i felt the earth beneath my feet

*Warning* Picture heavy post. :) (No particular order either.)

In honour of the end of July, here is a collection of photos that never found their way into outfit posts, but that I think are lovely in their own right. Of course, these were all taken in July.

Enjoy!

every cloud has a silver lining

H&M Garden Collection dress. Gap vest. Unknown socks. Geox flats. Gifted jewelry except elephant ring which is from Aldo. Vintage belt. Michael Kors watch.

This outfit makes me think of that old saying, "every cloud has a silver lining." I remember first hearing it in some cheesy pre-teen book. At the time I never thought much about what it meant, or if it had any meaning at all, but now I think it's a saying that we should all apply to our lives. Life never goes as planned, and there will always be moments that stop us in our tracks, but we cannot lose the hope that there is something better not far along. Even during the most stormiest of days, there should still be hope that a ray of light will peak out.

Therefore, this dress with all it's frills, and my silver vest and socks make me feel like I'm a cloud, drifting along peacefully.

(When I was little I used to dream about being able to sit on a cloud and read books. I still think that if it was possible to do that, it would be really incredible. But unfortunately science puts a stopper to that dream.)

Simple Compositing With Adobe Photoshop CS5

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you look at today's image?  Probably, "nice snapshot".  A man sitting on a bench, reading a book.  The thing is, the actual bench the guy was sitting on was about 25 miles and 9 months away from the bench you see here today.  After I took the shot of the bench in the park, I couldn't help but think that it needed some human interest.  The bench, the tree, the park scene was nice, but "if only".  A couple of young lovers, a hiker taking a break, someone lying on the bench trying to get in a nap in the park, something, almost anything to make the shot have a little life.  I remembered a shot from last fall, a nice shot of a guy sitting on a very similar bench, but the shot had a distracting background.  Cars, walkers, wires, half of the guys dog, about anything you can think of that would mess up a reasonable shot of a man relaxing in the late summer sunlight.   Benches like the one on the town green in Litchfield or in the State Park in Southford looked to be pretty similar.  I dug through the shots from the fall shoot and spotted the shot I was thinking of.  How the man traveled the 25 miles and 9 months will be revealed by hitting the "read more".

First to do was to find the image I remembered from nine months earlier.  Luckily, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is a fine DAM program.  (DAM = Digital Asset Management)  There are several ways to find what I was looking for.  Create a Smart Collection, use Keywords, pare things down with flags and stars and colors and other methods.  The easiest way, in this case, was to go to the file tree.  My method of saving shots (now) is to go to the folder for the type of thing that went on.  Events, vacations, assignments, yada yada and photo walks.  I knew it was on a Photo Walk.  Under that sub-folder I have the places where the photo walk took place.  I knew it was in Litchfield Connecticut.  We go to Litchfield with some regularity, so under that there's a sub-folder by date.  I knew it was late summer, last year, so picking out the specific date was fairly easy. 

I found and brought the shot into Develop Module of LR3.  Did any correction that was needed to the image of the guy.  As far as I'm concerned, any of the background could have gone paisley.  All I was interested in was the guy.  Once finished with the corrections the image was brought into Adobe Photoshop CS5. 

Since the benches were almost identical it was easy to match them up.  After bringing the image with the fellow into the base image of the park and "target bench" the Opacity of the upper Layer was brought down to about 50%.  (As an aside: When I say "about" some value it's because it's non-specific.  By "about 50%" I mean anything from 45% to 55%.  The difference really doesn't matter.  It's a temporary state.)  With the Opacity lowered it becomes easy to Move (V) the top Layer into position.  The bench in the upper Layer was much larger than in the park image.  The Free Transform Tool (CTRL T) was used, with the Shift Key held down to, Scale the bench to the proper size.

A Layer Mask, filled with black (ALT and the Add Layer Mask icon) was added to the Layer containing the fellow.  With the Brush Tool (B) set to white, the fellow was revealed.  Any minor tweaking of position was done using the Move Tool (V).

Once he was properly positioned the image was "finished" in the normal way, with Sharpening and a Vignette applied.

Matt Kloskowski, of Photoshop User TV has a book coming out in the next couple of weeks about Compositing.  I have a copy on pre-order.  I may comment on it once I've had a chance to read through it.  Hope it's a good reference.

tutu

American Apparel skirt and bike shorts. Keds. Gap tee. Gifted bag from Holt Renfrew. Gifted cross. Ray Ban Wayfarers.

I think this skirt is the closest that I will ever come to wearing a tutu. I've never worn a real tutu, not for a dance show (I never did dance that required tutu's, only traditional Lithuanian clothes), not for halloween, and definitely not when I played dress-up with my friends. Therefore, when I bought this skirt last summer, it was an incredibly happy day. This skirt makes me want to prance and twirl around. It's definitely one of the "fun" articles of clothing in my closet.

Wednesday Photoshop Q&A - The Number One Burning Question

Since June 1st the same keyword search (verbatim) has brought someone (or some people) to the blog 71 times.  That's more than once a day, including weekends.  What is this burning question?

What are two ways to create image adjustment layers in CS5?

You'd think, after visiting the blog that many times, my guest would have the answer.  Don't get me wrong, I love having people come to the blog through a Google search.  So, today's post will be devoted to getting this question answered.  I read through all the sources of entry to the blog each day.  It's great to know that people have taken to considering "The Kayview Gallery" a resource.  There have been more than 300 posts on the blog, covering a large variety of photography and Photoshop related subjects.  Over 60% of the posts have had something to do with techniques in Photoshop.  If I were to look back on some of the postings from 2009 I do believe I'd laugh.  I'd probably say "boy, that's a dumb why to do that (whatever "that" may have been)".  The reason would be that Photoshop has evolved and, I hope, so have I.  A year and a half ago I was saying that the CASE technique (Ctrl/ALT/Shift/E) of making a composite Layer on top of what was already done was the "hot" way to go.  I haven't used that method in more than a year.  The way "the cool kids" are doing that type of thing today is using Smart Objects.  It's a much more flexible way to work.  I've written about it several times lately.  (In fact, the past two Wednesday Q&A posts have been about Smart Objects.

Let's answer today's question.  In fact, we'll discuss three methods of producing an Adjustment Layer.  Follow me by hitting the "read more".

You might want to click on today's image to see a larger view of my "tools screen".  I use a dual monitor setup, so I lay out the Panels I use frequently on one monitor and have the full screen to view the image I'm working on.  The only thing I did today was Open a Raw file I looked at the other day (File/Open Recent)  I clicked on the two methods of getting to Adjustment Layers and did a screen capture of each one.  In Photoshop (wow, whoda thought) I Layered the two shots and used a Layer Mask to show both methods at once.  Typically you'd get one dropdown or the other, not both, on screen at once. 

The first method, the non-shortcut method, to put an Adjustment Layer into the Layers Panel is to go to Layer/New Adjustment Layer.  You'll get a dropdown menu of some, but not all, of the available Adjustment Layers.  This is shown on the left of today's image, outlined in red.  If you're not good with shortcuts this would probably be the methods to use.  You can find it, but it is a multiple steps process.

The second method is to look at the bottom of the Layers Panel (the top if you're using Adobe Photoshop Elements) and find the icon that has been described as "the black and white cookie".  If you don't happen to be from the New York tri-state area you might want to follow this link to find out what a Black and White Cookie is.  Clicking on the cookie produces a dropdown menu with all the options found in the Layer/New Adjustment Layer method plus three addition choices. 

The newest method to get to Adjustment layers is through the Adjustments Panel.  If you don't have it available in your setup, it can be activated by going to Window/Adjustments.  This view gives each possible type of Adjustment Layer as an icon.  Hover your cursor over any of the icons if you are unsure of which icon is what type of Adjustment.  In this method there is also a number of presets available.  You might be able to find just what you're looking for by using a preset.

There you have it.  Three ways to get to Adjustment Layers.  But!!!  That's not the only you to be aware of about Adjustment Layers.  Anything you do on an Adjustment Layer shows across the entire image, unless you clip it to the Layer below.  You also, automatically, get a Mask with each Adjustment Layer.  You can create zones having only the adjustment.  I use this a lot when saturating colors using individual (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta) Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers.  Certain areas of some images can take more saturation than other areas.  Using the Mask to isolate those areas is an effective method of image control.  But that's another story.

the lazy day

Mango tank. Unknown skirt. Aldo shoes and earrings and blue tooth necklace. Other necklaces are gifted. Vintage scarf worn as headband. Gifted rings.

This was my lazy day outfit. Those are always fun, aren't they?

I got into the whole scarf as headband craze and I think it's incredible. This gorgeous little scarf has never been the right size for me to wear as a scarf, but as a headband, it's perfect. Unfortunately you can't see the pretty little elephants embroidered into the silk.

Nothing much to say about this outfit, but I do have to say, WHERE HAS JULY GONE??? Seriously. I'm sitting here shocked because soon it's going to be August, and I'll need to start my back to school shopping. Oh wow!

What have you all been doing this summer?