Week 2 Lab : Painting a Picture

the assignment was to "paint" a picture with brushes in photoshop. I used a picture I took in Tahoe with a long exposure (10s) to freeze the water. My goal was not to make a precise copy of the picture but to make a painting including the main elements of the composition with a soft focus texture.

I used the mix brush in a mode that is sampling the color from the actual picture on the background layer, and painted on a additional layer. I used a fairly large brush to mainly capture the main "blocks" in the composition. then I used an additional layer and painted with the normal brush to suggest the snow on the mountain and another layer to add a little bit of texture in the 2 main rocks.

Week 2 Part 2 : Composite Bodies

The idea is to attach the head extracted from a picture to a body found in another picture. I searched the web for couples that could make a good final image and after some time I found 2 couples. I could not choose  one, so I did both!

the first couple is on one side a portrait of actress and super model Leaticia Casta made at the legendary Harcourt Studio and on the other side the headshot of a young Bob Dylan ( from the cover of the album " The times they are a changin'")

I thought the mix of Laeticia's pose and Dylan's attitude could be interesting. I used a combination of different selection tools to extract the head, mainly color range for the hair part and polygonal lasso for the chin. then a little bit of feather and copy paste. then resize and rotate to the final size and position. I used the clone tool to remove a little bit of the background head that was still visible. Then the difficult part began. To have something credible the "texture" and the lighting have to be consistent. I smothed bob's skin ( duplicate layer, gaussian blur , mask and a soft brush ) and then recreated the lighting effect on the face. that type of "1930's Holywood" lighting is very classy but is also very complex. I just used the lasso tool with a large amount of feather and the luminosity / contrast tool to recreate highlights and shadows. I then used the levels tool and a bit of sepia to try to better match the general tone of the studio shot. I then extracted a piece of Laeticia's shoulder and pasted it on top of Bob's chin. Voila!

the other couple I found was the iconic picture of a young Yves Saint Laurent ( the famous french fashion designer ) shot by Jean Loup Sieff ( one of my favorite photographer ) and a recent portrait of the Dude ( a k a  Jeff Bridges )

I basically used the same techniques for this one. As Jeff's picture is color I translated it to B&W using the hue/saturation tool pulling the saturation to 0 ( master chanel ) . Jeff's picture being significantly sharper I also softened it with gaussian blur. making the lighting match was a lot easier on this one.

OK this was fun. I wish I could pay the bills with a job like that ( but I don't have much hope...)

Week 2 Part 1 : Filters Gone Wild

The assignment was to try artistic filters and "let go". I used a picture I took of a friend as a new avatar for his Facebook page ( standard 4 lights shot )

I tried randomly the filters and finally did the following: I made 3 copies of the image and applied 3 differents filters: mosaic on the background, chrome on the intermediate layer and reticulation on the top. I played with the parameters on the different layers and finally I used different blending mode to have the final result: luminosity for the second layer and color burn on the third.

so when you add the 3 level of randomness ( filter choice, parameters value and blending modes ) this is what you get:

WEEK 1 : Fixing a Photo

rotate this photo so the bridge is horizontal then resize

To straighten and crop, I chose a guide as a way to verify horizontality, the rotation tool and then I cropped manually to achieve the right image aspect ratio so that after a linear resize the picture has the expected 600x399 size. this allowed me to remove part of the right side that was a little bit overwhelming. 

I then did the basic processing I would do to this type of picture: remove some of the blue haze on the other side of the bay with the curve tool on a selected area with some feather, and add a little bit of contrast  to the same part, pushed a little the color of the bridge with the hue saturation tool ( red chanel) , sharpened with the smart sharpen tool and a gradient mask so that the foreground is sharpened more, reduced the strong shadow in the front with a color range selection, boosting the luminosity while reducing contrast on the selected zone. the final touch has been just a little of warming photographic filter to give more the feeling of a warm summer day.

I finally resized the picture to 600x399 @ 72 dpi and uploaded to the blog

Blog Creation

I created this blog to track my progress in the DM/IS10C Photoshop class. 

I am 58, French ( nobody's perfect..), I moved recently to California. I am an electronics engineer.

I was very much into photography as a student ( the kind you do in dark rooms, seems 100 years ago…), won few contests, was even offered a job as a product photographer for one of the main advertising agency in Paris but was not confident enough to take the plunge so I chose the "easy" career path as an engineer, stopped photography completely  ( and destroyed my thousands of pictures!) and came back to it about 15 years ago.

I have been using photoshop on and off since version 2 mainly for photo retouch at work for presentations ( simple jobs) and more recently as a hobby, but always in a simplistic way, like the people who use Word like a typewriter not understanding the power of styles. I am comfortable with the basic stuff and I can achieve a lot but my efficiency is minimum. I am interested mainly in the methodologies (the right use of adjustment layers, masks , channels, what about blending modes…) and mixing images with vector based objects ( text or drawing). I am also very interested in understanding how to have an efficient workflow ( bridge, RAW editor, back up, color calibration especially in the printing environment ) I use additional tools out of photoshop like HDR, focus stacks, panorama…

here I add one of my pictures to test picture integration in the post.

OK it seems to work. that would be a "before" picture

and this would be the "after" picture