Legal Implications of graphics design P6

Graphics design can be quite a delicate matter when it comes to the law. There are various laws restricting what can be done with other peoples work. The law though, may differ from country to country so over the internet it can be difficult to sort out properly.

Copyright means the right to copy. When someone produces something, it must be assumed that the person has the copyright of what has been made. When this is the case, anybody else wishing to use their work must seek approval off them or legal action could possibly be taken. Aside from this though, most of the time action is taken when money is being made from someone else's work.

Gaining permission to use someone elses work requires you do simply ask the creator. In some cases a fee would be requested especially if the work was going to be used commercially. The fee's can be from thousands to millions depending on what it actually is and who needs to use it. If the work is a photograph then the person that has been photographed must sign a model release form to allow the work to be used commercially.

There are some designs that may be copyright free. This is when the owner allows their work to be used freely to anyone. One popular example of copyright free material would be some user made fonts. Some of these can be used however people want, although some copyright free designs are restricted from being used commerically by the owner.

To indentify the owner of a design they usually have some sort of text near or around the work to indentify who the owner actually is. If they are not labeled then they could be copyright free or belong to a company/website.

P5: capture existing images using a scanner and a digital camera and edit them to meet a given user need

My first image uses a scanner to capture a hand drawn sketch.

Before..





















To improve the image I first adjusted the contrast and brightness to ensure I had a more definite pencil line. I then removed the colour by converting the image to grey scale. This meant I lost all colours (for example some blue from the paper).

Returning to RGB mode I then used layers to colour in the picture. Using Photoshop layers meant that I could colour the image without ruining any edges or the overall eliteness of my drawing.

After

Photo

Here, i got a picture from the internet off an actress. I decided to completely change the picture to represent a character on Command and Conquer Kanes Wrath

Below is the picture of her before, then after the change

Then after:

For this, i used a number of layers for the different bits. I used colour correction to make the eyes a different colour from the rest of the face. Brushes were used to create the wounds on her face and logo's for the CNC & NOD were gotten from the internet and merged into the rest of the picture

After doing this, Robin informed me that the photo had to be one taken by me, so he kindly allowed me to photograph him and edit it. To create the image i used masking to change the color of his face, i then used the brush tool to turn everything else back to a normal color. After doing this i got a horror background, cropped his body and used distort to make things look more realistic.

P3 define and document a client and user need for three related graphic images

The games company 2K, requires 3 promotional posters for their new game entitled R.A.G.E
They require 2 different posters, which comprise of a red VS blue idea, but with the games associated with the game which are red and white.

The first poster must a teaser poster designed specifically for a billboard, therefore big bold font must be used to maximum effect. The colour must strictly be black and red, with this being a key part of the game. The only text on the poster should be RAGE, then at the bottom, the formats that its on. I want a the post to look very minimal, to keep the customer guessing at what the game entales. I also want the same post done, with a black background and white writing. This must also have the formats on. The red and black must have line of text saying "COG must prevail" and the white and black must have "Locust must prevail" This text can be done in either red/white depending on which poster it is going on to.

The second piece of promotional material i want designing is a small flyer to be distibuted in gaming outlets. On these i want the same design as the teaser poster but a much smaller poster being no bigger than a DVD box. With this though, i would want the R A in white, then the G E in red with no seperate flyers being made. This would combine both together as a merging of the two.

Thirdly, i'd like a magazine page designed. Obviously, this would need to be the standard size for a back page of a magazine. Here, i'd like two screenshots of the game. They would have to be quite small but boldly done. The rage font would be the same as the flyer, with the RA in white and the GE in red. I'd like the font to be at the top of the advert and be the full width of the page. The background must be black with the screenshots having white borders around them.
At the bottom of the page the formats and the company name must be clearly displayed properly. Again, we need to keep the minimalistc approach, and keep things clear and brief.

Advanced Techniques M2

For this i have to: Demonstrate the use of two advanced techniques in graphics manipulationAdvice is available, but largely this will be individual work. Advanced techniques go beyond selection and cropping. Consider colour correction, masks. Following a complex tutorial online may sufficient evidence - provided it involves at least two advanced techniques



For my first image, i changed to the colour of a flowers petals using colour correction.

Below are the two images:














This process was fairly simple. Firstly, i opened the image up with Photoshop then created a masked layer for hue and saturation. This was done from the layer box on the right hand side.
When i had opened the hue box up and selected my colour i applied it. After applying i choose a soft brush and selected black as my background colour, then i used to brush around the outside of the flower and this caused the bit that i didnt want changed to go back to my normal colour.

The second image is a design for a new game titled R.A.G.E. For this i used masking to change to cut out the colour of the blood, so it turns out the same colour as the background. This was fairly easy and only required me to make another masking layer over the top part of the blood, i then cropped certain sections and fitted them together so it looks entirely different from the bottom part.

The font, i downloaded and changed slightly with the magic wand tool to cut bits out, this left a distorted font, which in my opinion left a much better overall effect.

Below is the image

The three graphical designs

Encert

EnCert is a new company providing Energy Certificates to homeowners. (see explanation from last week). They require a logo for their website and letterheads. EnCert needs the logo to look professional and make the clients to associated it with energy (gas, electricity etc).



My logo for Encert is below

I've tried to keep my logo as simple as possible. Although simple, i think that my logo is modern and would appeal to a big audience. The idea of the moon shape represents the earth and energy, and the font represents a modern form of preserving it. The reasons above state why it meets the clients requests to their full potential.

I've used layers to allow the shape to go behind the font. There are also various forms in which i cut out a picture of the earth and used it to effectively colour in the shape. I didn't really like how it did this because of the way it made the logo look cheap so i decided to remove it. I added some effects to the font including sharpen. This helped to stop pixelation and made the logo look more defined.

Microsoft (Vizual Impact)

Microsoft has approached Vizual Impact to produce some displays for its stand at a show to be held in the Birmingham NEC publicising its newest operating system. Produce a graphic that could be printed onto a large piece of card to be used on the Microsoft stand

My stand for Microsoft is below

As you can see, my new operating system is called Aero. I've including the picture of Bill Gates as he is the front man of the company, and a friendly face. Reliability amoungst other things are what comes along with him.

I've included two microsoft logos so people know what they are getting, i also blurred the logo and bill to fit with the Aero theme. I chose the Vista theme as i feel that it stands out, and the colours represent the company quite well and make things seem familiar.

A number of effects have been done on all the layers and each logo is on a seperate. I went through a number of problems to achieve this, including overlapping and coloured font. I orginally wanted the Aero to put in the red/blue/green and yellow microsoft theme but because of the type of font and the size it didn't work correctly so i removed it. I decided to go for a white background to keep a neutral style.

The size of this would fit the needs, and could easily be resized without much pixelation at all.

Healthburger

An organics foods mobile fast-food service has requested a roadside sign. It will be used on a stand so when its van is parked in a lay-by offering quality burgers and all-day breakfasts, passing motoists will notice it. This sign is to be in full colour and must be eye-catching

Below is my road side sign

The client asked for a sign that would be highly visable from the roadside, that is why i included such a bright color. This will allow motorists travelling alone to road to easily see it. I decided to include the picture to show people that the food served is healthier than normal fast food.

I included the 100% organic logo on it to make sure that customers would know what kind of fast food it is.

Upgrading a computer system

In this task, i will change two components from the specification below and describe how they would better the system for editing images.


System specification
Intel Pentium D 'Dual Core X2' CPU (5.3 Ghz)
VIA Chipset 1066 Mhz Motherboard - slots available: AGP8x (1), PCI (3), RAM (2); ports available: LAN (1), USB (6)
512 MB RAM
80 GB HDD (SATA300)
18X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer & Dual Format
onboard UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory
mouse and keyboard
15" flat screen
cheap inkjet printer

The first thing that i would change would be onboard the UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory. This graphics component isn't very good at all. One of the main reasons for this not being a good card would be the fact that it is integrated and uses shared ram. Therefore it uses the system memory to work properly, leaving the user with less RAM.

I would replace this with a XFX GeForce 7900 GS 512MB. I've tried to keep the card to something reasonable to make sure the PSU has enough power to run the card. This would improve the performance of the computer quite a lot. Firstly, there would be nothing taking up the system ram anymore, leaving the user with a lot more to play with. It would also help with processing any image changes quicker, and do it more effiently. Overall, this change would help the computer a considerable amount.

The cost of this would be around £89.00


A second change i would make would be the ram. I would take out the 512 MB RAM and put in two 1GB sticks of DDR2. Obviously, after doing this the change would be massive. Loading times would be seriously reduced and so would editing times. More applications would be able to be run at once, and more than one document could be edited at one time.

The cost of this would be around £40-50

Software for Digital Graphics

Photoshop

This program is developed by Adobe and is the industry standard for editing software. It's main use is for bitmap and image manipulation.

There are numerous abouts of features available to edit images from within photoshop, from light filters, to various effects. Photoshops native format is .PSD and this means that the files can easily be exported to various other adobe editing programs. Photoshop also has the ability to edit raster and vector image files. Another feature that can be used is layers. Layers allow the image to be chopped up and edited on top of other parts of the image without it all being affected.

Below is an image of something that i edited using Photoshop












Paint Shop Pro

Paint Shop Pro is a raster graphics editor developed by corel. This program supports both raster and vector image types. PSP is largly used by people for home use because of the price, as opposed to photoshop that costs several hundred pound. The price difference is seen in the features when you see there is much less available to the user than in photoshop. Despite this, you can easily find 3rd party plugins that allow users to download photoshop features and use them inside paint shop pro

Bitmap Graphics

Bitmap images are basically drawing with pixels, each pixel has a different color which creates an image. Another name for bitmap graphics is raster graphics.

There are a number of disadvantages of using bitmap graphics. One of these being large save files. This also

Vector Graphics

Vector drawing involves mathematics. All the different points have a co-ordinate on the screen, therefore most drawings that are done using vector are accurate.

Some applications for vector are

• AutoCAD
• Corel draw
• Visio
• Flash
• Sketch-up

There are a few of advantages of using vector. One of the advantages of vector is the small save sizes. This means larger images can be saved using less space. Another major advantage of vector is the fact that when images been resized they are not effected and pixelated

Components

Screen

• The screen manipulates the images that are being made at the time.
• Good colour depth (32-bit is considered true colour)
• Resolution is also important

Ram

• Improves speed for the processing of the image
• Allows more images to be done at once
• Ram is volatile meaning that once the computer is turned off, all the memory is lost

Mouse

• Mice can be used to draw certain things on a computer that can manipulate graphics
• All the programs can be accessed using the mouse

Graphics card

• This component processes and displays all of the images that need to be displayed on the screen.

CPU

• The central processing unit, or CPU processes all of the applications and data. Depending on the speed of the processor, the images and applications may take longer to process

Graphics tablet

• Graphics tablets are an input.
• They allow the user to have more control over drawing an image on a computer
• They are fairly easy to use and act like a pen and paper

Scanner

• Scanners allow the user to input external images onto the computer into a form that can be edited.

Hard-drive

• A hardrive is used to store the data on a computer. This can save images that are being manipulated and changed. It also holds all the data for the photo editing software.