Spot the Differences

After the drawing and selection tools, the third major Photoshop tool group I focused on with my first year graphic designers were the retouching tools (patch, healing brush, spot healing brush, clone stamp, content-aware delete). The retouching tools are always my favorite to work with and teach since they perform the magic that everyone associates with Photoshop. I love showing students how to use them because there's a literal "ta-da!" moment that is so fun to watch. We completed a brief introductory exercise together and once everyone had a handle on the tools we moved into the final project. The students selected genres from a hat and visited that section of the library to gather photographs from cover art and illustrations. Once back in the classroom, we discussed examples of strong compositions in famous works of art. They then used the selection tools to isolate parts of their images and collage them onto one half of their workspace in Photoshop. Students were required to assemble either a diagonal, triangular, or S-shaped composition. Once their collage was completed they merged the layers, copied the collage, and moved the copy to the other half of their workspace. From here they used the retouching tools to complete the following list of alterations:

• Remove 3 elements
• Swap an element with another
• Repeat an element 3 times
• Hide 3 elements
  • Wallace (because yes, of course my students were familiar with the prince)
  • A Panda (our school mascot)
  • Yourself
• Change the color of 3 elements

Once their pieces were finished, students traded collages and solved each other's puzzles.
Can you spot the differences?