Ok so first off I had quite a few complications with my photoshop with it not showing my actions so this project was a huge annoyance.
I started with the buttons at the bottom by first off creating a red box about 1/5th the length so it would look even and than I edited the blending options to give it a rock look by using the default bubble picture for a texture under bevel and emboss. I maxed the depth and than changed the scale until it had a look I really liked. Than I just copied the block to have 5 buttons each for a section of the hypothetical site. The picture of the mace has a problem. It is not my personal picture of the mace but rather one off google, the reason I did this is because my friend has the same mace but I could not get a hold of him to take a picture so if there is any sort of problem I would be glad to take a picture of his mace.
As for the mace I simply used magic wand to remove the majority of background than placed it on a black background to see any spots that were missed. I wanted the mace to smash into the rock so I cut the middle button away with the pen tool and copied 2 more blocks and cut each of them separately and placed them behind each other. I changed the color, brightness, and shadows slightly on each rock to give it a look that it was inside a stone block and it worked out alright.
The title text has a picture in the background of a slab of granite my father has and so I used the linking method that was shown last class to give the text a granite texture. For the other effect of depth to the text I simply increased the shadow depth slightly in blending options and maxed the depth to give the letters a pedal stool to sit on.
The final step was the background and I just did a light red fading to a darker red to match with the buttons and the rest of the layout. As for the stones in the back it is a cut up block turned brown and than arranged them and merged all the layers and than reduced the overall image than I copied that layer and merged those than copied that and etc until it covered the entire screen.

So overall even with photshop frustrations I like a lot of this. The pic of the mace is low res and not very good and the background looks somewhat cheesy but I really like how the buttons and the middle button being smashed turned out.

Israel Sanchez Midterm

In my midterm I started out making a gaming banner but I didn't like it to much, so I decided to make another banner. I am a ducks fan and they have a big game coming up with week, so I decided to make a banner for a website for duck fans. I did like this banner much better then my gaming banner just because the gaming banner was to plain I thought. I used the quick selection tool then clicked "Similar" to select the photos I used because most of there back grounds were one color and make it easy. The more tricky one was the football players because I had to really zoom in and select inside the face mask. For the background and the navigation bar, I used the gradient tool and gave it a black blending look and for the name of the site I used a drop shadow due to the name being the same color as the background. I did use a out glow for the football players because I thought I looked cool when I was messing around with it. Overall, I found this project really fun .

Midterm - Tina Leung

(The gradients on the sides of the image actually fade to transparent but I only saved a jpg :P)

A web banner is supposed to capture your audience's attention quickly. Explain your over all intention to create interest and attention, your process using the Photoshop tools and end result.

The header I designed can be used for my dance crew's upcoming website. I wanted to the header to reflect our style/image so I tried to make it as clean as possible without being too plain. So, I stuck to a dark theme with sharp accents. I based the layout on our group picture and the dark blue to black gradient background. I chose sharp/thin text styles in white for "Liza's Dream Team" to keep a crisp look and to compliment the white in the group photo. At first, I had our logo (on the left) in plain white with the drop shadow but it looked imbalanced. To balance the image, and add more character, I found a cityscape of Portland, (we take pride in our city :]) with a color scheme that matched the scheme in our group photo, and linked it to the logo. Then I designed the link buttons to be as simple as possible to serve their function but not to add any chaos.

Most of the work was put into the background gradient, logo, and group photo. I had to use the polygonal lasso tool to cut the group photo since it blended with the original background very closely. After using the polygonal lasso, I just feathered and blurred the edges. For the logo, I just used stroke and drop shadow blending options in addition to linking the cityscape image. The rest was just done with text and rectangle shapes.

Did it meet your goals? Were you happy with the results? How would you change it in the future?

Overall, I am satisfied with my end result. If we were to actually use this header, I'd want to find another script font because "Liza" is frequently mistaken for "Lisa" and it's not very clear with the font I used. I also think I could've blended the edges of the group photo in a cleaner matter. Other than those issues, I think I created a clean and modern header that represents our group well.

Midterm: Karel Rasovsky

Concept/Intention

The banner is a concept for a contemplated business that will focus on digital marketing, web design and creative work. The first objective is to capture the attention. Related to that is the next step – how to make someone to take action. Some elements how to accomplish that:

· Distinct, pleasing color scheme with tones of green/yellow.

· A visual that projects the identity of the firm. Background of spider webbing (=design and web) and clover leaf (for “clover studios”).

· Follow the “left to right” sweep of the reader’s eyes. Start with “who” on the left, move to “take action” on the right.

· Avoid coming across as “screaming” thus equated with “repulsive”. Rather, project a balanced, clean and engaging design.

· Simple, easy to read font (no caps); white text projected on dark background to stand out

· Express the core competencies in sound bites - no more than three words (web, creative, marketing)

· Offer the tools to reach us (800 number on the left, click for online info on the right)

Process/Tools

The banner is a composition of two images (spider web, clover leaf), bottom info stripe, shapes (arrows) and text. Manipulating the images in Photoshop has become easy by now J I started with a square-shaped spider web photo. Just stretching it into the new banner dimensions (780px x 150px) followed by a horizontal flip created the desired effect – less defined background, with the web strands becoming thicker and more pronounced. On to selecting the clover leaf! How about showing only half of it to add a bit of a mystery? The glow behind was created with a white smudge on the background, blurred with Gaussian noise. (I tried a clear gradient, but did not seem to work as well.)

The blending options offered many impressive results. But for my simple theme, the combination I liked best was Bevel/Emboss combo, giving the leaf a solid, 3D feel. Turning on Outer/Inner glow enhanced the effect even more. Staying with the green theme, I mixed a green tone for the bottom info banner to match it with the top background.

The role of the text was then to project clean lines, simplicity, and be on point. That is reflected in my choices: minimalist font, no caps, little or no enhancements.

Experimenting with “shapes” available in Photoshop was a learning experience. For practice sake, I used one of the shapes to create my “click here” prompt.

End Results

It was a good first try. The banner modestly meets the objectives outlined initially. No doubt, with some practice, it can be made much better. I see many areas for improvement: the background could use a different blending technique as it seems too busy (I just don’t know what technique at this point), the leaf (as good of a visual as it is) can be made more distinct, and a special font type would make it more elegant. There is always next time. In the end, what counts most is that I am thoroughly enjoying the creative side of it!

Midterm - Courtney Acostagrates

Courtney Acostagrates - Midterm

I think that many times simplicity and brevity in images can be more attention grabbing than complexity and clutter. My goal with this banner was to create interest in the product, Fabulous, precisely but keeping the banner itself very simple. It was my intention that the brevity of the banner entice the visitor to scroll further down the page to find out more.

I began with a pink background, and placed a yellow gradient layer above. To both of these layers I applied a smooth 18pt inner bevel.

Above that I created a text layer on which I typed "Fabulous" in dark brown. I then rasterized the text, and applied the drop shadow and bevel and emboss effects. Finally, I stylized the word with the wind filter. Unfortunately, this effect cannot be readily seen in the compressed .jpg version that I have posted to the blog.

From a picture that I had taken of a garden, I initially attempted to use the quick select tool to isolate a couple flowers. I later learned that it is much easier to do this using a mask and thus extracted the yellow flower image in this way. To the flower I applied the outer glow and bevel and emboss effects.

Finally I added a second text layer in which I typed "See for yourself" and to this I applied the outer glow effect.

I think that this is a successful banner. The color scheme is effective in that the yellow gradient on the left balances the yellow flower on the right. The combination of pink and yellow creates a sense of vibrancy and the brown lettering mirrors the brown center of the flower. The wind filter used on the word "Fabulous" creates a sense of movement. If I were to do this project again, I think I would like to experiment with uniting several images. I was inspired by the banners of some my classmates and think that, when done well, this can be very visually appealing.

Christian Boneta - Midterm

The Idea behind the banner is for a photo design website

The header is comprised of about 12 layers.
6 text layers using Lythos Pro of different sizes.
1 layer has a distorted shape and soft light, blur to create the shadow and opacity changed to 45%
1 layer for the image of the lens/ the image was from www.freedigitalphotos.net quick selection tool to select just the lens and move it to the header
1 layer for Shapes
1 layer for Background I used the grid on this layer to arrange the 2 rectangle shapes
2 layers for a gradient to mix the background color with the purple in a smooth way.
I also adjusted the layers according to what i wanted in the from or back in the header
the entire Header is 750px by 150px

I wanted to create a banner that looked clean/simple and visually appealing
overall i am happy with the result.

Midterm-Melissa Flores

Well here it is! Hope you guys like it!

For this project i used many different tools such as hue/ssaturation which i used fot the magic hat,color balance was to level the color of the hat, outerglow was used to give the text a white glow around the "Magic" text, and i used opacity tool for the inner color. If i get to the chance to change this banner in the future it would problychange the the butterflies that i added and instead would gone for stars but at the moment i really like the butterflies.

Darryl Zenger - Midterm

Midterm Project notes CAS 208 for Blog
a. On this project I’m making a web banner for a home décor web site that I maintain. I wanted to take the colors and business logo from their old header, and then make a new header with those colors and logo making it more elegant and professional looking. I also wanted to add another image of some of their products into the header.
b. I think I accomplished my goals. I think the new header looks more professional.
c. I started the project by getting the two images that I was going to use in the header and sizing them so they’d fit in the header. Then I set the background color using the linear gradient. Then I used the move tool to move and place the images into the header. I then used the horizontal type tool to put in the text, set the font size, color and style. Then I added layer effects to the images and text using shadows, bevel and emboss. *one note I made the size 900px x 150px because the web site this header is for needed those settings.

Midterm — Becca.

I had a lot of fun with this project. I decided to invent a banner for a completely imaginary webpage, pretending I was the owner of a bookstore in downtown Portland. (The Moon's Daughters as the name of the business is swiped, with apologies, from China Miéville, one of my favorite authors.)

I wanted to create a graphic that was unusual and eye-catching, but elegant and simple at the same time. My hypothetical audience are literary nerds — fond of science fiction, fantasy and unusual settings — so I came up with the idea of three moons over a shadowy city.

I started with a plain black backdrop, then highlighted it with faint gray so that I could blend in the image of the Portland skyline. I desaturated it and set it to the Soft Light blend mode. Where the backdrop was gray, it showed up, and where the backdrop was black, it faded out.

For the three different moons, I wanted a realistic effect, so I didn't use blending techniques — I just cut them out and resized them. I redid the placement and the angle of each moon something like five times, and partially faded the one on the right, so they would all look like they were in different phases.

The font for the title is University Roman, and I used Adobe Myriad Pro for the slogan. The text effects — a lunar Outer Glow for the title — didn't show up so well with the smaller font, so I drew a simple black marquee behind the slogan and then outlined it subtly with a smaller Outer Glow.


I wanted to add a menu bar, as several other people have done, but I liked the height of the banner and didn't want to compromise my design by pushing it into a smaller space.

I was very pleased with the result. In fact, although I acknowledge the sovereignty of Powell's, I can't help wishing my imaginary bookstore were a real place. I could use some new reading material.

Panna Ong - Midterm

The banner I made is for a website idea I though of.

So Steezy

Steezy means to be styling with ease. I love cars and am very involved with the NW car scene.

The Idea behind the website would be to showcase the best of the what the NW has to offer in terms of style and performance in motor vehicles.

The banner itself is comprised of many layers. I used a lot of text and layer styles along with layer masks to achieve the faded out look.

I used the pentool to extract the vechicle from the original image. The background and the Car is from the same image. I just removed the car and moved a little and use them for the background.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the out come.

Jeff Ashmore-Mid term Banner

The first step in my banner was to re-size the
image at 750 by 115 pixels. Next I used the
shadows/highlights tool to change the highlight. I used the text tool to get my text and set the format at Blackoak std., 24 pt. sizing, and used the warp text tool. The warp text tool is cool. I set the text to fisheye, and the bend at 35%. Then I went to styles and added chromed satin text. I found the Layer Style tool, and put a drop shadow on it an inner shadow, satin, gradient overlay, set the blending at normal with 100% opacity, which really brought out the title. One layer I used was for gradient map, but I ended up turning that layer off because I liked the mountain color better than the darker scheme from the gradient map. I will be doing a lot more practice with making banner's it was a fun project.

Project 2 Ivy Akui

Project 2 Ivy Akui

I choose two pictures, which were taken at Yellow Stone National Park. I used the pen tool to cut out the grizzly and dragged over as a copy to picture of myself with the waterfall in the background. I used the command T to transform the grizzly to make a better fit. I loaded selection from layer palette and feathered selection by 8 pixels. This was to soften the edge. Then I made layer mask by clicking on the icon at bottom of layer palette. (make mask icon) I selected layer mask to sharpen edges by using the paintbrush tool to edit the mask. Used paintbrush tool set to color sampled brown from fur to tone down green around edges. Then finalize with using dodge and burn tool for the highlights and shadows.

CAS208 midterm...walt

(Noe: Two "web" sites are uploaded to server: one with CSS and one without. See request for help below).

Image modifications:
For the original Banner image...I used levels.
Deschutes image...levels.
Jefferson...curves.
Lake_basin...curves.
Matterhorn (the one in Eagle Cap Wilderness)...auto_constrast.
Sisters...Levels & curves.
Text...stroke.

To pull in each image piece, I used the elliptical marquee tool with a feather of 15px. I used trial & (lotsa) error for the sizing of the ellipse.

Did it meet my goals? Nope. Wanted to do something else...but didn't have the images for it. (But maybe I could make use of my resultant image in my less than stellar personal web site)


HELP...!!!...:
Lotsa problems with the css: could not get the banner to show unless I put it in the index.html as an image tag. Putting that same image in the style.css as a background did not work for me (it's still there but not working). Any thoughts/suggestions/help out there? Code as follows:

***index.html***with brackets changed so this blog will $#@! display****

(!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd")
(html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml")

(head)
(meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /)
(title)Oregon At High Altitude(/ title)
(link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/style.css" /)
(/head)

(body id="wrapper")

(div id="masthead")
(img src="images/oregon_high.jpg" height=100 width=780 /)
(/div)

(div id="textbox")
(br /)(br /)
Lorem ipsum...etc
(/div)

(/body)

(/html)

******************css/style.css*****************
#wrapper{
width: 780px;
margin: 0 auto;
text-align: left;
}

#masthead {
background-color:#808080;
background-image: url(image/oregon_high.jpg);
background-position:center top;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

#textbox {
height: 300;
}
***************************************

Oh yeah...the "Lorem ipsum" thing is pretty cool. Go to
http://www.lipsum.com/

Midterm Project - Vincent Phan

The intention of my web banner was to make my theme, "earth, space & beyond" look appealing.

I basically started my project by adding noise to the background in order to create the stars. I also slightly applied a dark-blue gradient to the background; it's hard to notice it in the banner, but if you switched that layer (linear gradient) on and off in the .psd file, you can actually see a significant difference.
I took a picture of the earth and re-sized it to fit in the banner. I then duplicated the layer and used an overlay blend on that duplicate with a decrease in opacity.
A path, as well as a radial gradient, was added to look like a shooting star was flying around the planet. Added text with glow to it.

The goal of my project was to include all the required items listed in the instructions. Although I met those goals, there are still a few parts of the project that I am not confident with. Some examples include the placement of the text as well as possibly working with the planet a little more.

Ken_Avdeef_midterm

From Ken Avdeef

Hello Everybody:

1. My mid term project is a dog kennel operation named after my dog (Y.D.). This is a prototype website for dog training and dog kennel care. Picture (avdeef_midterm1.psd)


2. The Banner includes a picture of my dog cut out from a previous picture I used then used a highlighted background around him. Next I used a drop shadow to blend in the white edges around him.

3. On the background I used a grain filter for the effect. I also created a couple button for video that have effects such as gradient, shadows, beveled and embossed color overlay with a inner and outer glow.

4. Down on the bottom I used a red banner with a gradient overlay with text to navigate around the website.

5. I think I met my goals with this project. The project went well other that understanding step 2 on the project. The only other thing I might do is to animate the dog with another picture

Ken Avdeef

project 2- Melissa Flores

Tools i used for this project were magic wand, eraser tool, magic eraser tool, color tool and inner glow. The blending options i chose inner glow because itt blended well whit the background. The background that i chose adds a diferents kind of depht to the original picture, plus whit the coloring it aded blendness to the backgrund. This whole experience doing project 2 went smoothly and enjoyet playing with the diferent tools to make the background blend whit the picture.

Project 2 - Panna Ong

This is a photo of my cousins Turbo Charged Scion tC (an older picture, it's missing his new orange wheels and orange roll cage =) ) rolling next to an industrial building.



The Selction tool I used was actually the pen tool. I used it so I could get perfect curves on the car. I had to select the upper half of the car and the back ground of the image and then "Paste Into" the building. The Images I had to Adjust the darkness/lightness using the curves tool.

I think the building and the car look good together. I had to use a motion blur filter to get the "fly by" look. The original is a rolling shot as well.

Project 2 Cameron Wold

At first I used both the quick selection tool and the magic wand
to remove the general colors trying out both to see what works
best. But because the overall color was so similar to his hair
it did not work very well. So I used the pen tool and went around
his entire body and then extracted the selection and feathered
a pixel or two to make the overall layer smoother.

To seperate the beach picture from the sky and the ground I used
the quick selection tool. The quick selection tool worked really
well because it was a general color and then I refined the edge
of the selection to try to get a really precise selection without
a line of thick blue across the selection.

To blend the picture to make it look more like it should belong
is using the match color command to try the match the overal
color of the beach setting. This never really turned out as
great as I hoped most likely because he is wearing a black shirt
and it is really hard to get any color to show up on it. So I
need to fiddle around with that method a little more on other
pictures to see its full effect. The only other thing I did was
blur the picture of my friend so it fits in better and is not
high resolution in comparison to the beach scape.

I think overall it looks fairly good except his black shirt
is the worst part. Not only does the color not show up on it
to match but because of that solid color it shows a blue line
along the shirt from landscape.

So I like everything that was used in here, quick selection more
so than magic wand because it allows me to be specific or broad
if I choose. This project was a little frustrating because I
couldn't quite get what I was looking for but overall it was
a good experience because these are all very useful tools to
use later on.

Project 2-Melissa Flores

Project 2 - Tina Leung

What selection tools did you use? why?
I used the magic wand and quick selection tools since the background and main object (Hudson, my godson) were pretty distinct from the main object for the most part.

What blending options did you use? I used the refine edge and a few color adjustment tools (variations, saturation, color balance) for the major blending. I also used a little bit of, blurring, burning and lighting effects to match the quality and lighting direction of the background. To blend the area where Hudson is standing, I used the magic wand tool to copy some of the grass/flowers on the ground and place it around his feet. And, just for fun, I copied the crown from Max's head, rotated it and blended it, and placed it on Hudson's head.

Do you believe your composite appears to belong in the background you placed?
I think it looks pretty close to believable. I feel like the contrast and sharpness could be better but I ended up making it worse every time I tried to fix it :P

Project 3 - Karel Rasovsky

The objective was to select a component (three hot air balloons) from another image and make them a “natural” part of a landscape photo. The background image captures a royal castle nestled in the rolling Bohemian countryside. Taken on a beautiful late-summer day last year, it is filled with unique hues of green and blue capturing the mood of the place perfectly. But that also presents a challenge when “blending” an external object into that setting.

I chose to do a quick pass through the entire process first, to scope up the best selection tool/process, sketch out the composite arrangement, and get a sense of how to best blend the balloons with their new surroundings. Second round was then all about getting the details right.

Selection process

I toyed with various lassos, but none came close to Quick Selection Tool. With some practice, it was easy to guide the tool along the edges almost perfectly, and whatever imperfections were there left, ironing them out with “add/drop to the selection” under a zoom completed the job. Having the ability to adapt the diameter of the brush – e.g. for detailed corrections – gives one improved feel when applying the tool.

Placement on new background

This was actually one of the more challenging parts of the project. I had to re-size the balloons several times to achieve the right proportions and placement relative to the background, to make them appear as if floating up in the air somewhere between the castle and the bottom of the valley.

Blending process

The Refine Mask has the advantage of being a dynamic all-in-one tool. My balloons had a nice edge definition to start with – but too sharp to fit into their new setting. Here, applying the “Contract” operation “broke” the edges in the most natural way. In Layer Style, nudging down opacity ever so slightly made a huge difference – the balloons were beginning to look like they belong. The Match Color command worked wonders when blending the balloons in with the characteristic blue mist on the horizon. Except one last thing – they looked too “in focus” for an object so far away. After a great deal of experimentation, adding a touch of a blue filter and a carefully measured amount of blur to the balloons improved the overall perspective and fit. Final step was a routine color adjustment of the resulting image.

Final thoughts

Do I believe the composite appears to belong into the background? Yes – considered we started with three garish-colored balloons and were able to slip them seamlessly in (well, quite seamlessly) as if belonging into the quaint Czech countryside is a testimonial to the powers of Photoshop. The bigger question is, do I believe they should be there. The answer is an emphatic no – nothing, nothing, not even hot-air balloons and Photoshop should intrude on the fairytale beauty of that place.

Project 2 — Becca.

Originally I was going to invent a Halloween-themed composite, since it's my favorite holiday, but the images I found for it were on my thumb drive — which has gone missing. So this afternoon, I started over.

First, I went looking for pictures of cats. I had originally intended to find a black cat, because my old photos of my own cat are low-quality and not really worth tinkering with. However, this wild-looking brindled cat caught my eye.


The cat's pointed face and imperious stare reminded me of a statue of Bastet, so I decided to put it into an ancient Egyptian background. I found a beautiful shot of the Great Temple of Abydos which was perfect for the piece.


Selecting the cat and moving it over to the new environment was the hardest part of this project. The Quick Selection tool was not very good at picking up the fine details of the cat's coat and whiskers, so I had to go over the selection about twenty times to get every detail I wanted. The shortcut keys (Shift to add to the selection, and Alt to remove from it) made this much easier. I also used Refine Edge to make sure the selection would blend better against its background, but I had to adjust the settings suggested in Lesson Four, because the temple background is much lighter than the underwater image used in the example.

Once I had put the cat down in the temple image and proportionally resized it, I used the Burn and Dodge tools to edit the shadows in the cat's fur, making them match the direction of the shadows in the background. I decided not to use a blur filter, because the foreground was already slightly blurry as compared to the detail on the wall and the cat's coat. The cat had a slight orange cast, so I went into the Hue/Saturation menu and tweaked it more toward yellow.

The shadow of the cat on the floor I had to paint in with a black brush, and then lower the brush's Opacity to blend in better. I think I need more practice with the direction of lighting — the result looks more mystical than it does realistic, as if the cat's eyes and face were catching more light than they should. However, I like the result — the cat makes an appropriately ominous guardian of mysteries.


(The original images I used were already set up for the web, so I only needed to optimize the finished composition. I also went in and edited the metadata on the stock images so I wouldn't lose the source credits.)

Project 2 - Christian Boneta

I used the the quick selecting tool selected the images and inverted to adjust there backgrounds used images with simple and clean backgrounds to make life easy tried doing this with more complex images but it was a pain. I read a bit on this and there is a way to do it with masking but dint get to much into that

2.I used the refine edges tool to changed the radius , contrast, and smoothness of the images specially the balloons, also used Gaussian blur filter on the cow to make it blend better with the tree right behind it.

3.The balloons and the cow blend in very smoothly with this farm with a clear sky background.

I think this project was very fun, at one point I went a bit overboard adding things to it so i deleted a lot of the stuff my. My favorite tool was the quick selection tool as of now cause it made things very simple. I dint have any straight edges to use the polygonal lasso tool on looking forward how masking is going to help with more complex images.

also the images I used where free from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Project2

1)I used the the quick selecting tool as I found it the easiest and most comfortable using. I have used this tool in the best and am familiar with it. The quick selecting tool made it quick to selecting around my dog as everything around her was sand and looked and had the same color. I also used the polygonal lasso tool to work around my dogs toes as it was super hard and almost impossible with the quick selecting tool because it keep selecting the whole toe. The polygonal tool made it easy because i just had to click and work my way around my dogs toes after I deleted the rest of the back ground that was selected with the quick selecting tool. These two tools made selecting the image of just my dog super easy.

2)I did use a the refine edges and the outer glow tool. I also had to adjust the color on my dog using the curves tool because the background of the creek shot was a little dark and my dogs shot was taken in a bright scene.

3)I think my dog belongs well in these backgrounds because she blends in nicely. I probably could have adjust the edges on the creek one a little better now looking at it but I think it turned out fine. I have taken pictures of my dog in similar backgrounds so I think it fits well. I also adjust the color of my dog by using the curves tool to make her fit in a little better.

I think this project was a great experience. I have always liked taking 2 different pictures and combining them to create a photo that looks like it should belong together. I have done many of these photos in the past but now I have a better understanding on doing it the proper way. I've used the quick selection tool and I am a big fan of it. I love how you can adjust the size of the circle to get more difficult areas.

Project 2 - Courtney Acostagrates

Courtney Acostagrates

Tools Used:
I mostly used the "Quick selection" tool to remove the background from my original image. This took care of mostly everything, and I used the "polygygonal lasso" tool to take care of the rest. I liked using the quick selection tool because it was quick and easy to pick up nearly all the background. I preferred the polygonal lasso tool to the other lassos because I felt that the point-by-point selection method gave me a lot of control over the specific area that I was working on. In this way, I was able to easily round off the gentleman's hat and shoes where the quick selection tool had left some rough edges.

Blending options:
I didn't find that there was a tremendous need to use many blending options. Because I was able to make a clean cut of the image in the forefront, there were very solid clean lines and thus no real need to use anything like the outer glow tool. I did was to utilize the curves and color balance adjustments to give the montage a unifying yellowing color cast. I also re-sized the gentleman with the transformation tool so that their size was better suited to the background. I felt that this created more consistency between the two components of the montage.

Opinion of final product:
I believe that the final montage is relatively believable. I had wanted to blur the foreground image a bit, since it seems to me that it has a somewhat crisper resolution than the background image. Unfortunately, when I attempted to employ this tool to the final image, the blur was applied to all aspects and I was not satisfied with the results. I think the positioning of the two gentleman and the color continuity help improve the believability of the image overall.

Experience:
I really enjoyed this project. I was pleased to find that with some simple resizing and color changes I was able to create a rather realistic montage. I had a few false starts initially, because I hadn't really taken the time in advance to consider how to realistically unify my images. I learned how important planning is in creating montages, which I believe to be an important lesson for all aspects of photo editing and design.

Project 2 - Vincent Phan

The original image just shows me jumping off of a ramp without a skateboard. I took an image of a skateboard and I removed it from its background by using quick selection. When I duplicated the skateboard layer to my project, I used the wand tool to select my front foot and erase a portion of the skateboard to look like my foot is overlapping the skateboard. I also used the match color command on the skateboard to adjust the color.

I'd say the composite is a good match for the environment, and the ramp. This was my first time using the quick-selection tool, so that was pretty fun to use.

I sure wish....

I had not missed the first day that class started. I was out of town and returned two days later. Missing the first class really set me back. I sure wish if I had been there so I would not be feeling so overwhelmed as I do. ;(

Project 2

Here is my final image for project 2. I used the magic wand tool to first get the tent from another picture, but then wanted to get the fire as well as the gear in too. So then I used the lasso tool and zoomed in to get as close as possible. After I got it in the wind break I then used the clone stamp tool to change the rock so it matched the area rock, and the shadows to add some shadow. This was a fun project, but I will need a lot more practice to be able to get this perfect!

Project 2...walt

Cut out my wife and I out of a formal photo. And stuck us in the middle of a lake SW of Jefferson (...at least I think it was Jefferson. Please correct me if I'm wrong...).

To select "us" I used the polygon lasso...as anything blown up enough has outlines of approx straight lines. Worked pretty good

To get a reflection of "us", had to invert, then skew/distort. Mea culpa - I did that in Fireworks. Can anyone tell me how to do so in PS?

Adjusted the background a bit with Image/Adjustments/Levels. But didn't hafta do much.

I did some "inner glow" to help with the outline. But I'm not that thrilled the results. Will be interested in how the others in the class got rid of any edges.

Do I believe it? Heck no. But it looks pretty interesting - especially since I centered "us" in the ripples of me swimming in the original. The faded/skewed/distorted reflection helps also.

Project2

Hello,

For Project2,

I choose to put my dog on the roof of a house. First I choose pict P6172729 for the background and used levels, saturation and vibrance to fix the color and levels in the background.



Then selected pict P6172717 the dog and cut him out using the quick selection tool, along with the refine edges tool.


The quick selection tool works the best and refine edges tool has is good for adjusting the edges. Then adjusted the image size to reduce the image to make the dog appear proportional to the house. Next I adjusted the levels and vibrance of the dog and saved to make the picture YD_onroof.psd a composite picture.


I believe that the picture looks as real as I could get it.
I enjoyed putting this picture together of my dog non a roof. I tried using the magic wand with no success until I used the quick selection tool, this is the tool I prefer to use because it was easy to go back and fix the edges.

Ken Avdeef