My Post Card Collection:

We had a great time at the Antarctica Iceberg Sculpture Festival where I received Honorable Mention for my self-portrait. Without my quick action we would have lost some of our family’s treasured Rubber Duckies to a voracious Great Southern Goldfish attracted by Saturn’s recent close proximity.

AntarcticVacation.pdf

There was a thick fog the other day when I saw Sally Mae in the yard trying to make a cell phone call. There was also a peculiar light coming through the fog that I wanted to photograph, so I got my camera and decided to use the new Spirit Filter I got for Christmas. When the photos came back from the lab I was astounded by what my Spirit Filter had captured! Sally Mae even more so, complaining that this was even worse than the bugs in her computer.

AmazingPhoto.pdf

How Pixels Work:

Sounds pretty dumb, huh? Almost like "How to breathe". But it is surprising how many people don't understand that a pixel is NOT a unit of measure but a piece (bit) of information; and why a "24-bit" image can contain colors from a palette of over 16 million possible colors. What actually is a 24-bit image, or an 8-bit, even a 1-bit image anyway? And what the hell actaully is a "bit"? But you already know all that, right? Check out my PDF lesson, click here (2.6Mb download)

How Graphics Work:

What are the differences between Bitmap and Vector graphics? What is Resolution? How does something get printed? Are RGB and CMYK secret police organizations? (No, you're thinking of KGB and NKVD which are long gone.)

You probably already know the answers*, but newcomers to the graphics field often have no clue. I use this PDF slideshow, built in InDesign with art created in Photoshop and Illustrator along with a (substantial) narrative at the start of many graphics classes that I teach. This file, like the one above, is available for your use, but only with written permission from Frank Collyer.

* Click here to take a look, but be warned that this is a 4.5Mb download!