Images Skills test

Above is the original image I took of Lancashire County Council. I took it from a corner angle to incorporate both views of the building and to add depth. I also wanted to ensure that I included the Lancashire County Council logo to make it clear exactly what building I had photographed. 

Above is my cropped image to the specification of: 200 pixel wide by 500 pixel high version in jpeg format. After setting the size to crop, I then 'Saved for web and devices' under the 'File' tab. This then took me to a menu where I selected to save the image as a jpeg and included the meta data before finally saving all of these options to my cropped image. I decided to focus my cropping primarily on the logo as I wanted to cut away the front facing side of the building as I felt it distracted away from the Lancashire County Council text. The 500 pixel high measurement allowed me to include all of the 'Lancashire County Council county hall' text which was my objective. I didn't want to include some of the logo and miss another part as I felt this would look messy and unprofessional. 

Above is my cropped image to the specification of 400 pixel wide by 300 pixel high version in jpeg format. After setting the size to crop, I then 'Saved for web and devices' under the 'File' tab. This then took me to a menu where I selected to save the image as a jpeg and included the meta data before finally saving all of these options to my cropped image. This time I cropped out the top part of the building that was shown in the previous focus to again direct the attention towards the Lancashire County Council logo. The only issue with this crop is that the window to the left is a little distracting which I have addressed in my final crop below. 

Above is my final cropped image to the specification of 100 pixel wide by 100 pixel high version in jpeg format.  After setting the size to crop, I then 'Saved for web and devices' under the 'File' tab. This then took me to a menu where I selected to save the image as a jpeg and included the meta data before finally saving all of these options to my cropped image. My main objective through cropping all of these images was to focus purely on the Lancashire County Council text as although the County Council building is architecturally beautiful, it could be easy to forget the purpose of the building without this logo. This is why for my final crop, I removed the window from the image which was shown in the previous crop and focused entirely on the text. Although the stunning contours of the building are no longer visible when you compare this 100 pixel wide by 100 pixel high image to the original, I think I have successfully met my objective and I feel this is an effective image and could be used as a thumbnail for Lancashire County Council e.g. as part of a letterhead or as a logo for their website. The logo is clearly visible and their are no distractions to the image. 

From this images skills test I have learnt how to successfully and effectively crop images to change the meaning and focus of the image. The meaning of the original image is significantly different to that of the final 100 pixel thumbnail image. The original image is filled with the architecture of the building, giving it quite an artistic meaning, whereas with the thumbnail, the meaning is simple and straight-forward - it's all about the logo and the Lancashire County Council. Like I mentioned previously, without this logo, this stunning building could be a building anywhere in the world and not mean anything to anybody but I think with my cropping based entirely on the logo, the meaning of the images as a whole changes. 

This post was written by Stacey Ford. You can contact Stacey at: SFord1@uclan.ac.uk