Week 6 – PSE 4 Homework
I can’t believe the 6-week course is over! I had a great time…
Here is my final assignment…fading two images together…before and after. Enjoy! (I know I did…)
Before – a duck and some lilly pads:
And after the fade:
Week 5 – PSE 4 Homework
Here’s my homework for Week 5 — based on Sara’s recommendation, I downloaded a few additional layer styles from the Adobe website, including FruitBasket (which I used in Part 1) and Wood Series 2 (which I used in Part 3). What fun! I wasn’t able to come up with a unifying theme this week, but I definitely had a great time with these assignments.
Part 1: Creating a Poster using the Filters Gallery and Text Effects. I began with a pretty lousy photo of one of my sons, but one I played with the Filters gallery, I found that the dry brush added a cool effect. Then I used the magic paint brush to select the watermelon, invert, and fade the background. It was fun adding the Fruit Basket Watermelon layer style to my text. Here are the results:
Part 2: Cookie Cutter with a feathered edge before/after (using a cloud-shaped cookie cutter and 10 pt. for feathering)
Part 3: Cookie Cutter with a stroked and styled edge before/after (using the road sign cookie cutter and the Redwood layer style from Wood Series 2):
Week 4 – PSE 4 Homework
My head is spinning with all of the different ways there are to select objects in a PSE4 photo! As always, my photos this week are following a theme, which seems to be “Red, White and Blue.” I’m using some digital scrapbooking paper for my backgrounds that I’ve downloaded from the Shabby Princess website (http://www.shabbyprincess.com). This was a fun lesson full of techniques I’ll definitely use!
Here is a photograph before any kind of touchups or object extraction:
Here is the same photo, but adjusting the chromic aberrations, namely the red/yellow car headlights in the top of the photo:
And here it is again after…I lightened, adjusted shadows/highlights, and used a combination of the magic wand and paint brush selection tools to get the details…it was tough! Here it is:
Here’s a photo before the Magic Extractor:
And here’s the same photo after playing with the Magic Extractor and placing the image on background paper:
And finally, here is the Creative Corner snapshot excercise Before and After. Whew! I think I picked a difficult picture to try this on, but at least I understand the steps now! Trying to line up the shoreline and shadows were especially tricky. Here are the results:
Before:
And After:
1 CommentWeek 3 – PSE 4 Homework
Here are my before/after photos for this week — my photo theme this week seems to be eyewear!
A photo of one of my sons before using the Photo Filter:
Here it is, after using all of the Quick Fix tools and the Cyan Photo Filter:
And here are my two examples of my other son, before and after using the selective desaturation technique…frankly, it makes him look a little bit “under the weather!”:
Wait a second…after a good night’s sleep, I remembered about the Magic Wand tool and inverting the selection, so I selected just the goggles, inverted, then desaturated…better!
Week 2 – PSE 4 Homework
I seem to be doing these assignments thematically, so this week (in honor of the Tour de France) I’m featuring bike race photos. Here are my two before/after photos for this week’s homework. The first one shows how a photo can be improved with the Shadows/Highlights filter, and the second one uses the feather feature to create a photo vignette. I improved the shadows & highlights on the second one, too…it’s amazing how much more detail pops out!
Pretty dark, pretty ugly!
It’s still difficult to capture a bike race with a digital camera, but this brings out WAY more of the detail!
Here are my before/after shots using the steps for creating a photo vignette:
Week 1 – PSE 4 Homework
Week 1 Homework:
Here’s my very first homework assignment for my very first online course…I’ve wanted to experiment with PSE for a long time and I’m finally getting around to it! I took my kids to a local petting zoo a few weeks ago, so please forgive my farm animal theme today.
Bunnies before using Auto Smart Fix and other Auto tools from the Enhance menu
The same bunnies after using Auto Smart Fix and other Auto tools from the Enhance menu. I like the way the background improved, especially the red pipe on the right, but the white fur lost some of its contrast.
Here’s a photo of a pig before using Quick Fix
And here he is after playing with the buttons and sliders in Quick Fix mode. The Auto Sharpen button seemed to improve things, but I probably took it a little too far. I like the sharpening effect on his ear better than on his body. I started playing with the various color sliders, it really made the picture look weird so I left those alone. I applied Smart Fix, Auto Levels and Auto Contrast as well.
Here’s my chicken (rooster?) photo before following the Old-Fashioned Photo How-To steps
And here s/he is after adding the look of sepia tones. I found that I needed to use the lighten button several times to get it to look sufficiently old-fashioned.
