D1 justify the following in connection with the production of graphic images to meet a client and user need: software and tools used, file format.....

Produce a report for Vizual Impact to justify how the production of your graphics images met the client and user needs. Include justification of the software and tools used, the file formats, the image resolutions and colour depths. (D1)



After the production of my microsoft banner which was to be used by the company for an event held at the birmingham NEC, I am required to create a report to justify why and how I made it.







The software I used to make the image was photoshop elements which I think was a fair choice because it features a lot of tools which help you to manipulate and create graphics, resulting in unique business ideas. Using photoshop elements meets the clients needs as it is a popular program, used often and maninly for work with graphics. Photoshop also fits the requirements as it allows me to choose different sized canvas'. To ensure I met the design specification I set my page up to look like a banner, photoshops assisted me in this by providing a size wizard. Photoshop also hosts a large number of tools and techniques which helped me to create an image which met the specification. In this graphic I used the magic wand tool, background eraser, layering technqiues and colour fill. Photoshop also has the ability to resize images without pixelating them, which allowed me to resize the keyboard so that it was in the shape of a banner. Photoshop also allowed me to alter the colour depth, as standard the colour depth is set at 72, which is a reasonably high default. I could change this however it would result in a poor quality image displaying less colours. I am aiming to achieve high colour depth to meet my design specification. Having high colour depth will be a great advantage and will result in high quality banner print outs. To meet my clients needs my banner needs to look very colourful and attractive, so having the colour depth tool implemented into the software I am using will ensure that I can do this.

Image resolution is measured in PPI which is an abbreviation for Pixels Per Inch. Printer resolution however is measured in DPI which is an abbreviation for Dots Per Inch. Images which have higher DPI values hold more data and have a high print quality.Images which are of a high quality take up more memory and require more processing power. Reszing images to make them larger can reduce print quality due to the reduction in the PPI hence the term, pixelation. I had to take both PPI and DPI into consideration when creating my banner. To ensure that I meet my clients needs I used the standard resolution setting on my image so that the print quality is at its highest. There are two main reasons why files are edited at a given resolution, one of which is the intended output device has that resolution so it’s not worth editing it at a higher resolution, or the memory/CPU of the processing device cannot handle high resolution and colour depth.

My image was initially saved as a photoshop elements image which was then uploaded directly to my blog however I later discovered that I had to change the file format to JPEG or GIF as the photoshop file was simply too large and exceeded the blogs image upload capabilities. By changing the file format to either a JPEG or a GIF I sacrificed a small reduction in image quality however I now had a smaller file which was able to be uploaded onto my blog. Keeping this clients needs in mind, the graphic was still of a high quality and was now a lot more versatile as it can be sent via email or easily uploaded to websites for example eblogger. The image could also now be opened on other computers which do not have the photoshop elements program installed.