Contact Sheet

This assignment, the contact sheet, afforded me the opportunity to experiment with the general manipulation of images in Photoshop. With this project, I mostly gained experience in the resizing of images, although I also became more familiar with color and filters. Since my previous work in Photoshop concerned text primarily, I was excited to begin the contact sheet and work with the editing of images for the first time.

In the first set of photos, I had to change the resolution, or dots per inch (DPI) of a photo of gas barrels. To do this, I had to choose the “Image Size” option in Photoshop, de-select “Resample Image” and then change the resolution. Of the four pictures in the first row, there are resolutions of 72, 300, 600, and 1200. Though they may appear indiscernible from each other, at least at a size of 1 inch by 1.33 inches, their qualities do in fact vary.

For the format/mode portion of this assignment, I had to produce four copies of the same photograph in different color schemes. I had to transform a picture of a dancing couple to B&W, Duotone, Color RGB (for print), and Color CMYK (for web). This particular task required entering the “View” on the toolbar, scrolling to “Proof Setup,” and selecting the desired color.

The Orientation, Framing, and Content portions of this assignment were different, but all involved the changing of the image size. For the Orientation row, I had to resize the images; I made the height larger than the width for the Portrait, I made the width larger than the height for the Landscape, and I made the height and width equal for the Square. Framing and Content both involved resizing and cropping the images, so that some were close-up while others had wide angles, or that some were abstract while others were representational.

The final row consisted of applying different filters to a photo of a fire hydrant. I used Artistic Palette Knife, Drybrush, Crosshatch, and Journalistic filters.

The filters were definitely my favorite part of this contact sheet. I’m glad that I’m now capable of changing the quality, color, and size of photographs, but I think filtering is the coolest part. I really can’t think of a more eloquent way to word it: applying artistic and fun filters to photographs makes them look really cool, and I love it!

The most difficult aspect of this assignment was that, excluding the Resolution and Format/Mode portions, I had to figure out stuff by myself. Since I attended a journalism conference in San Diego and missed class on February 26th, I was not present when my instructor explained how to complete the other rows. Since I don’t have any previous experience with Photoshop, it took me a long time to do some (what I found later to be) fairly simple tasks. For example, I spent an hour or more searching for and researching (in books and online) for a button that magically changed a picture from Landscape to Portrait. It wasn’t until reading six or more online forums that I realized no such button existed, and that I had to manually change the height and widths.

Trying to figure out this assignment on my own may have been difficult, but it was also really rewarding. I’m proud that I was able to do research and experimentation to discover how to execute that last few portions of the contact sheet on my own.

If I had more time to complete this, I would have changed my Landscape portrait. Since I was not present in class when we learned how to do the Orientation, I was not aware of the exact sizes we were supposed to use. Although the width is larger than the height, the width is not 1.33 inches like it should've been. I definitely would have changed this if I had more time and knew earlier of the correct size. Also, I think I would have devoted even more attention to the filters. Looking back, I realize that there are so many different filters and filter settings that I could have tried. I have every intention to experiment with filters with personal work. That’s because, like I previously mentioned, they’re so cool!