Friday, February 22, 2008
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
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
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...
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
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!
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!
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
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...
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...
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