly work and get ideas and inspiration from others and apply to a different medium. The main reason why I had not jet chosen a narrower area was because I felt I hadn't yet had enough time to relate to other areas of working such as textiles and sculpture.

As well as having a fine art BA (Hons) course at Northbrook, you could also choose another three sections within this space. These being painting, sculpture and printmaking. I felt I would have gone for the broadest section as I didn't feel I had enough knowledge of the others. 

The structure of the course seemed very similar to what we had been completeing at this current moment. The first year involved a few weeks of fine art workshops, of which you would be going into more deatil in this specific section. Then there would then be two studio practise briefs as well as lectures on cultural and supporting studies. The second year was also very similar and we were told by the beginning of this year which study you were most interested in and start carrying this forward. By the third year you would be creating and setting your own briefs as well as creating a dissertation.

I was told that students from previous years had exceeded in this course and had gone to places such as Central St Martins and Glasgow School of Art to study their masters. Other progression paths that were mentioned by David were found employment in museum work, teaching and freelance. 

I was also very interested in how to apply. After asking David he mentioned that you apply the same way as other universities around the country by apply via UCAS. You needed 160 UCAS points from A Levels or A BTEC diploma. I was surprised by this because I considered it to be a low entry requirement and hence not being very good. I  now realise that possibly I may have underestimated Northbrook at degree level as many of the other universities even with high UCAS points to get in relate getting in pretty much strictly to your portfolio evidence. I was happy with the fact that at Northbrook you got the chance to have a face to face interview.

To conclude this fine art course I sum it up by saying it would be the perfect course for me. The only major flaw I feel against this course nevertheless is the fact that it is not what I consider to have huge connections in this area. There would not be as many places to exhibit and it would be harder to make a name for yourself. A perfect place for me to study would happen to be in Brighton, London or Edinburgh. This is because all cities are influenced by the creative scene and there are lots of links. I feel Northbrook may not have so many. Even though I love the structure and the teaching style I think this gives it away. If this course was in London I would be applying to it next year.