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Viewing
Images: We were asked to compare file sizes for saving files through
Photoshop with and without thumbnails. I used a photo I had taken of an
old 35 mm camera and saved it with and without the thumbnail by
changing the preferences in Photoshop. I have used two screen shots
taken of the file-open screen to compare the file sizes. The filesize
with the thumbnail saved is 277 KB, and without the thumbnail the
filesize is 266 KB.
Filesize
With Thumbnail Saved
Filesize
Without Thumbnail Saved
I
created a contact sheet using one of my folders that contained pictures
of roses. The procedure actually created 3 pages of the contact sheet
since there were many photos in the folder. I elected to show one of
the contact sheets, since the others were similar.
Contact Sheet
Playing
with Filters: The exercise was to apply the Liquify Filter to a photo
of a cow and use the Bloat and Pucker Tools. The cow is shown next.
Liquify
Filter Applied to a Cow
The
next task was to apply the Liquify Filter to a picture and make it
funny. Sorry, I could not find a shot to do funny. Instead I did Ugly,
since I thought that would be fun to try. I had taken a photo of my
orange tree in bloom, and the insects were all out to join in the
feast. Unfortunately, one of the bugs became the feast instead of the
feaster. To get the effects shown in the picture below, I used the
Bloat, Warp, and Twirl features of the Liquify Filter. I also added
extra layers and used several different brushes and colors to add to
the image.
Orange Blossom
Liquify
Filter on Orange Blossom
Easter
Eggs: I am posting Merlin and the Easter Egg for Photoshop CS. Although
we did a similar assignment in Part I, this time I finally stayed with
the scrolling words until it went through the cycle the second time.
Then I saw all the additional phrases/sentences above the scrolling
text that I had missed last session. I stayed with it to the bitter
end. Those guys at Adobe really got a little crazy when they came up
with the additional text. Wow. I am just showing the pictures here, and
not the text since I could not get a screen capture to get all of it.
Merlin
Photoshop CS Easter Egg
Final
Project - Collage: I guess I am still into roses. Last session, I did a
collage of different roses and I liked how it turned out. Mainly, I
liked the colors. It is hard to beat nature and the colors it produces.
If you want to see a picture of the collage I did for Photoshop 7
Intro, click on the home page link for this Photoshop 7 Level II series
of web pages. The rose collage is at the top of the home page.
This session, I tried a bunch of different things and ended up back
in the rose garden. I started the composition with a photo of a single
rose. Then I added an artistic effect that I found online. It consisted
of duplicating the background layer three times, adding a filter to the
lower layer and changing the mode to Overlay. Lower the Opacity of the
middle layer, change the mode of the upper copy of the background to
Overlay and use Dodge and Burn Tools on it to highlight the rose. This
took the rose away from it's image as a photo and gave it a more
artistic look.
Then I brought in a cut-out of a small boy from a picture I had
taken at a community outdoor event. I did a Free Transform on the boy
and modified the size until I had what I wanted. I added a Dry Brush
filter to that layer and added a Mask, which I used to hide the boy's
feet behind one of the rose's petals. I wanted the boy to appear as if
he was sitting down in the rose, between the larger petals.
Then I cut out dancers from a photo I took during a local Greek
festival. Extracting the dancers from their background was very
tedious. I copied two of the girls onto separate layers and then added
a couple to another layer. I resized each dancer-layer using Free
Transform, including rotating for angles. I placed the individual
dancers and the pair on different rose petals.
I tried several different ways to introduce shadows for the
dancers, but I did not like the normal Layer Style approach. The normal
method gave a shadow for the upper dancers that extended above the main
flower onto the whitish background, where there should not have been
any shadow. I tried to Clone Stamp out this upper shadow, but this
approach would not work. So I resorted to duplicating each dancer and
placing the duplicate on new layers with each slightly offset and
behind the main figures. I changed the mode of the "shadow" layers to
Saturation which drove the images to a grey color without introducing
any grey above the top of the upper rose petals, and added a Blur
Filter to each "shadow" layer to further diffuse the shadowy image.
Once this was done, I applied a Dry Brush filter to each of the
dancers (but not to their shadows) so that their appearance was
compatible with the boy. I then created magic wands and added them to
individual layers so I could move them into the hands of the female
dancers. I applied Free Transforms to each of the magic wands and
rotated the wands to align then with the dancer's hands.
The last touch was to add wings to the dancers to make then into
tiny "faries". I found a wing I liked on the Internet, isolated it from
it's picture, duplicated it and rotated it horizontally to create a
matched pair of wings. Then I copied a set of these wings to layers
which I placed below the dancer's layers. That placed the wings behind
the "faries". I resized the wings and rotated the sets using Free
Transforms. To finalize the wings, I reduced the opacity of the wing
layers so the wings were complementary to the rest of the picture.
In the end, I created a small child sitting in a wonderland of
roses, watching the faires dance to their magical tunes. That was the
image I wanted to capture. There may be many other ways to capture that
feeling, but I am pretty satisfied with this end result. I hope you can
also appreciate the image and the concept of the little boy in a
magical rose garden.
It has been a very enjoyable course. I hope to run into many of my fellow students in future courses. See you then.
A Magical Wonderland of Roses
That's
all folks.................
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