For Valentine’s Day, I’m sharing a fun and FREE little program with you called Shape Collage.
An Example using images from my Flora Guide.
Here’s a video showing how it works:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMrSkUzg7ws
Tag Archives: photoshop
are you stuck on someone?
If so, don’t forget to send them a Valentine wish! (You’ve got two days left). 
Tech: Canon 24-105mm at 105mm. ISO 100. 1/750th sec at f/4. Topaz and Flaming Pear filters.
desert pixels
Yesterday, I worked on a recent desert landscape and came up with three renditions.
HDR – three exposures blended using Photomatix
Black and White – I used Photoshop’s B/W adjustment layer and Topaz Ajust for contrast
High Key (sort of) – I used various Topaz filters on this one
Also…a correction to what I said yesterday regarding our rain storms. The worst is yet to come! It’s starting tomorrow afternoon and continuing through Friday. I always get Tu and Thu mixed up 🙂
dueling blogs
One of my shooting buddies, Barry White, just started a blog. I’ve been giving him a hard time about it for several years so it’s about time! Welcome Barry 🙂
His photo today is very similar to my first shot of Balanced Rock so I thought I’d post mine. My shot was taken on October 7th, 2003. (I like Barry’s shooting angle better than mine). I was with him when he shot his (2009) so I know he did an HDR. Mine is just a single shot but I did “Topaz it Up” a bit 🙂
Our images remind me of a favorite “What the Duck” strip.
backlighting
More shots from Saturday’s hike in the wash behind our neighborhood.
Backlighting creates a beautiful glow around everything.
Invasive Fountain Grass
A knot in tree bark becomes an animal face in Photoshop.
are you losing your memory?
For the past year and a half, I’ve been putting up with extreme slow downs in Photoshop.
(you thought I was going talk about aging, didn’t you 🙂 ) Because I haven’t had much time
for photography, I’ve put up with it but when I started having to restart Photoshop after
only one simple task, I finally took the time to figure it out. Not that I hadn’t tried a million
things already…including buying more memory…but this time I googled until I found an
answer. Long story short…FONTS!
How can you have a proper Halloween, for instance, without these?!
Yes…I admit it. I’m a nut for fun fonts. I have animals, flowers, holiday themes, etc.
I have hundreds, I’m sure! Well, a single font or maybe more had become corrupted.
The simple solution (for me anyway) was to turn off font preview in Photoshop.
Problem solved! My memory is running at 100%. I then turned font preview back on
but chose “small” preview and so far so good.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could do something equally simple to get ours back? 🙂
lavender
Even though it took us almost twice a long to get home as it did to drive up, we really enjoyed our visit
to the Flagstaff Arboretum last Sunday. We went to catch the last of the wildflowers but as it turned out,
there were practically none. There was this Lavender, though. I created a modified Orton effect.
photomontage
I’m posting a photomontage today to extoll the virtues of Photoshop Elements. Successful compositing
requires total control over the components in your project and the only way to have total control is with
Layer Masks which Elements doesn’t offer. BUT you can have access to Layer Masks as well as many
other tools from the full version courtesy of Richard Lynch’s Hidden Elements. His full bundle at $24.95,
gives you almost everything you’d want from the full version of Photoshop BUT even better is that you
can get Layer Masks for FREE. His free bundle has several other useful tools including a channel mixer.
The photomontage below was done entirely in Elements 7 with the help of free tool bundle from Hidden Elements.
(If you decide to try them, follow the installation instructions EXACTLY! I skipped one step so it took awhile to load).
My montage is made up of 10 images: The background shot is of a rock in my backyard and then there are
5 images of petroglyphs shot in Utah a few years ago; A silhouette of a photographer that I selected out of
another image; A map of rock art sites in Utah; Two texture layers. One is a shot of tightly crumpled paper
and the other is a macro shot of a rough surfaced rock. Each of these was blended using blend modes and
opacity. Since this particular image is mostly monotone, I also use color adjustments to match the colors.
Here is a screenshot of all the layers and masking I did with Elements 7.
Click here for a larger version.
Katrin Eismann was who I learned from but I now know someone else who is a master at compositing!
Carol Leigh. She’s been creating some beautiful photomontages and is considering offering instruction.
Her new website; PHOTOMOTIVATION will be up an running soon. Visit the site and sign up for her mailing list!
110 degree daydream
Cooler temperatures and maybe even a little rain coming this weekend so I daydreamed a little 🙂
quick photoshop art
I was in the mood to create a greeting card for a friend yesterday so for today’s post,
I thought I’d share a Photoshop art tutorial I found recently. A link to the tutorial is below.
Before:
After:
Tutorial:
Photoshop Watercolor by Steve Patterson
TIPS: 1. Experiment with the values of filters. The strength of filter effects is dependent on file size and the amount
of detail in an image so what works for one image might not work for another. 2. Once you’re finished all the steps,
play with the opacity of each layer. I also did a final color adjustment, a little cloning and added a border.