Week 9 More Editting with PS Elements

So this week I have gotten off to a early start to try and play catch up in my other class, which is no where near as much fun as this one is :-) That being said I have to say that I put a lot of work into the photos and it seems well worth it. My ah-ha moment has been realizing that when I go to work on a photo I can't leave it at what we've learned this week, I am now viewing things through a much more artistic eye and less afraid to try new things.

This is the original of my son Joe, he was dressed as a mouse for his part of the circus his school put on last week.

And this is what I came up with, I love the comic book effect that occurred when I was done. First I cropped this to be rule of thirds and because I liked the way he ended up being framed by the yellow lines. Next I clone stamped to edit the other kids out and to remove the glare from in front of him. Lastly I went to the filter gallery and tried all of the filters, and finally decided I liked the Fresco filter the best.

This is my oldest son (Far left) at his best friend's birthday a week or so ago. Sky is the one in the middle on the right. They were hanging out in City Center in Montpelier because Sky's thing is elevators; he also has autism so it's great that they have that in common.

This one I did a lot more work on, first I used the burn tool to take care of the glare on the glass blocks. Than I used dodge with highlights to brighten the balloons. I used dodge again but with midtones to lighten the boys up. I cropped the picture to get rid of some of the background. Than I copied the background layer and clone stamped the glare from the reflectors on shoes and boots. I used burn to darken the boys worn jeans, and finally I added a Texturizer filter. I think this showed this rag-tag crew off well, although more than one could use a haircut :-)

Week 8, continued editing color and light

This week I choose to work on a picture of Arthur and his coach from Special Olympics Swimming, it was so dark that you could barely make out the people. So as I was reading the article from Twisted Tree I had this photo open and made adjustments to the color and lighting as I was reading.

Here is the the original:

Here is the corrected photo, I lightened it and took out some of the blue/green that showed up when it was lightened.

The second photo I worked on was a scanned picture of my great gramma from the 1930's. I really liked this picture but the original was pretty scratched up and there were a lot of dust from the scanner. So again I worked on this while reading the Twisted Tree article, and used the clone stamp to fix the scratches and then played around with adjusting the sharpness.

Here is the original:

And here is the corrected photo, it's one of my favorites of Gramma Lois, she was kind of a grumpy old lady when I knew her and as I got older and started scanning the photos I realized that she stopped smiling after my Great Grandfather passed away as a young man, and she was then thrust into an arranged marriage with his cousin because they both had young children and Great Great Gramma Suzie saw it as a way to save the family farms and give the kids 2 parents.

Week 7 Manipulating photos

I have had a lot of fun this week, using Photoshop Elements to play around with pictures and add things to them and figuring out how to create some more just for fun pieces. The thing I have had the hardest with is figuring out how the magic wand tool works, so that it my ah-ha for this week. I also have really enjoyed using the magnetic lasso tool. My six year old helped me design an invitation for his grandparents for dinner last night, which was a lot of fun; I love anything that gets the boys interested in art.

So this is the original photo I took during week 4 of the dull dreary field across from our house.

And this is what I turned it into, I first I used the polygonal lasso to cut out the farm from last week's landscape assignment. Than I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut the road from last week's street lamp photo and added it. If you look really close at the farm you'll see that I used the marquee tool and the magnetic lasso to add my sons' faces or eyes to the windows so it looks like they're peeking out. I took the lovely blue sky from a landscape shot and cut it out using the marquee to bring sun to the field. And I cut the clouds from a different photo to add a little more realism to the sky. Lastly I took the eraser and tried to make it look like the sky fit a little better and tried to make it look more mountainous.

So this is a lovely picture of my baby sister from her wedding day. The first thing I did was make a copy and edit it so it was black & white.

After that I used the magnetic lasso to cut her out of the color photo and dropped her in the one with the b&w background. I then used the magic wand to take a hint of the greenery from behind her and added it to the back ground of the b&w one. I had a lot of fun doing this, being able to colorize pieces of a b&w photo was on of my goals to learn when I signed up for this class. Finally I cropped it so she fit more in the rule of thirds.

So this is what I ended up with and after a little touch up with the eraser I am very pleased how it came out.

Lastly I wanted to learn more about the magic wand and tolerances, so I took this picture of the rose my husband gave me the week we did micro shots and started first by taking a higher number on the tolerance setting and moved it to a plain black background, and continued to lower the tolerance as I added more pieces to the black background.

I really liked how graphic this came out, and plan on framing a matted copy for my bedroom which is done in red and black.

Just for fun this is the invitation Joe helped me with. I lassoed the boys from in front of the Christmas tree and Joe picked the background which he said was a "disco"! :) Then added the text cloud and wording. Printed and mailed out to Gramma and Grampa. Very happy boys after a trip to the post office.

Week 6 landscapes

My ah-ha moment this week is that a landscape photo doesn't have to be a a whole scene it can just be a small snap shot of nature. When I think of landscapes it's always been a large picture, not the pieces. That being said I did mostly large shots just because dirty snow isn't that interesting but I did crop them down so the picture was what I wanted not everything that was in the shot to begin with.

This first picture is on the way back from Burlington, between exits 11 and 12 headed south. I wanted to try and capture the winding road and have it leading towards the mountains.

This one I took last fall in the back 40 of the farm, it reminds me of how much fun it was hanging out with my family, and the visiting relatives we were driving through the field with. Nothing like riding in the back of a pick-up and knowing that everything around you belongs to your family after having that be my dad's dream for so many years.

This is another one I took on the way home and I liked how the farm fit in the bottom third of the picture and even though there is a lot of white it shows up as different shades, and contrasts well with the beautiful blue sky.

This is my all time favorite this week, I love the way the lamp posts frame the road. I shot this out the windshield and cropped it to get rid of the wiper ect....

This one isn't quite in the rule of thirds but riding by at 65 makes it a little hard to line it up right. I really liked how the tree is so clear and sharp against the blue, blue sky and the shadows on the snow.