Alpha and Quick Masks

In this assignment I had to use the quick mask method in order to crop out the subject. It wasn’t that hard for me since I’ve been doing this for a while, but there is always a sensibility issue that I have when it comes to specific details. The way I used the brush tool was with the shift key in order to keep straight lines and I changed the pattern of the tool in order to be smoother. I also used the smudge tool in order to get some of the hair for the girl’s heads so it would look more natural. After all of that, I selected the wand tool in order to refine the edge. Then I saved them as alfa (including the inverse) and then saved the files as targas. 

Text Poster

I’ve decided to posturize the well-known phrase “Cartman” uses from the show called “South Park.” It was really fun making the poster in general with all the cropping involved when I had to edit the mask layers. The assignment started with the main text, which I used 3 different blending modes to get the desired effect, then the layers styles (like drop shadow and inner glow). It was hard to get the right amount of the satin effect since it kept over powering the color of the text, but I managed to get the right amount of it in the end. After that I just added adjustment layers to the whole thing and then cropped out part of them in order to give the text more debt with the different layers of colors. In the end, I just added a Japanese volcano on top of the both backgrounds and blended it using the ‘blend if’ option to take out more of the shadow parts from the volcano and leave the highlighted lightning.

            The assignment wasn’t hard, but it did occupy a lot of time in order to make. The layers were organized from my file and could use more work for the solid color backgrounds. Overall it was pretty fun and interesting in creating a poster based on a silly quote.

Color Correction

I understand that color correction is a method that people use in Photoshop to make the image easier to crop out the subject or the background. It is also used to differentiate multiple subjects within the image, and makes them stand out more. The assignment was extremely difficult to cope with, specially the images like the bird and the rooster (one had too much shadow and the other had so many different colors). I fixed the rooster by using the black/white adjuster and then fixing the hues from there (using green, a little blue, and red saturation). Then I selected the bird and made it lighter that the background. I tried using curves for the bird, but I didn’t come across a significant change in the image other than an inverse/negative color layout.

The money was also done the same way, but I didn’t select anything and I had to focus more on the shadows of the image. I tinted the shadows of the image yellow to make them easier to manipulate (since the shadows didn’t have a common color to begin with). The Quirigua monument was very hard to handle since the image had a monochromatic style to it already. If I change one aspect (saturation, hue, brightness), the entire image changed dramatically. To work around that, I used the curves, color balance, shadow/highlights, and hue/saturation (in this order). I ended up finishing, but had a little trouble with the hue/saturation because the image was really sensitive at that point.

Cropping Assignment

             I'm not going to lie; the assignment looked a little intimidating. The pictures were both difficult to deal with when I had to crop out the backgrounds. The fact that hair was flying all over the place made the images extra hard to work with the lasso tool. I did stick to the lasso tool when the color of the hair and the background was similar. If it had sections were there was mostly white background and dark hair contrast, it was much more effective if I used the magic wand tool to cut out that background. The magnetic lasso was very helpful when the situation called for it. It was particularly useful in the image with a very colorful background (the little girl). The lasso tool has its useful moments, but make the work go very slow and at the same time made me frustrated at points.

              It was really fun figuring out the different ways in which I can do this job. I'm sure there's a lot more methods to crop out backgrounds that we didn't go over in class, but it was still a fine finish for the assignment.

Haiku

Photoshop is really complicated software, but somehow it's also really fun to use. Making sure the photo looks realistic is really hard, especially if you have to fuse other pictures in it for a whole piece. Some layers look to pixilated and others look too real/sharp/focused. It takes such a long time to crop out images if you don't use the magic wand option. The tone from my assignment is good since I took the lighting of the sky into consideration. It was an assignment that tested my ability to apply my skills into a poem. I will have to find new ways to sharpen my skills even further.