Photoshop Skills Developement
During this part of the course, we were to learn the basics on how to photoshop images together, using skills like masks, selections, etc.
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In total, there are three tasks, one is where we were told to learn how to create clipping and layer masks, another was where we used assets provided to replicate an advertisement made already, and the final was where we were expected to create our own advertisement.
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Throughout the development of the advertisement and completion of tasks, I had access to three devices. The School’s Apple computers, a PC version of photoshop on my computer and a version of photoshop on an Ipad.
Task 1: Creating an advertisement using provided assets
For this task, we were given a set of images, and were to attempt to replicate an exemplar advertisment that was made with the same assets.
First, I imported the background as the canvas. I used the “Open” system option to reduce the chance of introducing noise and reducing the quality of the image.
I decided to use the background image as the canvas because either way, I would need to use 100% of a vertical column of the background image. By using it as a canvas, I did not need to struggle, moving it around in the small canvas, but could see the entirety of the image, cropping it to a smaller size when creating the final image.
Today was the first time using photoshop in a long time, and my skills overall are at an incredibly low level.
I did not have access to the usual windows photoshop on my computer, and thus i had to use the Apple Desktops at school. The interface was overall altered slightly, but the adjustment did not take long. The most distracting part of the transition was the command key rather than the control key. I miss-inputted the key many ties throughout my attempt.
Progress on Apple version of photohsop
Final Outcome
I used a polygon lasso tool to separate the subject from the background. It was not to a good quality however, as I was not used to the sensitivity and mouse acceleration settings on the mac and did not want to spend too much time creating a cutout.
After, I learned that I should have used the magic selection tool that could help separate the background from the subject easily. I should have used that instead
I created a shadow(of the subject) by duplicating the image of the subject(after background removed) and then creating a clipping mask over the new layer. The clipping mask was then filed black to create the shadow. I then offset it from the original in a way that made it look better.(it was below the original image layer)By creating the shadow on a different layer rather than the settings, i was able to put text under the person but over the shadow. After experimentation, it was not a good effect and did not look good.
To create the faded figure, I duplicated the figure, flipped with the transform tool, and then reduced the opacity to a level I was satisfied with.
When selecting text, I liked how the inverted colors looked. I decided to invert some areas of the image. I did this by duplicating the entire image(merged after duplicating it from a folder with everything inside), changing the color settings to invert. I then cropped certain portions out and deleted the rest.
Overall, I used a blue and red color scheme. This is because the dress was red and the background was blue(so an overwhelming amount of the scene was in these 2 colors already). However another reason is that Red, Green and Blue are the main colors that look good when paired together. (red and blue are not as good as red and green but still works well together).
In this image i did not use the drop shadow setting on text, but rather just did it plain. (I used it for the other one)
Task 2: Masking Tasks
Waterfall Masking Task
This masking task was to teach us to use layer masks. The layer mask made areas in black transparent and areas in white visible (transparent areas allow the waterfall to be seen). The part showing the waterfall is just black on the layer mask.
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I did this on Ipad (i had to relearn the interface), but it wasn't too complicated so I was fine
Man of Fire Task
For this one, we were supposed to work with a layer mask like the previous task. However, i noticed that the face image had a lot of negative space. I presumed it was transparent and applied a Clipping mask.
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The clipping mask isn't the way we were supposed to do it (layer mask and then selection), but it was way quicker (2 clicks) so i just did it instead.(plus we did a layer mask task already)
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A clipping mask is a mask where the visible portions of the image below dictate which portions of the image above are shown
