1. Learn more photo manipulation
2. Learn more about Photoshop

Janee has a way of giving lots of very useful tips about little things in Photoshop along with the discipline of making images a certain file size and dimension!

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Week 6, From Pop Art to Porcelain -- Exploring Artistic Effects- and I liked this more than I thought I would. I was particularly interested in the Pop Art and did 2 of those!

Line Art, Poster and Watercolor Effects

1. The line drawing effect, accomplished by simply Filter>Blur>Smart Blur with a Threshhold Adjustment Layers. The base photo, a picture from Blithewold Mansion Gardens last summer, can be seen in it highly exaggerated saturation in order to help the process. I experimented with the other ways of accomplishing this and found I liked the results of this best.
2. The photo of Lauren from last summer in New Hampshire, taken on the banks of the river where my son has his camper permanently based. I did the line drawing process as explained in #1 and used the Watercolor effect seen in Lesson 3.
3. The 2 Color Poster effect is one I really like! I used a rooster photo taken last summer at the Roger Williams Park Zoo.
4. My least favorite, the dithered image...

Porcelain and Pop Art

1. The photo of Lauren for the porcelain effect dates back to when she was in pre-school. Although small-close to a wallet size in real life!-I scanned it at 300 dpi and got a fairly sharp image. The image (with the effect) is quite blurry, but I feel that it all the more gives life to the eyes and so do like the effect for getting at the 'spiritual' image of the subject.
2. I had to do one for Kelly too! This photo is from Kindergarten, at school.
3. The 'pop-art' effect is so much fun! I had no idea I would enjoy doing it as much as I have! Lauren is first , at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old, in a pose that just seems suited to this kind of treatment.
4. Lauren, Kelly and Glenn, my son-in-law, on the steps of the NY Botanical Garden entrance seemed another fun grouping for this effect.

6. Questions

   A. 5. Which method did you use? If you used a combination of these methods, or if you devised another way, describe it.

   I am not sure what section this question is for, but will assign it to the line drawings effects. I used the Filter Blur>Smart Blur and experimented with the setting until I liked what was there. After that, I applied a Thresholds Adjustment Layer and aimed for sharper clear lines.

   Summary:

   a. Which of these effects gave you the most grief?

   I will have to say the dithered image did. I didn't like the colors and the way they went together and felt I didn't have a lot of control in their placement. I was not happy with the result either.

   b. Which of these effects gave you the most joy?All the rest did, much joy! But I have to say the Pop Art! I was just pleasantly surprised all around with that one.

   c. Did any "lightbulbs" go off for you during this lesson? Describe any insights you may have gotten.

   Well, this light bulb has been getting ready to flash all through the 6 weeks and finally went off big time in this lesson....Blending Modes! I had always thought them quite useless and now, I am seeing how important they are!