Saturday, May 22, 2010

Final - Magazine Cover



I used a layered composition for this cover. The background is a great photo I took at Yosemite. I didn't think it needed any adjustments at all. The "trekker" photo I used on the right is one I took of my husband while hiking in New Zealand. I masked everything to his left and set him on a different rock in Yosemite. A few text effects like a red drop shadow, bevel and glow helped the masthead text to "pop" from the page and hopefully grab the viewer. I used only the Trajan Pro font (it comes only in caps) for a clean consistent look.






Lesson 14 - Last of Groovy Photoshop Techniques

Pop Dots



Using Text as a Clipping Mask
I found a couple of nice surreal images at creative.ly. In the first one I applied a few effects such as bevelling and changing the color. In the second one I warped the text and moved it to another area of the image.















Lesson 13

Part 1: Masks, Knockouts, and Luminance Blending

Here's my result from following the tutorial:


Part 2: Depth of Field with Layer Mask

This photo from creative.ly is of the Petronas Towers taken by A. Cassini. This effect works well with looking up at something very tall.












Sunday, May 16, 2010

Lesson 12 - Introduction to Masks

I found a T Rex that was perfect for this background:


This masking technique worked well with this image:













Saturday, May 1, 2010

Lesson 11 - Plugins

I found plugins to be quite impressive once I got past the initial frustration of getting them to show up under filters. Here is one from Harry's filters using pattern and random art.



This plugin from Filter Forge distorts an image. It really changed how a face looks, creating different people from the original Shakespeare:


Original then plugin using distort/noise and distort/noise/large angle:




Another nice effect is using the distort with bumpy glass:




This plugin from Redfield converts an image from http://creative.ly/ into a sketch:







These plugins create a Rain Blur and Dawning using another photo from http://creative.ly/ . They are from The Plug in Site:

































































Sunday, April 25, 2010

Lesson 10 Surreal Image

I came across this photo of Philippe Starck holding up a mirror at:

The shape of the mirror reminded me of the head in the painting "The Scream". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream)





What I did in the final product was use the pen tool to cut out the head from "The Scream" and place it in the mirror. Then I took Philippe Starck from the waist up and put him on top of the figure in the painting. He now is wearing a sweatshirt and his hands are open.


I found the pen tool quite precise and easy to use. Just had to cut out the places between the hands and shoulders with the magic wand to finish it.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Lesson 6 - Editing Tools

Here is the edited version of the Hannah photo. I didn't saturate as much as in the book because I thought it look too suntanned.



This is the photo I chose to use for the healing brush tool. It was torn then pieced together and scanned.




Here's the final version after extensive use of the healing brush and also the burn tool and clone stamp. It still could use a bit more work. I softened the crease on the right (his left side) to balance better with the opposite side which was somewhat lost in the healing process.