Exercise Seven: Photoshop Tennis

In this Exercise you will be working with your partner to collaborative create a series of images that will form an emerging narrative.

We will begin with a brief Photoshop tutorial, where we will go through the following steps as a group. It is important that you follow these steps carefully so that your narrative emerges as seamlessly as possible.

1) One partner should open Temporary Storage, and create a folder with the following format: FirstName1_FirstName2. For example, Maya and I would make one folder called Jesse_Maya.

2) Mine the web for image content. Go to:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Note that we should only use images that use an appropriate form of Creative Commons license. Read over the Creative Commons information on the right. The first category (Attribution License) is the most appropriate for our purposes. Click on "see more," or go to:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/

Now, find 6 images in total with your partner, that you like, and download them to your desktop. Click on "all sizes" at the top left of the image. You want the large file size (1024 x 768). Copy these images to your folder on the temporary storage so both you and your partner can access them.

3) One partner should open Photoshop and create a new .psd file in Photoshop with the following characteristics: 1024 x 768 pixels, 72 pixels/inch resolution, RGB 8 bit colour mode. Save this file to your folder using the same FirstName1_FirstName2 format, ie.: Jesse_Maya.

Now, open the images you downloaded to your desktop in Photoshop, and select one of these images as your background, which will begin your narrative. Cut and paste this image into your .psd file. Manipulate the image, and add content from your other images. There are many image manipulation tools in Photoshop - Maya and I will go over a few of them to get you started.

4) After a few minutes, you will prepare the file for transfer to your partner. Follow these instructions carefully.

(i) Save your .psd file.

(ii) Select Save-as, select JPEG as your filetype, and change the name to FirstName1_FirstName2_FrameNumber, ie.: Jesse_Maya_1.jpg.
In this way, you'll end up with a .jpg "snapshot" of your .psd file at the moment of transfer.

(iii) Now, close the .psd file.

Please ask Maya and I for help if this is at all confusing. There should only ever be one .psd file per pair.

The second partner should now re-open the .psd file and add their own visual information to move the emerging narrative forward.

Don’t completely erase your partner’s work - that ruins the game and destroys the narrative. Whenever possible, use layers to separate the elements in your .psd file. This will give both partners more flexibility in re-working your collaborative creation.

5) Repeat the transfer step 4 more times, progressively adding to the narrative until the "tennis match" is over and you have a narrative that is 6 images long. You should end up with 6 .jpg files and one .psd file between the two of you.

Take a moment to ensure that all your files are in order, and to post only the six .jpeg images in sequential order to the blog in a single post. Make sure both your names are in the post. Be sure to adequately credit the source of your images as per the Creative Commons licence if you have not used your own images.