Final Project

I have been working on fixes for my final project.

I think I made some minor improvements to the overall look.

Here is a link:

http://cpenrith.com/Final%20Project.html

Final Project

While thinking on the final project I have decided to focus on the history of fraternal societies and how they focused on rituals.  I am not to sure of the design I want to use for the site or how I want to go about it.  I was thinking just a simple this is the history and these are the rituals.

Image Assignment

After a few finishing touches I think I finally finished my image assignment.

Here is a link:

http://cpenrith.com/Image.html

I managed to crop and increase the size of a photo of a church, create a vignetted photograph of a scene inside a church, restore an old image which was kind of tough, mat an engraving, and color a church in a black and white photo.  I feel like I did ok with this assignment, but could improve.

Image Project: Matted engraving and Image Restoration

Here I attempted to restore an image:

The original image:

As you can see the image seems a bit worn before I edited it:

 

Here is the photo after my attempt at restoration.  I cleaned up the photo and attempted to make it cleaner while adding a sepia tone to it to make it look a bit more classic.  Restoring a historical image can be useful because it allows people to see an image of the past as it should have been instead of in a damaged shape.

 

Matted Engraving:

Here is the photo I used in my attempt:

And here is my attempt at a matted engraving:

After following the directions this is what I ended up with.

Image Restoration: An attempt

In terms of the restoration of a photograph, I am finding it very difficult to actually get the photograph to be what it used to be.  Maybe I am not familiar with all of Photoshop, but I am finding it difficult to notice most of the problems of the Cat and Man photo and restoring it.  I found the spot healing tool useful in restoration and the healing tool can help to.  I find the patch tool difficult to use.  I guess restoring a photo useful for history images, but I’m not sure if it can be done completely or accurately.

I also wonder if the paintbrush tool can be useful for helping restore a photograph.  Can replicating a color and using the paintbrush to fill in damaged gaps be a valid way of restoring an image?  I also wonder if there are other techniques in Photoshop that could be useful in helping restore an image.  This is what I ended up with:

 

Website Update-Progress

    I managed to improve my website for Clio II and learned about grids.  The grid system I am using is the blueprint.css grid system which allowed me to improve the layout of my site from what it was before.  Blueprint is a grid system similar to the 960 grid system that is relatively easy to use and the site provides tutorials on how to get started.  I feel the site is still kinda rudimentary, but it still looks better.  For the Typography assignment I used typekit fonts called baroque text and jubilant.  I used a portion of one of my papers from the previous semester involving Moravians.  I was able to insert an image and a blockquote on the webpage.  I was able to improve the page from before where the quote would go into the text depending on the size of the screen.

Typography

After watching “Helvetica” and the Lynda lesson on typography and type setting and reading the articles on typography, I learned that the type you use can be important in web design.  Part of designing the web page is the way it is presented and the font that is used can play a big part in that.  Whether Helvetica or Georgia is used or a fancier font is used to spruce the page up, font can help the design of the page.

I didn’t realize that there was so much involved with typography and font though.  There are serif and sans serif fonts and many other options.  Not all fonts seem to work on every browser and you have to be careful what fonts you use to make the webpage look presentable.  Sometimes fonts won’t appear as they were programmed to appear depending on the browser and some fonts are apparently better for representation than others.

Who’s in and Who’s out and On Building

In his two essays titled “Who’s in and Who’s out” and “On Building” Stephen Boone discusses digital humanities and what it means to be a digital humanist.  His main point seems to be that in order to be a digital humanist you must be able to build.  Digital Humanities means using new technology to create something new involving the humanities whether this is building a web site or a digital archive.  He suggests that some knowledge of coding is a must for anyone who wants to be involved with digital humanities.

I agree with his points about digital humanities.  Since digital humanities involves some use of technology it stands to reason that the digital humanist must have at least some working knowledge of using that technology.  I also feel that there isn’t that high of a barrier to entry for those who want to dabble in digital humanities.  While you must know some html if you want to design a website or learn about databases if you want to build an archive, these are things that can be taught.

Anyone can be a digital humanist.  They must however have some knowledge of coding and be willing to build new things.  Digital humanities involve the use of technology to display a form of humanities.  While anyone can do this, this will still require the knowledge necessary to use the technology to build these things.