Seattle Skyline

Today, I had the opportunity to ride the ferry over to Bremerton.

It was a really good day to be doing this. It was very sunny — the only clouds were way off over towards the Olympic Mountains — and I think I can safely say it was one of, if not the, warmest day this year so far.

I hadn't planned to take a ferry ride, but it came up at work this morning that such an excursion was indicated. Some material that should have gone over to the Bremerton store earlier this week hadn't gone, and another person in the office needed something picked up from over there.

Anyway, I'd done everything else I needed to do, and so off I went.

On the way over, I took several photos of the Seattle skyline as we left the dock, with the idea of running them through the Photomerge feature in Photoshop.

It was rather windy on deck, and the ship was rocking back and forth a bit. I tried to get the amount of overlap necessary to successfully run the Photomerge, but apparently was not completely successful.

The two panoramas that I did get aren't bad though.

Next time take a ferry ride, I'll try to get it right.

Scary Pumpkins!

On Sunday, Tim and I finally got around to carving our Halloween pumpkins. This year, the two pumpkin-ettes that our garden produced join them.

In the interest of full disclosure, this photo was run through Photoshop to make it more Halloween-y.

The original was taken at night, but on Portrait setting, so the flash went off. I adjusted the Brightness/Contrast, which darkened everything to an appropriately spooky shade. However, then the ghosts in the window disappeared. So I created a selection layer to make them just a little more visible.

My classes are paying off!

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

My husband likes anything tiki. In our world, there are tiki mugs, a tiki T-shirt, tiki statues and tiki lights. He is always on the lookout for tiki-themed drinking establishments.

Last quarter in my photography class, for the assignment on lighting, I took some photographs of this particular tiki figurine he had picked up at Goodwill one day. I ended up using a different subject for the assignment, but the effect that the different lighting angles had on the figurine's appearance stuck in my mind.

Fast forward a few months. For the final assignment in Photoshop class, we had to design a movie or game poster. I decided to work up a poster for a B-movie.

There is a possibility that I can get it printed out full-size on the large-scale printer at school. That would be so cool!

Floating Rocks

Tomorrow I turn in Project 1 in my Photoshop II class.

The biggest challenge on this project was using the Liquify tool to get some realistic-looking ripples in the reflections of the trees and rocks. I spent most of yesterday’s class and a good part of this morning messing around with it, doing and re-doing it.

I think I finally got something halfway decent.

I wonder what my instructor will say?

Last Day

Today was my last class of Winter quarter. It was Photoshop and everyone presented their restored photo and their tinted photo.

In my post here, I showed the original photo and the restoration-in-progress.

Here are my final results.

Photoshop Effects

The latest assignment in my Photography class was a fun one, in that it allowed me to use some of the things I’ve been learning in my Photoshop class.

The assignment was to take an image and then manipulate it in two different ways in a photo editing program.

Herewith are my three images.

The first is a photo I took of the tulips that my charming husband Tim gave me for Valentine’s Day.

For the second one, I applied the Paint Daubs filter, then selected the tulips and adjusted the levels to make them brighter.

For the third one, I made three adjustments (Vibrance, Posterize, Levels) and then selected the background separately and adjusted the levels further.

It’s fun playing around with the different controls and pushing them to the extreme to see how they’ll change the appearance of an image.

Vintage Photo Retouching

The latest assignment for my Photoshop class embodies my least favorite task in Photoshop — cleaning up photos.

Our instructor gave us our choice of 4 photos to restore. I didn't pick the “easiest” one OR the worst one. I picked the second-to-worst one, based on the fact that it's worth 500 points, as opposed to 600 (for the “worst” one) or 400 points (for a “regular” one).

It’s due March 7, which is fortunate, because I can only work on it for an hour or two at a time before my brain starts to turn to oatmeal and threatens to leak out my ears.

Before

Retouch in progress

Butchart Gardens “Postcard”

About a week ago, in my Photoshop class, we had what I thought was a really fun assignment.

The goal was to familiarize ourselves with the process of pasting images inside specific outlined selections of letters.

Whenever my charming husband Tim and I go on vacation, I take scads and scads of photographs (digital cameras make it so easy!). For our first anniversary last May, we took a long weekend up to Victoria, B.C. While there, we visited the Butchart Gardens.

I browsed through my photos from the trip and picked out one showing a landscape for the background and several of close-ups of various flowers for the letters. I took one small liberty with the background photo: I flopped it so the bare patch of concrete walkway would be covered up by the type.

I was quite pleased with the result.

Fun with Photoshop

As I mentioned before, one of the classes I am enrolled in is Photoshop I.

I knew how to do some basic stuff, but my knowledge was pretty limited. I’d never had a pressing need to learn more, but things have changed. Now, I wish I hadn’t waited so long.

One of the main points the instructor has stressed is the ability and importance of non-destructive editing.

I had no idea. But it is so cool.

Anyway, at our last class, the instructor urged us to go home and play around with the tools and techniques he had introduced so far, and bring the results to class for show-and-tell.

Here are a couple of things I’ve done.

On the left is a photo of an azalea that was in the backyard of my old house. Using the magic lasso and lasso tools, I outlined one of the flowers; inverted the selection; created a Curves layer; and changed the highlights and midpoint.

On the left is a photo of my charming husband Tim that I took when we were visiting some friends in Spokane last year. I selected his T-shirt with the magic wand; copy and pasted to create a new layer; and used the Color Replacement tool to change his shirt from blue to tan.

Still pretty basic stuff, I’m sure. But it’s a start.