Project 3- Selection Assignment 2

The middle image is my final product. My first step was to fix my red eye using the red eye tool. I enlarged the canvas so I could put the cursor on the whitest part of the iris and then clicking. This corrects the red eye automatically. Next I used the quick selection tool to select everything but my head and then inversed it. I then refined the edges to give it a more feathered selection rather then jagged edges. I then moved my selection to my original picture.

I made both my original picture and my head picture black and white by selecting black and white out of the image adjustments menu. When I changed my head picture to black and white I adjusted the red tones just a bit so it was a little darker like the othere picture. I then used the clone stamp on the original picture to make part of my head dissapear so my new head would not have part of the old one sticking out behind it. I then flattened the image so I could fix my chin area by using the clone stamp and the spot healing brush. This cleaned up the area a bit so it did not have weird shadows. Finally I laid a gradient map color over the entire picture to give it a cool sepia tone.

Most of what I did at the beginning of this process was what I did for my final piece. However I did do some experimenting on my face to change the shadowing and chin area by using the dodge and burn tools. I also used the eraser to try to clean up the edges of my head picture but that just ended up making it more obvious that it was not part of the orignal picture. In the end though I just changed the red tone on my head picture to make it a little darker.

I know that my final product is not the best because my face is definately brighter then my son's face but I still think it looks sort of cool.

Project 3- Selection Assignment

To create this picture using selection tools only I started out with the polygon lasso tool. I drew the cross shape first and to keep the lines straight I held down the shift key while I drew my lines. I also tried to use the ruler on the photoshop screen to try to make the sections of the cross as even as possible. Next I used the rectangle marquee tool to draw the fours squares. I held the ctrl key down so I could add to my already drawn cross. After that I used the ellipse marquee tool to create the circle in the middle. Since I was taking away from the cross selection I held the alt key down to create it. To make sure the circle was centered I held down the space bar key while still holding the alt key and the mouse key down and moved it until I had it centered. Next I used the polygon lasso tool again to create the triangles. I held the alt key down just as I did with the circle, so as to take away from the cross selection. I held the shift key down to keep the line, closest to the cross edge, straight. To fill the my final selection in I went up to the edit menu and chose fill.

I accomplished all of this after I ran into a small problem. The first time that I did the selection assignment I ended up having my feathering set to 10 px on my ellipse marquee tool. This resulted in my circle having a fuzzy edge when I filled the color in. I could not figure it out at first but when I redrew it and examined what the properties on the ellipse were I figured out why it had done that.

Project 2- Black & White Photo Adjustments

My adjusted photo is on the bottom and John's is on the top. To achieve my final look I ended up using the gradient map. I started out with the preset sepia tone gradient and then manipulated it from there. I changed the coloring of the set colors to try to better reflect John's image. I think I did a decent job on the foreground of the picture but the background was hard. The tall building has windows that are very obvious in John's picture and I could not get my windows to stand out nor could I get the clouds over the mountain to stand out.

Other methods they I tried first were the channel mixer and black & white adjustment in Photoshop and then also the HSL/Grayscale in Camera Raw. They all worked to some degree but I could not get the tone that John's photo has.

Project 2- Color Photo Adjustments

The photo on the bottom is my adjusted photo. John's is on the top. I played and I played and I played around on this trying to see if any of the various methods from the chapters would work and I finally settled on the hue and saturation adjustment. Before that I did apply auto color. For the hue and saturation adjustment I ended up changing the master channel, the yellow channel and the red channel. I think that the walls and the lamps were my most successful part of the picture. I could not however get that bed to come up the same color as John's nor could I figure out how the window and area on the top left of the picture had the blue tint. No matter what I did nothing seemed to change in that corner.

Some of the techniques that I used were the variations adjustment and the curves adjustment. I tried all the techniques multiple times and none seemed to do what I needed or rather I could not get them to do what I wanted or maybe it was a little of both.