For my final project, I'm doing a tutorial on layers - layer filters, styles and masks. I've taken a photo and built around it a wood grain frame and mats with beveled edges and I've applied a mask to make it look like part of the photo is jumping out of the matting.



What you will learn from this tutorial:
1) How to use a combination of layer filters to simulate wood grain.
2) How to use layer styles to create 3D looks on layers, such as the beveled edge of a picture frame or mat.
3) How to use layer mask to create the illusion of part of a photo popping out of it's layer.

Techniques in this tutorial are useful in a variety of applications. Using filters to create illusions of wood grain or different textures is useful in art projects outside of traditional photography. And in the tutorial is a nifty trick to fix troublesome outer edges of a layer.

Using the bevel edge and other layer styles is good for producing a 3D effect. And using masks is another way to add the illusion of 3D to a graphic design.

I'm using a new application for me called VoiceThread.com to make this tutorial. This is a slide presentation with voice narrative. Since I've never used it before I'm not sure how easy it is for others to view or now loud it is. If anyone has trouble with it, please email me at:
wilkinson99835@gmail.com

This is the link to go to VoiceThread.com to my slide presentation:
http://voicethread.com/share/467804/

I've embedded the tutorial below. It shows up small, so the link is better for viewing. But I thought I would give this new technology (new to me anyway) a try.

Thanks for viewing.
Ann

Photoshop layers and woodgrain tutorial

Project 7 Layers and Masks

I got the picture above using layers, masks and filters from this:


This is my nephew being goofy and trying on my new sun glasses. He should know I always have a camera handy just to catch these embarrassing moments. It wasn't the best picture for this assignment. I should have found one with more shadows and highlights. But I wanted to see what I could do with those sunglasses. So here's what I did:

First I made a new layer coping the original. I always do this in photoshop because I've screwed up originals in the past. I turned off the visibility of the original layer and made a layer mask on my copy (I call that my working base layer). Then I selected the mask by clicking on the mask thumbnail on the layer palette. Then on the photo I used the quick selection to select large sections of the kitchen in the background. I used the paint bucket to paint the kitchen areas black. That made the kitchen invisible. I threw in a gradient background layer, just to see that I had my mask just right.


I made several copies of this image so I could play around with several versions and not have to redo the first mask.

For my next image, I put a new background behind this picture. I use to do this kind of thing a lot using the eraser tool to get rid of cluttered backgrounds. But the mask layer method is so much better because its not destructive. When I realized I had masked out areas I didn't want to lose, I just went back and painted that area on the mask white which restored that part of the image. So here's the image with a new background (from a cruise to Redoubt Bay).

Next I wanted to play with those sunglasses. What I wanted to do was put Brian on a sunny beach and add the reflection of a girl in a bikini showing in the lenses of the glasses. But I didn't have a good picture of a bikini clad girl. So I settled for another scene from Redoubt Bay. I made another layer of Brian and made a mask layer of the lenses. This was a little tricky because the glasses and the lenses are so close to the same color. There's a little flare of light on the right lens that proved to be very problematic. I ended up painting my mask layer with the paint brush tool rather than using selection tools. Then I slipped in another layer between the two layers of Brian's face. The top Brian layer had the glasses masked out so the image underneath it shows through. I wanted to make the lens look reflective using the blend modes. But I could never find the right one for that. I ended up using the lighter color blend mode on the waterfall layer.

So when I finished, I thought it looks silly. But I learned a lot about layers and mask and next time I'll pick better photos to start with.

Next I used the technique John demonstrated in his YouTube video. I used the selections drop down menu to select and make layers of highlights, midtones, and shadows. Then I took each layer and played around with hue, brightness, saturations and levels. I saved several and put them together.



The top left one I saved because the skin tones look kind of bronze or golden. I've tried to make gold before and it never looked right. But now I have a formula for it. Base layer flesh tone, the highlights are greenish yellow, midtones a darker green and shadows blue. So the next time I want to turn something gold, I'll know I can do it with layers.

On the top right, I made the shadows and midtones dark and deleted the highlights and base layer letting the background show through. For the bottom left I was just playing with color hues, added the disco gradient, flattened all the layers and them applied the poster edge filter.

My favorite is the lower right image. I started with the image on the top left and I added black squares to the background layer. I deleted the layer with the base photo of Brian, I flattened the remaining layers and applied the cutout filter (under artistic filters). The filter settings were: number of levels - 6, edge simplicity - 10 and edge fidelity - 2. It's the only image I did that isn't goofy looking. But I think it made the others worth whiled.

Photo.net panoramic project of the month

Photo.net, a web site for photographers, has a monthly project. This month the project is panoramic photos. If you want to see an interesting collection of panoramics from all over the world, check it out at:
http://photo.net/monthly-project/2009/april-panoramic
I don't think you have to be a member to post one of your own photos.

Panoramic Stitching - Quilters Delight

Call me crazy, but I totally overdid this assignment. The assignment was to take a series of at least 3 photos and stitch them together in a panoramic and then add text to them. (What up with that?) I really enjoyed doing this, so I overdid it. I did three different series of 4 to 8 photos for 3 very different panoramic images. The images are different but the process was the same.

The first series of pictures I took in Sitka's Ben Franklin store where the quilters go for fabrics. When I show the wall of fabric, I thought it would be perfect for this assignment. Unfortunately there were perpendicular aisles very close to this wall so I couldn't step back far enough to get good starting pictures. I knew this would be a problem with the perspective, and I was right. But I gave it a shot anyway and decided to post it.

For all three of my projects, I used the same process. I started by reducing the size of the photos to 20 inches wide (10 for the harbor pictures). Then I took the end photo and expanded the canvas. This one I started on the left, but I found it more natural for me to start on the right. Anyway, I selected the whole photo of the second image, copied and pasted it on my expanded canvas and moved it into position. I tried using John's trick of lowering the opacity to see how to line things up. I had trouble with that. Everything looks fuzzy and I can't tell which fuzz is which layer. So I started off with a lower opacity in my top layer, then once I had it close, I adjusted back to 100% opacity.

This fabric image was the hardest to do. I tried to use the free transform tool to adjust the perspective and that ended up throwing things out of alignment. But I think I have most of my transitions pretty close. This is really a flat wall, but the composite looks like a corner or a big V.

For my other images, I found that if I line up the largest details in the background, I can use the free transform tool to line up the details in the foreground. I got things close and then used the arrow keys to nudge. One thing I like about the free transform tool is that I can use it and nudge, transform and nudge and transform more without having to change anything in the tool bar. I just had to click on the move arrow at the top of the tool bar and then select free transform under edit. That trick was really helpful in my harbor image too.

After I had my first two pictures lined up, I made adjustments to brightness/contrast to blend them. Then I used the eraser tool with a soft edge and a large diameter to blend the edges. Once I was happy with that, I moved on to the next picture in the series. After they were all lined up and blended, I cropped the edges. I learned after this one to take photos with more than I wanted in the final image. A good portion of the top and bottom gets cropped away to make the edges smooth.

So although this image didn't turn out as well as I hoped, I learned a lot that made the next two turn out better. It is all about the process.

Panoramic Stitching - Crescent Harbor

Now you're going to know I'm crazy. Instead of doing 3 or 4 photos to stitch together, I decided I needed 8! Well I ended up with so much overlap between some of them that I only used 7. I thought this would be the most difficult project, but it turned out to be the easiest of the three.


I caught a break in the weather and had a relative snow free hour to get these photos done. I was standing at the harbor shelter so I had room to back up and get a good perspective. While I was taking the pictures, all I could see in my view finder were hundreds of masts and vertical lines. I thought I would never be able to match them up. But by the time I got to this one I had discovered that it's easier for me to work from right to left. And if I have something large in the background to match up, I can use the free transform tool to mesh the lower details together.

Of the three that I did, this one has the best perspective, true to the real scene. And that was without me having to over manipulate the perspective with the transform tools in photoshop.

I had so many photos for this one, I reduced the size (width) to 10 inches each. That made the math easier to work with and it made the final image a more manageable size. Unfortunately, I didn't save a copy of the right most photo. And I flattened the image before I realized it. But I have the panoramic. And of the three, this is my favorite final image. The most interesting thing to me is that I think none of these individual photos is outstanding. But the panoramic is pretty cool. I guess the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Panoramic Stitching - Fresh Produce

Now this one was my favorite to photograph. I thought it was a great idea to go to the grocery store and get in out of the snow and rain for indoor photography. And the produce department was a big enough space that I could step back and get my shots with a better perspective than the fabric shots. It sounded like a good plan. But in the middle of my salad photo shoot, I felt a little tap on my shoulder. The manager of SeaMart asked me to leave the store and not come back with a camera. They do not allow photography of their merchandise. Then he recognized me as a customer and explained that he thought I was someone else. It seems the other grocery store in town was recently sold to a chain. And the new owners have been sneaking in photographing SeaMart to check out the competition. Once the manager knew I wasn't there for asparagus espionage he agreed to let me continue photographing. But I had lost my enthusiasm at that point. So I had to work with what I had already done. I had enough photos for the panoramic, but no where to put in any text. So I had to create a sign. I did the sign with the custom shape drawing tool set at the glass button mode. It's pretty cheesy looking but it was fun to do.

As for the stitching, this was pretty straightforward. There were lots of little details to line up. The perspective is still off, it looks like a curved counter. But without a tripod and a lot more space, it's the best I could do.

And the experience of being almost thrown out reinforced one of my core philosophies in life: It is usually better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

Filters

Our assignment was to take a new picture and apply filters to create 3 new images. We are to have a goal in mind and not just apply random filters. My goal was to turn a photo of a still life into a painting or sketch.

Some of the differences in these images are subtle. Click image to view in larger format for best viewing.



This is my original picture for this assignment. I was just in Dallas visiting family and took this picture in my sister's kitchen window where she displays a collection of antique purple glass bottles. The window was covered with dew and was a little frosty so the trees outside the window are obscured. I thought that if I painted, this would make a nice still life. So that is the effect I was hoping for.

I tried several different options to turn this into a "painting" only to discover that the frosty window turned into a very busy background. So my first step ended up to select the window with the quick selection tool and apply a Glassian Blur. Then I applied the Accented Edges filter to bring out the details of the bottles and compensate for a lack of contrast. I decided I liked that image. So I stopped there and saved it. I used it as the base layer for other images.

For the image above, I started off applying the Paint Daubs filter with a brush size of 1, sharpness of 0 and type of wide sharp. Then I applied a Box Blur (to the window) with a radius of 12 px. It didn't look enough like a painting, so I applied the Accented Edges with edge width of 9, edge brightness of 19 and smoothness of 14. Then I decided it needed to look more like a canvas, so I used the Texturizer filter for Canvas with a scale of 88, relief of 17 and light, top left. Then I made the mistake of trying to smooth out some of the splatter on the window. But I discovered that once you apply a texture filter, further adjustments really mess that up. So I backed off my last adjustment deciding I liked the window with a little splatter.

Then I decided to make the bottles into a still life sketch. This turned out to be the hardest effect to create. I tried several different filters and ended up with big areas of black (like on the big bottle to the right). This attempt was a combination of a Graphic Pen filter with stroke length of 15, light/dark balance of 40 and stroke direction of right diagonal and a Watercolor filter with brush detail of 6, shadow intensity of 1 and texture of 1. I was hoping this looked like a pen and ink sketch. It doesn't really. But I liked it anyway.


This was my final attempt to convert my purple bottles to a pen and ink sketch. I started with the second image above (Glassian Blur on the background and accented edges). Then I applied the Photocopy filter with detail of 24 and darkness of 50. I played around with this a lot and either have too much black in the center of the bottles or I lose the outline of the middle back bottle. I never found the right combination of filters to look like a pen and ink drawing. But I came up with some interesting variations of my original image.

So this is the last one worth putting out for display. I was going for a watercolor look. But I know the Watercolor filter in photoshop looks very little like a true watercolor. So I used the image with the Glassian Blur and this time Sharpen Edges. Then I used the Photocopy filter with a detail of 7 and darkness of 15. I over saturated the base layer and then reduced the opacity of the top (filtered) layer to 55%. There's not as much contrast as I wanted. But further work only messed it up. So now I really am done.

Thanks for viewing. All comments welcome.
Ann

Zac, a colorful cat

So for this assignment I was to download a drawing of the left side of Zac, complete the picture by duplicating it and then color it in using the techniques in Lesson 6 of our text. This seemed easy enough when I did it with the butterfly. But I ran into a snag that stumped me for about 30 minutes.

The first thing I did was download the halfZac tile. I followed the instructions in the text to expand the canvas, select and duplicate the half drawing, flip it and nudge it into place. I used the darken mode adjustment to line up my halfs to make a full Zac.

When I was ready to make my selection of the lines, I realized I had a RGB image, so I converted it to gray scale. I'm not sure if that really mattered, I think I could have made the selection using the RGB channel but I wasn't sure. I made my selection with the channel for gray, inversed my selection and created a new layer.

Then I filled my new layer selection with black and tried to delect the selection on the background layer so I could paint the selected lines. This is where I ran into trouble. I thought I had followed all the directions in the book just like with the butterfly. But when I deselected the background layer and filled it with white, it deselected the lines layer. Then when I tried to paint, nothing happened. I fiddled around with these two layers and the selection and the layer lock and the brushes. Everything seemed right - but no results when I painted. Finally I notice that my mode setting on my brushes tool bar was set to overlay instead of normal. I think the overlay was a left over from something I was doing in the book. Once I got that figured out, it was all fun with colors.

I used a standard brush for the outline of the face. Then switched to the scattering and color dynamics for the frame. Next I added my color fill layer and filled in the large sections. When I thought I was all done, I decided to go a little farther and add some texture to the face. This ended up a little more trouble than it was worth. I had to divide my color fill layer into 2 - the face and the frame. I added the pattern layer to the face layer using the ant farm pattern. I blended the layer with the soft light mode.

Then I flattened it all and posted it.

Doing the PS-CS3 Dance

Doing the PS-CS3 dance

So my assignment is to select a picture of myself, select the head, copy and paste it and superimpose it on one of the dancers. I have some issues with this assignment. The first is that I need to lose about 100 pounds before I take head shots. Otherwise, Rita or Ginger will look like The Incredible Dancing Woman With The Balloon Head. The other issue is with hair. Right now I have really short hair, kind of spiky on top. Both of these dancers have hair down their back or at least on their neck. How am I supposed to blend my spikes with their do’s?

I found some old pictures of myself from back in the day that I had long hair. Some of them are almost in the right position, but not the right lighting. So I first tried putting my head on Rita Hayworth’s body. It was a dismal failure. But I’m posting it anyway so everyone can have a good laugh.

My second attempt I used Ginger’s picture. But instead of putting my whole head on, I just selected my face and superimposed it over Ginger’s face. This solved the problems of the hair, the double chin and the size of my head. But I’m not sure it’s what John intended when he made the assignment.

So here’s a brief outline of my process.

I selected the part of my face to transfer to Ginger. Then I copied it onto a new layer in the head shot photo.

Before I copied and pasted the selection I tried to clean it up as best I could. The head shot has a white/black lace background which made it difficult to quick select or use the magic wand. I had to zoom in to almost a pixel level to clean it up. But it was much easier to do it on the head shot than on the dancer’s picture. And to help clean it up, I made an extra layer just behind my selection layer and painted the extra layer bright pink. This made it a lot easier to see what I was doing. But it’s kind of scary seeing ones face floating in a field of pink.

Once I had it cleaned up I transferred my selected face (still in color) to Ginger’s. Of course my face was as big as half her body. So I used the Transform and Free Transform functions to scale my face down and tilt it to match Ginger’s.

After I had it the right size and position, I changed it to black & white. Then I adjusted the levels to try to get the tones just right. Okay, they’re not perfect but as close as I could get them.

Next I reduced the opacity of my face so I could see Ginger’s hair line. I zoomed in and carefully erased any part of my face that was covering her hair. There is a little bit of a halo effect on her face around her hair (like in front of her ears). I could never get it quite right.

Then I used the smudge tool to blend the line between my face and Ginger’s neck.

Then I sat back and laughed.

Look! It's the Amazing Dancing Woman with the Big Balloon Head!!

This is the 3rd version of this one that I've posted. I keep trying to get the head smaller and look more proportioned to Rita's body. So now nobody needs to be embarrassed about theirs.

Selection Mania

I thought this was a pretty straightforward assignment - to start with a blank canvas, select the areas to duplicate John's image, and color in the selected area. Of course the trick to this assignment was doing all the selection at one time, then the painting all at once. I've done enough in Photoshop elements to know the basics of selections. But I found, as usual, that I didn't know as much as I thought I did. I had not used the shift and alt keys to add and subtract from selections. It was a smooth process once I figured out that to subtract the corners to make the cross, I had to start with the cursor outside the selection. I tried first to line my cursor up on the edge of the selection. But it didn't work. I had to be outside the selection. I also learned that when using the polygonal lasso tool, I didn't have to hold the mouse button down while I was drawing. I just had to left click at the corners. Also, I'm not so good at drawing with my mouse. So my circle and triangles are a little off in size and in position. (I even tried doing this a second time with the grid showing (view, show, grid). It didn't help much. But I got the idea of the procedure for selecting, adding and subtracting from a selection.

The most exciting part of this for me was finding out about the quick selection tool. I didn't use it for this assignment, but I will use it a lot in other projects.
Ann

New tricks for old pics

I'm procrastinating in other classes, so I thought I would do a little playing around in PS. I have about 3,000 photos on an external hard drive that could use some help. To start with, I selected a photo I had worked on before with another more limited software. I took this picture of a church in Mendocino, CA with a 35mm point and shoot. Not very impressive. But a friend of mine was doing a collection of black and white photos of old churches and she really wanted an improved copy of this.

I scanned it into my computer so it's not the best quality to begin with. The brightness/contrast is all wrong. Every time I tried to adjust it I lost details - either the cross on the top blew out to white, or the door and windows lost all the detail in a void of black. So instead of just trying the auto adjustments, I used levels and curves to mend the contrast without losing the details. My friend likes sepia, so I went a little brown instead of gray. I've still got to figure out what to do with the sky. But considering my previous attempts (which I'm too embarrassed to show) this is a definite improvement. Old first, then the new.

Project 2 Color

Bummer
I've redone this assignment at least 4 times over the last week. Always with the same result - a photo that looks over manipulated. But I think I'm getting closer. Here's what I did for my last attempt. I started with Auto Color correction because I thought it wouldn't hurt and it might help. From there I went to Variations and increased Red one time. Next I went to Levels by color and changed them to Red: 0, 0.37, 222 and Blue 1, 2.12, 159 and Green 12, 0.73, 214 and RGB 6, 0.72, 255. I also changed the output on RGB to 22, 255. And the output on Blue to 0, 233. All of these adjustments were made with trial and error - just playing around with the Level slide bars. I also tried using Curves - but I messed up more than I improved.

By this time the colors were looking better, but not great. The red bedspread isn't red enough, the blue curtain isn't blue enough and the wall is too dark. But I've noticed that the more I finagle the colors, the more the contrast, brightness and sharpness degrade. So I'm stopping here and will wait to learn how others in the class overcome the very yellow retro room.

Mine is on the top. John's on the bottom right.

Project 2 - Adjustments

I tackled this one first because I thought it would be easy. Of course I was wrong. I started off well, duplicating the color image so I have a working copy. I put that working copy and the goal photo on a split screen and off I went trying adjustments to Levels, Hue/Saturations, Variations, Curves. My first frustration was that I get in a hurry to try the next thing in my bag of tricks and I forget to write down what I'm doing. I know the goal here is to learn how to make adjustments, not just duplicate John's photo. So even if I get everything just right with a hit and miss approach, it does me no good if I can't remember how I got there. So I have to keep reminding myself to slow down, think about what I'm doing and write it down as I go. Thank God for the history window.

I started off adjusting the Levels - it looked heavy on blue. Then I adjusted Hue/Saturation and reduced the saturation to almost, but not quite, black and white. Next I spent a lot of time in the Variations window. I like the variations window and find it easy to work with because it gives me a preview of the changes with my options before I select them. But I'm frustrated that the window is so large that it blocks the goal photo that I'm trying to match. I played around with the midtones, adding red, too much red, adding cyan, overdoing darkening then lightening it up. Then I revisited Levels and Hues/Saturations. I ended up with Hue 34, Saturation 18, Lightness -17. By this time I thought the street looked pretty close but the sky was too dark. I used the Curves function, selected a point on the sky and lightened it up without messing up the rest of the work I had done. (My input was 136 and output 186 on the Curves)

I'm about 85% happy with the way the photo turned out. But I've learned a valuable lesson to slow down and document what I'm doing.

So here's my adjusted photo:


And here's the goal photo:

Lesson 1 Open and Organize

This week I've been distracted from school lessons because of a recent flood at my home and emergency move. But I was able to setup my laptop according to the suggestion in our text. It was a lot easier than I thought. That's good because I'll have to do it all again as soon as I find the hard drive of my desktop. I have about 22 boxes left to look through.

I thought the text book instructions were very clear and thorough. I'm finding Photoshop CS4 a lot more complicated than my old baby Photoshop Elements 2. But of course that means the possibilities are boundless. I went through Lesson 1 using the text CD as the practice samples. I love the bridge function, and the loupe for zooming in on details. Being able to adjust the size of thumbnails and rate photos will be a big plus for me. I have a tendency to take too many photos so I'm sure to have a good one. That's part of why I love digital photography. Unfortunately I end up with lots of rejects. This bridge and the rating system will save me lots of time looking through photos.

This evening I finally got up the courage to plug my external hard drive with all my photo into my laptop. This external hard drive has about 6 years worth of photos filed away without a backup. I was afraid it had been damaged in the flood. But my photos are all still there. So I have material to work with this semester.

My experience this week has taught me two valuable lessons. 1) Invest in good surge protectors. My entire desktop system was on and plugged into a surge protector that was totally submerged under water. And so far my system seems to be okay. 2)Backup, just in case.

My next task is to figure out how to post photos onto the blog. I'm enjoying seeing every ones blog photos. I'll try to add one to this post. See you all Thursday on-line.
Ann Wilkinson

Orientation Quiz

A. What is something that is going well in your life?
I have great friends who have helped me tremendously this week.

B. What are your specific goals for this class?
To become proficient at Photoshop CS to the point that I can work for paying clients and meet their needs.

C. What was your first experience with computers and imaging technology like?
I first experience with computers was in 1977 when I took a course in programming. Back then our biggest concern was to not drop our punch cards. If you dropped a stack of punch cards with your program coding and they got out of order, it was a disaster. As for imaging technology, I took several classes in digital photography that also covered Photoshop. The last class was the year that Photoshop CS-1 was released. That class was a very positive experience.

D. Do you usually work on a Mac or a PC and why?
I'm a PC chick and have been quite happy with PCs until I got a new laptop recently with Vista on it. Maybe next time I'll cross over to Mac.

E. What is your experience level with Photoshop or image editing programs?
I've done some "just for fun" work with Photoshop Elements (version 2 or 3 I think). I've had some limited class work with Photoshop CS. I've also used JASSC which came on my desktop computer. It's pretty basic, but for adjustments like brightness, contrast, saturation, it's fine.

F. What is something you liked about your day today?
Tonight I got everything out of my house that flooded Monday. I packed and moved my entire household in less than 3 days - with the help of some very generous friends. So starting in the morning I can concentrate on my new place and getting everything in order for a fresh, dry start on higher ground.

G. How do you plan to use what you learn in this class?
I can play with Photoshop and photo manipulation for hours. But what I really want is to be able to do web design and some computer graphics and desk top publishing professionally.

H. What would make this class go very well for you?
A balance of pacing - fast enough that I learn as much as possible - slow enough that I don't get lost. This is a massive software package with a lot to learn.

I. How do you plan to make this class go very well for you?
First, try to stay on target with assignments and deadlines. This is not the type of class I could easily recover from getting behind in my schedule. Second, learn from others. Whether it's a program issue or a new appreciation for another photographer's style, I can always learn something from my peers as well as my instructors.

J. What do you do for creativity?
I write. I'm a member of Write Women, a writing group in Sitka that meets weekly. Also I do a variety of artist dates to fill the inspiration well.

K. Who are John and Thomas Knoll?
Brothers who created Photoshop.

L. Do you own or have access to a color image scanner?
I did Monday morning. I don't think it was damaged in my flood, but I won't know for sure until I find and set up my desktop computer system in my new place.

Welcome to fellow UAS students - CIOS 152

I created this blog to document my progress learning Photoshop CS4. This is the second blog I've created. See you in class.