Launchpad C, Lesson 6: A few adjustments

It's frightening how easy this is to do, once you know HOW to do it. I'll never look at my photos the same way again :)

Janee, the first one's for you.


John, the second one's for you.

Launchpad C, Lesson 6: Replacing the Sky

There's a "late for the sky" joke here somewhere, but I can't quite figure it out right now.

Anyway, this was a cool part of the assignment. Once again, it took a lot of time (I HAD to pick a tree, rather than a simple building!), but it was quite enlightening to see what could be done.

First I fixed the sky with a sky gradient taken from another picture with a "good" sky. Then I painted out all the gray that was left using the mask. Then I used an adjustment layer to lighten the rest of the picture up and make it look a bit sunnier. And then I used Image-Adjustment-Hue/Saturation to slightly alter the color of the water, so that it would seem to be reflecting a bluer sky.

Launchpad C, Lesson 6: Layer Mask

Holy smoke! Was this ever tedious! If I were doing this for a client, I'd get my money up front!

As you can see, I still didn't really completely get rid of the outline, but I get the idea, and I want to get on with the next section: replacing the sky :)

Launchpad C, Lesson 6: Clone Tool

This clone-tool technique is very time-consuming, but the results are worth it! As you can see, the original picture has lots of extraneous people in it, and especially that little red-eyed monster behind my daughter who kept jumping into my shots at the last second. (GRRRR!)

To fix the photo, I cropped out the people on the right and a bit of the tree on the left. Then I fixed Lulu's red-eye with a paint brush; then I cloned away until the boy and the man in the background are gone, as well as the white signpost. I also used the Clone tool to fix a hole in the Christmas tree. The only thing I wasn't happy with was the top railing of the fence--it looks a bit blurry. At a large size, it's very obvious, but at a smaller size, a lot of sins are erased :)

Hmm...

I just realized, looking at those two pictures of Donya, that I should also have colored the reflection of the curtains. Oh, well. Next time...

Launchpad C, Lesson 6: Quick Mask

The Quick Mask is a very useful tool! I've been meaning to get new drapes in the living room, and now I can test out all the colors and see how they'll look!

The first picture is our dog Donya, who feels it is her job to know EVERYTHING that goes on in the neighborhood. In the second picture, as you can see, the drapes are a different color. I used the Quick Mask and set the opacity to about 60, to allow the shadows to come through.

Launchpad C, Lesson 5: Animation

This animation lesson was so much fun! And so time-consuming. I actually did the extra credit (the falling book) first, and it was easier than the banner--smaller file-size, too. The banner is really too big to actually use, but it's fun. It took a long time to get the motorcyles "gapped" just right, and on the first banner (where the bikes go around in a square) I couldn't figure out why 3 of them show up at the end, when only one is showing in the frame??

But this was really fun, and it gave everyone at Starbucks, where I was working on it, a laugh :)

My animations don't want to "animate" here, so here are some links:

Falling Book

The First Banner

The Second Banner

The Third Banner