Introduction to Digital Media
ARS 162, Spring 2006
Instructor: Barbara Lattanzi

Short exercises due Tuesday, April 18:

1st.

• Identify one "full-color" (24-bit) image that is significant to you (personally, politically, or broadly socio-culturally).
• Identify a 2nd image that is related in the same way. However, if your first image is personal, then identify a 2nd full-color image that is political or connected to a cultural idea or practice (e.g., immigration, religion, communication, transportation, et.). Alternatively if your first image represents something specifically political or socio-cultural, then have the 2nd image represent something personal (memory, dream, etc.).
• Create a color palette from the 2nd image. Apply that color palette to the other image. Do a screen grab of the color palette. Assemble all images as a simple demonstration of the exercise, on one or more web-pages. Add text that describes the significance of the color palette.

2nd.

• Continue with work begun last week. Experiment with the basic process of recreating - or translating - a BITMAP image as a VECTOR-based ("structured" or "object-oriented") image within Illustrator.
  
  1st. down-sampling a photographic image in Photoshop (i.e. reducing the number of colors, non-dithered).
  
  2nd. bringing the image into Illustrator (use the Illustrator command, File> Place...).
  
  3rd. Use the Illustrator drawing tools to draw/trace the photoshop image layer.
  
  4th.  trash the photoshop image layer.
  What you are left with is an illustrated rendering of the original photographic image.Save the file in 3 forms: Illustrator file format (.ai extension) and exported in both the jpeg file format (.jpg extension) and in the flash file format (.swf extension). View both the jpeg and the swf files (the swf can be viewed in a web browser). Observe any differences in appearance between the jpeg (a bitmap, or "rasterized" image) and the swf (a structured graphic). To exaggerate differences, scale them both to a larger size.