Paul's Blog 07017421: 12th Entry

Friday’s lecture was the first of 2008 and taken by Daniel. Firstly I would just like to say that for this lecture, for some reason, I didn’t take any notes and only realised that I hadn’t taken any notes at the end of the lecture and since there’s nothing on blackboard I’ve got nothing to go on but what I remember so please take this into consideration!

Now the plea’s out of the way I’ll continue with the post. The lecture was about multimedia in the world around us. In the world today we are completely surrounded from multimedia creations. As I’m writing this I can see various logos around me from my clock, from my mobile phone, from some biscuits in the corner, even on my fridge! Logos are simply everywhere around us. I’m also listening to the radio while I’m writing this (barely streaming through the hall’s sub 56K style internet connection), which is another form of multimedia. Daniel also brought up an interesting point, why is the computer not in the living room, why should it be in bedrooms or even separate rooms altogether when it is one of the most powerful and most useful multimedia device most people possess. Multimedia devices are often shared, like televisions and radios, or traditionally they were anyway. He also went on to say that there have been efforts from companies to try and bring it into the living room. With Microsoft Media Centre you can watch TV and videos through an easy to use user interface, Microsoft have even brought out a remote control for it. So in the future we could well see computers becoming a part of family live and get together time instead of an independent work tool as its often viewed as currently.

Companies wishing to use multimedia have to think about a series of questions, similar to that of usability. Firstly, how they are going to acquire it. For example if the client wanted a picture of a lion in a particular posture, you could send out a whole team to Africa but then may need to train them in photography and by the equipment necessary so then you need to think of your budget and maybe compromise and an image taken by someone else and get the licence to use it. You also have to think about your clients needs. For example if they wanted a picture of a car, there could be millions of variations of car pictures so you need to understand exactly what they need. Pictures are just one example of multimedia, they may need a video, a piece of music, or both! You can also edit any of the images you acquire, like models who get digitally airbrushed before they get printed on magazines. You could even change the colour of a car digitally and you wouldn’t be able to tell.

Well I think that’s it from that lecture. It certainly made me much more aware about all the different types of multimedia around me which would definitely give me an advantage if I ever need to design any multimedia. I’ll probably remember something really important about it just as I’m about to drift off to sleep, oh well…

Below is a link to a Wikipedia article on multimedia (1). I know Wikipedia is often frowned upon but it certainly gives the best overview of multimedia from what I’ve seen.

In the tutorial this week we created a collage of images in Photoshop. To do this we used a number of layers and performed different effects on them. I wish the tutorial notes were for CS3 though instead of Elements since we only have access to CS3 and some things are ordered differently in elements. I managed to get though with my previous experience of Photoshop but I would have struggled otherwise. That said I’m really enjoying learning more about Photoshop, it’s just one of those programs that absolutely fascinates me with its ability. I’ve included a link to a few layers tutorials I’ve found on the internet (2) which may be useful as I get more experienced with Photoshop. See you next week!