B.A.

Honours in Creative Media

Module 1:
Digital Media in Visual Arts
Danica - Luana Ellul
Group A

Task1
LO1: Understand technical aspects of working with digital media.
KU1: Understand technical aspects of digital media.
KU2: Identify and examine a range of digital media software.
KU3: Identify best suitable file format for specific purposes.
Blog: You are to keep a detailed blog, annotating and expanding on the technical aspects of digital media
explored in class. The content of your blog will affect your grade across all tasks in this unit.
Research: Research and investigate a minimum of four industrystandard software used in the creation,
editing
and postproduction process within four different areas (photo manipulation, video editing, etc) of Creative
Media. Define the context in which each of the chosen software is used while making reference to its
capabilities
(technical specifications, file formats, etc) and purposes (design, business, etc).
The Four Industry-Standard Software
-Adobe After Effects
-Adobe Premiere
-Adobe Photoshop
-Adobe Audition
Using the data collected from your research, design and produce a draft layout for a booklet, with a
minimum of
eightpages. You are expected to experiment with various layout and font solutions before finalizing your
booklet design. The research report must be designed in Adobe InDesign and exported as both a PDF and
packaged
InDesign folder. Both the PDF and InDesign package must be uploaded on Schoology.com and to your blog.

After Effects
This software is mostly used in Post-Production which helps enhancing the visual effects,
add titles or text with motion graphics and
also use the compositing application. After
Effects was created by a company known as
Company of Science and Art. These created
the first two versions, in January 1993, then in
1994 Adobe bought the software.

After Effects works very similarly to Premiere, both

import media within the software and are placed
on a timeline, however, After Effects differ from
Premiere because it is used for Special Effects. It
was created purposely to work on video layering,
compositing, effects and animation. Even if After
Effects conducts similar and simpler tasks of editing, its main purpose is to enhance the image with
visual effects and compositing. Most commonly the
editing part of a film is done in Premiere, while on
After Effects only small parts of the video which
needs to be enhanced digitally.

Workflow
-Create a new project and save it as .asp
file.
-Import the media file/footage.
-Create a new Composition and place the
footage in the timeline, then ad effects,
animation and so on
-Render and Export the files.

Tools Used
3D Camera Tracking
The 3D Camera Tracker follows the footages sequence to create a camera motion and a 3D effect. This
help to amalgamate 3D images with 2D scenes.

3D Enhancements
Ray-traced 3D Renderer
This allows one to render compositions in a different location from the Advanced 3D Compositionb
renderer. These can include the bevelled or extruded text and shape layers.
Bendable footage and Composition layer
These are divided into two; Curvature (how much it can bend) and Segments (how smooth the bend is).
One can curve 3D footage and nested compositions by using controls in the Geometry Option.
Mask Feather Tool
The Mask Feather Tool can be accessed from the Pen tool. This tool helps feather certain parts of the
mask.

Vector Art footage-to-Shape Conversion

This tool can create other shape layers from any other vector art footage layer. It can transform imported
files, such as vector-based illustrations, EPS and PDF. Moreover, with the 3D extrusion support, one can
design and export artwork.
Rolling Shutter Repair Effect
The rolling Shutter Repair Effect helps fixing footage with
distortion.
Wrap Stabilizer
The Warp Stabilizer helps stabilising the footage when the shot is a bit shaky.

There are more tools other than these, such as; Camera Lens Blur effect, Source Timecode, Stereoscope
3D Improvements, Light falloff and many others.
Adobe After Effects is being used in the media industry and in Hollywood film, such as the animated
film Trolls.
For the team working on this particular film, the artists created a physical image of the characters, then
they shot different scenes and animated the characters in After Effects.

Premiere
Premiere is a video editing software, which works with a timeline bases
in order to edit the movie. Premiere was first released in 1991, on a Mac
computer as a non-linear editing system (NLEs).

Timeline
This is where one places the sequences in order to edit the video. The timeline panel can be found on the
lower part of the screen. One can create folders containing different footage depending on the scene, and then
place them on the track to edit.

Tracks
The tracks are where the video and audio is visible. One can add or remove or even move videos and audio
within the tracks from the sequence. Then, one can select each track individually to edit the scene.

Monitors
There are two types of monitors in this system; The
Source Monitor and The Program Monitor. The
Source Monitor can be seen on the left side of the
screen; it is used to view and cut the video and then
add them to the sequence. The Program Monitor can
be seen on the right of the screen and can be used to
play the whole sequences.

Project Panel
The Project Panel can sometimes be placed near the Timeline or above it on the left side of the screen.
It keeps the link from where one has accessed the videos and audio. One can also use folders or bins to
organise the clips.
Audio Mixer
This allows the editor to listen to the audio track while viewing the video within the sequence. This helps
the editor sync the audio with the video to adjust the levels. One can also use the Audio Mixer to directly
recorded the audio within the sequence.
Info Panel
When selecting an item, the Info Panel will show the details and timecodes of the clip.
History Panel
This follows the process of the work done. It tracks 32 steps of the process and one can move on the different steps of the editing done, however, backing up to previous edits, the steps done after that time will be
deleted.

Media Browser
This helps one to access the video or audio,
and import them from the video storage
while editing. When doing this, Premiere
creates another clip in the Project Panel.
When using the Media Browser, Premiere
will save the file as XMP automatically.

Effect Panel
The Effect Panel is divided into two main bins;
the Video Effect and the Audio Effect. However,
there are also the Presets, Lumetri Presets, the
Video Transitions and the Audio Transitions.
The last two ate the most used when editing.
Effect Controls Panel
This helps the editor to change, remove or move
a transition placed onto the sequence. It can
help to view the clips from the sequence and
place transitions onto effects to create a good
video.

Tool Panel
The Tool Panel has a verity of tools to help edit a sequence. When clicking on each individual tool, the
pointer will change its shape to the selected icon.

Exporting
When exporting the video/film, make sure to select both the video and the audio, select the High Quality
1280x720 and name the file before exporting it.

Adobe After Effects is being used in the media industry and in Hollywood film, such as the feature film
Deadpool.
While editing the film using Adobe Premiere Pro, editor Julian Clarke had to find a balance between the
characters love of gore and gleeful absurdity to create a perfectly acceptable good motion picture which
anyone can view.

Photoshop
Photoshop is an editing software for photographs,
it is also considered a Raster Graphic Editor. It
was created back in 1988 by the brothers Thomas
and John Kell. From there it became the industry
standard medium for editing images and in 2003
Photoshop became part of the Adobe Creative
Suite. Photoshop works alongside, Photoshop
Elements, Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop
Express and Photoshop Touch. These are
considered The Adobe Photoshop Family.

Layer Fundamentals
Layers in Photoshop are very useful; a layer can
help to organise and manipulate certain images
or parts of it. One can also group layers, this helps
the editor be more organised. The image can still
be edited individually, but the group can be moved
altogether. A layer can also be made invisible; this
will not be shown when exported.
Opacity and Blending Modes
Opacity - how visible an image is, like transparent.
Blanding Mode - works on a specific isolated image to show its visibility.
Transforming Layers and Smart Objects
In Photoshop, one would need to resize a layer. This is done because the editor needs to combine two
images with different sizes or needs to exaggerate the shape. One must keep in mind that when resizing
an image, unless it is of high quality, the image will become pixelated. On the other hand, when one is
decreasing the image size, it will lose pixel information, but when resizing it to the original form, the image
will be pixelated. One must first convert the image to a smart object, this will help the image keep the pixel
information.
Selections
In photoshop, the selection tool helps to create some space between the layers, but can also be used for
masks, edit or for creating a specific layer. When masking the image, only part of it will be visible or can be
edited.

Adjustment Layers
The Adjustment Layer is a way of
enhancing the pictures imagery. It can
manipulate the Hue and the Saturation
of the image, the levels, contrasts, curves,
colour balance, and so on.

Levels
This tool helps to adjust the image by increasing or decreasing the black and white of the image, to enhance the saturation and/or brightness.

Tools
The primary tools are all grouped together, however, each tool has a different function. For example, The Rectangular Marquee Tool can only select in a
Polygon way. While the Quick Selection
Tool will only select pixels or areas
which look the same.

Alternative Selection Methods

There are two alternative selection methods which are; Channel Isolation and Quick Mask Mode.
Channel Isolation
This tool has been created long before the layers, however, it is not often used except by printing
professionals.
Quick Mask Mode
This brush tool can be used to create manipulations on the selected image. It is a very handy tool, it can
start selections from the beginning, it is mostly used with other tools, especially the Quick Selection Tool.

Brushes
The brushes are more than just for painting, infect
many tools use brushes to work. A brush is divided
into three components; the size, the hardness and the
preset shape.
Size and Hardness
This can be manipulated through the dialog box
found on the left side of the screen, with the image of
the brush on it and the number under it.
Brush size
This is effected by the diameter of the brush and it is
measured in pixels.
Brush hardness
This has to do with the shape of the brush. It is a
blending tool where the images pixels incorporate
with the substance of the brush.

The Healing Tool

This brush is great for retouching and/
or clean up images which have small
mistakes on them. However, there are
several more retouching tools.

Colour, Swatches and Gradients

Colour is divided between RBG and
CMYK. RBG stands for Red, Green and
Blue. CMYK stand for Cyan, Magenta,
Yellow and Black. The RBG is mostly used
for scenes, while the CMYK is mostly
used for printing materials.
Swatches Panels
This tool helps one to select and save a
colour or groups of colours for a later use.
Gradient
This tool helps one to recreate real-life
textures and creating depth within the
image.
Photoshop is considered to be the best in the business of media, it is being used for advertiaments
to enhance a photographe and make the object seem better, seem perfect. An example of this is the
Redbook magazine.

Audition
Audition is an audio editing software which works on multitracking and also on both non-destructive and
destructive editing. This software was created by former Microsoft employees in the 1990s. It was originally
known as Cool Edit and was released on Windows computers. Than on May 2003, Adobe bought the software and renamed it Adobe Audition.
This is a software complete for multitracking digital audio recordings, mixers and editing. It is mostly used
with Windows sound card, which gives the user an experience of a digital recording studio. Audition has a
flexible working flow and it is used to produce music, radio broadcasting and sound for videos.
Audition has two modes; the Multitask Mode, where one can work on effects in real time, make changes and
combine the audio. One can use a mixer to do this and can work on individual channels this way. One can
use external mixing decks. There is also Waveform Interface, where one can make adjustments to the sound,
such as enhancing the Filter and EQ.

Audition in a way is like two applications in one. One

part of the application is for sound work, where one can
see the frequency and amplitudes of the sound. When
switched to the pitch display it shows the waves in terms
of notes, and in Audition there is the Automated Pitch
Correction Tool to correct the voice.

This software works with Premiere. The user can send and edit straight to audition to work on it and
then it can be exported back to premiere. One can edit a clip on it by creating a new multitrack, this
helps to sync the audio with the clip. One can extract sound from a CD, and can burn a CD.

Different Features

Essential Sound Panel

This panel helps the user mix the audio like the
professionals and output the sound in a professional quality. The Essential Sound Panel can unify the
volume level, can repair the sound, can improve the
clarity of the sounds and can add special effects which
helps the sound to be projected more in a video, almost
as if it was done by an audio engineer. Finally, if using
presets, one can re-use the audio track in the future.

Remix
One can use an original song which may have a longer duration and shorten it, but still make it sound
complete. This can then be fitted within the video. One can also use a variety of musical sound and
recompose a piece that seems fit for the video.
Text to Speech
This can be done by typing text and creating a realistic voice-over and/or narration either for a video,
game or audio use.

Match Loudness
The Match Loudness tool corrects any loudness within the audio and the true peak limitation.
There are many other tools and panels apart from the above mentioned.

Audition is also being used in the media industry and for games. An example of this, developer Simoge
created a text based mobile game named The Develop Post-Mortem: Device 6 using Adobe Audition.

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