Ok-Chap 9 has been redeemed

So now I understand the mask lesson-still not sure why I was not able to access the mask to uncover the mountains the first four times and the redeeming factor was learning how to merge all the photos and then being able to paint in his misses into the last photo-can't wait until I can use that- I have ideas brewing....so over all this was frustrating but rewarding in the end-still think he needs to have someone go through his lessons to make sure his instructions work....

Frustrating Chapter 9-Building Layered Compositions

So this is this worst chapter of the book....so far...if only he would tell us the goals before we started the assignments it would not be so bad...I have to say the chapter started off fine with the fruit lesson and football... (It was fun to play with the dimensions of the fruit hat )which were a little fun but alot of times I wished he would give us a little intro to want he wanted to accomplish...and he did with the first two lessons, but somehow after that with the mountain lesson the good directions got lost...and I found myself wanting to just quit and walk away...but I didn't I just skipped over some parts that instructions were lacking-at least in my book...wish he would sit with someone while they were doing the lessons in his book so that he would know when he needed to elaborate more or have more pictures to help explain some of his steps....I think that these processes have become so easy for him that he doesn't understand how difficult it can be for newbies like me...I wish he would give real life application of when we would use these tools...seems like we're just doing silly assignments....and maybe they have to be to illustrate the tools but the tools are quite amazing and it would be nice to learn about it more practically and maybe have this chapter less dense....I really liked this book up until now....maybe he will redeem himself before the end of the chapter....

Lesson 8 Focus and Filters

This chapter was amazing and at times a little frustrating...
Sharpening the bears images was quite amazing-made me want to find all my out of focus photos and fix them up...The subway exercises were cool but frustrating...it was fun to take the graffiti off using the stamp tool, vanishing points and planes...making the grids was way cool-but adjusting the text was way frustrating-even he knew that when he said "good luck" finding the handles to resize and fit the text into the walls...this took the most time, but was intriguing because of the 3-D effect and working within the planes...cloning the walls and then moving them blew me away and thankfully this time he had good directions...so it made it easy to follow his steps.
of course, the best part about this chapter was the last lesson where we used the free-form distortions...this was way fun, fun, fun and again quite amazing and he had good instructions so that made it easy to follow...I was again amazed at the ability of photoshop to manipulate pixels....makes me want to buy photoshop so I can play around with images.

Project 4

For the picture of the head I chose Extraction tool to get her out of the photo. Then I checked the color levels and they were fine-this photo has good beginnings so I did not have to do much to other than tweak it some it make it look freaky. I chose to do a gradient and change the opacity in it to 16% to give it that cast, then for the style I chose reflect - again- working to give it an odd color then I chose the angle of it to 12. For the 2nd photo I checked the color levels and they were fine but since it was a little over exposed I went to the brightness level and changed that to -8 and then the contrast to 12 and I liked the color and it gave the gray sweatshirt more detail and then the only thing I fixed was the red eyes....
I chose the extraction command because this seems to be the most accurate tool for me and then I love the tool within it that extracts more and it is simply done by doing shift T to choose the edges.
For the text I chose red since it matched the lips-I actually did the color picker and chose the font to be the same color as the lips and didn't look quite right so I went back to the red font. I used red as it an attention getter color...I chose the leave shape as it is organic and just seemed to fit the best-I resized and made it a little bigger. I chose simple text so as not to take too much away from the zany photo but still wanted the text to be noticed-I played with the size a little but decided on the 18 font....I tried to do the letter vertical but that seemed to take away the attention of the "funniness". I had alot of fun doing this....in the future when I want to do composites I will keep that in mind as I take the photos so that I can have some wiggle room in them to add photos.

Lesson 10-Text and Shapes

Yay, this was fun and easy compared to the one before!
I did get a little hung up on creating the guides as he gave the wrong directions on how to set them up but found out I did not need as I was able to wing my way around...
I liked that he included "a dozen more ways to edit text" because it is a quick reference and I don't have to go through an entire lesson to remember how to do something...The shapes were fun too-I would like to get a whole bunch of them to play around with just for fun....the bending and warping are fun as well...creating the circle path is quite a creative way to do text- I am going to start paying more attention to flyers to see other ideas of how to use all these cewl tools...

Lesson 7

This lesson was both amazing and frustrating...the directions were not quite complete so sometimes it took me longer to do a part of the lesson. Amazing with the selection tools under the extract command because of its ability to choose more pixels after we have made a selection under the extraction...for example when I chose the hair I didn't quite get it to look very good, but when I chose the T command while I had the extraction box still up I was able to choose more pixels which helped the hair look more realistic-it kind of "painted" hair in but really added more pixels...The flame picture was something I hope never to repeat! Although it was quite an amazing result-I did not like the process, but I suppose someday I will use this when I am making a fortune off my phot0s....actually I do have to say it was fun, but I do know if I could ever repeat the process with spending alot of time doing this assignment again...doing the buffalo assignment was quite tedious-it took me numerous attempts before I was just okay with the final result and I have a feeling I will use the extraction tool most often when making composites...

Midterm Project

The first image I wanted to do was corrupt so I had to put these together....
I made copies before I started-and then I checked the color levels through the channels on the image of the little girl and the only thing I had to adjust was taking some of the blue out so I went the the Color Balance and did the auto color and it changed just to my liking I then went and reduce the highlights to get some definitin in the snow and changed the midtones a little as well and this took the blue out.
The first thing I did with the cat image was check the color levels and that seemed okay so I went to the shadows since this image was overexposed I increased the shadows about 30 percent. Taking this image proved difficult as the edges of the cat were very light and it was hard to make as great as a selection as they did in the book with the giraffe-I basically tried all the tactics they did such as grow, similiar and it didn't pick it up too much but I was okay with using the quick selection tool to choose him. I used the History tool often to go back and forth with the selection as it was at times hard to choose the light colors of his hair.
Once I saw that the selection was under par I decided I would use the spot healing tools to bring definition into the edges and it worked pretty good. I then cropped the cat out of the image and used the free transform to make him bigger to fit into the picture. I then used special effects and used the color overlay and then blend mode and used the color picker to choose a bluish color so it would match the snow and then show the gradiet overlay to make the light pattern look similiar to the way the light was casting on the little girl.
It was fun to use everything we learned so far-I made sure I used the color channels to get the blue out of the snow, I used the shadow/highlight tool on the cat photo as the original was overexposed, I used the blend modes for the overlays, the free transform to make the cat bigger, I made the images the same size, and I used the heal patch tool to bring definition into parts of the cat-mostly the edges, the histogram was my most handy dandy tool in that whenever I wanted to go back a couple stept I just clicked on it within this and I liked it as it showed me exactly what tool I was using-served as a good reminder for me, the magic wand is good but the magic selection tool worked best for me in choosing the cat. I tried the marquee tools, but I just don't care for these so I didn't use them, I used the cropping tool to crop part of the cat out as I didn't use the whole cat-he just didn't fit into the space that well so I had to crop part of him out. The gradients and overlay are a great set of filters that I hope to remember to use. I didn't have to use the saturation or hue tools for this, even though I tried them in changing the blue out of the snow-the better option was in the color channels. It was was to use the healing and patching tools in cleaning up the cat. I am glad I was able to use everything I learned so far.
It will not upload my image at this I will try later.

Lesson 6

This was a very fun lesson-the butterfly one was quite amazing...all the options are incredible-I am not quite sure how each one works but I enjoy the effects....
The dodge, burn, sponge, and smudge tools will be ones I want to use in the future with old photographs that need retouching...eyes brighter, teeth whiter and I love the photo that Craig fixed- I have some photos somewhere with emulsion missing and when I find them I want to fix them up. My mom has some very old photos that I want to fix as well....who knows when I can find them though-I am looking forward to the makeovers....
I was quite amazed at the mole healing and patching...this may be one of the most valuable lessons yet...I just love this book even though at times it skips steps...

Lesson 5

This lesson was very tame compared to the composite and path lessons...cropping, resizing, straightening were all very simple and relatively straight forward-hope more lessons are like this

PROJECT 2 COMPOSITE

I changed the color level on the bubbles,to brighten it up and used the magic wand and blend modes to choose and blur edges then cut the eye out while using the marquee tool as well and used the transform button until got it to the right size-much resizing and using it to get it to fit into the hole-the original bubble pic has a whole in it-that is what gave me the idea to do it that way... I also had to straighten and measure the eye to get it into the right position...alot of work and fun

Lesson 4-Making Selections (using paths)

I found this lesson tedious and difficult to use-his directions seem less clear than all the others-he dropped the ball...I found myself getting lost and having to do some things twice and I still wasn't sure if I "got it"
The selection tools are quite handy in making composites though and once I get the hang of it I am sure I will do fine. The elliptical option seems useful but it took me awhile to get the hang of it...Somehow when I was doing the courthouse I lost some of the circles and didn't realize it until it was too late and it had deselected them and my first composite looked pretty silly-even I had to laugh at it. As I said it is going to take some getting used to these tools for me to get the hang of it...not sure what I did on the courthouse/fireworks lesson but the first time I did it I turned the courthouse orange! It was pretty funny-not sure why this lesson seems the most difficult, but I am learning and am interested in learning how to be comfortable using this.

Project 1

This photo was taken in Anuktuvik Pass last summer. I spent a few hours there and it was an amazingly beautiful gorgeous super hot day but it was the worse time to take photos and I knew the antlers would be washed out. I had fun taking pictures though-for those of you who have been there you Sherri Adams photo Copyright 2007 know that it is all about majestic scenery in that area.
I played around in all the areas: color channels, histogram, sat/hue, shadows/highlights, variation fader,tint and color and gradients and settled on the following steps...


I tried the auto levels for tint and color and decided that I would go with the color level auto then I turned on the channels and chose the green channel to pump up the foliage, sky, and antlers as they were washed out. It still looked a little washed out so I then went to the brightness/contrast and lowered the Sherri Adams photo Copyright 2007
contrast significantly and the brightness as well...
Again, I went to the channels this time in RGB and adjusted the levels using the peaks and valleys in the histogram I darkened the light, slightly darkened the midtones and darks...the antlers needed alot of help...
I lessened the hues and then went to curves and chose the red channels and changed it a little to bring out the colors in the mountains as the mountains around there are amazing but due to it being high noon the colors did not really show up in the pictures...
I adjusted the shadows and highlights as well to bring some definition into the foliage and it brought them out more-I also increased the tonal as well....
The last thing I did was to bring a little more color into antlers as there were stark white-they had no color to begin with so it was difficult to isolate them but I went to the Curve command and chose to manipulate just the blue and that helped bring out the antlers as well as the sky....
I want to use the inverse of this photo next....so you will see me use this photo again as it's one of my favorites-when we get to the cropping stuff I will crop out some things....I considered "healing" the clouds-but they were not blemishes so I decided I would leave them....in the future I may or just may crop them out...
p.s.I tried the variations with the more cyan, more green etc. and just didn't like any of the options it gave...

CIOS152-Lesson 3

Another rich chapter with lessons that I enjoyed doing...
It has been a long time since I learned about hue and saturation so it was good to refresh my memory about them...
The tint is the core color like a rainbow and saturation measures the intensity of the color.
I love being able to change the color cast using the Variations command under the Adjustment menu. I like that under the midtones option it shows us all the different variations with the filters of more green, more yellow, more cyan, more red, more blue, and more magenta and then to top it off it shows the current pick, lighter pick and dark pick all the same screen!!! that just amazes me-it is quite convenient to have the choice of having a fine or coarse intensity level with the fine/course slider bar. Variations changes brightness levels-highlights, shadows, and midtones.
Coloring the grayscale image was very interesting, I thought the photo looked fine as it was so it was very cool to be able to use photoshop to "color" a photo. The important thing for me to remember is to add channels and to do so one must choose Image, mode, RGB Color and then to turn on the Channels palette and walaa I'll see the Gray channel turn into Red, Green, and Blue plus the RGB composite and because this allows us to add channels it allows us to colors...The Hue/Saturation command allows us to turn on the Colorize check box which applies the Hue and Saturation as absolute colors and it is at this point that we enter a Hue value which creates the color! The Gradient Map command substitutes the luminosity values with the colors in the gradient! and if that was not enough it allows us to choose from a menu of Gradient menus that allow all kinds of cool colors to manipulate the photos with-the artsy kind of stuffs....fun fun fun!
Camera Raw
The other method for correcting or changing colors deserves a title just because it is way cool-it can edit multiple photos at once even! According to the book, it represents the unprocessed data captured by thy camera's image sensor. It has more flexibility because it is larger and contains more info and captures a wider range of colors...within it one can change things like White Baland to neutralize a color cast, change Temperature value to compensate for the color of the light source!Tint even lets you adjust colors even more along a color axis! The really amazing thing is that while in this program one does not permanently while in Camera Raw! so not only does it do all these amazing things, one can adjust highlights, shadows, and midtones-just like a real darkroom! The Vibrance and Saturation command changes the skin tone color when the exposure is not so great-I love this program! At first I was a little dubious about it but it is quite a handy program!
The Tone Curve command can get pretty detailed in its correcting abilities as well, the lesson he had us to do showcased how good that program is because of how he was able to do all the little changes that made a big difference!
Wow, switching into the HSL/Grayscale panel was fun because of how we were able to choose the Hue of the flowers right before our eyes-I had alot of fun with this as I exaggerated the colors and again it was artsy! I can see why people who have Adobe can get locked into it and not want to quit using it!
I loved the ability of the program to "heal" photos and get rid of blemishes relatively simple and clean...
The lesson pertaining to changing the color photo to black and white came in a close second as I love black and white photography and the Split toning was way cool and all it took was switching the channel mixer t monochrome....
Again, I learned alot in this lesson and the bonus is that it is fun-only hope I can retain some of the lessons!

Lesson 2 Highlights, Midtones, Shadows

I am really liking this book because the directions are almost always easy to read, understand, and follow.
The first lesson with the Automatic Image Correction was interesting when we made 3 copies and applied the auto levels, auto contrast, auto color, and then cascaded them to see the difference-I was amazed at the cascade command (call me simple if you want to :) ) because it automatically lined all the windows up so we could see the contrast between the aforementioned commands.
I am looking forward to being able to know how to choose the commands without having to follow directions.
The histogram in conjunction with the Levels and its three input levels values list with the shadows, midtones, and highlights helped me understand the values of each. I will probably have to refer back to the book several times before I can automatically do this...you're right Patti with the steep learning curve in Photoshop...it is such a rich and diversified program and I am enjoying learning all about it even though it is an amazing amount of material to digest for me.
The curves command is quite interesting and we can really see how the values work in this command...and amazing how we can pick up the values in the curves window using the preset custom command and the eye dropper that allows us to choose the values of the highlights and shadows in the photo. Adding points to graph threw me off a little, but when I realized that I had to set the first point in the middle to anchor it before I made the other points on the curve custom graph it made it easier to manipulate.
The exercise I liked best in this lesson was the Compensating for Flash and Backlighting. I was amazed that these steps were relatively simple with dramatic results. Although, since we followed his easy to read instructions we got a result that showed the most change of a photo compared to all of the other lessons. I can not wait until I automatically know how far to adjust the numbers in the shadows values options and highlights option. The Tonal Width option controls the range of brightness values that PS regards as shadows or highlights and this control seems to the most difference, at least in my "beginner" status opinion.
Overall, I enjoyed this lesson-setting the points on the curve was the only thing that threw me off, otherwise this was very easy to follow-I just hope I can remember what each command does...

Lesson 1

This lesson was alot of fun...I like the writing style of the author...
It is quite amazing to access Photoshop through a VPN, still not quite sure what it is and I am amazed at what Bridge can do inside Photoshop....I have never used Adobe Photoshop so I am looking forward to learning it.
The instructions for downloading the stuff from the disk that came with the book were great although I ran into one problem:
I could not change the color settings...did anyone run into this? If so, and you were able to fix it can you let me know? I have Vista and that may have something to do with it...I called Vista, they sent me to ACER(my computer name), they sent me to Adobe, and Adobe could not help, so I called the number in the text book and they said they would get back to me if they found a solution as it says the disk is compatible with Vista....
Anywho, the Bride program is quite clever. I really liked all the assets of the Metadata function in that it is an easy way to keep track of all the properties of the photos. I really liked that one could apply a template that would disseminate information to every photo grouping.
Another pretty clever tool is the loupe because one is able to magify such a small area with minimal effort.
The batch renaming tool is a convenient tool to sequential number photos and is a huge timesaver-especially for me as I am not the fastest typer...
The Bridge seems like a user friendly part of Adobe and the author enhances this by going over each lesson step-by-step...great book...thank you Patti for choosing it :)

Hi-this is my first blog ever

did I really do it?