Lesson 2

Once again, I tend to get, as Nolan put it, "zesty". So, for those of you in a hurry, here are the links to the assignment anchors. OK, if you're one of the 2.34x10*-555 who clicked on Lesson 2, because you couldn't wait to see what I've been working on, I apologize. The page took too long to load, so I reduced the size of a large number of the pictures, mostly the Distortion Correction picture and its decendents. I apologize, if necessary. The Supplemental Page will probably continue to be enhanced, as the week goes on.

Plastic Wrap Distortion Correction Porcelain Holga Image Trace Contour

For those of you who are not in a hurry, and who want to see The Old Man at Play, here's my Supplemental Page for Lesson 2.

Hot Spots

This is, for me, more difficult that the lesson made it seem. I found it useful as a starting point, but after the cloning with the Darken blend mode, I found it quite useful to go to Edit>Fade Clone Stamp and adjust the Transparency for a "pretty good" match, then use the lasso to select the "hot" area, Select > Modify > Feather and choose about 10% feather and Edit > Blur > Gaussian Blur to adjust the blur for best effect. Here are the results.

Before	After

I worked the left cheek and the nose. No, the results are not spectacular, but the "hot spot" wasn't terrible. If this were a work assignment, I wold have spent a good deal more time, especially on the right forehead. If I were working for, say, Playboy, I would have straightened here eyebrows, whitened her teeth, and added some (subtle) lipstick, as well. Then there's the flaw under her left eye. But this is a class, I'm learning techniques and trying to remember the techniques which are available to me.

This is a good one. Thanks.

Copy and Pasting into a New Image

It never occurred to me that there would be another way. Odd, that I should be so dense.

The Reselect Command

I've never noticed that command under the Select menu before; there have been several times when that would have been incredibly useful (complex, non-contiguous selections). Thank you.

Restoring order When Palettes Go Wild

This is a very useful tool.

Reset Buttons in Dialog Boxes

When I first discovered this, I was thrilled.

Floating the Options Bar

There will, no doubt, be times when I wish I could remember this. Right now, I'm unclear as to why I would want to do this.

Collapsing the Options Bar and Toolbox

I'm working in CS3 and cannot get this to work. Am I missing something?

Working with the Plastic Wrap Filter

I worked through the lesson as advised. When I was finished, I was unclear what had been accomplished, so I played around a bit with the Blend Modes (skipping ahead, I know, I know) and these are the results.

Original
Per Instructions		Back to Top
Luminosity @ 64%
Color Dodge @ 40%
Luminosity @ 64% above Color Dodge @ 40%		More Plastic Wrap

Correcting Perspective with the Lens Distortion Filter in CS2

This looks like it will be quite useful, as I am not an expert photographer.

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Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers are the coolest thing I regularly forget about using. And, if you've got CS3, you can do non-destructive filtering using Smart Objects.

Dreamy Porcelain Images

Several problems popped up during the porcelain exercise.

1. Although I adhered stringently to the directions in the instruction, the final image came out much more blurred than the image in the pdf.
2. In the sepia portion of the exercise, I had to reverse the numbers (12 for hue and 30 for saturation) to get something I recognized as sepia. Am I getting color-blind in my dotage?

Here are the images:

Dreamy Porcelain
Desaturated Porcelain (after 15 runs through the dishwasher)
Sepia Porcelain

Taking Holga Images

Where might one find someone using a cheap camera be found? In a gym, watching practice, perhaps. So that's the kind of photo I used.

Original	Holga-ized Image

There may be more; right now, nothing about this effect 'grabs' me.

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Trace Contour

This was an interesting effect. I'm not clear, though, why it makes a difference when the Trace Contour is done in Lab mode as opposed to RGB. I did it both ways, and the difference is clearly there. I just can't explain it.

Here's the result of the food007 photo.

This is, of course, followed by another photo.

Original
Trace Contoured

As in the lesson, except that I made three layers at the beginning, did not Flatten but Merged layers, and when I was finished changed the opacity of the Trace Contoured layer to 55%.

I have a feeling there will be more on this one on the Supplemental Before the end of the week. Stay tuned.

Layer Blend Modes