My picture that lies

For my Picture that lies, I put together a picture of Stephen Colbert giving a thumbs up from google images and a picture of my own. My picture is of me and my roommate pretending to Hitchhike in front of a sign that says "prison area, do not pick up hitchhikers." In this picture I replaced my roommate with Stephen Colbert, to make it look like me and Colbert are both convicts escaping prison.

In order to do this I first used the magic wand (and then inversed the selection) to cut out Colbert as a silhouette. I then used the grabber tool to drag him over to the picture of me and my roommate. I had to end up resizing the picture of me and my roommate in order to make Colbert look to be about the right size. I then had to use the clone tool to make my roommate disappear (or at least the edges of her), so that Colbert would cover the rest of her up. Once this was done (and it took FOREVER) I used the magnetic lasso tool to select part of my arm, then copy it. This created a new layer of part of my arm, and then I moved this layer so that it was above the layer with Colbert on it. This way it looked like Cobert is behind me. I then used the blur tool on the edge of my arm to make it blend in to the background. The last thing I did was changed the hue and saturation of Colbert to make him look darker like he is outside too.

Overall, I don't think that this is really a harmful manipulation, because it is obvious that this is photoshopped, and nobody is going to get any false information from viewing this picture. I think that most people who see this picture will immediately get the idea that this picture was meant to be a joke. Maybe this picture could be harmful if I had also photoshopped Colbert and me to have on a orange jumpsuit, and made it look really realistic. However, I still think that a person viewing the picture would see that it was made with the intent to be funny and so not a harmful manipulation. However, you never know who a photo manipulation would harm. In this case my roommate (although she thought it was funny) pretended to be mad when I showed her that I'd replaced her in the photograph.

Presentations from Tuesday

One of my favorite powerpoints presentation was Trevors presentation about "What causes a Tsunami." First of all, I thought it was a really narrow topic to choose, which is good since this was only a two minute presentation. I also really liked the backgrounds he used on each slide. It began and ended with a very nice picture of a wave, and in the slides in between he used colors that went along with the picture, and they were appropriate colors that reminded me of a wave. This made the presentation consistent throughout, and also interesting to look at.

I also really liked Monica's presentation about photography. It was a really interesting subject and I learned a lot from the presentation. I really liked the use of shapes to show what part of the picture was illustrating your point. It was a really effective. I also liked the use of a lot of pictures, it made it really interesting and easy to follow.

Making good powerpoints

Powerpoint presentations are one of those things that can go really wrong, and I think the best ones usually keep the slides simple, and display only the most important information and make it "easily consumable." We say that in the newsroom a lot, and it means something like you can just glance at a page or a slide and get the main point easily and quickly, and the most important stuff is clear.

Here are my top 5 suggestions:

5. Don't use bullet points to repeat words:

Two of the websites say that you should use bullet points to reinforce your words. However, I also hate it when you are looking at a powerpoint and you aren’t sure how it fits into what they are talking about. I think bullet points should be about what you are talking about, but it should just be a few words of the main point- and then you should expand about that when you are talking. I like the rule that said “if you wouldn’t write it on the blackboard don’t put it into a slide.”

4. Choose font well- especially color and size.

One of the sites said not under 28point font, and also make sure that the contrast is very high between the background and font color.

3. When using graphs use only the most necessary info:

I think we should use as little info as possible (only the most nessesary info) this way the graph is "easily consumable,"

or you can see what the meaning of the graph is very quickly at the first glance you take.

2.Limit animation:

I hate it when every letter is typed out on every page, and there is an okward waiting period between when you click to the next slide and when you can actually read what is says.

1. limit text!!!

The powerpoing shouldn’t be to helpful without you to expand on the points. One of the sites said never to use over 6 words on each page!! That seems pretty intense- I like words- but it should still be “easily consumable.” I don't think full sentences should ever be used.

Thoughts on the CLT trip

I thought the trip to the CLT lab was really interesting. I've always used the lab just to study because it is quiet down there. Now I know that I can also rent video cameras down there, as well as digital cameras. I'm not sure if there are SLR digital cameras to rent, but I think I'm going to look into it. I've been wanting to learn more about using these cameras, but I really don't have hundreds of dollars extra to buy one. I'm also going to start using the computers down in the CLT lab to play around on photoshop and learn more about how to use it. Overall, I'm really glad we took the trip down to see the lab.

Thoughts on Excel

I'm actually suprised how much I ended up liking the excel program, and how much I learned. I really had no idea how much you can do with excel and how easy it is to use. Its hard to say just how much new stuff I learned, because everything I learned was new! I've never actually used excel before this class. Just learning how to use functions, and put in formulas in general was really useful thing for me to learn! I never really thought I needed to know about excel, because I'm not a buissness major, but I realized how easy it can be to do just little day to day things. For instance, the other day I used excel to compare the prices of different study abroad programs I was looking into. I just typed in the cost of tuition, room, board and additional expenses, and then I put the sums of how much each program cost overall, but it really made it easy to see how much each program costs. It helped me make my overall desicion of where I should apply easier! As a philosophy major I might not use excel a lot, but I think I will end up using it a lot in my daily work. I really liked the idea of using it for keeping up with my budget! I also could see how learning excel would be really helpful in running buissnesses, and keeping up with a buissness's expenses, or thier clients.

About Chris Nolan's Lecture

I really enjoyed the Lecture from Chris Nolan last Thursday about google and finding high-quality information on the Web. I learned a lot that I didn't know before about what google does to put the most relevent sources on the first few pages. Google first lists sites that have the key words in thier title, and so this helps put a site that is focused on the subject I'm looking for, rather than a site that just mentions those words once. Another really interesting piece of information is the fact that google organizes the order of site appearances by counting the number of links that go to that site. This is a really good idea that I would have never thought of, but it makes sense because if a lot of other sites a referencing the site that's first on the list it is more likely to be a credible source. Google also recently revised this aspect, by giving wieght to certain sites that will give a link to a site. A blog that has a link to a Web site will have less of a wieght than a news website that has the same link. This makes a lot of sense because a buissness could just make a ton of blogs that link up to their site in order to try and get it higher up on the search list. I think this is all really interesting, and I never knew how it was that google could make the most relevant sites always come up first on the search lists.

Photo Manipulation

This Image is a before and after shot of Katie Couric. The Picture on the left was released by CBS, and the one on the right was manipulated for the September issue of Watch magazine. The picture, as you can see, was manipulated to make her look skinnier, they changed her dress to the color black, and the skin was changed to a more normal skin tone. (The only change to this photo that I do not think is harmful is the change in her skin tone to look more natural, since this was fixing a problem with the photo taken rather than actually changing what she looks like.) In my opinion, most of the changes made to this photo of Katie Couric were changes to make her look more attractive, and fit the "feminine ideal."

I liked this picture and picked it because I think this is a kind of picture manipulation that actually happens very often and it might not be immediately obvious why it is harmful. However, I do think this is a very harmful way of manipulating photos since it promotes an idea of superficiality and the feminine idea. Not to mention it sends an idea to Katie Couric that what she really looks like is not good enough. More than this it is not authentic. Which is especially ironic since this was published in a magazine, and I think authenticity is very important in journalism.

More than this, as I mentioned earlier, this kind of photo manipulation promotes the feminine ideal which I think is a bad thing because it can really affect women's perceptions of themselves. Many women will internalize this ideal and spend time comparing themselves to this standard and sometimes engage in unhealthy behaviors to try and achieve this ideal for themselves. In fact, I learned in my psychopathology class that one of the predisposing factors for a girl to develop bulimia is that they have internalized the feminine ideal. I think when a picture of a woman is manipulated to closer fit the feminine ideal this is especially sad because girls are then trying to work their way to a standard that is not even true or realistic.