Category Archives: Digital photo editing
Friday Flower Fiesta (3/15/13) — Imperfect orchids
Okay.
Back to orchids for our Friday Flower Fiesta today.
One of the problems with orchids is that the flowers last so long.
Long-lasting flowers are subject to greater physical damage than a day-blooming flower.
The following orchid pictures all had something wrong with them, usually a big dead spot on a petal (which I fixed using the Spot Healing Brush Tool in Photoshop CS6) or a piece of a petal missing (which I repaired using the Clone Stamp Tool).
In some cases, the flower was in front of an extraordinarily bright window, or there were weird colors around the flower that drew your attention away from the flowers. I guess a little fashion sense can teach you when flowers clash with their surroundings…….. When I had weird colors in the picture, I often highlighted the flower I wanted to focus on, inverted the selection so that the flower was the only thing not selected, and then added a Black & White layer. Sometimes the effect is striking, as I discovered in a recent post where I had this picture:
Look carefully and you can see that the white areas were blown out in the original picture. Changing the background to black & white, though, allows you to focus on what I want you to focus on.
In other cases, a completely black & white background didn’t work (in my opinion), so I played with the opacity of the black & white layer to bring just a wee bit of color back into the background.
Usually I can just add a background layer and decrease the brightness and increase the contrast to make the focus flower stand out.
Remember that, as my wise old grandmother used to say, “What comes out of the camera is just the basics to start with.” Don’t be afraid to experiment to make your pictures better, and don’t be afraid to be a photographic artist.
In the following pictures, I’ll tell you what I did to the background.
Without further achoo adoo adieux, today’s Friday Flower Fiesta:
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
(I think this would have been better with a black & white
background layer with a wee bit of color being added back in.)
Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
(I think this would also have been better with a black & white
background layer with a wee bit of color being added back in.
This was the picture that caused me to explore black & white layers.)
This was my first attempt at a black & white background
layer with just a wee bit of color being added back in.
I liked the previous picture so much that I decided to do
the rest of the pictures using the black & white background layer
with a little bit of color being added back in.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
There’s that guy again!
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
And the birthday is only half over!
So it’s been a great birthday so far. First the roofing company showed up at 7:00 (yes, A.M.) to replace the roof.
Zoey the Cool Cat is not too pleased with all the people walking on the roof, pounding, debris raining down from above scaring her mourning doves away……
Then Jim and I left the little queen all alone while we went out to Cleveland National Forest to see the snow.
As soon as we get back, we have a 5.2 earthquake. Nothing significant as far as we Californians are concerned….
There wasn’t as much snow in the mountains as I was led to believe but I got a few good pictures of which this one is my favorite:
It looks so serene, quite, peaceful, restful…. I’ll leave it for you to come up with some more synonyms. It was cold, however. How people actually live in areas where there is snow on the ground for half the year is beyond my comprehension.
I decided to take the picture to Photoshop and create some different pictures with different frames:
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Photoshop can make old pictures new again!
I’ve been cataloging some of my older pictures taken in the early digital camera days, early point & shoot days, and well before I got my Canon 550D. Although they are not the best quality, I saved them hoping that some day Photoshop would help me clean them up, add contrast and clarity, and make them presentable for you to enjoy.
So on with the show, including musical interludes by Three Dog Night, Queen, Pink Floyd, and Moulin Rouge.
Many of us are familiar with the ubiquitous brown tumbleweeds tumbling about in the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood western movies, but have you ever seen a field of growing tumbleweeds? Here’s a field from right here in San Diego:
When I was a juvenile delinquent in Brigham City, Utah, my first grade teacher lived next door to me. She was the first one to get me interested in plants. She had a beautiful garden in her back yard full of nasturtiums. I took such a love to nasturtiums with their beautiful flowers and round leaves.
One day when she wasn’t home I went over to her garden, dug up a plant to make it mine, and then destroyed all of her plants, making mine the only nasturtium on the street. Yes, I got caught and punished severely.
Am I the only one who likes dandelions?
My wise old grandmother had many flowers in her gardens, but I think her favorites were morning glories for year-round blooms, crowns of thorns, which also bloomed year-round and reminded her each and every day of her commitment to her faith, and poinsettias for Christmas.
My wise old grandmother’s poinsettias were the tallest I had ever seen until I came to San Diego. It seems plants grow taller out here. Here’s the tallest one I’ve seen here:
I despised my wise old grandmother’s poinsettias because I was the one who had to prune them each September so that they would bloom in December. Poinsettias are in the Euphorbia family, and I now know that I am sensitive/allergic to Euphorbias. A great general rule of thumb is that if the sap is a sticky, milky white, it’s a Euphorbia of some kind. The sap can cause severe dermatitis and other allergic reactions in many people and can be dangerous for our wonderful cats and dogs, so be careful! The funny thing is that I don’t generally have any poinsettias around the house because of the sap and Zoey the Cool Cat, but I have lots of Euphorbias, such as the Crown of Thorns, all outside where Zoey the Cool Cat cannot get to them.
Speaking of plants growing taller out here, plants that would never bloom for me in Texas are prolific bloomers here in San Diego. The umbrella tree is a great example. I bought a small umbrella tree when I was in tenth grade. It was only about six inches tall. It graduated from high school with me, went to four years of college at Texas A&M University, and lived in Houston and College Station until 1993. When I moved to San Diego, it was about six feet tall and one of my office managers claimed it. Here is a blooming one here in San Diego:
You’ll probably recognize the leaf because they are used as houseplants throughout the world:
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Talk bubbles in Adobe Photoshop CS6
For the past couple of decades I have been doing my photography editing and graphics work in Corel programs. Currently I’m using DRAW! X6, PaintShop Pro X5, and Photo-Paint X6. Give me a graphics or photo project and I can do it in those three programs.
Since around this time last year, I set out on a mission to learn Adobe Photoshop. In addition to the Corel programs, I had used Photoshop and PageMaker in the ’80s and ’90s because of my work. When my work no longer required them in 1994, I quit using them and quit upgrading them.
I know that the current version of Photoshop, CS6, can do everything that the three Corel programs can do, but the masses say that the learning curve is pretty steep. I’m here to tell you that the learning curve is, indeed, steep. But it sure is fun!
Today I’ve been learning to do callouts and talk bubbles in Photoshop CS6. The process is intuitive, but because things show up on different layers, getting things to come together, especially if you just want to edit text or change a graphic, can be frustrating. Once you learn how things work, though, it becomes much easier.
Here is a picture that I added two talk bubbles to.
It took me about an hour (and a couple of margaritas, a plate of nachos, a BLT sandwich, and a beer) to do that. However, once I understood how things worked, it took just a couple of minutes to do it again on a different picture.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Look this way! Please look this way!
On a recent hike in the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge, I found three house finches sitting on a wire. I took five pictures before they flew away. My intent was to get all three of them looking at me, or at least looking forward. They refused to cooperate. There was always at least one bird that was looking the other way. Begging all three birds to “look this way, please, look this way!” didn’t have any effect on them.
I got up the courage to do something about it as I was looking at the five pictures this morning. Originally, I was going to simply replace the one bird that wasn’t looking at me with one that was. Then I thought, why stop at three birds? After playing around, I came up with a nice picture of six house finches:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me which three birds originally were not in that picture. Let us number the birds 1 through 6 from bottom left to top right. And as all good teachers would do, I require that you “show your work,” i.e., explain your decision.
This little exercise reminds me of my wise old grandmother. She carried her Kodak Instamatic camera in her purse everywhere she went, and she didn’t hesitate to pull it out and snap a picture. Once she got home she took all her pictures and mounted them in her scrapbooks and photo albums. However, she didn’t hesitate to crop them, cut them in two, whatever, in order to make the pictures better or make them fit the theme of her pages.
She used to always tell me, “What comes out of the camera is just the basics to start with.” It’s still like that, so if you aren’t using Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Serif PhotoPlus, Photo Studio, PaintShop Pro, Photo-Paint, ACDSee, Gimp, Picmonkey, etc., you’re missing out on a lot of fun. The ones I use are Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 4, Photo-Paint X6, and PaintShop Pro X5.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
And you’ll have fun fun fun until daddy takes your filters away
Photoshop CS6 has lots of ways to modify pictures, but some of the most fun are filters. Many filters come with the program, but if you’re not satisfied with all of them, there are billions and billions and billions of third-party filters available, some free, some inexpensive, and some expensive.
One of the third-party filters that I bought is Fractalius by Redfield. It cost $39.90, which I consider to be on the expensive side for a Photoshop filter. Redfield is a Russian company, which might explain why the filter is now available via instant download and required a PayPal complaint to get my download code. Nonetheless, I am extremely happy with the filter.
Recently I was out in a field of grasses and snapped this photo:
The bright, sunny day caused the grasses to be somewhat washed out, but since I shoot RAW files, I was able to recover some color and contrast:
Still not being satisfied, I took the second picture and applied the Redfield Fractalius filter to it. Here are some of the results:
Each picture took about five seconds to create and save, and there literally are millions of possibilities. It’s a lot of fun!
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
End of the world postponed, so it’s off to the San Diego Zoo!
I was successful at getting the Mayans to postpone the end of the world to 3012. Of course, just like the government, that means I kicked the problem down the road. We’ll let our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren deal with it.
Meanwhile, enjoy some more pictures of wildlife that make the San Diego Zoo their home. I hope I’m not boring you with San Diego Zoo pictures. If I am, well, bear with me; it’s my favorite place to go to get away from it all and relax for a couple of hours.
I’m not sure I would want to run around all my life with three-foot spikes sticking out of my head, but maybe next Halloween I’ll try it.
Several decades ago I worked as a copywriter/editor/proofer for the University Press, the College of Science, and the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M University. That’s when I overcame my fear of the possessive S, as in Ross’s Goose above.
There are a couple of general rules that you can follow which are good in 99% of the cases. First, if you pronounce the possessive S, then use the apostrophe S. Since I pronounce Ross’s as Ross-es, I spell it with the apostrophe S. A couple of well-known exceptions are Jesus and Texas. Even though you pronounce the possessive S, you don’t use the S after the apostrophe (Jesus’, not Jesus’s, and Texas’, not Texas’s).
Another exception is that you don’t use the ending S if the following word begins with an S. For example, if that were Ross’ Snow Goose, the S that would normally be after the apostrophe gets left off. Too many Ses (S’s?) in a row would make you think of, what? A snake.
Mr. Ring-necked Duck looks like he has a little attitude. I promised him that none of my blog readers would make fun of him, so be sure to LIKE him.
These next two birds might not actually make their homes at the San Diego Zoo because they are free to come and go, visiting the wonderful San Diego area at will. However, if you could make your home at the San Diego Zoo, where you would get regular feedings and have people oooh and aaah over you, well, wouldn’t you?………:)
I’ve always known the Great Egret by that name but recently I read a blog from a blogger in Florida who called it a Great White Heron, which is also one of its common names.
The Visayan Warty Pig is a juvenile, so it does not have a single wart yet.
Once you see an adult, you’ll truly believe that there are faces that only a mother could love.
Here, let me show you one:
The hippopotamus is a young one, born on January 26, 2011, which happens to be my wise old grandmother‘s birthday. She would have been exactly 100 years old, so I have a special fondness for that little hippo.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
My effected brown pelican
Yesterday while I was playing around with frames in Photoshop (see my post Using Photoshop CS6 to frame your pictures), I accidentally hit a keyboard shortcut which applied an effect to a picture to which I had already applied a different effect.
This is something that I had not thought about, applying effect upon effect upon effect, ad nauseum.
I’ve always done just one effect and went on my merry little way.
When I finished, I saved what I had created:
P.S. Anyone notice how difficult it is to upload pictures to our blogs after the WordPress changes made late yesterday?
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Using Photoshop CS6 to frame your pictures
Here is the simplest way I have found to use Photoshop CS6 to frame your pictures.
Decide which picture to frame. This might be the hardest step. 
I’ll use a picture of Zoey the Cool Cat waiting for Santa Claus to deliver a mourning dove under the Christmas tree:
Do all of your photo editing work before framing. Your final picture is the one you want to frame. So that you can keep up with me here, resize your picture to 600 pixels on the longest side, the horizontal side. You can do that many ways, but I’ll show you how to do it here using Photoshop CS6.
Click on Image ► Image Size. In the Width box, type 600, hit tab, and make sure the box now highlighted in blue reads Pixels. If it doesn’t, click on the down arrow and choose Pixels. Then hit Enter or click on OK.
Now that we have a 600-pixels-wide picture, we’re set to go. I wanted you to use the Image ► Image Size command because right below it is the command that controls our framing, the Image ► Canvas Size command. If your picture is small on your screen, hold the Control key down and hit zero on your number keypad; do not use the top row of numbers (If it doesn’t resize your picture, make sure your number lock key is on and try again).
Let’s put a thin white border around our picture. I always use a thin light-colored border, either white or gray, to separate the picture from the thicker colored border that we’re going to create and which adds that certain pizzazz to the framing, just like at the framing shop.
Click on Image ► Canvas Size. That gives you this window:
In the Width box, change 600 to 610. Make sure the box next to that says Pixels. Since we want an even border around the picture, change the 399 to 409 and make sure the box next to that also says Pixels. Change Canvas extension color to White:
Now you should have a white border around your picture. I used WordPress to put a black border around my white-bordered picture here so that you could see the white border:
Now let’s put in our colored border. Again, click on Image ► Canvas Size. Let’s make it a 50 pixel colored border. Change 610 to 660 in the Width box, and change 409 to 459 in the Height box. Click on the down arrow in the Canvas extension color box and choose Other. That brings up the Color Picker (Canvas Extension Color) box.
Here’s where you can really have some fun. You can choose any color by using the color box, the color strip, or HTML number codes for any color imaginable. However, what I like to do is pick a color from my picture. The way to do that is simply to move your cursor out of the Color picker window and over your picture. Notice that your cursor turns into an eyedropper. Click your eyedropper anywhere on your picture and you’ll see that the color you clicked on magically appears in the Color Picker window. Everything you ever wanted to know about the color you clicked on is now in the Color Picker window:
Click on OK, and then click OK again. Hold the Control key down and hit zero on your number keypad to resize the picture to fit on your screen. Here’s my picture:
Now let’s add our final border, a white border, to separate the purple mat from our final frame, which will be black.
Click on Image ► Canvas Size and change the Width box to 760 and the Height box to 559. Change the Canvas extension color to White. Click on OK. Hit Control and zero on the keypad to resize your picture to fit on the screen. I’ve used WordPress again to put a thin black border around my picture so you could see the white border we just added.
Now we’re going to add an extension just to the bottom so we can add a title and our company logo.
Click on Image ► Canvas Size again. Do not change the width. Instead, change the height to 659 pixels. Now we need to anchor that 100 pixels to the bottom of the canvass. In the Anchor box with all the arrows….
….click on the top center arrow. What that means is that you want to anchor your picture in the top center, forcing your new 100-pixels canvas extension to go to the bottom center. Your Canvas Size box should look like this:
Click on OK. Your picture should look like the following (I again used the WordPress function to put a thin black line around my picture here).
Our last border will be black, to act as a black frame around the picture and the white and purple mat frames.
Click on Image ► Canvas Size and change the Width from 760 to 810, and the Height from 659 to 709. Change the Canvas extension color to Black:
Lastly, add text and your company logo.
If you don’t know how to add text and your logo, let me know in a comment. If there is enough demand, I’ll do a tutorial on that. If you have any problems, also let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, happy framing!
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
