Habitus Tutorial

ENT 5051. Scientific Illustration of Insects Fall Semester, 2004DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION OF INSECTS USINGADOBE PHOTOSHOP CSIntroductionThe purpose of this tutorial is to demonstrate the use of Adobe Photoshop to produce a fullhabitus (i.e., general form and appearance), color illustration of an insect. As a bitmap or raster-editing application, Photoshop offers an incredible diversity of tools, filters, masks, etc. to subtlychange the color value of individual pixels in bitmapped images (digital photographs, scannedimages). A bitmap is a grid (or raster) of small squares, pixels (or picture elements), used torepresent an image, much like a mosaic of tiny colored squares. Each pixel has a specific size,location, and color value and is individually editable. Perhaps Photoshop’s most commonapplication is in enhancing and retouching digital or scanned photographs, but its tools can beused to create digital art from scratch. Photoshop can represent subtle gradations of color andtone that are not possible in vector or object-oriented applications such as Adobe Illustrator. InIllustrator, objects, specifically lines and curves, are independently defined by mathematicalequations called vectors. Illustrator produces drawings with smooth curves and sharp, crispedges. It is resolution independent - the image can be scaled up or down and printed at any sizewith no loss of sharpness. On the other hand, Photoshop is resolution dependent - theresolution of the ...