More selection tool fun!

Layer Tennis with Jaymie Komo

I did this with Jaymie Komo. I started, meaning I have the odd numbers (1,3,5) and she did all the even ones (2,4). Note: this is not a true secret. We both like puppies. We just needed something to write and didn't feel like sharing real secrets because they wouldn't be anonymous at all.

Jaymie's:

Mine: 

Tri-pic

Saw some other people posting stuff like this, thought I'd just toss this up here...

Money!

I actually went through a few redesigns before settling on this. Originally, I had a vector silhouette of a dude in a bowler had with no face, but the vector art made it look too computer-made for my tastes. So here is the finished product, done entirely with brushes (except for the texture, that was a stock image) and downloaded fonts. I even did the fake signature myself to lend an air of authenticity lol.

Front:

(the banner reads "follow the money")

Back:

(the Latin reads "endless money forms the sinews of war")

Composite surrealist image

Yay selecting stuff and manipulating it to make it look weird

Favorite tool

I have a few favorite tools, one of which is only available in the new CS6 of Photoshop

The top two are the content aware select too (CS6) and the Brush tool. Content aware is awesome and everyone should try the beta to get its full features. I love it so much because it does better feathering than the pen select tool, and it also preserves the background/ fills in the blank space with like pixels once you move the selection.

I also love the brush tool because it is universal, and I have a lot of downloaded brushes from deviantART that allow me to add some additional flair to my images.

My last favorite is the pen select tool (especially in CS6). The freeform pen tool is great for making selections in order to isolate one area that you want to work on.

Repost + repost + repost . . .

Decorative font assignment

Poster done with Meghan S and Alex B

Self portrait

Here's the finished one:

And here's a before/ after/ WIP

Monster!

Here is my little monster~

Critique of Kirsten's photo

This is Kirsten's image. Clicking and un-clicking the layers of changes done, I must say the adjustments made are quite appropriate. I especially like how you were able to mute the light from the streetlamps above the street, so that the focus is on the lanes of lights. I also think that the lens blur and selective desaturation worked well to make the background more of a background, i.e. so that it doesn't draw focus away from the important parts of the photo.

I kind of do not like the stairway being blurred; it's a little visually confusing to have foreground and background blurred the same amount, when there isn't a huge amount of stuff to focus on in the middle of the image. When I make the image fullscreen. it hurts my eyes a little because of the front and back blur. Perhaps, instead of blurring the staircase railing, desaturate the blue so that it is not so prominent. In the background of the image, the far background of the sound barrier, it's a bit too blue. It looks altered, because there is no source of light that could make that wall look that tint. Maybe applying a tint or photo filter to just that section of the photograph (over the building and tree as well, because they have an unnatural look that doesn't quite match the rest of the image) would do the trick. Without that, it looks like two different pictures (color wise)

Digital Darkroom

This is how I chose to present my Digital Darkroom. Here you go!

Hint: you can hit the play button and it takes you through the path I drew. You can also click around to zoom in on different pictures to view them closer up! (also you should full-screen)

Digital Darkroom on Prezi

If the embedded version does not work, here is the link.
Digital Darkroom: 5 images and how they were edited



Here they are side-by-side for easier (but admittedly less fun) comparison. I would advise clicking on the images to view them larger.

Messing around with color

Color is an interesting thing It's definitely easy to go overboard, and other times you just need it to be the boldest thing in the picture. I'm still debating as to whether or not I like the edits I did on this picture:

In the case of this picture, I think the color is necessary, because otherwise it would be kind of a boring picture; the color helps make the sky seem HUGE. Before I edited this picture, it was just "meh"

This picture, I think, benefits even more from changing the colors.

For comparison, here it is unedited 

The color enhancement made any foreground detail go away (which is what I was going for, because some of those buildings are ugly in comparison to the sunset). The color adjustments made an already beautiful sunset simply amazing.

Yes, these are the same sky on different days. Kinda interesting to get almost identical shots of a morning and evening sky.

Some more fun before/ afters

Fun with black and white

Snowy footprints

snow walkers

Dead Deer

For comparison, here is a side-by-side with the original color version

5 begrudging self portraits

This first picture is one of my favorites. I will admit it is from high school, but it represents something that I had a lot of fun doing, and wish I was still more a part of. 

This is me after my troupe's first big belly dancing performance. I still had all my makeup and, and about half my costume. You can't see it in this picture, but where my hair is pulled back on the left, I've got a big hairclip covered in feathers that I made myself, and got a lot of compliments on. I had a LOT of makeup on, way more than I usually wear; eyeshadow, liquid eyeliner in a stripe down my cheek, lipstick, lip liner, blush. Something else you can't see in the picture is a peacock feather necklace that I got at a belly dancing convention a few months before.