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.

Cityscape

This is the orignal picture, it was taken on October 26th, 2010. Since I was in the car I had to put this on sports mode. This was taken right in Bemidji.

This is the edited picture, I used curves, levels and Brightness/Contrast. The curves were set at a input of  171 and an output of 130. Brightness/Contrast was set at a brightness of -21 and a Contrast of -8.
This only thing I did with the level is changed the white to 223.
I like this one better because it was raining and it brings out the look in the sky that it was raining, I looks better with the darkness.

Architecture

This is the original picture. It was taken October 26th at 3:45 P.M. This picture was at the Social Security Administration office in bemidji. The mode this was taken on was portrait. I used the White Balance on this  picture and put it to cloudy without flash.

This is the corrected picture. All I did was enhance this picture. I used Curves with the ouput of 255 and the imput of 236. I also used the brightness/contrast. The brightness was 27 and the contrast was 9.
I like this picture more because even though it was a gloomy day I still gave it a happy feel to it.

Black and White with Color

Orignal Photo

This picture was taken September 21st of 2010. This picture was taken in my front yard on the lilac bushes. I took this picture on vivid mode so the colors would pop out more.

Black and White

This is the picture in black and white. I  just desaturated the picture and used curves on it to make it pop out more.

Black and White with color

This is the picture with color in it. After I desaturated it and curved it I poked out the eye and merged all the extra layers so I could put the color in it. Then, I poked the eye back in and grabbed the eraser and started putting the color back into the leaf.

I like this picture better because it focuses on just the one leaf that I want to focus on. I tried spot healing, clone stamp and healing but they didn't look good with the picture so I had to leave the extra leaves there. But I like the leaf now because it seems to pop out more.



Landscapes

This is the orginal picture it was taken September 29th by the schools parking lot. I took this on landscape.

                                            Corrected Picture

What I changed on this picture is I sponged some of the dullness away. I took out the pile of leaves in the middle of the picture. I used the clone stamp to get rid of leaves. I like this picture better because you can see how sunny it is outside and it looks more natural to me anyway. But I love this one because it brightens up the whole picture and it gives you a new outlook on the day.

                                                                            Sky Landscape.

This picture was taken on September 21st 2010 at 3:35. I was on the bus when I took this picture so I used sport mode to capture this image.

This is the corrected version. I couldn't do to much to this picture so, I just enhanced it to make it brighter. In curves I put the input at 117 and the output at 125. for levels I just moved the grey around and put it at 1.09. Then, I finished this picture with Vibrance, I put the vibrance at +100 and the saturation at +7. I like the corrected one better because it's bright and it doesn't have a shadow affect to it anymore.

Diagonal Rule

This picture was taken on September 8th, 2010. It was on monochrome settings and it was taken by my house on the dirt road.
                                                              Corrected.

There wasn't much I could do to this photo actually. So what I did is used the clone stamp and stamped out some of the pebbles that were to big. I also used some curves to this one. The output was 63 and the input was 95.

I like this one better because in the top picture there is a pebble that is so annoying by his foot. When I took it out, I was able to focus more on my dog Zeus.

Lines

I took this picture on my porch on October 9th. I used vivid for the mode to get color of the wood.
                 
                                            Corrected picture

This one took a little bit of work. But I used to clone stamp to get rid of the:

Bucket

The Rake

The Snowmobile.

I also took the shadow out from the lower right hand corner.

I like this picture the best because it's not so cluttered with noises that get in the way. Plus, you can focus more on the wood then you do the other things. It's lines because it just goes down straight and it just focuses on the railing on the deck.

Color Replacements

This picture was taken on September 29th, 2010. It was taken on Auto in the school teachers parking lot.

Edited

This is the edited one. I used the magic want and color replacement I changed it to orange and the replacement is -10 +4 +8. I like the edited one better because I like the darkness in the orange yet it still has light to it. Also, you see a no parking sign all the time and it's yellow. I like to see it in different colors. I think it blends in better with the parking lot.

Straight Shot VS. Angled Shot

This picture was taken on October 2nd at 3:02 P.M. in my front yard. The mode I took it on was portrait.

This picture was taken on October 2nd at 3:02 P.M. in my front yard at a different angle. The mode setting this was taken on was portrait.

This is the edited angle shot. I cropped the picture and changed the Contrast/Brightness. The Brightness is -8 and the Contrast is 9. Then, I added color balance to +13, +30, -3. I like this picture better because the pumpkins were to far away and I made the pumpkins brighter because it was to dim.