Playing with Photoshop

I love playing with Photoshop. Last night I was practicing removing stuff from photos. I have a snapshot of a cemetery in Wisconsin. It's not a great shot, the light levels are wrong, the colors are muted, and there is a plant stand, a rope and a road that detract from the image. So I removed the offenders, punched up the colors, and adjusted the levels and contrast. I also tried out the image in black and white.

And then I made them into a movie, to show how the photograph morphed. I haven't done these movies before, but it was really fun. I just wish I could remember what program I used...I really need to start taking notes on some of this stuff I do.

I am having a really good time with my reliable and big-memoried new computer!

Ship Creek.

Ship Creek is near our house. I have been wanting to take photographs of it this winter. It froze over and then the ice broke up again, which looked really cool. Thick chunks of ice on top of ice -- chunks of ice that are a foot thick. Didn't make it to take those photos. On Christmas Day, after sledding, we drove past the bridge over Ship Creek and on into Cottonwood Park. The Creek runs along the park, but it is frozen over where the parking is, and plus the kids saw the big wooden fort playground, covered with untouched snow. So the photos that day were not the creek, but instead I photographed the kids and Mark playing in the snow -- those photos were in my Weekly Winners.

So a couple days ago, we were coming home, I had my camera, we were going over Ship Creek, we had a plan to park along the road so I could hop out and take a couple of photos...

Except that there was a snowplow ahead of us and one behind us, so there was no chance to stop along the road. And we had had a bunch of snow, so the road to the park was a no-go. It hadn't been plowed and I was not wearing my snow boots, so hiking through drifts was out.

I said "roll down the window" as I prepared to take a couple photos as we drove slowly over the bridge (the one silver lining in being sandwiched between snowplows, being able to go 10 miles an hour) . Mark rolled his window down. I guess driving behind a snowplow at almost dusk on a snow covered road with our three kids in the back seat is more important than me getting a decent photograph. Men.

So these are my placeholder photos, until I manage to get to Ship Creek to take photos I actually frame and format and think about, instead of sticking the camera out the window as we roll by...I am happy with these photos but running water! I love running water and I love taking photos of running water! I lived in the desert where the only running water came out of a tap, so running water!

In other news, the sun is now so low in the sky it is blocked by the two story house south of us. And it is ten below. A high today of zero, if we are really lucky.

And yes, Lou, I still love it. The air is crisp and cold and fresh, the snow is white and fluffy, and the dogs like to sleep on my feet.

And oh, yeah...the snow on the branches? It's always there. We have had a very calm windless winter, so it doesn't blow off, and the sun is so low in the sky it doesn't stand a chance of melting anything, and it's been well below freezing for months, so no melting there either.

It is colder than normal. Usual for this time of year in Anchorage is 20-ish...I seem to attract weather extremes. I cannot tell you how many times I have been places on record hot and record cold days. It's a curse, bad karma, something. Apparently I was mildly evil in a previous life.

November in Photos.

vent pipe on the side of our house

foggy at noon (note how low in the sky the sun is at noon. we are pretty dang far north.)

fog glazed everything

more foggy glaze


the park

more of the park, 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Days are really getting short.

my favorite store. and some really gorgeous mountains.

the dogs playing on the deck.

Stump.

I got nothing. Thor and Tess and I went to Penney's to pick up Mark's new suit, lusted after various video games at Game Stop, went to Costco -- the children were much distressed to have to go to Costco, although they enjoyed all the samples available today, and Thor scored a variety pack of muffins with SIX poppy seed muffins instead of the standard four poppy seed muffins -- Thor loves poppy seed muffins -- and they HAD EGG NOG. Thor loves egg nog. He is very sad every January when he drinks the last of the egg nog he makes me stockpile (egg nog does have a shelf life, unfortunately, or I would have to buy a refrigerator just for Thor to have a year's supply.)

Then we went to the PROMISED LAND -- (insert trumpets blowing and angels appearing here) Target. We love Target. Not only is there now a Target in Anchorage, it's just minutes from our house. We got wrapping paper and penguin salt and pepper shakers, Christmas presents, Thor got a new pair of Converse One Star chocolate suede tennies, and a new fingernail clipper because even though we have at least six sets of clippers somewhere in this house, my nails currently look like hell, raggedy and pathetic and sad and awful because all the clippers are vanished. Always.

Oh, yeah. The stump. It's just a stump, but I thought it turned out to be a pretty good photo. There was a out-of-focus branch with a couple dead leaves in the foreground, but Photoshop Elements 6 and the bandaid shaped tool icon helped me vanish them.

random photo and the story behind it

I got this idea from Patsy...you open your My Pictures, and choose the fourth photo in the fourth folder and blog about it.

The fourth photo in the fourth album is one of my sons and my nephew on the beach. I love this photo. It's one I have done lots of experimenting with, which is why it's in black and white, and why I have an older photo in my more recent folders.

That's the Pacific Ocean, the coast of Washington state. We went to the beaches as much as possible when we lived on Fort Lewis. The kids loved it, especially when their cousins were along. It's cold, the ocean off of Washington, so we didn't swim, but we did lots of wading and playing chicken with the waves.

It's a gloomy day, because it's fall in western Washington state, which we didn't like at the time, but it did make a great photo.

This is closer to the original...

Photoshop Elements.

I am loving playing around with Elements. I can take a snapshot, a decent shot but one where the background is too busy, or the whole thing is in focus instead of just the subject, or one that is cute but not fab, and whammo!

Suddenly the busy background is gone, the focus is on the subject, not the stuff behind them, and that cute snap is a great framable shot.

Like these:

Downtown Anchorage has salmon sculptures. I really like this one:



But it's on a busy street and there is no good background. So I did this...

A little weird, but the focus is definitely on the fish sculpture. When I have some more time I am going to experiment with photos and images of water and photoshop the sculpture onto them.

I like this picture of Tess, but it's a too dark and gloomy, and when I tried to lighten it up, Tess' red shirt got way too bright for the rest of the photo.

I messed around with it for a while, and managed to dull down just a bit her red shirt, while brightening her face (I am not thrilled with the dodge and burn tools, because they don't seem to work the same way twice. I am sure that is me, not the program...).

I also sharpened it to give it a grainy feel. I didn't originally plan to make it that grainy and sharp, but I really like the way it turned out.

There are also some really awesome tools that completely change a photo. I have this shot of a path through the woods. Nice shot...



I used the Posterize filter and the result is kinda fun, the birch tree trunk is suddenly turquoisy:

Then I noticed the impressionist brush tool. My new favorite toy!

I am sure you will see more of landscapes altered with that impressionist brush, because it's so much fun to play with.

Ooooops.

It was a lovely sunny fall afternoon, and we were driving around the gravel roads near and accidentally on the firing ranges of Fort Richardson.

I took dozens of photos. I wanted this photo:



So my guy...

when I said, "hey, there's one," slammed on the brakes, threw the Suburban into reverse, and destroyed the right rear tire.

Mark got busy with the jack and the spare tire and all that...

I took a couple more photos of the unexploded ordinance sign, and some other photos...

Several people drove by (we were rather out in the middle of nowhere). Most of them stopped to see if we need help -- "nope, just a flat." (If you are going to have problems, having problems on or near a military installation is the way to go. Those are some seriously helpful people.)

He really really destroyed that tire.

Lucky for us we got to the auto repair near our house just before it closed, so we could drop off the tire and see if anything was salvagable (nope. We ended up buying four new rims and tires -- the rims and tires were wider than normal, and hard to find here. It worked out okay, because we got studded snow tires a couple hours before it started to snow for the first time. People ended up waiting hours to get their snow tires installed a couple days later, when it got slippery for the first time.)

The guy at the service station laughed when he saw our tire.

We were parked behind the building, the north side of the building. I noticed this moss

growing on the side of the building below a drainpipe.

It was a good couple of hours, even with the destruction. I think this may be Denali, the highest peak in North America.

Even with getting lost and destroying a tire, we still managed to find our way back to civilization and Costco. I love that -- I am out away from people and cars and noise and everything, and then half an hour later I am at Costco. Peace and quiet and giant economy-size bags of rice. And somebody to change my tire.

What more could a girl need?

Before and After.

I used to be here...

Now I am here.

You just never know, you know?

Random Photos.

I have been trying to organize my photos on my new computer.

I got Photoshop Elements 6 for Christmas this year (yes, I am fully aware that it is not Christmas yet. That's right, Marilyn, not only did I open a present early, I opened it three months early.)

So it found somewhere around 15,000 photos on my external hard drive and cataloged them all into one big pile. Didn't import the folders or the tags or any of that stuff. Ugh.

So to be able to find the photos I want, I have to once again go through and sort them all. 15,000 photos. I have done a couple hundred.

Because instead of sorting photos continuously, I keep stopping to play with them.

The results of my playtime:

Abe thinks the recycling bin is his toy bin. Any box or plastic bottle that hits the bin is fair game for him.

Wild flowers.



Amazingly enough, when I yelled "dance!" to the kids when I was taking pictures, they danced. I cut them out of the photo (Thor was tough to cut out. He ended up in pieces on several layers). Then I used motion blur on another copy of the photo, and dropped the cut out kids on top of it.


I was trying to do the same thing with a photo of Mojo. But the first time I cut him out of the photo, for some reason I accidentally left his tongue behind...


So I started over, and ended up with this photo...

I still hadn't figured out the selection tool, so I couldn't cut out Moj without taking some of the rocks with him. But I like how Moj and the rocks he is standing on are the only things in focus in the photo. I really like the way the motion blur echoes the "grain" of the rocks.

If you click on the photos, you can see them big. Because I take really big photos...

Random photos.

This is my big back yard (okay, it's half an hour from my house, but still. I can drive here and enjoy the view. )

Blink.

My kidlets.

I am all about the Photos...

Duh.

I didn't realize that downloading PioneerWoman's action set for Adobe Photoshop CS3 meant I could hit the little play button and Voila! my photo is transformed. I was working step by step trying to figure things out. Again with the duh...

(I started this post a while ago so if I am repeating myself, sorry. Life is too busy for me to go back through all my posts to see what I have said!)

But actually trying to replicate the actions rather than just voila!ing them has taught me quite a bit about Photoshop CS3. So my moronics in not doing any reading of instructions or help was a boon in this case.

Anyway, here are four photographs I have "viola-ed"...


This is a prickly pear cactus flower. On a bright sunny day. I messed with this one rather a lot.



I really liked this photograph of a rock and a dead tree up on Mount Lemmon before I did the Photoshopping to it. Now I like it even more. This one was really a bit of work -- I made four layers: the tree and rock, and the scrubby midground, the mountain background, and the sky. Then I was able to adjust and improve each separately. I really like the rusty color on the rock in front now. The sky could be a little bluer, maybe, but we don't have those bright blue skies in the middle of the summer.


This is a detail of a detail of the statue at the Vatican Museum. (The original ). I love the way this turned out. I have a thing for statues and gargoyles...



We have a Bird of Paradise in our yard. It's two sticks with some leaves. This is a photograph of our neighbor's beautiful plant. I love the colors and detail, and that black hole. It feels like you could crawl under this plant and find yourself in another place....

Oooh, Dang.

I have been playing with Photoshop CS3 -- I have twenty days left of a thirty day free trial. I downloaded some actions from Pioneer Woman -- I love that blog, by the way -- and have been trying to figure them and CS3 out, and partially succeeding. But upgrading from Photoshop Elements 4.0 will run me $550. Ouch. I don't have $550 laying around, and there are many other things that are far more important to spend that money on...

So I was messing around with Elements, which I can upgrade to the current version for $80. I am finding that using CS3 has given me some insights into using Elements. (I know I need to get a book about digital photography -- any suggestions, Marilyn? Didn't you recently buy some books on this subject? Any you really like?)

Here's the photo I started with. Possibly straight out of the camera, or perhaps SOOC via a slight tweaking with Picasa2. Dunno.

Problems with this photo: It has a grayish haze. The right side of the photo needs to disappear -- the flower is too close to dead center, and the left background is more interesting.

Things I really like about this photo: The sunlight shining through some of the petals. The focus -- yay! The focus is the reason I was so desperate to buy a digital SLR -- I wanted to be able to get shots where only the subject was in focus. In this shot, the flower and bud below it are in focus, the unopened buds to the left are less out of focus than the background. Depth! Ta Da! Also, I like the way the flower is so much brighter than the background.

With Picasa, I can crop it, bump up the saturation, add a glow, adjust the contrast, and in this case, use the focal B&W button to emphasize the flower and make the background fade into the...well...background.

I like it better than the original. And ten days ago, before I downloaded the trial of CS3, I would have been happy with it, except for maybe the focal B&W. Not sure I like that...

Yup. I like it better without the focal B&W...

Here's the same photo after I messed around with Elements...

Pretty similar...although the background of the Elements photo is a darker and a deeper green, and I could do the edge burn thing to darken the edges. Plus the Elements program is more fun, because you have more control over the changes you make, and there are many more changes to play with. There are lots of filters that create images like that cutout Seattle skyline I posted a couple days ago.

I may upgrade my Elements program for now (you know, that might be a great anniversary present, Mark...), and I have eight months to decide if I want to blow my Christmas and birthday money on CS3...

So...what do you guys use? Any digital photo programs you love or hate?

Seattle Skyline

I have been playing with my 30 day free trial Adobe CS3...

Here's the photo I was playing with today. It's from the deck of the cruise ship leaving Seattle on our way to Alaska. Not a great photo...it's gray and cloudy and dreary. Typical Seattle in the fall and winter, really, but not what I want. Yes, my reality is fluid and changeable.



After I cropped out superfluous water and sky...

I went arty. I like the blocky cutout look of this one, and the way the black building on the right is reflected in the water.


With this one, I added some lighting and punched up the depth of the color and the contrast. Still a gloomy day, but brighter.


This one is what Seattle would look like if it were in fact in Hell, rather than Washington.