Hey everyone, I hope you're getting some useful tips from this. I think that this is probably the last tutorial that I have left to give. Unless I can think of another one in the next couple of weeks that is. This one is a personal favorite of my sister-in-law's. It is a B&W photo with one thing drawn out in color. It's actually pretty simple to do and you will see just how simple they are to do, once you've gone through this entire tutorial.
You start off with a colored photo. I chose to use a picture that I took of my niece. (Isn't she a cutie?) After you've adjusted it the way you want it, color and all, you then save it. Don't close out the file because you aren't done with it yet. Take that same photo and turn it B&W (see previous tutorial). Save the file with a new name so that you don't overwrite the colored photo you just saved. Next thing you are going to do is open both files in Photoshop. You will want the two pictures separated like having two separate windows open for the internet, like so. (this is when I am grateful that Jay decided that we needed two computer monitors for our desktop)
(Just a friendly reminder: you can click on any of these photos to see the larger version of them.)
Next, you are going to want to zoom in on the color picture to the part that you want to bring out in color on the B&W photo. On this picture, I chose the flower. Make sure that you zoom equally on both pictures by looking at the percentage at the top of the photo. There may be times where you will not be able to get them exactly the same, but try to get them as close as possible. Next, you are going to choose your magnetic lasso tool on the right hand side. It looks like an upside down wire hanger. 
Go to your subject and click on where you wan to start. The cool thing about the magnetic lasso tool is that it will follow exactly what it is you're trying to trace just as long as you remain close to the lines. Just to be on the safe side, you may want to click (be careful not to double-click) on certain points just to make sure you stay on track. For me, I just did a "safe" click on the points of each petal. Keep tracing the object until you get back to the starting point just like if you were playing "connet the dots" make sure you click on the exact spot you started at. Once you've done that your object will be completely traced in dotted lines like below. (you will have to click on the photo for the larger version to see this one)
Next, right-click on your object and that will pull up a drop down menu. click on "layer via cut". 
Then comes the reason why we needed to make these pictures two separate windows and make sure they were zoomed in equally. You are going to selecet the Move tool (looks like an arrow with a cross next to it). Click on your object and drag it to the B&W photo, lining it up over the object you would like to make color. 
Make sure that you get it over the object exactly. 
And that's it! Who knew that it was that simple? Now you can save the picture and close out the others. Make sure that if you want to keep those other photos you do not want to say "yes" to the changes when you close them out. Just say "no". LOL
And this is what the finished picture looked like when I was done with it.
After placing my watermark over this picture, I thought maybe I could do a tutorial about creating a watermark for those that are interested. Although, I don't know if I would be able to get it on here within the next couple of weeks. It would greatly depend on what my schedule allows. In the meantime, for those of you who ARE interested, look around and maybe take a picture of something that you would like to put into your watermark. The flower in my watermark above, actually came from a picture that I took of one in my garden. I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut it out. You have plenty of time to decide what you would like and take the picture. In the meantime, until I can get the watermark tutorial up, practice using these other techniques and discover your own style of photography. Until next time, Ciao!
B&W with a splash of color
Black and Whites
I know I'm a day late, but here we go. The next one that I thought I would teach is B&W's . After learning how to do these, I have noticed that most people just pretty much hit the B&W button and they're done with it. But a lot of those photos could look so much better if they adjusted the curves. I will show you what I mean. For this tutorial, I decided to use this photo that I took while away on a Christian Women's Retreat. The picture reminds me of Yoda's swamp on Dagobah. (Remember you can click on any of these images to see the larger version.)
Jay of course, being the Star Wars fanatic, thinks this picture looks awesome! It's kind of cool to me too, but not really something that I think anyone would really want to hang on their livingroom wall. LOL. As it turns out, this actually turned into a perfect example of what I am talking about. The first thing you want to do after you've opened your image is click on "Image > adjustments > Black & White. You will get a dialogue box that looks like this.
All you do is click "OK" and it will turn your image B&W, like this.
But we're not done yet. To adjust the curves you will want to click on threshold on the lower right hand side, which will pull up a menu and then click on curves.
It will show the curves dialogue box in the upper right hand corner just pull on the diagonal line you see circled here.
Now this is where your own personal touch comes in. You will want to make the picture more black and white and less gray without losing the details in the photo. How much you want to adjust the picture is up to you. To lighten the picture, click on the middle of the line and pull up. To darken pull down. To adjust the black levels go a little lower on the line and pull. To adjust the grays go higher up on the line. You will have to play with it a little bit to get comfortable with using it. And while you're doing that you can kind of gage your preferences. With mine, I lightened up the picture just enough to turn the swamp water almost white. And then I darkened the black to really bring out the details. You can see here how I adjusted the curves.
This is what the finished photo looks like.
And to kind of make my point, you can look at the two photos side by side and see that the one I adjusted is more clear than if I'd only hit the B&W button and been done with it.
And that concludes my tutorial. See you again in a couple of weeks. :)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Color Pop
Welcome back everyone! Today we are going to learn about color popping! I love this technique because it's sole pupose is to draw out color. And sometimes you get colors that you never thought were even there. A couple of great example that I have are these.
Notice the blue color in the cabin behind my girls? Those cabins are actually gray. When I did a color pop on the image it drew out a pretty blue color that was hidden in the wood. That's one of the things that a color pop does! And today I am going to teach you how to do that.
The first thing you need to do is open up your image in Photoshop (PS). Last tutorial I told you that I would be using the pansy picture for this technique. So here it is.
Once you have your image open you are going to click on Image > Mode > Lab color. Next you are going to hold down Ctrl + J to create a layer copy. We do this especially when you are doing a picture with people. And I will show you why in a minute. After you've created a layer copy, you are going to change your top layer copy setting from normal to multiply. 
And here comes the reason why I chose this flower for this particular tutorial. Notice what happens to the petals after I changed the setting.
See the pretty color on the inside of the petals that popped out? After you've done that you can adjust the brightness and contrast to your liking by clicking on Image > adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. In this image I didn't have to make adjustments after that. It's a little different than when you are working on a picture with people in it though. Because a color pop tends to make people look like lobsters. Like this. 
Which is why you create a layer copy. It gives you the ability to use the eraser tool and just erase back on the skin.
So once you made your adjustments and erased back the skin tones on your people. Then you are going to go back to RGB mode to finish the job by clicking on Image > Mode > RGB color. You will get a dialogue box asking you if you would like to merge the layers before changing modes. Click "Merge". Now you can adjust the picture to however you like it. Whatever fits your style. With my picture there was a little more yellow than I really cared for so I clicked on Image > Adjustments > Selective color. Changed the color to yellow on the dialogue box and then pulled back a little bit on the yellow curosor. And this is the final result.
Here is the before and after. You can really see a difference in the color. 
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Finding the Correct Color
Hey everyone. In this lesson we are going to learn how to find the correct color in your photos by doing a curves adjustment. With this technique you may only end up adjusting your photos a little bit. In others there may be some drastic improvement. It depends on the photo taken. For this lesson I have decided to use a picture of a purple pansy that I will also use for the next lesson. But if you'd like you can use the same image that you used to learn how to crop last time.
Open your image in your photo editing program. Then you are going to create a copied layer (I will give the shortcuts in a minute). To create a layer go to Layer > New > layer via copy.
Next we are going to open up our curves dialogue box by going to Image > adjustments > curves.
The shortcut to do all of this is Ctrl + J and then Ctrl +M.
On the curves dialague box you will see 3 eyedroppers, black, gray and white. You are going to use all three, but first, click the black one on the left and then click OK. Now you are going to go to your threshold. Down on the bottom right you will see a circle that is half black and half white. click on that circle. On the menu that pops up you will see a selection that says threshold. Click on that. Your picture will look this this.
On the top right you will see a graph with a little white arrow below it pointed in the middle. That is called a histogram. You are going to take that little arrow and drag it completely to the far left. Your picture should completely disappear leaving you with white screen.
Then you are going to take that arrow and slowly move it back towards the right until you start to see black specks appear on the screen. As soon as the first black speck appears on the screen. STOP! This is your black point. Next, select the color sample tool from the eyedropper menu (make sure sample size = 3x3 average (on the top tool bar)
Click on the black speck and then throw away the threshold layer by dragging it to the trash can at the bottom right.
Hit Ctrl + M again to bring the curves dialogue box back up. Click on the white eyedropper on the right and then click OK. Again you are going to click on the B&W circle on the bottom right and you will have your histogram show up on the right witht he arrow in the middle. But this time you are going to drag the arrow to the far right until you are left with a all black screen. If you noticed on my picture below, even though I pulled mine to the far right I still have a white circle.
This is what is called a blowout. Simply put, on this part of the picture it may look like a white spot, but put simply, it's actually blank. There is no information there. With a white spot you can at least darken it if you want too. But with a blowout, you cannot adjust it no matter what you do, because there is no information there to adjust. In photography, most of the time, blowouts are a bad thing. In this shot, it's not that big of a deal. But when half the picture is blown like below, then I trash it. It doesn't matter how good the composition of the picture was, it's just no good when the picture is this blown.
In this picture when I was first trying to get a picture of the flower, my ISO was set too high. The ISO on a DSLR camera determines how much light the camera allows. The higher the ISO the more light the camera lets in. So that shot was trashed. OK, back to the lesson.
To find your white point you are going to drag the arrow slowly to the left until you start to see white specks show up on your screen. Then STOP! BUT for instances like in my picture where I have a blowout, moving the arrow is not necessary. Next take your color sample tool again and click on the white speck (or in my case the white spot). This is your white point. Again you are going to throw away your threshold layer.
Hit Ctrl + M again and click on the gray eyedropper icon in the middle and click OK. With the gray point we are going to do things a little differently. Go to Edit > Fill.
You will see a dialogue box pop up that looks like this. Make sure you settings are the same as mine below before clicking "OK".
Your screen will now turn completely gray.
Now you are going to go to the right of your screen just above your layers and where it says "Normal" you are going to change that to "Difference".
What you get should look like a film negative.
NOW you are going to click on that little B&W circle on the bottom right again and click on threshold. This time your screen should go black and you should only see half a histogram. Move your arrow all the way to the left. Some of you will have a mostly white screen with a few black specks on it. For those of you who don't have any black specks showing, you will again move the arrow slowly to the right until you start to see a few black specks show up. Then STOP! This is your gray point.
Go back to your color sample tool in the eyedropper menu and click on one of the black specks. Again throw away the threshold layer and then go ahead and throw away your copy layer until all you are left is the single layer with three small numbered circles. Now you are going to click on the B&W circle again and click on curves. On the top right where you saw your histogram pop up you will see a white box with a diagonal line through it and three eyedroppers next to it. You are going click on the black eyedropper and then go to the number 1 circle. Then the white eyedropper and click on the number 2 circle and then click on the gray eyedropper and then click on the number 3 circle. As you do this you will notice that there are lines that adjust themselves in the curves graph as it is adjusting your pictures.
Once you are done, highlight your original layer and click clear at the top. This will clear your numbered circles from the picture.
Like I said before, sometimes it will only correct the color in your picture a little bit and sometimes it will adjust it a lot. In this instance it only adjusted it a little. The picture on the left is the after picture and the one on the right is the before picture. If you look at the two side by side, you can see that the picture is now a little less yellow.
And that is how you find the correct color in your pictures.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Rule of Thirds
I have been thinking lately about what to blog about. And while some things come to mind, none of them were really inspiring enough for me to sit down and actually type out my thoughts. Last night I thought about posting what I have learned so far with photo editing. I know there are a couple of passionate picture takers who read my blog (wink wink) who might like to learn this, and maybe there are others who might be interested in taking a couple of shots they have and enhancing them. Now, I am certainly not a professional when it comes to photography. There are still some things I need to learn before I can even go as far as to even consider myself a professional. But that doesn't mean that I can't share what I have learned so far. And as I learn more, then I can share more. So I am planning to do one tutorial every two weeks. I will post a tutorial of one of the techniques that I have learned. Most of it has come from the ilovephotography website. There's really only a few techniques that I can teach all of you, so this will keep me from having to come up with new stuff to blog about for a couple of months. LOL. Some of what I have learned comes from just playing around with a picture. And you will need to do the same as you discover your own personal style. In the end, I hope that these tutorials will help you take a picture like this...
And be able to bring it to it's full potential...
And hopefully I won't come across as confusing. The first one I thought I would do is what's call "The Rule of Thirds". It is a cropping method that is used by photographers and is a basis for well balanced and interesting photos. (Megan, this is a great technique to use on that one picture of Lizzy from up north that you were thinking about making B&W) To do this you basically use a grid and have it divide the picture into 9 equal parts. You then move the picture so that your subject is touching one of those lines or intersections.
I currently have photoshop cs4 to edit my pictures. It really isn't much different from the cs3 version. The main difference that I can see is that they moved some stuff around. If you do not have photoshop then you can always go to gimp.org and download their program. It's free and from what I hear it is very close to photoshop.
Ok, after you've opened up photoshop, click on edit then preferences then select grid. You will get a dialogue box like below. (the red box was added by me so you can see what you need to adjust)
In the info where you see the red box is what you will need to key in. If you can't see any of these pictures very clearly just click on the picture to see the full sized image. For people who own a Mac, use the image below (kindly given by the ilovephotography website) to edit your grid preferences. The dialogue box that opens up will look similar to the one above.
Once you've adjusted the grid to your preference, you can then open up the picture you would like to crop. For my example I will use a picture of a flower that I took in my garden. (I just love the designs of the red throughout the yellow.)
To open up your grid, you will need to click on view then show then grid. (For a shortcut to show and hide grid on photoshop hold down ctrl and ' )
Once you've done that, you should see this.
Click on the move tool located on the top left. It looks like a black arrow and then you should be able to move your picture until your subject is touching one of those lines. You will see that part of the picture looks like it is going off the screen and behind it you might see a bunch of squares (it just means that area is blank). Click on the cropping tool (looks like a bold square with a diagonal line through it). Start at one corner of the picture and left click on your mouse and drag it until it covers the entire part of the picture that is still visible on the screen. Once you let go of the mouse, everything you dragged to crop tool over will be highlighted. It will look something like this.
All that is left now is to hit enter. And everything that wasn't highlighted will disappear. Leaving you with your desired crop. Then you can just follow the same process you used to show your grid to also get rid of it. And voila! You now have a beautifully cropped photo!
At this point I did a few other things to draw out the beautiful colors...
...but that will be left for another tutorial for another day. :)
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Adding to God's Miracle.
I mentioned in a previous blog about God performing a miracle on a friend of mine. I was reading the updates on his blog today and I read something that leaves no room for doubt that this is nothing short of a miracle from God. This is what was written in the blog:
"Char wanted to share a conversation she and Trisha had with Jim's doctor on Monday. He pulled up 3 different brain scans and asked them to look at them and see if they could find any difference between them. He told them to look at the darkness in each picture. Char and Trisha could not find anything different as they all looked the same. The doctor said the person in the first scan died 4 days ago, the second person died 2 days ago and the third person is Jim!! The doctor said Jim had the largest most massive bleed anyone could have. It was in the most strangest place of his brain that it took them 3 hours to find the aneurysm so they could repair it! It is medically impossible that Jim is alive. All three patients had the same aneurysm & the same treatment yet Jim is the only one who survived. The neurology team at Henry Ford is amazed. The doctor remarked he had heard that this must be some "divine intervention". The doctor also said he always has at least 14 cases a night and he only had 2 cases that night so he is able to literally watch Jim breathe on the monitors and if anything happens he will be right there to assess the situation. The doctor thinks Jim has some "guardian angel" watching over him. Char said it was divine intervention, GOD performed a miracle."
How awesome is that?!
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Obama's Health Care Plan
These are the first 500 pages in the 1017 page health care plan that Obama is trying to push. Even though this may sound like a good thing on the surface, I just thought you might like to know what will be tagged onto this.
If you would like to check any of these out for yourself, you can click on this link here.
Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed.
Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process).
Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free health care services.
Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Health card.
Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW, and ACORN)
Page 72: All private health care plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Health care Exchange
Page 84: All private health care plans must participate in the Health care Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens.
Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run health care plan.
Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.
Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. And once that happens all that is left is the government health care. So much for Obama's claim that he was only offering "another choice"
Page 126: Employers MUST pay health care bills for part-time employees AND their families.
Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.
Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.
Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll.
Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2-6% tax on payroll.
Page 167: Any individual who doesn't have acceptable health care (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.
Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them)
Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Health care Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.
Page 203: "the tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax." (Yes, it really says that.)
Page 222: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected.
Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same.
Page 253: Government sets value of doctor's time, their professional judgment etc.
Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private health care industries.
Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.
Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!
Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.
Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.
Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in health care companies.
Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.
Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on "community" input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.
Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.
Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs etc.
Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.
Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (health care by phone)
Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?
Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.
Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources guiding you in death. (they decide what meds you can or cannot have)
Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.
Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.
Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.
page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN
Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN
Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.
Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.
