I learned how to use the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to make corners and curves. We made different lines and shapes using the pen tool.

Before doing the exercises, I found the pen tool challenging. While the follow-along helped me learn how the pen tool works, I still find the tool confusing and had to use at times. I believe I need more practice with it to fully understand how to draw with it.

I don’t know how else my submission could be improved. I followed along with the guides and made the shapes. I could possibly try to make these shapes on my own without the guides as practice with the pen tool.

I did enjoy the guides for using the pen tool. I believe a lot of practice is needed with the pen tool, especially with someone who has never worked in these programs before. I could use these guides to practice more, either by timing myself or doing it without the guides.

In this lab, I learned a variety of ways to make textures from scratch and how to make a texture from an already existing photo. I have made a “Space Time” texture from a picture of space and a clouds texture from the complimentary colors of blue and orange. Overall, I like the clouds option, the gradients option and the brushed metal options. They produced pleasing textures that didn’t look too subtle or too overbearing.

The lab was not hard at all, and it was quite fun. My original idea for the texture from an image was snake scales, but that did not work well to turn into a pattern so I changed my ideas.

I think my space texture can be tweaked a bit to make it less unnatural, but I don’t think it is too bad. It was a lot worse before since there was a larger star in the corner that made it much more apparent.

I learned how to use some of the tools in Photoshop in order to create mask layers and hide the background of images to put onto a different background. The banana was done with the pen tool, while the rose was done with the magnetic lasso tool.

Overall, I found the lab fairly easy. I like the magnetic lasso tool the most, as it is easy to use and still offers a good amount of options to fix the image. I did not like the pen tool. I found it hard to use and not as good as the other options. The background eraser was easy, but tedious to do. It did produce good results.

I believe the banana could be improved, as well as the model. The pen tool was hard to use and I would need more practice on it to make it better. The model would just take more time to adjust the background tool so I could keep more of her hair and less of the blue background.

I don’t think the lab could be improved. It was simple and taught about the important tools to use to make layer masks.

I can use this in the future to make images for the web, especially if I want a specific object from an image and want to put it on a different background. It can also be useful for getting rid of things in the background that one would not want.

In this lab, I learned how to retouch images. I scanned two of the things that going to use for my first project, which is going to be a portfolio of images pertaining to one of my favorite things, Dungeons and Dragons and other table-top role-playing games. One of them is the D&D book and the other is my favorite character, a dragon named Fulgur. Learning to adjust the colors of the scanned images was fun to do and not too hard. It really just required a good eye for how color looks.

I believe the lab was relatively easy. Figuring out how the levels and the curves just took some practice and playing around with to understand how they worked. I used the scanner at the library again, and it was just as easy as before. For the first project however, I may omit or make the D&D book better as it couldn’t scan that well.

I think the first thing that I could do to improve my submission is to use something other than the D&D book. It didn’t scan well despite my best efforts. The dragon may also be too bright. I kept it though, since how the colors looked how they were supposed to with the character. I used my “photographer’s eye” in order to decide that his colors were correct.

I don’t think the lab can be improved. It was simple enough and taught me how to color correct the best I could. It is also good that we can use scanned images from our project, since it encourages us to do our project.

I can use this knowledge in the future to make images that are taken and scanned and make them look better than their originals. This is useful in web design so that images used on a website look professional, clean and vibrant.

In this lab, I learned how different forms of acquiring images affects the quality of the image. The images that were taken with the high-end camera were brighter, sharper and higher quality. The scanned images retained the full size of the scan even though the objects or images weren’t the full size of the scanner.

Most of the lab was easy. Taking the pictures was easy enough, but getting the high-end camera may be harder to get with the limited amount of cameras that are available. The scanner was easy to use and easy to send the scanned images to my email in the library. Creating an image from Photoshop was also simple. The only thing I could count as challenging would be getting the camera, but I had no problem with it.

I don’t think my submission can be improved much because of how simple it is. Making the dollar bill smaller may have made it more like the rest of the images.

I think the lab can be improved if the use of the high-end camera was either removed or implemented differently. Perhaps it could be fixed by renting a single camera out for the class and let everyone get a chance to take a picture with it during class time.

I can use the knowledge from this lab for future projects by making sure to use the correct and most accurate image acquirement option for the job.