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Lesson 1 Supplemental

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6

Before we get started ...

I have a bad habit of beginning a course with an exaggerated idea of my own knowledge.

I write this entry on Friday, 2 Sep 2005, before the lesson about edging is made public. From the title, I have decided that it will be about applying various edges and frames to photographs. Since I've been framing photos and art works in Photoshop for a little over five years now, I got the idea that I can breeze through this lesson. As I was congratulating myself over my vast experience, I was reminded of a poem by Stephen Crane.

A rendering of that poem appears at the right.

I call it "Reminder".

A Beloved Friend

This is Custos, my companion for 11 years, who succumbed to cancer on 4 Dec 04, after carrying on bravely for nearly two years.

I made this piece strictly according to the instructions. The wheat thatch specs are:

Noise: Uniform; 28.33%, Monochromatic

Crosshatch: Stroke Length: 9; Sharpness; 6: Strength: 1

When I applied this, it was too strong. It overwhelmed the picture. Since the Background was white (#FFFFFF), I could merely adjust the opacity to 45% to correct this.

The color of the fill for the crosshatch was selected from over Cus's right eye.

Because of where I work and what I do, I have access to a variety of already created paper textures, produced by (or at least available as) KPT, in the Paper Textures collection. I've always wanted to try out a number of them for comparative purposes, so I'll impose on you to do that now.

I have to admit to being a Kai Kraus groupie. I've been a fan since the early '90s, when he first released Kai's Power Tools. I know that he now has no control or interest in the product, lately (last I knew) marketed by the Corel people. For those who know, or know of, or want to know of the man, see Byteburg. Read the text, then click on it. Then think of Magritte.

Yes, I am a pain in the a**. Someday, I will get a life. Until then, I will continue to enjoy the Internet and explore.

Scratch Edge

Scrüj MacDuhk

So here we have an un-color-corrected fowl named after one of my favorite Canadian bands. Manitoba has bands?!? Yes, indeed. Oh, dear. Safari is giving me trouble displaying a file with the umlaut over the "u" in Scrüj; it should be there, but the nefarious (wrong word, but the right one is hiding at present) gods of the Internet are playing with me tonight.

I did this according to the instructions, until we got to that one-pixel brush business. Ahhhhh. That's for people with excellent visual acuity.

Does George belong to the Set Of All People With Excellent Visual Acuity? False.

How to make up for such failings?

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, Radius = 1.7, then

With the Layer Mask active, Filter > Sketch > Conte Crayon, and Black (#000000) as foreground, Foreground Level = 11; Background Level = 7; Texture: Canvas; Scaling = 100%; Relief = 4; Light = Top.

I think it would be better if I correct the color with an Image > Adjust > Levels and fiddling about, but that is left, as they say, as an exercise for the student.

Notes from Later: I notice that there are faint white horizontal lines in the photo. Perhaps these are artifacts of the Conte Crayon business. Worth investigating, once I get time; perhaps later in the week.

"Shotgun" Edge

Watercolor Edge

George's Edge

Well, this was a little frustrating. As the old country song has it, "I'm looking for jitter in all the wrong places." And since Janee didn't happen to be online to answer my question immediately at 2:45 a.m. (the unmitigated gall!), I had to figure something out myself. Here's what I did:

On a new layer with white foreground, I made the lines with "noise" instead. Then I applied Filter > Texture > Stained Glass (cell size = 10; border thickness = 4; light intensity = 3) about six times (lost track; sorry). Then I changed the Blend Mode for the next layer to Lighten.

It doesn't look like confetti; it looks like somebody took a large-gauge shotgun to the frame.

When Janee tells me where I should have been looking, I'll probably re-do this, somewhere else on the page.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find where.

I selected the 55 Wet Sponge Brush and looked at the Scattering business, but since I'm mousing I don't think I've got the necessary controls. So I chose Dual Brush with the 59 Spatter brush (Space = 9%; Scatter = 340%; count = 1).Wet Edges was also checked. That seemed to work.

On a new layer with white foreground, I ran twice around the perimeter at 100% opacity. Then I selected a green hue from the rhododendron leaves, set the opacity to 30% and ran twice around again.

For the record, this technique is added to the notebook under "Things to work on more."

Selected brushes Bfly6 and Bfly62 from my collection.

Picked a color from the flower and put the lower right corner in on a new layer. Then duped the layer, flipped horizontal and moved to lower left. Duped lower left, flipped vertical and moved to upper left. Duped upper left, flipped horizonal and moved to upper right. This made it so that the not-really-circular stamp was the same in all four corners. The merged them all into a "corner" layer.

The horizontal and vertical edges were made with two other brushes, again duplicated and flipped so the alignment was right, then merged into one. I tried a number of different effects, but settled on a simple Bevel and Emboss with a Color Overlay of white.

Confetti Edge

Cracked Edge

Hammered Copper

Now that I know where to find the jitter controls, this is much more fun.

I used a Scatter at 234 for the first round, then did two more rounds with Foreground/backround jitter at 100 and Brightness jitter at 100.

For this one, I selected a soft round 100 pixel brush.

On a new layer, I did two rounds of shift-clicking with white, then Filter > Texture > Craquelure (spacing 15; depth 6, brightness 9) and changed the Blend Mode to Hard Light.

Finally added a Color Overlay, using a green from the picture, with a blend mode of multiply and opacity of 57%.

I wasn't satisfied with the misalignment of the frame on Cracked Edge, so this time I created a new layer and made a rectangular selection 100 pixels from each corner, then reversed the selection and filled it with black.

Then I made the background color white and Filter > Artistic > Sponge (Brush 4; Definition 18; Smoothness 1) followed by Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap (Highlight 15; Details 9; Smoothness 13).

Finally, to get the color right, I used a Layer Effect of Color Overlay picking a tan from the picture (tried a darker brown first, but it did not work), with a Blend Mode of Color Dodge.

The subject of this photo is one of the hard-working staff members at the Renaissance Faire in Sterling, NY, another fun day.

For the matting, I used the Cotton Scroll Paper, but changed the color, using one of the leaves which was later cropped out of the photo. After trimming out the center section, I wanted a bit more texture in the paper, so I added a layer above the matte material and filled it with Filter > Render > Clouds, then control-clicked on the matte layer, inverted the selection and cleared. Then I set the Blend Mode to Multiply and merged down.

The frame itself came together rather easily, but once again I wanted more texture, so I added a bit of Noise and blurred. It doesn't show up very well at this size, however.

The first issue was removing the pants (I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course). I duplicated the picture and flipped it horizontal so that I could use the edge of the marker on the left of the original as a source for the Clone Stamp. This worked, there was a strange interruption in the shadow, so I had to go back to the working copy and clone an edge with shadow from a lower portion of the marker. Overall, it seems to have gone quite well, except that extremely observant folks with notice a repeated patch of rust-colored moss (?) down three perforations from the top and to the right three perforations from the top of the marker.

I used the Levels command to adjust the lighting. I had to play with all three adjustments (black, gray, and white) to get things acceptable: light enough to read, but not blown out.

Now to the stamp work. One of the things I like about these lessons is that they force me to use portions of the program which I have preferred to ignore or work around. For this one, the brush tip controls and guidelines. Brush tip controls I've worked around because I really didn't know what they were for; I'm getting better at it. Guidelines I've worked around because they were annoying; I was often pulling them out when I didn't want them and I didn't know what they were for, anyway.

Needed three tries to get the perforations right-sized and even now I'm not sure. I looked at some stamps here and they look closer together, but older stamps from the stamp collection looker further apart. Oh, well.

I wanted to check the directions I gave earlier about special characters and, since I knew how to make the ¢ sign, chose the Euro. It turns out I was wrong. See the post "Special Characters on the Mac" on the board for more nearly correct directions.

The photograph is from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. Please be advised that this is a cropped-down version of a much larger photo, taken to emphasize the perspective lines formed by the translucent ceiling tiles. The sculpture in the center is a Remington.

The paintings in this room at the Clark are late 19th century and have shown some darkening due to poor treatment by their original owners. One hung over the bar in a New York City tavern for decades. Before the no-smoking laws. Therefore, the lighting in the room is set for much darker pictures than I have. So, the only one which actually works in context is Duck Line, to the right of the Remington.

Try as I might, I could not get the bright blue sky in the Little Girl (left of Remington) nor the bright green grass in Flower Seller (extreme right) to tone down enough to be really acceptable.

Also, the size of the pictures added is quite small, so I tried again, this time using André Grisson's "The Gallery." I think it turned out better. Because of the people in front of the pictures, I had to use layers, with the Grisson in front and the photos behind. Then I was able to select the paintings from the Grisson and delete them and adjust the photos so they fit both size and lighting.

Those seeking a real challenge might be interested in using Frederick Bazille's "Artist's Gallery" at left.

I don't have the intestinal fortitude right at the moment.

See ya'll on the board!

I look forward to your comments and, most especially, your suggestions.