The first part of the lesson was on using photos and other graphics to make a composite graphic. We also worked with the Manual Color Correction and Adjust Brightness and Contrast features in Enhance Photo Effects.

The original Taylorhouse photo is on the left and the composite photo on the right:

Next I used some of my own photos to try out some of the techniques used in the lesson. The next image is the original, a shot of the Forbidden City in 1999 taken from outside the wall. The day was dreary, and I hadn't taken Ron's Digital Photography class yet to know how to work with the camera to compensate for it.

While generally there are not many flowers in Beijing, when I was there in 1999 it was at the time of the 50th anniversary celebration of Communism and there were flowers everywhere. I decided to add some of those flowers to my composite photo. It was not until after I had finished the composite work that I decided to try the Manual Color Correction on the flowers. The second flower photo shows the colorized version.

After selecting the sky, promoting it to a layer and filling it with a blue color, a gausian blur was applied. Since the day was cloudy, I then painted in some clouds. Then I added the flowers. I resized them first, then did an Edit|Copy|Paste as New Layer. I then used the Deformation Tool to change the angle and reduce them some more. Once that was done, I duplicated the layer two more times and positioned the flowers so that they went across the bottom of the photo. I used the Soften tool where they overlapped, and the Smudge tool to blend the farthest yellow flowers into the background, and the Push tool to push the tree trunks and branches down into the flowers.

Next we worked with some of the Blend modes available in the Layer Palette. We started by laying out three shapes in red, blue and green. A black to white gradient layer was added to the palette. This image is shown on the left. The example on the right demonstrates the Hue blend mode applied to the image.

The second set of experiments first use the Dissolve Blend Mode, as shown on the left, and the Difference Blend Mode at 100%, shown on the right. The colors produced, however, are not the same as those shown in the lesson. I'm not sure why.

The final two images demonstrate first the use of the Difference mode on the individual red, blue and green shapes. The result, on the left, shows where the overlap produces white; green and red produce yellow; blue and red yields magenta; and blue and green produce cyan. Finally, since my experiment with the Difference blend mode on the gradient did not produce the same results at 100% as the graphic in the lesson, I tried it again at 50%. As shown in the image on the right, the colors are more muted, but the colors are still not like those shown in the lesson.

In the last part of the lesson we used some of the blend modes on an image. I decided to use another photo of Choctaw that was taken a few weeks ago at the lake. The original image is shown below:

Before creating a portrait of Choctaw I first removed his collar and lead with the use of the Clone tool. (Without those he would have been in the lake that he was eyeing rather than posing for a picture!) Once that was done I started by following the lesson. I wanted him to blend in with the background rather than have a sharp edge so I used the Soften tool around Choctaw and then applied the top layer with the Blend mode set to Overlay and the opacity at 35%. Even at 35% his color appears a bit deeper than his chocolate coloring. I really like how this turned out! :)

Thanks for another interesting week. I'm looking forward to Week 3!