Blending Pratice

Here I present you two images that I have blended into one. The goal of this assignment was to use new tools which would be the blending modes, layers styles, and within layer styles the blend if. The images I choose where the Alder Planetarium which I had taken a photo of and I wanted a beautiful sky image which I had to find of the web from flicker.com. My first steps were to color correct both images. Then after that I decided both images were color corrected I put a blending option on them. The sky had multiply and the planetarium had darkened blending modes. By doing this it poorly blended the images so to get a better look I added blend if to the sky to get an equal amount of sky to go through the planetarium image. Last I decided to throw some layer styles on the planetarium.

Color Correction 2

 

To the left you see a photo that I have taken from Millennium Park in my Chicago area.  From it I will display more color correction techniques to improve this photo. To add more dynamism I selected two objects from the photo and individually developed upon them. The two objects I enhanced were the blue and yellow circles. I selected these by using the same methods and that is by means of color range and quick selection tool. After which I manage to a get selection around my objects I then applied a refined edge to get a more thorough piece. From here I knew I wanted to work on these objects first and then balance out theoverall photo/image. Adjustment layers were utilized and will always be executed from here on out be to perform a non-destructive work flow. On the blue circle brightness/contrast, levels, and hue/saturation adjustment layers were used to achieve a more lively blue. Next for the yellow circle the same adjustment layers were repeated as the blue circle, but I removed the curves layer later on to better fit the piece. Also with the curves layer removed it showed more shadows around areas where needed that brought out the shapes of this artwork clearer. Now with both circled objects color corrected it was time to fit the background appropriately with those. The first adjustment layer that was used was the color balance. This did an alright job of bringing out the green in the trees and it slightly effected the overall environment. It was not until I applied the hue/saturation layer to get more real green for leaves and cleaner quality for the concrete and buildings. Also througout using these layers I kept in mind the Crown Fountain (tower with face in the background) to develop and keep its color. Finally the brightness and levels layers were the last touch to my photo to bring a pleasant clear day. You can see resluts below.

Color Correction 1

Here are my color corrected pictures. Displayed on the left sides are the original picture and the right side is my work. So first is the bird which I ended up having an old photo feel to it. Right away I noticed an issue with the upper left corner that casted a shadow, bringing the brightness up in the photo made that part very distorted so I decided to turn the brightness down. By bringing down the brightness it lowered many tones of the pictures colors, so my next step was to use the levels tool to bring out some mid-tones along with a slight brightness to the birds feathers. Still the photo had an unnatural look and to fix this I added curves that improved the red color of the bird’s beak and at the same time incorporated a nice mellow yellow to overall photo.

Next for the rooster in the shadow I immediately knew I wanted to make it a day scene. Being the photo was really dark I started with the levels tool to quickly get a rough day scene. After that I used blue channel within the curves tool to lightly add blue to it. Now at this point this I kept rolling and decided if I was going to add brightness/contrast to this photo it was no longer going to be a day scene, but an morning scene with the idea of the sun being above the rooster. With the limitations of only use the top image adjustments for Photoshop for this assignment I used curves again to bring some color in the photo. Lastly to convey a shine around the roosters head and back the levels tools was used.

Now for the Quirigua monument I started off going for night scene. I do so at first with the brightness by lowering it. Then with the levels tools I ended up bringing out a cleaner darker green for the leaves and the grey tones with the monument. Now to my surprise I wanted to make to sky darker and so I thought that by using the blue channels within the curves this would do the job, but instead it made the trees and grass greener. Here is where my original idea switched from night to just improving the photo overall into a beautiful day. I went and added a second brightness/contrast and notched them up. And lastly I incorporated another curves this time from the green channel and this made everything come together attractively.  

Proffiency

Here is a collage I have made for my Game Design II class. We were to find a poem or haiku and create an inspirational piece from it. After finding a haiku that I liked it was now time to put a picture to it. With the haiku that I picked I wanted to go for twilight zone feel, almost calm but eerie. The next step was to find an image which was done on flicker.com. The background, communication tower, flat line, hand print, space ship, and the silhouette of the house are all separate images that have had selections removed them. The selections tools I used were the magic wand along with quick selection. For the communication tower I took a different approach and used the color range to remove the background and leave the tower by its self along with the grassland. Almost all of these selections were put into mask layers. Also I used some adjustment layers to balance out the picture. And for the flat line and hand print different blending modes were applied to fit the whole image. These were the main steps I used to create my collage.

Research and Development 1

This video was helpful for showing some really good ways to select and remove items but also by doing it in non-destructive way. I really liked his first example were he used the Blending Options from the Layer Styles to combine two images to make one. Although it was unconventional I appreciate that he still showed this because it can always come in handy for later work. Another technique to remove selections that I was not aware of was the Color Range. Color Range is similar to the Magic Wand tool but with slightly more control over the tolerance of pixels/colors that would be selected. By using the Color Range you can get rid of some difficult backgrounds and have them replaced. The most important technique to be taken away from this video is the Mask tool. By always making selections into a Mask you can achieve a non-destructive work flow, plus can do more with the Mask tool. Refine Mask is also important for improving your selections which include contrast, radius, and shift edge, etc. These were the main topics that had been discussed in the video along with some key boards short cut to these tools. One final thing that I took note on was his progress of work. He says and I believe to find true is to start by making a rough selections and improving upon that step by step to get a better selection, instead of trying to take care of the situation in one huge step. All of these techniques will be used on my assignment for class were I will make a collage inspired by a poem.