This photographer used high speed photography to take this picture of something being shot through an egg. I thought it was a really cool idea.

http://smilepanic.com/photoshop-disasters

Check out this web page. Came across this late tonight, not sure how true it is, but I thought it was funny to think that someone could screw up like this. Thought I would share.

Georges Rousse

Wow, this French photographer physically paints these geometric shapes into his locations. For reasons such as this, I am grateful for photoshop.

Bina Altera Collage

http://www.binaalteraimaging.com/

How you see when you see

Yarbus

How To Sharpen Selectively in Photoshop CS 5

Sharpen a Selection

This is the quicker, less precise way to sharpen a selection in an image.

1. Select the layer you want to work on in the layers panel, then choose a select tool, and draw your selection
2. Choose Filter> Sharpen> Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen (depends on how carefully you want to be when sharpening)
3. Adjust your options and click ok.

Sharpen an Image Using a Mask

You can also sharpen a selection using a mask rather than a selection made with a selection tool. This is more precise but is more time consuming. These steps will show how to do so with an edge mask. You can use these steps with another type mask.

1. Open the channels panel and deselect the RGB channel. Select the grayscale channel (Red, Green, or Blue) that shows the greatest contrast.
2. Then duplicate this channel.
3. Select the duplicated channel.
4. Choose Filter> Stylize> Find Edges.
5. Then invert the image. To do this choose Image> Adjustments> Invert.
6. Then, with the inverted image still selected, choose Filter> Other> Maximum. Set the radius to a low number to thicken the edges and make a clearer demarcation.
7. Select Filter> Noise> Median. Set the radius to a low number.
8. Choose Image> Adjustment> Levels. Set the black point to high to get rid of the remaining random white pixels.

• then choose Filter> Blur> either Blur, Gaussian, or Angle. Your choice of selection depends on how smoothly you may want to feather the edges of the mask. You can use one, two, or even all of them

9. Once you have finished these steps, go to the channels panel duplicate the channel to make the edge mask a selection.
10. Then, in the layers panel select the image layer. Make certain the selection is still visible in the image.
11. Then choose Select > Inverse.
12. With the selection active choose Filter> Sharpen> Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen (your choice). Proceed to edit.
13. Finally, to view the results, select the RGB channel in the channels panel and deselect the selection in the image.

CURVES

How to use curves in photoshop....
Select the picture you are wanting to work on. Go into curves, using the map you can pull it up at the bottom to increase contrast or down to decrease contrast. At the top you change the 3/4 tones by pulling up or down. In the RGB box you can adjust the overall color of the picture. Such as red...if you pull it up it tones the picture in reds, and if you pull it down it changes it to cyan tones which is the opposite of red. You can also use the automatic settings that photoshop has to darken the contrast, or turn into a negative, etc. Play around with it and have fun!

Stephen Eichorn

Another awesome scissors and glue artist.

Resource

This is pretty impressive. You can search the entire 60,000 work collection of the Centre Pompidou online. http://collection.centrepompidou.fr/Navigart/index.php?db=minter&qs=1

Here is what Laszlo Moholy-Nagy brought up: http://collection.centrepompidou.fr/Navigart/index.php?db=minter&qs=1

Refine Edge

The steps for refine edge:

1. Use the Quick Selection brush tool to select the part of the image you want to refine.

2. Once you have a basic rough selection click the "Refine Edge" button on the tool menu or go to Select-Refine Edge.

3.In the screen click the "smart radius" button in the Edge Detection section. This will give a softer edge to your selection.

4.In the Adjust edge you can smooth, feather, adjust contrast or shift the edge of the selection (Do what you think works best.)

5. In output, you have the option to decontaminate colors. If you want a blue color to be removed from the radius of the selection click the decontaminate colors button and increase the amount.

6. Once done, decide how you would like to out put it: New Layer, New Layer with Mask ect.

7. Click OK and you're done. :)

Using Apply Image Command To Separate Images From Their Backgrounds

You can use the Apply Image command to separate images from their backgrounds. It can be especially helpful for images with a lot of detail.

1. Before entering the Apply Image command, view the image color channels to see which one reveals the most tonal difference between the foreground and background. Select the channel.

2. Duplicate the color channel that you just selected.

3. With the color channel active, select Image > Apply Image. Click the Blending option on the Apply Image menu and select a blending option that increases the contrast between the foreground and background. (You can repeat Apply Image with different blending options as often as you like)

4. To boost the contrast even more, use Levels to adjust the remaining light areas to white and the dark areas to black.

5. Use the Polygon Lasso tool to select the interior of the image that you want to select and fill with black. Use the Eraser tool to erase any black areas outside of the area you want to keep.

6. Once you have the image you'd like to keep in black and the background white go to Image > Adjustment > Invert to select the image you want to keep. Return to the Layers palette and choose Select > Load Selection > Color Copy (this will be the color copy you duplicated earlier)

7. Go back to the Channels palette and select the RGB channel. You should see the 'marching ants' around the outside of your image. Choose Edit > Copy. Select File > New and click OK. Choose Edit > Past to drop the image onto a blank file.

Fake Tilt-Shift

If you want to make a photo look tilt-shift but don't have the money for a fancy lens or the skill to make one, just using photoshop can get a pretty nice technique.

Original image:


1. Enter Quick Mask Mode.

2. Select the Gradient tool. Set it to Reflected Gradient Mode.

3. Decide what part of the photo you want to be in focus. Start drawing a vertical line there, and finish with where you want it to be fully out of focus. On my photo, I draw a line from near the feet of the man wearing a white shirt to the people on bikes.

4. Go back to Standard Mode (unclick Quick Mask).

5. Go to Filter> Blur> Lens Blur. Check to see whether the section you want to be in focus looks right. The default settings work pretty well but you can mess with them if you want. Hit OK if you are satisfied.

6. Get out of the selection (CMD+D).

7. Miniatures are usually brightly painted, so it helps to kick up the saturation by using Hue/Saturation. I set it to +57.

8. My photo became a little yellow when the saturation was changed, so I kicked that down a little in Color Balance but setting it more towards blue.

9. Increasing the contrast can also help the objects in the picture look more fake. I used Curves.

And voila!




Here is a nice tutorial that has screenshots of this whole process.

If you are feeling handy, you can make your own tilt-shift lens. It does mean buying a cheap lens and superglueing it to a plunger... so don't do this with your normal lens! Here is an example from Instructables, but a quick google search will turn up all sorts of instructions.

Also, here is one of my favorite tilt-shift videos:

http://www.marcadamus.com/index.php

Selective Exposure in Photoshop

I like using this technique when part of the photograph needs correction and editing the entire image doesn't fix an under or over exposed part of the photograph.

First you need to make a selection of the area that you want to correct. You can do this many ways, like the lasso tool, quick mask or the pen tool. I personally most often use the pen tool for complex selections.

Once you have you selection, save it, and then you can adjust levels, curves or color/saturation. It is a very simple task but can make a world of difference.

Here is a link for a good online tutorial of selective exposure. This uses mainly quickmask.
http://www.photographybb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=122&t=6745

Here is a before and after picture. I wanted to adjust the contrast on the paper and make it more crisp.

Before:


After:

Fred Tomaselli

Fred Tomaselli is an excellent example of a contemporary, scissors and glue collage artist.

HDR merger

HDR Merger

The first step to making a HDR image is in the photo taking process. For best results use a tripod and some type of remote. Make sure that your aperture stays the same with all pictures.


Open Adobe Bridge. Select the photos that you want to merge. Select Tools; Photoshop; Merge to HDR pro.
This will bring you to a new window just for HDR which will let you adjust the slides to how you want to mix your photos. When done just hit ok and it will transfer your image to Photoshop.

Eduardo Recife

This guy has probably made a fortune on his website, lucky. He has a lot of really interesting collages and a pretty unique way of incorporating found imagery, drawings and type. Check it out.

The Radiant Child: Jean-Michele Basquiat

On Sunday I went to go see the documentary about Jean-Michele Basquiat. I did enjoy the film but I am more struck by how the tragic heroic artist figure was portrayed. He was definitely portrayed as the tragic artist, complete with drug addiction, homelessness and coming from nowhere. I recommend checking it out.

Selecting / Quick Mask

To start I use the magnetic lasso tool for the intial selection.

After the selection is complete I hit the mask button under the color selectors on the bottom of the tools pallet. This will turn the screen outside of the selection a transparent red. I use The mask mode to clean up the selection, In this mode you can zoom into the selection very close while using your paintbrush tool to add and take away the mask. I tend to use a circle brush with about a 95-97 percent opacity.




Once the selection is cleaned up and perfect you can save the selection using the channels pallet next to the layers pallet.




Do this by cliking the far left icon on the bottom of the pallet, this loads your quick mask as a selection. Then click on the icon just to right of that one to save your selection as a channel. By doing this you can always return to the channels pallet to reload your mask as a selection. Now you can do other things and not worry about having to reselect the object out of the picture!

ACTIONS

Actions is a function that automates a series of steps as designated by the creator. This is very helpful if you are making the same changes to many different photos.
This video shows you how to create your own Action.
http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-use-Photoshop-Actions-24620283
If you don't want to watch it, it's easy. First open the action panel and create yourself a new folder. Hit the 'New Action' button which will give you several options about naming your action. Everything you manipulate to your photograph will be recorded, your actions zooming and moving around photoshop will not be recorded. Note, it is helpful if your first step in the action is to create a new snapshot in the History window, this will ensure you can easily get back to your photo after an action has been ran. After you have made all of the wanted adjustments hit the 'Stop' button.

There are a lot of really bad and some pretty decent actions available online. If you find an effect you'd like to try out on your photo, download the action to your computer. On the upper left side of the actions window there is a drop down window, select 'Load Action'. When you are ready to run an action, select it and press the 'Play' button.

Have fun out there.