You surely can’t be serious Chris?!!
I’m scratching my head here, wondering just what the "competition" might glean if you were to tell this young enthusiast that Photoshop has a total of 5,364,856 (or whatever) lines of code.
%-(
How do lines of code equate to anything? I can write 100 lines of code that don’t do anything useful or I can write 10 lines of code that do all kinds of things.
If you want to compare applications, compare the number of features, the number of file types supported, the market share (another unknown number), the byte size of the installed package, etc. The number of lines of code mean nothing.
OK, thanks! I’m gonna check that out.
You possibly don’t have some fun fact about photoshop? Something that teens would find interesting?
I’m scratching my head here, wondering just what the "competition" might glean if you were to tell this young enthusiast that Photoshop has a total of 5,364,856 (or whatever) lines of code.
Thin edge of the wedge, Chris. CC probably has been told that "no" information about source code can be released. While number of lines of code cannot possibly be of much use competitively, making one exception can lead to another.
Phos….
Thanks, but I have already seen those things. What I want is something unusual that keep my classmates from falling asleep during my presentation.
You can compare the size of the binary, plugins and DLLs — that is usually proportional to the number of lines of source code.
Actually, the number of lines of code would be useful to the competition. AND we have to get approval for giving out any information like that.
Generally speaking, it’s been my experience that if a teacher exhibits a passionate enthusiasm for the subject they’re teaching, the class is more interesting to the students.
But if you wanna go for [ahem :)], "Gimmicks", something you might think about is grabbing a crossword puzzle creating app, loading the dictionary with tons of common and obscure Photoshop and general graphics terms and building a REALLY tough puzzle. One that would almost certainly require them to do a bunch of their own research. I’ll betcha that on their way to solving the puzzle (for EXTRA CREDIT, of course!) they’d learn a whole bunchprobably beyond the scope of your lesson planand would then be coming to you for more info and questions about the things that get their motors chugging.
Oh, and typically the size of the binaries is proportional to the number of features. But there are exceptions: like one DLL that supports all Unicode scripts, and is huge because of all the special cases coded into it for every Unicode supported language, and applications compiled with bad compiler settings, or Cocoa based applications on MacOS X (where most of the functionality is in the Apple libraries), or when we clean out old code while adding new features and get net zero change in binary size (I’ve even shrunk the app while adding features).
Something that teens would find interesting?
discussing how many line of code are in a a program defeats this. Those of any age may pass out from boredom on this, even Chris Cox.
Consider showing what Photoshop does. People like the program for what it does, not what it is. Find tutorials online that show layer compositing, look at deviantart.com, quiz the class with real and fake photos that were tweaked in Photoshop (
http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/a/147104.htm), blame Chris Cox for allowing us to have unhealthy perceptions about beauty (
http://photoshopnews.com/2005/08/09/ok-at-least-madonna-like s-photoshop/) 🙂
Excellent advice, Jim, that’s exactly the kind of stuff that has a "wow" factor.
Caroline, I just yesterday came across a link to a video that depicts the difference between real and artificial beauty. It demonstrates a professional make-up session for a model. The end product is a billboard, so the end of the video contains a few simple tweaks with Photoshop that really enhance the image. Without knowing how these images are created, the average teenage girl could easily get an inferiority complex after years of exposure to all the "gorgeous" women in magazines, posters, and billboards.
Personally, I think every teenager should see this video. Girls will breathe a sigh of relief on learning that beauty photos aren’t real, and it may help jar guys out of a quest for the mythical "perfect" woman. The clip could be an interesting part of your presentation. Go here to check it out:
<
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/>
Joe, yes, that’s a great clip.
Something that would probably astonish your classmates is comparing how certain prepress/photographic processes were done BEFORE Photoshop (dirty, dangerous, slow, expensive). For instance, manual methods of colour separation or sharpening. But that may be beyond the research requirements of your presentation. 🙂
How about the fact that over 90% of comic books are done in Photoshop now? (see www.gutterzombie.com to learn how)
And it’s a fairly safe bet that most images they see (movies, TV, print, online, video games, comics, newspaper, etc.) went through Photoshop at some point or another.
Darkroom methods (hurry up and wait) versus digital methods (no waiting necessary, unless you have a really decrepit computer). Unfortunately, most of the kids won’t identify with it because they won’t know anything about darkrooms.
I told a class at UC Berkeley about Rubylith — and they didn’t get it, because they’ve never had to use something so primitive. And that same class associated airbrushes with fingernail painting – they had never seen or heard of an airbrush used for illustration or photo retouching.
Don’t forget, many school kids were born AFTER Photoshop was released (if they’re under 16 years of age). Think about it: by the time they could use a computer, Photoshop was already well established. Scary, eh?
wrote:
OK, thanks! I’m gonna check that out.
You possibly don’t have some fun fact about photoshop? Something that teens would find interesting?
Teens love altering things and you can use photoshop to alter its own Splash Screen. You can do whatever you want. just be creative. I entertained my officemates once by doing that. hope it works for you.
Think about it: by the time they could use a computer, Photoshop was already well established. Scary, eh?
EEEKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!
Don’t SAY things like that.
My students have no idea where the Photoshop toolbar icons for Dodge and Burn originate (The black lollipop lightens. The hand OK sign darkens).
Photoshop itself has made its own iconography obsolete.
Darkroom methods (hurry up and wait) versus digital methods (no waiting necessary, unless you have a really decrepit computer). Unfortunately, most of the kids won’t identify with it because they won’t know anything about darkrooms.
Ah, the memories. Waiting all day to get a photo-composed neg from the film department, only to find Newton rings in it when printed.
Have them cut rubylith for masking…(of course make sure that you have lots of band-aids and parental permission for admission to the hospital)
Nothing makes you appreciate layer masks more than a couple of hours struggling with rubylith…
BIG thanks for all your proposals. I’m sure the presentation gonna be really good.
Ah, the memories.
The smell of the Bleach/Fix. The faint green glow of the darkroom clock. Endless hours in the dark converting the latent image into a fibre-based masterpiece.
Oh how I miss that.
..
..
..
..
.. …in much the same way as you miss a headache. 😉
Scary, eh?
The Paterson "Auto Load" spiral. getting the film in at complete darknes. It gets stuck because chemicals peeled off the plastic a bit. It won’t reverse back either.
I "un-bayonette out" the two spiral halves, and I feel and hear my poor Ilford PanF 50 film buckle, scream almost.
The film sizzles on the floor. Shall I pour the prepared Perceptol dillution over it?
Rob
Re posts 16 through 18: yes, this is a good reflection on the wisdom that comes with experience. Those without the experience probably wonder what the fuss is about and, of course, think an air brush is a software related thing rather than a hardware thing with nozzles that can block, splatter induced by poor blended inks/pigments/paints.
Ahhhh… so much to reflect upon.
So, in essence, it seems to suggest that there is a differential cusp wherein appealing to solutions in previous generations has just made a quantum leap.
The solutions of yesteryear no longer appear hardware/mechanical but software related?
You can tell them about using an airbrush: it took several years to learn to use it well. And the paint was sprayed, so you’d almost always inhale some of it (BAD, worse if it’s a toxic pigment or dye), and you’d still have to cut masks, and you’d spray your hand and have the ink in your skin for weeks.
Oh, yeah – then there’s straining the paint to make sure it’ll go through the airbrush, and disassembling the airbrush to clean it every time you stop work for a few hours (ie: every day).
Oh, and you had to have a good compressor and air tank to feed the brush.
Or rubylith: you learned to cut it with a swivel knife (tiny little blade that rotated as you move it), and it was fragile once you lifted it off the backing – so you’d frequently screw it up and start all over (or, if you’re lucky patch it with another bit of rubylith).
For publications that needed more than one type of effect, you’d use emeraldlith (green) or sapphirelith (blue) (that rarely got used).
