Dreamweaver Lesson 4
LVS Online Classes
Instructor: Althea Fox
June 4, 2007
All links to other sites will open in a new window.
The Original Photos
This
is a combination of two of the three photos used to create the composition. The photo on the left is of a bronze statue which I photographed on a recent
visit to the Rhode
Island School of Design Museum in Providence Rhode Island.
The photo on the right was shot in Newport, Rhode Island, on the same day.
It was found standing outside a shop on Belleview Avenue. The two statues seemed
an unlikely pairing of art work! The artistic tension between the two, the
seriously beautiful bronze statue and the whimsical wild-twig-haired wooden
carving, would make an exciting composite! The choice for the background is
a photo of Mackerel Cove in Jamestown, Rhode Island, which was also taken on
that bright and beautiful day in May.
I am working in Chapter 7 of a book about masking and compositing
in Adobe Photoshop which is written by Katrin Eismann. My work for this composition
was to get rid of the backgrounds on each of these photos by using a Layer
Mask and painting into that Layer Mask with a hard, round brush. Painting
with black into the mask will conceal the areas on which you paint and reveal
what lies on the layer beneath. Painting with white will do just the opposite
so that if there is an error of removing too much of the image, it can be brought
back. This is why a Layer Mask is a safe, non-destructive way to change
the way an image looks.
The 'twig' hair on the little wooden statue posed a certain problem
in that using a brush in so many small areas with thin outlines was almost
impossible. I found that using a copy of that section which was cut from the
wooden statue layer would be the way to go. Here are the steps:
- Cut the desired layer section
- Paste above the layer from which it was removed
- Apply a layer blending mode, in this case Pin Light, to make the twigs
seem to be on a transparent background
The Composition
Incidentally, the background tile for this page was made by using a copy of
the image above and working in Corel Painter X with an oily, smeary
brush to totally mix the colors. I then took the resulting 'mess' into Photoshop,
used the Offset Filter (this helps the outer edges to line up seamlessly) and
then covered the inner mismatched places with the Clone Stamp Tool. This guaranteed
a resulting tile that would match the images on the page. Also, the bullets
(done in Photoshop CS3)are a circular selection of one of the earring's end
circles and saved as a .gif. I was thinking that this was possible and now
see that bullets can be assigned an image file!
This photo to the left
is the completed composite with some changes to the photos which are:
- Tonal changes to the bronze statue
- Bronze statue has been flipped horizontally to accommodate what could be
the light source
- Burning and dodging on the wooden statue to bring out the color on the
arms, which in the original were almost black
- Shadows which were created by making a new layer of each of the statues,
filling with black and changing opacity and then some distorting with Transformation
tools
Shadows are always difficult for me to decide about and these may not be totally
accurate!
I am working with a group at myjanee.com (under
the topic "Fix Your Photos Study Group")who are also using Katrin Eisman's
book. We find that the support we receive from one another is really helpful,
along with the fact that there is someone to 'show' the work to as you complete
the lessons. Katrin Eisman also has a site devoted to the book, Masking & Compositing .
Other Exercises
The rest of this page will include samples of some of the other
exercises done in the chapters preceding #7. I am so delighted with what I
have been learning by studying this book chapter by chapter. Although I knew
already quite a bit about masking and compositing there are so many things
that, if left to myself, I would not have uncovered,
Clicking the images in the table below
will open the image in a larger size.
