Photoshop Project Revisions / Report Draft

The intended audience I aim to encompass revolves around young adults of various backgrounds who have experienced difficulties in fitting in and establishing connections with others. Maybe the viewer is experiencing a culture shock in a new environment, or even just struggling to find a comfortable community. Since the theme of cultural connection is heavily used, this image might appeal more to those struggling culturally. Through this image, I am suggesting that the universal nature of music can be used to unite our differences and help build a sense of belonging. So, the purpose of presenting music in such a way is to encourage the audience to learn a musical instrument to bring about opportunities to become engaged and find commonalities with others. When it comes to learning music, I feel that most other calls to action focus on the individual, appealing to the notion that "learning a musical instrument can make you smarter", or "it builds your confidence", but I'm urging that learning music is more than this. In fact, music can be a way to express yourself emotionally to those around you, transcending the horizons of a single individual.

There are a few major landmarks in this image that contribute to my message to the audience. Situated in the bottom left stands a piano. Since I am encouraging others to learn an instrument, providing a well-known example of one helps establish a musical theme. The placement of the piano gives space for a sprawling staff to flow from it, extending the entire width of the image. This staff is the main symbol of unity and connectedness, as it is overlayed on top of several different countries all in a row. In a way, the staff is what is providing the connection, seemingly wrapping up the countries together, showing how music brings different cultures and people together. The staff also provides a separation of saturation, which is the final main feature of the image. Everything below the staff, besides the piano, is grayed out and has low saturation whereas everything above the staff is bright and vibrant. This sort of saturation manipulation is used to explain that music is what brings "color" to the world. The portions without color are boring and unsatisfying, as is a lonely life with a lack of fellowship.

Several tools within photoshop helped me convey my message. I ended up using a lot of the selection tools to delete portions I didn't need and to move around objects. For example, the original picture with the piano had an auditorium which I completely cut out in favor of placing different countries in the background. One extremely useful tool was the spot healing brush tool, which helped remove the middle piano from the stage while leaving the stage behind it intact. I also used the cropping tool extensively to get the best portions of each country. I needed each crop to work well with each other since I planned on connecting the mountains in the background. Lastly, I used a saturation layer to fill in the spots where I wanted the color to "pop" and where I wanted it to fade. This was one of the most important techniques for my image since it made the staff a bit more profound than just simply connecting the countries. I first attempted to have this saturation with a gradient, but the gradients weren't flexible enough in terms of where I could put the color and leave it out. In the end, I found out that you could use the brush tool to paint the saturation wherever I wanted, which was very helpful and flexible.

Through this process, I learned that creating these edited images takes quite a bit of planning. It is one thing to have an idea, but if you can't plan out how you will execute the idea, it will be harder. Oftentimes I found myself working on the image and struggling because I didn't think about how each component would interact with each other. However, I also found that the design process is very experimental, as in, sometimes ideas just simply wouldn't work. However, even when one idea didn't come out the best, it usually sparked another idea whether from me or my peers. In terms of myself, I was able to reflect on the role that music has played in my life, which is why I feel strongly about learning an instrument. Music was how I met some of my best friends, and how I continue to meet and connect with new people. So, the project was a nice reminder of why I continue music.

Thinking ahead for the next project, I definitely want to allocate more time to figuring out a concrete audience and purpose. I think that will help the project vision form quicker than it did for the photoshop project. Ideally, I would start planning once I see the capabilities of the program the project is based on. Once I have an idea of how it can present information, I can use the tutorials to think of specific implementations for my ideas. Also, I might want to try harder and commit the skills in the tutorials to memory. With the photoshop project for example, even though I would learn a new skill, I had a hard time remembering it later on, so I would have to spend time going through the same tutorial again. Working on a few ideas based on a specific tutorial could potentially help this memorization hold. Lastly, it would be a good idea to get a draft done earlier so I can get as much feedback from people, and have more time to implement that feedback.