Adjusting Color and Luminance

What is gamma, and how does it affect graphics displayed on monitors?

Gamma is an important characteristic of virtual systems that defines the relationship between a pixels numerical value, and actual luminence. Gamma settings control the brightness and contrast of a devices screen/monitor and vary for each different device. It says in the introduction to color that images will appear lighter on a mac than they do on a pc.  There are different settings, color cards, and monitors for all platforms, and none are collaborated with each other which can be very frustrating because you wont be able to have the same look on every system.

What is bit depth and how does higher bit depth affect the file size?

Bit depth is the number of bits that are used to describe the color of a pixel. Bit depth lets you control the amount of colors you can view on your screen, which is very useful. The more colors you choose to use in your document, the larger the file size.

Bit Depth Number of Colors:
2 ...............................4
8............................... 256
16............................. 65,536
24 .............................16,777,216

Give an example of a cultural influence of color. It may be from your own experience, from the handout, or from another source.

 Your example was great and honestly made me open my eyes about color. I am having trouble personalizing and defining a situation like that in my life at the moment...

Define luminance smoothing.

Luminensce is referred to the quality of lightness and darkness to an image. An example of a luminence tool in photoshop is the brightness/contrast command and is the most simple out of the many other options photoshop offers. Each pixel in an image is recorded as the number, called a luminosity value or level. A value of 0 means that the pixel is black and a value of 255 is white. When adding in some color into the mix the luminosity value is no longer the sufficient.

What is camera raw? What is advantageous about raw files?

Camera raw is a Photoshop plug-in that is rather new and quite useful. It provides fast and easy access to raw image formats. A designer can now achieve the results they want greater artistic control and flexibility by using this plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. This is a very powerful plug-in. Photoshop camera raw also works well files in Digital negative format. The advantages of using camera raw extended is that a designer can work with “digital negatives”. You can have the results that you want, artistic control, flexibility, while still being able to maintain the original raw files.

The first image that I used for my color scheme image #1 I found in google image results after searching for "photography". The black kid looking through the fence I saw as a more depressing image, which I feel like I can relate to the little black boy. I chose to use red as my color scheme. I thought about doing a more dark color, like black, or gray, but I thought that red would make other see the pain and anger in the image. Red, in this case I think shows vibrance, and that the boy isnt completely dead inside, which means there is a chance and hope that he wont be trapped behind that fence forever. Black means no hope at all. Everyone should have hope. 

Image 2 I chose from my iphoto. I picked this picture of a dark plant/flower. It is beautiful, that is obvious, but naturally dark. I decided to choose purple to give it some vibrance and let every one know that yes this dark flower is here, and maybe if you gave it attention like all the other flowers it wouldnt be so dark, hence the vibrance from the center of the flower. Inside its full of energy and life, but on the outside, Its starting to die. 

Im not really a dark person. Just going through the hardest year of my life, and well, Im sure you get the idea of how I feel from my descriptions of the color schemes I chose.