Week 4 - Editing Photos Using Layers

This week we returned to do some more editing on photos in week 4 of class at myJanee, this time concentrating on the following 3 aspects;
Filtering a photograph and ending up with an altered/different image.
Using the Magic Wand to change blocks of colour to a completely new colour.
Fixing Red Eye to rescue photos blighted with red-eye or pet yellow-eye.

I have the picture below as a screen-saver on my mobile, it was taken last summer in Gibraltar. I tried several filters and decided I liked the affect of the Plastic Wrap best.
The next picture was taken from my Nintendo DS. I used Stained Glass and Plastic Wrap to get the finished picture, which I think has lots of potential :-).

For red-eye I first tried a picture of my Grandson which I knew would not be too hard to fix. The method used was different to what I had been using and it worked very well :-).

For my next project I deliberatly looked for a picture that would be a bit more of a challange to fix. I often have trouble with my son's pics because he wears glasses and a lot are ruined because the refelection of the flash makes him look like he has no eyes.

This picture is pretty good except I was trying to fix a red eye that is behind the lens of his glasses. Perfect for painting new pupils!!!!!!!!!

I think you will agree the result is good. The small patches of glare will need to be fixed too, when I learn how :-).

Week 3 - Digital Painting

It's time to try digital painting in week 3 of class at myJanee.

I had mixed feelings at the start of this lesson because I hate drawing and was never much good at it.


I stuck with it though and enjoyed both parts, pictures are shown below.

First part of the lesson was painting a picture with different brushes. Using different layers for all the different parts I worked in the following order: sky, grass background, Dune Grass brush for actual grass, gradient tool for both the balloon and basket, lastly used a hard round brush to out-line the basket and add some birds.



Next up was Moving and Transforming. I had lots of fun with this one. This picture shows a shelf with 3 objects, each made up of at least 2 layers for each object.
Layers were linked so the objects could be moved/transformed and rotated as a whole unit. This was so amazing to do and really changed the layout of the origional picture.

Week 2 - Editing Photos

It's week 2 of Launchpad A at http://www.myjanee.com/.This week has been all about working with photos. In this lesson we looked at:
1). Fixing Levels using a photo that is too dark or too light that has poor contrast.
2). Curves - fixing a photo with poor contrast.
3). Colour Cast - fixing a photo that has yellowed with age or has a cast due to artificial lighting conditions.
The quick photo fixes are Auto Levels, Contrast and Colour. These may not work on all photos but you might be lucky like I was with this picture taken in the Autumn of 1976. Using just the Auto Colour on this has had a very dramatic affect on altering the colour.

Menu adjustments include Levels, Curves, Colour balance.
I used levels on the photo of my son below, it was taken in a museum on the Costa Brava, Spain. I was very disapointed at the time that the old cars and bikes in the background were so dark in the origional photo, using levels has brightened the background enough to see more detail on the
vehicles.

This picture below is of me with my father, I used a combination of Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Colour to achieve the results in the after picture.



Variations is another method of working with a picture with colour cast, here you get to see the affect of different changes and pick one with the best outcome.To improve the picture below I also used Auto Colour and Levels after tweeking with Variations.



The photo below of Patrick Senior and Patrick Junior was improved using a combination of Curves and Levels. The effect is to brighten a picture that looked pretty dull to begin with.

This week has been lots of fun and I've learned quite a lot about trying to rescue photos that would otherwise be deleted.