Color correction

I really enjoyed this week's assignment... I've been trying different things in Photoshop to familiarize myself with the different tools and I'm getting more comfortable with it. I know there is much more to learn, but it's a good start. In this first set of photos I used the Color Replacement tool and changed the color of the train from red to green. I also used the Shadow/Highlight to bring some of the detail in the blackness (upper right in the photo) and added some light with the Brightness/Contrast. I had to try this a couple of times, but I like the outcome.





























The second set shows a photo of me taken without the flash in which my face came out really dark. I applied the Shadows/Highlight tool and was able to brighten up my face. I adjusted the Highlights, Midtones and Shadows individually and was really pleased because not only was I able to bring light to my face and clothing, I also changed some of the landscape in the background. The clouds in the sky and the mountains in the far back are a little more defined, same with the green in the grass and trees.

Photomosaic

I love Photomosaics... I have actually put together mosaics before with a program I downloaded from the Internet (it might even be the one Karen suggested, it looks familiar). I did this after a trip to Europe a couple of years ago, where I took tons of pictures and putting them in a mosaic seemed like a really cool idea. Looking at them now I feel like they may need a little more work (some of the pictures are too bright and they don't blend well), but at the time I though they were great. I will probably make a couple with the pictures I took for this class. I attached one mosaic here and will be posting some of the other ones on my Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alinar/
:)

Photoshop tools

I apologize for posting this week's assignment so late, but I was out of town for a few days and had lots of homework waiting for me when I came back. And the fact that I spent almost an entire day going through the chapters in the Photoshop book. 

I have to say this assignment has been the most difficult and frustrating yet... going through the exercises was not easy when some of the photos that I needed to use were missing. Anyway, these two photos show the use of the cropping tool. In the first photo, I captured another rock on the waterfront which was left out of focus and looks like it does not belong in there (it's distracting the eye). By cropping the bottom section I was able to clean up the image and keep only the blueish colors. I also resized the picture from 9 to 3 megs.

For the second manipulated photo I took the butterfly from the first picture and placed it in a second one. My intention was to place a seagull in the second photo could not find any seagulls in any of my photos so I just used the butterfly. I used the Lasso tool to select the butterfly, the Move tool to move it and then played with the seize and position until I found the current placement to my liking. When I selected the butterfly in the first photo I could not help getting some of the background as well, and to remove that I used a soft brush with 0% opacity.

That's about all I did to combine these two photos. It was definitely a learning experience. :)

Fall Landscapes

I love fall in Vermont! Everywhere you go, you are surrounded by the amazing fall colors and scenery. The assignment for this week was a pleasure to complete, although, composing and taking the pictures is not as easy as observing the landscape. I had the most difficulty with choosing what to capture. Yes, there are plenty of great places around, but I wanted to include as much as possible in my photos. Only after seeing the pictures on my computer at home did I realize that I was going too far. However, I did manage to get some less "cluttered" shots (I think), which I posted here.

I have also posted some of my other photos on Flickr... http://www.flickr.com/photos/alinar/
or you can see them in the little slideshow I have on the lower right of the page.

Framing