Fantasy Landscape

For my other final image I had to use a range of techniques.

Lasso

The lasso tool is basically an accurate select, it is useful for selecting more detailed things such as a person.

The lasso tool is the one that, surprise surprise, looks like a lasso (third one down), there are three types of lasso

lasso tool: this is a free hand one, you draw around what you want to select.

polygonal lasso tool: this one is only straight lines, it is good for boxes or buildings, anything with straight lines.

Magnetic lasso tool: this one clings to the defined edges of what you are selecting, with a slow hand this is the best one.

Masking

Masking is commonly used to refine what you have already selected with the lasso tool. once you have selected your area with the lasso tool click this button.

This is the quick mask tool, hen clicked this happens

when this is up you click the erase tool

the erase tool can be used to add or take away mask (so it is spot on).

The color white erase mask, the color black adds mask.

Copy and paste

Copy and paste is a basic tool, I used it to move a selected image to another picture

click the selected section, then go onto edit

click copy.

Then go onto your other picture and press edit

and...........click paste.

when you have pasted your picture you may need to feather the edges (make it look more natural and not so sharp) do this by zooming in close

and have the erase tool settings like this

then go softly round the edges till it looks natural.

Final image

For my final image I looked at the works of John Goto who did fantasy landscapes much like this one (but much better). I took inspiration from this image he created

John Goto is a well known British photo-digital editor. He is known for his 'high summer' work, he creates landscapes out of a lot of different images merged into one, I like how it keeps the brain occupied. I find that I constantly looking for things that are and aren't real. Goto studied fine art in London and his earlier work really shows those influences, he combined his photographs with drawings and paintings and it worked really well, I am sure I will try it out because it looked really cool. 

Over all I am happy with how my image came out, obviously it could have been better had I put more time into it but that is the case with most things. I am really pleased with how the death star looks in the sky, I think that I get the tone and opacity perfect so now it looks real. The dinosaur on the other hand isn't as good as I had hoped, it is slightly soft and it has some hard edges (around the feet) if I were to do it again I would make it smaller and feather the edges a bit better. Also the man riding the penny-farthing could have been done a bit better (I rushed him) it would have looked a lot better if I had him riding in the direction of the path. If I were to do an image like this one again I would definitely plan it out, I found it hard to think of things to add into my picture and I feel my picture suffered for it, the time I spent thinking of what to add could have been spent on editing. I would also add tiny little changes so that the viewer would almost be forced into studying my work, not that I crave attention, I would just like my work to make people question the reality of it. 

My sequence image

This is the first of my two final images for this project. This is a sequence shot. A sequence shot is where you take multiple pictures of a movement, such as a BMX trick. I got inspiration from the BMX photographer Chris Hill-Scott who has also done sequence shots like this.

What I liked about this shot was how Chris included the shadows, I was surprised to find that in a lot of sequence shots leave out the shadows, that would have been too easy for me.
As you can probably see in my photo the shadows are not perfect, this is partly because I had never done a sequence shot before and it is also because when I took the photos I moved the camera a little bit. If I were to do a shot like this again I would use a tripod to keep the shots steady and I would also spend more time in photoshop editing.

Selective Black and White

This has become one of the most popular techniques on photoshop.
To start you make a copy of the background

Then on the copy convert it to black and white

when you have converted it select the erase tool and rub out what you want to be in color

Final Image.

Add Text

Adding text to a picture is very simple.
First click the text tool.

from there you can edit the size, font, ect.

You can also warp the text.

Final Image.

Painting in color

To start create a new layer

with the new layer open select the color you want

then with the brush tool open paint in the areas you want to change. Once you have painted go to layer options

(where it says normal)
when you click on that this list should appear

click overlay.

Before

After

I painted the sky to give a deeper more dramatic blue, I also painted the bike to make it brighter.

vignette

Vignette
To apply vignette to a photo you start by creating a new layer

After you have done that you open the brush tool and change the size of the brush to what you want

remember to keep opacity and flow at 100%
Now because I was shooting with a fish eye lens my photo is a circle shape, if it was a rectangle I would hold shift to get straight lines, I just had to try my best to keep the lines tidy.

once you have drawn around your image go onto 'filter-blur-gaussian blur'

when you click that this box pops up

here you can change how blurry the line is, you will want to get a faint line around the outside of your image, that is called vignette.
Here is my final image

Photoshop Workshop 3

Levels and Brightness and Contrast.

One way to change the contrast of an image is to go onto 'Image - Adjustments - Levels'

When you click that this box will pop up, on here you can either go onto 'presets' and pick from there or you can move the 3 arrows under the graph, for the best results it is better to keep the the 2 outer arrows at the edge of the where the black on the graph starts and have the middle arrow in the middle.

Layering.

To layer two images start by opening two images in separate windows 

From here click the 'move tool' then click one of the images and move it over to the other window

you will need to resize the image to however you want it to look.
Once you have sized it you can change the Opacity in the layers box in the bottom corner

 the blends the two images.

Liquifying.
Liquify is a tool used by fashion photographers to improve the models, maybe it's shallow but the world is shallow, models need to look better than possible.
Josh is not a model so I have a big task on my hands!

To start I click 'filter - Liquify'

On here I can change the image, when done quickly it looks very bad, like mine, when done professionally it can look great and unnoticeable.

Clone Tool.

The clone tool is used to clean up blemishes such as spots, it can also be used to clean up the background of a photo.

All better.