Clone Tool, Text Tool & Paint Tool - Week Ten

I had a lot of fun with this assignment this week. So Cool! I found that the tutorial that Lisa did worked great. Love it...was laughing the whole time! The first photo is of my son playing baseball. I used the clone tool to select him in the area and then clone him a few times. I was able to select different areas to adjust the photo the way that I wanted and to also remove the other individual out of the photo. This was neat. At first I had his face all over the page and found that to be too busy so I settled with this. I even forgot the tip of his shoe once and was able to go back grab it and put it where I needed it. Here is the before and after for my clone tool assignment.

The next image I added text to the photo. I found this to be interesting getting it where I wanted it and the size, color and alignment. I think this was a pretty neat tool with a lot of options. Would make scrapbooking a lot of fun! Here is the before and after images from a day at Fenway Park. Had to add baseball pictures as today was the start of the season...Go Red Sox!! At first I had the text in the upper corner, but with all the people and it being transparent, I had a hard time reading it so I selected the move tool and moved it to the bottom right.

The final tool used was the paint tool. This was fun. First I took this picture of my son and his turkey from last year cropped it and added text with the call out boxes and changed the colors as I needed them in both the background and the foreground along with the text. Then I used the paint bucket and chose the color I wanted and painted in the background, and then chose a differnt color for the floor. Changing the brush size I was able to get close to the body with the tools and try not to mess with the image of my son or the turkey. Cleaned up the photo and took out a lot of the background stuff to almost make the photo pop off the page.

Dodge & Burn and Filtered Photos - Week 9

Apologize for being late with this assignment I am having computer issues and needed to borrow one to even get this posted today.

I found the Dodge & Burn effects very helpful in enhancing photos. I used these effects to change my original photo so slightly but certainly enhanced the overall appearance of the photo. Changing the hue slightly along with the temperature helped create a warmer photo along with making the using the dodge & burn effects to bring out the camo in the dresses and tie, vest.

Before:

After

Filtered photos were so much fun! What an amazing tool to create fun images and just playing with the differnt filters and what they would do to the photos was making me laugh...(that was before computer issues).
Here is the original of a family photo.

Now the filtered version...I thought this was fun I used the filter gallery and chose the photocopy option and changed the details to 15 and increased the darkness to 26, which really brought out the lines.

Second filtered photo was one of the fruit I took with the aperture assignment

With the filtered gallery again, I chose the Brushed Strokes options and chose the accented edges - changes the edges to 4 and the Edge Brightness to 28 and increased the smoothness to 11. I think that was so cool in that it created an almost 3D image of the photo.

Beach photo -

Sorry but for some reason the preview was not responding and so I published post...here is the before photo for the beach picture.

Color & Light Adjustments

The more that I work with the Photoshop software and review the tutorials on how to use the various elements of this, I'm very excited about all the changes that I can make. Some small, some I say wow what a difference. This assignment helped me with understanding more with layering adjustments in certain photos and others helped with simple keyboard shortcuts to select and deselect photos. Very helpful! This first photo that I worked with is one that I'd taken on my landscape journey and also tried to work with last week a little bit. I found the original image to be a little dull as far as lighting, not much jumped out at your.

Here is the edited version. I used the feature make dull skies blue and worked with the color satuation as well as hue, and then sharpened the image a little, this seemed to make the photo my vibrant. I also worked with the shadows as noticed in the trees in the background.

The second photo I worked with was one taken during an early morning walk on the beach with my daughter a couple of years ago. The original is a little washed out due to the exposure of the sun behind, however I did some work with making the dull skies blue on this one too and it really brought out the ocean color as well as you are able to notice the small hills in the background to the right.

I then used the hue and saturation techniques to touch up this next photo of my son. I cropped the picture to take out some of the background which made the photo a little busy. Also using some of the balancing options with the temperature made this photo warmer.

And the edited photo.

Additional Changes - Week 7 Layer Photo

This has been a little frustrating in getting this photo the way I wanted it. I think that this one is a little better than the first option. I searched on the options within photoshop elements to help me with working with more of their tools and this is what I came up with. Looks a little 3D"ish". I think that this will be fun software once I learn how to use it better.

Photoshop - Layer photos, crop, resize - Week 7

Manipulating photos in photoshop sure does require some skill! I guess it goes with the saying the more you use it the better you get at it. I certainly am new to these functions and found this to be challenging. I plan on working more with the photos to crop the images a little better to get the best effect. I had trouble maneuvering the marquees and the magic want to crop exactly where I wanted, but this is my first attempt and hope to see huge improvements over the next several weeks as we use this program more. The first photo I used for the background was one from my last week landscape assignment of the snowmobile trail through the field.

The next photo I took was one with my husband and brother on their snomachines with the red bridge in the background. My process was to try to extract them from the photo and layter them onto the new image through the process we learned about this week.

I was hoping for a better result, and as mentioned, will play/work with other photos to get better at utilizing the functions better.

Here is what I came up with...suggestions on how to crop just the images out and not the red barn and background...I think the contract is a little higher and would like to make the image appear softer and without such a high contrast.

Process for Landscaping Photos - Additional Landscaping Photos - Part II

My process was to try and visualize my photographs in its final form as I was taking pictures. I tired to use the RofT in my photos along with the S curve and also the framing technique when taking my photos. Also tired to vary the colors in the photos as much of them were "white" due to the natural beauty of the snow and the expanse of the blue sky that was present this day.

Landscaping

Landscape: “a picture representing a section of natural, inland scenery, as of prairie, woodland, mountains...an expanse of natural scenery seen by the eye in one view.” Webster’s new Universal Unabridged Dictionary

I really enjoyed this assignment. I love landscape photography. Just looking at certain scenes brings peace, joy, sadness and a awe of the beauty that is before me. I love the colors and hues that can be present. Much like the beach seens that I have included. These were obviously not taken this time of year, but were take in August of 2009 & 2010 in OOB, Maine.

Yet the difference in seasons brings a vast difference in my ability to travel in search of photographs for this assignment. My quest took me on a 93 mile snowmobile ride, which last "too" long according to my husband who rode with me and had so much patience with me as I stopped quite often whenever the scene in front of me needed to be captured for my assignment. What a beautiful state we live in and might not have been able to capture such views if we had not travel off the beaten path into the mountains and valleys of Central Vermont. I really had a hard time choosing the 5 best photos, so I hope that you bear with me as I add a few more than expected. Hope you enjoy the views as much as I did!