In Town Beautification Project Using Adobe Photoshop CS5

Everything I do, basically, starts out in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 and then goes (if needed) to Adobe Photoshop CS5 for any pixel bending that might be needed.  If it's a straight image, the time spent in CS% (if any) is pretty minimal.  The way it works out, about 90% of my images spend time in CS5.  I guess that's because, like Jessica Rabbit, I'm drawn that way (oblique reference to a 1988 film titled "Who Framed Roger Rabbit").  I don't seem to be able to leave well enough (read that "good enough") alone.  I guess some purists would say the 25 MPH Speed Limit sign that was the nearest object in the frame should have remained.  "It was there in real life, so it should be there in the shot".  To them I say BS.  I don't create documental or historical imagery.  In my own small way I create art.  If someone working in oils on canvas were to paint the scene and, for aesthetic  value, left out the sign, no one would bat an eye.  If I were doing photojournalism I'd have to work with a set of fairly strict rules.  I'm not.  Again, I'm creating (in my mind) art.  If you were standing across the street from this sidewalk park (as I was) and you were checking out the park (as I was), you'd look at it and never even notice the sign.  It's incidental and of no importance to the scene.  Therefore, it's outa here.  As I said above, about 90% of my images get tampered with.  If I did photojournalism, the stuff I shot would fall into the category of "spot news".  Why?  Because I took the shot when I was there.  We typically go to the Maine coast each fall to do some shooting.  We're there when we're there.  We can't make the sky have beautiful clouds.  It's Tuesday and the sky is bald.  Do you put the camera in the bag and say "oh well, not today?".  It's not like we live there and can walk out tomorrow  and check if Wednesday is a great cloud day.  We're there one week a year, take it or leave it.  So, popping in a sky or taking out a speed limit sign, is not a problem to me.  It's art!  To see what else was removed from today's image, hit the "read more".

We'll have to break this into two segments.  What was removed and what was "enhanced" to give it more prominence in the image.  The shot is downtown, not five minutes from the gallery.  It sort of juts out into the street to define an important intersection.  One of the streets used to come into the other four at an acute angle, making for some nightmarish driving.  The town squared off the offending street and put in a light to control the flow of traffic.  Good move on the town's part.

The speed limit sign was just to the right of the walk light.  CS5's Content Aware Fill (W) function got a pretty good workout with this image.  The sign (in several [about four] pieces) was removed and minor cleanup was required to straighten out a couple of lines.  A pole, just to the left of the hedges was removed using the same technique.  Segment the pole into similar pieces and have Content Aware Fill do its magic.  One piece of the rail had to be Cloned (S) back in, but, other than that it was a pretty clean extraction.  A light fixture and wiring chase under the "Opera House" sign was taken out.  That was probably the easiest extraction and came out great.  It was just a general tidying up of the area.

The things that were "enhanced" were the globes on the street lamps and the ribbon on the Opera House sign.  The way that was accomplished was to create a second Yellow Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, increase the Lightness of the yellows and invert the Mask that comes with an Adjustment Layer making it filled with black.  The adjustment to the saturation and lightness of the yellows was done before inverting the Mask.  That made everything considerably yellower and considerably brighter.  By filling the Mask with black, everything went back to "normal".  Using a white brush (B) the Mask was opened in the areas needing to be brighter (the globes and the ribbon).

Everything else got its normal one shot of color maximization using individual (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta) Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers.  The one final dab was to desaturate the clock face and brighten it a tad.

pins and needles

ENTER MY $100 SHOPBOP GIFT CARD GIVEAWAY!

H&M skirt, UO top, Aldo heels and necklace, Michael Kors watch, gifted jewelry.

I've never fancied the summer months as much as the others, simply because my closet isn't prone to temperatures that sky rocket and make layering impossible. Nonetheless, this shirt is one of those little gems that makes me realize that hot weather isn't always necessarily terrible (although I could easily wear this shirt all year). Besides the pattern of safety pins, thread and needles that attracted me to the shirt, the collar and the back detailing is simply the icing on the cake.

The main perk of summer is that the flowers match my clothes. Look at my mothers beautiful roses!

Moving A Building To A Better Neighborhood With Photoshop CS5

Okay, I really didn't move the building, I moved the neighborhood.  This restaurant is on a short street with another restaurant to the left and a house (turned office building) to the right.  The fence and chair in the lower left belongs to the other restaurant, but the entire house to the right is gone.  It wasn't like you could see it through the trees.  There were no trees blocking view.  The tees that area there now came from the upper right corner of the shot.  The wood shingles up on the third floor were nowhere near as new as they appear to be in today's image.  Just as a little background about this style of building.  At one point, in some US cities, there were regulations about the building only being two stories high.  Here in the northeast, steep roofs were the norm to be able to shed snow during the winters.  The reason for the wood shingles was to be able to call it a part of the roof.  That way the builder could skirt the regulations concerning the number of stories in a building.  Pretty clever, those old Swamp Yankees.  The house actually does date back to the early days of our town and gets its current name from General Israel Putnam, of Revolutionary War fame.  There's no direct connection that I know of, but Putnam did spend the winter of 1778-1779 camped, with his troops, in town.  To find out how the neighborhood was moved, hit the "read more".

This one's kind of easy, maybe even cheesy.  It's like Photoshop 101.  A copy of the image was made (CTRL J) and the Move Tool (V) used to bring slide the image down.  A black Layer Mask was added (hold the ALT key down while selecting the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the  Layers Panel (looks like a front loading washer).  Then the Layer Opacity (above the Layer Panel) was lowered, allowing the lower copy of the image to show through.  With the lower copy selected, areas of the image to remain selected with the Quick Selection Tool (W).  The selected areas were filled with white (if white is the foreground color - Alt/Backspace). 

That took care of most of the fill in.  The process was repeated to fill in the rest of the area.  The trunks of the larger tress were masked out of the replacement areas to give the overall trees some weight.

See, it doesn't have to be hard.  Just a quick copy and move, paint out what you don't want showing and you're done.

$100 Shopbop Gift Card Giveaway ft. a Shopbop Sale

A great big hello to all my readers! I have a wonderful surprise for you all. I was recently contacted by Shopbop to host a $100 gift card giveaway. Definitely not an opportunity that I wanted to miss.

Whoever wins the gift card will have the opportunity to select from designers like Ella Moss. You can choose from a selection of tunics, Patterson Kincaid tops, and do not forget to check out the Shopbop Sale section AND more!

The rules of the giveaway are:

1. Go to Shopbop and select your favourite item and post it in a comment.

2. Include your email address in a comment so that I can contact you.

3. Only one entry per person.

4. Contest ends July 8th at 11:59pm.

These are some items that I really like:

GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!

Why Adobe Photoshop Smart Objects Are Like SCUBA Diving

What!  How bizarre a statement is the title of today's post?  To tell the truth?  Not at all. I was looking at the third (and last) times Square scene in this trilogy and was trying to decide if I liked the way it looked or if one of the older iterations looked better.  By using Smart Objects I was able to pick the image apart, going back to the base Layers of the four shot pano.  I was able to take a look at each of the five nested Smart Object Layers and turn on and off each Layer at each interval.  I had total freedom to move in any direction I wanted.  Up, down, left, right, just as if I was SCUBA diving.  When you're SCUBA diving you're not restricted by the typical forces we find on land.  If a diver is properly buoyant he/she can move vertically just as easily as she/he can move in a horizontal plane .  The same holds true for working in Smart Objects.  One of the demonstrations I typically do when discussing the use of Smart Objects is to start a panorama with four or five shots.  Once Adobe Photoshop CS5 does its magic I add a Layer and write the word "MISTAKE" in big red letters across the image.  From there I make the whole set of Layers into a Smart Object.  I'll go through any color correction and color saturation I think works with the image and make a Smart Object of all those Layers.  From there, as in today's image I'll create an Alpha Channel Mask and drop in a pleasing sky.  I'll adjust the sky (using Adjustment Layers and a Clipping Mask) to make it look reasonable with the rest of the image and make a Smart Object of that whole shooting match.  I'll make two copies of that Smart Object and use the lower copy to Sharpen the image and the upper to put a Vignette around the edges to "finish" the image.  Mind you, I still have the word "MISTAKE" across the image.  The reason for having the word in large type is so no one forgets that a "mistake" was made on the original pano.  In real life it wouldn't be a large, typed word, but this is only to make a point.  To find out what the magic is about using Smart Objects, hit the "read more".

Just in case you haven't been counting, there are four sets of Smart Objects nested one under another in the scenario I've described.  And, there's a "MISTAKE" all the way back at the beginning.  So, now I'm finished with this masterpiece I've just created and I'm looking for any flaws I may have overlooked.  Lo and behold I spot the "MISTAKE".  I can double click on the base Smart Object and step down one level, it's not there.  Double click on the next base Layer Smart Object and step down another level.  Not there either.  Step down again and check.  Nope, not there.  One more step down and we get to the place where the "MISTAKE" can be fixed.  It can be fixed any way you'd like.  The visibility can be turned off or the Layer dropped into the trash bin.  Whatever method is used, the "MISTAKE" is gone.

It's sort of like being at the bottom of the dive in SCUBA.  You're as far down as you can go.  On the way back up you have to take it nice and slow and rise at the same pace as your bubbles.  In PS CS5 you Save and then Close each step.  Save and Close, Save and Close your way back up to the top.  You can't just Save, Save, Save and expect to get the proper results.  Saving is one thing, but Closing updates the Smart Object that will be used by the Smart Object above.

It is interesting to watch what goes on as the Smart Object are updated.  In today's image the T-shirt on the fellow just about in the lower center of the image is a copy of the one worn by the guy just under the tip of the "One Way" sign.  The original shirt was a confusing mess of person and van due to the movement of both as a shots were taken.  When rising in the levels of Smart Objects, at one point the pants that go along with the shirt can be seen extending below the Crop of the image.  When that Smart Object was updated, the crop returned and the pants neatly trimmed to conform.

Smart Objects are the coolest things I've ever worked with in Photoshop.  The flexibility they provide is outstanding.

Exaggerated Colors With Adobe Photoshop CS5

Here's one more view of the Times Square area in New York City.  It, like Monday's post (below), is an eight shot panorama of NYC.  The shots were taken with a Nikon 3000, held in a vertical position, and is four shots wide by two rows of shots high.  The Times Square area is so bright with color that it's almost Las Vegasesque and lends itself to pushing colors past the limit of normal.  As is usual with my images that are either HDR or exaggerated, a "normal" sky was popped in to try to do a little trompe l'oeil (fool of eye) action and make the viewer wonder just what is real and what's over the edge.  To most people who have seen today's image, the first thing that comes to mind is HDR (High Dynamic Range).  There is no HDR applied to this image.  The illustrative look it the image comes from a completely different technique.  To find out how the effect was achieved and how the bright colors pulled out of the image, hit the "read more".

There's basically three parts to How today's image came to life.  The first is the Mask used to put in the sky, the second is how to get the look of an illustration and the third is the method used to kick the colors up.

The first thing I tried with the Mask is the Quick Selection Tool (W).  I figured a quick swipe between the buildings, do a Save Selection and just paint in the wires and arm of the traffic light crossing the sky.  What a pain in the butt that turned out to be.  Instead, it wound up being much easier to go back to the tried and true method of using the Calculations (Image/Calculations) function found in the last several iterations of Adobe Photoshop.  What was painful became quite easy.  Calculations is not available with Adobe Photoshop Elements, so if you're a PSE user you'd need to go back to a more difficult method.  First thing to do is to take a look at the RGB Channels (Channels Panel - usually clustered with the Layers Panel).  Typically, because we're looking at the sky, the Blue Channel will have the greatest amount of contrast between the sky and whatever else is in the scene.  In the case of today's image, don't worry about the street and the bulk of the buildings.  Take a look at the separation  of the sky and the edges of the buildings.  Don't worry about making a copy of the Blue Channel.  The output we'll end up with is a new Alpha Channel, so copying a Channel doesn't buy us anything.  Open the Calculations dialog box.  Don't get scared, it's not as bad as it looks.  It'll already be populated with two copies of the Blue Channel.  Highlight the Blend Mode dropdown and use the up and down arrows to flip through the possible blending combinations.  Today's image had the biggest contrast in either the Hard Light or Vivid Light modes.  There will be gaps in the street and buildings.  The big thing you'll be looking for is the sky to building edges.  Once you've determined the best contrast click the OK button.  This makes a New Channel (with the "Result" option set to New Channel) and this Alpha Channel can be filled in using whatever tools you feel comfortable with.  Now that we have a finished Mask, we can use any sky we like and put a Mask on the sky revealing the buildings.

The illustration look to the image comes from making a copy of the composite image Layer.  Make sure it's a Smart Object (Filters/Convert for Smart Filters) and use the Find Edges Filter (Filters/Stylize/Find Edges).  Once the Filter is applied, add a Levels Adjustment Layer and bring both the black and the white tick marks toward the center, increasing the contrast.  When you have fine, sharp lines, change the Blend Mode to Overlay to outline all the major breaks in tones of color.  Any lines will become very defined and create the look.

The third thing used to create today's image was multiple Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers.  Each color (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta) had the Saturation level pushed to the maximum without getting neonish .  The easiest method I have for doing this is to move the Saturation slider to 100% and then back it down until the garishness (in the area you're concentrating on) is just below the point of going neon.  I use the Shift Key and either the down arrow or the Scroll Wheel on a mouse to move the increments by ten points at a time.  The difference between 60 and 50 can be seen.  The difference between 54 and 56 can't.  The sky is not included in these adjustments.  In today's image the billboard of the Green Lantern movie (to the left of the image, just to the right of the red car billboard) needed a heavy dose of Green.  That much Green resulted in specks of Green being scattered throughout the image.  The Mask that comes along with Adjustment Layer was used to remove any stray Green splashes.  Once all colors were max'd out another set of Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers were used.  This time the Saturation and Lightness sliders were used to increase the brightness of individual colors.  In this case the Mask that comes with an Adjustment Layer was inverted (CTRL I [eye]), filling it with black.  A white brush was used to brush in the brighter colors.  The Reds, Yellows and Greens benefitted most from this technique on this image.

There it is.  The method of building today's image.  Play with similar image in your own files.  You may come up with a unique image of a place you've visited.

treasure hunt

Vintage top and belt, Minnentonka flats, Lithuanian Folk Dancing skirt, Mom's necklace and brooch, Ray Ban Wayfarers, Michael Kors watch.


















One of my favourite things is to search through the closets in my house and unearth new treasures (in the form of clothes of course). It's always incredibly satisfying to find something that I had completely forgotten about or that I never knew existed. This skirt is one of those forgotten treasures. This used to belong to my very first Lithuanian Folk Dancing costume, therefore, unlike the new one I wore when I got older, the material of this skirt is much lighter. I love the rather ethnic effect it adds to my outfit. It's such a wonderful feeling to wear something everyday, that I used to only wear once or twice a year.

Combining Real And Surreal With Adobe Photoshop CS5

At first glance you might think you're seeing "just another HDR image", but there's no HDR involved with today's image at all.  We were wondering around the Times Square area in NYC on Saturday and I had my little 12 MP Nikon S3000 in my pocket "just in case".  I thought we had gotten to and "interesting" area, so I whipped out the camera and took eight shots of the intersection.  You read right, today's image is the result of eight shots.  Four each in two rows.  One of the really neat things about Adobe Photoshop CS5's Merge to Panorama is that it really doesn't care if you shoot a half dozen shots across a horizontal or four or five in a vertical or any combination of both.  The computer will sit there and play jigsaw puzzle routines until it figures out what goes where and then assemble a coherent image.  You can see the building on the left, looking like a space shuttle that just took off and is heading down range due to the wide angle used to take the shots.  The buildings to the left look somewhat exaggerated and those to the right look fairly normal.  To find out where the "HDRness" comes from and how we just happened to be there on such a beautiful day, hit the "read more".

What seems like an HDR effect is actually just an overlay of a Layer with a Find Edges (Filters/Stylize/Find Edges) Filter applied.  After the Filter was initially made, a Levels Adjustment Layer was added and the edges were darkened to exaggerate  the effect of the edges.  The Blend Mode of the Filter was changed to Overlay and every sharp edge became almost cartoonish, or illustrative.  One negative result was that it messed up the sky something fierce.  The buildings looked cool.  The people at the bottom looked like something you might see in an artist's rendering, but the sky just had to go.

Using the Quick Selection Tool (W) the sky was reasonably easy to pick out.  Any misses were either brought in or moved out bay using the Shift and ALT modifiers to add what wasn't picked up or remove things that weren't gotten on the initial sweep.  The easiest way I know to do this is to blow up the image so you can see the edges around the building (ALT Spacebar and either roll your scroll wheel or left click and move the mouse left or right).  Once the sky was cleanly selected, the selection was saved (right click within the selection and choose the Save Selection option) as an Alpha Channel.  (If you're using Adobe Photoshop Elements you'd just use Select/Save Selection.   You'll be saving it an Alpha Channel, but PSE won't tell you that you are and won't let you see it as a Channel, but trust me, it's an Alpha Channel.)  Once that's done, just go to your random cloud collection (everyone should shoot interesting looking clouds just to have a depot of clouds to choose from) and pick something appropriate looking for the scene.  Today's clouds were a little to uniform from high in the sky to the horizon, so a Graduated Filter was applied to make the clouds further down the scene look just a little bit less intense.

So, thre you have it.  A set of surreal looking buildings with a natural looking sky with, what looks like, a pencil sketch of the people milling around.  A little bit of everything is today's image.  Thanks for stopping by.  BTW:  That's the sister-in-law in the lower righthand corner.

restless youth

Thrifted top, gifted necklace, Minnentonka shoes, DIY shorts, belt with pouch from Urban Outfitters, Blackberry Bold 9780 with random green pouch, Rayban Wayfarers.

Silly me thought that the summer months would bring a break from the hectic school months. Unfortunately, my level of busyness has stayed pretty much the same. It feels like every day in the week is jam packed full of things to do. The older I get, the more I start to realize that summer becomes no longer the time for silly playfulness and days spent lying in the sun (not that I have actually spent weekdays doing that since I started having summer jobs 4 summers ago). But even a year back everything seemed different. The word summer used to represent vacation time, now it just means a season when the weather gets too hot and clothing layers seem to slide away. Summer is now just a period of time before yet another school year of sleepless nights, too much caffeine, and new experiences.

I suppose I've been feeling restless as I spend most of my free time watching Dawson's Creek, listening to the same couple songs on repeat, starting books and pushing them to the side after only reading a few pages, and trying to decide where I want to be after two years and never liking my choices.

As time slides by quicker than sand between my fingers I only hope that my restlessness settles soon so that I can stay on track with all my tasks.

Nesting Smart Objects In Adobe Photoshop CS5

I've talked about Smart Objects in other posts, but this is about nesting multiple Smart Objects .  Here's a super easy explanation why I use (and you should use) Smart Objects.  I had the image completed and was looking it over for any flaws, omissions, extra bits, missing bits or whatever.   The thing I noticed was that the ball, in flight, had shrunk from soccer ball size to softball size.  It looked like she really kicked the air right out of the ball.  Remember, this was just before I was about to pull the trigger on making a print.  I typically print off the top set of Smart Objects.  The top set of Smart Objects contains Sharpening and Vignetting only.  Everything else has been done and work on the image is over.  What a time to discover you have to make a correction two sets of Smart Objects down.  But, because of Smart Objects, it's not a problem.  It's actually an easy fix (and it would up being the second trip back to the base set) because of the flexibility of using Smart Objects.  To find out why I'm so high on Smart Objects and to get an idea of the magic of Smart Objects, hit the "read more".

First thing to make note of is that there's three sets of Smart Objects in today's image.  The first set is all the Layers and Layer Masks involved in assembling the image.  If you count heads you'll see that there are seven individual Layers (actually eight, but more on the extra Layer later) used to make up the action sequence.  I use a Nikon D300 and it can fire six times per second.  Do the math.  The entire sequence is just over one second.  Six of the seven Layers have Layer Masks to go along with them.  Each Layer Mask has an Alpha Channel that goes along with it.  The Alpha Channels were made by using the Quick Selection Tool (W) to select the goalie in each frame and saved by right clicking on the selection and choosing "Save Selection".  The reason for saving the selection before moving forward is so you can get the selection back by loading the selection (Select/Load Selection) rather than needing to reuse a selection tool (Lasso, Marquee, Color Range, Quick Mask, etc.).

So, the bottom set is the images required to make the image.  Select all the Layers, right click and choose Convert to Smart Object.  This reduces the eight Layers to one Smart Object.  It now looks like you're back at a Background Layer, but with a twist.  You'll see the notched corner in the lower right of the thumbnail indicating a Smart Object.  The next set was to do any color correction (salt to taste correction) using individual Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta).  Once that's done we're back to having seven Layers.  Select all of those Layers, right click and choose "Convert to Smart Object". 

We're back to a single Smart Object being shown.  Two copies of the Smart Object are made (CTRL J twice).  Turn off the eyeball on the top Layer and select the next Layer down.  It's already a Smart Object so we can go directly to Filter/Other/High Pass and do a High Pass Filter sharpening (change the Blend Mode to Overlay).  Once that's done, turn on and select the top (unsharpened) Layer.  Using the Marquee Tool (M), make a Selection.  Leave a border around the focus area of the image.  Hit the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel.  That will apply a preformed Layer Mask to the top Layer.  You'll have to Invert (CTRL I [eye]) the Mask and then change the Blend mode to Multiply.  The Vignette will (most likely) be too much.  Lower the Opacity to taste. Thirty, forty of fifty percent is about the right range. 

Thanks when I noticed the soccer ball being the wrong size.  The flying soccer ball was actually the eighth Layer in the bottom set.   Any of the "old ways" to get back there would involve a lot of redoing a lot of work.  Using the left side of the keyboard method (CTRL/ALT/Shift/E) won't help a whole lot in this kind of situation either.  Anything that needs to be done under the composite Layer means tossing everything above the composite.

Using nested Smart Objects makes it a simple fix.  Double click on the base Smart Object.  It'll open the Layers below.  Double click on that base Smart Object and it will open the bottom set (in the case of today's image) of Layers.  The flying ball was imported from another shot and was on its own Layer.  Do a Free Transform (CTRL T) on the ball Layer and make the flying ball a similar size to the rest of the balls.  Once that's done it's time to climb back up the Smart Layer ladder.  Do a File/Save and let the computer cook.  When you have your cursor back do a File/Close.  Now we're back up one step of the Smart Object ladder.  Do another File/Save and another File/Close and you'll be back to the finished image with the ball enlarged. 

An excellent example of using nested Smart Objects.

hot air balloon

Vintage top. Gifted jewelry. Geox flats. Rodarte for Target skirt. Unknown belt. Gifted pin. Michael Kors watch.



















Sometimes sticking to the primary colours is the best choice. Yellow and blue are two wonderful colour combinations. They make me think of the sun and the bright blue sky on summer's day. What could be more wonderful than that?

As per usual I find that mixing vintage items with current ones makes for a great outfit combination. Today at work I was talking to someone about how I prefer shopping at vintage/thrift stores because you get unique items that no one else has. Yet, I should note that I actually prefer mixing vintage and current. It gives more options for everyday outfits, and it helps add a little modernity to every day life even thought I'd rather be living in a different era.