Launchpad C, Lesson 4: Dust!

This was time-consuming but easy and very satisfying.

This is Estelle. I don't know who Estelle is, but her picture was in a folder of my mother-in-law's old photos. As you can see, Estelle's photo has been around the block a few times. I used the Noise-Dust and Scratches filter the most for the little specks, and then used the Healing Brush and the Cloning tool to get rid of the bigger spots. She still needs a lot of work to be good as new, but it's a start :)

Blue group--Lesson 4--Fixing Mike and Lulu

For this project, I used a picture of my daughter Lulu and my brother Mike. Janee asked us to open a partially closed eye, but I figured I could go one better on that (who, me? competitive?)--and besides, I don't have any other recent pix of Lulu with my brother.

First, I did Lulu's eyes. I found some eyes in another photo that were turned at about the right angle and were about the same size, and then I copied them using the Lasso tool and pasted them into this photo.

The eyes are about 2 or 3 pixels too low, but I couldn't get them just right using the Move tool--they kept snapping too high or too low. Any suggestions about how to avoid that would be appreciated.

Then I used the Healing Brush, the Spot Healing brush, and the Clone tool to blend them in with the rest of the eye socket.

Then I went to work on my brother. He'd just come back from a weeklong boat trip around the Puget Sound, and he obviously thinks sunscreen is for sissies! So I wanted to lighten him up a bit. I couldn't get him the right color with a Curves or Levels layer, but a Hue/Saturation layer worked just great. (I give credit to my friend Marie for figuring that one out--she heard me whining about it and suggested I try it.)

One question: I didn't sharpen the photo, because I couldn't figure out which layer to sharpen. Sharpening the adjustment layer didn't work, and sharpening the background layer left out the eyes. ???

Anyway, this was hard work, but in the end, worth it--it's a much better picture now. But if anyone has any suggestions about how to make it better, I welcome them. When I'm satisfied with it, I want to send it to my brother, so if you can see any improvements that need to be made, feel free to pass them along :)

Launchpad C, Lesson 3--Extra Credit

I used the same picture of the mountains and instead used the filter gallery to apply, first, paint daubs, and then rough pastels. Fun!

Launchpad C, Lesson 3--Colored Pencil

This is harder than it looks! I tried it a few ways and finally came up with something fairly odd-looking, but fun. I think all the snow made it hard to get the light right, but that's okay :)

Launchpad C, Lesson 3: Line Art

I think I need a lot more practice with this technique. I tried several different pictures, and learned along that way that shadows are veryverybad; ornate buildings come out looking like mush; etc. Here's what I came up with. I'm not so happy with it. Suggestions/comments are welcome :)

Launchpad C, Lesson 3--Gradients

Here she is: Menorah Dog!

I had a hard time with this one--I couldn't get the gradient to show up. I finally discovered that I needed to have "Normal" showing in the Mode box, but Photoshop kept wanting to change it to "Screen." Once I got that figured out, this part was fun :)

Hey, can you warp just the mask? I thought it might be fun to do that, but I couldn't figure out how.

Launchpad C, Lesson 3--Fading and Pink

Janee's question about how you'd make a photo all B&W except for the girl in pink was hard to answer, so I tried it myself. This is my daughter Lulu on the beach. I won't say how I did it, since I don't want to give away the answer to the question, but I'll say this: it was fun, and I bet there are three other ways to do it, too :)

Launchpad C, Lesson 3: Adjustment Layer 1

I've decided to post these as I go, so I don't forget what I did :)

Okay, here's my Samoyed, April. She's a very fuzzy dog, as you can see. I changed the background to blue and then painted April white again. I realized too late that I should have chose a SMOOTH object for this exercise--it took a long time to paint all that hair in strand by strand! But now I have a greater appreciation for why it took those guys over at Pixar 5 years to finish "Monsters, Inc." The smooth characters were tough enough, but the hair made them nuts. They had to invent whole new software for the furry characters, and now I see why :)

Launchpad C, Lesson 2--Button Banners

These were fun, too! On the 3thieves button, I just made a gradient background and then added the text. On the GardenLA button, I found a flower image, reduced it and copied it to the button, then added a background, a border, and text.

Launchpad C, Lesson 2--Banner

Well, I got a little carried away and tried this in a few different ways. I also decided to incorporate the extra credit (gradient text) into the banner, so here they are.

One weird thing: I worked on them and got them finished. But then my daughter came in and said, "Are you going to work on your materpieces ALL DAY??" So I shut down and went and played with her for a while. When I came back, Photoshop asked if I'd like to upgrade the layers (some vector thing--can't remember the message exactly). I clicked yes, and when my files opened, the rainbow spill was all choppy--it had been absolutely smooth before. GRRRRRR!!

Anyway, this was a lot of fun! I found the bowl on the internet and tipped it; then I used the elliptical marquee tool and made an oval rainbow gradient, which I then warped into the shape you see. The text was easy--I just used different layer styles on the various versions. I added background colors, but I'm not so sure about those. If I were really going to use these, I'd probably look for a texture of some sort to use as background...maybe...