Kuler - a sweat online "color ruler"

It can be a challenge to create a color scheme. Often times, people add color as they create their images. Some people have great success with this. Others benefit from planning ahead. Adobe has a website which is really fantastic for this purpose. It is name Kuler. You can select from thousands of color schemes that other users have created or create your own. You can create your own following suggested rules, or just wing it. You can even create your own color scheme by uploading and image or selecting and image from Flickr. It is really awesome to create a color scheme from your own image! You can save your color schemes as well using and Adobe.com account. If you have ever downloaded a trial version of an Adobe product, you probably already have an account. The numerical data for the colors is provided in five different color models; RGB, CMYK, HSB/HSV, hex, and even LAB. Kuler is really one of the truly great design tools on the web.

Thursday March 4th - last class before Spring Break

Just went through everyone's blogs. Some of them look great, others haven't been touched since Feb. 4th. A straight month! I am going to tally up all your grades over break so that you know exactly where you stand, but if you haven't been doing the projects, you should already have a good sense of that. You have done all the projects, then you are doing awesome!
Your only assignment during break is to take some photos of something fun and post them with a blog entry about what you did over spring break. Basically, a summary of what you did over break. That posting won't be due until the Thursday after you return, so the only think you need to actually do during break is to take some photos which you were likely to have done anyways.
Summary of assignments so far, reverse chronology:
Grid Project
Silly photo edited in Pixlr.com
Ran an anti-virus program, posted screen shot on blog.
Backed up data to Mozy.com, Adrive.com, or other free online storage site. Posted a screen shot on your blog.
Post a day in the life slide show presentation.
Posted two Animoto videos. One on the Urban Landscape and one on whatever.
Posted on the various music formats and differences in quality after ripping a CD in multiple formats.
Posted your five favorite Urban Landscape photos after editing them in Picnik. 
Posted a link to your Flickr account with your 20 favorite Urban Landscape photos.
Created a Blog. Took some time to customize it. Made an initial posting.
I think that was everything...
I will give you extra credit for each substantial blog posting your make. It can be on anything that you want. Your dog, how much you love beer, whatever.
Have a fun, safe break.

Class summary for 3/1

In class, we used Fallon's images to go through the process of putting your grid project together (thanks Fallon). We are going to use Pixlr.com for all the editing. A quick recap:
-The largest file that Pixlr supports is 3500 x 3500 pixels. Start with an image that big for your canvas.
-Edit the files using Levels. Set the white point and black point to where the data begins. Move the middle slider to obtain a pleasing mid tone.
-Crop the images down. To get a perfect square, you have to hold down the Shift key as you drag one of the corner handles. You can then re-position the area to be cropped. Hit Enter/Return to apply the crop.
-Re-size the images to 812 x 812 pixels. This will result in all 16 images fitting on the large grid image with 1/4" space for borders and between the images.
 -Once the individual image is cleaned up, copy and paste the images into the large grid image. Cmd + A to select all, Cmd + C to copy, Cmd + V to paste.
-Move the images into position. Unfortunately, Pixlr doesn't have a provision to create a grid for positioning, so you will have to create a shim of the appropriate size to use as a guide for positioning.
-Create a shim of 51 x 900 pixels. Since we are using a resolution of 203 for our images at 17.25 x 17.25, 51 pixels would results in a .25" shim. Create one for vertical and one for horizontals.
-Use the shims to position each image, then move the shims to position the next image.
-Save your file as the native Pixlr format which is PXD.
We will add to this workflow on Wednesday.
No excuses, you need to have your 16 images cleaned up by Wednesday or you will receive a 0 for the whole project.