Project 3 — Becca.

I have revised my opinion of masks since learning to use them properly. While they're not always reliable, I find them much more intuitive than the marquee selection tools.

I started with an experiment in contrast. Both of the first images were shot in fairly consistent light environments. The first one I chose was a photo of a pair of black cats.


This strongly shadowed duo was very easy to isolate with Color Range. I barely even had to fix any holes in the mask. (As you can see, the furry edges are not perfect, but it would be fairly simple, if time-consuming, to go in and tinker with a pixel-sized brush around their tails and ears to get stray hairs into the selection.)


For more of a challenge, I chose an image containing a white kitten for the second attempt.


The white kitten's silvery fur made it very hard to select. Even with the Localized Color Clusters option turned on, Color Range was not able to separate the kitten from the white floor in the background effectively. I had to do a lot of hand painting in Quick Mask mode to get even a halfway passable result. I'm not too proud of how it turned out, but it did demonstrate that masking is probably not the best tool for the job — however, because of the blown highlights in the image, Refine Edge did not make the selection any better.


(On the SWS server, both of these images should be uploaded as PSD files so that the selection is visible: I moved each selection to its own new layer to make it easier to compare against the background.)

The clipping mask was easy. I found a beautiful image of colorful fireworks to be clipped in.


To make the title, I just used the same technique we went over in class to get this festive result. (I know it's not appropriate to the current season, but I quailed at the idea of attempting to insert turkeys into my art.)


Finally, I wanted to use a steampunk motif for my composition. An artist whose work I follow on DeviantART loves to make stock photographs with elaborate steampunk costumes: the one I used is from my favorite series.


I also found a fantastic picture of a stone doorway and a wooden hall to use as the background.

The background needed color correction to blend in better with the girl's waiflike pale skin and red hair, and I also lowered the saturation value to make it look more like a faded photograph. The shadows I drew by hand with the Burn tool, and the faint scrollwork at the top was done with a stamp brush, to give the composition a fairy-tale feel. I added in the pair of black cats from the previous exercise, erasing part of the image so that it looked like they were peeking out from around the doorway.


The most time-consuming part of this process was editing the mask I used to capture the girl. Color Range did an inefficient job of separating her from the background, so I had to delineate the edges by hand with the pen tool. The shorcut key — X to switch from white to black — made this a lot easier.

Overall, I would say that I need much more practice with masking, and also with techniques for blending different layers of a composition together and making them look realistic, but I think this has been the most useful, if difficult, project we've done so far.

Project 3- Melissa Flores

Ok, what can i say about masking? Well, it made me want to pull me hair out litteraly. The task for me personally wasnt as enjoyable as the last projects. It was pretty defficult to move the picture because it made the model see through, it really made me frustrated! The tools that i used was the color range tool and also to level the coloring of the picture. I tried really hard to get this task right, but i wasnt succesful so im going to have to practice more for sure.

Project 3- Courtney Acostagrates

Multi-layered project

Clipping Mask

I think all of Deke's weird exercises with monsters and dinosaurs might be rubbing off on me...

For my project, I used the clipping mask tool to unite an image of a strange woman a mud mask, and Crater Lake. I created a layer on which I drew and a oval in approximately the same color as the lake, and to that, I applied a gradient tool to create depth and (arguable) a more realistic effect. I then created another layer on which I placed the image of the face, created a clipping mask, an voila! :)


Multi-layer image
I began with three images, a forest, a "no trespassing" sign, and a skeleton. To create my multi-layered image I first applied a slight gaussian blur tool to the forest. I then corrected the colors in the "skeleton" image, and then removed it from the background using the color range and mask tools. I found the color range tool to be quite helpful since the background was considerably darker than the white skeleton. I found the tool to be particularly useful under these circumstances. I used the mask tool to clean up around the edges that the color range tool has missed.
The color range tool was less useful on the "no trespassing" image since there was less contrast between foreground and background, though it was a helpful starting point. I relied more heavily on the mask to remove the background from this image.

To unite the images, I dragged the "skeleton" cut-out to the tree background applied "match color". To the "skeleton" image I aplied the "inner shadow' and "gradient overlay" effects. I then dragged over the "no trespassing" image which I blended as a "hard light" layer with 35% opacity, resulting in it's semi-transparency. I intentionally placed this yellow object over the background trees of the same color to create color unity.

My next step was to apply a black gradient to the entire image via "multiply." My intention in so doing was to create movement between the dark, lower part of the image, and the light, upper right corner. At this point, I applied a solid grey "vivid light" layer at 60% opacity to alter the forest color. I then applied hue/saturation, color balance, and brightness/contrast tools to arrive the finished composite.

Experience
As I mentioned above, I found both the color range and mask tools to be useful. The color range tool is best best suited to images with greater color contrast, whereas masks are more universally applicable. I was happy to see how both of these could be used together to simply and cleanly remove foreground images from a background.

Project 3 - Darryl Zenger

Remove Background

I picked an image of a flying saucer to remove the background from as the first image: ufo.psd. The second image was an alien: alien1.psd. I used the color range to remove the background and the magic wand to touch up. I like using color range along with the magic wand much more then the masks palette, I just find it easier to understand and use.

The Clipping Mask

The clipping mask I made was in a header I’m making for a Portland web site. The image I clipped in was of a bunch of full beer bottles with different types of beer so I got lighter and darker colors coming through the main text: inthecityportland.psd.



Simple Multi-layered

For my multi-layered image I took the images of the ufo and alien that I used in the remove background steps above, and then added them along with a few other things into an image of earth from space. After I’d moved the images I used the background eraser tool to clean up around the edges and help to blend the images into the new image. I also used the color range to darken the flying saucer. Project3_.psd.

Avdeef_project3

Hello:

Masking was difficult using in this project. I have a couple of images for step 2. I then chose to use the picture ford truck (ford truck.jpg).















and used the other picture boy (boy.jpg).
















I then used the magic selection tool to cut the boy out then used the color range tool to make the mask and the refine edges tool. Then placed the boy to the left of the picture in front of the Ford truck to create Project3_2a_avdeef.psd.
















The other masking picture is one of me with my camera on a background (ken.jpg).















I first had to remove the background using the magic selection tool and paint the background white. Next I used the color range tool to mask the image and used the refine mask tool to adjust the edges

Then created a background image to put behind me (background.jpg)

to create the image of me Project3_2b_avdeef.psd.
















My next project using the clipping mask method I used a Coast picture (beach.jpg),















Then used a sunset picture at the beach (sky.psd)















inside the words Tillamook to create Project3_3_avdeef.psd.















The final picture I a friend of mine Bob showing one of his guitars he designed. I started with the picture (bob.jpg).















Then removed the background and used my own background image (background.jpg).















Then placed him on the new background with some effects and text. to create Project3_4_avdeef.psd.















These are my files for project3

Ken Avdeef

Project 3...walt

Not so successful. Several problems:

First...had to figure the pixel thing out. Had a great deal of confusion trying to adjust the "size" of my images relative to each other. Finally figured out that it's all about pixels. My background images were "smaller" than my camping images. Had to upsample the background and moonscape - before layering on the little stuff. Then this made the images humongous...and slowed down my machine to a crawl. Had to "smaller-ized" the attached image in this blog with Fireworks to get it to upload. What I learned the hard way: pixel control.

Next problem: what exactly is a mask? Does it define what is shown or what is blocked? Still don't know. Just kept clicking until something worked.

Started with the moonscape. Easy - it had a black background. Did a quick mask and somehow got it to work. Used the brush tool to clear out some bad spots. At this point, I think I should have modified the edges. Realized at the end that it was too late.

Then started on the small images. I think I used the Color Range on one and the background eraser tool (like in the video) on another. For the latter, I ended up later having to use the polygon tool (my favorite by far...anything blown up enough has straight sides) to clean up stray pixels.

Tried adjusting the tents. Needed to more closely match the washed out moonscape: Used Image/Adjust/Hue&Saturation...lowered saturation and increased lightness a bit. Can't remember how much.

Tried Filer/Blur/Gaussian to blur edges. Not sure if it helped. Again: should have taken care of the edges earlier.

The moonscape was lifted from some NASA site...and had crosshairs. Use the healing brush to eliminate them.

Tried adding some Drop Shadow. Marginal success.

Threw in a title since others were doing so. This took some time to figure out. Remember that "pixel control" comment? Well in the images I set up, the size of the type had to be about 450 pt. I kept trying things like 16 or something (normal for apps like Word)...which I couldn't see.

Actually, it looks pretty corny.

-w

Project 3: Karel Rasovsky

Color Range vs. Mask Palette

Both – the Color Range and Mask Palette tools – stand on their own merit. I usually used both in the process of isolating objects and compiling a new multi-layer composition. Starting with a flat image, Color Range was a good enough first tool to sketch out a rough selection of an object from the image, without the complexity of building a layer. The colors to be selected can be adjusted and the results can be viewed dynamically, saving valuable time. Inevitably, I would always find myself reverting to the quick mask mode for finer editing work on the mask. Having access to all the familiar selection tools (e.g. magnetic lasso) offers flexibility when refining the mask. Saving the selection outline in the Channel Palette took some getting used to on my part - remembering to hit the “save” button, and only save to TIFF or PSD files - but once I got it under my skin, this proved invaluable for saving multiple versions of a mask as alpha channels. (This is perhaps the only major advantage of the Color Range over the straight use of selection tools only.)

Once I moved a selection to a new multi-layer target image, the Mask Palette would come into play. Usually, there would be additional work to be done, aka blending the “imported” object now being built into a new layer –details like getting rid of bluish edges embedded in the object. Creating a pixel-based mask associated with that layer opens access to the Mask Palette, to take care of exactly this sort of edits. And since the Mask Palette only sees the active layer being edited, it makes it possible to invoke the Color Range command from here again, and work on the selected object now confined to a layer.

Removing background from images

On to creating a Happy Halloween card! I practiced Color Range technique when selecting the outline of a pumpkin character, but the black background and the “almost black” rim of the pumpkin hat made it impossible to create a good mask, as the dark-gray rim would come out as a “reveal” area on the mask. Finally, I came up with a trick to accomplish this – went into the RGB channel, selected the hat rim only using magnetic lasso selection tool, and then inverted the selection turning is almost white now. This made the image ready for creating a better mask. I switched to Channel Mask and selected the mask, then worked on filling up thinning areas inside the mask mostly with brush tool. Done? Not quite. Now, I needed to go back into the RGB channel, select the hat rim area again (same magnetic lasso tool) and invert the selection back to the original (dark gray). Finally, I had both - a perfect mask, without permanently modifying the original image. The magnetic lasso tool did a marvelous job in making the two consecutive selections look identical. Once transferred into the target background image, I had to open Mask Palette mode in the new layer and enter Color Range mode, in order to better blend the edges of the pumpkin.

Overall, I found creating a mask through the Color Range command to be very demanding. It exponentially increases the complexity of the selection process, because one has to worry not only about making a precise selection in terms of the contours of the object, but also about creating a good mask which involves making sure everything inside the selected areas turns black. Unless you start with a high-contrast background/foreground image, this is not easy to accomplish.

Clipping Mask method

In the spirit of this season, here comes another Happy Halloween card creation. The Clipping Mask method is a refreshingly simple way for creating a layered composition. I didn’t count the clicks, but it was as easy as one, two, three – get a background image, create a text layer and clip it with a dummy image layer that is to be “imprinted” on the card text. The Rosewood Std font offered in Photoshop is a 3D-like font type suitable for picking up enough of the clipped layer wallpaper on the resulting text, so I used it in this project. The “edit style” includes good assortment of pre-built options for text warping, one of them worked great for my card. With only modest investment in time, this method delivered wonderful effect.

The Adobe Help pages were sufficient for this basic project. For practical advice on more subtle aspects of Photoshop use, I like to search the Community Help searchable from the same portal – there you will find input on topics that Adobe Help alone does not address.

Multi-layered project

Here, I ventured to compose a layered image that captures the essence of my son Ian. The technical challenge of the project was removing three different objects from their original images. The Earth on black setting was the easiest selection to make, but the butterfly and Ian’s portrait made up for it in complexity. Color Range came up short in both cases, so I was back to magnetic lasso again, removing the background around both piece-by-piece. Archeological kind of work J Very time consuming, but worth it! I had now nice, clean components to build the composition. Building these as new layers in the target image was straightforward – only Ian’s image needed a touch of blending through Mask Palette features. I experimented with gradient blending of different sort, but none of it won my heart, so I stayed with the undiluted version attached here. (Close second came the same composition, only with the Earth faded into background with “radial gradient” – not published.)

The resulting image is Ian at his best – imaginative, born explorer, ready to take on this world!