Rule of the Ratio

Math is everywhere, not just in school or in work, not just in the works of man, but also in God's. These numbers, ratios, proportions and equations can create something pleasing or even perfect. There is a rule, and the famous and widely used one is the "Rule of Thirds", which can also be related to the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Sequence.

Rule of Thirds - is a technique in visual composition. It is simply dividing (for example) an image into 9 equal boxes, or a 3x3 grid. To follow this rule, you must put the subject on the parts where the lines of the grid intersect, sometimes not exactly but its more pleasing to see the subject in that position instead of it placed on the edge of the image or plainly in the center, but still, there're standards to not use this rule.

The Rule of Thirds creates a space in the composition which pushes the attention to the subject that is placed on the imaginary intersections.

Below are 3 pairs of images that consists of: First (Original/Uncropped) and Second (Edited/Cropped to follow the R.O.T.)

                                     

The Fibonacci Sequence and The Golden Ratio are related because The Golden Ratio explains that equal proportions have a ratio of 1:1.618. For example: the perfect or normal proportion of the hand to the forearm is 1:1.618. Artists in History and today have been using this to create their artworks.

As for the Fibonacci Sequence or Spiral, it has this pattern of numbers such as "1,1,2,3,5,8,13..." the sum of the previous 2 digits makes up the next number, and whenever you divide one number to the previous, it will have a total of 1.618. The larger the numbers divided in the sequence, the nearer it gets to the Golden Ratio.

 An example of the Golden Ratio is applied to the face, there is a diagram called the "Golden Ratio Mask" that determines the perfect face, if someone's face fits in it, it is perfect, while I tried it on mine, its not, although not a big surprise.

Filling Up the Spaces

Even though I already know a lot of tricks in photoshop, its still not enough. There are a lot of still things I have to learn other than shortcuts and how to use different tools on my work. 

It's like entering a diner or a restaurant, I'm so eager to eat that I just missed a sign board on the front mentioning customer privileges or a discount on a certain condition whenever I order. And because of that, every time I enter, I'm unaware of the stuff I can lose or gain. And that is what it feels like after today's lesson in Principles of Design and Color Theory.

We discussed about setting up the preferences in Photoshop. (Ctrl+K)

In the General settings:

• Image Interpolation: Bicubic Best

• The checklist under the Options are self explanatory, it will depend on the person of what they think is convenient.

• Enabling History Log encodes the History of events in the PSD file but makes the file size bigger.

• The Interface settings is associated with the appearance of the UI.

In File Handling:

• Its recommended that the lower cased file extensions are checked because its widely used, specially in web designing, because it doesn't support upper case letters.

• Since PS CS4 doesn't have the autosave option, the user better remember to save every 10 minutes.

Under Performance tab:

• Never go for 100% memory usage because it might crash the background programs, the recommendable is 80%-90%.

• History States are the number of undos, while the Cache is the temporary level of data that can be preserved. Both of these are not recommended to but in the maximum numbers because it will cause the program to hang or crash.

• The Scratch Disks are the partitions where you can lean the processing into, if you put the processing on a disk with no more space, photoshop will have a hard time processing your work compared to a disk/s that has a space.

• GPU settings shows information what your video card is and if its capable of the 3d interface in the software.

Cursor preferences lets you choose what you want your cursor to look like while you work.

Transparency and Gamut is the appearance or color of the pattern of the empty background on a transparent image in photoshop. 

In Units and Rulers, a lot of people and even most printing companies use the English System of Measurement (e.g. inch, feet, yard). 

While the Guides, Grid & Slices deals with the color of what the name says.

• To enable the Grids by going to the View Menu>Show>Grid. 

• You can have guides or margins by alt+click+drag from the ruler either from the left side or top. 

• While the Smart Guides is the line that appears if a certain object in the workspace are in line (e.g. center,top,bottom, side) with another object. It can also be found under View>Show.

Well I think that's all I can remember about what I've learned today. I'll get back to this whenever I need it.

Another First Step

There are things that you can just take easily, so easy that you don't need to think for more than five minutes. Things that mildly affects your everyday life such as buying a snack from the cafeteria, or brushing your teeth, such things that are already a daily basis for a person that they got used to doing that they dwell on it very long. But there are chances and opportunities that we have to think thoroughly, and decisions that we have to take that may affect a part or even parts of our lives, and these are the things that you can't just take easily, you have to go through a lot thinking and processing "What could happen if I do this?". You have to carefully inspects the aspects of things to know what to expect and to know what you should do.

Stepping right into this class (Principles of Design and Color Theory) conducted by Mr. Rey Mendoza, is a decision I won't regret as much as the ones I've taken, but was necessary. Either way, its a 4-hour session, starting from lunch, and of course, even for a first day, such amount of time shouldn't go to waste, we started off with introductions, then it eases into the first lesson which was about the first forms of Graphic Design, it didn't take very long maybe because the fact that we also have another major subject that will tackle on that. After that, we proceeded on how to handle a project by discussing about asking the questions like "What is the goal?", "Who is the audience?" and "The Time and budget it takes for the said project". I know that I will enjoy this subject because it will focus on something I'm interested in doing and I'm curious about. Although I don't think I'll be able to handle such clients like the given examples we were given, or at least the part that I have to budget the time and money, or specifically the printing part of the job. I'm more on with digital works, but I'll just think that its for the benefit of my future having to know these things.

Even though I have knowledge of a lot of things by now, it doesn't hurt to learn more as long as I'm willing to.