This document discusses basic design principles for Photoshop projects, including employing the five W's and one H to develop a project plan, creating task lists to allocate work, understanding the iterative design process as a helix, using compositional techniques like the rule of thirds and golden rectangle, how pixels and exposure work, and techniques like bracketing, HDR, and controlling depth of field.

1. Ch 1:Design Basics
Photoshop CS6 Essentials
By Scott Onstott

2. Ch 1:Design Basics
Project Fundamentals
Think like a journalist and employ the five W’s and one H to tell your
project story:
• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
• How
Develop your project plan from the answers to these basic questions.

3. Ch 1:Design Basics
Creating Task Lists
From the project plan the project manager allocates tasks to each team
member with an estimated time required for each task’s completion.
The task list becomes the basis of team member timesheets that record the
actual hours spent on each task. These timesheets in turn are collected from
each team member and form the basis of client billing.

4. Ch 1:Design Basics
The Design Process
• The design process can perhaps
best be visualized as a helix
because this 3D shape combines
the notion of forward progress
through time with cycles of design
revision.
• The radius of the helix diminishes
with height as you or your design
team converge on final design
solutions through time.

5. Ch 1:Design Basics
Rule of Thirds
• The rule of thirds is a
compositional technique dating
back to the eighteenth century
used to locate subject matter
within a frame divided into three
parts both horizontally and
vertically.
• Aligning subject matter with the
rule of thirds grid can help you
create more aesthetically
pleasing compositions as
compared with centering the
subject.
Courtesy of Teeks99 under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

6. Ch 1:Design Basics
The Golden Rectangle
• Known since the Renaissance, the golden
rectangle is considered the most
aesthetically pleasing proportion.
• The golden rectangle is based on the
golden mean which divides a line into two
parts such that the shorter is to the longer
as the longer is to the whole.
• Use the proportion of 1:1.618 to
approximate the golden rectangle
• You can easily construct a golden
rectangle using a straightedge and a
compass or Photoshop’s drawing tools.

7. Ch 1:Design Basics
Understanding Pixels
• When you stand back from a
mosaic, a perceptual shift
occurs and you see the picture
from the tiles. The same thing
happens with pixels.
• Raster images such as photos
are made of pixels, or solid
blocks of color.
• Every point in a camera’s
sensor array is sampled in
red, green, and blue
wavelengths. These
wavelengths are recombined
to form pixels.

8. Ch 1:Design Basics
Light Sensitivity / Film Speed
• Film speeds in the past were measured using
various standards including DIN, ASA, and
ISO.
• Increasing the ISO value in your digital
camera’s menu will enable you to use faster
shutter speeds and smaller apertures.
However, at extremely high ISO values
(above 2000) digital cameras start to
experience problems with noise, or random
fluctuations of light intensity.
• You should therefore set your camera to use
the lowest ISO value that yields the shutter
speeds and apertures you need.
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, © Leonsbox,
Image #9022259

9. Ch 1:Design Basics
Bracketing Exposures
• Exposure is primarily modulated by
aperture and shutter speed.
• Capturing multiple exposures at
varying shutter speeds or
apertures is called bracketing.
• If you want to play with motion
blur, try a slow shutter speed such
as 1/30th of a second.
• If you are shooting a moving
athlete or vehicle use a faster
speed such as 1/500th of a second
to freeze the action.
Photos courtesy Richard Trueman

10. Ch 1:Design Basics
High Dynamic Range Images
• It is not always possible to properly
expose all parts of a single image that
exhibits a great variation in
brightness.
• HDR images combine multiple
bracketed exposures into a single
image that shows detail throughout
the dynamic range.
• HDR images can show detail both
inside and outside buildings at the
same time.
Photo courtesy Richard Trueman

11. Ch 1:Design Basics
Depth of Field
• The width of the spatial region
in sharp focus is called depth of
field.
• You control depth of field by
adjusting the lens aperture.
• Small apertures tend to keep
everything from the foreground
to the background in focus.
Large apertures tend to narrow
the depth of field.
• The rule of thumb is depth of
field increases with f-stop
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, ©LajosRepasi, Image #9109571