Color Techniques

Four photographs were used for this project: Street Lights in San Francisco, Amethyst, Birds, and Clouds. I photographed each of these elements within the past month.

I first used color range to select an amethyst I had photographed. I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't! I then selected the glass in the street lamps and pasted the amethyst into each lamp. I used hue/saturation layer adjustments to change the color of both amethysts, and I experimented with changing the colors in curves. I feel there is a lot more control and variety in the curves option. I pasted an image of flying bird just above one of the lamps, (oh, I smart sharpened it before bringing it over to the main document). Then I used color range on a photo of clouds and brought the clouds and placed it in the lower sky behind the lamp post. I tried various colors, and decided not to get too "out there". The edges around the cloud are dark, but even though it doesn't look realistic, I liked the contrast it gave to the clouds. There is a gradient overlay on the entire image.

Also, I did play with some filters and changed the clouds.. using the cutout filter, and then transformed it and stretched it a lot. It gave the image a very different feel, but I'm submitting the more "realistic" one to my instructor. This is the more "playful, comic-bookish" background:























While using color range, I saw an effect which I really liked, so I took a screen shot of the grayscale image:

















Below are the four original photos I used for this assignment:

A Cloudy Sky In San Francisco

The original photograph was taken on a completely clear day in San Francisco - not a cloud in the sky! For this masking assignment clouds were added using Filter > Render > Clouds. Hue and Saturation were adjusted on the cloud selection to create blue tones that would work well with the rest of the image.

Charles Dickens Compilation

1. I set up an open book (A Tale of Two Cities, The Heritage Press, 1938) sitting on closed book (The Pickwick Papers, The Heritage Press, 1938) , resting on blue and gold fabric, and photographed it. This became my background layer. I corrected the image using exposure, levels, and hue/sat.

2. I placed a decorative pocket watch against three books, photographed it, and later selected the watch, pasted it within the blue/gold portion of the background and partially behind the open book. I lowered the opacity to make it somewhat transparent, and increase the saturation a little.

3. I selected a photograph of my son, desaturated it, and changed it's hue. I pasted it into the middle foreground of the composition, and reduced the opacity to give it a ghostly appearance.

4a. I photographed an illustration from the story, A Christmas Carol on page 61 (of Five Christmas Novels , The Heritage Press, 1939) titled, Bob Cratchit Comes Home. I lowered the opacity and ..... I pasted it into the background, lowered the opacity, changed the hue, refined the edges and modified the upper right edge so that it flowed along the same direction as the page of the book it is next to. (I used the line tool to make a line to follow along with and then turned off its visibility afterwards.)

4b. Using the same image, I decided to try out creating a 3D object. (I recently joined NAPP, and received a Photoshop User magazine which gave basic instructions on how to create 3D objects.) I wrapped the images around a spherical shape and then rotated the image so that Tiny Tim and his father would be visible. I added some light to the illustrated sphere, and then pasted it into the background. I played around with hues and levels, increased the saturation, and the object began to become very shiny and reminded me of a Christmas ball. I thought this fit perfectly with the theme of A Christmas Carol, and it is now one of my favorite parts of the composition.

5. Text is used in three different areas.

a. For the quote "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." on the clock, I first created a circle with the ellipse tool and made it a work path. Using the type tool I pasted my text onto the circular path - and then copied and pasted this over the clock. Since the clock is not shaped in a perfect circled, I then changed the skew and played around with it until matched the clock's skew as well as possible.

b. For the two other quotes, I gave both a lighter color for the top layer, and a darker one for the shadow, to compensate for the mix of lighter and dark shades in the composition they were being placed on.

I placed the quote, "Please sir, may I have some more?" below the ghostly image of the boy, to make it clear that he is representing Oliver Twist.

c. I placed the quote:

"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into the companionship: compared these every day associates with those of my happier childhood; and felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my breast."

~ Charles Dickens as a boy in the blacking factory

over the larger image of Tiny Tim and his family as it seemed to be a place where such a large amount of text would fit gracefully, without distracting from the other elements. The Tiny Tim illustration is also used in the Christmas Ball, and he and his father can clearly be viewed there, so I felt the larger image could serve as more of a background to the quoted text. I experimented with justifying the text, but found that I liked have the control over where the lines would break in relation to their meaning, and decided to align the text to the left (ragged right).

Surrealism Project

I created the coyotes and the mask-like faces with the pen tool. I converted the coyote and the two faces into shapes and then transformed their sizes and experimented with many, many blending options. The mauve/brown face on the right looked very nice in PSD format, but when I saved the file as JPG, the white outer glow appears jagged. I resaved the PSD file as 8x10 JPG, and the jags smoothed out a little.

I photographed my own hand and made it look comic bookish using the cutout filter and also plastic wrap filter. Used blending options and experimented quite a bit with color and gradients.

I photographed the clock at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk; it is part of the haunted ride attraction. I used curves to correct the dullness of the image, tranformed it's size and perspective, and used some blending modes to soften the edges.

The apple is part of a watercolor painting that I did several years ago.

The purple planet was actually a photo of flowers which I converted into a 3D sphere and then added texture to it. Put a touch of an outer glow on it to help it blend with the sky.

The clouds along the bottom (which kind of also look like an ocean to me) required a lot of adjustments.. stretching and pulling..

The stars were created with the star brush tool.

The background is two parts; a basic color first, then an overlay with an elliptical shape deleted and a gaussian blur put on it.. then on top of that was a quadrone gradient.

Color Theme ~ Boardwalk

The source of three of the images were from a series of photos that I took at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk this summer. The beach scene was taken in Santa Cruz two years ago.

The color theme was "fun, bright, and vibrant"! The serenity of the beach background with the seagull carrying the banner is a melding of the excitement of the boardwalk with the stunning beauty of nature.

Each image required quite a bit of adjustment, as the photographs were shot on overcast days. The beach/ocean scene was taken during the day, but I modified it so that it appeared to be taken at sunset. I felt that the darker, more saturated, colors of the evening made the colors of the forefront items pop out more. I enlarged and moved the bird that was in the sky, and distorted the shape of the banner it is carrying.

Lizard on Building

I enjoy having fun with Photoshop - I don't think much explanation is required; I obviously enlarged the image of the lizard. I had to modify him in order to make his body appear to be coming from behind the building. Also, I put a shadow on the building underneath the lizard's head and neck. I was so happy to finally discover how to use "opacity"!

Duotone ~ Mushroom Kitten

I scaled down the size of "Shakira The Kitten" to make her look like she's crawling out from underneath some giant mushrooms. In reality, these mushrooms were only about two inches high - much too tiny for Shakira to crawl under in "real life".

I had originally intended to create a blue duotone, but the contrast looked much better with this sepia tone. I've learned that it's best to experiment, rather than just stick with a set idea.