Playing With Photoshop Elements

Many people want to rush out and buy the big Photoshop program. I am completely satisfied with Elements -- it does way more than I will ever need, want, or use. The last Friday entry shows a tough restoration completed with the aide of Elements.

When I teach a Photoshop Elements class I will show how to make a water background. I believe I originally found the directions for this in Photoshop Elements User. I have never used it for

anything except to show what you can do with Elements.

A couple years ago I took a photo of my mother's cat -- I use that photo in the class often as my example. Here I have placed Rora's head in the swirling water (the created background).

I have also used Rora's face to merge it with my daughter's. My daughter all of a sudden will have cat ears and eyes. I have also used Rora to show how you can blur a background and keep the subject sharp -- but of course when I do it -- I do it to the extreme! Besides blurring the background -- you can completely remove the background and replace it with what you would like. Here the back of the couch was removed and it kind of looks like a weird sunrise behind Rora.

Is It Real or Is It Photoshop?

You have to really look twice a lot of photos.  Even looking twice -- do you really think you can tell if something is real or created?  I know that I used to think if I saw a photo of something I could believe it.  But sometimes seeing is not believing...

When I first got into digital I was not interested in manipulating photos -- much.  In fact, I would limit myself to crop, contrast, sharpening and overall minimal tweaking -- but nothing to really 'change' what was in the photo.  The aspect of digital manipulation that first attracted me was photo restoration.  I never really spent much time at all -- even on removing pollen specs on flower until after I started fixing the small specs on 50+ year old photos.

I don't know why I was reluctant to manipulate an image.  Photographers in the dark room had been doing it forever.  Somehow I felt I was not being true to the viewer if I altered the image from what it was originally.  There are photo contests out there that require any entry to be an unmanipulated image -- the only things you can do is the simple adjustments to contrast, sharpening, etc.  If you go beyond that to removing objects -- it is a step too far.  Most of the time a contest with such strict rules will have a separate category for manipulated images and the gloves are off in that group as to what you can do -- you can do just about anything!  

Some contests group everything together -- color, black and white, and manipulated all in one category.  I used to have a problem with that but I have changed my mind.  I see that type of contest to be more about the art than the technically sound photo.  In the contest with strict rules -- anything not technically good photos is not going to get very far.  Sometimes a blown highlight can be a good thing -- it is all in the art of the photo.  The way I see the contest with the wide-open categories is that it is more about art and the image itself than fitting an image into a box of 'photography only;' forsaking the art of it.

After all this blabbing about manipulating -- I have been playing more with Elements over the past month than I think I ever have.  I saw something in a book about adding a drop of "water" to something -- so I played with that.  I tried it numerous times.  Most of those tries came off looking like I fudged with the photo.  One of them though -- looks pretty darn good.  That is the one on this entry.  I simply used the lasso tool to create a selection.  Then went to Filters>Distort>Spherize.  I found that this needed to be repeated two or three times to get the look I wanted.  Many times -- no matter how many times I did it -- I did not get a look I wanted. Frankly, I don't know if this is something I will ever really play with again -- but it sure was interesting to make something like this look so realistic.  

I still stand by my standard of trying to get the closest to what I want with the camera and minimize the computer time for editing.  I like my camera much more than I like the computer.

Now -- a by-the-way about the last blog....I don't really want to come off like I am picking on Shutterfly.  (but I guess I am.)   They were not the only entity that turned me down during my quest.  They surely won't be the last.  (sniff, sniff)  I can take rejection.  But they (well this one person specifically) was pretty rude about it.  That was the difference.  It was not about me being told "no."  It was about the way it was done.

Orbs

Orbs -- I see this effect every now and then. Sometimes the it is really interesting. I never took the time to learn how to do it.


After looking at some awesome orb photos on Flickr -- I decided I would take a stab at it. OK -- so I have a lot of books on Elements (my choice of photo-editing software). I am sure in the books are instructions on how to do the orbs. But, since I am sitting at the computer -- I Googled.



I did not look far or long and found a quickie way to do them:

Square photos work best -- so choose something and crop it to a square. Then Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates>choose Polar to Rectangle, Image>Rotate>Flip Horizontal, Image>Rotate>Flip Vertical, Filters>Distort>Polar Coordinates>choose Rectangle to Polar -- and voila!

To give one a really interesting look -- then apply the Orton Effect. Way back in the blog I wrote about this -- you can search for the directions -- but hey -- I will put them here again.

Orton Effect:

Make a duplicate copy, make a second duplicate copy. One the second copy pull down the blending mode menu and choose 'screen.' Make a duplicate copy. Go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose a level that blurs but still shows shapes in the photo. (this is a very subject choice) Now go to the blending mode menu for this layer and choose 'mulitply.' You can choose the level of this effect for this layer by using the opacity slider. You can always use the opacity slider to manage the level of an effect.


The photo on this post was created from a square photo of pines. The photo was manipulated to keep the sky blue and the trees were in black and white. I created the orb and then applied the Orton Effect.