Emily Scherer

1. What did you learn?

I learned how to create a pattern and put it in my project on illustrator because I didn’t know how to do that before and don’t have much experience on illustrator because I usually use Photoshop more. I also learned how to do the logo and make it look more 3D and sharp/cleaner. Also how to create something on the computer and then being able to print it out and put it together because I have never done that before. 

2. What was easy?

What was easy was doing the logo because you just had to work with the layers. You just had to copy and paste the logo and move it a little down to make it look 3D and then just hide the other stuff to make it look cleaner. It was also easy to come up with a story to write on the side of the milk to show why they are the best milk and why someone should buy it and make the product sound really good. 

3. What was challenging?

What was challenging was making the coffee cups because I had a hard time drawing something that looked decent and not messy and also trying to come up with two ideas so I had a variety and not just the same coffee cup on both sides. After a while of brainstorming and trying to sketch things, I did end up being successful and found a way to create a clean, nice looking coffee cup. 

4. How could your submission be improved?

My submission was improved by changing the pattern from the swirls to creating my own pattern of a cow print to match the theme of the milk carton. 

5. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

He could improve the assignment by making a new pattern required because I feel like it is important to match the theme of the milk carton and show that you can be creative and practice doing a pattern and not just using what you did from a lab. 

6. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

How I will apply my knowledge to future assignments is having more confidence in illustrator and knowing what I am doing when I have to use it again for a different project. I will also know how to print something out that I made and know how to put it together. 

7. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

What helped me do this project was the labs because they worked into the project and made us go step by step because for one lab we would do the pattern and then for another lab we did the logo and these labs gave me the knowledge to know what I am doing so I can be more creative with it. 

Emily Scherer

1. What did you learn?

I learned how to cover backgrounds and all the different ways you can do that. There were many different tools you can use to get rid of the background of a photo and it was easy to figure out. I also learned that if you do command J it will let you choose a section of the image and put it on top of another section and then I lowered the opacity so it blended in with the background. 

2. What was easy?

What was easy was importing my individual photos into the template and using the tools I was taught to remove the background of the pictures so you could blend them together. 

3. What was challenging?

What was challenging was that my background color and pattern didn’t really work with my images and my pattern was so intense that I couldn’t see the color of the background and didn’t come through or blend well together. Also what was challenging was creating the mobile version from the desktop version and definitely struggled with that but was able to figure it out after watching the class video. 

4. How could your submission be improved?

My submission was improved by a lot because when I first submitted it the images weren’t blended and were just each placed on the template and saw the pattern and the color of the background and just didn’t look great and then when I realized what I needed to do I redid it and made the images all blend together and definitely looked a whole lot better. 

5. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

You could improve the assignment by maybe taking out the background color and creating a pattern because I feel like for at least mine, it didn’t really fit in the whole scheme and worked better if you just used your images and overlapped them and took a section of a image and put it on top of another image with low opacity. 

6. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

I will apply my knowledge that I learned in this project to help me on future projects and labs that we will be doing in class and can also help me in classes I will be taking next semester and is just a good skill to have when applying for jobs/internships. 

7. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

The Erik Johansson surreal photography website helped me on this project because it inspired me to think outside of the box and not make my project so basic. 

Emily Scherer

1. This project made me learn a lot about photoshop. I was a beginner before this project and had no clue how to use any of the tools. I struggled at the beginning but I learned so much and am able to say that I am comfortable with photoshop because I used to be scared of it. I learned how to get people and glares from windows out of my photos and make them look a lot sharper. This was so satisfying though because they are pictures that I genuinely enjoy and were ruined by people and stuff like that so I love that I am able to crop all that out and have better photos than before. 

2. What was easy was creating the lighting adjustment curves because you just had to play around with it and would always make your photos so much nicer and would give it a darker/sharp kind of lighting. All you had to do for the curve adjustment was make a slight S on the line and it would work well with every photo. 

3. What was challenging about the project was trying to get people and other things out of my photo by using the stamp tool and other tools while also trying to blend it in and make it seem natural and not out of place or where you could tell that it was photoshopped. And also the my portfolio with all the pictures and creating thumb drives for it was very confusing and didn’t know what I was doing until I was shown and then got the hang of it pretty well. 

4. How my submission could be improved is making sure the photo looks neat in some places because there were some spots where I used the stamp and lasso tool to cut people out and looks a little blurry and was a little noticeable. I tried my best to make it blend in and I feel like it worked pretty well, but could also be neater. 

5. How you could improve it for the future class could be to simplify it or find an easier way to replace your photos with our photos and to maybe have a little less photos because it can be a little overwhelming and confusing with all the files. 

6. I will apply what I learned from this project in future assignments because it has helped me with improving my skills with photoshop and will be comfortable using it for future projects. 

7. The videos in the project 1 slideshow helped me a lot to learn what I had to do in photoshop and how to make my picture look better. Without those I would have been really lost.