Ashton

Picture Worth A Thousand Words

I opened up this picture and then I did copies of it with Shadows and Midtones then merged them together. Before I did that I wanted the midtones to be filled with 50% gray and the shadows to be filled with black. The Control I used to do copying was CTRL+(J). Then I made a new layer put the background white by CTRL+backspace. I added another layer put it white also and used my brushes with different styles and put random text all over it. For this I just put my name for the text. After creating the brushes I went to Windows, Brushes and changed my brush style. Then I went back to my midtones and shadows and ctrl A to select all then I pressed CTRL C to copy it and then went back to my layer with the words on it and put a mask on the layer and selected the second one and the CTRL V so I would have my midtones and shadows on the second one. Finally, what I did was pressed (fx) and went to gradient overlay and I used the green and red gradient and that's all I did to this.

I had to help near the end because it got a little confusing mainly at the layer mask. I kept going back and forth from the steps on the computer to understand it.

I really like the look of my picture. I struggled at this but managed to make it look good. I kept deleting stuff and undoing things. I think it turned out good and I really like the look of the red and green together and how it switches right by my eye and gives it this brownish look so it looks like the color of  my eyes.

Creation Of Choice

What I decided to do was one of my favorite books called Beautiful Creatures by: Kami Garcia and I wanted to make the background kinda resemble the 1st book with the tree. But in the cover you couldn't really see it so I grabbed a tree from mine and focused on the branches and selected them over to the picture and gave it a Drop Shadow to give it more of a affect to the picture and I did a little work with making it a little transparent.

I used the gradient for the background and used purple and black for it. Then I used a present brush and made the color a dim blue. I enhanced the photo with both levels and curves. The levels I just changed the white to 225 and the curves I set that at an output of -128 and an Input of 116. I extracted part of the tree from a picture of mine and put it in the background. I free transformed the photo to make it look a little smaller then it was. I duplicated this image and messed with the blending modes, I added a drop shadow and I just changed the distance to 95. All I did for the layer style was just add a drop shadow to the words. For the Text I used Monotype Corsiva and put the size at the top one at 30 then the bottom one at 24. Then finally I went to Filter, Render, Lighting Effects. I did the triple shot lights in the background to make it look like it's focusing on what I put in the background.
                                      Quick commands I used:
                                                 (L) Magnetic Lasso Tool
                                                 (E) Background Eraser Tool
                                                 (G) Gradient Tool
                                                 (T) Text Tool
                                                 (Z) Zoom Tool
I thought my end project turned out really nice and it resembles the book. I wanted people to look at it and not understand it. I think it doesn't make any sense which is a good thing. The cover on her book really didn't make sense to me so I wanted to keep it the same. I really like this picture I created and all the drop shadow effects on it.

Personalized Card

I went to text and wrote out my initials and found a picture of a speaker with sound levels and I copied and pasted it onto my document but I first put a new layer up on there so I could put the picture I wanted. Then, I went to Layer and Create Clipping mask to put it behind my initials. Then after I finished that I played with different things that we have learned but what I decide to do was go to Filter, Render, and Clouds. Then, I went to my brushes and chose one to make a fancy looking border. Then I made a new brush effect and put it as my initials. All I did was type my initials then went to EDIT and DEFINE BRUSH PRESET and that's all I did to it.

Why I chose the picture I did was because I'm totally into music, it's like my life so I thought the best picture to best describe me was music. I think this picture describes me the best and it goes good with what I love to do.

Post Card

For the background I took out the telephone lines in the sky with clone stamp. Then, I added the house and used the magnetic lasso tool to take out the houses background. Then after I got it the way I wanted it to look, I went to EDIT, FREE TRANSFORM and tilted the house a little to the left to make it straighter. Then, I Clone Stamped the sink that was on the side of the house and an outlet.

Next, I used text, the double a figure was set at strong, and the font style was monotype corsiva, the font at 200. Then, I went to Filter, Render, and lighting affects. The style I choose for this was the triple spot light.

Then, I added my dog, Zeus did the same technique I threw in some clip art and used the same stuff also. Then, I went back to the house and refined the edge with a radius at 53.6, Contrast 6, Smooth 91, Contract/Expand -8, and Feather 54.5.

I also free transformed the snowflake, hot chocolate and the fireplace. Then, I CTRL + A, to select all and messed with the curves and levels a little bit.

The curves were put at an output of 176, and an input of 123. I created a border around my post card with the pixels at 30 for the border. The opacity was set at 91% and the vibrancy at +83.

Didn’t really like the blending mode much I only used it for two of them. I didn’t use it for the house. Dog was set at opacity 84% for blending, and the snowflake at 66% opacity. Nothing was set for the fireplace. Next, I added in the tree and used the inner glow and satin. Inner glow was set at lighten mode and opacity of 75%. Satin was set at soft light, opacity 26%, Distance 12, size 14. Then, I went to stroke and saturated it didn’t do anything else to it. I refined the edges on the tree at Smooth 72, Feather 8.5.

Finally, I put a drop shadow on the cup of hot chocolate. Distance was 37, Spread was 35, and Size was 35 also.

Why I added the drop shadow is because I wanted to give it a realistic look. Why I added the other things with the tree is because I wanted to give it somewhat of a realistic look. But I didn’t put a drop shadow because I didn’t like it on the tree. Blending mode didn’t really work but with what I added the blending mode was to help it complete the picture. Like the dog I don’t think it would’ve been really great if I didn’t add blending mode. I think I could've went without the blend mode but it still looks good.

Choice #1

This picture is of my cat, Snowball it was taken September 12th of 2010. It was on portrait mode with no flash. This picture was taken on my front porch.

This is the edited version of this picture I cropped it and took out the smudge, the log splitter, and that stick that was in the way with clonestamp. I also clone stamped the hole by his foot and I put the vibrance to +77.

I like this picture better because it's not as distracting as the other one was and the green in the background pops out more. I think without the extra stuff in the background helps you focus a lot more on what I originally wanted the picture to look like.

Scale

This is the original photo of my brother and his sons hand. This picture was just taken on auto on October 29th, 2010. We were in the kitchen when this photo was taken.

This is the edited photo. I cropped the photo to just focus on their hands. Then, the extra food I couldn't crop away I just clone stamped. I set the vibrance at +38. The curves were set at an output of 156 and an input of 130. Last but not least I just desaturated the photo to -100.
I like this picture better because 1 the gray look to it gives it a better look and I like using black and white on hands. 2, because it doesn't have so much clutter in the picture anymore and it's easier to focus on the picture of what I originally wanted it to be focused on.