alyssag’s blog

The first part of this assignment that I worked on was the motion blur effect.

Here’s the original image I worked from:

& here is the altered image:

I accomplished this by first duplicating the layer, then creating a radial blur with an amount of 50, the zoom method, and the best quality.  I also moved the center of the blur up & to the right, right around the area where the girl’s face would be.  This gave me an extremely blurry image.  But then I added a layer mask to the blurred layer, chose the black to white, radial gradient tool, and clicked near the center of the girl’s face & pulled outward.  Finally I flattened the image & saved it as a jpeg.

The next part of the assignment I did was the HDR image.  I began with this image:

& ended up with this image:

I did this by first duplicating the background layer.  Then I went to Edit > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights.  I changed both settings to 50%.  Next I duplicated this layer & went to Edit > Adjustments > Desaturate.  This took all the color out of the image.  Then I changed the blending mode of this layer to Hard Light.  Finally I duplicated the original background image one more time & moved this layer to the top.  I gave this a Gaussian Blur & changed the blending mode to Soft Light.  This brought back more of the color of the original image.

The third part of this assignment was to use the Content Aware tool to get rid of a distracting object in an image.  For this one I started with an image of a park that had a distracting sign posted in it:

This is my finished version:

For this one I simply used the polygonal lasso tool to select the sign & post, then hit the delete key which allowed me to chose the content aware fill option.  This got rid of my selection & filled it in with information from the surrounding area.

Finally the last part of this assignment was to create a sunny looking picture out of a cloudy day image.

These were the original images I worked with:

& here is my final image:

The first thing I had to do was to place the layers.  I first opened the image of the sunny sky, then moved the cityscape layer onto the other.  Next I had to select the buildings.  I used the polygonal lasso tool with a 1px feather to do this.  Then I gave this layer a layer mask.  This automatically filled in the unselected space a black fill, ultimately getting rid of the cloudy sky in that image.  This just left the sunny sky as a background for the city.  I had to move the background though so only sky was visible.  I also used the Levels & Vibrance adjustments to lighten & add color to the buildings so it was more believable that it was in fact a sunny day when the photo was taken.

For this assignment I chose to make a poster & movie cover for the movie Fight Club.  After researching some past examples of posters & dvd covers, here’s what I found:

The first thing that I noticed about all of these designs was that they all reflect the gritty nature of the movie.  Of course I’m going to want to show the same thing in my designs.  Also, a couple of them pull in line & themes from the movie & incorporate them into it, like the lines “you are not special,” or “Mischief. Mayhem. Soap.”  I think I might want to do this as well.  I also like the ones that keep the color palate very minimalistic, either by washing out the image to a certain tone or just using black & white with a pop of one color.  I think that the movie deals a lot with getting rid of the unnecessary things in life, & I think that the design should reflect that.

Here are my thumbnails & sketches for the poster & DVD cover:

Here are some of the images that I plan to chose from for this project:

For this assignment I had to adjust one image of a red car to make it look like the police car from another image.  Here are the original images:

And here is my adjusted image:

There were a lot of steps I had to take in order to make it look like the police car of image 2.  The first thing I did was to change the car’s color from red to black.  I did this by making a rough selection of the car with the polygonal lasso tool, but avoiding the red detailing of the truck behind it.  Then I went to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.  I changed the settings from Master to Reds, then brought the Lightness down all the way to -100.  This changed all the red in the selection to black.  I also had to bring down the lightness of Magenta tones as well to get rid of all the red.  I wasn’t quite yet happy though with car color, as it was a bit more grey than black.  So while the car was still selected, I went to Image > Adjustments > Levels, & moved the left handle slightly to the right until I liked the tone of the blacks.

After I was got rid of all the red of the car, I moved on to taking elements from the original police car image & moving them to my own.  I started with the white door.  I selected it with the polygonal lasso tool, copied it, then pasted it into the image I was working on on a new layer.  Since it was backwards, I had to flip it, but before that I had to copy the word ‘sheriff’ from the door & paste it on a new layer so I could replace it later.  Once I flipped the door the right way, I used the Warp function to make the door fit to the new car.  After this I replaced the word ‘sheriff’ back on the door, & used the Perspective function to reverse the perspective.  I used layer masks & the brush tool to make slight corrections along both the door and word in order to blend them correctly.

The last thing I did was to select the police light from the top of the car & paste it as a new layer on my working image.  I used the rotate and scale tools to make the light the right size & angle, then again used a layer mask & brush tool to blend the bottom of the light against the top of the car.  When finished I flattened the entire image & saved it was a jpeg.

For this project, I’ve decided to create a poster for the book “The Little Prince.”  It’s a story of a little boy from a small planet that travels  to different planets to learn about life and love.  I’ve read the book more times than I can count & have seen the movie as well, but I still did some research into the book’s themes, symbols, and motifs.  This is some things that I’ve come across during my research:

The Stars

As a pilot, the narrator attaches importance to stars because he depends upon them for navigation. After the narrator meets the little prince, he finds the stars hold new meaning for him because he knows that the prince lives among them. The stars in The Little Prince also symbolize the far-off mystery of the heavens, the immensity of the universe, and at the end, the loneliness of the narrator’s life. The narrator’s final drawing, which accompanies his lament of his loneliness, is of a single star hovering over the desert landscape in which the prince fell. In this one image, the presence of the star both highlights the prince’s absence and suggests his lingering presence. The star is also a reminder of the large and densely populated universe beyond Earth that the prince recounted visiting.

—-

The backstory tells how Little Prince left his planet because he had grown disenchanted with his rose; she was boastful and did not seem to appreciate all he did for her. On his journey, though, The Little Prince encountered a number of small planets, each with a single inhabitant who represented some negative aspect of human nature: pride, greed, desire for power. When a self-important geographer told him that his rose was ephemeral — subject to quick disappearance — he experienced some regret about leaving his planet behind.

—-

The characters that I chose to portray on the poster were chosen for very specific reasons.

The rose, though not a main character, is one of the most important.  It is the Little Prince’s love for his rose that makes him want to explore as well as get back to his planet.

The fox is another important character in the book.  He is the one that teaches the Prince the most important lessons: responsibility, relationships, using your heart and understanding that the most important things in life aren’t visible or tangible.

The snake is the most conniving character, but is the only one of the characters from Earth that offers the Prince a way home.

And finally the plane is meant to represent the narrator, an adult pilot that gets lost in the desert & befriends the Prince.  Both the Prince and the narrator learn from and teach each other.

So here are the images that I’m going to work with for my poster:

Here are the thumbnails that I’ve come up with:

Part 1

Original Images:

Composite Image:

The first thing I did for this part of the assignment was to make the image of the model a layer over the background layer.  Then I made a rough selection of the woman, & clicked the Refine Edge option at the top of the workspace.  I chose the On Layers option in order to view the selection over the new background.  Then I adjusted the radius slider to where I thought looked good, as well as checked the Smart Radius option.  I also smoothed the edge just a touch in order to make it look more natural, & finally I checked the Decontaminate Colors box and increased that slider.  Once I was satisfied with these settings, I hit OK then cropped the image down to size.

Part 2

Adjusted Image:

For this part of the assignment I used adjustment masks to perform non-destructive adjustments to the given image.  I started by duplicating the original image.  I then created a channel mixer adjustment layer over the bottom layer & changed the settings to monochrome.  This made the bottom layer appear to be in grayscale.  I then created a layer mask over the top layer.  Using the polygonal lasso tool, I made a rough selection of the sky & buildings I wanted to make grayscale, then used the paint brush on the layer mask to paint out that part of the image.  I then went in with a smaller brush to touch up any places I wanted to look smoother.

Part 3

Panorama:

For this part, I simply went to File>Automate>Photomerge in Photoshop.  I then chose the 5 images to merge, & stuck with the automatic settings.  This created most of the panorama, but it left out 2 pieces on the right side of the image.  So I manually went in & added the last pieces to the panorama, & used the skew tool to adjust the perspective of the left out images to match that of the rest.  Finally I cropped down the image to make the image seen above.

Part 1

Original Image:

Corrected Image:

For this part of the assignment, I mainly used the clone stamp to get rid of the crease marks & tears.  I also used content-aware fill in areas where there were isolated tear marks.  I tried to use this feature to fix the bottom right corner of the image, but I couldn’t get it to give me a legitimate looking fix, so I once again used the clone stamp to correct the carpet & part of the wall.

Part 2

Original Image:

Corrected Image:

The main tool I used to correct this image was the content-aware fill.  I started by selecting and filling in small areas of his shirt, face, & background.  Then I could more around the image to get rid of some of the grain & damage.  I did use the clone stamp again in order to fill in the missing background of the image as well as the missing chunks of hair.  Finally, I used the spot healing brush to smooth out the image a little bit more & clean up any more significant spots that I could see.

Part 3

Original Image:

Corrected Image:

For this final part of the assignment, I first converted the whole image to grayscale in order to get rid of the yellow water damage.  From there I first used the spot healing tool to clean up the tear marks that I could, them I went back & forth between the clone stamp tool & content-aware fill to fix the rest of the marks on the image.

Part 1 – Straighten a crooked image

Original Image:

Adjusted Image:

In order to correct the slant of this image, I used the ruler tool.  I made a line along the horizon line in the image, then selected ‘Image’ > ‘Image Rotation’ > ‘Arbitrary.’  Photoshop will then automatically rotate the image so that the line made previously by the ruler tool is straight across the image.  I then cropped the image down so that the white edges don’t show.

Part 2 – Correcting Perspective

Original Images:

Adjusted Images:

For this part of the assignment, I began with the crop tool.  I used this to make a rough crop rectangle of each image.  I then checked the ‘Perspective’ option at the top of the window.  This allowed me to position the corners of the crop so they make odd angles instead of just 90 degree angles.  Once this was done I hit the Enter key, which cropped down the image to just what was selected, as well as adjusting the image to make it appear straight on.

Part 3 – Creating a Composite

Original Images:

Composited Image:

For this part, I first had to select just the cars from their original backgrounds.  I did this with the polygonal lasso tool with a 1px feather.  This created a fairly spot on selection without an extremely harsh edge.  Once I did this for both cars, I copy & pasted them onto the background I selected.  I then used the scale tool to adjust the size of each car to make them fit into the image.  Finally, I masked both car layers, then used the brush tool at 30% to smooth out the shadows the cars casted.

Part 4 – Using Camera Raw

Original Images:

Adjusted & Composited Image:

For this final part, I first had to adjust the image of the dog in Camera Raw in order to make it look as similar as possible to the other image provided.  I made several changes, including adjusting exposure, recovery, blacks, vibrance, & saturation.  Once I was happy with my adjustments, I opened the image in Photoshop.  I also opened the background I chose as a layer beneath the dog layer. Once again I used the polygonal lasso tool with a 1px feather to make an initial selection of the dog, then chose ‘Refine Selection’ at the top of the window.  This allowed me to refine the selection & edges of the dog.  When I got it to where I wanted it to be, I just used the Scale tool to adjust the sizes of both the dog & background images.  Finally I flattened the image, & I was finished.