work Archives | Kate's Point of View

Maybe I’m the Douche

On December 8, 2011

On our way to an off-site meeting today, a co-worker lamented the rising social stature of hipsters. I’m not sure I agree with his definition of hipsters, which seems to be centered on people doing things that are lame just to be “ironic” such as drink cheap beer of the PBR variety to be ironic. But, he’s definitely on target when it comes to spotting a hipster. Tight jeans, scraggly mustache, old-looking T-shirt that was likely purchased brand new from Urban Outfitters.

While I didn’t defend hipsters (although I definitely appreciate the hipster aesthetic and feel like I could talk it up okay), I did argue the point of being ironic. I feel like it’s more of an affectation. Like, “I’m above drinking some bourgeois beer. I proudly drink this working class swill.” (Again, I like PBR.) I think the affectation applies to cigarettes, music for sure and many other pop-culture references.

Midway through our discussion of hipsters, my co-worker busted out with, “Maybe I’m the douche.” (I bet he would have said douchecanoe if he’d know how cool the word was. Or maybe even doucheballoon.)

To me, this is a stellar comment. Isn’t this what we all try to avoid? In the past I have defined it as not wanting to be that girl. You know the one. But it’s so much funnier this way. The reality is, we all experience times when we are, in fact, the douchecanoe in a situation. That moment when you realize it’s not them, it’s you. And it’s terrible. But acknowledging it is the first step.

Some moments where I may play the role of the douchecanoe?

At Christmas, my family claps after gifts. This drives me bananas so I don’t do it. But really, they’re all having a great time clapping away. So who’s the douchecanoe in that situation? Me.
Entirely too often I am in situations where people find it necessary to sing. In public. As a group. Some are normal situations like someone’s birthday, but other times it’s just because people feel like doing a song parody to celebrate something or mock something. In my mind? Ridiculous. Nothing but ridiculous. But on the other hand, while I am hiding out in the back or trying to subtly lip-synch while everyone is having fun singing their heads off, I might be the douchecanoe.
It can work in reverse, too, of course. Sometimes you are the only one doing something that you totally should not be doing. When I tried to implement fancy hat day at my last job and wore a vintage hat all day around the office, I thought it was quirky. In reality, I was probably a douchecanoe.

I am 100% certain my siblings could come up with hundreds of other examples of when I’ve been a douchecanoe, which is why they aren’t able to submit here. But what about you? Have there been times when you thought some person or group of people was crazy only top later step back and realize, “Maybe I’m the douche”?

Days 27 and 28 of My 30 Days of Fun

By Kate

On September 30, 2011

In travel, work

On vacation my mom lent me The Disappeared by Kim Echlin. It’s about the genocides in Cambodia, which I didn’t realize when I started reading it. A lot of the storyline is taking place in Phnom Phen, which is somewhere I’ve been. It’s so surreal to be reading about a place thousands of miles away and to know you’ve been to the place being referenced.

Over lunch the other day I was talking with a co-worker about her recent trip to Paris. I love talking about travel. Love it. I’m not one of those people who is all gaga for Paris but I love it in the way I love any town in another place. It’s fun to be in other cultures. It ignited my travel bug. This year Wonder Boy gets to pick our travel destination. He better get on it because I’m getting antsy!

Yesterday I had fun at lunchtime watching co-workers watch what I was eating. I had instant Kraft macaroni and cheese and some vegetarian chicken nuggets. Everyone with a child under the age of five was like, “Seriously?” But it was delicious.

Photoshop Lesson #8: Applying Filters

By Kate

On August 17, 2011

In technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about applying filters.

Photoshop offers many effects you can add to images to make them more visually interesting. These effects can be added alone or in combination and there’s no real way to apply them incorrectly because it’s all based on personal preference.

To apply a filter, first open the file you want to work with. Then go to your filter menu. You will find tons of available options.

If this is your first time working in filters, it’s probably best to just start applying them at random. With each filter, a new window will open that allows you to play with the intensity of color, width of brush strokes, etc. Changes to your image will be shown in real time so you can keep playing. After you see how it turns out, select Alt + Control + Z or Edit … Step Backward to undo the filter application and try something new.

Here are some examples of effects you can accomplish and what I did to achieve them.

Lake picture before:

Lake picture after:

This effect was achieved using the Crosshatch Filter, which can be found at Filters … Brush Strokes … Crosshatch.

Bee before picture:

Bee after picture:

This effect was achieved using the Colored Pencil Filter, which can be found at Filters … Artistic … Colored Pencil.

Cow before picture:

Cow after picture:

This effect was achieved using the Colored Pencil Filter, which can be found at Filters … Stylize … Glowing Edges.

None of these edits is in any way critical. But, they can result in an image that looks like it took hours to create when in fact you can accomplish it in seconds.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color. View Lesson 5, which goes over the clone stamp tool. View Class 6,which reviews color match. View Lesson 7, which talks about how to copy pieces from one image to another.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.

Photoshop Lesson #7: Copying Pieces From One Image to Another

By Kate

On August 12, 2011

In technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about using the copying pieces from one image onto another.

There are real reasons why you might want to take part of one image and place it on another. Maybe you need to make a collage of images. Maybe you need a logo to appear on top of your picture. Maybe you want to reuse a watermark.

There are also funny reasons you would want to use one part of an image in another.

There are a few ways to copy parts of an image from one file to another. Regardless, you will need to open up both images.

Method 1: First go to the image from which you want to copy something. Click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool (if you’d prefer a different shaped marquee, click on that icon on your toolbar and hold down your mouse button so other shaped options appear and select the one that best suits you). It looks like this . After you have selected that tool and move your mouse over top of your image, you will see your cursor look like a plus sign. Put your cursor on one far corner of the area you would like to copy, click and drag to the other corner. When you release your mouse you will see a dotted line surrounding your selection.

Copy your select either by Control + C or by Edit … Copy.

Go to the image to which you want to copy something. Paste your selection from the other image either by Control + V or Edit … Paste. Your end result should look something like this:

It’s a step in the right direction but the newly pasted item is in an odd spot in the picture. You can drag it to the appropriate spot by selecting Move Tool, which looks like this , and dragging your pasted item to the correct spot. This will result in something more like this:

That’s definitely better, but the pink showing up on the background is weird. A better option here would have been method 2.

Method 2: When you are working with illustrations and things with solid blocks of colors, method 2 is likely a better option. First go to the image from which you want to copy something. Select the Magic Wand Tool, which looks like . After you have selected that tool and move your mouse over top of your image, you will see your cursor look like a wand. Click on part of the image you want to copy. Holding the Shift key, select all parts of the image you want to copy. When you are done, you should see dotted line surrounding your selection.

Copy your select either by Control + C or by Edit … Copy.

Go to the image to which you want to copy something. Paste your selection from the other image either by Control + V or Edit … Paste. Your end result should look something like this:

The newly pasted item is in an odd spot in the picture. You can drag it to the appropriate spot by selecting move tool and dragging your pasted item to the right spot. This will result in something more like this:

Not all items are as easy to work with as this example but the methodology you use is the same.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color. View Lesson 5, which goes over the clone stamp tool. View Class 6,which reviews color match.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.

Photoshop Lesson #6: Color Match

By Kate

On August 8, 2011

In photography, technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about using the Color Picker tool. It’s not the most powerful part of Photoshop, but I love it.

Using Photoshop you can get the exact color of any point in an image. It will get you the information in numerous ways:

HSB – Hue, Saturation Brightness
RGB – Red, Green, Blue
Hex value – HTML-friendly color
Lab – Lightness Component, A Component, B Component
CMYK – Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Black; color is represented by percentage saturation of each color

When you click your mouse anywhere on the color picker, the values for HSB, RGB, Hex, Lab and CMYK will all adjust accordingly.

By selecting the Color Libraries button, you can also view colors by common color systems. See the full list in the image below.

Knowing this is one thing, but it’s only useful if there are real world applications. And so:

Your brand guide lists your logos Pantone color for printers, but not RGB value (which is easy to apply in Microsoft Word) or hex value (for web). By looking up those colors, you can create headlines and graphics that tie in with your logo color.
You’re designing a piece in Photoshop (because you don’t know how to use InDesign) and want the type to match other elements in the piece.
Someone hands you a graphic and tells you to fix it and you need to figure out how to replicate things in the same color palette.
You’re handed a print piece and asked to make a version for the web but given no electronic files. You can easily scan in the piece and match the colors using Photoshop to replicate things online.

Ultimately, most people trying to match two colors just eyeball it. But by using Photoshop you can create pieces that look much more polished and pulled together.

How to Do It
The Color Picker is one of the easiest tools to use. Open an image and then click on the layered color boxes in your toolbar that look like this: . A window will open up and that’s your Color Picker. You’ll notice that if you move your mouse around over top your open image (outside the borders of the color picker window), your cursor will change to an eye dropper. Use this to sample a color from your image. Click in several different places on your image and you’ll see the color data in the color picker window change accordingly. You can also select a color right within the Color Picker window.

If you are only working within Photoshop, select your color and hit OK. This will change the colors shown in your toolbar for foreground color. (If you want to select a new background color, click on the curved double around to switch your colors and repeat the selecting process.)

If you want to take the color you just got from Photoshop and use it in another program, you will need the data shown in your color picker window here:

There are so many types of software you could use this in but I’ll only cover Microsoft Word here. To change the color of type to match what you are working with in Photoshop (and you would use these same steps for almost any other color in Word), go to your font color tool, which will reveal a window a new window.

Click on the more colors option, which will open up a new window. Select the Custom tab and the view will change to something similar to the Color Picker in Photoshop.

In the Red, Green and Blue fields you can type in the fields from R,G and B in Photoshop. This will result in a color that is an exact match to what you selected in Photoshop.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color. View Lesson 5, which goes over the clone stamp tool.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.