I took a paragraph from my previous assignment and tried to make a screenshot out of it. I did not want to use images as simple explanatory tools for the textual information (as you usually find in most books) and tried to mix them with the text in a meaningful way. To do this I found it useful to divide my original text into three shorter paragraphs to allow readers to experience the whole image by shifting their look from text to pictures at least a couple of times. Compared to the caption-like effect, using photoshop allows you to provide the reader with additional visual information. For example, designing Strickland's screenshots as a deck of cards supposedly suggests in itself a wider range of different options than the single vertical passage from complete illegibility to complete legibility of RosenmbergÕs screenshots on the left.
Even if I am not satisfied with the final result (I am virtually new to photoshop), composing the image with such a structure made me more familiar with layers and text/image overlapping. I was not really successful in using the distort option and I used the eraser to delete some white lines that for some reason stemmed from the layer. Managing color choice (background plus text crossing bright and dark zones) proved to be very difficult and remains one of the weak elements that probably prevents a good fruition of the whole message. I tried also to emphasize the text at the bottom by adding a shadow to make it more readable but it still remains scarcely legible. However, StricklandÕs textual effects within her own screenshots, I believe, are difficult to foreground also because of the little contrast between blue and grey colors on the black background of the cosmos in the original.
Last modified 11 February 2008