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I am trying to reshape the eye and stretch it out to be more pointed. I have been trying to use the anchor points and don't seem to be doing it right. Any hints on a way to go about this. I'm thinking about taking the eye out completely and starting from scratch. My Dad drew the raven and scanned it in. I've been able to adjust the colors and make them look real sharp...but I want to adjust that eye. I have the artist permission...Dad's are great!

My new hobby

This is a 1955 Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria that needs A LOT of tender loving care and paint and ???? and ???? and.....

Final - How to adjust the forground when it is too dark

So you've taken this picture and you get home and it's great...but you can't see you and your handsome husband. All is not lost, with a few steps you can brighten everyone's smile.



Although the actual numbers may vary for each photograph,the process can work for a wide range of photographs. After you have opened the photo you want to work on, do the following:
1. Click on magic wand (W). Looks like a wand with a star burst around it. You should now have a magic wand icon in the top left of the screen, under "file"

At the top of the screen there are several setting you will need to decide on

-This first is a series of boxes, it should default to single box, "new selection"

-Next is the "tolerance", 50% is a good place to start and depending on your photo, you will need to set this differently. The higher the percentage the higher it's sensitivity to the shades it will have. I like to think of it as 1% is general and 99% is specific.

-Anti-alias and contiguous should be checked or on, sample all layers should not be checked or off.

About now you are probably thinking to yourself that there has got to be an easier way...in some cases there are. For this photo I found by using the Brightness/contrast, it was washing out the background with the very bright glacier. I adjusted the Contrast down and the brightness up. Even with some tweaks with Curves and Hue/saturation it was hard to get a good result...let me show you another way to bring the foreground into view. Picture below shows my attempt to adjust the fore mentioned way.



-Now with the magic wand selected click on the object you want to highlight, you will get marching ants around the object. You may get luck, unlike me and have ONLY your object get captured. My photo also found the trees in the foreground...the look was horrible after doing some adjustment. See the photo below for what happened, the little bit of frost on the trees near by were brightened up too much.



2. Let's try another approach of grabbing what we want. Click on the Magnetic Lasso Tool (L). Looks like a metal hanger with a horseshoe shaped magnet.

-Now follow the outline of your object, in this case my husband and I. I find clicking to force a anchor point is useful to ensure that the magic wand doesn't get away from you. Make sure to have your last anchor point meet up with your first to end the magic wand action.

-Go to: Images...adjustments...curves. Once in curves I set the output to 40 and the input to 10. You can adjust by typing in values, or the more fun way is the grab the line on the graph and move it around up...down...left...right.

-Then I went to: Images...adjustments...hue/saturation. I set hue to +14 and saturation to +10. This helped bring back the color in the photo.

At this point we are only editing the lassoed object.

-Depending on the border area around your selected area and the background there may be some obvious places that got changed that shouldn't have. Here is a way to fix this problem.

3.Click on the Clone stamp tool (S). Looks like a stamp. You will need to set some parameters for your stamp tool depending on your photo. For mine, I had some fairly detailed stuff around us and I only needed to fix a thin area around our lassoed area.

-Select your brush size, you can also use the quick keys by using the ] to increase and [ to decrease.

-I left mode as "normal"

-Opacity I had set to 42%. This is set to how dense you want the clone stamp tool to be. It's like water colors being the low numbers and the higher percentages being the latex paint that you can't see through.

-I left flow on 100% and the aligned checked or on.

-Taking the cursor and hovering over an area that I want to clone. While holding down the ALT key and left clicking on the mouse, you have now cloned that area and can stamp the area you want to fix. You can click to your hearts content or hold down the left click button on the mouse and move it around. I find the Clone stamp tool will only hold it's clone for a short time and then you will need to reset your clone stamp again. After all cloning is done, your photo should be done...at least for this process. I strongly recommend zooming in (C++) to do your cloning, as this will help you stay more in control of where you are stamping. Below is the finished photo.



You may also notice that I removed my husbands hobo looking ripped pouch and the water bottle he was holding. I also for fun got rid of my waist strap from my pack...couldn't let him have a the fun!

Another try

It's one of those times, I'm not sure if I'm getting closer or farther away. The fact that I was able to get color to my photo was a good thing. I know I don't have this totally right...something is still not clicking. I did have an epiphany at 530 this morning, so I still feel better about getting a couple of things right. :)

Layers, layers and more layers

I picked this photo, because it had many tones that I thought would be fun to be able to work with. The faces would be mostly there with some missing areas, which I was hoping for a nice affect. I watch the videos and followed the instructions and I could not get it to work quite right. So, below I have included what the layer looks like, but that is as far as I could get figured out.

This was a nice hike on the trail behind Costco and the Prison here in Juneau, late summer time with my wonderful husband.

Around and around we go

This had two "hard" parts, the first being the "what" to take a picture of and then the sky transition on two of the photos. I was planning a trip to Eaglecrest and was hoping to take some great photos from up the hill after snowshoeing or skiing. Well, I went but the weather was such that it would have been just 3 photos of varying shades of white and gray. So, I settled for the Mendenhall Glacier and took 4 photos. I wish I had gone out on Friday with the beautiful sunny day...darn! I followed the instruction from the last class session and it all worked well, except I never really got the hang of the "levels" adjustment. I was getting it better by the end, but I can really see how there is a lot of learning that must happen to make this all work right. At first I thought having all the trees in the foreground was going to make it harder, but it turned out not to be a problem when using the eraser tool. I erased and erased until I got rid of the line and blended the photos together. I do not like how it turned out, mostly for the sky. The shade was so off, even after the eraser tool. I then tried the smudge tool and the blur tool to help it...oh yeah and the clone tool. I got it looking better, but still not happy with it. Next, I want to try to stitch photos together viewing from the ground in front of me all the way over your head...maybe even down the other side, like looking at the inside of an arch. I'll post it if I do it, even if I can not get it right.


OK, there is no real photo with text! I did just as the book said and it would not work, went on line found plenty of sites to tell what to do...none worked. I could never get a text box to come up, only a little gray square. Everything I tried to type would just become the name of the layer....I'm lost on this one. I ended up just using word, copying it into paint and saving it. Then I cropped it and pasted it on to the photo...very cheese!

The photo below is the same, except I used the eraser tool to blend it in to give it a so called look of coming out of the clouds.

Original Pre-Filtered Photo

Here is the original photo taken for this assignment. The sun always shines on my house!

Filters

When I first sat down to do this I really was having a hard time thinking about how I wanted to changed the picture. I decided on these three affects: Simulate the surface of the sun, soften the image and make a stained glass mosaic. This first one used the liquify filter. As the suns surface is liquid, I wanted to have my sun have that same look. I used a larger brush size to get rid of the lines on the house and then used the smaller one to liquify the sun. I had to be careful not to do this too much around the face area. I did try to get rid of some of the deep cracks in the face, some turned out good and others just seem to move it around.

Filters and more filters

This one I used the sprayed brush strokes. I wanted to soften the edges and the cracks that had formed on the sun's face. The other affect I was hoping for was to make it look like graffiti art. Just as I had sprayed on the foam, what if I had created it with spray paint. The details would have to be limited, yet still identifiable. I like how this turned out and with some work with the magic lasso to get the sun only, it would be fun to work on as a picture.

Filters, filters and more filters

This one, I used the stained glass filter. Since this was a creation of my own, I wondered how it would look as a piece of stained glass. I thought that the shape of the sun and the different colors within the sun would give nice color combinations. I think with using layers, I could separate out the face to have it have the smaller pieces of stained glass to be able to keep more of the details of the face. After all was said and done, I think this would make a pretty tile mosaic for a table top.

More of the Lions Share

This first image is one I painted just filling in the area with paint can tool. One bit of detail I would do differently would be to not use red as an outline color and save it for the background. Using the bright colors for Zac made him stand out and then adding the contrasting red made him POP!



The above image a used the pattern fill "Hard light" This worked well with the splotchness of the texture, continuing the basic and the seemingly sloppy design.

On this one, after painting it I used the "difference". I think this gave it a softer feel...almost touchable. It reminds me of a quilt piece.


This image above would be the one I would use for posters for a Big Zac Cat event. The pattern I chose, has a grass mat look. This matches textures I associate from the area I would also find the cats living in. The grass fits two ways by also being where cats like to hide and hang out.

The Cats Meow

Just for the fun of it!


I had fun playing with the paint brush feature and added four basic colors to the outline, using a large brush size (200).


Then using the brush palette, I select 112 witch reminded me of blades of grass...something a big cat would like to hide in. I then moved around the picture using different color than I had been using. I liked this one for the fun and bright colors.

Lions share

I used the paintbrush, using different sizes and colors. I found by working in a zoomed in mode, the detail was better and quicker to do. I actually like the fact that the image is not painted perfect...since the artwork has a quick look the painting not being perfect matches that technique. I think of it like putting a monster truck picture on fine china...it's just not gonna look right.

Losing my head over dancing

I found this VERY hard to post, as I HATE getting my picture taken and a close up no less. Oh, well...learning over vanity. The dancing couple and the picture of me are the originals. The goal was to take my head and put in on the girl dancer without it looking like it has been altered. This proved to be a lot harder than the scarecrow picture in the book. After some trial and error and mostly some great help from a class mate...I am ready to dance with the stars.

I had my daughter take my picture, she finally was able to stop laughing long enough to click the camera. Teenagers...everything is hilarious or horrible :). After getting my pic into PS I tried using the magic wand, but part of my face was being included...some of this was fixed by taking a second picture with a different color background. Finally, it worked best to use the magnetic lasso to rope in the features I wanted to post into the other photo. I used the same technique to take out that "other woman's" head. I then moved my head over and then I couldn't stop laughing. My head went from where her head started and went to her waist. I adjusted the size using the free transform option. Once I had my head the right size I adjusted the brightness and contrast (with brightness/contrast tool) of my face skin to match her body skin, I also had changed my head to gray scale when moving it off my body. I then learned about the clone tool...LOVE IT! Between the clone tool and the eraser I was able to blend the areas where her features had been and mine where not. It also helped to remove parts of me I didn't need, while that layer was still there. I mention this because once I had everything positioned and erased that I wanted, I resaved the pic and then flattened it. This allowed me to clone easier. I think the final results turned out good, but it is still weird...I wish I had those legs. Now, I guess I can have them in my dreams and my Photoshop.

Quilt work

Here is my "quilt" square. I couldn't figure out a way to center things or ensure that they were equa-distance from each other, does anyone know how to do that? Also, is there a way to copy the triangles and then paste and rotate them where you want them, thus ensuring them to all be the same? Pointing me to the page number, if I've missed it would be great.

Hotel California

The first pic is the starting point. The second was my attempt. First I went into the cooling filter and downed the luminance and upped the fade. I also checked the Neutralize check box. Then Selective color to down the yellow to bring the walls to a more tan, less green hue. Which by the end, I might have taken too much out. The channel mix, I adjusted the blue down to give more blue into the pic. (A side note, I did the shadow/highlight and boy did it light up the room. It looked like big spot lights where lighting up the room.) In hue/saturate I brought down the red hue, which helped bring the bed spread closer. The couch and drapes are good, but the walls and bedspread are still a bit off. The third pic to match to.

Project 2

I need a lot more work on the "levels". To change the photo to sort of get close to John's (First photo) I selected the Black and white option, then Neutral Density, tint. Decreased the red hue 27 and decreased the saturation to 13%. Adjusting the yellow seemed to help brighten up the image as well. (second photo) I played with the color balance and came up with some very weird colors. Through all the "playing" it seemed like the Alaska 50 years flag never really changed. (third photo)

CIOS 152 Course Orientation Quiz

A. What is something that is going well in your life?
Home improvements are progressing

B. What are your specific goals for this class?
Be able to do things with graphics and pictures to make them better and interesting.

C. What was your first experience with computers and imaging
technology like?
Mystical! Scary! Cool!

D. Do you usually work on a Mac or a PC and why?
PC, I’m a computer conformist. I use PC’s at work so they are all I know.

E. What is your experience level with Photoshop or image editing
programs?
Just a wee bit, I used Dreamweaver once.

F. What is something you liked about your day today?
Getting some homework done.

G. How do you plan to use what you learn in this class?
Projects at work and I want to do some web designing for fun. My Dad has a Pottery Studio and my Brother is the Web Master, but I think I might be able to make is photos on his site look better…in May.

H. What would make this class go very well for you?
Good communication.

I. How do you plan to make this class go very well for you?
Ask questions and don’t get behind
J. What do you do for creativity?
I get creative trying to juggle a school, work, family and me schedule…oh ya I’m also a Girl Scout Leader somewhere in all that. I like to build things and do pottery.

K. Who are John and Thomas Knoll?
A couple of Brothers with a lot of brains that happened to be in the right place. Thomas wrote the code for Photoshop and his Brother John worked with Lucas Films. With Thomas as the code writer and John as the salesman, they eventually got Adobe to give them a look and Adobe liked what they saw, and the “rest is history” as they say.

L. Do you own or have access to a color image scanner?
Yes.