Para Camera Club Tutorials

The Squarckels Return by Yvonne Hill

2009-10-01T00:58:00.000-07:00

How I did it in Photoshop CS4

Here is the finished image

First I started with an image of out of focus pelican wings (a failed image where I was trying to catch the birds in flight). This became the bottom layer which I converted to mono with a sepia tone and tweaked the lightness and contrast. The bright spots can be darkened using the Burn Tool.

Next I loaded an image of cracks in dry mud flats, selected it (Select, All) and dragged it onto the base layer. In the box above the layers where it says Normal I went down the list of blending modes and clicked on overlay.

This then became a layer above the base layer of the pelicans. Where images were not the size I wanted, I used Edit, Transform, Scale and dragged the corners to change the size to fit. When I was happy with the look of it, I flattened the image (Layer, Flatten); although this can be left to the last if you might want to change anything later.

Next I opened an image of an egret flying and selected the front wing using the Magnetic Lasso Tool and dragged it onto the 2 image composite. I duplicated it five times (Layer, Duplicate), flipped 3 of them (Edit, Transform, Flip Horizontal) and scaled each of them to the sizes I wanted (Edit, Transform, Scale) and dragged them into the positions I had in mind. By now, I had 7 layers, the flattened bottom layer and six egret wings. On the tips of the wings, I used Filter, Liquify, Forward Warp Tool on the tips of all the feathers to give it a more surreal effect. It is worth naming each Layer and remember that to work on any layer you must click on it in the Layers palette.

I decided to use a photo of a green glass sphere (fisherman’s float) that we have in our garden as the body of the bird. I used the Elliptical Marquee tool (from vertical tool bar) holding down Shift to select a circle of the sphere. This was dragged into the mix and duplicated 3 times and scaled to the appropriate sizes. 10 layers now.

It now looked as though the fantastical birds needed eyesight so the final image was the eye of a Parenti (large goanna from Nth Qld).

Again I used the Elliptical Marquee Tool, holding down the shift key to make sure it was circular, not oval, dragged it to fit the size of the eye of the lizard. I then clicked on the move tool and dragged it onto the Squarckels image, again duplicating 3 times, scaling to the relevant size, rotating and dragging into position. 13 layers.

The final steps were to flatten the image (Layer, Flatten Image), tweak the colour using Curves, Hue/Saturation and anything else that improves the look of the whole thing. Lastly, I applied Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen (between 50 and 100%) then Sharpen, Unsharp Mask (around 50%).

The very last thing I did was to put a frame around it by choosing Select, All, Select, Modify Border, choose 10 or more pixels, OK then Edit, Fill (I used foreground - black). Next choose Image, Canvas Size and add approx 1 cm to each dimension (horizontal and vertical), e.g. 21cm becomes 22cm. Then use the Eyedropper Tool (vertical menu) to pick up a good colour from the picture. Finally follow the process described in the first sentence of this paragraph again but this time choose up to 50 pixels, OK.

Job done!

While it looks like a complicated job, it actually did not take me all that long. The trick is to have a picture in your mind’s eye of how you want it to turn out. The title came from some Wattlebirds we have in our yard that I call the squark squark birds because of their raucous call.

The imaginary birds in this composite look to me as if they are looking around after returning from a long way away, but that is just my imagination. My husband says he has always had suspicions about me but now he is sure I am mad!

Yvonne Hill
August 2009

Yachts on the Rocks by Heather Horsnell

2009-09-26T23:30:00.001-07:00

A Sample of Layers & Montage

Yachts On The Rocks

I use Photoshop CS2, and tonight I am going to attempt to create a simple montage using layers.

Firstly, I collected some photographs of yachties preparing to venture out at Largs Bay, and then some images of shallow sandy pools at the beach. I didn’t have any good rock images suitable for what I had in mind, so I arranged some beach rocks in my back yard and took a photo of them. Armed with 6 images I sat down and began my montage of Yachts On The Rocks.

In Photoshop, open the image you want to use as your background. I will refer to the images I will use for this exercise. I open the sandy pool image, featuring shells, crabs and seaweed.

Next I open the image of the rocks from my garden, then having the two images open and with the rock image highlighted and using the ‘Move’ tool, I hold the shift key and clicking and holding the mouse button, drag the rock image over to the sandy pool image. With that image highlighted in the Layers Palette I open Edit>Transform, and holding Shift and clicking a handle of the transform tool, I resize the rock image until I’m satisfied with the placement. Click on the tick on the top toolbar to set the transformation. You will see covering part of the background image, the rocks complete with dirt.

On the bottom of the Layers Palette the 3^rd icon from the left is Add Layer Mask, so with the rock image highlighted, click on Add Layer Mask. Click your cursor on the mask to make it active, set the foreground colour to black and using the brush tool, paint at 100% opacity, then as you begin to work closer to the rocks, reduce the opacity to around 15% opacity, which means you will have to use several strokes to remove the dirt. It will be easier to also reduce the brush size so you can get into smaller areas, and magnify the layer to make it easier to see. Gradually work around the rocks until all the unwanted black areas are gone. You can switch between the background and foreground brushes by using the keyboard shortcut X. Likewise, you can zoom in and out by using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + Spacebar + Mouse click to Zoom in, and Alt + Spacebar + mouse click to zoom out. To reduce and enlarge the brush size by keyboard, you use the bracket keys [ ] between the ‘P’ and ‘\’. It may be an idea to check if all the black areas are masked out, by holding Alt and clicking on the mask thumbnail, then painting with either black or white, the bits you have missed.

The next step is to open a yacht image. Using the same procedure, select move tool>shift>drag the yacht image over to the sandy background image. Edit>Transform>Shift and alter the image until you are happy with the placement on one of the rocks. Again, using the mask by clicking on it, and brush tool, alter the opacity as needed and use black as the foreground colour, begin to mask out the background of the yacht reducing the opacity as you get nearer the bits of yacht you want to keep. If you make a mistake, and remove some of the yachts detail, all you have to do is click on the foreground/background colour selecting white, and paint over the mistake using the white brush, and it will bring back the detail. Remember to select the foreground colour to black before continuing to remove the unwanted details.

Now that you have the hang of it, repeat the yacht masking step until you have placed all the yachts where you want them.

Another good idea, is to get into the habit of saving your work at regular intervals, as it is rather frustrating to have spent an hour or more working intently on a brilliant image, only to have Photoshop freeze up, and you have lost all your work. Save As Photoshop PSD into a selected folder, and that way you can always go back to it with all the layers intact, for printing or output. After you have saved it to a folder, then frequently save it. File>Save, and it will save you from unsightly hair pulling.

For the slideshow I made I went to the Toolbar and selected the rectangular marquee Tool. On the top toolbar, in the Style Box I selected Fixed Aspect Ratio, then where it specifies Width: I typed in 4 and Height: I typed in 3, then clicked the Marquee Tool, and pulled it out to where I wanted to crop the image. I went to Image - Image Size, and selected 72 for the resolution, then in the Pixel Dimension boxes I typed in where it specifies Width: 1024 then Height: I typed 768. Don’t bother with the Document Size as filling in the specifics of this isn’t needed. Press OK. Then File, type in a file name eg: montage1 (the next image to save would be montage2 etc.) click the second dropdown menu and select JPEG, and save it into the folder you select for your montage. Click Save, then in the next window, use the small file/large file slider to reach the figure of around 200K, which in this case would be around the Quality figure of 8. This is the ideal size for using the Pictures To Exe Slideshow Program, which we may explore at another time.

Happy montaging,

Heather Horsnell

30^th April 2008

Mirror Image Effect by Neil Gray

2009-09-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

PCC PHOTOSHOP© TUTORIAL

TWIN WATERFALLS – MIRROR IMAGE EFFECT

NEIL GRAY - PHOTOSHOP - CS3

Firstly it is best to take your original photograph in camera with this effect in mind. Compose your image so that one edge of the main subject of the photograph is as close to the middle of the frame as possible. This enables you to “flip” the file easier in the editing process.

Editing Workflow:

Open image file
Copy layer (optional – re-name layer – “right side”)
Select rectangular marquee tool
Select left side of image
Edit – cut – switch off “eye” icon of the background layer
Turn “eye” icon off (background layer)
Copy your “right side” layer (re-name “left side”)
Edit – transform – flip horizontal
Select move tool – position this layer over the left blank area – use arrow key to butt precisely the two halves. In this case I want to overlap slightly – use arrow key & adjust to your liking
Select zoom tool – zoom in to fix overlying hard edge
Select layer mask icon in the layers pallete
Select brush tool – set colour swatch black foreground, white background
Remove distractions – copy top layer – re-name “heal clone”
Select healing tool – paint out distractions
Select clone tool – clone to fine tune
Select crop tool to re-size & fix any selection problems
Job done

The following is my own workflow I use on all my images:

To add a vignette – copy “heal clone” layer
Edit – fill – white – normal – 100% - OK
Select – all
Edit – stroke – 25px – colour – black – inside - OK
Filter – blur – gausian blur – radius 60px – OK
In layers palette change blend mode to multiply (turn off/on eye icon to see change)
When happy flatten image
To sharpen – copy layer – change blend mode to overlay – filter – other high pass – use 1, 2 or 3px
Flatten again & save image in your usual manner.

You could go even further with this effect if you feel creative, how about flipping the image again but this time vertically. This will make the “twin falls” into “quad falls”. Also, currently, I’m converting all my colour photos to mono, then duotone. This gives me three options from the one idea, but that is for another tutorial.

Cheers for now

Neil