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.